Quote from: tekla on January 14, 2010, 04:33:07 PM
What it really says is the Republican Party last time around was so messed up that they couldn't even get rich people to vote for them.
One thing is absolutely certain - the GOP has been so messed up for the last six years (minimum, like 10) previous to the last election that they didn't deserve anyone's support.
for the left, the GOP neither says nor does anything good, for the right, they often say the right things but almost never DO them.
Not since Gingrich got the boot (for, despite the pretense, actually doing what the GOP claims it wants to do) really.
And if they can't take advantage of the current situation to regain power, they will have proved that they are so far gone they've learned nothing from the ass kicking they got.
Post Merge: January 15, 2010, 12:30:21 AM
QuoteThe bailout of the banks, they just handed out checks. No oversight, no real rules, no benchmarks for performance. Nuttin. Passed by both sides.
Where are these debates - ...Where is the news?
Ummmm....on the Glenn Beck Show, for one.
He has ripped on both sides for the whole course of the "crisis" and the aftermath.
There was one Monday program where he apparently got some bad info over the weekend and came in with a wrong opinion but on that very show he had a guest that corrected him....but otherwise he's said exactly what you just said about the bank thing.
He also said that IF the U.S. wasn't going to commit to a clear win in Afghanistan that we should simply get out and wash our hands of it and quit wasting blood and treasure - not exactly your position but definitely discussion of the issue.
Post Merge: January 15, 2010, 01:40:02 AM
Quote from: Becca on January 14, 2010, 09:12:31 PM
I don't mean to sound unpatriotic, but I don't see what the big woop is about those guys. They were slave owners and more than half of them weren't even christians. Plus, if they had lost the war, they would have been considered terrorists.
Not all of them - or even most - were slave owners and you've been lied to about the Christianity thing. Of the famous names you have heard, it's pretty firmly established that three were not textbook Christians -
Paine was an atheist, Franklin was a vague sort of agnostic and Jefferson was a deist.
Yes, skeptics occasionally trot out isolated quotes from or about others which they use to prop up a very flimsy claim they were not believers, but they also hope you fail to notice the mountains of evidence from the same people to the contrary.
Back to the slavery point - there were almost no famous names involved in the Deceleration or Constitution from south of Virginia...maybe 3 or 4 out of the 55+ people you could put on that list.
Of the rest, pretty much only the Virginians owned slaves.
Washington freed all of his in his will, by the way.
And Jefferson gives us the following quote which addresses both his view of slavery, and his belief in the Christian God (though not the divinity of Jesus which is why he wasn't a Christian):
"God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Establish a law for educating the common people. This it is the business of the state and on a general plan."Soiurce:
http://www.monticello.org/reports/quotes/memorial.html
Post Merge: January 15, 2010, 02:53:29 AM
QuoteSo the question is, who is acting to make that happen? For the last 20 years, at least, it sure as hell hasn't been the Republicans. No, it's been a tax cut mantra all the time -- likely for some of the reasons Tekla mentions, summed up in the phrase, "Starve the Beast."
I agree with a lot of what you say but I have a couple of quibbles:
First, the GOP does not and has never proposed tax cuts as a means to reduce government revenues (whatever the stump rhetoric about "putting money back in your pockets"
Rather, they Republicans hold toan economic theory that holds that tax cuts generate INCREASED revenues (up to a point) because it produces more taxable transactions in the economy. this was true when JFK radically cut taxes, it was proven again when revenues to the Federal government DOUBLED over the decade between Reagan's tax cuts and GHWB's agreement to raise taxes.
the GOP does screw up much, especially in the realm of poorly chosen spending - but the canard that the GOP proposed tax cuts caused budget problems by reducing revenues is just silly Democrat propagated mythology.
the other thing is that you mentioned one thing that was "worth the money" which most definitely is not - social security.
It's a massive Ponzi scheme which is ripping us all off in a major way with us having no ability to opt out. there does need to be some provision for disability for workers who lose there earning ability....but SS is screwed up in so many other ways that it's not worth what it costs us just to provide that one actual need.
for workers who DON'T become disabled, the amount of return they could have gotten on the money they were forced to pay in FICA taxes over their lifetime is staggering. Far FAR in excess of anything they could ever draw from SS (to say nothing of the poor soul who pays in for 50 years and drops dead a year after he qualifies for SS and that money simply disappears into the government's pocket).
