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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.
...nothing of value was lost or gained.
This does pose a dramatic shift in the balance of power. While a lot of votes do go on party lines, often most of what happens is self interest, with politicians doing what is most likely to keep them in office. Specter is just doing a better job of staying with the times rather than any real change in his personal convictions.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
...Specter was a Republican to begin with?
Gee - big surprise. This news comes just a weekend after news that his primary challenger, Pat Toomey, is showing a commanding lead in the polls.
I can see the fnords!
While I may support Democrats more than the Republicans, I find the general principle of changing parties mid-term a disgusting and cowardly betrayal of trust.
You were elected as a Republican, for better or for worse. You should either finish your term as one, or if you can no longer consider yourself a Republican, resign. At the next election, feel free to run as a Democrat or whoever the hell you want. But for this term, you should act for the people who elected you. That's the principle of representative democracy.
I'd even accept the compromise of, when one leaves or is kicked out of the party, he/she should have the right to stay as an Independent member until the next election. But joining a party different from the one you were elected under, in the middle of your term, should be outright unconstitutional.
Specter left the Democratic Party in '81 because he lacked seniority for cool appointments. The Republicans were (and have been) desperate enough for a Pennsylvania senate seat that he could write his own checks in the GOP. Now, he's looking at being part of a permanent minority, and the majority party is probably going to give him nicer committee chairs than he could get with the GOP.
It's not a principled stand; it's politics.
Well, to be fair, he has always described himself as a moderate republican; elected in the 80's when the 'Big Tent' philosophy was strong in the Republican party. If 200,000 people left the Republican party for the Democratic party, you can bet that it was the moderates that were leaving, shifting the party farther to the right and making it impossible for him to win the primary as a self described moderate.
If he is more likely to win the primary in the democratic party than the republican party, he is almost by definition a democrat. If he isn't a democrat, he will lose badly in his first primary and everything will be exactly as it would be if he had stayed as a republican.
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
Actually, that was a right-wing projection. Democrats never wanted us to lose the war, they wanted the U.S. to stop pursuing the policies that were failing. Republicans, in their typically hyperaggressive way, screamed themselves red in the face that this was wanting America to lose. Put another way, Rush Limbaugh explicitly has said he wants President Obama to fail. Not his policies. Not his programs. His entire presidency. No Democrat of any significance actually made any statement calling for the war to be lost.
Long? What do you mean the signature at the bottom of every comment I post on Slashdot is too lo
If the US pulled out of Iraq... who or what would be killing Iraqis? Other Iraqis? Sounds like an Iraqi problem, not a US problem.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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It's a bit too simplistic to call all the people responsible for the Republicans' fiasco neo-cons.
The Republicans looked very powerful around the time of GW Bush's first election, but what they had is something we old time Democrats knew a lot about: a big tent coalition. We had the cultural elite and labor, and Reagan figured out that that was a fracture line he could split Democratic support along.
The difference is that the Republican coalition had even less coherence than the Democrats, and underwent spontaneous implosion as they tried to put together an agenda that pleased everyone in the tent: Westerners of a libertarian bent, the old economic and intellectual elite of the Republican party, the evangelicals, the flat out racists. That's why they could never control spending, they were too busy keeping everybody in the tent happy. They fooled themselves into thinking they were cleverly doing this temporarily so they could "starve the beast" until such a time the system began to fall apart. That was stupid. You can't starve the beast. If you try, then when things start to fall apart it just reaches out and eats you alive.
Still, if you want to find a scapegoat, look the the Southern social conservatives. It was their backing of the messianic mission of the neo-cons that allowed them to hijack foreign policy.
Nixon invited the old enemies of the Republicans economic elites into th party, the old Dixiecrats. They became powerful, like the far out religious parties in Israel, because they were the key to power. They're the ones that run the Republican party; not the people who elected Eisenhower. It's too bad, because the old economic and intellectual elite of the Republican party weren't such a bad bunch, if you kept an eye on them. The country needs people like that, even if you didn't want them to have unchallenged control over policy.
But those old time Republicans don't have any place to go now. The Republican party has been redefined out from under them. It's now the party of anti-intellectualism, xenophobia, and racism, all things that were anathema to those old time conservatives.
Maybe it's time for a Grand New Party.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You are basing your argument on the classical philosophy that a vote, when cast for a person, essentially places trust in that person to serve as he or she sees fit, for the duration of his term.
I call that position bullshit and reject it in principle. I refuse to place unconditional trust in a politician, or be so naive as to believe that he is indeed there to serve his constituency. Politicians will always do what is in their self interest (wow, just like the rest of us). That's why we have the party system, so we have an extra layer of protection. We don't JUST vote for Specter, just like we don't just vote for any Republican. We vote for both. We vote for Specter AS LONG AS he maintains the principles of the party he was running under, in this case, Republican.
