quote:Originally posted by Jon Boy: Did he not learn anything from the fallout of his "47 percent" video?
That keeping his financial backers happy is more important than anything else, obviously.
Sure, but what does is matter now? It's not like he's going to run again. Twice bitten thrice shy.
Habit?
Also, keep the people with power in your party happy, and you might get a political appointment a few years down the road.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Jon Boy: Did he not learn anything from the fallout of his "47 percent" video?
That keeping his financial backers happy is more important than anything else, obviously.
Sure, but what does is matter now? It's not like he's going to run again. Twice bitten thrice shy.
Habit?
Also, keep the people with power in your party happy, and you might get a political appointment a few years down the road.
I think that's the Randian class war narrative that the extreme pro-business wing of the Republican party is trying to push. I expect we'll see more of it coming, especially around the 2014 and 2016 elections.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
like i said, the only people who can save the party aren't at the rudder.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
quote: McCain skips Benghazi briefing, gets testy when questioned by CNN
Posted by CNN Senior Congressional Producer Ted Barrett
(CNN) - Most of the Republican members of a Senate committee investigating the terrorist attack at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, skipped an classified briefing by administration officials on the incident Wednesday, CNN has learned.
The missing lawmakers included Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who at the time of the top-secret briefing held a press conference in the Capitol to call for the creation of a Watergate-type special Congressional committee to investigate how and why the attack took place.
McCain, who has accused President Barack Obama of not telling the truth about the Benghazi attack, said that even though there are several committees involved in the probe, only a select committee could streamline the information flow and resolve the "many unanswered questions" about the tragedy.
When CNN approached McCain in a Capitol hallway Thursday morning, the senator refused to comment about why he missed the briefing, which was conducted by top diplomatic, military and counter-terrorism officials. Instead, McCain got testy when pressed to say why he wasn't there.
"I have no comment about my schedule and I'm not going to comment on how I spend my time to the media," McCain said.
Asked why he wouldn't comment, McCain grew agitated: "Because I have the right as a senator to have no comment and who the hell are you to tell me I can or not?”
When CNN noted that McCain had missed a key meeting on a subject the senator has been intensely upset about, McCain said, "I'm upset that you keep badgering me."
While McCain refused to shed light on why he didn't show, his spokesman Brian Rogers emailed CNN a short time later with an explanation. He blamed it on a "scheduling error" but wouldn't provide any more detail.
According to a Democratic aide on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, only three of the eight GOP members of the committee attended the two hour briefing that ran from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. ET. By contrast, seven of the nine Democratic members were there.
posted
I used to really like McCain up until the 2008 election. He struck me as a fairly reasonable guy who was willing to work with the other side. What happened to him? Or has he always been like this and it just took me a while to notice?
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged |
Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
From what I've read hes never really been graceful in defeat, when he lost in 2000 he 'reinvented' himself in 2001 and tended to support Democrats and reached across the aisle to cause the BushAdmin trouble, losing to Obama he's reversed.
IP: Logged |
posted
Interesting that Sen. McCain is proposing a new committee since in January he loses his spot on the armed services committee where he is currently the top-ranking member.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
man, this all has shades of .. the hell was his name again, kenneth starr? they are desperately angling for any sort of scandal to stick to obama and hoping that there's a new monica lewinsky waiting for them in the wings.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
To be fair, it's clear the administration was not forthcoming. I've been hearing that Patraeus indicated the CIA ommitted all mention of Al Qaeda from the original memo they sent the DOS. No explanation why yet.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
"The recently resigned spy chief explained that references to terrorist groups suspected of carrying out the violence were removed from the public explanation of what caused the attack so as not to tip off the groups that the U.S. intelligence community was on their trail, according to lawmakers who attended the private briefings. "
quote:Originally posted by Jon Boy: I used to really like McCain up until the 2008 election. He struck me as a fairly reasonable guy who was willing to work with the other side. What happened to him? Or has he always been like this and it just took me a while to notice?
posted
I thought he was fantastic in 2000. I was so dismayed when Bush greased him. But not enough to not vote red in 2000.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky:
quote:Originally posted by Jon Boy: I used to really like McCain up until the 2008 election. He struck me as a fairly reasonable guy who was willing to work with the other side. What happened to him? Or has he always been like this and it just took me a while to notice?
I feel your a little hard on McCain there, there's idealism and then there's the fact that the Spoiler Effect would've absolutely handed the Presidency to Al Gore; which would've been the preferred outcome for you?
