So in the same post you credit Clinton with the budget surplus generated during the economic 'bubble' and absolve him of all responsibility for the subsequent bursting of the bubble.
That objection makes no sense at all.
The bubble generated taxes, granted, and possibly helped balance the budget.
And? Was Clinton supposed to step in and say 'Well, you people are making more than previously, so tax revenues are up, but they're being generated by a bubble, so I'll lower taxes to bring government revenue in line. Be sure to spend the excess money investing even more in the over-inflated stock market.'?
Does that even vaguely make sense? You tax more during economic booms, to slow them down and create a surplus so you can lower taxes to help things when the boom goes away.
I mean, that's your propaganda, right? That lower taxes helps the economy, and raising them slows it down? And you're complaining about Clinton not lowering taxes during a bubble? WTF? Why the hell would anyone ever do that?
I'm beginning to think you're just trying to blame Clinton for everything. Clinton ignored warning signs, yes, and should have reeled in the market some. This has almost nothing to do with economic status of the country at this point. That is due to complete lunatics spending way more money than we have, and productivity going up while wages go down thanks to companies consolidating their power and unions almost completely vanishing.
There's a difference between using the actual military courts instead of the civilian courts, although I'm not a huge fan of that, and using no courts at all, which is completely and utterly unconstitional unless the prisoner doesn't want it use them.
Someone's about to say 'What about POWs, they don't go to court?'. POWs don't want to go to court, as they have more rights as POWs. They certainly have the right to go to court if they aren't supposed to be there at all. (I.e., if a French resistence fighter put on a German uniform and was captured by the Allies during WWII, he'd have access to the courts to demonstrate he was not, in fact, the enemy.)
Now when it comes to the economy and national debt I don't know what the numbers are but without knowing them you cannot say outright that every extra dollar is better spent paying down the debt. I also make the assumption that Clinton's budget took already took the national debt into account.
There are no numbers. We're not making any money, at all, on anything that we can control. Student loans and other loans like that sometimes make money, but it would obviously be stupid to stop issuing those and pay off the debt instead, and no one's suggesting that. The US government does not have several trillion dollars in some bank somewhere making more, or in fact any, interest for us, and certainly not at a higher rate than the debt accues.
And, no, his budget didn't actually take the debt into account, or at least not the interest on the debt into account. I.e., the debt went up even under Clinton, thanks to us borrowing to pay interest on the debt. Lots of fun. We only took in more than we spent not including the debt.
We needed at least ten years of Clinton-like policies before we got the debt under control, i.e., where we use it cover for shortfalls and disasters but it's normally nothing. Now we'll probably need twenty thanks to borrow-and-spend conservatives.
Oh, and, incidentally, I did, back then in 96-2000, give the Republicans some of the credit for the budget, except they've pretty much demonstrated they are lunatics when they have total budget-making power, thus pretty much forcing me to give sole credit to Clinton.
As far as refunding the surplus goes, yes the money is already out of the hands of the people but if that has created a burden to the economy then re-injecting those funds back into the economy by refunding them would be a nice pick-me-up.
And why, exactly, would paying back the money count not count as 're-injecting the funds back into the economy'? Yes, it would mostly go to rich people and businesses, but considering that's exactly where Bush's tax cuts went, I fail to see the difference.
However, I do not believe that Clinton or most others for that matter foresaw the impending hit that the economy was going to suffer and felt justified in putting that money to other use.
I think you're conflating two different problems. One was the absurd tech bubble/stock market bubble which, frankly, needed a correction. (As does the damn housing bubble, and I hope the Democrats actually do something to make that landing a bit softer.)
The other is the depression we've been under since then, which we only had because the government hasn't attempted to do anything to fix, which is really ironic in a time of war. This is the only depression during a war ever, and when you look at the price of the war, that's really ironic. We're spending as much or more on this war, it's just all getting sucked out at the top instead of filtering down to workers.
And I most certainly can complain that Clinton taxed too much. I watched family and friends lose jobs in the subsequent crash. I watched my own investments tank. I have older friends whose retirement plans went out the window because their retirement investments took huge hits.
What the hell are you talking about? Why are you blaming Clinton for a bubble busting? The stock market was clearly out of control at that time. Are you about to blame the Bush for the housing bubble bursting right now?
The government needs to attempt to reel in bubble craziness, and it needs to attempt to make the landings softer. Clinton somewhat failed in the first place, I'll admit. But that was not the problem.
