From what I've read the home owner had ample time to remove the pets. The fire started outside, slowly spread to the shed and then to the house. It is not the Fire Departments fault that the home owner didn't think enough of his pets to have them removed from the house.
The FD ensured no lives were in danger before refusing to offer their services. This is simply a destruction of property story so there is no need to try and make it more than that with strawman arguments.
In at least one other story it was reported that he had 'forgotten' to pay at least a few other times in the past. I haven't seen anything saying he's ever been a regular subscriber to this service.
But putting these fireman's lives in danger to simply protect this mans property (they had already assured no human life was in danger) seems perfectly ok with you?
And they knew what was there. The home owner was on site talking to them.
Even here in the city I live (about a million people) I've seen buildings allowed to burn simply because the cost and risk to save them was considered too high. The FD just ensured there was no chance of the fire spreading and then allowed the primary structure to burn. I'm pretty sure the idea that an armed nuclear bomb is sitting in the living room surrounded by 'dirty' material does not much enter into the fire chiefs calculations about whether it's worth risking his men or resources to save it.
More importantly, since they were acting outside of their jurisdiction and not on the property of a person who had contracted their services and not performing an action to save a life there is also the very distinct possibility that if anything had happened to the fireman while putting out the fire they would not be covered by their insurance policy.
They used to operate this way, charging $500 after the service was provided, but less than 50% of the people in the county bothered to ever pay the bill. So in effect the 2500 people of South Fulton, whose fire department this is, were being taxed to provide fire services to the 30,000 people of Obion county who were not being taxed, fined or levied for any fire services. Obion County's own report on the matter considered this unsustainable and because the residents of the county still didn't want a levy to pay for a contract with the SFFD the $75 annual fee system was devised and membership became optional.
But you're ignoring the fact that when they offered to allow people to pay after the services were rendered the majority of people didn't.
So in your example you'd be asking the doctor to give every patient without health insurance the $50 medication, knowing full well that only a small portion will bother paying him in the end. The result would either be the doctor being forced to raise the cost of the medication to $200 so that those few honest people would be penalized to cover the cost of the freeloaders or the doctor being forced to close shop and there no longer being any medical service to the people in the area, whether insured or not.
And either way, no lives were in danger in this situation. The FD ensured no one was in the home and only refused to protect his property from damage because he had not bothered to contract their services for that. So to continue your medical analogy, it's closer to a doctor arriving at the scene of an accident, bandaging the wounds of the victim and ensuring all life signs were stable and they were good to go and then getting mad at him because he refused to perform breast augmentation surgery on them for free.
And no court in the land would enforce such a contract signed under duress.
And a post-payment system used to be the norm but the people in the county refused to pay more than 50% of the time leaving the municipality who funds the FD with no legal recourse to recover anything.
The briefing in question was a generic summary of Al Qa'ida activity and attempted attacks on US installations worldwide. It effectively said "Al Qa'ida still doesn't like us".
It contains very little detail and mostly just confirms that Bin Laden, since at least 1997, has wanted to hit the US somehow. The closest it comes to any actual warning is the final line:
"Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York."
The "Nevertheless" is in reference to the proceeding line:
"We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a [--] service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" 'Umar 'Abd al-Rahman and other US-held extremists."
There is nothing remotely actionable in the briefing and nothing even close to suggesting anything the size of 9/11. Even the references to hijacking imply the traditional strategy of taking a plane to demand something else, not to use them as weapons so I'm pretty sure everyone was shocked at the taking down of the twin towers.
Heronblademasters already gave a good explanation below, which you try to dismiss.
So how do you dismiss all the other various polls, such as the various Zogby, Scripps Howard, Ipsos-Reid and numerous newspaper/magazine sponsored polls which all seem to hit around the same overall average as the Rasmussen poll linked above.
I guess their questions are just too darn difficult for liberal brains to comprehend, since when separated by ideology it's always the liberals who are shooting upward of 30%+ agreement while most other groups are in the teens or below. Or maybe, just maybe, a significant percentage actually do believe the conservatives in power were evil enough to actually allow or help plan 9/11. Just reading any Slashdot post on politics would certainly lead one to believe the latter is quite possible.
Here's another sample question from a non-Rasmussen poll:
"Do you think President Bush intentionally allowed the 9/11 attacks to take place because he wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East?" (for the record 27% of liberals answered yes to that question).
You need to look more closely at the poll Spun is getting his numbers from. The agency has been caught in a scandal where they were just making up numbers they thought their liberal clients liked. Most reputable sites, or even the more rabid left leaning sites, are cutting off all ties to their results on anything.
But back to your "Dems don't allow their odd ideas to affect their decisions while Repubs do", I'll see your Palin and raise you a Biden. And don't even pretend you want that man anywhere near the nuclear football. I personally think Obama's a terrible leader (he seems more interested in letting other people do all the lifting and decision making) but even he is smart enough to keep good ole Sheriff Joe as far away from anything of importance as is humanly possible; not that that stops Joe from putting both feet squarely in his mouth on a weekly basis.
And while you're putting down Palin, could you explain to me Obama's glorious track record that made him such a great candidate (and no, giving nice speeches don't count). The man has almost no real work history since almost every position he held was either largely ceremonial or merely treated as a stepping stone to a higher office. If Dems had used their heads instead of just going for the flash, Clinton would most likely be President right now. She at least had a clear track record and solid history of getting things done.
Let's try out this remedial English lesson on you.
Denounce: Publicly declare to be wrong.
To denounce something you would have to be of an opinion that the subject you are denouncing is wrong. You can assume that those who hold no opinion on the matter (26% as mentioned above) or those who agree with the subject (35%) are not actively denouncing anything. That leaves just 39% of Dems who may or may not be actively denouncing anything. As 39% is less than 61% then it would be safe to say that a clear minority of Democrats who are denouncing 9/11 trutherism.
You could possibly say you are in the majority of those Dems who are vocal in their 9/11 beliefs but since 39% and 35% are within the +/- of most polls even that can't be said with 100% certainty.
So how does that math work out for you? I could write it out long form and show my workings if it's too hard for you to follow. Or if you prefer I could wait for you to write someone at Research2000 and I'm sure they can get you a result showing Dems are 98% against 9/11 trutherism. Just make sure you state what numbers you want up front, I hear they charge extra if you make them make up the numbers themselves.
And as pointed out below the 'polling' company who put forward those results has been caught cooking the books. They were so bad even most liberal sites have been trying to disassociate themselves from their findings.
Using Reasearch2000 as an accurate polling source is akin to using Tiger Woods as a source for marriage advice.
Huffington Post's own link to the poll calls into question any of the findings. As you would clearly see if you bothered to follow the GPs link.
Those damn dirty conservatives over at HuffPo trying to boudmouth the outstanding work of Reasearch2000.
But you can go on with your belief that of all the claims of outright fraud against the polling company in question THIS was the poll they were completely truthful about.
The last poll I saw putting forward the "Did Bush know about 9/11 in advance" had democrats at a nice 35% in the affirmative with an additional 26% "not sure". And in case you don't like Rasmussen, Zogby's earlier poll had Dems at 42% for their belief that Bush either participated in or allowed 9/11.
So you and your fellow left wing 'denouncers' are clearly in the minority of your party.
It's also a bit odd that Jobs actually has to stress "our new product is only worse than our old product by a factor of x" as a defense.
Since most other reviews I've seen say just how much better the reception is on the iPhone 4 compared to the 3gs (when not holding the phone in the 'wrong' way) if it loses more calls than it's predecessor than that would just go to stress how poorly the antenna design was. The external antenna screw up is essentially negating all other reception improvements and then some.