Partisanism has lots of problems, but I firmly believe that the extra layer of safeguarding against do-what-I-fuckin-like politicians makes it worthwhile. 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.
If someone WANTS to run under the platform of "unlimited trust", he should run as Independent. There's a reason why almost nobody gets elected as one.
For those that are not aware:
I want the Democrats to have to own what happens the next few years. After all the years of hearing them harp on Bush deficits I want them to have undeniable majority so they are undeniably responsible for the economy busting budgets they are signing off on.
Lord preserve us from such conservative wishing.
There was a time when conservatives saw this country as something more than a wall for spraying political graffiti onto, or fuel for their rally's bonfire They used to care for traditions, principles, and institutions.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
>90% of Americans think that way. It's funny to sit on the outside and see Democrats fear monger about the Patriot act being a horrible piece of legislation that the Republicans put into place, then instead of repealing it when they took power the Democrats use it to put Conservative Idealists on a list of possible terrorists.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
"Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, pressed an amendment that would strike a provision from the bill that prohibits terror suspects from challenging their detention in the courts. ''What the bill seeks to do is set back basic rights by some 900 years,'' said Mr. Specter, who traced the ability to challenge one's detention to the Magna Carta"
And the debunked point hits again! Republicans are the only ones who actually want anything to fail. Find any Democrat of any national significance who has actually made a statement about wanting a collapse, please.
Long? What do you mean the signature at the bottom of every comment I post on Slashdot is too lo
FAIL.
The right-wing extremism report was initiated by George W. Bush's White House, as a counterpoint to the left-wing extremism report issued earlier this year. The right-wing extremism report further did not identify conservatives as extremists; it identified two major groups within right-wing extremists, those being hate extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and single-issue extremist groups like abortion-clinic bombers. Agreeing with any of the issues does not mean that they called you an extremist, only that extremists have been known to share that issue.
Some squirrels are male and some squirrels are female. You are in all likelihood either male or female. This does not, however, mean that you are necessarily a squirrel. It's the same argument, except with 'squirrel' in place of 'extremist,' 'male' in place of 'hate groups,' and 'female' in place of 'single-issue groups.'
Long? What do you mean the signature at the bottom of every comment I post on Slashdot is too lo
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
"Eh. Specter is an old school reagan-ish republican."
There is nothing even remotely "Reagan-ish" about Arlen Specter. The only principle Specter has ever had are the ones that keep Arlen Specter in power. Though it puts the GOP in a painful disadvantage in the Senate, I am well and truly glad to see him gone. Besides the shiny new (D) beside his name, the only difference in Specter is that now he'll have to stab the Republicans in the front.
And Democrats, while you're happy about your new supposedly filibuster proof majority, consider this; if history is any indication, sooner or later you'll need Specter's vote on something. And he'll screw you guys too. When a whore leaves her husband for another man, does she ever really stop being a whore?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
If the ideology we're talking about is the unconstitutional, moderate socialism that we have now thanks to both parties, then certainly it's broken. Maybe we could try capitalism and the rule of law next?
Revive the Constitution.
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
Yes they can. Private industry can collude with others to prevent you getting a job. They can buy all the land around yours and refuse you access. They can pollute your land and kill you, then if you've got anyone left alive to sue them, they can beat them with hundreds of lawyers.
In fact, it is the government that can't take your money, your freedom or your life without good reason. Private industry feels no compunction against doing so.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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.
New Orleans is squarely in Democrat hands, the Republicans haven't had anything to do with it. The fact that you don't know that just goes to show how good the media is at covering for them.
Really, though, I think jmorris was talking about CONSERVATIVES, which Republicans ain't. Which is why they lost so big in the last election cycle, their own "right wing" base won't support them.
Actually, Conservatives believe in not giving any charities government funding, regardless of belief.
As far as Scientific Funding.... Who was the first US President to dedicate Federal funds to embryonic stem cell research?
Actually that sounds pretty awesome. :)
Can you give an actual example of a Conservative Republican who wants that? I don't think so. Hell, I'd be surprised if you came up with an example of a Conservative Republican, period.
Ahh there's that tolerance everyone on the left said was missing during the Bush years. I feel so accepted for my differing viewpoints. Really.
Here's a news flash: At this rate, things are going to come to a head, one way or another. And only one side of this argument owns guns.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
This is going to get me flamed to hell, but I don't care, my karma is good, so here goes. Hate to break the news to you, but inside every Iraqi is NOT an American waiting to get out,okay? You are NEVER going to "win" there,got that? They WANT to live under their crazy Sharia law, and you are NOT going to get them to behave like little Americans. All you are doing is wasting time and lives. Just ask the Russians, they can tell you all about it from their time in Afghanistan.