As for 'retirement investments', you're missing the concept of a 'bubble'. Stock prices went down to where they were supposed to be. If your friend made decisions based on the idea that crazy stock prices would continue forever, that sucks, but without the bubble, they wouldn't h
There are quite a few losing Senators and Congressentities that want to kick his ass right now, considering that if he'd resigned, say, the day before yesterday, he'd have taken the wind out of some of the Democrat's sails.
It was called a 'surplus', but it wasn't, not in a sane environment.
If you owe ten thousand dollars in interest-bearing accounts, paying four hundred dollars interest every year, and suddenly come up with an extra thousand dollars at the end of the year, you don't have a 'surplus' of money if you a fiscally responsible. You merely have a way to reduce your debt.
Now, we can argue that he should have lowered taxes, but refunding money is just goofy. At the point of a tax refund, the money has already been gone from society for, on average, a year. (Thanks to withholding.) You might as well pay off bonds and put it back in society that way than to hand to random people who already budgeted not having it, and would have already spent it a year ago if they did have it!
Now, it'd be different if there was no debt, but, honestly, the easiest way to permanently reduce taxes is to pay off the damn debt. You can't complain that Clinton taxed too much by attempting to do that instead of randomly handing money back.
And this is the party of Christian values. It is time that the Republican party either stops promoting that it is pro Christian or start walking the walk. The same goes for many Christian preachers.
Yeah, because we all know what Christ said about gay people!
*crickets chirp*
Oh, come on. Surely he said something. I say we track it down and do exactly what he says.
Yeah, i don't think people are grasping this. Here's the slashdot explanation:
1) There were only about two Senate race, and maybe six House races, up for grabs under any logical rules. The Republicans have a lot more money to spend on the election.
2) ?
3) Democrats win at least four Senate seats and thirty House seats.
We're not sure, but we're almsot certain that #2 is 'The Republican party did what it does best, fail to govern, in any way, at all.'
There's a major shift happening in U.S. politics, due in large part to the wilful self-destruction of the Republican platform and the moderation of the Democrat platform.
Speaking of major shifts, it's out of things like this current wildly-oversped-with-people-flying-off merry-go-round of the Republican party that third parties slide in to replace them. Either a literal third party, or the entire leadership and platform of the destructing party shift to something else, resulting in a new party with the same name.
The Democrats are shifting, too, but I don't know whether or not it's to 'moderates'. The grass-root bloggers put in a lot of honestly progressive candidates, and there's a big battle between them and the DC aperatus.
Crazy prediction for two decade down the line: The Democrats have split in half, into the Progressive-Democratic party, aka, 'the left', and the Republican-Democratic party, which absorbed most non-disgraced Republicans, and is like the 90 Democrats or the 80 Republican party. The Republican party is a shell that the theocons ended up with when the neocons leapt from the sinking ship.
Of course, there are a thousand technical ways that could play out, but, historically, something like that is what happens when one party runs itself in the ground. The Libertarians obviously hold the Republicans will jump to them, and the Greens hope they'll end up with the progressives. But usually replacement parties come from actual party leadership splitting from an existing one.
Because the Democrats decidedly have the advantage in this election with gains in both houses, can we now claim voter fraud was widespread and systematic due to the Democratic Party?
Damn straight!
I call for immediate removal of all electronic voting machines until we get this sorted out.;)
(They say clouds have a silver lining. I think this election would be example of a million dollars having a silver living if it caused Republicans to get as upset about electronic voting machines as Democrats.)
Where the American people stand on the issues is a bell shaped curve, not the bathtub shape people seem to think.
However, it's a bell-shaped curve slightly to the right of the Democrats, with something like 40% of the population to the left of the Democrats. Meanwhile, the Republicans are about where the curve flattens out to the right, with about 10% of the population to the right of them.
This is why Republicans have to rant about issues a huge segment of the population doesn't agree with, or even care about, to get elected. They then get the few lunatics who care about those issues to show up and vote for them. As the voting population of the US is only about 20%, and the crazy-right is, like, 10%, they have to constantly work to pull them to the polls. (I.e., all the unrelated 'gay marriage' amendments in 2004.)
This has been working less and less for them, as they can't actually do those crazy-ass things or everyone else would turn from them, and the far-right aren't made up of complete morons. They do, in fact, notice that you ranted about a lot of stuff, but then actually didn't appear to pass any laws about it. 'Luckily' for Republicans, 9/11 happened and they had a brand new issue to yammer about and not actually do anything about. (This despite the fact they could have actually done stuff there and not lost votes.) However, people have finally figured out they're, well, incredibly stupid people who don't actually know how to run a government or actually do anything at all except get elected, hence the election results.
