Slashdot Mirror

Contact your reps in both the House and the Senate. If everybody on Slashdot had done this earlier in the week, we might be looking at a very different situation today. Here's the links.
Senators
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

House of Reps
http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/

They may not do what you want, but at least you can let them know why they are being fired at the end of their term. I contact mine every few weeks on big issues, like the sequester.

surveillance that is implied by Obamacare Well this should be amusing. What the frack are you babbling about now?

He's probably talking about stuff like this and this and this, among other things.

98-0 or 95-0, depending on what source you'd like to cite

How is it not known how many people voted for something when the votes are supposed to be public? Every source I found indicatd 95-0 (wikipedia, and it's sources) Even the Senate itself says 95-0. http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=105&session=1&vote=00205 So how does it happen that so many people say 98-0?

There are no Israeli Senators List of foreign born senators. In addition, if one was born in Israel, they need to become a US citizen for 9 years to be eligible for election to the Senate.

Of course, I'm probably just feeding an antisemitic troll that has a problem with a Jewish Senator, but I wanted to post the link since I looked it up and it is interesting to see where some Senators were born.

Maybe we should allow Senator Feinstein to ban 30 round "clips," thus protecting the sale of 20 and 30 round magazines.

Maybe you should read what she actually said and not the headline some idiot put on it here.

http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=28d0c499-28ec-42a7-902d-ebf318d46d02

On the first day of the new Congress, I intend to introduce a bill stopping the sale, transfer, importation and manufacturing of assault weapons as well as large ammunition magazines, strips and drums that hold more than 10 rounds.

Why bother with Pakistan? You have people in the US that want to ban free speech or remove the right to protect yourself while their kids are well protected.

Sounds to me like they just run a more progressive liberal government than the US currently does. I'm sure their leadership has full access to You Tube but its not right for their people to have the same freedom. Just like in the US, the leaders have freedom of speech and armed guards, but you the lowely citizen have no need for such things and they are trying to correct it. Pakistan just doesn't have that pesky Constitution to deal with so they can do it easier.

I love it when folks say that Democrats "rammed" the health care reform. Fact of the matter is that Health care reform started before Obama was president and had bipartisan input. It took over 3 years from conception to the president signing it into law. Between June of 2009 and September 2009, there were 31 bipartisan meetings on the health care reform law. I could tell you about it, but why not read/watch for yourself. I think watching is only supported on Windows machines: http://www.finance.senate.gov/issue/?id=32be19bd-491e-4192-812f-f65215c1ba65

That's not true at all.

Democrats/Lefties have a long tradition of supporting more and stricter gun restrictions and outright bans, even going back to the 1920s. And I remember the debates that occured during the AWB's voting, and republicans were primarily against it and dems primarily for it. There was no arbitrary decision by the NRA to support just one party; they have long tended to support Republicans (though in reality they base their support on a canidates actual opinion on guns, leading them to support Democrats who favor the 2nd amendment and not support Reps that don't).

And you make it sound like they all got together and all passed the AWB. They didnt.
Senate: 61-38 ( http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=103&session=2&vote=00295 )
House: 235-195 ( http://clerk.house.gov/evs/1994/roll416.xml )

Furthermore, the AWB was merely one part of the massive Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, one of the biggest crime laws and expansions of federal law enforcement powers ever created. The AWB was just one part of that bill, a bill that was created in reaction to several high profile violent crimes (ie, emotional knee jerk reaction law, ala the PARTRIO act, and several others....stop making decisions in the heat of the moment people!!!), such as the waco disaster.

And the ACLU is hardly an unbiased organization. I heartily support and applaud their many attempts to preserve civil liberties, even when unpopular (the nazi's marching in the chicago suburb), due to the consequences of letting even,a ndone go undefended. But the ACLU has never supported the 2nd amendment, and further, does not even consider the 2nd amendment a civil liberty issue ( http://www.aclu.org/racial-justice_prisoners-rights_drug-law-reform_immigrants-rights/second-amendment ). So the ACLU are hardly the all protective organization of our rights that you think they are.

Some people at NASA aren't at fault. There is a huge divide going on in NASA right now between those who want to encourage private commercial spaceflight and those who don't. Lori Garver received a cold shoulder when she first visited NASA centers while she was on a "fact finding tour" for the Obama administration.... then she became their boss. I've also heard in those same congressional hearings some very negative things about private spaceflight efforts coming from NASA center chiefs and other prominent people within NASA.... not just dissenting congressmen.

The saddest one was trying to get Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan to essentially tell congress that it was a waste of money to even support commercial spaceflight efforts. This is a battle of ideas that has been happening for some time. The funny thing about that particular hearing is that Buzz Aldrin and Harrison Schmitt (ship-mates of these two other astronauts) were saying nearly the exact opposite things. This has nothing to do with political affiliation, but it does represent a huge reluctance on the part of many entrenched interests to even consider commercial spaceflight as a legitimate option for future spaceflight needs.