IP: Logged |
posted
What's most interesting to me in that thread is the degree with which the idea of teaching ID in schools was coddled. I don't think suggesting that "only idiots" would support teaching it in public schools would get nearly that much heat these days. Though maybe I'm wrong.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: "The recently resigned spy chief explained that references to terrorist groups suspected of carrying out the violence were removed from the public explanation of what caused the attack so as not to tip off the groups that the U.S. intelligence community was on their trail, according to lawmakers who attended the private briefings. "
I read this later in the day after posting. But thanks. I think Fox News should run a retraction at this point.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I legitimately don't think that's an option for them; they legitimately have way too much invested in providing a narrative outlet for conspiracy theory/pending outrage at the obama administration.
At this point they serve psychological needs for an ideological demographic moreso than they are committed to any sort of unbiased journalistic integrity. Said demo is not interested in hearing "okay it looks like benghazigate is overblown," they are interested in having Fox News cater to the 'real news that the Liberal Media is hiding' and be invested in a huge scandal that confirms the applied image of Obama as a scandalous and impeachable failure.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
god that sounds so extreme and it sounds so full of hyperbole, but its not, it's just a business-based analysis of what fox news does.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
so i guess there's yet another israeli everything's-terrible crisis. what, is netanyahu up for re-election soon or what
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
The stories coming out are interesting depending on the source. Most of them focus on the Gazan rockets, and don't get me wrong, I think that's something worthy of concern, but Gazan injuries from the IDF Air Force strikes either get buried in the story or don't come up at all.
And the casualty count isn't even close to being equivalent. The IDF seems to have taken out all their public buildings, attacked their press buildings to kill their journalists (calling them fair game), and has already killed dozens of civilians.
They tell the civilians to get out of the way, but where is out of the way when bombs are dropping into the middle of neighborhoods and a million and a half civilians are living in the middle of a tiny warzone? There's nowhere to go, especially with IDF troops massed at the border.
I'm sympathetic, I'm more than sympathetic, to Israel's problem, I have a couple friends over there, but the response doesn't really seem proportional to the threat.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
ah! yup. yuuup. election coming up. all makes more sense now. the response is not proportional to an external threat, it's proportional to an internal opportunity to capitalize on yet another gaza conflict
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
"obama is putting the country on a path to complete ruin! god needs to cause complete ruin to the country to save us from obama!"
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
"obama is putting the country on a path to complete ruin! god needs to cause complete ruin to the country to save us from obama!"
Funny, I've thought for a long time now that complete ruin was the only way we'd actually solve ANY of our problems. Americans don't like to recognize a catastrophe is a catastrophe until it's already happened.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
"obama is putting the country on a path to complete ruin! god needs to cause complete ruin to the country to save us from obama!"
Funny, I've thought for a long time now that complete ruin was the only way we'd actually solve ANY of our problems. Americans don't like to recognize a catastrophe is a catastrophe until it's already happened.
People often don't change their behaviors even when those behaviors cause significant ruination.
I think the way we'll solve problems is by letting our bad ideas die (and in many cases this includes waiting for people with sufficiently entrenched bad ideas to physically die) and thereby making incremental progress towards improvement.
Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
A lot of our problems simply won't wait that long. We're already in the process of wrecking things, maybe not beyond repair, but to the point where digging ourselves out of the hole will be infinitely more painful than the pain caused by solving them now would be.
But we can't see it because the vast majority of people still have running water, power, cable TV, computer and iphones. So long as the trains run on time, people don't care about the crumbling foundation around the tracks.
They'll only start to notice when the train derails.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
at this point everyone here is only looking at it in terms of market effects. nobody cares about the moral issues, they just calculate how long hamas is going to fire rockets to prompt israel to bomb houses full of children and how long israel is going to bomb said houses and whether this is just agitation to test the system and call up reservists in plan to prod iran, everyone's like "don't care, sh*t's f*cked, watchin my money"
cooool huh
the world is such an awesome place
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I think that, rather than the Boston tea party, they have taken inspiration from the Mad Hatter's tea party.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
iirc they don't even really know what they're talking about in terms of the method by which they would hijack this election using the EC. it's a house quorum?
business as usual for the tea party and the constitution
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: iirc they don't even really know what they're talking about in terms of the method by which they would hijack this election using the EC. it's a house quorum?
That's correct. Haven't read the article but if they're talking about a two thirds quorum in the EC they're completely wrong. Doesn't exist.
Okay, read the article. Even at the bottom they apparently admit that they're just straight up wrong. Either way, I'm with Jindal on this one.
Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
One appreciable aspect of this story, aside from highlighting the profound stupidity and malice of some of the biggest Tea Party leadership, is that it can hopefully move us a step closer to dropping the idea that the leadership of the larger, more powerful Tea Party groups are anything like good, concerned citizens who simply disagree and rather treat them with the contempt and suspicion they've long earned.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm guessing that we're not too far away from really hacking down on the procedural filibuster, considering that it is the tool with which the republicans have managed to completely cripple congress and the intransigence is fairly damning at this point.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
We'll know soon. The Senate has the option to change the rule with a simple majority vote at the start of the next term, and many Democrats are pushing to have it revert back to its old format where Senators would have to actually stand and deliver instead of simply making every vote a 60 vote margin.
While senators could still theoretically halt the passage of any bill they want, it would be much more public, and they'd literally grind the Senate to a halt while doing so. Instead of simply putting the bill in a drawer, they'd have to hold the entire chamber hostage until the other side agreed to give up.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:and many Democrats are pushing to have it revert back to its old format where Senators would have to actually stand and deliver instead of simply making every vote a 60 vote margin.
posted
I just did a little reading. Apparently Harry Reid has said publicly that he, for certain, intends to change the filibuster rule to at the very least ban filibusters that stop bills from reaching the floor. He also is in favor of pushing to make Senators hold the floor and speak during an active filibuster.
A day or two ago he got into a nasty debate with Mitch McConnell on the Senate floor where McConnell basically accused him of trying to wield ultimate power in the Senate, while Reid dismissed it as nonsense, since at the end of the day the power of the filibuster is still intact.
Reid seems very serious about the change, and he has a lot of support within his own caucus. McConnell is trying to scare old timer Democrats into not voting for it, threatening the evils that will come when the GOP is back in power.
Many are also worried that it's poor timing with the fiscal cliff negotiations, but Reid seems hellbent on it, so we'll see. At the end of the day, it's rather uncertain what actual effect this would have on the Senate, but if the very least it does is to open the Senate up to more coverage of bills being discussed and filibustered, then I approve.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: A day or two ago he got into a nasty debate with Mitch McConnell on the Senate floor where McConnell basically accused him of trying to wield ultimate power in the Senate, while Reid dismissed it as nonsense, since at the end of the day the power of the filibuster is still intact.
quote:The specific changes Reid envisions aren’t particularly dramatic: He wants to be able to make the motion to debate a bill — but not the vote to pass it — immune to the filibuster; he wants the time it would take to break a filibuster to be shorter; and he wants whoever is filibustering to have to hold the floor of the Senate and talk. None of these changes would alter the basic reality of the modern U.S. Senate, which is that it takes 60 votes to get almost anything done. In my view, that means they wouldn’t do much to fix the Senate at all.
Nevertheless, McConnell is furious. But many of the arguments he was making on the floor Monday don’t hold up to even the barest scrutiny.
1. “What these Democrats have in mind is a fundamental change to the way the Senate operates.”
McConnell is referring to the Democrats’ proposal to change Senate rules with 51 votes rather than 67. But his outrage isn’t particularly convincing. As Senate whip, McConnell was a key player in the GOP’s 2005 effort to change the filibuster rules using — you guessed it — 51 votes. As he said at the time, “This is not the first time a minority of Senators has upset a Senate tradition or practice, and the current Senate majority intends to do what the majority in the Senate has often done–use its constitutional authority under article I, section 5, to reform Senate procedure by a simple majority vote.”
Now, Reid, at the time, was steadfastly opposed to changing the rules with 51 votes. He condemned the idea as “breaking the rules to change the rules.” So McConnell isn’t the Senate’s only inconsistent member on this point. But the fact is that McConnell was right the first time: The reason that Republicans believed they could change the rules with 51 votes in 2005 and Democrats believe they can do the same today is that they can.
2. “The minority voices the Senate was built to protect.”
Oh, enough of this old saw. The idea that you need a two-thirds vote to change the Senate rules doesn’t appear anywhere in the Constitution, and some scholars even think it’s unconstitutional. It comes from the 1975 deal in which the total votes needed to break a filibuster was lowered from two-thirds of the Senate to three-fifths. As for the filibuster itself, it didn’t emerge until decades after the founding of the Senate.
The American system of government was built to protect minority voices, but the Founding Fathers explicitly rejected designing the Congress around a supermajority requirement. In Federalist 22, Alexander Hamilton savaged the idea of a supermajority Congress, writing that “its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of government and to substitute the pleasure, caprice or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent or corrupt junta, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority.”
3. “Until now, you could say that protecting the rights of political minorities have always been a defining characteristic of the Senate. That’s why members of both parties have always defended it, whether they were in the majority or the minority.”