Meanwhile, a lot of the things Democrats care about, like social security, would be death to oppose even on the right. Hell, the Republicans barely managed to ignore not raising minimum wage and the health care disaster. If they'd stayed in office for another two years they'd have had to do something about those for any chance of relection.
This, incidentally, is why Democrats tend to be higher educated and, in general, smarter than Republicans. They don't hold different positions. They just actually looked at the parties and the positions and realized the Democratic party was closer to what they want. They did more research. The smart people who aren't close to the Democrats have mostly defected to the Libertarians or other third parties.
You're actually incorrect there, there's nothing stopping the President from declaring Americans enemy combatants. Or, at least, that's one way the law can be read, and, of course, you can't dispute that reading in court.
However, all of that's moot. The second we have any class of people who do not have access to the courts, all they have to do is assert you are in that class, and you do not have access to the courts to prove you are, in fact, not in the class.
I.e., they stamp 'non-citizen' on your forehead, put in your file that you falsely claim American citzenship, and ship you off. How the fuck do you fight that without access to the courts?
Incidentally there were two years of budget surplus under Clinton just before the crash.
No there wasn't. The government was spending less money than it was taking in, but it's not a 'surplus' when you owe several trillion dollars. Clinton quite rightly put the extra money towards the debt instead of stupidly handing it back to people.
There didn't used to be much observable difference.
However, over the last decade, the Democrats stood still, while the Republicans upped their corruption to absurd levels. Meanwhile, the Repubs rubberstamped Bush, who isn't anywhere near either party.
All you oh-so-clever people who are repeating the assertation that 'the parties are the same' are fucking imbeciles or posting from the year 2000.
As far as abortions and "gay marriage," the carnage continues at abortion mills, and NO LAW was passed to prevent "gay marriage."
Hey, dumbass, even Kansas doesn't want to outlaw abortion. Way to pick a winning fight there.
And the DOMA was passed in 1996, you idiot. States don't have to recognize the same sex marriages of other states. That's about all the Federal government can do about them.
In fact, the Bush administration has appointed the largest number of openly gay people to office.
It's not just the Bush Administration. The amount of openly gay Republican Congressional staffers would amaze you.
I guess I would disagree that because people are unsure what the punishment should be, that means they don't really think that abortion should be illegal.
They aren't 'unsure'. They are completely sure. They uniformly reject jail time for women or doctors. More than 3/4ths reject any sort of fine, with a tiny amount wanting to fine doctors and an even smaller amount wanting to fine women.
There are only three options here:
1. They wish to restart some form of punishment we have stopped using, like the stocks or lashing with a wipe. I think that is unlikely, considering all thoses forms of punishment are harsher than fines, and they have problems with fines.
2. They have invented some form of punishment heitherto unknown to mankind. Society has been punishing people for about ten thousand years, and we've come up with: imprisoning people, physically injurying them (Which we stopped doing), or taking something of theirs away. I doubt a large segment of the populatin has suddenly come up with a new concept there.
3. They don't actually wish it to be illegal, and are thus wrong about what they believe. They are factually incorrect about their beliefs, and, yes, that's possible.
There are no 'conflicting views' there. The only 'conflict' is between people who know they want it legal, and people who don't know they want it legal, along with a very very tiny but very vocal segment of society leading the second half.
And we've just demonstrated that people are idiots when polled about questions about abortions, because their answers make no sense. Trying to make out what exactly a question technically asked is craziness, when it's clear they just keyed off whatever random word they've been imprinted with.
So I propose we do exactly what they say. I propose we make abortion illegal, but with absolutely no jail time or fines at all for the first trimester. That should please everyone.
We can even include it under murder laws. It can be 'fifteenth degree murder' or 'embryo manslaughter', and the police can issue a citation requiring you to, I dunno, be polite to people the rest of the day or something.
Or, we can realize the Republican party has managed to create a case of schizophrenia in a large portion of the American voting public, where they think, and vote as if, they believe one thing, but they actually believe something else when asked to follow that thought to the logical question 'If it's illegal, what's the punishment?'.
In any case, I think the issue is sufficiently complex that saying most people are closer to Democrats on this issue is too simplistic, and probably wrong.
You can think that, but you're wrong, probably because you don't know where the Democrats are on the issue, because you've been feed Republican lies.
There is less than 15% support in this country for passing a law for fining doctors or women for first trimester abortions. If people do not wish a behavior to have any sort of punishment, they wish it to be legal. That's how laws work. And when I said 'punishment', I meant fines.
But, hey, go ahead, poll people yourself. Even in really conservative areas, it won't reach over 25%. No seriously. Go find a pro-choice person and ask them if we should fine doctors or women who have abortions.