> We should challenge the economics that says we can't create money and give it to people. In fact we created $16 trillion (enough to pay off the entire national debt) in two years to bail out financial unions (source: http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3 ).

Actually, that economic view gets challenged a lot, quite shrilly. The problem is that experience has taught us what happens. First, you're confusing two different things: you're confusing expansion of the money supply which sits in the background as a capital reserve, keeping banks solvent, with money in active circulation. You're also skipping over the fact that the effect of the crisis was to drastically reduce the effective money supply, and the creation of backing funds was essentially a fix for that.

Just wandering around handing out roughly $2,000 a month to every man, woman and child in the USA would not have rendered the banks magically solvent, but would have played hell with price stability - a problem which the third world is intimately familiar with.

As for bailing out the `financial unions' (a complete misnomer, since their role is entirely different), politically it would have been very easy to tear them to shreds. The reason that wasn't done was because of the hideous side effects it would have had on the little people - now you may argue that letting them get that big and unstable was a problem, and you'd be in good company, but just leaving them to die would have been catastrophic on a level not seen in this country since the Great Depression. The outcome would have been a lot worse than currently seen, partly because unwinding all those deals would have baked in a lot of losses rather than allowing for recovery periods.

I'm with you on the idea of a social safety net, however constructed, but then it should go paired with a removal of the minimum wage, and arguably with a required level of work at the government's behest if only to make sure that it's not a freeloader's dream (with exceptions for the disabled, aged, etc.) and encourages a shift to actual employment when it's available. Even a tiny wage in addition to the living allowance is better than the rock bottom living allowance, and probably with better working conditions than digging ditches for the labour office.

> We start by challenging the fundamental assumptions of popular economics, one of which is that government can only spend what it takes in. This assumption has been violated by the history of the United States, which has had a national debt since its very founding. Lincoln printed some $480 million greenbacks to raise money without increasing taxes or borrowing it. Japan runs a 230% debt-to-gdp ratio and has a currency they keep trying to devalue. Dick Cheney was right: Reagan proved that deficits don't matter.

Unfortunately, here you are flatly, demonstrably wrong. I'll prove it:

First, as an absolute, ludicrous maximum, when your debt reaches the point that the interest payments consume your revenue, you're screwed. Lenders know full well at that point that lending you more money means that someone goes unpaid. That's bad. So they don't. It's a guaranteed default. Even if you just print money that means that you run into a problem: money is a fungible commodity. Like other fungible commodities, when the market is flooded with it, the price drops. In the monetary environment, this means inflation. A couple of percent of inflation is healthy - it discourages people from just sitting on money rather than trying to do something with it. Double digit inflation is not healthy. If you extend that ... well, ask Zimbabwe how that worked out.

Second, it actually happens much earlier than that, when you can make the interest payments, but repaying the principle is going to be tough, or people just don't trust you enough to roll your debt over and want

We should challenge the economics that says we can't create money and give it to people. In fact we created $16 trillion (enough to pay off the entire national debt) in two years to bail out financial unions (source: http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3 ).

The best option (that I can think of, at least) is to give everyone a basic income (an idea that goes back to Founding Father Thomas Paine in his 1795 Agrarian Justice), and stimulate innovation and technological progress with challenges from both biz and govt (X Prize, DARPA challenges, Google bug bounties, Netflix prize, etc.). The resulting increase in knowledge advancement will raise our survival fitness fastest because knowledge empowers us to better predict and adapt to sudden catastrophic changes.

We start by challenging the fundamental assumptions of popular economics, one of which is that government can only spend what it takes in. This assumption has been violated by the history of the United States, which has had a national debt since its very founding. Lincoln printed some $480 million greenbacks to raise money without increasing taxes or borrowing it. Japan runs a 230% debt-to-gdp ratio and has a currency they keep trying to devalue. Dick Cheney was right: Reagan proved that deficits don't matter.

(Reliable) citation, or you just made these numbers up. And that doesn't mean a link to some blog that made the numbers up themselves, either. It means a link to an irrefutable source.

When the official source of this information is the government itself, on the official websites which tracks this stuff, which never leaves out any of its voting.. it makes you look like an idiot for not automatically going there where you should have known to go.

Senate Vote
House Vote

Now here is an idea.. instead of pretending to be smart by asking for a citation.. prove that you are smart by actually watching what the government is actually doing through the most authoritative channel possible.. the public one that has never once editorialize.. never once given an opinion.. the one you apparently didnt fucking know about proving that you are just a sheep.

Is it really so difficult for the USA to implement...?

Yes. Replacing the fleet means fighting interminable battles with activists armed with judges that injunct whatever they're told to. Even when we do grown-up things like create a law and a tax to fund waste disposal it gets wrecked by statists. Capital knows better than to have anything to do with US nuclear; the US electorate are hysterical children, bought a paid for with bennies and led around with FUD.

Nuclear power is out of our league now. We're just not competent to govern such things any longer. Our zombie reactor fleet will subsist until some easily foreseeable disaster creates sufficient hysteria. Our parents in Washington will then act and take them away.

Average welfare spending per poor household IS NOT higher than median income. That is a god damn lie and you fucking know it.

Then perhaps you should direct your fuck-yous to the appropriate liars then.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/welfare-spending-equates-168-day-every-household-poverty_665160.html

Slightly earlier claim, but it depends on what you mean by "welfare"; if you mean the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program - the program that replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children, both programs being what people often mean by "welfare", it's not true. The Republican statement to which the Weekly Standard was referring is using "welfare" to refer to a list of 83 items.

(Of course, if you're a fan of Congressional Research Service reports, you're presumably not going to argue that cutting tax rates for the top tax brackets is a way to boost economic growth, but I digress....)

I used to have respect for Kucinich, too.

Isn't there anyone in Congress who has the people's best interest at heart AND has a brain in their head?

The two traits are so uncommon in Congress that I suppose it would be wishful thinking to imagine that there was any overlap.

From intelligence.senate.gov :

http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/pdfs94th/94intelligence_activities_I.pdf

Senator SCHWEIKER.

Now, on this same inventory list, again, that the CIA discovered, is another toxin, a fish toxin, and we inventoried that at 3 cubic centimeters, and only 1 milligram of this material apparently is a lethal dose, indicating it is almost as lethal, at least weight-wise, as the shellfish toxin. Why was this also overlooked, and why wasn't the fish toxin destroyed?

Mr. COLBY.

Well, the fact here was that the various materials here were not destroyed. I believe there is a technical argument about whether the shellfish toxin is the only one that is directly covered by the President's order. But obviously, we do not have a need for the other kinds of toxins, beyond the research into the possibly defensive uses.

Senator SCHWEIKER.

Well, the President's order, Mr. Colby, is very clear and specific. It said research for defensive purposes only. To your knowledge, has any research for defensive purposes been going on with the fish toxin at CIA, or at any other laboratory?

Mr. COLBY.

No, Senator. This was put on this shelf, and just left there. It became an old storeroom, and the material was up there and forgotten.

and later....

are not. In effect, they are. The CHAIRMAN.

Well, I am informed that 11 grams of shellfish toxin-on the surface, it seems to be a small quantity-actually represents about a third of the total amount ever produced in the world. ...

This was 40 years ago. It begs the question- what do they have now?

Using complex schemes to shift U.S. revenue overseas, Microsoft was able to avoid paying taxes on $21 billion in revenue between 2009 and 2011, amounting to about half its total U.S. sales, according to the subcommittee report. The company avoided paying $4.5 billion in taxes, or about $4 million per day, during that time, according to the report.

Using similar schemes, Levin said, Apple avoided taxes on $34.5 billion between 2009 and 2011, and Google has dodged taxes on $24 billion.

Hewlett-Packard, meanwhile, used a series of constantly revolving short-term loans between itself and its subsidiaries that have helped it avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes since at least 2008, according to Levin. Though he didn't say how much money H-P has avoided paying, Levin did say that H-P has kept billions of dollars in cash offshore -- more than $17 billion in 2010, for example -- that it would then "lend" to its U.S. parent company in a steady stream.

Forget a few jerseys, we're talking about billions of dollars here. Clearly it's not that the government is being bamboozled, rather it has been bought out or intimidated. I think it is time to put our foot down; if these companies really think they can do better from Bahrain, let them move there and try.

TFA seems to get a lot wrong, as is common for articles about legislation or litigation. I couldn't find the actual bill text, and I would like to read it. Any help here? More specifically, the two references to the bill that I saw appear wrong:

• There was this link, which goes to a Senate bill without a number. I don't even know whether it is the current version of the bill. I don't know the bill number to which to refer when contacting my Senators, since the bill number is blank. And this is going to vote next week?
• There is mention of H.R. 2471. But, that is a House bill, and it does not appear relevant to this discussion at all.

Any help here?

HR 2471 is slated to be voted on in committee at 10am EST on Thursday, November 29th. Here is the list of House Judiciary Committee Members and their contact numbers: http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/press.cfm.

Troll? If Mozumber's post is a troll, then I'm a troll as well.

I disagree; you are not a troll. I suspect that the parent was modded troll because he acted as a provocateur, charging the GOP with representing monopolists as though it were peculiar to the GOP. Your statement was far more reasonable in that it recognized both parties can be thus implicated.

