US Government Shut Down - new elections for senate and house of rep.?

[tar]

 

Overtone,

 

Thanks for attempting to answer my questions. It points out to me, that your idealogy is just as blinding as the idealogy of a person that would say "keep government out of my Medicare".

 

Tell me exactly how one would go about having a banking system, without banks.

 

Tell me exactly how one would go about providing insurance, without an insurance company.

 

Tell me exactly how one would go about creating medicine without the drug companies.

 

Tell me exactly how power and money "should" be aquired, and what idealogy that power and money should serve.

 

I think we have already, as a country, developed banks, so we could have credit cards, and school loans, and buy houses and start businesses, and fund projects to build and maintain our infrastructure.

 

Our system is based on merit and effort, and the promise to repay already. There are good people in leadership positions, and subordinate positions, all over our nation, doing banking, and by the way, OUR bidding. They are creating something of value, to the rest of us. It allows each of us to have economic power, by borrowing it from someone else, who we intent to repay for the favor.

 

We can neither default on the loans we individually took, or default on the loans we took as a town, or a state, or a country. We can't default in a couple of days. We took loans we promised to repay.

But also we can not call the banking system evil, when we created it for our own purposes in the first place.

 

Regards, TAR2

[jduff]

 

Tea Party Utopia. Or more informatively, the US circa 1861, Spain circa 1936, Colombia circa 1964, Chile circa 1973, Afghanistan circa 1978, USSR circa 1990, Somalia circa 1991, - - - -

 

Forgot, Germany 1933 Reichstag! Wonder if Obama could follow Hindenburgs footsteps.

 

Also, a socialist's wet dream! http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-collects-millions-of-e-mail-address-books-globally/2013/10/14/8e58b5be-34f9-11e3-80c6-7e6dd8d22d8f_print.html

 

Talking about a police state!

Edited October 15, 2013 by jduff

[jduff]

So now there are two bills, one from the senate another from the house. Will either pass? Maybe our government can concede on both sides ad mix em up?

[CharonY]

 

 

Forgot, Germany 1933 Reichstag! Wonder if Obama could follow Hindenburgs footsteps.

 

Uh what? Dissolve the parliament and invest a chancellor with unlimited emergency powers?

[iNow]

The best way to get out of that problem is to grow your income if you are an individual or grow the economy if you are a government. <snip> I’m always amazed that growing the economy is no longer considered an option. It has worked well in the past.

Interestingly, that's YET ANOTHER area in which republicans have chosen to block progress and tie an anchor to our potential economic growth.

 

http://www.epi.org/blog/congressional-republicans-smothered-rapid-economic-recovery/

And more here from the Financial Times specific to the current tactics being used by the GOP to get what they want:

 

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/b61060ce-34f0-11e3-8148-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=intl&siteedition=intl&siteedition=intl#axzz2hchFYfLp

 

TWO MILLION JOBS, 1% OF GDP LOST TO REPUBLICAN BUDGET BRINKMANSHIP. ANY QUESTIONS?

And here:

 

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/15/the-gop-tax/

 

Macroeconomic Advisers has a new report out about the effects of bad fiscal policy since 2010 — that is, since the GOP takeover of the House. The way it’s written, however, might confuse some people. They say that combined effects of uncertainty in the bond market and cuts in discretionary spending have subtracted 1% from GDP growth. That’s not 1% off GDP — it’s the annualized rate of growth, so that we’re talking about almost 3% of GDP at this point; cumulatively, the losses come to around $700 billion of wasted economic potential. This is in the same ballpark as my own estimates.

 

And they also estimate that the current unemployment rate is 1.4 points higher than it would have been without those policies (a number consistent with almost 3% lower GDP); so, we’d have unemployment below 6% if not for these people.

 

Great work all around, guys.

So yeah... I'm all in favor in economic growth to help with our problems. Why aren't republicans?

Edited October 15, 2013 by iNow

[overtone]

Tell me exactly how one would go about having a banking system, without banks.

Who said anything about getting rid of banks? WTF are you talking about?

 

 

Tell me exactly how one would go about providing insurance, without an insurance company.

The term was "for profit" medical insurance company, a US obsession with a long track record of failure, throughout history and around the world, at providing good medical care to anyone not wealthy. If you want to see how the better medical care systems work, observe any of the thirty or so Western first world systems with better outcome stats and lower costs both. There are several different ways of setting things up - the most efficient and effective, by far, are the single payer systems run by governments with every citizen by default enrolled in the largest possible insurance pool for basic care.

 

 

 

Tell me exactly how one would go about creating medicine without the drug companies.

You have me confused with somebody else, maybe? Or are you just asking Fox questions to deflect the discussion from matters that cause you discomfort? My preferred route to creating medicines is publicly funded and openly published basic research licensed to private corporations for development and marketing, but that has nothing to do with any of my posts here.

 

 

 

Tell me exactly how power and money "should" be aquired, and what idealogy that power and money should serve.

In my opinion? We're just abandoning the thread topic for a stretch? Power should be acquired via temporary bestowment by one's fellow citizens through informed consensus and/or democratic political procedures. Money should be acquired by people via market exchange of created wealth within the political system that established the money itself, initially. Neither should serve any ideology - both should be regulated and governed for the common good, the common regarded as a compilation of the individuals rather than an entity in itself.

 

You ask cheap questions intended as accusations, but obviously do not pay attention to the answers. And you provide no answers of your own - just nonsensical rightwing talking points of no practical use, apparently motivated by uninformed frustration and ill-considered reactionary flailings.

 

 

 

There are good people in leadership positions, and subordinate positions, all over our nation, doing banking, and by the way, OUR bidding. They are creating something of value, to the rest of us.

So? They suffered with the rest of us, is all. That doesn't excuse the behavior of the not so good, the foolish, and the greedy, who crashed our economy and embezzled from our financial system and bankrupted our government and profited in the billions thereby. These people have not been removed from their positions of advantage, and they are still engaged in destruction and mismanagement for their own profit (check out Goldman Sachs as it attempts to take over the markets in aluminum and copper by controlling distribution hubs - something that was illegal for bankers, felony crime, until Phil Gramm and his Congressional pals finally managed to jam through that part of Reagan's agenda, in 1999. They had to impeach the President to do it, but give them credit - it got done.)

 

 

 

But also we can not call the banking system evil, when we created it for our own purposes in the first place

If you don't properly label the behaviors of the sociopaths and criminals and con artists who took power at the top of the US financial system in the 1980s,

 

financial freebooters who were step by step unleashed from all accountability by the actions of Congressional and Executive Republican politicians in the thirty years subsequent to the seating of Reagan's administration in 1981,

 

you will have given up on the basic principles, ethical and moral and simply practical, of democratic governance of an industrial economy ( or any sound governance at all, if like many of the Abrahamic faiths you don't really approve of democracy).

Edited October 15, 2013 by overtone

[Phi for All]

So now there are two bills, one from the senate another from the house. Will either pass? Maybe our government can concede on both sides ad mix em up?

 

Isn't that what House Republicans have wanted all along? To abuse the system and force a bargain they couldn't achieve legitimately? To get the Senate to cave in to economic terrorism and concede some hard-won goals? To block the Democrats ability to end the shutdown via traditional rules while lying about wanting a shutdown in the first place?

 

I know how you feel about the government in general, but I also know you think blame is spread evenly, and that's where I think you need to take a good hard look. Things may very well be as you describe them, with conspiracies and world domination in the offing, but in this particular instance, the one thing I'm pretty sure of is that allowing the Republicans to crap all over our Constitution while waving pocket versions of it over their heads is wrong and needs to be stopped immediately.

 

We DON'T know that the ACA is going to be bad (overall it's looking pretty good), and we DO know that this brain shutdown the Tea Party has engineered is bad. And we DO know that austerity just when we're starting to do better is also bad. How can anyone feel they're being conservative by supporting the Tea Party's radical speculations when we have history and tradition to support more sane choices?

[john5746]

Looks like the monkeys aren't going to be men, so I think either a few decent republicans and the democrats will force a vote in the house or Boehner will have to fall on the sword. Not sure which one is politically better for Boehner, which is all that is driving this mess at this point.

[iNow]

Looks like the monkeys aren't going to be men, so...

Shhh... Don't mention monkeys! They might get the idea to refuse to reopen government and address the debt ceiling until we agree to stop teaching evolution in biology class and introduce the stork theory of childbirth as an "alternative hypothesis!"

I think either a few decent republicans and the democrats will force a vote in the house or...

How can they do this, though, given the rules change they implemented on 9/30 a few hours before the shutdown began?

[overtone]

It's too late anyway, unless they can get a unanimous vote in the Senate for whatever Boehner allows through - the Senate takes at least a week to do anything that is contested, and Cruz is a Senator.

 

This is going to cost the country a fortune.

 

Maybe we can force secession on Texas, and load them with the bills for this amazing display of ineptitude on the way out.

Edited October 15, 2013 by overtone

[iNow]

I believe (hope??) that Cruz' election was more of an aberration than a trend: http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/79014-us-government-shut-down-new-elections-for-senate-and-house-of-rep/?p=770454

[Phi for All]

I believe (hope??) that Cruz' election was more of an aberration than a trend: http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/79014-us-government-shut-down-new-elections-for-senate-and-house-of-rep/?p=770454

 

I don't know. They've been working hard on "doublethink" ever since 1984, so now they can slip a Cruz into Congress pretty easily. When you hold two contradictory beliefs in your mind simultaneously, and accept both of them, then you get to tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, and you don't have to remember any fact that has become inconvenient.

[kindheart]

The way our government has been behaving is absolutely shameful. I still don't think we'll slide into default -- I don't think our "leaders" are that crazy -- but it's looking like we'll get dangerously close, and even the threat of not paying the nation's bills will harm the country's credit rating and cause the markets to take a hit. This is disgraceful, and voters need to wake up and push for change in 2014.

Edited October 16, 2013 by kindheart

[tar]

Overtone,

 

You are probably right, that I have confused you with a British socialist that was on the thread earlier. But it was your list of evil doers, that included Greenspan, that made me lump you in with Republican haters. My point was that you are not allowed to hate the power structure of the U.S. AND love the country they have put together. The military industrial complex is the exact same one that allows Clinton to use cruise missles, or W. or Obama. They are OUR cruise missles, in any case.

 

I stopped watching Fox years ago. I hate their spin. If I am saying anything that sounds like I am parroting FOX, it is accidental in nature, or reflects perhaps something sensible Fox might be arguing, since I consider myself a sensible fellow. I also dislike Gore, not because he wants to save the planet, but because he is aligned with the anti-zionists and the news organisation that raked U.S. policy, the CIA, and the U.S. military/industrial complex, over the coals, with talk of Bush's Warmongering, American Hegemony, and capitalist greed for oil.

 

I agree with almost everbody here that the tea party is using bad bad judgment and tactics, and cutting off their own nose to spite their face. But I will not allow wrongdoers in my party to define me or my intentions and opinions, nor will I stop expressing my opinions on what would be sensible and advisable to avoid doing, or to do, based on the fact that I am registered Republican. I campaigned for McGovern in New Hampshire, I have a college education, and am reasonably intelligent. Some of my best friends are democrat (including my Father, Step Mother, Aunt, Sister and departed Mother.) I like neither Bachman or Hillary, for different reasons. Excuse me for confusing you with someone else, but please allow me to have my own biases and dislikes, opinions, questions, and concerns without calling me a right wing fanatic.

 

I make this plea, because it appears that this all or nothing mentality is what is fueling the impass in Washington, causing everybody to completely disassociate with the other party, harden their stance on their own principles, and forget that we made this mess together, and it will take us getting back together, to clean it up.

