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The Republicans need to explain what they'll do differently versus the last time they were in power and caused the debt to skyrocket. Sometimes I get the feeling that Republicans like Reagan and Bush drove the debt so high specifically so Democrats can't create any new social programs because the government is broke :/ But that would be attributing malice where incompetence suffices...

I think it's an indication that Glenn Beck is really good at riling people up. At first I think there was a fringe of truly fiscally conservative libertarians who were genuinely upset at things like TARP taking place under a Republican president who was urging it on. But then came Glenn Beck, and the 9.12 Project, and the movement gained momentum but its original message was lost. What was left was a bunch of extremely partisan Republicans who loathe Democrats and hate the fact they're in power right now. A common trait seems to be they're not particularly informed and confused by what the government is and how it actually operates.

Fascinating analysis of liberal versus conservative tendencies of their userbase by the creators of the OkCupid dating site: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2010/03/30/the-democrats-are-doomed-or-how-a-big-tent-can-be-too-big/ OkCupid, if you're unfamiliar, matches users based on a large and open ended set of survey questions, trying to determine similarity between users and whether they'd be compatible. Their conclusions about political similarity, culled through anonymous statistical analysis of their userbase, is that liberals are a far more diverse group than conservatives, who are largely a monoculture: As you can see, conservatives of both stripes get along with each other better than liberals do with themselves, even on non-political issues. We calculate match percentage by posing a series of questions to our users. Matches were computed "political compass" style, weighing social/economic viewpoints and grouping people as liberal/conservative and libertarian/authoritarian. According to their analysis, conservative libertarians were much more likely to be in agreement with conservative authoritarians than liberaltarians were likely to be in agreement with liberal authoritarians. Several distributions of viewpoints are shown, correlating political positions with stances on particular issues. The results when comparing social conservatives to social liberals give the expected mirror image, but the results comparing economic conservatives to economic liberals are often, shall we say, asymmetrical: As the intro to the article states: Time and again in American politics, Republicans have voted as a unit to frustrate our disorganized Democratic majority. No matter what's on the table, a few Democrats will peel away from the party core; meanwhile, all Republicans will somehow manage to stay on-message. What do you think?

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-03-29-health-poll_N.htm I would fall into this group as well. I am not happy with the healthcare bill as passed, especially because it's more expensive than a bill that would've included a public option. I am certainly hoping the bill will be revised to include a public option and lower costs, however I'm worried that after the midterm elections the Democrats will no longer have the votes to pull this off, and I can only assume Republicans would continue to oppose a public option, even if it saves money.

What about He'brew, the Chosen Beer?

Subscribed posts seem hard to use, but maybe it's just me

Religion offers answers that things like science and secular humanism can't offer. Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where do we go when we die? I don't know. Neither science nor secular humanism provide answers to these questions which are satisfactory to your average person, and not knowing the answers to these questions is frustrating. Knowing you'll be reunited with loved ones after death is assuring, especially in times of loss and grief.

It's the topic of this thread. It's specifically on the Democrat and Republican parties. Nobody is forcing you to post. Furthermore, the now much maligned individual mandate was originally a Republican idea: http://www.wbur.org/npr/123670612 For Republicans, the idea of requiring every American to have health insurance is one of the most abhorrent provisions of the Democrats' health overhaul bills. "Congress has never crossed the line between regulating what people choose to do and ordering them to do it," said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT). "The difference between regulating and requiring is liberty." But Hatch's opposition is ironic, or some would say, politically motivated. The last time Congress debated a health overhaul, when Bill Clinton was president, Hatch and several other senators who now oppose the so-called individual mandate actually supported a bill that would have required it. In fact, says Len Nichols of the New America Foundation, the individual mandate was originally a Republican idea. "It was invented by Mark Pauly to give to George Bush Sr. back in the day, as a competition to the employer mandate focus of the Democrats at the time."

Read harder... the Democrats appropriated ideas from the Massachusetts legislation, but the Republicans claim they didn't. A few dozen more examples of Democrats appropriating Republican ideas and the Republicans washing their hands of them can be found on my original link: http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/a/m/americandad/2010/03/an-open-letter-to-conservative.php?ref=recdc I'm not sure why you're trying to pretend this isn't happening. Democrats are enacting Republican ideas into law, and Republicans oppose it.

