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Holy shit. Jim Moran(D-VA) lays the smackdown on Bush and the GOP.
- Thread starter Incognito
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Baron Aloha
A Shining Example
Oh, come on Incognito. Who really cares about this stuff? Laura tore it up at the White House Press Correspondence Dinner. [/sarcasm]
I swear if I hear one more reporter talk about how great she is instead of reporting on the real issues facing this country I'm gonna be sick.
I swear if I hear one more reporter talk about how great she is instead of reporting on the real issues facing this country I'm gonna be sick.
bob_arctor
Tough_Smooth
JC10001 said:
I saw clips of that bullshit. The best quote was when she said something like "George's answer to everything is to cut it down with a chainsaw" to a scattering of laughs. I immediately thought of Iraq. Surprisingly, I didn't even crack a smile.
bob_arctor
Tough_Smooth
Incognito said:
Plus, how can anyone expect Dubya to better his "Those WMD's gotta be here somewhere!" joke? After something like that, you just drop the mic, throw your hands up, and walk away, Chris Rock-style.
Ninja Scooter
Member
If you fuckers MUST know, George W. has a vast Goosebumps collection that he reads every night.
Kudos to Jim Moron for saying what I would like to say, but it's a day late, and hundreds of billions of dollars short. Honestly, it's too fucking late to be stepping up to the plate. The game's over and the fans have all gone home. It's just time to lick the wounds and home these same mistakes never happen again. But since the opposition has all the spine of a jellyfish, that won't happen anytime soon. If it didn't suck so much, it would be hilarious watching the Dems flounder as they get absolutely railroaded by the Rep majority. 
PEACE.
PEACE.JC10001 said:
"The first lady's lines were written by Landon Parvin, a longtime Washington speechwriter who does jokes for Mr. Bush and who wrote both comedy and serious speeches for Ronald Reagan. More to the point, Mr. Parvin wrote the lyrics to "Secondhand Clothes," the song-and-dance routine that Nancy Reagan performed to the tune of "Secondhand Rose" at the 1982 Gridiron dinner in Washington.
...
In Mrs. Bush's case, playing off "Desperate Housewives" was a natural, even though Ms. Whitson said that Mrs. Bush had never actually seen the racy ABC hit show. Ms. Whitson said the first lady had heard about the characters and plot from the Bush twins, Jenna and Barbara, who are fans, and was planning to watch the entire first season on a DVD she has at home.
Ms. Whitson said Mr. Parvin sat down with the first lady some weeks ago to work out ideas. He then wrote a script and helped Mrs. Bush with her timing and delivery over several days of rehearsals, including one run-through shortly before the dinner. The first lady went on right after dessert, as Mr. Bush was at the lectern launching into the traditional presidential stand-up routine, in this case rehashing some of his worst jokes from the 2004 campaign."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/politics/02letter.html?
It may be too late for the opposition to undo most of the damage, but if they can curb these next three years from getting any worse, and maybe, just maybe, get around to restoring things a bit, I'll be content with that.
cubicle47b
Member
This guy is my new hero.
videogamer
Banned
Yeah it was all over the radio this morning. Then again, the music station I was listening to really really sucks at reporting news. It's like they take the first three sentences of some AP rough draft.JC10001 said:
WrathOfOtaibah
Banned
Ninja Scooter said:
I found that funny. Good one.
Why? He doesn't do shit anywhere he goes. He might as well stay at home.
Alcibiades
Member
lol, a Democrat criticizes Bush...
isn't that like their job...
it pales compared to the nasty dirt the Tories are throwing on Blair though...
isn't that like their job...
it pales compared to the nasty dirt the Tories are throwing on Blair though...
Wow, the latest salvo in the neverending tit for tat of American contemporary, domestic politics. Sounds exciting! A member of the oppositition party says something bad about the president? Who would`ve thunk it? I`m sure all the countries problems will now be solved because of this miraculous breakthrough!
bob_arctor
Tough_Smooth
Hournda said:
It's not even really bad, though. There are tons of people who claim loyalty to niether "side" that would say the very same thing, seeing as common sense still does exist.
Hournda said:
Did Incognito say that? I believe his exact wording was, "This is hilarious."
I like it when people don't even care about what was said in the topic. It's different when a republican says an unfounded statement like, "That John Kerry, well he's a flip-flopper!" As opposed to a Senator coming out and saying a bill that was just voted on is giving massive billion dollar tax breaks to mega corporations to fuck up our environment and screw over the people who truly need the money.