 

The economy is a social thing. Confidence in each other, trust in each other, in the end is what makes it work. And people will not always do the most ethical moral thing. (for instance Enron, and those Louisiana folk who emptied the Wallmart shelves when they found their electronic debit cards had no credit limit). Neither example should cause us to doubt the humanity and goodness of the most of us. And the 90 percent of us that are not evil, criminal and unethical, should get together, and stay together, and talk out our differences of opinion.

 

Regards, TAR2

I think we might all have a little Erkle in us, enough perhaps to point to a mess and say humbly and timidly and apologetically "Did I do that?".

[overtone]

But it was your list of evil doers, that included Greenspan, that made me lump you in with Republican haters. My point was that you are not allowed to hate the power structure of the U.S. AND love the country they have put together.

I label as evil the people who are wrecking the US, destroying the country that other people put together, for their own profit and their own power and in their own delusions of entitlement, competence, and self-justification.

 

And of course that list is dominated by Republicans, because it is reality based rather than ideologically or theoretically balanced. When Alan Greenspan opened his yap and declared to the US Senate inquiry committee that he had been taken by surprise when amoral sociopaths and long con perps he had given free rein to had actually behaved in an amoral and sociopathic manner for their own profit - billions, literally, in personal profits - when he said he had expected self-sacrificing and humble rationality men whose entire lives had been devoted to untrammeled greed and ambition, I was shocked at what I took to be his naivety relative to his responsibility and reputation. When he then retired from his powerful oversight and regulatory role to a very lucrative (many millions in personal income) job as partner and consultant to those same men he had allowed to embezzle all that money and do all that damage, I was no longer shocked by his childish naivety, but came to a different assessment of events.

 

And Mr Greenspan is far from the worst the Republican Party has to offer on the national stage.

 

 

 

but please allow me to have my own biases and dislikes, opinions, questions, and concerns without calling me a right wing fanatic.

I'm calling you a Republican, and associating you with the kind of political thinking that lumps Michelle Bachmann and Hilary Clinton together, and thinks their Repuiblican Party is somehow different and separate from the Tea Party, adn populated with men of good sense.

 

You can't have voted for any Republican politician currently holding nation office and not have voted for irresponsible rightwing authoritarian extremism. The current ideology of the Republican Party has a name - it is called fascism. Its bad reputation is well earned. And you are a registered Republican.

 

 

 

If I am saying anything that sounds like I am parroting FOX, it is accidental in nature, or reflects perhaps something sensible Fox might be arguing, since I consider myself a sensible fellow.

Don't kid yourself - it's no accident that you parrot Fox, and it's not because anyone there has any sense, integrity, honor, or principles. Your opinion of your own good sense is not supported by the evidence. Did you vote for W? Take a good look - that's the evidence the rest of us are looking at, of Republican pretentions to being "sensible fellows". You can't say you weren't warned, weren't informed, had no way of knowing what that guy would do in office. We told you exactly what was going to happen, and why - it was on the front page of the Onion, for chrissake, he was campaigning in an Enron jet with Cheney at his side - and you "sensible fellows" bent over anyway. You were suckered, and most of you unbelievable dumbasses were suckered twice (we know this by the voting stats). And it looks like you will never face what you did to this country - not that I blame you, it's pretty bad - but you don't have to keep doing it, eh?

 

 

 

I also dislike Gore, not because he wants to save the planet, but because he is aligned with the anti-zionists and the news organisation that raked U.S. policy, the CIA, and the U.S. military/industrial complex, over the coals, with talk of Bush's Warmongering, American Hegemony, and capitalist greed for oil.

So basically you don't like Gore because he is right about some stuff youve been increasingly and obviously wrong about - because he says perfectly true and commonly understood things about warmongering and oil companies and Zionist behavior? Because he repeats Eisenhower's sensible Republican (back when there were some) warnings about the US military industrial complex, and aligns himself with news organizations that have decent track records of factual accuracy when dealing with US foreign policy?

 

I don't like Gore because he strikes me as a stuck up prig with authoritarian tendencies, but I don't pretend that makes him wrong about stuff.

