The Democrat Thread

[Balta1701]

Ouch.

Union donations to federal candidates at the beginning of this year were down about 40 percent compared with the same period in 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Last month, a dozen trade unions said they would boycott next year’s Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., over frustration on the economy and to protest the event’s location in a right-to-work state.

[Balta1701]

Direct quote from Labor leader:

HOFFA: Everybody here's got to vote. If we go back and keep the eye on the prize, let's take these son of a b****es out and give America back to America where we belong! Thank you very much!

 

Version played on Fox News:

let's take these son of a b****es out and give America back to America where we belong!

 

I'm expecting the same level of outrage over this selective editing as what was expressed over Ed Schultz's selective editing. After all, if it's so terrible, awful, and unfair when Ed Schultz does it to Rick Perry, then it's equally bad when it's done to smear unions.

[southsider2k5]

Direct quote from Labor leader:

 

Version played on Fox News:

 

 

I'm expecting the same level of outrage over this selective editing as what was expressed over Ed Schultz's selective editing. After all, if it's so terrible, awful, and unfair when Ed Schultz does it to Rick Perry, then it's equally bad when it's done to smear unions.

 

As long as the left spews as much outrage over the violent tone set by the unions.

[NorthSideSox72]

The author of this piece is a recently retired Republican staff member who spent 28 years on the Hill working for budget and defense committee members. So, lifelong Republican.

It'd fill up 6 pages if I tried to excerpt everything. It appears to be a legitimate, cathartic rant about the people who are taking over the party he worked for.

That's pretty much a description of my political feelings as well. I was a pretty reliable Republican voter for my first few election cycles... until the GOP took a hard right turn and decided science, intelligence and true fiscal discipline were all evil.

 

[StrangeSox]

The author of this piece is a recently retired Republican staff member who spent 28 years on the Hill working for budget and defense committee members. So, lifelong Republican.

It'd fill up 6 pages if I tried to excerpt everything. It appears to be a legitimate, cathartic rant about the people who are taking over the party he worked for.

 

finally got around to reading this, thanks for the link.

[StrangeSox]

What's wrong with this picture?

 

[Balta1701]

A whole lot of things.

[Balta1701]

Because it's working so bloody well, the Obama proposed "Jobs package" that is worthy of an NFL-Opening-Night joint session of Congress is...

 

To do exactly what we're doing right now!!!

The two central measures in the Obama jobs package are expected to be a one-year extension of the payroll tax cut and an extension of expiring jobless benefits, according to the AP. Those two initiatives would total around $170 billion.

 

In his speech on Thursday night to a joint session of Congress, Obama will also consider a tax benefit to those businesses that hire the unemployed, with a price tag of around $30 billion. Public works projects will be included, but the AP reports that this will be less than $50 billion of the package.

 

The president also will continue for one year a tax break for business that allows them to deduct the full value of equipment.

 

The local aid that Obama intends to propose it aimed at preventing teacher layoffs, officials said.

 

The New York Times said the cost of the package would be “several hundred billion,” while the Washington Post estimated it to be “at least $200 billion.”

 

The White House is considering introducing the entire jobs plan as a piece of legislation, POLITICO has learned.

 

The measure will be paid for with spending reductions in other areas, according to several reports.

 

But Bloomberg News said that Obama will ask Congress to offset the cost of these measures by raising tax revenue in later years, as part of a long-term deficit reduction package. White House spokesman Jay Carney said that he did not expect the president o lay out a long-term deficit reduction package in his jobs speech.

s.Yeah, this is an excellent speech to use for drinking.

[StrangeSox]

He needs to push for more and highlight that we can borrow the money essentially for free to pay for things we're going to need anyway, like infrastructure improvements. He won't, and even this week version will get derided by Republicans as a Marxist takeover of everything wholesome and good.

[Balta1701]

He needs to push for more and highlight that we can borrow the money essentially for free to pay for things we're going to need anyway, like infrastructure improvements. He won't, and even this week version will get derided by Republicans as a Marxist takeover of everything wholesome and good.

That's the sad thing.

 

If that's the package, it's already a weak, negotiated down package. It's not arguing what the real problem is...it's what you'd propose if you thought things were going to turn around on their own starting now.

[StrangeSox]

So we're back to the same dilemma: complete political incompetence and coming to the table, yet again, with a heavily compromised position for a negotiation with a party who has no interest in good faith or compromise or they've completely bought into the conservative economic narrative.

[StrangeSox]

 

Republicans are Crazy and Nobody Cares, Part 754

 

 

Jared Bernstein notes that if he's elected president, Mitt Romney has promised to "immediately move to cut spending and cap it at 20 percent of GDP." That's crazy with the economy so sluggish, but in fact, it's even crazier than that. Here are budget projections for 2013 from the OMB:

 

Medicare: $534 billion

Social Security: $807 billion

Other mandatory: $858 billion

Interest: $320 billion

Defense: $675 billion

Total: $3,194 billion

The first four items are mandatory and Romney can't do anything about them, and I think he's made it pretty clear that he doesn't plan to cut defense spending. These five items collectively amount to 19.06% of projected GDP in 2013.

