United States of Entropy

[namkcuR]

Originally Posted by INDY500

Limited government is not anarchy. Balanced budgets are not anarchy. Obeying the Constitution is not anarchy.

Last week the House passed amendments to;
1) give all Americans the same one year exemption that Obama (illegally) granted to big business.
2) to delay the medical device tax
3) a provision eliminating the Healthcare Exchange subsidies that Obama (illegally) gave to Congress, their staff and other Capital employees.

They all were ignored by the Democratic senate.

First of all, #1 amounts to delaying the individual mandate for a year, and the whole thing falls apart without the individual mandate, and the Tea Party in congress knows it. When individual components of the ACA are polled - such as people with pre-exisiting conditions not being shut out anymore, people being able to stay on their parents' plans for a longer time, etc - large chunks of the country from both sides of the aisle like them. The individual mandate is what draws the most hatred, but it was the cost of business to get the aforementioned reforms from the insurance companies. They are the ones who wanted the individual mandate. They wouldn't have agreed to dropping the pre-exisiting conditions BS, among other things, without it. If everyone isn't buying insurance, premiums go up, which means more expense for those who can afford it and no insurance for those who can't. If the individual mandate is delayed for a year, the whole program will suffer, and that is what the right wants. No way anyone who wants this program to succeed can give any ground on the individual mandate.

Second of all, the President and the Senate stood on principle, that to give the Tea Party anything they were asking for regarding the ACA would set a scary and dangerous precedent, that you can get anything you want from the opposition just by threatening to breach the debt ceiling or to let some other potentially disastrous thing happen to the country. This was about making sure that in the future, this is not seen as either an acceptable or an effective political tactic.

[nbcrusader]

What started as a thread on the dismal state of the US economy has taken, unfortunately, a familiar turn.

Post-election season is a time for healing, for putting aside the rancor of a long campaign and rediscovering what unites us. It has not been that way this year.

Prudence, one would think, if not generosity of spirit, should impel Democrats to be magnanimous in victory. Romney did receive about 48 percent of the vote. A little modesty among the winners would seem to be in order.

Instead, the gloating has been extravagant. Worse, liberals have gorged themselves on the same junk food they enjoyed during the campaign and cannot seem to resist under any circumstances — slandering their opponents. The smears are so casual and commonplace that we become weary of responding. But we must protest, or someone new to politics may assume that we concede the point.

Appearing on Meet the Press, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns attributed conservative unhappiness with the election to racism. “Race is always there in America,” Burns opined. “It’s always something we don’t want to talk about. Do you think we’d have a secession movement — a faddish movement — if this president wasn’t African-American? Do you think the vitriol that came out of some elements of the Tea Party would have been at the same level had this president not been African-American?”

Ken Burns is a fine filmmaker. I met him once, and found him to be engaging and amiable. It’s painful to see him descend to this kind of defamation. Some disappointed Republicans are talking secession in Texas and elsewhere. This is proof of racism? Is this the standard of evidence Burns employs for his films?

Secession talk is the overheated emotional venting of the disappointed. It is not the exclusive province of Republicans. In 2004, Jonathan Gurwitz of the Houston Chronicle reminds us, Democratic talking head Lawrence O’Donnell suggested that George W. Bush’s reelection would provoke “a serious discussion of secession over the next 20 years.” When a fellow panelist on the TV show in question asked “Are you calling for civil war?” O’Donnell replied “You can secede without firing a shot.” Bob Beckel was for kicking the southern United States out of the union that year. “Really, I think they ought to have their own confederacy.” Alec Baldwin, among others, had threatened to leave the country if Bush was reelected.

Burns’s flippant reference to the “vitriol” emanating from “some elements” in the Tea Party is nothing but an oft-repeated slur. The late Andrew Breitbart famously offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could produce audio or video proof that the N-word was hurled at black members of Congress as they moved through a Tea Party protest on Capitol Hill. The accusation of racism was broadcast far and wide. The lack of proof — though hundreds of people had video cameras recording every moment — is the untold story. Someone as sophisticated as Ken Burns should know that the Tea Party protests were multiracial, multiethnic affairs, featuring speakers of every background. What united them was concern that the government stop spending money it does not collect.

False accusations of racism are an attempt to delegitimize those who disagree with you. Promiscuous use of the word also defangs it for actual instances of racial bias. Honest liberals should further consider that flinging the charge protects them from having to defend their ideas. It’s simultaneously ugly and lazy.

Kathleen Geier of the Washington Monthly writes that conservatives use abstractions because they are attempting to conceal positions that “a hefty chunk of the population” finds “icky.” That’s the reason, she explains, that they talk of “‘small government,’ ‘right to life,’ ‘states’ rights,’ ‘free markets,’ ‘right to work,’ ‘judicial restraint,’ ‘family values,’ etc.”

I can’t recall the last time a mainstream American politician referred to “state’s rights,” but I’m pretty sure that whoever it was, he was a Democrat. It was the code term southern Democrats used to defend Jim Crow laws. Three quarters of the nay votes on the 1964 Civil Rights Act came from Democrats. Conservatives, as Ms. Geier would know if she actually read them rather than relying on cartoon depictions, do talk of federalism. If Geier thinks the constitutional order providing for state and federal governments is “icky,” she should say so.

