The Glade 4.0

Has it occurred to you that if you can't even get agreement among your own party, let alone even fractionally bipartisan support, perhaps it's not exactly legislation that should pass?

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Sure, but I don't find that critique particularly persuasive. The politics have far more effect than the substance at the margins.

She doesn't know where President Reagan when to college. I chuckled a bit.

Article

_________________
Hokanu
Duty is a magnificent blessing because it is the sign of trust from the universe.
END OF LINE.

She was a gimmick to try and win the women's vote. It failed, she's had her 15 minutes. Move on.

_________________
The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

I don't know where President Reagan went to college. So?

Yes, but do you pretend you do know and say he went to college in the wrong place in front of what is effectively a national audience?

She has to hie better researchers and speech writers or she might as well be Pat Paulsen for all the good campaigning is going to do her.

_________________
The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Or, instead of surrounding herself with experts for whom she will serve as a parrot, she could recognize she is entirely unqualified to do the job and stop trying.

_________________


It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Qualified? Hmm...let's see, who do we know that was elected as president with no executive experience...

At least Palin has experience in an executive position

_________________
In time, this too shall pass.

Nor have you made a claim to know. Likely you would have researched it and came up with the correct answer.
About 2 months prior to this she was in Washington, Illinois (about 10 minutes down the road from Eureka) talking about how Reagan went to college just down the road.

I care not a whit about her politics, but making this sort of mistake as a national figure is avoidable.

_________________
Hokanu
Duty is a magnificent blessing because it is the sign of trust from the universe.
END OF LINE.

Speaking of avoidable, making these sort of mistakes as a national figure shouldn't even require research:

Obama thinks there are 58 states, and a small town in Wisconsin is one of them. I chuckled a bit.

[youtube]zJKT8M5QnV8[/youtube]

_________________
"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Only if you're trying to pass things the majority of Americans don't really want. When you're trying to cram through unpopular legislation, it does get unrealistic and with good reason.

_________________
The Dude abides.

You're too politically savvy to actually think that, Screeling.

I would vote for her if she had the best chance of getting Obama out of office.

_________________
Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

1) Shifting goalposts
2) Irrelevant.

Your original point was that the Republicans have obstructed the Presidential agenda. You have now gone on to directly indicate that the Democratic party voting as a block is unrealistic and that the Republicans doing so is also unrealistic, i.e. that they cannot obstruct the agenda.

Thank you for proving my point: obstructing the Presidential agenda cannot mathematically be a one-party affair.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Vindicarre, I think the difference is that if I were to ask Obama how many states there are prior to that speech he would have said 50. If I asked Palin where her hero when to college I don't think she would know.
YMMV.

_________________
Hokanu
Duty is a magnificent blessing because it is the sign of trust from the universe.
END OF LINE.

Odd thing here is last election, it was all about Palin's, experience and how's she was unqualified, The only problem with that was, she wasn't running for president. She'd be doing the same type of things that Biden is doing now, things of little or no consequence.

_________________
History of the Condom
In 1272, the Muslim Arabs invented the condom, using a goat's lower intestine.
In 1873, the British somewhat refined the idea, by taking the intestine out of the goat first.

Strawman. (And kind of an unedifying observation anyway.)

Hokanu, my point was that you can find instances where people who give many, many speeches misspeak. It is what you choose to believe about them due to those instances which indicate your own existing biases. It appears to me that Palin's comment, in CA, about where Reagan went to college vindicated your pre-existing beliefs about her, while her comment about where Reagan went to college, in IL, did not - so you choose to highlight the instance that supports your conclusion rather than the instance that detracts from it.

_________________
"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Horseshit, RD.

Your original argument was essentially "if only the mean Republicans hadn't been blocking the way, Obama would keep all his promises." The fact remains that the Republicans literally cannot block anything, which you've given further support to by indicating a belief that parliamentary voting is unlikely to occur.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Dude, the only horseshit here is the stuff you're shoveling. Quote my original post on the subject and explain how your characterization of it is legit. Alternatively, feel free to review the thread and, upon realizing that you're conflating my comments with those of Aizle and Monte, retract and/or modify your critique.

There are currently 58 Democrats, 2 Independents, and 40 Republicans in the U.S. Senate, with the two Independents being Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman. By themselves, the Republicans are mathematical incapable of sustaining a true filibuster or blocking a motion to close debate. The latter is, perhaps, more important than the first because the media simply disregards all truth about procedural filibusters; that is, what the Democrats and media have taken to calling obstructionism is the Democrats failure to overcome certain procedural boundaries in the Senate.What obstructionist tactics? Anonymous holds? True filibusters? Procedural issues that would pass the Court's stared decisis standard? This is an empty assertion.Except, it is. Cloture motions require 60 votes, but actually legislative passage only requires a simple majority.