Now, if I was, like you thought, talking about jail time for women or doctors, (Which would be what people who really think it's 'murder' must logically be for.) I'd be way down around 2%. No shit.
And, yes, just asking people if it's murder will get you more than 2%, but, somehow, that doesn't transfer into actually, you know, wanting to charge anyone with murder. So, again, they've internalized the idiotic rants of insane people, but are still enough of human beings to know it isn't actually murder. There are probably as many true-believer communists in the population as people willing to imprison a woman for having an abortion, despite all the yammering about 'It's a life, not a choice.'.
And, as a fun aside, if you actually do find one what says 'yes', either to fines, or even to a jail sentence, then ask how we could even tell that people in their first trimester were pregnant, or ask them how we'd tell an abortion from a miscarriage. But that's screwing with the polling.
Yes, if you ask people if 'abortion should be legal just to end a life', you have most people say 'no'.
When you then ask them if doctors should be punished for it, they respond 'no'. If you ask them if women should be punished for it, they say 'no'.
So, frankly, it's a little hard to know what the fuck they mean by 'not legal'.
All that demonstrates is that people react weird if you include the word 'life' in the question, thanks to the Republicans continual efforts. But if you ask them what should actually be done with abortion laws, they'll come up with what the Democrats want, and have done, which is to reduce the number of abortions by reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies, but not making them illegal in the first trimester.
There have been studies done, and on 'important' political issues, about 3/4th of all people agree. Seriously. That's a frickin supermajority. I'm talking stuff about abortion and gay marriage and teaching evolution in school and all the stuff the Republicans like to make issues about.
And, when you look at what these positions are, they are slightly to the right of where the Democratic party stands. If you were to draw a scale on every issue from 0 to 100 between the far right and the far left, and put the Democrats at 75 and the Republicans at 25, almost 70% of people over 18 are somewhere between 60 to 70 on that issue.
Probably another 15% is spread between 60 and 15, and 5% between 70 and 85, with the remaining 10% making up both edges. (Aka, the 'far' right and left.)
Another way of looking at this would be to draw a bell curve, and put the Democrats almost right in the middle, and Republicans way over in the 15 percentile.
However, I have to point out, in this country, only 1/4th the people vote. People who outside the system, the 10% on the ends, almost always vote. But they cancel each other out, mostly, or vote for third parties.
So, we're left with 15% of the sane people. And, statistically, most of them would vote Democratic. It's a very fine line the Republicans have to walk. Punching the right button with the churchgoers are one way to do it, demonizing their opponants, trying to portray them as 85ers instead of 70ers, in hopes of catching the 60ers.
Randomly selecting, say, 10% of the unregistered voters in this country, making them spend a week listening to the issues, and then making them vote, would be a total disaster for the Republicans.
And, more to the point, it's not illegal to vote if you aren't a citizen and they let you. If you fill out all the voter registration forms truthfully, they would have, at some point, told you you couldn't vote. If they didn't do that, and for some insane reason you're not a citizen but they put you on the voter rolls and sent you a preceinct card, you cannot be arrested for attempting to vote.
I.e., even attempting to parse it as 'illegal immigrants' doesn't make any sense. There's no 'extra' checks on your own voter eligablity you have to do before voting. If you're registered, and didn't commit perjury by falsely filling out the form, you can legally vote, period, even if you aren't supposed to be able to.(1)
Now, if you lied when filling out the forms, you already commited a crime and can be arrested at any time, obviously. I wouldn't recommend compounding that by trying to actually vote.
1) This whole thing is assuming some crazy parallel universe where they actually put people who check 'no' to 'Are you a US citizen?' on the voter rolls by accident.
The same thing happened to me. There were two burger places in town, let's call them Repuburger, and Demoburgers.
Well, I used to eat at Repuburgers, but they started poisoning customers who ordered their fries, although I was smart enough not to do that. (I like onion rings.) And sometimes they physically assaulted me with forks, but never seriously enough to make me get medical attention, so it was okay. I guess the thing that finally made me dislike them was the fact they blinded me by holding my face in the grease cooker thing.
I called up the Demoburgers, but they refused to say they wouldn't physically harm me. In fact, they seemed completely outraged I would ask the question, and hung up on me.
So, I guess I'll attempt to find my way back to Repuburger. It's closer to my house anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
So in the same post you credit Clinton with the budget surplus generated during the economic 'bubble' and absolve him of all responsibility for the subsequent bursting of the bubble.
That objection makes no sense at all.
The bubble generated taxes, granted, and possibly helped balance the budget.
