thegreekdog wrote:There is a rather large difference between "I'm voting for Obama/Democrats, the lesser of two evils" and consistently making posts about how great the Democratic Party is compared to the Republican Party. In the post above, you apparently think you do the former. In the past six months, you've done nothing but the latter. I think in the name 5 differences between Romney and Obama you named three. That should really tell you all you need to know about putting the Democrats on a pedestal.
Whoa, yeah that happened, but that's because in the last cycle of elections the Democrats were on the pedestal. Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Duckworth, etc....! The Repubs were the party of obstructionism and libertarianism. On this very site, in the past, I have espoused strong support for individual Republicans, and I even said I believed that Paul Ryan was an honest politician before he was named as Mitt Romney's running mate(I'm embarrassed). The deal is, if you want me to bitch and rant about a Democrat, then you're going to have to give me a reason to. And in the past several months, it's the Republicans who have been the party of Abortion Laws, Classroom Jesus, Gay-repellant chicken, and class warfare. The dems have only had to stand off to the side while the Repubs gave themselves bad press. Saxi couldn't understand because he's a senile person reading our posts in a second language, but that pew poll showed that most Americans use negative words to describe the Republican party while a new poll shows that
63% of Republicans polled believe that Republicans in Congress are out of touch. This is the current state of conservatism in this country, and it ain't my fault.
thegreekdog wrote:I've read (in the link provided in that other thread on gun control) that Walmart was offered certain business incentives associated with the deal. But let's say we haven't heard anything at all. If the vice president calls one of the biggest gun retailers in the United States in to discuss gun control and wants Walmart to stop stocking its shelves with an item that makes loads of money, do you think the vice president is going to say "We're going to f*ck your shit up if you don't come" and do you think that would even be effective? And even if the vice president said "We're going to f*ck your shit up if you don't come," that's also a form of rent-seeking. It intimates that the government has the power to take things away from Walmart that the company has received in the past. I know you're not that naive.
The government does have the power to take things away from Wal*Mart. If Obama wanted to he could send the National Guard to occupy Wal*Mart. But that would be extremely expensive and damaging to the country.
And even allowing that Wal*Mart will get "business incentives" (which is very vague) that still sounds like a compromise was reached to me. Each side got something in return.
thegreekdog wrote:Controlled is not the right word, I agree. Heavily influenced is the right phrase. I also agree that members of each party believe what they say, but only sometimes. As I indicated up to the 2012 election, I could only judge the president and Mitt Romeny by their actions. They were not very different from one another. For example, Romney clearly thought that state-paid-for health insurance was a good idea. He also did nothing in his state to restrict abortion and had commented in the past that he was pro-choice. And yet right before and right after his nomination he was in favor of repealing the Affordable Care Act and pro-life. Why do you think these types of things happen on a fairly regular basis?
I don't believe that they are regular, except in the highest offices. In this example Romney was trying to appeal to the batsh*t -crazy conservative base. But my understanding is that he didn't write the legislation form his state, rather that Democrats did that. If that's the case then even if he vetoed the bill, it would have been passed over his veto. So why not sign it and get some credit?
But you'll note that other Republican candidates like Herman Cain, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum stuck to their guns. Though obviously politicians are only people, and people can change their minds. Even Reagan raised taxes before he left office.
thegreekdog wrote:Because I don't think it's in the Democratic Party's best interest to end issue advertisements and other soft money from liberal-minded donors. You've pointed out on numerous occasions that the Republicans got a lot of leverage out of the Citizens United decision (and rightfully so). You've neglected to point out how much the Democrats got out of Citizens United. I've read reports that the Democrats raised more money from millionaires and billionaires than Republicans in the last election. Why would the Democrats want to change that?
Maybe individual Democrats did, I don't know. I do know that most of the money that Obama raised came from individual donors, while more of Romney money came from wealthy donors. The numbers were something like 55% small donations vs 25% small donations. But the answer is that not every politician is morally corrupt just because they are a politician. And there is also lot of pressure from registered Democrats to end it.
Now if we flip back to the individual donors, as you government-haters would, you'll see clearly that if citizen's united was repealed before the last election, that would have helped the Democrats more than it would have hurt them.
thegreekdog wrote:The NRA is only as influential as its message. The NRA is not a politician, although it can donate to politicians and run issue ads. The members of Congress and the president are the people that can control gun control (ew). And as I indicated previously, now is the best time, publicly, to get more effective gun control passed. Instead I'm looking at Assault Weapons Ban Version 2.0 that was largely ineffective at solving any gun violence problems. Instead I'm looking at total ignorance with respect to the real gun killer, illegal hand guns, that are by-and-large the biggest source of violence against blacks in this country. Is this the NRA? I would say no. The NRA (and its corporate donors) are concerned with the assault weapons ban because it means the gun manufacturers have to find new ways to make money by remodeling the same guns. There are no serious Democrats talking about handgun control, even though the NRA doesn't influence Democrats (for the most part) and certainly doesn't influence the president. So why?
I'm not sure, and I can't tell you how disappointing this is. I think that the Administration believes that their executive orders for requiring all gun sales to be recorded and for mandatory background checks 100% of the time is going to negate the need to ban new manufacture of hand guns. But this is only a hypothesis because I've found no statements to that effect. It does follow logic though, even if I'm not convinced. The new Assault Rifle Ban is looking stupid, I agree, but lets not forget the Executive Orders that come with it.
thegreekdog wrote:I don't agree that the Affordable Care Act will do more good than harm, but that's not the debate. The debate is whether there was a compromise in the first place. When the Affordable Care Act was passed, the Democrats controlled Congress and the presidency. For the most part, up until that point, the Democratic Party favored government-run healthcare. Instead we got government paid-for health insurance. Why the change? Why did a whole swath of Democrats, including the president, change their minds? Compromise? I don't think so. Campaign donations and soft money? Yes.
That's a conspiracy theory. Politics are actually more complicated than that.
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/83153 ... ikely-dead& also Jan Schakowsky has kept the discussion of the public option alive in the Democratic Party.
thegreekdog wrote:So the issue between you and I becomes one of reality, I think.
I dunno why you think we were on different sides there, or what "reality" meant when the president's actual gun plan hadn't even been released yet. Now that it has been released, I'm lukewarm to it. It could work, but I dunno.
And you saw the Jon Stewart video, Congress has been right-steadily eroding the Executive's power since the 1970s, by adding little rules into the back of unrelated laws. Like the one that says "ATF cannot track firearms." Because of all this unconstitutional bullsh*t, the president had to write new Executive Orders to enforce the laws that were already on the books. It's stupid and silly. But I also realize that there will always be this power struggle. That's the way our government was designed. That's reality to me.