It’s flatly false that the Senate has always rejected efforts to weaken the power of the filibuster. Before 1917, for instance, there was no way to end a filibuster at all. The Senate thought that excessive, and so they created the cloture process. Before 1975, the majority needed a two-thirds supermajority of the Senate (or at least of the senators who were present) to break a filibuster. That was brought down to three-fifths. Both of these reforms, by the way, are far more significant than what the Democrats are proposing, which wouldn’t change the votes required to end the filibuster at all.
Meanwhile, it’s particularly rich for McConnell to say that both majorities and minorities consider the filibuster sacrosanct, as he himself was a ringleader in the effort to eliminate the minority’s ability to filibuster judicial nominees in 2005. “Even if one strongly disagrees with a nomination, the proper course of action is not to obstruct a potential judge through the filibuster but to vote against him or her,” he said at the time. “Unfortunately, this obstruction necessitates that we restore these norms and traditions, and that includes through the use of the so-called ‘constitutional option.’”
4. “If a bare majority can proceed to any bill it chose and once on that bill the majority leader, all by himself, can shut out all amendments that aren’t to his liking, then those who elected us to advocate for their views will have lost their voice in the legislative process.”
McConnell’s complaint that Reid often doesn’t allow amendments is legitimate, but unrelated to the rules changes under discussion. His complaint that Reid’s proposed changes to the filibuster will mean the minority “will have lost their voice” is, however, absurd.
Reid is basically proposing two things: First, no more filibusters on the motion to move to debate a bill. Second, if you want to filibuster a bill, you have to actually take the floor of the Senate and speak. Reid’s proposed changes might, in other words, end “quiet” filibusters, in which a bill is killed by a 60-vote challenge even though there’s no debate on a bill. But so long as the minority was willing to hold the floor of the Senate and, well, use its voice, it would have all the power it currently has to filibuster a bill.
5. “[Reid] preferred to write legislation in the confines of his room rather than in the public eye, as he did most famously with the drafting of Obamacare.”
After the Senate’s Health and Finance committees drafted versions of the Affordable Care Act, Reid did combine them in private before bringing them to the floor. But the idea that the law wasn’t written in the public eye is ridiculous. Both the committee processes were endless and, with the exception of Max Baucus’s sojourn into the “Gang of Six” process, quite open, and Reid’s effort to combine the bills mostly preserved the committees’ work. After the law came to the floor, there was both a long period of public debate and an extremely open amendment process — you can read the many, many amendments that got voted on here. As someone who had to cover that process and thus spent almost six solid months watching C-SPAN, I’ve little patience for those who suggest it was all conducted behind closed doors.
I want to be clear: Most every charge of hypocrisy that can be leveled at McConnell can also be leveled at Reid. And McConnell does have legitimate complaints, particularly when it comes to the ability to offer amendments. But the filibuster was not designed by the founding fathers, it has not been sacrosanct throughout the long history of the Senate, and its use today is not in any way comparable to its use 50 years ago. The biggest problem with McConnell’s statements wasn’t what he said so much as what he left out; namely, this graph, which shows the way the filibuster has gone from a rarely invoked minority protection to a constantly wielded supermajority requirement...
quote:In my view, that means they wouldn’t do much to fix the Senate at all.
The difference is that in order to kill a bill, the minority party would have to be on record as voting against it. That is huge for things like the "jobs" bill.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Yeah, they actually are forced to DISCUSS the bill, and if you want to filibuster, you can't just do it procedurally by having one person stand up, say "nope!" and shut down all discussion on the bill whatsoever.
it's big. it hits at one of the two cores of republican obstructionism in a big way.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
Lets hope the Democrats are even half as partisan as the GOP claims they are and this change goes through.
IP: Logged |
posted
Yeah, it's a completely broken rule. If this was a game, there'd have been a hotfix years ago.
I hope the media and Americans in general get behind this hard. It's not going to fix the deficit directly, but it's necessary if Congress is going to function again. We're going to need to make some tough choices, if every single one requires a 60 vote super majority in the Senate, then not enough can pass.
Neither both parties control one house, it's a good time to put this dog down.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I am curious how many Americans actually know the filibuster rule. Obviously this group is informed but when you think filibuster, don't most people think telephone book reading and jimmy Stewart and all that? I am just not sure people know the actual rules and that the current rules are an issue. This board seems more informed than average to me but I have birthers as coworkers so that seems a bit uh, les informed than average so I don't know what normal is.
Posts: 2223 | Registered: Mar 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
I don't know about the average American but the vast majority of people I spend time around have no idea and probably would not even recognize the word.
Posts: 1574 | Registered: May 2008
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