And? Was Clinton supposed to step in and say 'Well, you people are making more than previously, so tax revenues are up, but they're being generated by a bubble, so I'll lower taxes to bring government revenue in line. Be sure to spend the excess money investing even more in the over-inflated stock market.'?
Does that even vaguely make sense? You tax more during economic booms, to slow them down and create a surplus so you can lower taxes to help things when the boom goes away.
I mean, that's your propaganda, right? That lower taxes helps the economy, and raising them slows it down? And you're complaining about Clinton not lowering taxes during a bubble? WTF? Why the hell would anyone ever do that?
I'm beginning to think you're just trying to blame Clinton for everything. Clinton ignored warning signs, yes, and should have reeled in the market some. This has almost nothing to do with economic status of the country at this point. That is due to complete lunatics spending way more money than we have, and productivity going up while wages go down thanks to companies consolidating their power and unions almost completely vanishing.
Read it again. They got a trial.
There's a difference between using the actual military courts instead of the civilian courts, although I'm not a huge fan of that, and using no courts at all, which is completely and utterly unconstitional unless the prisoner doesn't want it use them.
Someone's about to say 'What about POWs, they don't go to court?'. POWs don't want to go to court, as they have more rights as POWs. They certainly have the right to go to court if they aren't supposed to be there at all. (I.e., if a French resistence fighter put on a German uniform and was captured by the Allies during WWII, he'd have access to the courts to demonstrate he was not, in fact, the enemy.)
Now when it comes to the economy and national debt I don't know what the numbers are but without knowing them you cannot say outright that every extra dollar is better spent paying down the debt. I also make the assumption that Clinton's budget took already took the national debt into account.
There are no numbers. We're not making any money, at all, on anything that we can control. Student loans and other loans like that sometimes make money, but it would obviously be stupid to stop issuing those and pay off the debt instead, and no one's suggesting that. The US government does not have several trillion dollars in some bank somewhere making more, or in fact any, interest for us, and certainly not at a higher rate than the debt accues.
And, no, his budget didn't actually take the debt into account, or at least not the interest on the debt into account. I.e., the debt went up even under Clinton, thanks to us borrowing to pay interest on the debt. Lots of fun. We only took in more than we spent not including the debt.
We needed at least ten years of Clinton-like policies before we got the debt under control, i.e., where we use it cover for shortfalls and disasters but it's normally nothing. Now we'll probably need twenty thanks to borrow-and-spend conservatives.
Oh, and, incidentally, I did, back then in 96-2000, give the Republicans some of the credit for the budget, except they've pretty much demonstrated they are lunatics when they have total budget-making power, thus pretty much forcing me to give sole credit to Clinton.
As far as refunding the surplus goes, yes the money is already out of the hands of the people but if that has created a burden to the economy then re-injecting those funds back into the economy by refunding them would be a nice pick-me-up.
And why, exactly, would paying back the money count not count as 're-injecting the funds back into the economy'? Yes, it would mostly go to rich people and businesses, but considering that's exactly where Bush's tax cuts went, I fail to see the difference.
However, I do not believe that Clinton or most others for that matter foresaw the impending hit that the economy was going to suffer and felt justified in putting that money to other use.
I think you're conflating two different problems. One was the absurd tech bubble/stock market bubble which, frankly, needed a correction. (As does the damn housing bubble, and I hope the Democrats actually do something to make that landing a bit softer.)
The other is the depression we've been under since then, which we only had because the government hasn't attempted to do anything to fix, which is really ironic in a time of war. This is the only depression during a war ever, and when you look at the price of the war, that's really ironic. We're spending as much or more on this war, it's just all getting sucked out at the top instead of filtering down to workers.
And I most certainly can complain that Clinton taxed too much. I watched family and friends lose jobs in the subsequent crash. I watched my own investments tank. I have older friends whose retirement plans went out the window because their retirement investments took huge hits.
What the hell are you talking about? Why are you blaming Clinton for a bubble busting? The stock market was clearly out of control at that time. Are you about to blame the Bush for the housing bubble bursting right now?
The government needs to attempt to reel in bubble craziness, and it needs to attempt to make the landings softer. Clinton somewhat failed in the first place, I'll admit. But that was not the problem.
As for 'retirement investments', you're missing the concept of a 'bubble'. Stock prices went down to where they were supposed to be. If your friend made decisions based on the idea that crazy stock prices would continue forever, that sucks, but without the bubble, they wouldn't h
Oh, good. It always annoyed me that Watergate was overrepresented in the White House. Maybe now the Iran/Contra guys can field a softball team too.
