Mostly because those 'plans' were craptastic insurance that covered hardly anything.

Glad you're starting to see how serious the healthcare situation prior to ACA was for most Americans.

I don't find it acceptable. I'd love to look at legislative fixes either on the plan side or subsidy side, but that won't happen because the GOP is more concerned with sabotaging the law than making it work.

Exactly - responsible government could likely fairly-easily solve these issues, the problem is the GOP isn't a party committed to responsible government and "looking out for the people" despite their rhetoric.

That wasn't the frightening part.

Affordable in terms of monthly premiums, sure. Affordable in terms of the insurance actually paying out a full claim in the event it's needed? Not so much. That's the point here.

Part of ACA was to get the uninsured on insurance, so as to stop them from either a) avoiding treatment or b) going into bankruptcy to afford treatment.

Part of ACA was to get the underinsured on better insurance, so as to stop them from mainly b, above.


Claims that people with affordable individual plans now that also will adequately cover them financially if used as intended are merely anecdotal, until some of you start citing data. And simply saying "X million folks will lose their policy" isn't the point. How many of those policies would adequately cover their members is the point, and here's data to the contrary: Medical bills prompt more than 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies - CNN.com

You don't say? You mean you are just concern trolling as usual?

:popcorn:

Yes, along with a good chunk of the rest of the country except those of us who realize there are problems don't consider it trolling.

What would you propose?

Well, the simple solution would be to re-introduce the public option. :D

You can make a good chunk of the country think dihydrogen monoxide is a serious problem, too.

Without consultation with experts I can't say specifically, but there has to be a way to broaden the acceptable plans and/or expand subsidies/tax credits. The particular problem shouldn't be that difficult to alleviate.

52-48 - the Nays have it. Filibuster on nominations (not including Supreme Court) is gone.

Grrr

Democrats Carl Levin, Joe Manchin, Mark Pryor voted against changing the rule.

There are lots of important things to do with healthcare in America imho - one of the obvious ones is decoupling it from employment.

At present I know lots of people who remain in jobs they hate because they need healthcare, it stifles competition between corporations for positions and thus depresses the wage level.

Another obvious one would simply be to remove the ludicrous purchasing restrictions which are placed on government healthcare programs preventing them from negotiating fairly with drug companies - at present they're handicapped in total violation of the 'free market' which is so touted by conservatives ...

You silly Europeans and your practical, data-driven and supported solutions.

;)

Woah.

Edit: This was in response to the filibuster on nominations being lifted.

Took them far too long to do it, and it's only half-hearted, so I'm not exactly celebrating in the streets, but it's a step in the right direction, so that's good.

The quick consensus seems to be that this will likely serve to enrage the TP/GOP even more leading to yet more gridlock and (ironically) the Democrats maybe looking, in 2015 (if they still hold the Senate) towards removing the rule for legislation as well. Slippery slope and all that....

How could they be more obstructionist? Basically anything the D's try to do.. good/bad/negative gets objected to and filibustered.

We had the Know Nothing Party, the GOP is now the "Do Nothing" party.

Or maybe the Tantrum Party.

I'm trying to decide if this is a big deal or not and I think ultimately the answer is "not". It will be a talking point for a little bit. But, frankly, I think it's esoteric enough that the general population will just sigh and shrug it off.

But politics has always been about creative ways to bend the rules to your political will. Just as the incidence of filibuster has gone up recently, there had to be a reason it was the new tool in the toolkit. Now that it's gone, there will be another.

Also, near as I can tell- this is just for nominees, not for legislation, correct?

SI

You could reduce the need for insurance entirely if individuals were charged the same amount insurance companies were for prescriptions and care...

While I'm reasonably sure you can't enrage conservatives too much more than they already are (not without armed revolt anyway), I'm not going to sweat this too much. Goes around, comes around, etc.

I don't get the timing, frankly. Popularity for Obama will continue to wane throughout his term as happens with second term presidents, the Dems have a ton of seats to defend in 2014, and it didn't appear that there were a lot of nominees out there awaiting passage, just a couple (tho this could be the fact that I'm totally off on). Why now and why not in 2009? Politics is such theater, sometimes.

SI

This is why I'm not excited. It should have happened in 209 or 2010 at worse or whatever.