 

 

 

I make this plea, because it appears that this all or nothing mentality is what is fueling the impass in Washington, causing everybody to completely disassociate with the other party, harden their stance on their own principles, and forget that we made this mess together, and it will take us getting back together, to clean it up.

We did not make this mess together. You and your pals made this mess, all on your own, in the face of our best efforts to stop you, and you and your pals are the biggest obstacle to cleaning it up.

 

It's long past time when you and your pals should have got the hell out of the way and let people who have a track record of political sense (rather than an unjustified self-assessment), and a demonstrated ability to see total failure and incompetence and venality and corruption and greed and ignorant vandalism when it's plastered all over the walls of New Orleans or growing like Topsy in the mushroom buildings of something called "Homeland Security", take a shot at cleaning this up. We'd ordinarily welcome the help, but you guys don't have a clue. Seriously.

Edited October 16, 2013 by overtone

[kindheart]

 

We told you exactly what was going to happen, and why - it was on the front page of the Onion, for chrissake, he was campaigning in an Enron jet with Cheney at his side - and you "sensible fellows" bent over anyway.

 

The Onion is a satirical newspaper -- its stories are comedic, not real.

[tar]

There are three registered democrats, two republicans, and an unaffiliated in my profile picture. I love them all, as I do my country. I associate with them all, bear responsibility for them all, and reap the benefit of their services to the country, their schools, their place of employment, and to the humanity they touch. I extend this feeling of kinship to all my countrymen, and give everybody the benefit of the doubt, and my trust and admiration and association, unless and 'til they fail to reciprocate.

[Phi for All]

The Onion is a satirical newspaper -- its stories are comedic, not real.

 

Not in hindsight.

[tar]

Overtone,

 

Wow. Talk about defining an unrealistic, impassable, dividing line, that separates those that are this county and those that wish to destroy it.

 

I am afraid you have to be mistaken.

 

You are forgetting that according to some right wing extremist Muslims, the U.S. is the great Satan.

 

That is every last living one of us, that is evil. If you believe in the American Way, you ARE Satan. If you don't believe in the American Way, but you live here, you STILL are Satan.

 

Forget it Overtone. I am neither as foolish, or evil, or stupid as you suggest(well maybe stupid, since I used the word neither, followed by three things). And your speech to me is hateful and scary, and got me a little riled.

 

I know I have enemies in this world. Like the ones that took down the twin towers. But you? I didn't expect YOU! (In the words of Monte Python "nobody expects the spanish inquisition".)

 

I think you should recount your friends and enemies, if little ole TAR is on your enemy list.

 

TAR

You sound to me like someone that would take a jet airplane ride to a global warming convention, and still consider you are blameless and the oil companies are your enemy.

If nothing else, I think we answered the thread question, and all now know why we have an impass in Washington. Because EVERYBODY is pigheaded and thinks they are not, and the other side of the aisle is trying to destroy the country.

Its been fun and instructive, but I think I'm about finished here. Its too damn depressing to see so many red minus boxes.

Edited October 16, 2013 by tar

[overtone]

 

 

Forget it Overtone. I am neither as foolish, or evil, or stupid as you suggest

I never suggesed you were evil. I simply pointed out that as a matter of recent and easily remembered historical fact you and your fellow registered Republicans bear full and undiluted responsibility for this mess, inclduing the hostility and the lack of cooperation, and blaming others for one's own mistakes is not the mark of a sensible person, or an admirable trait of a political Party.

 

And your speech to me is hateful and scary, and got me a little riled.

Good. You run around accusing other people and "both sides" of creating your unholy stinking messes, you talk as if you are entitled to cooperation and compromise and consideration of your "sensible" nature, you offer mutual forgiveness and mutual setting aside of grudges as if you and your Party had suffered some kind of wrongs and been abused by the intransigence of others, you set up this silly, offensive Hollywood movie version of reconciliation between mutually warring sides, you speak of "everybody" being pigheaded and so forth, and then you object ot being "riled" and reading "hateful" speeches.

