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Senator Arlen Specter Becomes a Democrat
Akido37 was one of many readers letting us know that US Sen. Arlen Specter has changed parties to become a Democrat. This gives the Democrats 59 seats in the Senate, and 60 if and when Al Franken gets seated from Minnesota. However, Specter said in his announcement that he will not be an automatic 60th vote for breaking Republican filibusters. While the senator's move seems to have surprised many Republicans, it is understandable to moderate Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, who said, "You haven't certainly heard warm encouraging words of how they [Republicans] view moderates. Either you are with us or against us." Specter noted that in his home state of Pennsylvania, 200,000 formerly Republican voters switched party allegiance last year.
Prepare for some extremely Democratic legislation. (In the party sense, not the democracy sense).
YEAH! Like universal health care, and an end to the 35% of health care expenditure that goes to parasite insurance companies! WOOT!
(Just for reference, the US is the only western country to tie health care to one's employer. It is a strange combination, that has many perverse effects such as separating the consumer from the one paying the health care bills, and turning the bill-payers into care-denial organizations. The macro effect is that we spend more of our GDP on health care than any other country in the world, yet our population dies sooner (about 3 years' shorter life span).)
Remain calm! All is well!
Nonsense. Party lines are more harmful than they are helpful. Also, he doesn't ONLY represent republican voters in the state, he represents ALL the voters in the state. So your notion that switching midterm is disgusting is just plain stupid, and hows your zealotry along party lines.
Personally, I'm inclinded to go with the founders, who believed parties were a bad idea. I think our history shows that to be true, and I'm in favor of doing away with political parties all together. Explain your ideas, don't just say "I'm a republican!" (or democrat).
To quote a smart man, "Gee - big surprise."
The GOP has shrunk a great deal in the last 4 years. Moderates and Independents left the party. Millions of them.
The result is a GOP that is far more conservative than it was as recently as the 2004 election.
BushCo drove so many sane people out of the GOP that the only people left are of the dyed-in-the-wool variety.
Such a party is not going to nominate a moderate. Specter knew that. Everybody knew that.
The people of PA have re-elected Specter many times. By switching parties he's preventing a small group of very conservative voters from restricting the people of PA from electing somebody they've supported over and over in the past.
This would all be moot if PA, like most states, had open primaries where registered dems and indies could vote in the GOP primary if they chose to do so.
They seem like crazy nut jobs here, too. Every time I hear another insane rant about "Obama's Fascist Regime" it pushes me further and further away from the Republican party.
They are SO upset that they lost the election and they're going ape shit. Instead of trying to push their message with resonable thought, they force it on you with words of communism and "fascism."
The more they do it though, the less people they will inevitably get to vote for them. You might get some simple people to believe the nonsense but not a thinking person.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Nope. Nobody on 'my side' has ever wanted America to lose a war. Try again. Here's a hint: you may want to stop looking at politics as something with 'sides' and realize we are all in this together.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Being a libertarian, I don't really have a dog in this fight, I think that most politicians are crooks. But do you have any idea how irrational & childish you sound?
There is a huge difference between wanting your country out of a war & wanting your country to *lose* a war.
There is a war going on for your mind.
The correct term is universal health bureaucracy, there is no care involved.
Says the guy who obviously hasn't yet had to face a serious health problem without coverage or with inadequate health insurance. I know, you shouldn't be made to suffer just because of the poor choices made by others to have genetic disorders, evil employers or the lack of foresight to grow older.
If you think having government administered health coverage vs. private coverage will result in more bureaucracy, then you just haven't had to deal with your health insurance provider yet.
I am not a crackpot.
There are hundreds of regimes around the world doing worse. Some of them we even put in power. We do nothing there, why is Iraq different? THAT is the question. Why are we meddling there, and not in any place with real problems, like Somalia?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
That's why we have the party system, so we have an extra layer of protection
Nonsense. The party system we have was not designed. There is nothing in the constitution about political parties, and in fact George Washington argued strongly against political parties in his farewell address. Our party system evolved for one reason and one reason only, because it is easier to get elected if you're in a party than not.
We don't place unlimited trust in the guy, we only vote for him as long as he maintains integrity to the party under which he ran
Political parties don't fix this issue, they just shift it. Instead of placing trust in the guy you vote for, you place trust in the party you vote for. I don't see how one is better than the other. Well, I do, considering that a person can have a conscience and a political party cannot, I'd rather trust the person. (Of course, since it's politics, I don't really trust anyone.)
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
While I agree with you in principle, I think your numbers might be a bit off. The ones I find indicate the U.S. is paying between 20% and 50% more than the next highest country (per capita). U.S. citizens pay about twice as much for health care as the average of all the other industrialized countries. However, it places second to last in terms of effectiveness among the industrialized nations, only beating New Zealand. World-wide the U.S. ranks 37th world-wide according to the WHO, and the only North American or European country it seems to beat in terms of health care results is Mexico.
So yeah, the U.S. system is a raw deal for U.S. citizens.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
There are hundreds of regimes around the world doing worse. Some of them we even put in power.
You'd think we would have learned by now not to keep putting new regimes in power, just to have them become our Mortal Enemies (TM) 10 years later.
okay, if we're going to play the "your side" game, you have to look at the other side as well.