I do not say this to exonerate the GOP, nor is this a false equivalence. The fact that people habitually act as though one side or the other has sole responsibility for the problems we face is part of what allows those problems to persist (i.e. when the consequences arise, both parties always have a scapegoat). The cure to this problem is, as far as is possible, to praise and punish those lawmakers who do good or ill according to the good or ill they do. When some lawmaker says we need copyright reform because our current system, we will never get anywhere by saying, "Well, that's coming from a member of the [fill-in-party-here]." If I have a problem with the absurd wars started under Republican administrations, I'm not going praise Joe Biden for being a Democrat. If I've a problem with deficits, I'm hardly going to support Paul Ryan on account of Republican rhetoric.

I'm an American, and this pisses me off. This is so obviously stupid. We should not detain someone just because they disagree with us. We shouldn't even question them... There was NO reason to stop him getting on that plane. He was no threat to the plane, to the people, or to the country. Everyone can clearly see that this is just stupid.

My fellow Americans... Pony up.

Write your representatives.http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/

Write your Senators. http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Hell, write the President. http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

Please write and say... "Please stop being Stupid." Mention this incident. Keep it simple. Keep it polite.

Obama swore (pre-election) that he would veto any bill that gave retroactive immunity to telcoms. The fact that he lied was a big disappointment.

He never had the chance to..... signed into law by bush.

https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2008/07/09

Two things should be pointed out: Obama voted for this bill, and all of the "nay" votes were democrats.

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=2&vote=00168

Maybe if they didn't spend so much money on other things they could afford to keep it.

This Bill passed in the House 314-100 with 95 Republicans voting for it (with 96 voting against it). In the Senate, it passed 86-8, with 40 Republicans voting in favor of the Bill, and only 7 voting against. And, of course, President Bush, a Republican, signed it into law.

Well, there's a Senate report of about 400 scientists in 2007 disputing the man-made part, and this other Senate report from 2009 that updates the number from the previous report to over 700.

I'm really curious about the results of the paper, though. I'm no statistician, but the paper used a 4-point scale (Strong Disagree [1 point] to Strong Agree [4 points]) on statements like:
- "The preservation of the free market system is more important than localized environmental concerns." (score: .827)
- "I believe that the burning of fossil fuels on the scale observed over the last 50 years has increased atmospheric temperature to an appreciable degree." (score: .969)
- "In July 1947 the U.S. military recovered the wreckage of an alien craft from Roswell, New Mexico, and covered up the fact." (score: .891)
- "A powerful and secretive group known as the New World Order are planning to eventually rule the world through an autonomous world government which would replace sovereign governments." (score: .742)
- "The problem of acid rain is no longer a serious threat to the global ecosystem" (score: .927)
- "The HIV virus causes AIDS." (score: .894)

And that's all you're getting out of me because I can't figure out how their charts indicate the number of people who strongly agreed with all of the statements, let alone the number of people that strongly agreed with the first statement and any other statement in the list.

Well, there's a Senate report of about 400 scientists in 2007 disputing the man-made part, and this other Senate report from 2009 that updates the number from the previous report to over 700.

I'm really curious about the results of the paper, though. I'm no statistician, but the paper used a 4-point scale (Strong Disagree [1 point] to Strong Agree [4 points]) on statements like:
- "The preservation of the free market system is more important than localized environmental concerns." (score: .827)
- "I believe that the burning of fossil fuels on the scale observed over the last 50 years has increased atmospheric temperature to an appreciable degree." (score: .969)
- "In July 1947 the U.S. military recovered the wreckage of an alien craft from Roswell, New Mexico, and covered up the fact." (score: .891)
- "A powerful and secretive group known as the New World Order are planning to eventually rule the world through an autonomous world government which would replace sovereign governments." (score: .742)
- "The problem of acid rain is no longer a serious threat to the global ecosystem" (score: .927)
- "The HIV virus causes AIDS." (score: .894)

And that's all you're getting out of me because I can't figure out how their charts indicate the number of people who strongly agreed with all of the statements, let alone the number of people that strongly agreed with the first statement and any other statement in the list.

The military-industrial complex needs enemies.

It is more correct to say that the nature of America's enemies determines the resources devoted to military procurement. That has changed considerably over time, and is presently around 5%.

. . . defense spending was 37.5% of GDP in 1945 (WWII), in 1953 (Korea) it was 14.2%, and at the peak of Vietnam (1968) it was 9.4%. -- Defense Spending Already Below Average

Defense Spending as Percentage of GDP Well Below Historical Average

The "Military-Industrial Complex" doesn't seem very successful if it is supposed to be driving defense spending - the resources devoted to it have had a strong negative trend since WW2. Heahthcare takes up something like 3-4x the resources spent on defense at present, and total social welfare spending also dwarfs the defense budget.

Health-Care Spending to Reach 20% of U.S. Economy by 2021

Spending on hospital visits, medications and other health care rose an estimated 3.9 percent in 2011 and consumed about 17.9 percent of GDP, the same as the previous two years, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said yesterday. The increases in such expenditures will continue to outpace economic growth projections, jumping 7.4 percent in 2014, when much of the insurance expansion created by the health law begins.