There are quite a few losing Senators and Congressentities that want to kick his ass right now, considering that if he'd resigned, say, the day before yesterday, he'd have taken the wind out of some of the Democrat's sails.
It was called a 'surplus', but it wasn't, not in a sane environment.
If you owe ten thousand dollars in interest-bearing accounts, paying four hundred dollars interest every year, and suddenly come up with an extra thousand dollars at the end of the year, you don't have a 'surplus' of money if you a fiscally responsible. You merely have a way to reduce your debt.
Now, we can argue that he should have lowered taxes, but refunding money is just goofy. At the point of a tax refund, the money has already been gone from society for, on average, a year. (Thanks to withholding.) You might as well pay off bonds and put it back in society that way than to hand to random people who already budgeted not having it, and would have already spent it a year ago if they did have it!
Now, it'd be different if there was no debt, but, honestly, the easiest way to permanently reduce taxes is to pay off the damn debt. You can't complain that Clinton taxed too much by attempting to do that instead of randomly handing money back.
And this is the party of Christian values. It is time that the Republican party either stops promoting that it is pro Christian or start walking the walk. The same goes for many Christian preachers.
Yeah, because we all know what Christ said about gay people!
*crickets chirp*
Oh, come on. Surely he said something. I say we track it down and do exactly what he says.
Now, the republicans and dems are virtually the same when it comes to fiscal policy (spend, spend, spend)
Yeah, but at least the Democrats are smart enough to actually take in money before they spend it. ;)
Yeah, i don't think people are grasping this. Here's the slashdot explanation:
1) There were only about two Senate race, and maybe six House races, up for grabs under any logical rules. The Republicans have a lot more money to spend on the election.
2) ?
3) Democrats win at least four Senate seats and thirty House seats.
We're not sure, but we're almsot certain that #2 is 'The Republican party did what it does best, fail to govern, in any way, at all.'
There's a major shift happening in U.S. politics, due in large part to the wilful self-destruction of the Republican platform and the moderation of the Democrat platform.
Speaking of major shifts, it's out of things like this current wildly-oversped-with-people-flying-off merry-go-round of the Republican party that third parties slide in to replace them. Either a literal third party, or the entire leadership and platform of the destructing party shift to something else, resulting in a new party with the same name.
The Democrats are shifting, too, but I don't know whether or not it's to 'moderates'. The grass-root bloggers put in a lot of honestly progressive candidates, and there's a big battle between them and the DC aperatus.
Crazy prediction for two decade down the line: The Democrats have split in half, into the Progressive-Democratic party, aka, 'the left', and the Republican-Democratic party, which absorbed most non-disgraced Republicans, and is like the 90 Democrats or the 80 Republican party. The Republican party is a shell that the theocons ended up with when the neocons leapt from the sinking ship.
Of course, there are a thousand technical ways that could play out, but, historically, something like that is what happens when one party runs itself in the ground. The Libertarians obviously hold the Republicans will jump to them, and the Greens hope they'll end up with the progressives. But usually replacement parties come from actual party leadership splitting from an existing one.
Because the Democrats decidedly have the advantage in this election with gains in both houses, can we now claim voter fraud was widespread and systematic due to the Democratic Party?
Damn straight!
I call for immediate removal of all electronic voting machines until we get this sorted out. ;)
(They say clouds have a silver lining. I think this election would be example of a million dollars having a silver living if it caused Republicans to get as upset about electronic voting machines as Democrats.)
Like I said in some other article the other day:
Where the American people stand on the issues is a bell shaped curve, not the bathtub shape people seem to think.
However, it's a bell-shaped curve slightly to the right of the Democrats, with something like 40% of the population to the left of the Democrats. Meanwhile, the Republicans are about where the curve flattens out to the right, with about 10% of the population to the right of them.
This is why Republicans have to rant about issues a huge segment of the population doesn't agree with, or even care about, to get elected. They then get the few lunatics who care about those issues to show up and vote for them. As the voting population of the US is only about 20%, and the crazy-right is, like, 10%, they have to constantly work to pull them to the polls. (I.e., all the unrelated 'gay marriage' amendments in 2004.)
This has been working less and less for them, as they can't actually do those crazy-ass things or everyone else would turn from them, and the far-right aren't made up of complete morons. They do, in fact, notice that you ranted about a lot of stuff, but then actually didn't appear to pass any laws about it. 'Luckily' for Republicans, 9/11 happened and they had a brand new issue to yammer about and not actually do anything about. (This despite the fact they could have actually done stuff there and not lost votes.) However, people have finally figured out they're, well, incredibly stupid people who don't actually know how to run a government or actually do anything at all except get elected, hence the election results.