From what I'm reading, while there are only a handlful of Executive Branch appointees that are unfilled and can now go through, there are also 90 (or 93, it's unclear) judicial appointments that can now also go through, which may be more significant.

There was also a rumor that the reason Sebelius wasn't fired as head of HHS was because Obama wouldn't be able to find a replacement that the GOP wouldn't filibuster. It may be too late for that, but would allow for people to be fired easier if they mess up.

The GOP really has escalated things. They are now at a point where they won't accept any nominations to the D.C. Appeals Court.

I actually think the results of this rule change should have been standard practice. An elected President with a majority Senate should get to fill executive and court positions. That's part of what the populace voted for. Ideally the minority party would be responsible enough to maintain the filibuster for extraordinary cases, but the majority party has a right to make appointments.

She won't be fired, but she should be. She not only fucked up implementation, she has sounded clueless in the aftermath. If this rule change results in a new HHS Secretary I'll be thrilled.

Quick consensus? Here is the quick consensus:

The same democrats who passed this bill will be in tears when (not if, it's cyclical people, it's going to come around) republicans get in charge and start ramming through Pro-Life/Anti Gay marriage candidates. They took away the checks and balances and deal making. (while deal making might sound horrible, it at least mitigates how psychotic certain appointments end up being)

As I said above, the dems will pay the piper for this decision. It may be 2015, it may 20 years after, but they will feel the impact of this. This was a very shortsighted decision that will hurt badly in the long run.

To be honest, a better way to do this would likely be to make positions that been empty for x amount of time to be subject to an up or down vote. Would likely lead to more negotiation earlier.

This.

+1

What - like Scalia (and yes I know he's SCOTUS and this doesn't apply, just making the point that deal-making doesn't prevent wackos)?

You're delusional or being deliberately disingenuous if you don't admit that Republicans would have taken it away to ram through those same candidates when they got into power anyways.

Agreed. It's time that this silly notion that somehow stopping anything from passing (or being appointed) can be considered 'checks and balances'.

With that said, the genie is out of the bottle now. It's only a matter of time until the other shoe falls and it is changed for legislation as well. They can't say it's a good idea in one instance and not another.

Hell, at some level we've got some terrible laws because of the filibuster mess. People think they need to put EVERYTHING in a law that does pass because they don't know when they'll be able to get anything done again. Pass things in small chunks, not in huge laws where no one has even read it all before voting on it.

Chuck Grassley said it today - he doesn't believe that Obama should be able to make any appointments to the DC Court because of ideology - in that there were 4 judges appointed by Dems and 4 by Republicans and Obama shouldn't be allowed to break that "balance". That's a far different intent than just trying to prevent the far right-or-left wing candidate from getting on the court. That's essentially saying that he wants to subvert the '08 and '12 elections because it didn't agree with with this philosophy. Weird, thought...I certainly didn't notice that sentiment when the Republicans got their chance to pack the Supreme Court with their ideologues.

The Republicans left the Democrats no other option. Bush's 1st term nominees were approved at a 94% clip. Obama's were approved at only 81%. His second term is trending far worse. So if the Republicans do manage to take back the White House and the Senate in 2016, there would be far more openings available because Obama hasn't been allowed to make appointments. So what would happen? The Republicans use the nuclear option and pack the courts in 2016 with Scalia Clones.

So while it may hurt the Dems at some point, it would have hurt 'em far worse if they didn't do it.

FML - bipartisan agreement from me.

Mark this date in the calendar - MBBF and I agree on something political.

Sure - we probably disagree on what is terrible in those laws, but we agree on principal.

Deal making's dead, Jim. See also: recess appointments, use of reconciliation, and signing statements. Hell, have you forgotten the government shutdown already?

The GOP just took the world economy to the brink because Obama wouldn't agree to a) throw away his signature legislative accomplishment, b) agree to budget spending levels lower than those proposed by Paul Ryan, and c) a host of other, less reasonable demands. These guys aren't going to compromise when they get back in power anyway, the way things are going.

You want compromise and deal-making back in Congress? Find a way to get rid of TP influence. Because when you're a GOP Congresscritter and any time you compromise you risk a primary challenge from the right, there's plenty of disincentive to waddle up to the table to talk turkey.

And who says the GOP didn't already ram through psychotic candidates, especially during the Bush II Administration?