On the other hand if you ask for less than $10,000 in arbitration they'll pay for your lawyer fees win or lose.

On the other hand if you ask for less than $10,000 in arbitration they'll pay for your lawyer fees win or lose.

If you are going to dispute for a small amount of money you are always better off using Small Claims Court. It is a real court and you can expect to get a real fair verdict. Most of the small claims courts even forbid lawyers.

On the other side arbitration in USA is known to be so biased that it is literally a farce (in 99.9% of the cases). The arbitration is done by private entities under little to no oversight, you are going to face corporate lawyers and the arbitration is binding, meaning you can't appeal it . The arbitration is biased because the corporation can pick not only the arbitration company but also the actual arbiter. Here is the testimony of an arbiter that got rejected after single judgment in favor of a customer.

Looks like you're right. The bill was reintroduced as S.3414 which was voted on and rejected a few hours ago.

I think you must be mistaken. I don't see that any Republicans voted for it in the Senate. Here is the list of sponsors of the bill. Charie Rangel - Democrat, and 40 co-sponsors. I doubt that any are Republicans.

. . . .it seems that some might need a refresher course on the history of Obamacare’s enactment. Reconciliation didn’t play a small role in Obamacare’s passage, as has been suggested. Without reconciliation, Obamacare would not have become law at all. It’s true that the main Obamacare structure was passed by the Senate in December 2009 under normal rules for legislative consideration. That’s because Democrats at that time had 60 votes (including two independent senators who caucus with them). They didn’t need to resort to reconciliation to pass the bill as long as all 60 of their senators stuck together and supported passage, which they did.

But then Scott Brown won the Massachusetts Senate race in January 2010; the Democrats lost their 60-vote supermajority and could no longer close off debate on legislation without the help of at least one Republican senator.

At that point, the president and his allies had two choices. They could compromise with Republicans and bring back a bill to the Senate that could garner a large bipartisan majority. Or they could ignore the election results in Massachusetts and pull an unprecedented legislative maneuver, essentially switching from regular order to reconciliation at the eleventh hour, thereby bypassing any need for Republican support. As they had done at every other step in the process, the Democrats chose the partisan route. They created a separate bill, with scores and scores of legislative changes that essentially became the vehicle for a House-Senate conference on the legislation. That bill was designated a reconciliation bill. Then they passed the original Senate bill through the House on the explicit promise that it would be immediately amended by this highly unusual reconciliation bill, which then passed both the House and Senate a few days later, on an entirely party-line vote. - - The Reconciliation Option

The Democrats own Obamacare, which may not be good news for them.

Poll: Obamacare Still a Huge Issue for the Voters This Fall - By Grace-Marie Turner - July 19, 2012 1:26 P.M.

The latest New York Times/CBS News poll dives into public opinion on Obamacare following the Supreme Court decision and finds opposition to the law virtually unchanged from when it was enacted in 2010, with about half disapproving and one-third supporting the law.

And those who strongly disapprove (36 percent) continue to significantly outnumber those who strongly approve (14 percent) of the law.

Support for repeal also remains strong: 61 percent of those polled say they want Congress to repeal the individual mandate (27 percent) or the entire law (34 percent). Only 15 percent want to keep the law as it is.

And the feds used their unlimited power of money creation to bail out the same financial institutions that are now holding the government hostage. Time for the ppl to demand that the created money goes to us directly instead of rewarding middlemen.

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3

"As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world," said Sanders.

Nice try at the revisionism, but that shit don't fly in the age of Google.

Here was the Senate vote:

Kill it:

• 26 Dems in favor, 29 against, 1 vote not cast
• 31 Repgs in favor, 13 against, 0 uncast

Source

Have you forgotten that all spending bills must originate in the House? Where the the group that led the charge to kill the Supercollider was led by a Democrat with the following vote totals:

Voting to kill - 166 Democrats, 115 Republicans
Voting to save - 98 Democrats, 61 Republicans

Democrats were a large majority in the House in this period.

Nice try at the revisionism, but that shit don't fly in the age of Google.

Here was the Senate vote:

Kill it:

• 26 Dems in favor, 29 against, 1 vote not cast
• 31 Repgs in favor, 13 against, 0 uncast

Source

Congress did try to pass a balanced budget amendment (TWICE, in 1995 and 1996) during Clinton's 8 years, but because it was the Republicans that proposed and promised the amendment (their "Contract With America") that most of the Democrats voted against it (because apparently there is nothing worse than Republicans getting credit for promising and then passing it.)

The 1995 act passed the House 300 to 132 but failed to get a 2/3rds majority (required for amendments) in the Senate with a vote of 65 to 35.