Except in every independent test the iPhone 4 signal drop is significantly higher than any other smartphone tested; often in the range of 3 or 4 times as much signal loss.
So yes, the laws of physics effect all antennas on all phones but due to poor design those affects are much more pronounced on iPhone 4s.
Once again, the stat people are tossing around to prove an abundance of filibusters is the submission of cloture votes NOT the failure of cloture votes.
According to the Senate.gov website, of the 92 cloture motions filed between Jan 3, 2009 and April 29, 2010 about 44 were passed and only 9 failed. Of those 9, 2 were passed after reconsideration. The rest were mostly withdrawn before any vote was taken (usually indicating that the Senate leader didn't even have the support of his own party on the bill in question or other business came up that was deemed more important).
That would mean there were effectively 9 true filibusters in that time period, 2 of which were later ended by either a change of heart of the participants or a compromise on the bill in question.
As for Obama's instruction to Reid, if it was followed so closely, as you contend, why did Kirk vote on at least three separate occasions on matters that required a 60 vote majority. The raising of the debt ceiling, confirmation of Ben Bernake for the Fed Reserve and an amendment to introduce a discretionary spending cap. He also voted on at least 14 other matters that may or may not have required the 60 vote majority. So you might want to tweak that 'trivial' Google search or check the senate.gov vote rolls. Also a good idea not to take a statement from a politician as proof something occurred without first bothering to look at the facts.
Or maybe in the "Obama's word is gospel" world you live in January 28th (the Bernake vote) comes before Jan 19th. Must be a real hell on calender makers.
A minority party with less than 41 members cannot in any way obstruct the passing of any legislation or any appointee of the majority party. Failure to pass legislation or appointments in those conditions are effectively 100% on the shoulders of the ruling party.
They can declare a filibuster all they want but that doesn't make it so when the ruling party can simply vote not to have a filibuster. And cloture votes, while related to filibusters, are also used when the ruling senate party simply doesn't want to continue a debate, even if their are valid points still to be discussed.
As for Obama's appointees. Several have never been put up for formal vote because of the push on health care, even ones the GOP had no objections to, and some were so terrible even several Democrats were on record as opposing them so Reid knew there was no point in even trying.
Can you list off these numerous filibusters? And quoting Obama doesn't count.
For 7 months the Democrats had a filibuster proof majority, meaning the Republicans could not filibuster any bill/motion even if they wanted to.
The oft cited cloture stat is next to meaningless as cloture and filibuster are not directly linked.
A filibuster is a tool use by the minority party to prevent a vote. Which as already pointed out was impossible for Republicans to do without Democratic support for at least 7 months.
Cloture, on the other hand, is a tool use by the majority to close off further debate. This could be because of a filibuster or simply because they just don't want to discuss the matter further.
And if you want to talk about improper actions taken in the Senate, the Democrats win this round hands down. To protect their filibuster proof majority and to help push their agenda forward, they violated the rules of the Senate which they themselves demanded previously by allowing the interim Senator from Mass. to continue to vote even after Brown had won the seat. The rules of the Senate clearly state that in the conditions present at the time newly elected Senator Brown was legally permitted to hold his seat and vote the day the election was completed and he was recognized as the winner; and the Senate rules specifically don't even require State certification. The Dems actually held several votes after the election in Mass. and prior to them recognizing Brown (at least 17). Previous, the Republican majority had recognized Democrat winners of special elections the following day, even when important legislation was on the floor.
Of course you could also extend the improper actions to the very appointment of a interim Senator to fill Kennedy's vacant seat since the Dems had to change a law THEY PUT IN PLACE just a couple years before to even do that. But I guess that was on the state level and not the federal so that's ok.
And I feel horror when a mother of two is told to buy a camcorder and record Christmas messages for her kids because she can't schedule the test she needs to help her doctor's focus in on the cancer and extend her life until 2 months after her doctor tells her she'll most likely be dead. Damn that American health care system.... oh wait, that happened to my neighbours best friend here in Ottawa about 4 years ago.