I wish some people would get some god damn compassion and start standing up for what's right.
bob_arctor
Tough_Smooth
Hournda said:
Who the fuck cares when the current ideas are borderline criminal? I mean, what are we saying here, we're all cool w/ this admin's current screwing over of pretty much everyone save their own interests because no one else can think of a better plan? Bah!
videogamer
Banned
Send whom? His kids? Community colleges get the vast majority of their funding from the state government. The larger universities tend to have more federal government funding. AFAIK, my school gets about 30% or so its funding from the state government. So yeah, back to the topic. If more people are sent to less expensive community colleges (which the federal government does not have to worry over as much), then student loans won't have to be given out as much.DJ Brannon said:
Kabuki Waq
Member
Hournda said:
so a bad idea is better than no idea?
wow. no bias at all in that piece, was there? "OMG BUSH IS BAD HES TEH SUXORZ!!1"
Incognito... enlighten me on some of the great ideas that the Dems have actually pushed for in Congress. I'm a fucking liberal myself, probably more liberal than most people here, but at the end of the day, people have to recognize that it's not the GOP doing this, it's the DNC failing miserably at its job of representing people. They've changed from a valid political organization to a get-together of former hippies who sit around and bemoan what Bush does without actually doing anything to legitimately oppose him. Instead of coming out and DEFENDING their stance on the filibuster and why they don't just need a 60 percent vote in senate, but the filibuster as well, they just sit and say the GOP is stupid. Get John Kerry and John Edwards and Hillary Clinton onto Meet the Press or the NYT and have them start submitting ideas!!! Christ. Don't just sit and say why Bush is wrong on social security. EVERYONE KNOWS THAT! Go out and try to submit something that works!
Incognito... enlighten me on some of the great ideas that the Dems have actually pushed for in Congress. I'm a fucking liberal myself, probably more liberal than most people here, but at the end of the day, people have to recognize that it's not the GOP doing this, it's the DNC failing miserably at its job of representing people. They've changed from a valid political organization to a get-together of former hippies who sit around and bemoan what Bush does without actually doing anything to legitimately oppose him. Instead of coming out and DEFENDING their stance on the filibuster and why they don't just need a 60 percent vote in senate, but the filibuster as well, they just sit and say the GOP is stupid. Get John Kerry and John Edwards and Hillary Clinton onto Meet the Press or the NYT and have them start submitting ideas!!! Christ. Don't just sit and say why Bush is wrong on social security. EVERYONE KNOWS THAT! Go out and try to submit something that works!
Bias? It was a personal statement from a Democratic Congressman. You only have "bias" when someone is claiming to be objective and is not...but I don't see anyone pretending to be objective here.whytemyke said:
Abso-fucking-lutely irrelevant, and I'm getting very sick of this particular talking point.
If someone is putting forth a bad idea, you don't need to have a good idea of your own in order to offer valid criticism of the bad idea...and your common sense experience ought to tell you that. For example, if you're working on math homework with someone else, you don't necessarily need to know how to solve the problem to be able to recognize a flaw in your partner's thinking. Yeah, you might not know how to solve the integral yourself, but you can still see where they screwed up the integration by parts formula.
I couldn't figure out where the hell your rambling diatrabe was headed, but the fact is that Democrats are not in a position to offer alternatives in several cases. In the case of judicial nominees, they cannot pick another judge -- all they can do is vote for or against a particular nominee picked by the Bush Administration. Since they don't have the votes to defeat a candidate, all they can do is this case is try to obstruct the process and bring out enough negative material to influence public opinion and thereby cause the Bush Administration to withdraw that person in favor of someone more palatable. As for Social Security, Bush himself has bounded the solution space to exclude a lot of possibilities.
Finally, your "former hippie" line is not cute.
Hopefully his plan also includes a way to change that worthless Associate's degree into a slightly less worthless Bachelor's degree. Community college ain't the answer since these days, Master's degrees are becoming more and more important. Comm. Colleges just don't offer an adequate education. PEACE.Hammy said:
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We're not talking about math here, and to assume that there is a simple right and wrong in politics is borderline naive. If you're going to go so far as to make a credible argument against one persons idea, then you have to have ideas of your own. I'm not going to start screaming and moaning about the horrors of capitalism unless I have a way to fix these horrors. Everyone knows that the Bush social security plan is bad. But if you want to defeat the plan then you must do more than sit around on talking points and whine about why its bad. You must give people an alternative. If there is no alternative, then there is no argument. If you've got an election involving only one candidate, it doesn't really matter how wrong he is, because if theres nobody else there to take the challenge, then there is no problem.
The fact is that Democrats are given the responsibility to field alternatives. Every scholar in America has an idea on different ways to amend the social security problem, and oftentimes you'll see them on any number of news sources doing so. I myself have even come up with ideas on amending this, and in that sense it is better than anything that the DNC has done. And in terms of the judiciary, they don't need to offer alternatives. It isn't their role to do so. Their role is to either approve or disapprove the nominee, and while the filibuster can be helpful, it most certainly was never intended to be a universal cockblock on all legislative matters. I'm not saying to get rid of the idea for the Cloture vote, which I fully believe in... I'm saying that if they want to end this filibuster shit, more power to them, just not to get rid of the idea behind the cloture vote needing a 3/5th majority to pass the legislation or nominee.