In fact, that pretty much illustrates the problem with the services you mentioned - some of them MUST be done corporately by the government - security, national resources management, roads, etc....but far too often the government does that which DOESN'T have to be done by government and pretty much EVERY time they do, they spend way more than necessary to get way less done than possible.
Which by the way is exactly were that massively screwed up health care bill is going before it's even passed.
I, like you, am very much in favor of and very much willing to pay taxes for things only government can do well, no one on either side of the aisle is opposed to government taxing and spending to do those things - the differences of opinion arise from where one crosses from things only the government can do well and should be doing into the land of things the government shouldn't be doing because private interests can do it better and cheaper.
not everyone agrees where that line is.
Post Merge: January 15, 2010, 04:08:04 AM
Quote from: Jen on January 14, 2010, 11:20:22 PM
I can see that you have a ton of passion about everything you said, Alyssa. I really do wish I shared your optimism. But I'm sorry, I just can't be satisfied with incremental change after watching everything get turned upside down in eight short years.
I am utterly terrified of another Republican regime and I am just so completely frustrated with the Democrats for not tipping the balance far enough while they had the chance.
And to clarify, because I am sure I wasn't clear, when I said both parties can share the blame for the inflation that is coming, I didn't mean recently. I meant that every president since FDR has done things to make matters worse on that front- a whole other thing to blah blah blah about.
Anyway, sorry if I made you mad, Alyssa. I didn't mean it! /hugs?
I think the reason for your frustration is all about being TOO ambitious and focusing it all on one big play.
IF the Democrats were not so obsessed with nationalizing healthy care - and that's the real agenda here, they know full well if they can get ANY bill no matter how wacked into law, then it sets in motion an inevitable process which will lead to nationalized health care - they could have gotten dozens of things you and I would like to have seen done instead and with much less grief.
But they put all their eggs into that one big goal, and even if they succeed they have alianated so many people who wanted other things that they've lost their political capital. If it fails, they are that much worse off because they spent all that capital and got nothing at all.
Laying aside what one thinks of the current bill, if they had settled for a package of ACTUAL reforms (tort reform, interstate purchasing reform, the things Alyssa mentioned about pre-existing conditions and the like) they would have gotten widespread support (easily 8-12 GOP votes in the senate for instance) and had gained plenty of political capital.
then they could have used their super-majority and their political capital to do all sorts of things that the middle and the left would have rewrded them for.....ENDA and the DADT problem and so forth, among other things)
You would be sitting here tonight very happy at the dozen or so REAL advancements that would not only have been enacted but would also be things which would be pretty much impossible for Republicans to gather enough support to reverse (ENDA, for instance - such anti-discrimination laws NEVER get reversed once on the books).
But, as you said, they blew it. Like a drunk in a casino, they put it all on one number and spun the wheel, win or lose that's going to be there only play and we all lost something in the process - we lost all the other good they might have done
(of course, from a conservative/libertarian point of view like mine, we were also saved from them finding a lot of other things to screw up too so i can be more philosophical about it than you)
there is reason for optimism though, for both of us, when it comes to the issues important to our community -
The Dems have so very badly compounded the already massively screwed up economic situation (and will take it to another order of magnitude still of the health care bill passes) that when the GOP does regain power, they will have their hands so full trying to find a way out of that mess that they won't have much time to pass laws unfavorable to LGBT folks on the national level.
Quite possibly, they won't have time on the state level either because the dirty little secret (one of them) in the health care bil is that it contains massive unfunded mandates on the states (regarding the expansion of medicaid) which most of them don't have a prayer of affording.
That's not the atmosphere in which you take time to kick the "freaks" - you have to figure out how to survive.
ok, so that's not good news overall - but it does mean that the trans community should be more worried about whether the economy collapses altogether than whether or not the Moralists pull some anti-trans law out of their ear.