_________________

Let me show you:

I originally wrote, in response to Aizle blaming Republicans:


To which, in direct support of Aizle's comments and direct refutation of mine (thereby establishing your position in the thread as in agreement with Aizle's, you wrote:

[underline mine]

Now, in order to further the debate, I quoted your above response and said the following:



Which you didn't refute, and:



Which you did, by essentially stating that the assumptions therein (that either side would vote in parliamentary fashion, as a block) were unrealistic. As such, you demonstrated my point by inversion: if the Republicans cannot vote as a block, they cannot overcome legislation, considering they'd need (their # in the Senate) + 1 to do so, and (their # in the House) + (I don't remember) to do so. This means that, given your statement that they wouldn't vote as a block, they would need additional Democratic party support to stop any legislation. As such, they cannot truly obstruct anything by themselves.


Now you're trying to call strawman by attributing to you the position for which you originally defended Aizle. I'm sorry, but you don't get to proverbially file a "friend of the court" brief and then when you're proven wrong (by your own logic, nonetheless) go, "Well it isn't my stance, it just belongs to that other guy I was defending."

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I see. So, you assumed that I was arguing in support of Aizle's view of Obama's record, rather than simply pointing out a specific weakness in your argument, even though I made no reference whatsoever to Obama or Aizle and instead simply quoted and commented on your specific statement about the balance of power in Congress. Ok, I can see how that assumption was reasonable, but it was mistaken. I do partially agree with Aizle's position, but I wasn't commenting on it one way or the other in this thread. I was addressing your point about Congress, which is why I quoted and referred to it and it alone.

Anyway, setting aside the meta-argument, my substantive point was and is that assigning total responsibility for everything that happens in Congress to the Dems because it's "mathematically impossible" for the Reps to block legislation if the Dems all vote in unison is so unrealistic as to be analytically worthless. It's numerically correct but practically and politically irrelevant. The actual state of play in the Senate is: virtually all the Dems try to pass X, virtually all the Reps try to block X, and a handful of each swing back and forth. So, if you want to accurately capture that dynamic in a description, when the handful swings to the Dems' side, you say the Dems succeeded in passing X, with so-and-so crossing the aisle to join them, and when that handful swings to the Reps side, you say the Reps succeeded in blocking X, with so-and-so crossing the aisle to join them. Pretending near-total Republican opposition is irrelevant and success or failure is all on the Dems because they have a 60-member caucus is misleading at best.

Incidentally, this also applies to the "bipartisan" label pundits and politicians like to kick around. When the Dems claim a bill has "bipartisan" support because 1 or 2 Reps are willing to vote for it, or when the Reps claim there's "bipartisan" opposition because 1 or 2 Dems join them in opposing it, I think any reasonable and honest observer should call bullsh*t. Sure, such claims are "mathematically" correct, but they're still b.s. in a practical sense.

I would agree with you, except that it also the majority party that is driving the agenda, so I personally think that failure, while not all on the Dem's shoulders, is certainly theirs more than even. They have the ability to craft the agenda to garner wider support, but it appear their main goal is to include just enough to get the needed 1-2 Republicans to switch rather than come to a compromise. Of course, to some degree they keep sabotaging themselves because the far left and middle left are far enough apart, too much of a shift to get any of the middle republicans on board is too much for the far left.

Fair enough. You lose certain things utilizing text over real speech.

[underline mine]

Unfortunately, though, this point is still incorrect. It is called a supermajority for a reason. The Republican elements of the legislature literally cannot push legislation by virtue of mathematics, and they cannot block legislation for the same reason.

Let's look at basic methods by whichs something could be blocked:
In committee: The majority of the Democratic party is large enough that all committees of which I'm aware have Republicans significantly outnumbered, so nothing can be "held up in committee."
By a failure in the house: IIRC, the Republicans have 178 seats, the Democrats have 255. In order for the Republicans to be able to block anything by themselves, then, 68 Democrats would have to abstain.
By filibuster: The Republicans have 41 seats in the Senate, 1 more than necessary to keep and maintain a filibuster.
By a failure in the Senate: Again, the Republicans have only 41 seats, so 16 Democrats would have to abstain in order for the Republicans to block anything by themselves.

In other words, the only way the Republicans can block something unilaterally is through parliamentary voting against cessation of filibuster. You've stated twice now that you do not believe the assumption of parliamentary voting is realistic. As such, voting against cessation of filibuster would require Democratic party support.

In other words, stating that "[mean and nasty] Republican obstructionism is at fault" as Aizle did is equally fallacious to what you're saying, that, essentially, "near-total Republican opposition is relevant to whether measures pass or fail." As I've demonstrated above, this is absolutely untrue.

Being untrue, to continue to claim otherwise indicates, to me, a willful attempt to deceive.



I concur, but where are we to find reasonable and honest observers, given that I'm inferring you mean members of the 4th Estate when you say "observers."

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine