As droll an example of unintended irony as ever I’ve seen. Morning made, thanks proferred.
Any time old chap - this is easy.
I did point one out.
Martha Johnson’s nomination was help up by Senate republicans for 9 months. When it finally came to a vote she passed 96-0.
I am content with my willingness to cite info here on the SDMB and you are free to check it out if you are of a mind to. I am not being evasive here. I am literally frustrated by a metric crapload of articles that talk generally of republican filibusters but very little actual detail one way or another.
That’s the way it always goes. I point out how you’re misinforming and you head for the exits. Every single time.
How about answering my question? Here it is again : Given that these guys [CPAC peeps] believe a bunch of stuff that has been shown to be wrong and very dangerous for the American economy, shouldn’t serious people on the right who know the truth about these things stand up and explain to them why they’re all wrong and need to change their views? It’s the responsible thing to do after all.
This doubly annoys me because, as an outside amateur observer of the military contracting thing, I’m vehemently against Boeing getting the contract, but I’m also vehemently against appointee shenanigans. =P
Here’s another cite:
Unemployment insurance extension stalls in Senate
Senate passes unemployment insurance extension
Final vote: 98-0
(Almost positive that is the one sitting in the back of my mind when I brought this up)
I do hope, Sam, that you’re not taking issue with Whack-a-Mole’s hyperbolic use of “EVERY” or painting with a broad brush (e.g., not adding a “Senators” qualifier to “Republican” or somesuch). You just can’t be – I’m sure you’re above that type of pedantry.
Anyway, there’s the fact that 290 bills passed by the House are stalled in the Senate (both major and minor; full list here). Of particular note:
Does that qualify as evidence that Republican Senators are trying to gum up the works, even when legislation is supported by (House) Republicans?
Whack-a-Mile, this is what you alleged:
You didn’t say “There have been instances were Republicans were obstructionist.” You said that they try to stymie the government at EVERY turn. You even capitalized it, and added “even stuff they agree with”. You then doubled down with the claim that the level of obstructionism today is unprecedented and by a ‘huge margin’.
This is ridiculously easy to refute. For example, did you notice that the 15 billion dollar ‘jobs bill’ passed the Senate by a margin of 70-28? That refutes your statement right there. But it’s not the exception - it’s the norm. If you browse around OpenCongress.org, you will find MANY bills that have passed this year with solid Republican support. In fact, the large majority of them. For example, this one, which passed the house by a margin of 391-8.
In fact, if you just browse the Roll Call page, you’ll see the list of bills and whether they passed or failed and who voted for them.
Looking at just the first page of FIFTY, which is just the votes that have happened this month, we see the following:
Bills: 30
Bills failed: 2
Bill passed UNANIMOUSLY: 10
Bills passed with less than ten nay votes: 8
More than half the bills entered were passed with near-unanimous support from Republicans.
So not only were you wrong, you were wildly off the mark. The bills that failed, by the way, were votes on an amendment to the Hawaiian government reorgnization act. On the two votes that failed, they were opposed by DEMOCRATS. One only got 8 Democrat votes, and the next only got 2. This was an amendment the Republicans offered to the bill, and the Democrats shot it down en-masse. They then voted on the bill itself, and it passed despite widespread Republican opposition.
Going through the entire list, you’ll see a pattern of partisan opposition on BOTH sides, but also a lot of bills that get passed unanimously or with near-unanimous support. Your assertion wasn’t just wrong - it was completely off the mark.
Now, I don’t think you were lying. I think you hang out in circles where all you talk about is how evil Republicans are, and every time they vote against a bill your side likes, you read about it in the lefty blogosphere or on this board, and your leaders have a vested interest in portraying Republicans as the party of NO, and you swallow it completely because it fits with the narrative in your head. So somewhere along the way, you developed this picture of Republicans just stamping their feet at EVERY bill and refusing to play nice.
The problem with that scenario is that it’s a partisan fantasy.
This baffles me. I made that comment because I observed the trend lines on the graph, and they show no sign of flattening. The slope is pretty constant right up to the end of the last polling period. Therefore, it was a factual statement. Of COURSE we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. That’s why I used the word TREND. If it’s already happened, it’s a fact. Extrapolating a trend line is done to predict the future.
I’m fully aware that conditions can change, and trend lines can turn. My only point was that as far as the Pew graph goes, there’s no indication that the trend is turning. Explain again why that is wrong?
Take your personal crap to the pit. Don’t you think most readers are getting sick of you and Hentor and a few others constantly following me or Shodan or a couple of others around and launching personal attacks at them?
As I’ve said before, if you want to open a pit thread, I promise to come and play with you. If not, please try to stick to the subject of the thread.