I also feel horror when my mother has to spend 3 months in the hospital, 1 and a half of which she couldn't eat or drink anything, because of an intestinal problem that could have be caught earlier but wasn't because of having to wait months to see a specialist. Damn that American health care system.... oh wait that happened in Newfoundland last year.
I also feel a little twinge of guilt knowing our prescription drug prices are lower simply because of we off load the difference onto our American neighbors. Companies are willing to lower their prices to reach our market because they can easily make up the difference south of the border. So feel good about getting that $100 dollars off your meds knowing that 10 Americans have to pay an extra $10 for theirs.
No system is perfect and our system is no more humane than the American one. We simply choose to sacrifice service to minimize out of pocket expense. If you want to make our system more 'humane' you should be out protesting low taxes, demanding the provincial rates be increased another 10 or 20% to help buy the necessary scanning equipment or to help attract more specialists to lower our high wait times so people don't have to sit around letting their conditions worsen for months waiting for tests that can be done same week or even day in American hospitals. Of course you could be an NDP voter so it's entirely possible that's how you spend your free time.
It's also interesting to note, that despite our 'humane' socialized health care, we have the same rate of medical bankruptcy as the US. So the evil American insurance system is not the biggest problem with people losing everything due to illness.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
The only mention of individual rights is the right to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for redress of grievances. The restrictions placed on the government about religion, free speech and the press make no mention of individuals and are blanket restrictions placed on congress.
And if you want to complain about how CEO's spend company money you might want to consider that stockholders are voluntary members of the company. The stockholders can exercise their rights by complaining to the board or if that fails, making the choice to either continuing to invest in the company or selling their stocks and investing elsewhere. If they continue to invest then they are in affect condoning the actions of the CEO and the board.
Your description of a loss of rights seems more fitting with Unions than corporations. Unions, who were free from many of the political restrictions placed on companies prior to this ruling, usually have membership as a requirement for working at a unionized workplace. In that regard Unions are not truly voluntary. Most workers have little or no choice than to actually fund, through their dues, the political activities the union board decides upon with no ability to prevent it. In that case their only way out is to quit their job as opposed to sell off a few stocks.
The recent ruling by SCOTUS (US SCOTUS is a bit redundant isn't it) had NOTHING to do with campaign contributions. All contributors to a campaign are still restricted to the same limits as they were before. For good or bad the ruling simply removed the unconstitutional restrictions on a companies ability to voice their opinions. Meaning if they want, Microsoft can now make an ad directly for Mr. Hunter's re-election bid but they cannot actually give him any more dollars.
And you can debate whether a company has constitutional rights all you want but existing precedent (I believe as far back as the 1800's or further) already gave them the same rights as citizens except for rights that are specifically granted to individuals (the 2nd being a good example of an individual right).
I believe he was also the only editor of the Harvard Law Review to never write a single article.
From accounts I've seen he edited the HLR in much the same way he is governing, dropped by occasionally to see how things were going and then patted the people who were doing the actual work on the back and then left the office. He seemed more interested in the title than the job.
Can you link to any of these independent data sets?
As has been mentioned numerous times, all the climate data comes from primarily a single source, the NOAA/GHCN, and is them 'independently' analyzed by NOAA/GHCN, NASA/GISS and the CRU. So any problems in collections, instrument location and to a very large extent the methods used to balance the numbers will show up in all 3 'independent' data sets.
Their final 'adjusted' data sets are then used by pretty much every other research facility in the world.
And you have the numbers to show that right? Anything? Even a HuffPo post with some dollars mentioned.
From their books we know that Enron spent about 7million last year on 'global warming' research and somewhere in the mid 20's over the last decade, which even if you assume was all pro-oil, is still a fraction of a percentage of the funds the US government spent (which was somewhere in the multiple billions for last year alone).