Meanwhile, a lot of the things Democrats care about, like social security, would be death to oppose even on the right. Hell, the Republicans barely managed to ignore not raising minimum wage and the health care disaster. If they'd stayed in office for another two years they'd have had to do something about those for any chance of relection.
This, incidentally, is why Democrats tend to be higher educated and, in general, smarter than Republicans. They don't hold different positions. They just actually looked at the parties and the positions and realized the Democratic party was closer to what they want. They did more research. The smart people who aren't close to the Democrats have mostly defected to the Libertarians or other third parties.
I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.
-Will Rogers
You're actually incorrect there, there's nothing stopping the President from declaring Americans enemy combatants. Or, at least, that's one way the law can be read, and, of course, you can't dispute that reading in court.
However, all of that's moot. The second we have any class of people who do not have access to the courts, all they have to do is assert you are in that class, and you do not have access to the courts to prove you are, in fact, not in the class.
I.e., they stamp 'non-citizen' on your forehead, put in your file that you falsely claim American citzenship, and ship you off. How the fuck do you fight that without access to the courts?
Incidentally there were two years of budget surplus under Clinton just before the crash.
No there wasn't. The government was spending less money than it was taking in, but it's not a 'surplus' when you owe several trillion dollars. Clinton quite rightly put the extra money towards the debt instead of stupidly handing it back to people.
There didn't used to be much observable difference.
However, over the last decade, the Democrats stood still, while the Republicans upped their corruption to absurd levels. Meanwhile, the Repubs rubberstamped Bush, who isn't anywhere near either party.
All you oh-so-clever people who are repeating the assertation that 'the parties are the same' are fucking imbeciles or posting from the year 2000.
As far as abortions and "gay marriage," the carnage continues at abortion mills, and NO LAW was passed to prevent "gay marriage."
Hey, dumbass, even Kansas doesn't want to outlaw abortion. Way to pick a winning fight there.
And the DOMA was passed in 1996, you idiot. States don't have to recognize the same sex marriages of other states. That's about all the Federal government can do about them.
In fact, the Bush administration has appointed the largest number of openly gay people to office.
It's not just the Bush Administration. The amount of openly gay Republican Congressional staffers would amaze you.
I guess I would disagree that because people are unsure what the punishment should be, that means they don't really think that abortion should be illegal.
They aren't 'unsure'. They are completely sure. They uniformly reject jail time for women or doctors. More than 3/4ths reject any sort of fine, with a tiny amount wanting to fine doctors and an even smaller amount wanting to fine women.
There are only three options here:
1. They wish to restart some form of punishment we have stopped using, like the stocks or lashing with a wipe. I think that is unlikely, considering all thoses forms of punishment are harsher than fines, and they have problems with fines.
2. They have invented some form of punishment heitherto unknown to mankind. Society has been punishing people for about ten thousand years, and we've come up with: imprisoning people, physically injurying them (Which we stopped doing), or taking something of theirs away. I doubt a large segment of the populatin has suddenly come up with a new concept there.
3. They don't actually wish it to be illegal, and are thus wrong about what they believe. They are factually incorrect about their beliefs, and, yes, that's possible.
There are no 'conflicting views' there. The only 'conflict' is between people who know they want it legal, and people who don't know they want it legal, along with a very very tiny but very vocal segment of society leading the second half.
And we've just demonstrated that people are idiots when polled about questions about abortions, because their answers make no sense. Trying to make out what exactly a question technically asked is craziness, when it's clear they just keyed off whatever random word they've been imprinted with.
So I propose we do exactly what they say. I propose we make abortion illegal, but with absolutely no jail time or fines at all for the first trimester. That should please everyone.
We can even include it under murder laws. It can be 'fifteenth degree murder' or 'embryo manslaughter', and the police can issue a citation requiring you to, I dunno, be polite to people the rest of the day or something.
Or, we can realize the Republican party has managed to create a case of schizophrenia in a large portion of the American voting public, where they think, and vote as if, they believe one thing, but they actually believe something else when asked to follow that thought to the logical question 'If it's illegal, what's the punishment?'.
In any case, I think the issue is sufficiently complex that saying most people are closer to Democrats on this issue is too simplistic, and probably wrong.
You can think that, but you're wrong, probably because you don't know where the Democrats are on the issue, because you've been feed Republican lies.
There is less than 15% support in this country for passing a law for fining doctors or women for first trimester abortions. If people do not wish a behavior to have any sort of punishment, they wish it to be legal. That's how laws work. And when I said 'punishment', I meant fines.