Republicans were threatening to do this when the democrats were blocking Bush's nominations. (the dems actually went longer than the republicans have thus far. Appellate judges were at 238 days under Clinton, 355 days under Bush and 257 for Obama. )

They threatened, then they cut a deal. Trent Lott, the republican who coined the term and first talked about doing it, realized very quickly how dumb of an idea it was and he backed off it. Yes, by the way, you read that correctly. Despite Bush's nominees being delayed over 100 days more and him being referred to as the worst president of all time, he didn't endorse the nuclear option and his party didn't enact it. So to your response above, at this point no Republican had ever done it even when they had the reason and the chance to do so. So no, I'm not sure they would have done it if the roles were reversed right now.

I'm not delusional (well, ok, I'm sure some people think I am and I wouldn't know it if I was, so fair play to you sir) I hate both parties. Which is why I hate ANYTHING that gives one party a ton of unchecked power. Once you push a button like this, there is no going back. When the Republicans get power (and again, I stress WHEN, because they will get it back someday), they are going to say "you had your fun, OUR TURN" and go nuts.

It's why you want a cold war. You don't want anyone punching the button. Because even if you win short term, everyone feels pain long term.

You know, let's not forget that Mitch McConnell famously said, after Obama's first election (when the TP was still only in its infancy, and couldn't have influenced this) that the GOP's primary legislative priority would be to make Obama a one-term president.

The GOP aren't interested in governing. They're interested in a) defeating Democrats and b) destroying the government, in roughly that order. I'm just glad the Democratic leadership finally woke up and saw it.

This is undoubtably true. Laws get stuffed to the gills with hand outs for the minority parties to get past any potential filibusters.

The "pain" of up-and-down votes on judicial and executive nominees (and possibly, down the road, legislation)? Yeah, sounds terrible. Let's take complete gridlock, government shutdowns, ratings downgrades and driving the economy over the cliff instead.

Oh god, I agree too.

I don't know if this is worse than that one time I agreed with Jon.

:banghead:

At its heart, it's the difference between crafting a legitimate compromise (a practice now dead at the federal level) and merely horse-trading.

You don't get it, do you? This is going to go beyond all of that.

Gridlock, government shutdowns and economy over a cliff are both parties doing by the way. I don't know how anyone over the age of 12 can still blindly blame one side in this at this point. It isn't one side is a bunch of evil douche bags who want to destroy everyone and the other is angelic and wonderful. Both are power hungry dirtbags who have about as much care for individuals as most people do for the bug on the ground outside our homes.

Both parties defecate in paper bags, set them on fire, ring the doorbell and talk about the door of opportunity that was just opened for you. I know, I know, one party is less evil because they believe in things you believe in.

I wish I had a party. I'm against the death penalty, for gay marriage, believe we need to raise some taxes but also cut some entitlement programs. . . where the hell is my party?

Aren't most medium-to-large-sized companies, along with with unions, self-insured when it comes to health insurance? Isn't this a big talking point that people are missing or don't really understand?

Sounds like you're Obama.

Except the cut entitlement spending part.

True, expect he offered to do chained CPI and Medicare cuts.

The real fun may come a little later down the road ... when all the clowns Obama appoints have to be removed, and we see an end to lifetime appointments pushed through to make that happen.

Make a note of it, m'kay. Just for when it comes up later.

False equivalence.

One party steps in shits far too often. The other wallows in it.

Here's an example on this page of a false equivalence that you posted.


5 of 6 Bush appointees were put on that court. 4 of 5 Obama appointees have been filibustered. This hasn't been going on for 100 days, this has been going on for years. That's right, these seats have been open for years and the Republicans refuse to sit any judge nominated by Obama on this court per Chuck Grassley. So again, where's the equivalence? A short delay and a permanent delay aren't the same thing.

Bush got 91% of his judicial nominees on the bench. Obama only 76%. When Bush came into office, there were 80 vacancies in the Federal Judiciary (which rose to over 100 in year one). By year 3 that number was below 60 and was below 50 his entire last term. Obama came into office with about 60 vacancies, which rose to over 100 by his second year. It's still over 90 today. The facts just don't support a "they did it too" claim.

Much as I hate to bring this up - but throwing percentage statistics around with such small numbers is ultimately pointless as they can change wildly with only a few more nominations being processed.