 

Wash out your own mouth, quit talking to other people as if they shared blame for your faction's behavios and consequences (it's insulting and offensive to blame others for your misdeeds), grow up and apologize.

 

And then quit living in some kind of fantasy you get from lack of information and amnesia and childish irresponsibility. It's just been you, your Party, your faction, doing thsi stuff. It's not everybody, and hasn't been for a long time now. . The Republican Party is not OK, you haven't been OK for a couple of decades, and a lot of other people have been working their butts off in last ditch attempts to keep your vicious and ugly political faction from trashing the entire place. You claim to love this country? Sure, whatever - look around: you guys did this to it, on your own - what they call in tennis an unforced error. That was love, the aftermath of Katrina, the lies told by warmongers you re-elected, the elevating of Enron and Halliburton and Goldman Sachs, the gerrymandering and electoral fraud and pandering to ignorance and dogwhistling to bigotry and constant, continual, industrial strength dishonesty at high volume without letup? That was love, rigging the voting machines and slandering Acorn and defunding preschools and repealing the Fairness Doctrine and opening the National Parks to mining and drilling and the remaining aquifers to fracking and agribusiness drawdown,

 

with tax breaks all around for the 1%?

 

The pattern here is not love, but domestic abuse. You guys are the perps.

 

 

 

Wow. Talk about defining an unrealistic, impassable, dividing line, that separates those that are this county and those that wish to destroy it.

I am afraid you have to be mistaken.

Look at you try to move the frame - to those who "wish to destroy this country", vs those who "are this country". I don't care what you think you "wish" - I'm just keeping track of what you guys, registered Republicans, did and do. Destructive, much of it.

 

W, your beloved and reelected President, did more damage to this country in eight years than ten Al Qaidas could have done in twenty. And you want to talk about "everybody" assuming resposnibility for creating this mess, and all of us getting together in mutual cooperation?

[michel123456]

(....)

 

No, what it all needs is a default. That'll perhaps restrain the lenders to be more circumspect with their lending policy, and thus constrain relevant countries to adopt a sounder financial policy.

You can't be serious. You need to be instructed about what a default is. Some people will die.

It's too late anyway, unless they can get a unanimous vote in the Senate for whatever Boehner allows through - the Senate takes at least a week to do anything that is contested, and Cruz is a Senator.

 

This is going to cost the country a fortune.

 

Maybe we can force secession on Texas, and load them with the bills for this amazing display of ineptitude on the way out.

Proposal 11th. Secession of Texas.

The way our government has been behaving is absolutely shameful. I still don't think we'll slide into default -- I don't think our "leaders" are that crazy -- but it's looking like we'll get dangerously close, and even the threat of not paying the nation's bills will harm the country's credit rating and cause the markets to take a hit. This is disgraceful, and voters need to wake up and push for change in 2014.

I don't know what you have in mind saying "voters need to wake up and push for change in 2014".

But when the politicians get disgraced then the political system comes into question and it is very (very) dangerous for democracy. The only thing you (don't) need is the emergence of another kind of political "party" that will show up and say "clear all this mess".

That's what I have in my country and I don't wish that happen to you.

[john5746]

How can they do this, though, given the rules change they implemented on 9/30 a few hours before the shutdown began?

Guess I didn't understand that very well, I thought that they could still petition with a majority of the house and call a vote.

 

 

If nothing else, I think we answered the thread question, and all now know why we have an impass in Washington. Because EVERYBODY is pigheaded and thinks they are not, and the other side of the aisle is trying to destroy the country.

Its been fun and instructive, but I think I'm about finished here. Its too damn depressing to see so many red minus boxes.

Tar,

 

I was going to comment earlier that I think your posts in this thread probably mirror the majority of Americans in terms of fiscal policy. But, I think that's what Obama tried to do with his grand bargain back in 2011. Some cuts with some taxes.

 

I think iNow has presented some really good data in support for more spending and I guess this makes sense on the aggregate, but in practice I am very skeptical about throwing more money at the problem. So, I completely understand why people want to cutback. Pragmatically, I think that argument has been won, but its a question of how much and where.