Slashdot Mirror
From what I've read the home owner had ample time to remove the pets. The fire started outside, slowly spread to the shed and then to the house. It is not the Fire Departments fault that the home owner didn't think enough of his pets to have them removed from the house.
The FD ensured no lives were in danger before refusing to offer their services. This is simply a destruction of property story so there is no need to try and make it more than that with strawman arguments.
In at least one other story it was reported that he had 'forgotten' to pay at least a few other times in the past. I haven't seen anything saying he's ever been a regular subscriber to this service.
But putting these fireman's lives in danger to simply protect this mans property (they had already assured no human life was in danger) seems perfectly ok with you?
And they knew what was there. The home owner was on site talking to them.
Even here in the city I live (about a million people) I've seen buildings allowed to burn simply because the cost and risk to save them was considered too high. The FD just ensured there was no chance of the fire spreading and then allowed the primary structure to burn. I'm pretty sure the idea that an armed nuclear bomb is sitting in the living room surrounded by 'dirty' material does not much enter into the fire chiefs calculations about whether it's worth risking his men or resources to save it.
More importantly, since they were acting outside of their jurisdiction and not on the property of a person who had contracted their services and not performing an action to save a life there is also the very distinct possibility that if anything had happened to the fireman while putting out the fire they would not be covered by their insurance policy.
They used to operate this way, charging $500 after the service was provided, but less than 50% of the people in the county bothered to ever pay the bill. So in effect the 2500 people of South Fulton, whose fire department this is, were being taxed to provide fire services to the 30,000 people of Obion county who were not being taxed, fined or levied for any fire services. Obion County's own report on the matter considered this unsustainable and because the residents of the county still didn't want a levy to pay for a contract with the SFFD the $75 annual fee system was devised and membership became optional.
But you're ignoring the fact that when they offered to allow people to pay after the services were rendered the majority of people didn't.
So in your example you'd be asking the doctor to give every patient without health insurance the $50 medication, knowing full well that only a small portion will bother paying him in the end. The result would either be the doctor being forced to raise the cost of the medication to $200 so that those few honest people would be penalized to cover the cost of the freeloaders or the doctor being forced to close shop and there no longer being any medical service to the people in the area, whether insured or not.
And either way, no lives were in danger in this situation. The FD ensured no one was in the home and only refused to protect his property from damage because he had not bothered to contract their services for that. So to continue your medical analogy, it's closer to a doctor arriving at the scene of an accident, bandaging the wounds of the victim and ensuring all life signs were stable and they were good to go and then getting mad at him because he refused to perform breast augmentation surgery on them for free.
And no court in the land would enforce such a contract signed under duress.
And a post-payment system used to be the norm but the people in the county refused to pay more than 50% of the time leaving the municipality who funds the FD with no legal recourse to recover anything.
The briefing in question was a generic summary of Al Qa'ida activity and attempted attacks on US installations worldwide. It effectively said "Al Qa'ida still doesn't like us".
It contains very little detail and mostly just confirms that Bin Laden, since at least 1997, has wanted to hit the US somehow. The closest it comes to any actual warning is the final line:
"Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York."
The "Nevertheless" is in reference to the proceeding line:
"We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a [--] service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" 'Umar 'Abd al-Rahman and other US-held extremists."
There is nothing remotely actionable in the briefing and nothing even close to suggesting anything the size of 9/11. Even the references to hijacking imply the traditional strategy of taking a plane to demand something else, not to use them as weapons so I'm pretty sure everyone was shocked at the taking down of the twin towers.
Heronblademasters already gave a good explanation below, which you try to dismiss.
So how do you dismiss all the other various polls, such as the various Zogby, Scripps Howard, Ipsos-Reid and numerous newspaper/magazine sponsored polls which all seem to hit around the same overall average as the Rasmussen poll linked above.
I guess their questions are just too darn difficult for liberal brains to comprehend, since when separated by ideology it's always the liberals who are shooting upward of 30%+ agreement while most other groups are in the teens or below. Or maybe, just maybe, a significant percentage actually do believe the conservatives in power were evil enough to actually allow or help plan 9/11. Just reading any Slashdot post on politics would certainly lead one to believe the latter is quite possible.
Here's another sample question from a non-Rasmussen poll:
"Do you think President Bush intentionally allowed the 9/11 attacks to take place because he wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East?" (for the record 27% of liberals answered yes to that question).
You need to look more closely at the poll Spun is getting his numbers from. The agency has been caught in a scandal where they were just making up numbers they thought their liberal clients liked. Most reputable sites, or even the more rabid left leaning sites, are cutting off all ties to their results on anything.
But back to your "Dems don't allow their odd ideas to affect their decisions while Repubs do", I'll see your Palin and raise you a Biden. And don't even pretend you want that man anywhere near the nuclear football. I personally think Obama's a terrible leader (he seems more interested in letting other people do all the lifting and decision making) but even he is smart enough to keep good ole Sheriff Joe as far away from anything of importance as is humanly possible; not that that stops Joe from putting both feet squarely in his mouth on a weekly basis.
And while you're putting down Palin, could you explain to me Obama's glorious track record that made him such a great candidate (and no, giving nice speeches don't count). The man has almost no real work history since almost every position he held was either largely ceremonial or merely treated as a stepping stone to a higher office. If Dems had used their heads instead of just going for the flash, Clinton would most likely be President right now. She at least had a clear track record and solid history of getting things done.
Let's try out this remedial English lesson on you.
Denounce: Publicly declare to be wrong.
To denounce something you would have to be of an opinion that the subject you are denouncing is wrong. You can assume that those who hold no opinion on the matter (26% as mentioned above) or those who agree with the subject (35%) are not actively denouncing anything. That leaves just 39% of Dems who may or may not be actively denouncing anything. As 39% is less than 61% then it would be safe to say that a clear minority of Democrats who are denouncing 9/11 trutherism.
You could possibly say you are in the majority of those Dems who are vocal in their 9/11 beliefs but since 39% and 35% are within the +/- of most polls even that can't be said with 100% certainty.
So how does that math work out for you? I could write it out long form and show my workings if it's too hard for you to follow. Or if you prefer I could wait for you to write someone at Research2000 and I'm sure they can get you a result showing Dems are 98% against 9/11 trutherism. Just make sure you state what numbers you want up front, I hear they charge extra if you make them make up the numbers themselves.
And as pointed out below the 'polling' company who put forward those results has been caught cooking the books. They were so bad even most liberal sites have been trying to disassociate themselves from their findings.
Using Reasearch2000 as an accurate polling source is akin to using Tiger Woods as a source for marriage advice.
Huffington Post's own link to the poll calls into question any of the findings. As you would clearly see if you bothered to follow the GPs link.
Those damn dirty conservatives over at HuffPo trying to boudmouth the outstanding work of Reasearch2000.
But you can go on with your belief that of all the claims of outright fraud against the polling company in question THIS was the poll they were completely truthful about.
The last poll I saw putting forward the "Did Bush know about 9/11 in advance" had democrats at a nice 35% in the affirmative with an additional 26% "not sure". And in case you don't like Rasmussen, Zogby's earlier poll had Dems at 42% for their belief that Bush either participated in or allowed 9/11.
So you and your fellow left wing 'denouncers' are clearly in the minority of your party.
It's also a bit odd that Jobs actually has to stress "our new product is only worse than our old product by a factor of x" as a defense.
Since most other reviews I've seen say just how much better the reception is on the iPhone 4 compared to the 3gs (when not holding the phone in the 'wrong' way) if it loses more calls than it's predecessor than that would just go to stress how poorly the antenna design was. The external antenna screw up is essentially negating all other reception improvements and then some.