If you actually look at these references, you see that it was the Democrats voting against the balanced budget amendment and they are why it never got to Clinton's desk to be signed (although he had already stated that he would veto it anyways.) 97.7% of the Nay votes in the House were Democrats and 94.3% of the Nay votes in the Senate were Democrats.

Had it passed the Senate though, Clinton had already stated that he would veto it. You claim it would have been ingenious if he had gotten the balanced budget amendment passed, but in actually he and his party were hostile to it. The amendment itself was fairly benign, giving congress the power to still pass unbalanced budgets if they had to as long as they could get a 60% vote in both House and Senate.

You people act as if Clinton was great for the economy, but the facts transcend the media reporting, and obviously your ignorance. Clinton vetoed every balanced budget plan that hit his desk until after the government shutdown twice in 1995 for lack of a budget. There was no plan for a balanced budget until the Republicans took control of both House and Senate by promising exactly that. Clinton had already been in office for 2 years by that point, but he didnt even have a balanced budget plan. The media gave Clinton credit but he didnt deserve it. The media loved Clinton.

Then explain this

The DREAM Act is precisely what I'm talking about in rewarding illegal immigration. It's a kind of Amnesty. It's a message that "Hey, if you can keep your kid here long enough without getting caught, he gets to stay whether you played by the rules or not". This law has nothing... zero... to do with the regular visa system, and, once again, the overwhelming support for it on all sides. It's a total dodge of the question of support for legal immigration.

This is a flat out, demonstrably false lie. Conservatives support legal immigration at about the same rates as self identified liberals and moderates

Then explain this

We issue over one million visas per year, in a lottery system.

If people are still immigrating illegally, then it's not enough. Remember, you are claiming that the ONLY thing that matters is that immigrants go through a legal process. Legalize free border crossings for all, and then all immigrants will be legal. That should please everyone, right?

The issue of "legalization" is whether or not giving an amnesty to illegal aliens would only encourage more border jumping.

Complete and utter legalization of all immigration would eliminate border jumping, because everyone could come in through the front door.

There has been at least one bill in recent years--HR 3012--which would have made legal immigration easier for highly skilled workers, and which was passed with an overwhelming majority in the House (389/15), only to be placed on hold indefinitely by Sen. Chuck Grassley in the Senate. The way I see it, 389 votes in favor of such reform suggests that the majority of Americans support such a move, but there seem to be many (largely) political hurdles to overcome before anything concrete actually gets done about it.

From the article;

Each house needs half of its members to be present for a quorum to do any official business. The House of Representatives can replace deceased members only by special elections that take, on average, four months. The Senate, under the 17th Amendment, allows states (usually governors) to appoint replacements to fill vacancies, but neither house has a mechanism for replacing incapacitated members.

Members do not need to be replaced. Here is a quote from the Office of the Clerk of the US House of Representatives.

A quorum in the House of Representatives is when a majority of the Members are present. When there are no vacancies in the membership, a quorum is 218. When one or more seats are vacant, because of deaths or resignations, the quorum is reduced accordingly. Because of Members' other duties, a quorum often is not present on the House floor. But any Member may insist that a quorum must participate in any vote that takes place in the House. If a Member makes a point of order that a quorum is not present, and the Speaker agrees, a series of bells ring on the House side of the Capitol and in the House office buildings to alert Members to come to the Chamber and record their presence.

Here are a few points that are important;
1. Quorum is calculated relative to the number of sitting live Representatives and not the number of seats. A dead Representative is considered a vacancy and is not counted toward quorum. If all but three of the Representatives were killed than 2 would constitute a quorum.
2. Quorum does not need to be present for a vote unless at least one Representative asks for one. In an emergency I doubt and Representative would make such a request.
3. As for incapacitated members, the House can declare a seat vacant by vote (Note: Unless a member requests a quorum is not required for a vote).
The same standards are present for the Senate.

A straightforward reading of the Constitution’s quorum requirement would seem to require a simple majority of Senators, or a minimum of 51 if there are no vacancies in the body, to be present on the floor whenever the Senate conducts business.

As the House and Senate would still be functioning after such a disaster, the House could elect a Speaker or the Senate elect a President pro tempore and the line of succession would be restored.
The article misrepresents the quorum issue. Basically, as long as there is one member of the House or Senate alive and not incapacitated an acting President will be legally found.

Senator Reid
http://www.reid.senate.gov/issues/yucca.cfm

Every time I hear the phrase "career politician" I want to gag. The simple fact that being a politician CAN be a life long career is screwed up. A major point of our goverment's design is to have representatives rotating in and out in an effort to combat entrenchment. Well.... the assholes even get RICH on being entrenched.

I figure politicians should only be paid the average wage of the state they represent (that'd incentive for broad spectrum growth, yeah?), and then punted out after 4 years no matter what.