 

In other words, Romney is proposing that everything else in the budget be immediately cut to 0.94% of GDP. That's all he has left to fund the FAA, the border patrol, the FBI, overseas embassies, highways, disaster relief, the SEC, the court system, NASA, prisons, national parks, school lunches, flood control, medical research, and everything else in the domestic discretionary budget. That's an 87% cut in those programs.

 

This is the guy who used to run Bain Consulting? It doesn't look to me like he can even read a balance sheet.

[StrangeSox]

Rather than 'bustering ss2k5's thread, I'll post the ACLU's 10-year look back at what's happened to our civil liberties here.

 

via Greenwald

Torture: Just as the public debate over the legality, morality, and efficacy of torture was warped by fabrication and evasion, so, too, were the legal and political debates about the consequences of the Bush administration’s lawbreaking. Apart from the token prosecutions of Abu Ghraib’s “bad apples,” virtually every individual with any involvement in the torture program was able to deflect responsibility elsewhere. The military and intelligence officials who carried out the torture were simply following orders; the high government officials who authorized the torture were relying on the advice of lawyers; the lawyers were “only lawyers,” not policymakers. This had been the aim of the conspiracy: to create an impenetrable circle of impunity, with everyone culpable but no one accountable.

 

Indefinite detainment: President Obama’s pledge to close Guantanamo was undermined by his own May 2009 announcement of a policy enshrining at Guantanamo the principle of indefinite military detention without charge or trial....The real danger of the Guantanamo indefinite detention principle is that its underlying rationale has no definable limits.

 

Targeted assassinations: No national security policy raises a graver threat to human rights and the international rule of law than targeted killing....Under the targeted killing program begun by the Bush administration and vastly expanded by the Obama administration, the government now compiles secret “kill lists” of its targets, and at least some of those targets remain on those lists for months at a time.

 

Surveillance: The Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, has used excessive secrecy to hide possibly unconstitutional surveillance....Hobbled by executive claims of secrecy, Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall have nevertheless warned their colleagues that the government is operating under a “reinterpretation” of the Patriot Act that is so broad that the public will be stunned and angered by its scope, and that the executive branch is engaging in dragnet surveillance in which “innocent Americans are getting swept up.”

 

Profiling: No area of American Muslim civil society was left untouched by discriminatory and illegitimate government action during the Bush years....To an alarming extent, the Obama administration has continued to embrace profiling as official government policy....There are increasing reports that the FBI is using Attorney General Ashcroft’s loosened profiling standards, together with broader authority to use paid informants, to conduct surveillance of American Muslims in case they might engage in wrongdoing.

 

Data mining: Nothing exemplifies the risks our national surveillance society poses to our privacy rights better than government “data mining.”....The range and number of these programs is breathtaking and their names Orwellian. Programs such as eGuardian, “Eagle Eyes,” “Patriot Reports,” and “See Something, Say Something” are now run by agencies including the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Homeland Security....Without effective oversight, security agencies are now also engaged in a “land grab,” rushing into the legal vacuum to expand their monitoring powers far beyond anything seen in our history. Each of the over 300 million cell phones in the United States, for example, reveals its lcation to the mobile network carrier with ever-increasing accuracy, whenever it is turned on, and the Justice Department is aggressively using cell phones to monitor people’s location, claiming that it does not need a warrant.

[BigSqwert]

So true

 

[W]hen Perry is asked about the two-hundred and thirty some people he’s executed on death row during his governorship, the audience bursts into applause. Torture, war, and death, and this is the “pro-life” party. I submit to you that this moment is perhaps the most telling since George W. Bush left office; that the modern Republican party is not only intellectually bankrupt, but morally bankrupt as well.

 

 

via

 

[BigSqwert]

Could you imagine the Tea Party's reaction to these candidates?

 

[NorthSideSox72]

Could you imagine the Tea Party's reaction to these candidates?

 

Modern day conservatives like those who now predominate the "tea party" have made Reagan into a mythical figure that bears little or no resemblance to his reality. The reality is that either of those guys would be looked at now as a political moderate, and certainly not in step with the GOP party lines. They'd be ostricized and would never be elected in any party primary.

 

What's really funny about that is, for all the times I heard and still hear people claiming that Dems were seeing Obama as "the savior", they are doing the exact same thing about Reagan... and in Reagan's case, his record is now out there for all to see!

 

Dems (some of them) were in denial of political realities, and took the whole hopey changey thing to mean some idyllic figure that couldn't possibly exist. Republicans (some of them) are doing that to a guy who we already KNOW FOR A FACT wasn't that. Come back to reality, folks.