This is all neglecting the common fact that we live in a democratic republic, ruled rather indirectly by the mob, and to support the idea that the minority can block judicial appointments really is going against the will of the majority of Americans-- regardless of whether you agree with their opinions or not.
And I'm sorry for the hippie comment. Though I wonder if in this particular case had I referred to the right as their stereotypical insult/monnicker 'redneck' whether you'd have taken exception to that.
-jinx- said:
We're not talking about math here, and to assume that there is a simple right and wrong in politics is borderline naive. If you're going to go so far as to make a credible argument against one persons idea, then you have to have ideas of your own. I'm not going to start screaming and moaning about the horrors of capitalism unless I have a way to fix these horrors. Everyone knows that the Bush social security plan is bad. But if you want to defeat the plan then you must do more than sit around on talking points and whine about why its bad. You must give people an alternative. If there is no alternative, then there is no argument. If you've got an election involving only one candidate, it doesn't really matter how wrong he is, because if theres nobody else there to take the challenge, then there is no problem.
-jinx- said:
The fact is that Democrats are given the responsibility to field alternatives. Every scholar in America has an idea on different ways to amend the social security problem, and oftentimes you'll see them on any number of news sources doing so. I myself have even come up with ideas on amending this, and in that sense it is better than anything that the DNC has done. And in terms of the judiciary, they don't need to offer alternatives. It isn't their role to do so. Their role is to either approve or disapprove the nominee, and while the filibuster can be helpful, it most certainly was never intended to be a universal cockblock on all legislative matters. I'm not saying to get rid of the idea for the Cloture vote, which I fully believe in... I'm saying that if they want to end this filibuster shit, more power to them, just not to get rid of the idea behind the cloture vote needing a 3/5th majority to pass the legislation or nominee.
This is all neglecting the common fact that we live in a democratic republic, ruled rather indirectly by the mob, and to support the idea that the minority can block judicial appointments really is going against the will of the majority of Americans-- regardless of whether you agree with their opinions or not.
And I'm sorry for the hippie comment. Though I wonder if in this particular case had I referred to the right as their stereotypical insult/monnicker 'redneck' whether you'd have taken exception to that.
Cerebral Palsy
Banned
Ninja Scooter said:
Don't forget his finally complete collection of Nancy Drew, Girl Detective novels.
AB 101 said:
They aren't fighting Bush, though. He's a puppet--do you really think that Bush got the nomination over John McCain because he was some uber politician?
In any case, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney are the ones that are really running the show and they know what the hell they are doing. The weakness of the Democratic Party annoys me, but I can't completely blame them for having a hard time mounting an offensive against the current GOP.
Cerebral Palsy
Banned
whytemyke said:
You mean like our current SS system? Assuming our government kept their fucking hands out the piggy bank.
Incognito said:
Like what? If there's so many ideas, surely you can humor me and post some or a link to some, because I sure haven't seen any.
Cerebral Palsy said:
This is fine, and after seeing the numbers I certainly do believe that SS is set to last at least to the latter part of the estimates (2040, not 2017 as the GOP seems to be saying). However, that doesn't let the DNC off the hook for not doing anything about this. The only commercials talking about this that aren't sponsored by Bush are sponsored by the AARP. Why hasn't the DNC come out and actually started talking about this? Why don't I see Hilary Clinton and Joe Lieberman on Meet the Press talking about this? I'm not trying to say that the Bush plan is right, because it's atrocious (and some of the riders on the bill are awful, too... I think I read about one that gives credit companies to control when you declare bankruptcy). But this does need to be discussed, and the DNC is letting the GOP do all the talking from what I can see.
That's why I agree with whoever it is that said that the DNC is failing miserably as an opposition party.
I don't have time to respond to your entire post, but I have to disagree with you. You missed the point of the math analogy, so let me try again. Imagine this exchange between me and a friend:whytemyke said:
Him: "I'm bored and don't know how to spend my afternoon. Wait! I've got an idea. I think I'm going to spend my afternoon skydiving without a parachute."
Me: "Well, that's a really dumb idea. For one thing, you will almost certainly die."
Him: "Oh yeah, well, what should I do with my afternoon?"
Me: "I have no idea what you ought to do to make a good use of this afternoon, but I can guarantee that jumping out of a plane without a parachute is a bad idea.