Its entirely true that the Democrats have played this game as far as I can see - there is a list of the equivalent action taken against Bush here:

List of Stalled/Blocked/Filbustered Nominee's under Bush

(trust me as your local commie infiltrator I hate to bring this up, I enjoy kicking the Republican party as much as the next person ;) )

That's simply untrue.

My current plan is very similar to the bronze plan. Except I'll be covered if I get pregnant.

Even the "conforming" plan I'm being shuffled into for 2014 (it will go away in 2015) is pretty much exactly the same. All Obamacare does for me is double costs.

Around this time next year, we'll all be arguing about the merits of high-deductible plans. As I've said repeatedly, most of you who have had your plans through work have no idea about true health care costs.

Of course they play this game. EVERYONE in politics plays this stupid ass game. But nobody believes "their" guys do it. If I throw out gerrymandering, people on both sides will talk about how horrible the other has been at doing it. Both parties do it, it's all about the power and the ability to do so. This isn't new and it won't be stopping anytime soon.

Crap, some of my post was cut off. See, I'm not "pro gun" but I do think Americans should have the right to own one. I also think the gun show permit thing should be closed. The entitlement part is pretty big. I'm not for doing one without the other. I don't want my taxes raised so they can be raised again when all the entitlement programs go belly up. I don't want all entitlement programs to go away because some of them are pretty damned useful in helping people.

If I ran down a list of things I believe in, it would be split pretty evenly down the middle. If I split off the top 7 things I like about either party, I could have a stranger believing I was a raging tea party member or was the son of two pot smoking liberals from Cal Berkley.

It's funny how BOTH sides will use the same language used by another post here. "My side just wallows in it or steps in it a little bit, YOUR side bathes in it." It doesn't work all that well with me because I think both are subhuman, despicable, horrific examples of human beings.

Please stop trying to bring reason to this discussion. It has no place in our modern government.

These two posts summarize our government perfectly.

Isn't that the perfect example of partisan politics?

I'm agreeing with Troy's sentiment that we have two extremes in government, and both sides refuse to deal with each other, except in the most negative, biased manner.

Supporters of both sides consider the other side evil, something we've seen over and over in this item. They never think their own shit stinks.

Troy is mocking that with his choice of language. And there you go doing the partisan out-of-context quote thing. Taking one sentence, out of context, to satisfy another agenda. It's exactly why nothing is bipartisan these days.

Both parties are locked into this cycle, and continually up the ante.

So instead of false equivalencies, now you're making false assumptions. I'm not a member of either party. I just know what I see and one thing doesn't equal another. What the Dems did in the early 2000s does not equate to what the Republicans are currently doing. The numbers don't lie, especially since the sample size ain't that small.

FYI, I think both parties are despicable. I don't think most of the people are "subhuman" since dehumanizing people tends to lead to irrational actions. I think they're self-serving jackasses who would rather embarrass one another than create a compromise. I think they're also driven to it by the way the game is played, especially by the radicals providing the money. Until that element is removed, this game won't fundamentally change.

No, I think that summarization reflects the personalities of the authors, not the government.

If only we could go back to the bipartisan days of 1776.

A Republic form of government is not winner-take-all. But I guess they don't teach civics anymore if anyone is willing to except an executive-legislative system without checks and balances. And I still contend that it is better to not do something than to do something bad or wrong. Sigh.

It is expressly written in the Constitution that agreements of 2/3rds of Senators is needed to pass treaties signed by the President, and just advice and consent of the Senate for appointing judges and officers, no mention of 2/3rds agreement. How is adhering to that taking away checks and balances?

Because the powers expressly granted in the Constitution has been greatly superseded and violated, esp. when one party is in control. I do not believe they envisioned a federal govt. with this much power (and expenditures) and therefore, would have sought to reign in the tyranny of the majority in the context of how much they have.

That probably did not make sense. Here's a simple analogy:

You give your child $10 and that child wasted and/or abused that $10. The lessons learned are 1) you do not then give the child $30 and 2) you actually cut back to $5 to see if they will be responsible for that and then you move it up to $10.

If the framers knew what abuses some of the clauses would have been, they would not have granted that much power. Advice and Consent works well within reason, not to use as a hammer. It's not just current events but throughout history as well for representational governments.

