Obama '08?

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

You're full of **** on the last Congress, the use of the filibuster, and you know it. You don't even bother to address the fact that the Republicans used it as much as possible to block everything they could - because you can't address that without admitting that it sort of makes your earlier argument that the Dems could 'pass anything they want' invalid.

I merely noted to Cicerone that the Democrats enjoyed control of both Houses of the Congress, by wide margins. during Obama's first two years. There was nothing either wrong or misleading about that statement. It was you who later brought up all the stuff about filibusters - an issue that is hardly new to American Senatorial politics. The fact is the Democrats were remarkably successful in getting major elements of their legislative agenda passed during the period - a collection of dubious achievements most notably led by the Dodd Frank financial regulation legislation and Obamacare. They failed (thankfully) on Cap & Trade, mostly because of very negative public reactions, but otherwise enjoyed truly unusual dominance of the legislative agenda. The Republican opposition they faced was based on principle and entirely within the rights of the minority party in our Democracy. Do you believe your Dems should be free of that stuff and be al;lowed to rule by decree? The truth is both central legislative "achievements" look increasingly flawed and harmful to the country and neither is likely to last through the next Congress.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Keep your pronouncements about me to yourself - I really don't give a ****. You have failed pretty much every test I put forward to you that would determine you are someone whose opinion of me I would care about, and that's kinda sad, because it certainly wasn't always that way. The last couple of years have seen you slip into an increasing radical online persona, which frankly is boring for me to read and doesn't lead to productive conversation.

Cycloptichorn

You are getting a bit thin-skinned aren't you? You are very free with your summary judgments of others, but evidently quite unable to take the heat yourself. The lack of grace in adversity is usually a telling sign of one who is in over his head. I haven't changed (except that former doubts about Obama have evolved into serious opposition): it is you who have begun to reveal your limitations.

2 Replies

@georgeob1,

georgeob, The issue was brought up, because of my original statement of why Obama is being blamed for our economy while the republicans have become the Party of No to essentially handicap his administration.

You guys want it both ways: destroy Obama with No's, and blame him for the poor economy.

All I ask for is some consistency from you; control of congress doesn't mean the GOP doesn't have the power to filibuster initiatives that could have helped our economy whether democrats controlled both houses of congress.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

Quote:

I haven't changed

Snort. You most certainly have. You just aren't very big on self-examination, it seems.

I don't gain anything by lying to you on this issue; there's no reason for me to make things up.

To repeat: you don't mind when I don't provide evdience, do you? Per what you've said earlier, I'm acting in an appropriate fashion when I do so. You think that discussions online should be a never-ending stream of assertions, with no requirement for any poster to back up anything they say. Right?

Love to hear an actual answer from you, as to whether you believe this is the correct behavior for posters to engage in here - and whether you've found that it leads to productive conversation or not.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

You guys want it both ways: destroy Obama with No's, and blame him for the poor economy.

This is exactly correct. The Republicans have done everything they possibly could to delay, water down and hamper what the Dems want to do, and then turn around and blame the Dems for not having effective solutions. It's total bullshit.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

That's bullshit Cyclo. They were voted in by the public to do exactly that and would be failing in their democratic duty if they had joined the Government of National Unity which Mr Obama pleaded with them to do.

1 Reply

@spendius,

spendius wrote:

That's bullshit Cyclo. They were voted in by the public to do exactly that

No, they weren't. No other minority party in Congress has ever used the filibuster (and delaying tactics in the House) to the extent that the Republicans did in the last Congress.

There's a difference between principled opposition, and rank obstructionism.

Cycloptichorn

2 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

Sigh. More sound and fury and adolescent bombast, but still no answer to the request for backup for the very strange and inplausible assertionthat it is disgruntled liberals who are causing the continuing fall in Obama's approval ratings.

2 Replies

@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

Sigh. More sound and fury and adolescent bombast, but still no answer to the request for backup for the very strange and inplausible assertionthat it is disgruntled liberals who are causing the continuing fall in Obama's approval ratings.

But, you don't care about backup documentation. Right? I mean, you've argued exactly that here several times. Why the sudden concern for it now?

Take a post or two off from making derisive comments about me - which are boring - and answer the question: does backup documentation for one's assertions matter, or not? Should requests to provide that backup be respected, or not?

Cycloptichorn

0 Replies

@georgeob1,

You and I post about the same. We post our opinions. But if someone challenges me I try to post proof, you never do.

0 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

Quote:

There's a difference between principled opposition, and rank obstructionism.

Yeah I know. If you approve its PO and if you don't its RO. Simple.

1 Reply

@spendius,

spendius wrote:

Quote:
There's a difference between principled opposition, and rank obstructionism.

Yeah I know. If you approve its PO and if you don't its RO. Simple.

This is untrue, and a cheap way of avoiding a real issue.

Cycloptichorn

0 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

spendius wrote:

That's bullshit Cyclo. They were voted in by the public to do exactly that

No, they weren't. No other minority party in Congress has ever used the filibuster (and delaying tactics in the House) to the extent that the Republicans did in the last Congress.