Except in every independent test the iPhone 4 signal drop is significantly higher than any other smartphone tested; often in the range of 3 or 4 times as much signal loss.
So yes, the laws of physics effect all antennas on all phones but due to poor design those affects are much more pronounced on iPhone 4s.
Once again, the stat people are tossing around to prove an abundance of filibusters is the submission of cloture votes NOT the failure of cloture votes.
According to the Senate.gov website, of the 92 cloture motions filed between Jan 3, 2009 and April 29, 2010 about 44 were passed and only 9 failed. Of those 9, 2 were passed after reconsideration. The rest were mostly withdrawn before any vote was taken (usually indicating that the Senate leader didn't even have the support of his own party on the bill in question or other business came up that was deemed more important).
That would mean there were effectively 9 true filibusters in that time period, 2 of which were later ended by either a change of heart of the participants or a compromise on the bill in question.
As for Obama's instruction to Reid, if it was followed so closely, as you contend, why did Kirk vote on at least three separate occasions on matters that required a 60 vote majority. The raising of the debt ceiling, confirmation of Ben Bernake for the Fed Reserve and an amendment to introduce a discretionary spending cap. He also voted on at least 14 other matters that may or may not have required the 60 vote majority. So you might want to tweak that 'trivial' Google search or check the senate.gov vote rolls. Also a good idea not to take a statement from a politician as proof something occurred without first bothering to look at the facts.
Or maybe in the "Obama's word is gospel" world you live in January 28th (the Bernake vote) comes before Jan 19th. Must be a real hell on calender makers.
Once again you're missing the point.
A minority party with less than 41 members cannot in any way obstruct the passing of any legislation or any appointee of the majority party. Failure to pass legislation or appointments in those conditions are effectively 100% on the shoulders of the ruling party.
They can declare a filibuster all they want but that doesn't make it so when the ruling party can simply vote not to have a filibuster. And cloture votes, while related to filibusters, are also used when the ruling senate party simply doesn't want to continue a debate, even if their are valid points still to be discussed.
As for Obama's appointees. Several have never been put up for formal vote because of the push on health care, even ones the GOP had no objections to, and some were so terrible even several Democrats were on record as opposing them so Reid knew there was no point in even trying.
Can you list off these numerous filibusters? And quoting Obama doesn't count.
For 7 months the Democrats had a filibuster proof majority, meaning the Republicans could not filibuster any bill/motion even if they wanted to.
The oft cited cloture stat is next to meaningless as cloture and filibuster are not directly linked.
A filibuster is a tool use by the minority party to prevent a vote. Which as already pointed out was impossible for Republicans to do without Democratic support for at least 7 months.
Cloture, on the other hand, is a tool use by the majority to close off further debate. This could be because of a filibuster or simply because they just don't want to discuss the matter further.
And if you want to talk about improper actions taken in the Senate, the Democrats win this round hands down. To protect their filibuster proof majority and to help push their agenda forward, they violated the rules of the Senate which they themselves demanded previously by allowing the interim Senator from Mass. to continue to vote even after Brown had won the seat. The rules of the Senate clearly state that in the conditions present at the time newly elected Senator Brown was legally permitted to hold his seat and vote the day the election was completed and he was recognized as the winner; and the Senate rules specifically don't even require State certification. The Dems actually held several votes after the election in Mass. and prior to them recognizing Brown (at least 17). Previous, the Republican majority had recognized Democrat winners of special elections the following day, even when important legislation was on the floor.
Of course you could also extend the improper actions to the very appointment of a interim Senator to fill Kennedy's vacant seat since the Dems had to change a law THEY PUT IN PLACE just a couple years before to even do that. But I guess that was on the state level and not the federal so that's ok.
And I feel horror when a mother of two is told to buy a camcorder and record Christmas messages for her kids because she can't schedule the test she needs to help her doctor's focus in on the cancer and extend her life until 2 months after her doctor tells her she'll most likely be dead. Damn that American health care system .... oh wait, that happened to my neighbours best friend here in Ottawa about 4 years ago.