 

I think I would prefer actual compromise, where we make some cuts(more emphasis on structural, long term) and get more revenue, instead of having a supermajority of Democrats. But with the current situation with the Republican party, I want them out of power as much as possible.

 

In terms of this shutdown, debt ceiling issue, it is the Republicans that are the problem. There is hate on both sides, but in terms of politics, the republican congress is fractured, with a significant portion who get rewarded for bad behaviour. The spoof of Miley Cyrus "we can't stop" is accurate. These guys will not stop, they will continue to shutdown and ask for concessions and act like 20 years olds with more money than sense. They will twerk and enjoy the feedback.

 

Hopefully, they will do a long range plan next time, but it will be even harder than this one.

 

Keep posting. Peace from the left.

[tar]

Overtone,

 

I really do think your reluctance to associate with ALL republicans, translates realistically into you not wanting to associate with anybody. Really. Do a recount. Put everybody that has done something bad or stupid, or iladvised or that had good intentions but things did not work out, on one side, and all those that are NOT human on the other, and you will be alone in the NOT human pile, by yourself.

 

Then take all the people that have done something good, solved a problem, built something, made a sacrifice, contributed to society, followed the rules, accepted reality, and dealt with it, and made it better for everybody else, took responsibility for their own lives and made this world a better place for themselves and their kids and you will find that more than 280,000,000 did it, regardless of the fact, that you know better than them how to do it properly.

 

Bulldinky Overtone. You are talking Bulldinky. You are the fantasy world dreamer. I am not destroying your dream. I am trying to make your reality work, by making my reality, that includes you, work.

 

Count up all your enemies and you will find, I am 100 percent sure, that they have built and are maintaining the reality you depend on to live.

 

And by the way. That goes for me as well, and everybody else. The world consists primarily of people other than oneself. And the most of us are doing the best we can, to do it right.

 

Regards, TAR2

[Phi for All]

I think I would prefer actual compromise, where we make some cuts(more emphasis on structural, long term) and get more revenue, instead of having a supermajority of Democrats. But with the current situation with the Republican party, I want them out of power as much as possible.

 

I'm not big on the idea of a supermajority, but in this case I think it's the best thing that could happen. Science could flourish once again! We could continue to undo the damage of the Bush years. We really need to put the teeth back in banking regulations without being blocked at every turn. We might actually see some value for our money when we're not spending as much to NOT work a program as we are to making it work. And all the while we watch for evidence that it's either working or not. I think it's pretty clear that what the current Republicans want is NOT working.

 

I really don't see how compromise is possible with the Republican party as it is. It's being led by lying, manipulative fanatics who've proven they can't be trusted to do their job and represent the will of the People over the will of the "special" people. Every time I think about the hypocrisy of PLANNING all the steps to shutting the country down, including blocking any chance that cooler, wiser heads may prevail, and then hand-over-heart lying about it, waving pocket Constitutions around while pissing on the spirit of the document, I feel the need to shower.

 

I miss Ike.

[iNow]

Proposal 11th. Secession of Texas.

Seriously, people. Please stop thinking this. Just because our idiot governor and some of our idiot legislators talk about Texas seceding from the US does not mean that me or my fellow residents in this massive state want the same thing. While I certainly wish the number were much higher, and that more people recognized the huge trade and protection and educational benefits we get from being a part of the US, at least 67% of Texans do NOT want to secede from the union, at that is a very strong majority, even though their voices are not the ones you always hear reported in the media.

 

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/01/clinton-could-win-texas.html

 

 

 

Guess I didn't understand that very well, I thought that they could still petition with a majority of the house and call a vote.

Unfortunately, no. That's what they changed about the house rules just hours/minutes before the shutdown began. More here: http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2013/10/14/house-gop-changed-rules-before-shutdown-to-prevent-senate-bill-from-easily-returning-to-house-floor/?hpt=po_c2

Edited October 16, 2013 by iNow