The side you refer to 'thinking the Founding Fathers' were on to something also believes in the erosion of civil liberties, consolidation of executive power, silencing those who dissent, torture, revoking habeous corpus, forced religion, racial profiling and exclusion, warmongering, etc...
Read some of President Washington's work and tell me how ANYTHING from the last 8 years even remotely comes close to the Framer's vision!?!?
Face it, both sides are out of touch with the Founding Fathers. Both "sides" are corrupted abominations that offer little in the way of serious social stability with in the original frame work of our Constitution.
The Democrats have long understood and I think important elements of the Conservative movement (not the Republicans as of yet) now realize that we are fast approaching a 'there can be only one' point in history, where one side must finally confront and defeat the other.
Mean while I think the general population of the US is finally coming to the inevitable "there can not be only two" point in history.
There are way more issues than there are sides. Some of those issues the Democrats are more liberal, some of them Republicans are more liberal, hell some of them the Libertarians are more liberal on. Stop thinking of politics as a black and white game, all that type of thinking is doing is shrinking and isolating the once proud Republican movement. Learn to deal with nuance. Work to reform the party based on intellectual debate rather than 5 second sound bites of FUD and maybe we can see a healthy return of the Republican party.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
"socialism" doesn't mean what the bulk of americans (ie "you") think it means. Most of Europe, Canada and South America are "socialist". We say "socialism" and you hear "communist dictatorship" which is something completely, completely different.
Sort of like how "liberal" is slanderous to you guys... so weird.
Stop thinking in black & white, flush the cold-war era propaganda from your mind, and you'll find there are some excellent lessons to be learned from a system not driven wholy by greed.
Jeremy
Not in so many words, no. Many Democrats have, however, called for us to pull out of Iraq under conditions that are equivalent (in my, and many other people's opinion) to admitting that we've lost.
How is coming to the realization that we lost the same thing as wanting to lose? Did Japan's surrender that ended WWII before his entire country was destroyed mean that Emperor Hirohito wanted to lose? Did the fact that that James Madison signed a peace treaty with the British that under conditions that are equivalent to admitting that we've lost mean that he wanted America to lose the War of 1812?
I wish as much as the most hardcore right winger that we were accepted with open arms in Iraq and that Iraqi citizens were willing to work with us to rebuild their country, but that isn't what happened. No one wanted to (or wants to today, for that matter) lose the war. What the Democrats wanted to do was stop sending our boys off to die overseas just to prove that invading Iraq was a good idea in the first place.
Erosion of civil liberties? You mean the Patriot Act that Obama DIDN'T renounce once he was the one in the hot seat and would be responsible if something went FOOM!, is that what you are on about? The Patriot Act that DIDN'T actually do most of the things the crazies say it does?
I have not said a word in defense of the Democrats or Obama. They are as complicit as the Republicans, IMO.
The only solution is to push hard for a return to normal as soon as the Islamic threat is beat back.
Islamic threat!?!? We are not at war with the Muslim religion, we are at war with extremists who use religion as a tool. The number of violent Muslims is insignificant compared to the number of socially respectable and respectful Muslims in the world. Claiming that the entire Islamic nation is terrorist is nothing short of bigoted drivel.
As someone who leans Libertarian I find it distasteful but can't see a way around the problem.
Here's a thought, how about not getting into unncesary foreign wars?!?!
Are you insane or do you just believe if you repeat a lie enough it will become the Truth? Name one dissident who has been silenced.
Joseph C. Wilson would be the obvious choice, since his story actually did make it public. There were many more smaller stories that did not gather the same level of press over the last 8 years, and with all likelihood many more that had been successfully supressed such that you nor I would never hear of them.
many AMERICAN CITIZENS did BushHitler put in to gulags?
I have never compared Bush to Hitler. Although oddly enough I have heard a few right wing talk show hosts make that comparison to Obama. And the answer is at least one, John Walker Lindh. On the other hand, he did make some huge investments in new prison and internment camps our west, there deffinately appeared to be a concern expressed by the Federal government that a significant number of people would need to be locked up in very short order.
Try it in a real dictatorship and you can earn some actual Karma.
When did I say anything about a dictatorship? I said Fascist. Two entirely different arangements. While they can overlap significantly, the two are not mutually inclusive. Not only that, but where they hell does this arguement come from? I'm specifically stating that I think President Bush did more to move the country in the direction of Fascism than any other President that I am aware of. I dislike the idea of Fascism AND dictatorship, so I will do all that is in my power to prevent the slide of the government in that direction. What Chaves and Castrol due is immaterial to my concern of the US government. Just because social norms in their country are even more unacceptable to me doesn't mean I should compromise my views of social norms here in the US.
And I really don't think you even know what a phrase like habeous corpus even means if you think we have been violating it.
Habeous Corpus is a legal action through which a person can seek relief from the unlawful detention of him or herself.
How is that not an exacting contradiction to what we are doing through GITMO detentions and black site holdings? Hell, some of the GITMO prisoners have been legally cleared of wrong doing, yet we are STILL detaining them. Even US citizens like José Padilla have been denieghed the right to Habeous Corpus.
I don't know what rock yuo have been living under, but come on out in to the light.
I won't concede that waterboarding is torture
So then you would be in favor of the US making reperations to the families of the Japanesse whom we executed after WWII for using waterboarding as a form of torture on US troops? You are also stating that it is there for acceptable to have any person any where, be it a member of our military, a citizen
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs