He never did.
The anti-fracking hysteria. Anti-GMO hysteria.
Nonsense. This meme is invented by near-anarchists or “libertarians” for whom all government is teh evil.
The Civil Rights Act of 1965 did not have broad support; should we still have segregated restaurants and hotels, adaher?
The Deficit Reduction Act of 1993, which economists say ushered in a period of great prosperity, got zero Republican votes in the House and zero Republican votes in the Senate. (True, the GOP contrived to soar the debt to unprecedented levels when they regained control.)
Or how about the Abolition of Slavery and guarantee of Equal Protection:
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
The 14th Amendment was bitterly contested, particularly by Southern states, which were forced to ratify it in order for them to regain representation in Congress.
[/QUOTE]
And on and on and on …
Actually, the exact opposite of adaher’s claim is closer to the truth. Important legislation often has broad opposition – if it didn’t, the legilation would be unnecessary.
The anti-GMO crowd doesn’t seem to be of any particular party. As far as fracking goes, its impacts on the water supply and a possible link to increased seismic activity isn’t exactly in conspiracy theory territory. Not to mention it wastes a lot of water.
It does. Look at who is sponsoring/advancing the anti-GMO bills.
Wrong about water.
The amount of water required to drill all 2916 of the Marcellus wells permitted in Pennsylvania in the first 11 months of 2010 would equal the amount of drinking water used by just one city, Pittsburgh, during the same period, says environmental engineering professor Jeanne VanBriesen, the study’s lead author.
…
Of the 9.5 billion gallons of water used daily in Pennsylvania, natural gas development consumes 1.9 million gallons a day (mgd); livestock use 62 mgd; mining, 96 mgd; and industry, 770 mgd.
As for quakes - seriously, 3.0 and lower quakes are not something to worry about. You can hardly feel that and no damage is caused.
If you want another example - anti-nuclear-energy sentiments are concentrated on the left.
I was more concerned about the effect on ground water. There have been cases of groundwater contamination from fracking. These are just some local wells that were turned to shit. Now imagine if the Ogallala Aquifer is ruined by fracking and/or the ill-advised Keystone Pipeline. You’re going to render entire states uninhabitable.
Again, from the same link:
But the idea stressed by fracking critics that deep-injected fluids will migrate into groundwater is mostly false. Basic geology prevents such contamination from starting below ground. A fracture caused by the drilling process would have to extend through the several thousand feet of rock that separate deep shale gas deposits from freshwater aquifers. According to geologist Gary Lash of the State University of New York at Fredonia, the intervening layers of rock have distinct mechanical properties that would prevent the fissures from expanding a mile or more toward the surface. It would be like stacking a dozen bricks on top of each other, he says, and expecting a crack in the bottom brick to extend all the way to the top one. What’s more, the fracking fluid itself, thickened with additives, is too dense to ascend upward through such a channel. EPA officials are closely watching one place for evidence otherwise: tiny Pavillion, Wyo., a remote town of 160 where high levels of chemicals linked to fracking have been found in groundwater supplies. Pavillion’s aquifer sits several hundred feet above the gas cache, far closer than aquifers atop other gas fields. If the investigation documents the first case of fracking fluid seeping into groundwater directly from gas wells, drillers may be forced to abandon shallow deposits—which wouldn’t affect Marcellus wells.
But this response illustrates it. Anti-fracking is correct. Anti-global warming is wrong.
See the problem here?
The anti-fracking hysteria has gripped the party on a national level? Really? Even given that, the safety of fracking can hardly be considered settled science to the degree that AGW is. More of a NIMBY effect than anything else, as far as I can tell.
As for Anti-GMO hysteria, it’s not as partisan as you might think (indeed, the most fervent advocates of anti-GMO bullshit are people like Mike Adams and Alex Jones - hardly “liberals”). If anything, it’s yet another sign of the establishment resisting the worst urges of the base. Kind of like how you’ll find plenty of truthers in the democratic base, but nobody in congress will speak for them, because they know they’re crazy. Sure, in the states you have pushes for labeling laws, but these are almost always grassroots, petition-based laws. Labeling laws, mind you - something even those well aware of the science behind GMOs are not united on, even though I consider them bloody silly. But if you want to go to the state level, the degree of republican insanity goes from Bachmann’s “Crazy but still at least somewhat understandable how she got elected” to Arpaio’s “What even the fucking fuck”. Keep grasping, though.
I see the problem, alright, and it’s not liberal hypocracy.
There are multiple sources that show fracking contamination. You think people just wake up and all of a sudden their tap water lights on fire?
Not to impugn popular mechanics hard hitting research, but what else do you have?
Documents: A Case of Fracking-Related Contamination
Feds Link Water Contamination to Fracking for the First Time
Not one of those sources shows fracking contamination. Because not one of those studies shows the source of the methane – and methane appears in ground water where there’s no fracking, too.
From just one of the links:
If it’s impossible for contaminants to leak, how did synthetic compounds get into the water? Come on, your better than this.
Since my previous quote didn’t deal directly with methane, this is from the pnas link:
So, you seem quite convinced that you are correct. WHY do you think you are correct? What evidence do you have that makes you think you’re correct? Does a lack of certainty bother you?
I’m honest enough to admit that while I have some good reasons to hold the position I hold, it’s not something I can prove. Will you admit to the same lack of certainty?