As for the “right to life,” isn’t that a great deal more honest than the liberals’ habit of disguising a policy of unrestricted abortion up to and including birth as “women’s reproductive health”?

Geier further confuses her readers by explaining that “judicial restraint” means “no rights for women, gays, or nonwhites.”

On reflection, I take it back. What liberals like Geier need is not humility or magnanimity. It’s basic information.

[Irvine511]

I wouldn't hit you if you didn't make me so angry.

(Also, that's a truly ghastly op-ed. Link? I'd like to know who wrote it.)

[Badyouken]

It really boggles my mind to read some of the rationalizations and reasoning in this thread and on the Republican side of the aisle in the US. It would almost be funny if it didn't have such grave consequences, as we saw this week.

An interesting thing I've noticed is the manifestation of the Backfire Effect, now well-supported psychological fact:

“THE BACKFIRE EFFECT: When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger.”

[nbcrusader]

[anitram]

Damn that Obama causing the global financial recession of 2008.

[nbcrusader]

Big Government doesn't care how much they spend (waste)

$2 billion in pork-barrel appropriations were added to the Congressional Resolution to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling.

[anitram]

Pork barreling is outrageous.

But I also love how that page has a huge unflattering photo of Nancy Pelosi and only quotes her, implying she inserted all these provisions. This wasn't Nancy's bill. But nice try.

Take a look at what McConnell got in Kentucky...things start to crystallize a bit. Why isn't his ugly mug front and centre?

[Pearl]

It looks like nbcrusader is on one hell of a trolling tirade and is lost in his own world.

[martha]

Originally Posted by Pearl

It looks like nbcrusader is on one hell of a trolling tirade and is lost in his own world.

He didn't used to be.

[Pearl]

Originally Posted by martha

He didn't used to be.

Yep.

Kind of shows that having a liberal in the White House can show a whole different side of someone

[nathan1977]

Originally Posted by anitram

Pork barreling is outrageous. ...

Take a look at what McConnell got in Kentucky...things start to crystallize a bit. Why isn't his ugly mug front and centre?

Because the Olmsted Locks and Dam project was spending previously authorized by the President and approved by both the House and Senate?

'Kentucky kickback': an issue for Mitch McConnell or just friendly fire?

The Olmsted Locks and Dam project, spanning the Ohio River between Olmsted, Ill., and Paducah, Ky., is no "bridge to nowhere," the notorious Alaska earmark that launched the drive in 2005 to end earmarks. The dam replacement project aims to ease a bottleneck for barges about 17 miles upstream of the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. The Army Corps of Engineers calls the site "the busiest stretch of river in America's inland waterways."

When Congress first authorized the project in 1988, the estimate for completion was $775 million. By FY 2011, costs had soared to more than $1.4 billion, and the Army Corps says it will need authorization to spend up to $2.9 billion to finish the work. Despite delays and cost overruns, the project retained bipartisan support. The proposed increase was included in President Obama’s FY 2014 budget and authorized by both Senate and House committees.

It's not clear whether Senate leaders expected the blowback they're getting on this project. Accounts from aides, who will not be quoted publicly, differ on this point. What is clear is that Senate leaders, on both sides of the aisle, quickly rallied to its defense.

Both McConnell and Senate majority leader Harry Reid denied that the project was an earmark or that McConnell had requested it. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R) of Tennessee, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Water Development subcommittee, said in a statement that he and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) of California, who chairs the panel, had requested the project and that it would save taxpayer dollars.

“According to the Army Corps of Engineers, $160 million taxpayer dollars will be wasted because of canceled contracts if this language is not included,” Senator Alexander said, in a statement.

[anitram]

It's actually an interesting conversation to have (though not really on topic) every time somebody states that there has to be a continued increase in spending otherwise you'll be dinged with costs related to contract termination. It's always highly contextual, but there are plenty of situations where you are actually better off swallowing such costs.

[Diemen]

Originally Posted by Pearl

It looks like nbcrusader is on one hell of a trolling tirade and is lost in his own world.

Let's keep the personal commentary out of this.

[Pearl]

Originally Posted by Diemen

Let's keep the personal commentary out of this.

Sorry about that. I thought I was being observant.

[INDY500]

Originally Posted by anitram

Damn that Obama causing the global financial recession of 2008.

Three cheers for those pre-Tea Party "moderate" and "sensible" Republicans that are all the rave in FYM these days.

[INDY500]

Originally Posted by Diemen

I don't live in California.

Didn't you live in the Bay area?

The rest of your comment isn't even analogous to the current situation

It isn't meant to be analogous it's meant to be illustrative that Democrats are only interested in "the law is the law" when it suits them. Democratic governors and mayors openly disregard immigration laws for instance.

"the Left" didn't throw an epic hissy fit, grind the government to a halt and threaten California with economic calamity if they didn't get their way.

No, the Left threatens California with economic calamity by its expansion of government and its pension programs, oppressive business regulation, an open border policy and confiscatory tax rates. But we have a thread on that.

[INDY500]

Originally Posted by martha

He didn't used to be.

We have a black president now.

[INDY500]

Originally Posted by martha

He didn't used to be.

.

[INDY500]

Originally Posted by Pearl

Yep.

Kind of shows that having a liberal black in the White House can show a whole different side of someone

Fixed. I didn't know I was a raving racist until 5 years ago either.