And plenty of people are doing just that. I already linked to a Mark Levin article where he told Beck to shut up. There’s all kinds of handwringing on the right about Sarah Palin and other leaders.
But are you going to take your own advice and become the voice of moderation and clear-headedness for Democrats? Or do you think they’re right about everything?
Oh, so if someone on your side uses wild hyperbole that is not just factually wrong, but wrong even in implication and which draws an incorrect picture of reality, it’s ‘pedantry’ to go after them. But if I make a rounding error in an offhand comment, I’m a filthy liar and a misleading poster. Is that it?
First of all, that’s not remotely close to what Whack-A-Mole said. You’re simply covering for him. No one has disputed that Republicans are obstructionist over some bills. So are Democrats. That’s WHY there are political parties. It’s nothing new, it’s not unprecedented. It’s business as usual. When Republicans had majorities, the Democrats did the same thing.
As for Republicans in the Senate blocking legislation that comes from the house… Are you aware of the difference between the House and Senate? The difference that makes them ideologically different? It’s not common for the Senate to just pass bills that the House sends up. In fact, I hope you noticed that the Health Care bill was stalled in the Senate by DEMOCRATS refusing to pass what DEMOCRATS in the House wanted. Are they guilty of trying to stymie themselves?
Pedantic to the last. Anytime someone says “every” or “always” someone will point out the one case where it isn’t the case and declare victory.
I would be interested in seeing how many of those votes you tally actually sailed right through the Senate. Not that they eventually got an up or down vote and garnered bi-partisan support. I already provided the cites showing republican attempts at obstruction and then, when a vote was finally achieved, seemed perfectly ok with it and were unanimous in support.
Republican obstructionism is unprecedented and, lucky for me, easy to prove.
For the pedant in you I think that is by definition unprecedented. It has never happened before to this extent and it is more than a little increase.
So not “every” vote before them has been stymied but then looking at your link I suppose even republicans saw no need to fuss on:
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Honoring the heroism of the seven United States Agency for International Development and Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance supported urban search and rescue teams deployed to Haiti
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Supporting the goals and ideals of American Heart Month and National Wear Red Day.
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Recognizing the significance of Black History Month.
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Recognizing the bravery and efforts of the United States Armed Forces, local first responders, and other members of Operation Unified Response for their swift and coordinated action in light of the devastation wrought upon the nation of Haiti
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To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 930 39th Avenue in Greeley, Colorado, as the “W.D. Farr Post Office Building”.
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To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 2-116th Street in North Troy, New York, as the “Martin G. ‘Marty’ Mahar Post Office”.
And so on…so of the 30% of bills republicans did not obstruct it is telling to see what they can reach across the aisle on. :rolleyes:
Seems that list is House resolutions. I was not paying attention. I think the gist of it still stands though.
It IS unprecedented!
Yes it is business as usual for parties to oppose the other side and try to block various things. Nothing new there.
What is unprecedented is the scale it is being done on now. Republicans have taken this to new extremes never (and in this case I feel comfortable saying “never”) seen before in the history of the United States.
ETA: Uh oh! That article said, “Republicans in the Senate have stymied overwhelmingly popular bills at every turn.” Someone should write them a strongly worded letter about that patently false rhetoric!
You’re kidding, right? “crooksandliars.com” is your cite? Is it okay if I come back with a cite from National Review or perhaps Rush Limbaugh’s web page?
In any event, none of this has anything to do with your assertion. And you can claim all you want that I’m being ‘pedantic’, but you’re the one who chose the emphasis you did. You’re the one that said EVERY ONE of the bills had been opposed by Republicans, EVEN IF they like it.
I’d give you a pass if there had been only one or two exceptions to the EVERY ONE characterization. But in fact, the majority of bills are passed with bipartisan support, and in fact, the majority of that entire list I gave you passed with near-unanimous support.
Face it - you were wrong. Your mental picture of how obstructionist Republicans are is distorted by your own bias.
You know, this isn’t a horrible thing. I understand that we have different perceptions of the facts. That’s why I debate here rather than running off to some Republican echo chamber.
The problem with calling someone a liar and a scoundrel when they say something you think isn’t true is that it forces everyone to double-down and attempt to defend their wrong statements to the bitter end, like you just did. Of course you have to, because the alternative is to accept the other side’s claim that you are a liar and therefore a bad person.
Civil debate requires tolerance of disagreement, as long as both sides are willing to amend themselves when provided with incontrovertible evidence that they were wrong. The best chance you have of getting your opponents to admit they were wrong is to avoid making that admission a referendum on their very character.