So go right ahead and keep believing you can "win" this thing. You can't. You can't win this anymore than we could win Vietnam, hell probably have even less of a chance here. We could win WW2 because Germans and Japanese were basically functional before they got Hitler and the militant generals of Japan. Here you are trying to take dozens of tribes, many of whom HATE each other, and are happy to strap bombs to themselves and their kids because it gets them a free pass to Allah, and make them behave like they were just another country in the EU. It will NEVER EVER work. But keep believing that it will, while Haliburton and the other contractors laugh their way to the bank with your money.
Whether you pull out now or in 10 years you WILL pull out, the only questions are how many lives and how much money will be pissed down that rathole before we do. There is simply NO WAY to win this, your money and your planes and your bombs will NEVER EVER make these people quit slaughtering each other. All you are doing is giving them a common target to shoot at, because the only thing they agree on is they ALL hate us.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Unitary Executive, not Unitarian! If Bush were a Unitarian executive, he would be far more open minded ^_^.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Yes, I realize that. But the person he was responding to was talking about Conservatives, not "right wing Republicans"...
Yes, I believe I was the one making that very point.
If you'd of said Pat Buchanan, you may have had a point. But Rush Limbaugh? Seriously? You're saying RUSH LIMBAUGH wants a theocracy? He gets CONSTANT heat from the religious right over how areligious his show is! Next you're going to tell me Bill O'Reilly is a Conservative!
Damn, we started up the Inquisition again? Why wasn't I invited!? I loved the Pit and the Pendulum!
Seriously, though... Lately the only "Agree with us or die!" point of view I've been seeing espoused vis a vis scientific belief has all been coming from the Global Warming camp...
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
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
"I won't concede that waterboarding is torture"
Well that's big of you.
Perhaps you should go back to 1946 and tell that to the Allies before they hang 'innocent' (according to jmorris) Japanese officers for doing it. Also make sure you tell the US and Aussie POWs (especially the high ranking officers!) who were on the receiving end of it that you don't 'concede' that they were tortured.
Big fucking heros you American 'conservatives' are aren't ya.
Except when *your* on the receiving end of any of your bankrupt ideology.
"crossed the line to treason more than once"
Good god.
Was it treason when that fat fuck on Fox openly declared he hoped the navy rescue of that ships crew would fail? Or that your all critising Obama in *gasp* a time of war?!
Right.
Critising Bush = Treason.
Critising Obama = Patriot.
There's a reason your party is being completely dominated - You and your ilk and your muddled and *completely* morally bankrupt ideology ARE THAT REASON.
It's a shame too, because I bet you only make up a tiny fraction of the party. It's always the extremists who are the noisiest and ruin it for the reasonable majority unfortunately.
Old Saddam kept order by gassing everyone that disagreed with him. I can't really see Americans dropping mustard gas, which is pretty much the ONLY way you are going to "win" there.
Saddam gassed people to keep them from revolting, because if they wanted to change something, they had to revolt. The democratic way is to give people a way to change things without violence. Of course, if they don't accept the non-violent way, America has shown it is not afraid to kill them: see Fallujah
It is about OIL, it has ALWAYS been about OIL
Come back when you understand what the Iraq war is actually about.
The petro dollar is pretty much the only damned thing we have left in the country.
Demonstrating once again your naivete. The United States produces more than any other country, and has a strong industrial base. The only reason you could say that "the petro dollar is the only thing we have left" is if you don't actually understand how the US economy works.
Let us look at the facts, okay? ..... FACT- Iraq is made up of THREE completely separate groups that frankly can't agree on shit. These are of course the Sunni, The Shia, and the Kurds.
Let's look at the real facts. The power structures in Iraq are divided along tribal lines, not along religious lines. In fact, most of Iraq is secular. The fact that you think the Sunni/Shia division is most important shows that you've gotten your information only in passing, not from a deep investigation of the matter. In essence you know nothing about Iraqi politics.
"Inside every gook.......while we make deals with China(true evil) is not only BS, it is kinda insulting,okay?
Oh nice, fortify your position of ignorance with racism. Smooth. Not only have you demonstrated your ignorance on politics and foreign affairs, you've also shown you lack the ability to understand other people at all. Racist. I can't believe it. What kind of idiot are you? Wake up and enter reality already.
And the hawks will blame the dems for not letting them "win" when the simple fact is you can NEVER win.
They won't. Obama is continuing the war. You seem to have not noticed.
In conclusion get some sense in your brain before opening your mouth and you will be a lot more intelligent. May sound harsh, but seriously, if you don't get over that racism, there's a special circle in hell for you. In this life too (more importantly).
Qxe4
Unfortunately for you, the Supreme Court and the stewards of the Geneva Conventions disagree with you there. At a minimum, Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions provide a baseline of protections the United States must afford to every detainee.