There's a difference between principled opposition, and rank obstructionism.

Cycloptichorn

In the first place you are wrong about your unqualified (and unsupported) statements about relative uses of the Filibuster. Democrats used it for years to prevent Civil Rights Legislation.

Pray tell us what is the difference between "principled opposition" and "rank obstructionism" ? It appears to me the difference is all in the perspective of the viewer. Are you suggesting that no principled opposition was involved in the uses of the Filibuster by the Republican opposition in the Senate during the past three years? My very strong impresdsion is there was indeed very strong and principled opposition to the Health care Bill, Dodd Frank and Cap & Trade, as well as the excessive spending by the majority. Indeed there still is very widespread and principiled opposition to all of these initiatives.

Spendius was entirely correct. What is the REAL issue you assert he was avoiding?

2 Replies

@georgeob1,

The Civil Right legislation of 1964. Who was president at this time? Oh it was a Democrat. I believe his name was Johnson.

1 Reply

@RABEL222,

The votes on the 1964 Civil Rights Act is very telling.

Quote:

By party and region
Note: "Southern", as used in this section, refers to members of Congress from the eleven states that made up the Confederate States of America in the American Civil War. "Northern" refers to members from the other 39 states, regardless of the geographic location of those states.
The original House version:
Southern Democrats: 7–87 (7%–93%)
Southern Republicans: 0–10 (0%–100%)
Northern Democrats: 145-9 (94%–6%)
Northern Republicans: 138-24 (85%–15%)
The Senate version:
Southern Democrats: 1–20 (5%–95%)
Southern Republicans: 0–1 (0%–100%)
Northern Democrats: 45-1 (98%–2%)
Northern Republicans: 27-5 (84%–16%)

Now, which party is it that advocates for equal rights?

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@georgeob1,

When Obama was elected, a good number of republicans both congressmen and pundits said they were going to oppose everything and that they hoped Obama would fail and have openly admitted in 2009 that the way to regain power was to say no.

Quote:

The second-ranking House Republican, Rep. Eric Cantor (Va.), put it more bluntly. "What transpired . . . and will give us a shot in the arm going forward is that we are standing up on principle and just saying no," he said.

Quote:

The party, these Republicans say, need only hold true to its small-government principles for a center-right electorate to gravitate back. That means rejecting the stimulus package and offering in its place an alternative package centered mostly on tax cuts, as House Republicans did last week.

It also means focusing the stimulus critique on relatively small slivers of the package that echo old culture wars, such as spending for contraceptives and for the National Endowment for the Arts. And it means rallying to Rush Limbaugh, who has put himself forward as a de facto party leader, penning an op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal and accepting the on-air apologies of Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.), who criticized the radio host and paid for it in a deluge of angry calls.

"If you get the principles right in the first place . . . the politics will take care of itself," said Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.), a leader of the new conservative vanguard. "It comes down to basic principles -- who's better at preserving jobs, small business or the government? If you think it's small business, look to the Republicans."

Curly Haugland, a Republican National Committee member from North Dakota, said there is little need for ideas when the main task for the GOP will be fighting back Democratic ones. "We're going to have plenty to do just playing defense," he said. "These people [the Democrats] are going to be aggressively on the march."

Others argue that the past two elections represented a more fundamental turn against Reaganite assumptions that dominated for nearly three decades, and that the party has to develop an agenda that goes beyond tax-cutting to lay out a vision for government that, while smaller than what Democrats want, is active in its own right.

"They're talking too much about opposing," Florida GOP Chairman Jim Greer said of the House Republicans. "They're talking too much about voting 'no' and not about how they're going to solve these issues. I'm proud the party took a stand on principles, but I also want to hear about how the Republican Party leaders intend to solve problems."

excerpts taken from here

What is so ironic is that we were already doing what the republicans kept (keep)advocating, the infamous Bush tax cuts which results helped the most to land us in the financial crises of which Obama inherited. The tax cuts have been extended under Obama where he compromised in order to extend unemployment benefits. It was not good for the economy.

(A while back during the debt celing debate there were numerous graphs posted to show just how much the tax cuts contributed to the debt crises compared to Obama's health care bill and the stimulus package. I can hunt it up again if asked)

The stimlus package did help the economy, it wasn't a miracle worker but it did help the economy and kept the economy from going off a cliff.

Quote:

His 2009 stimulus plan was not well planned out and only did half the job. True, it kept the economy from falling off the cliff.

Christopher Ruddy Newsmax

Now corporations have been sitting on money with the tax cuts for over ten years and the tax havens and tax loopholes but they still say they need tax cuts in order to hire more workers so they will feel more stable. insert eye roll.