You should really read this incredibly well-sourced article from the conservative Wall Street Journal on that matter: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704117304575138071192342664.html Unfortunately I'm guessing you didn't read it when I originally linked it and now it's blocked by their paywall.

Well, this is all a non-sequitur. The issue at hand is one of whether the Republicans care more about improving the country or winning political victories. You seem to have done a great job making the argument that the ideas behind the healthcare bill are Republican in origin. Now that the Democrats have passed these Republican ideas into law, the Republicans are up in arms... it's "armageddon!" When Democrats take Republican ideas and create a bill around them, that should be a prime opportunity for a bipartisan effort, not the partisan sh*tstorm we saw surrounding this bill.

http://www.gop.com/ The front page of the Republican web site now bears the image "FIRE PELOSI!" and all in all looks like the sort of web design you'd get for free from your cousin. (screenshot here for if it changes)

That legislation was also signed into law by Mitt Romney. Rather than actually creating a European-style social program, the Democrats passed legislation that originally came from Republican ideas. Ideas Republicans would subsequently wash their hands of... I've visited the the European country with a system closest to the proposed hybrid public option system, Switzerland. The Swiss aren't particularly happy with their system but say it's better than before. America didn't even get that. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I think it's more than a handful of examples at this point. The Republicans are routinely washing their hands of their own ideas then opposing them after their ideas are embraced by Democrats. It's sort of like bipartisanship, except usually when one party adopts the ideas of another the two can work together towards a common solution. That's not what's happening with the Republican party right now. The WSJ article I linked (the WSJ being a conservatively leaning source) goes into this in exhaustive detail on the issue of healthcare.

I think that's the de facto position, especially around here. I am making the audacious claim that one party is objectively worse than the other

They believed the healthcare bill was "armageddon". Right. Because the government providing healthcare is the same thing as the epic battle at the end of the world.

I just think they've sunk to a new low and it's damaging to the country. How or why that came about is a different matter entirely. It certainly doesn't excuse their behaviour.

the part of the earth that matters most to humans is the crust and the atmosphere. however these are made of comparatively little mass compared to the rest of the earth, which is largely unaffected by the happenings of its surface.

I thought you gave up arguing about the debt already That said I was much more opposed to this legislation until I read a summary of the CBO report. I am certainly not happy they tossed out the public option and ended up spending even more money. I would've preferred a cheaper bill that had a much more robust public system.

As far as I'm concerned, this speaks to the culture of hatred among many Republicans I was talking about earlier (citations for recent occurrences may be found in the list I linked) Aside from the issue of bribes, the others are personal, not political flaws. I've taken the stance (FLIP-FLOPPER!) that I no longer care about any politican's personal life. People's personal lives should be personal. QFT

I had a similar experience in Switzerland. Riding the SBB takes longer and is more expensive than flying. Same goes with the TGV had I taken that to Paris. Trains have the advantage of running more regularly and being available on shorter notice (i.e. you can generally show up to the train station and buy a ticket on the spot). There's also considerable overhead in flying. While the actual time you spend traveling is less, there's still all the overhead of check-in, security, boarding, retrieving your baggage, etc.

*shrug*

Not to derail this thread, but Obama announced a withdrawal timetable with a hard date of August 31, 2010. We'll see if that slips. That's all the Democrats asked for throughout the duration of the war and it was one of the first things Obama did after taking office.

Being the minority party means they should disavow their own ideas when the Democrats try to implement them? Seems like a golden opportunity for bipartisanship to me, but the Republicans would rather do a complete 180 and rub it in the Democrats' face.

And yes, this really goes to the heart of the issue. Much of this list is "flip-flopping" (as much as I hate to use this word), many of the cases being ideas which were originally Republican which the Democrats adopted and then the Republicans washed their hands of. It makes bipartisanship extremely difficult when the opposing party adopts your ideas and then you turn around and reject them.

No, my point is that there is a systemic problem with the Republican party. They care more about winning political victories against the Democrats than they do about improving the country. I do not think that the Democrats have this problem to nearly the same degree. Here's a Google Cache link to an extremely well sourced list of incidents, since the original link is having problems: http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:CkxaP-ujtRwJ:tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/a/m/americandad/2010/03/an-open-letter-to-conservative.php+an+open+letter+to+conservatives&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a