 

[southsider2k5]

Modern day conservatives like those who now predominate the "tea party" have made Reagan into a mythical figure that bears little or no resemblance to his reality. The reality is that either of those guys would be looked at now as a political moderate, and certainly not in step with the GOP party lines. They'd be ostricized and would never be elected in any party primary.

 

What's really funny about that is, for all the times I heard and still hear people claiming that Dems were seeing Obama as "the savior", they are doing the exact same thing about Reagan... and in Reagan's case, his record is now out there for all to see!

 

Dems (some of them) were in denial of political realities, and took the whole hopey changey thing to mean some idyllic figure that couldn't possibly exist. Republicans (some of them) are doing that to a guy who we already KNOW FOR A FACT wasn't that. Come back to reality, folks.

 

The funny think is that I feel the same way about RR references as I do all of the Dems who try to be with JFK. It is an effort to connect to a feeling or an ideal, instead of a specific plan.

 

You could parse out just as many phrases from Kennedy, who said things like you can grow the economy with tax cuts, and make modern Dems look just as out of touch with their hero. Its cheap theater.

[NorthSideSox72]

The funny think is that I feel the same way about RR references as I do all of the Dems who try to be with JFK. It is an effort to connect to a feeling or an ideal, instead of a specific plan.

 

You could parse out just as many phrases from Kennedy, who said things like you can grow the economy with tax cuts, and make modern Dems look just as out of touch with their hero. Its cheap theater.

But you don't see all the major Dem candidates (in 2008 in this case, since 2012 has only one Dem candidate for Prez) trying to say they want another JFK. You do see pretty much all the GOP candidates referencing and trying to make themselves out to be Reaganites (which, by stated policy stances, they are not).

 

What we did see was people expecting Obama to be something ridiculous, and it was laughable.

 

But I generally agree with your point, people look back on previous Presidents and try to make them into something they wanted them to be.

 

[farmteam]

What's really weird to think about is that Kennedy barely had any more time in office than Obama has had.

[VictoryMC98]

But I generally agree with your point, people look back on previous Presidents and try to make them into something they wanted them to be.

 

100% Agree, look how the GOP portrait Reagan as some "god", and how great he was... When in reality, Carter was better, the problem was.. Carter had a crappy situation that was out of his control, which improved dramatically under Reagan.. And what I am talking about is the Oil issue, of OPEC.

[StrangeSox]

But you don't see all the major Dem candidates (in 2008 in this case, since 2012 has only one Dem candidate for Prez) trying to say they want another JFK. You do see pretty much all the GOP candidates referencing and trying to make themselves out to be Reaganites (which, by stated policy stances, they are not).

 

What we did see was people expecting Obama to be something ridiculous, and it was laughable.

 

But I generally agree with your point, people look back on previous Presidents and try to make them into something they wanted them to be.

 

Democrats tend to idolize JFK as an optimistic visionary, and both sides generally idolize Lincoln and deify the founders.

 

I think that's fundamentally different from how the modern GOP treats Reagan, though. They don't just use him as a shining exemplar of Republicanism, but actively want to embrace the same policies and ideals he did (or at least they now believe/say he did). You don't really see the same for any other President. You hear a lot lately about Clinton-era tax levels etc. etc. as pushback against the GOP's incessant call for more tax cuts always, but Clinton himself isn't pointed to as a mythical figure who saved America.

 

[Jenksismyhero]

100% Agree, look how the GOP portrait Reagan as some "god", and how great he was... When in reality, Carter was better, the problem was.. Carter had a crappy situation that was out of his control, which improved dramatically under Reagan.. And what I am talking about is the Oil issue, of OPEC.

 

This made me spit up my coffee in laughter.

[Jenksismyhero]

Democrats tend to idolize JFK as an optimistic visionary, and both sides generally idolize Lincoln and deify the founders.

 

I think that's fundamentally different from how the modern GOP treats Reagan, though. They don't just use him as a shining exemplar of Republicanism, but actively want to embrace the same policies and ideals he did (or at least they now believe/say he did). You don't really see the same for any other President. You hear a lot lately about Clinton-era tax levels etc. etc. as pushback against the GOP's incessant call for more tax cuts always, but Clinton himself isn't pointed to as a mythical figure who saved America.

 

I think FDR is often used by liberals in the same way people use Reagan. But of course Reagan is going to get the lions share of attention since he's the most recent President to really change the course of the country.

[Y2HH]

100% Agree, look how the GOP portrait Reagan as some "god", and how great he was... When in reality, Carter was better, the problem was.. Carter had a crappy situation that was out of his control, which improved dramatically under Reagan.. And what I am talking about is the Oil issue, of OPEC.

 

Did you just say Carter was better?

 

Like...really?

 

Sorry, but you deserve to get hit by a stick for that.

Edited September 9, 2011 by Y2HH

[VictoryMC98]

Did you just say Carter was better?

 

Like...really?

 

Sorry, but you deserve to get hit by a stick for that.

 

Are you thinking Reagan was a good President.. Why ? He was probably one of the worst in the last 50 years..