I agree that some people on “my side” in this thread are making overbroad claims, but you seem to be mocking this entire thread… and given that part of your frequent shtick is “well, you don’t have any actual EVIDENCE, it’s just good when the Dems do it and bad when the Reps do the same thing”, it seems that mocking an earnest attempt to actually GATHER that kind of evidence is a bit silly.
That seems like a baseless claim. It’s arguable that there are factors missing from the graph that tell a fuller story. But the graph is very straightforward. It’s not like it’s an obvious case where someone cherry-picked a particular way to view the data, with weird axes on the graph, in order to distort the truth. Rather it’s basically the most straightforward graph of filibusters you could possibly produce.
So the graph shows that the most recent congress, with a dem president, dem senate, republican house, has far and away the most filibusters in history. Is this the only time in history that there’s been a party that controlled only the house? When was the last time the dems controlled only the house?
What I’m trying to say (and I’m not sure I’m correct here, but it feels correct) is that there are fewer reasons to propose a law than to oppose a law. Generally speaking, if you propose a law, it’s something you want. It might be a stronger version than you think you can actually get in order to establish a bargaining position, and it might be something that you’re mainly floating out there as a trial balloon, but if you propose laws that you actually do NOT want, then (a) you risk them passing, and (b) you risk people (understandably) thinking that you want things you don’t.
On the other hand, in a divided political system, there’s at least one VERY obvious reason to vote against a law that your opposition proposes, even if you’d at some level be perfectly happy with it, which is to deny whoever proposed it a victory.
In other words, if A proposes a law and B votes it down, there are 4 possibilities:
(1) A genuinely supports it, B genuinely opposes it
(2) A doesn’t actually support it, B genuinely opposes it
(3) A genuinely supports it, B would actually like it, but is opposing it for reasons other than actual disagreement with the proposition
(4) A doesn’t actually support it, B would actually like it, but is opposing it for reasons other than actual disagreement with the proposition
I’m claiming that in a vacuum, (3) is generally more plausible than (2).
Sure there is. There’s a HUGE difference between “the filibuster is something that we use on very rare occasions when we feel VERY morally compelled to do so” and “the filibuster is something that we use routinely”. It’s disingenuous to pretend otherwise.
I agree that that’s a possibility. And if we go back to the original point of this thread, it’s probably at least vaguely possible to get an objective count of filibusters. It’s probably much harder to make a curve of “level of moderateness of proposals by democrats in congress over the years” that we could compare to that first curve, but it’s not necessarily impossible…
I’m unfamiliar with this claim, and several others that you have mentioned. Can you provide links?
IF we agree that the basic sequence of events was:
(1) republicans started filibustering at an unprecedented rate
(2) democrats then seriously mulled using the nuclear option (and, if I recall correctly, used it in the limited context of judicial appointments, or something like that)
Then yes, there are two basic explanations:
(A) Republicans became far more obstructionist
(B) Democrats became far less moderate
(Or obviously some of each)
Do you agree that (1) and (2) actually happened? If so, we can start discussing which of (A) or (B) better explains it. And the whole point of this thread is to discuss whether we can come up with some actual EVIDENCE to let us choose between (A) and (B), rather than just falling back to our usual squabbling. (Evidence of how true (1) is is also welcome in this thread, as there still seems to be some dispute as to how true that is.) (And of course, filibusters aren’t the be-all and end-all of obstructionism.)
You’re asking me for evidence that there’s not enough evidence to settle the issue?
Yes. Because it’s not something I can prove, and I don’t think it’s susceptible to proof, given that proof would rest on so many subjective factors.
I’m sorry. But it seems very clear that there’s not an uncontroversial way to interpret the evidence gathered.
No. A straightforward graph would show different color areas to indicate what party the President was and what party controlled the House.
Republicans controlled the Senate and the White House from 1981-1987 (Reagan was President; Howard Baker and Bob Dole were Senate Majority Leaders). The Democrats controlled the House only: Tip O’Neill was Speaker.
I am amazed that you’re not familiar with Reid’s obstructionism in the Senate. Could it be selective blindness?
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/368369/harry-reids-obstructionism-andrew-stiles
That’s an opinion piece that starts, “It took a while, but the media seem to have finally noticed Senate majority leader Harry Reid’s unprecedented obstructionism.”
Do you have something written by someone more serious?
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304081804579560251530777852
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2014/08/04/harry-reids-reign-of-paralysis/
Pretending that you don’t know about Reid’s authoritarianism in the Senate is pathetic.
I know that Reid runs a tight ship. I also know that the people the GOP elects will poison pill anything they get a chance at. So, I see why keeping a tight rein on amendments is a good idea.
I don’t subscribe to the WSJ, because it’s owned by a crazy person, but what I could read of that story is here: "The U.S. Senate failed to advance another piece of popular bipartisan legislation late Monday, and the reason tells the real story of Washington gridlock in the current Congress. To wit, Harry Reid has essentially shut down the Senate as a place to debate and vote on policy.
The Majority Leader’s strategy was once again on display as the Senate failed to get the 60 votes to move a popular energy efficiency bill co-sponsored by New Hampshire Democrat Jeanne Shaheen and Ohio Republican Rob Portman. Mr. Reid blamed the…"
A question, why is it taking 60 votes? Shouldn’t 51 do it?