But, hey, go ahead, poll people yourself. Even in really conservative areas, it won't reach over 25%. No seriously. Go find a pro-choice person and ask them if we should fine doctors or women who have abortions.
Now, if I was, like you thought, talking about jail time for women or doctors, (Which would be what people who really think it's 'murder' must logically be for.) I'd be way down around 2%. No shit.
And, yes, just asking people if it's murder will get you more than 2%, but, somehow, that doesn't transfer into actually, you know, wanting to charge anyone with murder. So, again, they've internalized the idiotic rants of insane people, but are still enough of human beings to know it isn't actually murder. There are probably as many true-believer communists in the population as people willing to imprison a woman for having an abortion, despite all the yammering about 'It's a life, not a choice.'.
And, as a fun aside, if you actually do find one what says 'yes', either to fines, or even to a jail sentence, then ask how we could even tell that people in their first trimester were pregnant, or ask them how we'd tell an abortion from a miscarriage. But that's screwing with the polling.
Yes, if you ask people if 'abortion should be legal just to end a life', you have most people say 'no'.
When you then ask them if doctors should be punished for it, they respond 'no'. If you ask them if women should be punished for it, they say 'no'.
So, frankly, it's a little hard to know what the fuck they mean by 'not legal'.
All that demonstrates is that people react weird if you include the word 'life' in the question, thanks to the Republicans continual efforts. But if you ask them what should actually be done with abortion laws, they'll come up with what the Democrats want, and have done, which is to reduce the number of abortions by reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies, but not making them illegal in the first trimester.
No, you haven't.
If you think you have, google their name and 'robocaller' and you'll find out who's doing it.
There's a damn good reason for that.
There have been studies done, and on 'important' political issues, about 3/4th of all people agree. Seriously. That's a frickin supermajority. I'm talking stuff about abortion and gay marriage and teaching evolution in school and all the stuff the Republicans like to make issues about.
And, when you look at what these positions are, they are slightly to the right of where the Democratic party stands. If you were to draw a scale on every issue from 0 to 100 between the far right and the far left, and put the Democrats at 75 and the Republicans at 25, almost 70% of people over 18 are somewhere between 60 to 70 on that issue.
Probably another 15% is spread between 60 and 15, and 5% between 70 and 85, with the remaining 10% making up both edges. (Aka, the 'far' right and left.)
Another way of looking at this would be to draw a bell curve, and put the Democrats almost right in the middle, and Republicans way over in the 15 percentile.
However, I have to point out, in this country, only 1/4th the people vote. People who outside the system, the 10% on the ends, almost always vote. But they cancel each other out, mostly, or vote for third parties.
So, we're left with 15% of the sane people. And, statistically, most of them would vote Democratic. It's a very fine line the Republicans have to walk. Punching the right button with the churchgoers are one way to do it, demonizing their opponants, trying to portray them as 85ers instead of 70ers, in hopes of catching the 60ers.
Randomly selecting, say, 10% of the unregistered voters in this country, making them spend a week listening to the issues, and then making them vote, would be a total disaster for the Republicans.
And, more to the point, it's not illegal to vote if you aren't a citizen and they let you. If you fill out all the voter registration forms truthfully, they would have, at some point, told you you couldn't vote. If they didn't do that, and for some insane reason you're not a citizen but they put you on the voter rolls and sent you a preceinct card, you cannot be arrested for attempting to vote.
I.e., even attempting to parse it as 'illegal immigrants' doesn't make any sense. There's no 'extra' checks on your own voter eligablity you have to do before voting. If you're registered, and didn't commit perjury by falsely filling out the form, you can legally vote, period, even if you aren't supposed to be able to.(1)
Now, if you lied when filling out the forms, you already commited a crime and can be arrested at any time, obviously. I wouldn't recommend compounding that by trying to actually vote.
1) This whole thing is assuming some crazy parallel universe where they actually put people who check 'no' to 'Are you a US citizen?' on the voter rolls by accident.
I know! It's crazy!
The same thing happened to me. There were two burger places in town, let's call them Repuburger, and Demoburgers.
Well, I used to eat at Repuburgers, but they started poisoning customers who ordered their fries, although I was smart enough not to do that. (I like onion rings.) And sometimes they physically assaulted me with forks, but never seriously enough to make me get medical attention, so it was okay. I guess the thing that finally made me dislike them was the fact they blinded me by holding my face in the grease cooker thing.
I called up the Demoburgers, but they refused to say they wouldn't physically harm me. In fact, they seemed completely outraged I would ask the question, and hung up on me.
So, I guess I'll attempt to find my way back to Repuburger. It's closer to my house anyway.