Having a job where you can vote on your own raise is some serious bullshit; being able to keep that job for 50 years (I'm not exaggerating, either: http://www.senate.gov/senators/Biographical/longest_serving.htm) is bullshit squared. Yeah, yeah; the people keep voting them back into office... but it shouldn't even be possible.

When you get to the "talking points" BS, basically means you lost this conversation.

No it means that I'm pointing out that you are just spewing the same old denialist talking points.

"talking points" as you put it are there because they distill the whole point into something even an idiot can consume and understand.

The problem with your talking points is that they are blatant lies.

I never said it was globally.

Then what is the relevance? Do you really not understand the difference between local (2% of the planet or so) and global? But you didn't specify the US did you? You wrote: "The warmest decade for the 1900s was the 1930s" - nothing about this only being the US. You have been caught red-handed again.

You did look at what you sent me, right? You do realize that it shows that GW in the past was because of orbits and then we got the heat + co2, right? You do realize that we are in one of those warming orbits, right?

Actually, the sun has had a cooling trend for nearly 40 years. And how did you miss the part of that page which says "bout 90% of the global warming followed the CO2 increase"? Face it, you were just spewing another denialist talking point because you are clueless, and now you are trying to pretend that the article supports your nonsense.

Finally, about the models. Very accurate eh? I guess you missed this article too

No I didn't. The article is based on a shitty piece of pseudoscience (really, really shitty) by creationist and "God decides the climate on the planet and there's nothing science can do to change that" moron Roy Spencer.

There was a really nice graph showing the UN predictions and reality somewhere.

You mean the very, very old predictions that actually turned out to be rather accurate, and actually predicted less warming than we have seen?

I bet you are STILL not convinced. It's time to get you mad as you realize you've been duped, played for a sucker

Says the moron who blindly believed in creationist loon Roy Spencer's pseudoscience. Your crappy article even repeats the old "they predicted an ice age in the 70s" lie.

Check this out - http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=2158072e-802a-23ad-45f0-274616db87e6

Check what out? This crappy list of engineers and other non-scientists who are completely incompetent?

The question is, are you still fooled. Member of Al Gore's/Mr. Strong's church of Man Made Global Warming?

Al Gore is irrelevant. He is not a scientist. I realize that you hate science and can't be bothered to refer to actual scientists, though.

Oh my, you are just a gold mine (or shit mine) of ignorance and denialist talking points...(more BS)...

When you get to the "talking points" BS, basically means you lost this conversation. If you have a point, make it. "talking points" as you put it are there because they distill the whole point into something even an idiot can consume and understand. Sadly, a lot of idiots still don't get it. Moving on...

The 1930s were warm in the US, not globally. You can't even tell the difference between local and global??

I never said it was globally. Good that you found the point I was making. I don't think you understand it though.

Of course, your ignorance and dishonesty compels you to repeat the old "CO2 lags temperature" canard. Once again your ignorance is only too obvious.

You did look at what you sent me, right? You do realize that it shows that GW in the past was because of orbits and then we got the heat + co2, right? You do realize that we are in one of those warming orbits, right? Ever hear of the little ice age? Probably TMI for you. Nice of you to help prove my point.

Where science isn't is if you add CO2 will you get more temperature. In the past all we can say is that CO2 seems to follow temperature. No kidding, less ice, more biological activity. The reverse, adding CO2 (effect) to the atmosphere doesn't necessarily mean you'll get heat (cause). That's the crap science. If you understood anything about science you would know that. We know methane is being released for example and you can show that traps heat. No doubt about that.

Finally, about the models. Very accurate eh? I guess you missed this article too - http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/07/28/2249238/new-nasa-data-casts-doubt-on-global-warming-models ? There was a really nice graph showing the UN predictions and reality somewhere. Unfortunately I can't seem to find it. They were not even close.

I bet you are STILL not convinced. It's time to get you mad as you realize you've been duped, played for a sucker - http://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/GW_History.htm . Read it if you dare. I bet you won't. Too long, too much information, etc.. Then your character flaws will come out again. Check this out - http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=2158072e-802a-23ad-45f0-274616db87e6

Don't feel bad. A lot of people are fooled by them. The question is, are you still fooled. Member of Al Gore's/Mr. Strong's church of Man Made Global Warming? Life member maybe? Offended by that statement? Re-read the GW_History article again.

HTH and Best wishes.

Harry Reid was the only D who voted along with the R's on this.

Get off your butts and write them now house.gov, or better yet write your Senator and see if you can stop it before it hits Obama's desk.

So much wrong or misleading in a short comment.

First, Democrats have had a majority in the Senate since 2007, so 2 Bush years and 3+ Obama years.
Second, they had a majority in the House for 4 years, 2 under Bush and 2 under Obama.