Speaking of the health care bill

Quote:

“CBO estimates that outlays for Medicare (excluding receipts from premiums) will total $555 billion (3.5 percent of GDP) in 2012, about the same, in nominal terms, that it estimates for 2011. Between 2013 and 2021, outlays are projected to grow at an average annual rate of 6.3 percent, reaching $966 billion (4.1 percent of GDP) in 2021. Spending will be pushed up over the decade by increases in the number of beneficiaries and in health care costs per beneficiary (in nominal terms). At the same time, growth in spending will be restrained by reductions in updates to payment rates that were included in the 2010 health care legislation and by the program’s sustainable growth rate mechanism, which, under current law, is projected to reduce payments to physicians by about 30 percent in 2012 and by additional amounts thereafter.

The Budget and
Economic Outlook:
An Update

Lots of others things of interest in there as well about how we need to increase revenue as well as decrease spending (balanced approach) in coming years and how low revenue has been.

Quote:

Beyond the 10-year projection period, further increases
in federal debt relative to the nation’s output almost
surely lie ahead if certain policies remain in place.
The aging of the population and rising costs for health
care will push federal spending up considerably as a
percentage of GDP. If that higher level of spending is
coupled with revenues that are held close to their average
share of GDP for the past 40 years (rather than being
allowed to increase, as under current law), the resulting
deficits will cause federal debt to skyrocket. To prevent
debt from becoming unsupportable, policymakers will
have to substantially restrain the growth of spending,
raise revenues significantly above their historical share of
GDP, or pursue some combination of those two
approaches.

2 Replies

@revelette,

A good post that tells it like it is; the No Party and tea party have been on the march to ruin this country with their extremism. Will the American voters ever wake up to the reality?

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@revelette,

revelette wrote:

When Obama was elected, a good number of republicans both congressmen and pundits said they were going to oppose everything and that they hoped Obama would fail and have openly admitted in 2009 that the way to regain power was to say no.

Quote:
The second-ranking House Republican, Rep. Eric Cantor (Va.), put it more bluntly. "What transpired . . . and will give us a shot in the arm going forward is that we are standing up on principle and just saying no," he said.

And using the same words as those you were quoting from Rep. Cantor, they were standing on principle in doing so.

Thus Cyclo's mindless assertion that ths was "rank obstructionism and not opposition based on principle" is, by your own evidence, demonstrated to be false.

It is common for authoritarians like Cyclo to believe that anyone who opposes him or his views is necessarily either wrong or motivated by bad intentions. That, to some degree, appears also to be a trait of current Democrat party politics - no surprise, self-styled "progressives" tend to be sure they (alone) know what is good for the rest of us. However, we have a Democracy here: people, and their elected representatives, have the right to seek the government policies they want, and oppose those they don't want.

The fact that minority Republican Senators and Representatives opposed the Democrat agenda is neither surprising, nor in any way new and unusual. Indeed it is the norm in the politics of our Democracy. What is unusual here is the apparent belief among some that their annointed leader should (or was even cabable of) ruling like a dictator and without either criticism or opposition (neither of which he handles very well).

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

Rank obstructionism is when you declare that you are going to block each and every thing you possibly can, that the other side wants to do. That's not principle. It's declaring that you will force the gov't to quit functioning until you get your way. This is exactly what the Republicans did; McConnell has been quite open about it.

Also, I must say, this is pretty rich coming from the political party who equated opposition to their plans with 'anti-Americanism' for years. Specifically did so. There was absolutely no respect for 'principled opposition' whatsoever when the GOP ran the entire show; just continual demonization of the opposition for having a different opinion.

Nevertheless; the Dems during that period, though they disagreed mightily with the ruling party, engaged in very little actual obstructionism and never took the country hostage or shut the gov't down to get what they wanted.

There is a difference between opposition and obstructionism; the fact that you pretend there isn't is immaterial. It's just a convenient way for you to defend the ridiculousness of your political party.

But, I don't think the public is fooled. As bad as Obama's ratings are, the GOP is rated far worse by the public and have really made themselves look like a bunch of asses with their current behavior. I mean, you are aware of the fact that people don't like your party or policies very much, right? Or is this just the part of the polling that you like to ignore?

Quote:

What is unusual here is the apparent belief among some that their annointed leader...

Every time one of you guys speaks about Obama in this fashion, it's far more revealing of your own inner insecurities about the guy being elected, than it is a reflection of the way Dems feel about him.

Cycloptichorn

2 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

It's very amusing to see georgeob try to deflect what the GOP members of congress have declared early in Obama's administration to make Obama fail.
Their nick-name, the No Party, wasn't anyone's imagination; it's a fact. How often has the GOP voted "No" 100% of the time?

If that's not obstructionism, I wouldn't know what is!

0 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Quote:
What is unusual here is the apparent belief among some that their annointed leader...

Every time one of you guys speaks about Obama in this fashion, it's far more revealing of your own inner insecurities about the guy being elected, than it is a reflection of the way Dems feel about him.

Cycloptichorn

No. It is, instead, an expression of contempt for both the object of all this adulation and those who do it.

However, he will almost certainly depart the political scene soon enough.

1 Reply

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