I'm not fully against this move, but my question is why is it okay for Obama, Reid, and Biden to railed against the "Nuclear Option" back in 2005, but today it's okay?

I really like this idea. Shame it didn't come to pass

SI

Is it really this hard to see the hypocrisy? I've sat and listened at how the democrats weren't that bad in 2003 to 2005. Ummm, yeah, they were freaking horrible. The Republicans, flush with power, were acting like jack asses. The democrats in a grand quest to stop them from acting like jack asses, went nuts.

Rather than continue nominating every far right zealot they could think of, the Republicans cut a deal with the democrats to push through more moderate judges. If they had continued down the path of the zealots, the democrats would have come unglued and certainly would have continued down the path.

It was politics at work. The Republicans tried to go too far one way, the Democrats stepped in and said "Nope, not gonna allow it" and the two sides struck a deal.

Now we have no deals. Things get slammed through without either side bothering to talk to each other. Both sides are "evil" to their opposite number and you can't have a political discussion with either a far right or a far left person without them calling the other side demons who want to destroy mankind. Whatever "side" you are on, the fact that a nuclear option happened shows how far off the wagon we have fallen as a country.

Instead of trying to win over public opinion talking about what the Republicans were doing, the Democrats simply threw out a power grab that WILL NOT BE GOOD LONG TERM for this country no matter what side you are on. The timing is a little suspect too, with approval numbers sliding off a cliff due to Obamacare, it's nice to shift the subject away, don't ya think?

We can't even talk to each other anymore. The guys we pay money to don't even pretend to work with each other anymore. Power grabs like this happen and people try to justify it. Of course, if it happened to "their party" it would be the worst thing that ever occured. Don't mind me, I'm just disgruntled with the entire lot. Maybe I'm wrong and one side is truly angelic and the other side wants to eat babies. I don't claim to know everything about every political issue. I just hate what I'm seeing right now. I really hate it.

They also didn't envision a country where women could vote and black people weren't property. A country where you can travel from one coast to the other in 3 hours and communicate in a fraction of a second with someone on the other side of the planet.

I get if people have different views on how things should be handled. Just don't understand the whole forefather bit that gets thrown in. They are politicians from a completely different time. I wouldn't want a doctor to practice medicine in the vision of a doctor from that time. I wouldn't an 18th Century approach to our military. Why are so many people insistent on an 18th Century approach to running government?

1828

Attachment 4874

Um... what exactly do you think a parliamentary system of government is if its not a republic (btw, calling it "Constitutional Monarchy" is complete semantics of the royal has no real power)?

She should absolutely have been fired. Honestly HHS needed someone with tech experience in it and instead they went with a career politician and the results are showing.

Over the past few years there have been at least three deals on nominees and each time the GOP has broken the deal.

This.

The Democrats didn't come to this decision lightly. This isn't a knee jerk reaction. They know they'll feel the repercussions from this at some point, probably sooner than later. The average person thinks that this say "we can't work with the other side". In reality, this is saying "we no longer trust the other side".

Troy, step back from the keyboard and take a deep breath.

Everyone in this thread is agreeing with most of what you say. Probably most everyone you know in life would agree with much of what you say. I'm agreeing with much of what you say. For instance, you're right, we have no deals now. But why? Isn't JPhillip's post an indication of why there are no deals now? If this were a courtroom, both sides would be significantly liable. But it's not 50/50. It's more of the fist/bat/knife/gun analogy from Casino. The Republicans have decided to go full Nicky. You never go full Nicky. How are the Democrats supposed to respond in this case? If Obama can't get his nominees through and those seats stayed vacant until 2016, do you think the Republicans wouldn't immediately seek to stack the court? Isn't that more than a little bit of an attempt at election nullification?

You entirely go off the deep end when you infer that some mystery person somehow things that "one side is angelic" and the other "eats babies". Or when you say that they're "sub-human". Or that people "blindly blame one side". No one here has done that and when you keep spouting that junk, it makes you look irrational.

I think almost all of us are entirely disgusted with the whole damn lot of 'em. But as I said before, until you remove the money from the process, it won't be fixed. You could un-employ 535 members of Congress and the next one would be just as bad because they would be beholden to the say radicals who are pulling the purse-strings.