So that's 2 years they had majorities in the Senate and House while holding the Presidency. The President of course has a veto, so that's a key ingredient to getting anything through. The House is fairly strictly majority rule. The Senate, by current rules (since the 70's) allows the minority to block bills unless 3/5 of the full Senate (i.e. 60 Senators) vote for cloture. Use of that tactic has risen dramatically since the Democrats retook the majority in 2007. So when you claim that the Republicans didn't block anything, that's just outright false.

See the Senate records on how often cloture votes were held to break a filibuster. See the big jump?

2011-now : 48 (D)
2009-2010 : 91 (D)
2007-2008 : 112 (D)
2005-2006 : 54 (R)
2003-2004 : 49 (R)

You can still be against the bills in question. Hell, you can be proud of the R's for blocking them. But don't deny it's happening.

I've heard the "control of congress" tactic be used very misleadingly. If every Republican and barely enough Democrats vote down a bill, you can be technically correct to say that the majority Democrats could have passed the bill. But when you look closer and see 90+% of Democrats and 0% of Republicans voting for it, it's clear which party is more responsible for the bill not passing.

Yes, please do call your reps. If if you're like me and "bipartisan" isn't granular enough, here's the break down so we know who to blame:

The Patriot Act - 2001 (Yeas / Nays / Not Voting):
House of Representatives:
Republicans: 211 / 3 / 5 (96%)
Democrats: 145 / 62 / 4 (68%)
Independents: 1 / 1 / 0 (50%)
Senate:
Republicans: 49 / 49 / 0 (100%)
Democrats: 48 / 1 / 1 (96%) - Hooray for Russ Feingold
Independents: 1 / 0 / 0 (100%)

CISPA cosponsors (from your link):
Republicans: 86 (out of 242, 35%)
Democrats: 26 (out of 190, 13%)

SOPA had 16 of each on the list, but had various joining dates and withdrawals. I'd like to see the data for the Patriot reauthorization votes, but don't have time right now.

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

EVERYONE needs to send letters (NOT emails) to their state's senators. If enough people deluge their offices with "Shutdown the TSA" mail, they'll finally get a clue and do something about.

And yes, spend the money on a stamp, these guys pay more attention to paper mail than email.

The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.
~ Lord Acton (of absolute power corrupts absolutely fame)

Capital must protect itself in every way... Debts must be collected and loans and mortgages foreclosed as soon as possible. When through a process of law the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and more easily governed by the strong arm of the law applied by the central power of leading financiers. People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. This is well known among our principle men now engaged in forming an imperialism of capitalism to govern the world. By dividing the people we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us except as teachers of the common herd.
~ JP Morgan

There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.
~ John Maynard Keynes, 1920

All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.
~ John Adams

Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effectual than that which deludes them with paper money. This is the most effectual of inventions to fertilize the rich man's fields by the sweat of the poor man's brow. Ordinary tyranny, oppression, excessive taxation--these bear lightly on the happiness of the mass of the community compared with a fraudulent currency and the robberies committed by depreciated paper. Our own history has recorded for our instruction enough, and more than enough, of the demoralizing tendency, the injustice. and the intolerable oppression on the virtuous and well-disposed of a degraded paper currency authorized by law or in any way countenanced by government. It is one of the most successful devices, in times of peace or war, of expansions or revulsions, to accomplish the transfer of all the precious metals from the great mass of the people into the hands of the few, where they are hoarded in secret places or deposited under bolts and bars, while the people are left to endure all the inconvenience, sacrifice, and demoralization resulting from the use of depreciated and worthless paper.
~ Andrew Johnson - 1868 State of the union address (apparently he was quoting Daniel Webster) - also quoted by Nelson Aldrich, architect of the Federal Reserve system

100 Million Dollar Penny: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dl1y-zBAFg

The first ever GAO (Government Accountability Office) audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator, led the charge for a Federal Reserve audit in the Senate, but watered down the original language of the house bill (HR1207), so that a complete audit would not be carried out.

http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3

What was revealed in the audit was startling:

$16,000,000,000,000.00 had been secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland. From the period between December 2007 and June 2010, the Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world's banks, corporations, and governments.

You're also forgetting Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009 - that's profits, not revenue. But not only did it DODGE ALL TAXES, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings. (source)

So please, if you want to rage about Solyndra and you don't first rage about this, it will be obvious to all that you're full of shit.

Solyndra was a government investment that didn't pan out. Given the number of such investements that our government makes, it's kind of impressive that Solyndra is the only one to really go wrong. For example, the government made money on its loan guarantees to carmakes, while also keeping them from drowning and firing everyone.

I find the House and Senate roll calls for the "Patriot" Act to be most useful in judging whether I would consider voting for someone, instead of against the other guy. They're also why I vote Democrat by default (well, one of the top two reasons), and why I seriously gave up on both major parties in 2001 and then the American people in 2002 and 2004.

Ron Paul voted against. It took real balls to do that in 2001.