There’s nothing wrong with saying, “Okay, saying EVERY ONE was a little over the top. Honestly, my impression is that it’s been the case. Your site shows that there is significant bipartisanship in the day-to-day operations of Congress. However, the Republicans are making it worse, and being more obstructionist than they should be, and more obstructionist than anyone has been in the past.”
If you made that admission, then I might be inclined to look at your data and see if it makes sense. Maybe that first page I linked to is an outlier and I’m wrong, and you can convince me otherwise. Then I’ll admit it, and we can both learn something and get on with the debate.
But when you guys keep hammering your opposition on this board as evil shills and liars and despicable, disingenuous humans, you either cause debate to break down entirely and turn into a sniping match as most of the recent threads seem to be doing, or you cause them to simply refuse to ever acknowledge error, in which case you gain nothing and both sides can continue to play the game of ‘gotcha’ instead of seriously trying to understand each other or change each others’ minds.
The Democrats are voices of moderation and reason compared to the GOP. They’re definitely not perfect, they’re effectively bought and paid for by corporations too but they’re not actually promoting proven disastrous economic policies like the GOP are. And that’s what this thread is about, the fundamentalist beliefs of the GOP. We’re supposed to stay on topic don’t forget.
Nobody on the right is standing up and telling Republicans that some of their sacred tenets are not just wrong but dangerously wrong. One guy, Bruce Bartlett, Reagan’s former chief economic advisor, tried it a couple of years ago and was immediately sacked from his wingnut welfare job at a right wing think tank and can’t get articles published anymore in righty media outlets. Any journalist mentioning it will get their article immediately spiked :
It’s a taboo subject on the right. And you’d think that (post-January 20th 2009) with the GOP so concerned about deficits that it would be a smart move if somebody pointed out to them that their number one economic priority is not just bad but given the current fiscal situation, the yield curve etc., very dangerous. It surely can’t be a good thing for a party to be marching lockstep towards economic disaster because of a failed policy that they refuse to reconsider, right?
I agree with you completely on this - a tax cut right now is asinine. Tax reform, which aims at simplifying the tax code in a revenue-neutral way, would be fine. I’d be all for adding a VAT as well, so long as it was used not just to raise even more money, but to simplify the rest of the tax code and reduce capital gains and dividend taxes. That’s what we did in Canada. We actually have a less-progressive tax code than you do, because we raise more money through our GST and excise taxes.
I also agree with Megan - taxes are low enough that lowering them further won’t increase revenue. This is plain to see by looking at what happened to revenue after Bush’s tax cuts. They plummeted. Now, even Laffer Curve proponents will admit that the added growth in the economy takes a while to ramp up, so even if the Laffer Curve was applicable you’d see an immediate reduction in revenue, eventually displaced by more revenue from higher growth. Like the supply side version of a Keynesian pump. But in this case, the drop in revenue was large, and was never fully recovered. So Megan is right.
But I hope you realize in return that spending increases without tax increases are exactly as destructive to the fiscal situation (I would argue more because at least tax cuts leave the money in a more efficient place, but that’s another debate). Obama raised discretionary spending by 13% in the 2010 budget, and at the same time suspended his plan to roll back some of the Bush tax cuts and in fact offered more tax cuts to low income people. And in his latest health care measure, he’s removed much of the taxes on ‘gold-plated’ health care plans, which were supposed to be one of the mechanisms used to fund it.
Both sides have their orthodoxy which they won’t budge from. Republicans want tax cuts, Democrats want spending increases. So you get what you have now - spending increases and tax cuts - and a budget running wildly out of control.
Obama raised spending in a one-off stimulus spend to correct the disaster caused by eight years of conservative ideology. Tax cuts being rolled back were suspended for the same reason. Since then the Democrats have enacted (for the second time, and for the second time unanimously opposed by the GOP) PAYGO rules which prevent any spending increase that isn’t matched with a tax increase, something which helped bring the budget into balance for the first time in living memory in the 1990s and of course was scrapped by the GOP in 2001. So you have the Democrats who favor balancing the budget and paying for spending increases, which by the way are inevitable, spending never ever and never will decrease, and the GOP who believe in unfunded spending increases and tax cuts. So clearly the GOP need to go to reeducation camp on their tax and spend craziness, no?
To be fair, some of those bills have just recently been passed by the House and the Senate hasn’t had time to act on them yet. That’s obviously not true of all of them, but even if there’s no obstructionism at all, it does take time to get bills passed, and the Senate takes longer than the House in the best of circumstances.
Look, you made a claim. Either it’s true and you can support it with a cite, or it’s false.
I’m guessing at this point that you cannot.