This has been building, I think that's the key. If we had a Republican President / Congress right now, everything would be flipped, with the Dems blocking everything, and Republicans going nuclear.

Politics in this country has certainly always been nasty, but I go back to the class warfare Clinton used in '92 as the start of this particular cycle (or maybe the whole Bush I "read my lips" fiasco - he cut a deal and got CRUCIFIED for it by the Dems). Each party has upped the ante each time they get a chance.

Um, while the Democrats certainly did make hay with Bush I's broken "read my lips" pledge, I seem to recall that many in his party were even more incensed. In fact, you can really trace the origins of Grover Norquist's insanity to that period.

And I was in D.C. when Clinton was inaugurated. From before Day One there was a machine revved up to discredit, tear down, and otherwise stop Clinton. Sure, he didn't help things with many of his actions, but also remember this is when guys like Rush Limbaugh finally came to the national stage.

But yeah - gotta have a tech person at the very top! :rolleyes:

I doubt that. This is being driven by the Tea Party, and there's no similar movement on the left with any representation amongst Democrats at the national level that would cause the same thing.

The Tea Party is no different than the extreme left - they just have a cute name.

Don't the Dems realize they're just standing up for Obama's right to appoint judges friendly to his electronic monitoring policies? :)

You are talking about cultural norms, I was talking about a system of government they had set up which is still very much active and relevant today. It is an economy of scale but there were and still are good reason not to have most of the power in the hands of the few as well as the power of executive and legislative all in the hands of one party. A majority party, in this country, does not get to become a dictatorship. It is still a government of the people allowing representatives to represent their constituent's and state's needs and interests.

Those on the left do not believe there any extremists on their end, esp. when they believe the most people to the right of them are extremists.

The difference is that the Democrats then were willing to cut deals in good faith. They were "rational actors" in the parlance of game theory.

The Republicans today are not "rational actors" at all. They're not willing to cut any deals. Their idea of a "deal" is the other side capitulating 100%. That's not a compromise.

There are extremists on the left. The thing is that they (Kucinich, Sanders) do not dominate party discourse and have the potential to call up primary challengers from the "extreme left" against any politician who doesn't toe the line. They've never been more than a handful, and have never exercised significant power. They don't have the $$$ behind them, or the ideological-purity fervor that the extreme right does.

Come on. The founders could have written a sixty vote threshold if they wanted one. The routine use of the filibuster was not something they expected.

The difference is power. The Tea Party currently has a lot of power within the GOP. When was the last time the extreme left had any power within the Democratic Party. They couldn't even get a vote of card check when the Dems had a supermajority.

And you would be wrong.

Isn't this where the bias comes in? From your perspective, trying to remove Clinton (or Obama) from office, either through election or impeachment, or just trying to "discredit and tear down" them is some terrible thing. But that's just because you like them. We had many years of calls for Bush's impeachment or arrest on war crimes, not to mention the comparisons to Hitler, and other more subtle attempts to discredit him at every turn. Bush hate become part of our culture in a way I don't think even Obama hate has reached. Even though Obama has continued Bush's national security policies, and even though we've learned a lot more about them, there's still nothing close to daily rage about it that we had it during the Bush years. People will give lip service to criticizing something about their guy or their party, the underlying loyalty never waivers, it's just about good and evil and what side you're on.

Which follows the theme championed by some Dems that anyone except them who succeeds either in elections, or through the government process in implementing or stopping policy is somehow illegitimate. Where the Dems lose elections to this tea party of wackos and such, it's never anything they did wrong, it's never maybe that they didn't do the best job of connecting with real concerns people had. They're just the default correct and any attempt to go against that is essentially, breaking the rules, or some kind of brainwashing or devious mind control over the electorate.