I also feel horror when my mother has to spend 3 months in the hospital, 1 and a half of which she couldn't eat or drink anything, because of an intestinal problem that could have be caught earlier but wasn't because of having to wait months to see a specialist. Damn that American health care system .... oh wait that happened in Newfoundland last year.
I also feel a little twinge of guilt knowing our prescription drug prices are lower simply because of we off load the difference onto our American neighbors. Companies are willing to lower their prices to reach our market because they can easily make up the difference south of the border. So feel good about getting that $100 dollars off your meds knowing that 10 Americans have to pay an extra $10 for theirs.
No system is perfect and our system is no more humane than the American one. We simply choose to sacrifice service to minimize out of pocket expense. If you want to make our system more 'humane' you should be out protesting low taxes, demanding the provincial rates be increased another 10 or 20% to help buy the necessary scanning equipment or to help attract more specialists to lower our high wait times so people don't have to sit around letting their conditions worsen for months waiting for tests that can be done same week or even day in American hospitals. Of course you could be an NDP voter so it's entirely possible that's how you spend your free time.
It's also interesting to note, that despite our 'humane' socialized health care, we have the same rate of medical bankruptcy as the US. So the evil American insurance system is not the biggest problem with people losing everything due to illness.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
The only mention of individual rights is the right to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for redress of grievances. The restrictions placed on the government about religion, free speech and the press make no mention of individuals and are blanket restrictions placed on congress.
And if you want to complain about how CEO's spend company money you might want to consider that stockholders are voluntary members of the company. The stockholders can exercise their rights by complaining to the board or if that fails, making the choice to either continuing to invest in the company or selling their stocks and investing elsewhere. If they continue to invest then they are in affect condoning the actions of the CEO and the board.
Your description of a loss of rights seems more fitting with Unions than corporations. Unions, who were free from many of the political restrictions placed on companies prior to this ruling, usually have membership as a requirement for working at a unionized workplace. In that regard Unions are not truly voluntary. Most workers have little or no choice than to actually fund, through their dues, the political activities the union board decides upon with no ability to prevent it. In that case their only way out is to quit their job as opposed to sell off a few stocks.
The recent ruling by SCOTUS (US SCOTUS is a bit redundant isn't it) had NOTHING to do with campaign contributions. All contributors to a campaign are still restricted to the same limits as they were before. For good or bad the ruling simply removed the unconstitutional restrictions on a companies ability to voice their opinions. Meaning if they want, Microsoft can now make an ad directly for Mr. Hunter's re-election bid but they cannot actually give him any more dollars.
And you can debate whether a company has constitutional rights all you want but existing precedent (I believe as far back as the 1800's or further) already gave them the same rights as citizens except for rights that are specifically granted to individuals (the 2nd being a good example of an individual right).
I believe he was also the only editor of the Harvard Law Review to never write a single article.
From accounts I've seen he edited the HLR in much the same way he is governing, dropped by occasionally to see how things were going and then patted the people who were doing the actual work on the back and then left the office. He seemed more interested in the title than the job.
Can you link to any of these independent data sets?
As has been mentioned numerous times, all the climate data comes from primarily a single source, the NOAA/GHCN, and is them 'independently' analyzed by NOAA/GHCN, NASA/GISS and the CRU. So any problems in collections, instrument location and to a very large extent the methods used to balance the numbers will show up in all 3 'independent' data sets.
Their final 'adjusted' data sets are then used by pretty much every other research facility in the world.
And you have the numbers to show that right? Anything? Even a HuffPo post with some dollars mentioned.
From their books we know that Enron spent about 7million last year on 'global warming' research and somewhere in the mid 20's over the last decade, which even if you assume was all pro-oil, is still a fraction of a percentage of the funds the US government spent (which was somewhere in the multiple billions for last year alone).