Him: "Well, where are YOUR good ideas? All you ever do is criticize me. You suck at being an opposition friend!" <GOES OFF TO JUMP OUT OF THE PLANE>
Well, THAT conversation did a fuckload of good, didn't it?
whytemyke said:
Sure, try watching this: A video of John Kerry, arguably the most prominent Democrat there is right now, discussing his plan for fixing Social Security on your favorite show, Meet the Press, some three months ago.
http://www.johnkerry.com/video/console.php?video=013005_meetthepress
Just because your channel FoxNews tells you Democrats aren't stepping up the plate doesn't mean it's true.
whytemyke said:
Do you attempt to follow politics at all or are you just talking? I follow what I can, and even with the 10 minutes of each day I spend trying to catch up on politics, I've seen countless ideas, criticisms, and so forth concerning SS.
And I'll certainly disagree that you have to have a better alternative to point out flaws in a proposal -- you just have to know what you're talking about. Having an alternative is icing on the cake.
Incognito said:
OMG I DONT FOLLOW WUT EVRY DEMOCRAT SAYS SO I WATCH FOX LOLOL OMG!!!
What the fuck? Are you stupid or something? Because I disagree with your stupid, party-line toting opinion I automatically watch fox news? Well I'm sorry but I think Fox is just shit. It's just that I'm realistic enough to understand that the entire idea of party politics, in general, is fucking stupid, forcing people to dumb down their beliefs to fit within two broad party ideologies. And I'm sorry that you cannot separate personal opinion from party politics (Yeah, I know, pretty hard to imagine that somebody actually is a liberal and still criticizes themselves as well as everyone else, but alas, not everybody that studies American politics is a complete hypocrite) but just because I disagree with you doesn't mean that I'm some brain-dead moron sitting around watching Fox News. The reason I say Democrats aren't stepping up to the plate is because they aren't.
I saw this clip live on Meet the Press, and it was over three months old. Do you mean this is the only instance of a Democrat stepping up to the plate and saying something in the past three months? Because the fact that this is the only source you could come up with to rub in my face would prove the fact that I'm right... the DNC isn't doing shit to contest this. What, are they gonna wait another three months before they run damage control on the filibuster issue?
The real crime of this is that John Kerry did this three months ago, and you don't hear a single thing about this since. You have to dig around for facts about this kind of stuff, while every voter in the country that owns a TV set will probably be able to tell you what Bush thinks on the issue. What does this tell you about the DNC?
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And jinx, you're missing the point. When you're in the minority, and you're opposing the majority, the burden is on you to display why their opinion is wrong. The DNC is not doing so, or at the very least they're doing so poorly. In politics you have to prove why a particular idea is bad and then ideally offer an alternative. Take 9/11. For a response, if Bush said invade Afghanistan to get the people who did this, you can't just say that its a bad idea, otherwise you won't change anyones minds. You'd have to offer an alternative, otherwise you run the risk of letting things run its course and nothing getting done. Even if they just came out to say that we need to quit cutting taxes if we want to save our government programs, it's still an alternative that nobody is getting out there. If I'm Howard Dean, I do everything I can to get every representative I have on every local news network for their constituency doing interviews and telling them point blank why the Bush SS plan is piss poor and then saying that their alternative really is to stop the tax cuts and suffer through the taxes.
Another example is the energy situation. ANWR drilling may be a horrible idea, but what other ideas are there for solving the energy problem in the US? If you offer no alternative the average American will realize that basically your plan is to just choke on it.
Simply put, there's no debate going on. It's the GOP giving their ideas and the DNC just saying why the ideas won't work.
Incognito: I don't think a Democratic Senator saying these things about the GOP is a "holy shit" moment by any stretch of the imagination.
whytemyke:
The only time an opposition party has a responsibility for proposing an alternative bill is when they agree that there is a problem and that the best possible solution would be less effective if it were delayed. If, as in this case, a political party believes that a government program is doing fine, then I don't see how they can have any ethical duty to suggest changing that program.
On the political side, the DNC's been very effective. The poll numbers are decidedly against Bush, Democrats have been holding the party line, and Republican legislators are very wary about actively supporting this.
whytemyke:
The only time an opposition party has a responsibility for proposing an alternative bill is when they agree that there is a problem and that the best possible solution would be less effective if it were delayed. If, as in this case, a political party believes that a government program is doing fine, then I don't see how they can have any ethical duty to suggest changing that program.
On the political side, the DNC's been very effective. The poll numbers are decidedly against Bush, Democrats have been holding the party line, and Republican legislators are very wary about actively supporting this.
Mandark said:
It is when their private thoughts become public domain. Find me one Democratic Sen. or Rep. who's publically said this before? Sure, it's most likely common perception among the caucus, but it's just nice to see someone step before the cameras and spit out what everyone is thinking for a change.
As for the polls -- eh. The country, even though they view most Republican ideas as utter shit, still don't trust Democrats enough to provide them with election victories where they could be much more effective in the legislation process.
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