Edit: I've read a million times on this board that Republican voters, especially the poor ones, just aren't smart enough to realize that the Democrats want to help them and that they're essentially tricked into voting against their self-interest. I find that kind thinking to be a tad infuriating. The implication is that there's one correct way to vote or think in any election, and if you stray from that you're just not as smart as the other side. That kind of thing, along with how some members can look and talk down to people in rural areas who do crazy things like value gun rights is where the Dem party as a whole loses me, even though these days I agree with them far more than the Republicans on the issues. But I do think that a lot of those voters understand and resent the way they perceive the Dem party thinks of them, so they have a reason to fight for a candidate who will aggressively stand up for them and against the Dems. And I don't really have a problem with anything the Dems are doing in a practical sense right now, and agree that you can't try to be the moderate deal-maker when the other side is taking a more aggressive approach. But part of what has gotten us to this place is are the ideological us v. then mentality where the other side is seen as something evil and less then them, which we absolutely had in the Bush years. I used to think all the time back then, "won't it be interesting when the Dems are in power and actually have to back up this rhetoric that they have all the answers and the Republicans are evil." Well, it turns out the Dems couldn't fix the country the way they said they would, they can't even win elections against crazy tea partiers in some places.

Yeah, the Bush hate hasn't abated much.

Fuck George Bush and His Stupid Fucking Cat Paintings

Declared evil, a war criminal, and yes - compared to Hitler in the comments (they both painted!).

(In this case, I wonder how old the writer even is - she says she has a 10mo-old sibling, and from what I see she was an intern just a couple of years ago. Obviously she lived through the Bush years, but 9/11? Might have been pretty young. *shurg*)

You're naive if you think the Democrats would somehow play nicer if the roles were reversed today.

No, I don't think most people are disgusted with the whole damned lot of them, because if people were, they wouldn't be making excuses for their party while blasting the other one.

And if you think I'm for Republicans, you haven't read a damned thing. Would republicans try to stack the court? DUH!!! Of course they'd try to stack the court in their favor. And the dems would use the same blocking mechanisms the Republicans have.

For all the proof you need is how I wrote my post blasting both parties and immediately 4 or 5 people came out and said "NO, NO, NO, they all might be bad but the republicans are worse" (including you in this post)

I'm sorry you guys really believe it because it's 100% garbage. Both sides are out of their ever loving minds. Neither side debates or rules in good faith. They do it in sound bites. Obama "I won't talk about spending reductions until the government is opened up again" Republicans "You've been saying that for three years, you pushed Obamacare down our throats, we need to draw a line and demand you talk about this, even if you disagree with us" Obama "na, na, na, na, na, na I can't heeeaaarrrr you"

How many talks has Obama had about spending reductions since the government opened back up?: None. The fight was just put off for a few months where both sides hope to win the battle of the sound bites again. He hasn't even put out an olive branch and set a time for discussions. Why bother? He got his way, right? Should the republicans have tried something different? Of course they should have. Thousands of families were impacted by their decisions, but exactly where else could they put their foot down? Blocking judges maybe? Well, that's gone. So what else can they do? Tell me. Forget blaming anyone for a second and pretend you are a republican who would like spending cuts. What action hasn't been taken from you?

As long as people are married to their party and excuse their actions because "the other side is worse," we aren't going to see changes for this toxic environment. There is no excuse from either side about why we are where we are now. None.

Did we talk about this, btw:

Dow Jones Index Closes Above 16,000 For First Time : The Two-Way : NPR


Thanks Obama!

More government involvement? Yikes!

He's definitely the worst socialist in history.

He can't even be a socialist right! We can't trust him with anything! :mad:

The rhetoric about the economy just depends on whether someone is supporting their party, or attacking the other one. If they're supporting their party, the economy is great because of the stock market. If they're attacking conservative backed evil "wall street", the stock market only benefits the rich and there's no real jobs out there for ordinary Americans, and the un-employment rate is misleading. But I guess for now, since people are criticizing Obama, everything is rosy. If we make this discussion about corporations and wall street, then we'll be back to doom and gloom about how horrible everything is. Edit: But if Obama has managed to fix the economy, or at least the stock market, that certainly is good, so maybe Republican obstructionism isn't such an obstacle anyway.

It is nothing like a dictatorship. If a party obtains a lot of power it is because people elected them into office. There are plenty of checks and balances to avoid a consolation of power, and being able to vote out our representatives is the biggest of all.

The last three pages of this thread are filled with sanctimonious people standing on a soap box complaining about partisans, all while they are making blanket statements about large groups of people. The lack of self-awareness is hilarious.

The health industry is going through a transformation that requires expertise in technology. There are huge modernization programs in both Medicare and Medicaid taking place, and plenty more on the way. Not to mention Obamacare.

Sebelius was a terrible choice for a department that was going to be going through huge technological advances during her tenure.