The whole point of 9/11 and all the associated terrorists threats and attacks is to cause the country to panic and persecute Muslims, which would help the terrorists recruitment efforts. What the terrorists want is targeted government efforts against Muslims. The fact that we have refused to play along and have targeted everyone has made it harder for them to get what they want here.
So we trade Islamic masters for neocon spooks? Is liberty no longer of any value?
Dude, there's no way you're going to get me to agree that an authoritarian state is for my own good.
CJ I think both you and Anklebiter are both very special. In case either of you cares.
The fact that we have refused to play along and have targeted everyone has made it harder for them to get what they want here.
Not sure I buy this because of a) invasion of Afghanistan; b) invasion of Iraq; etc., etc.
The fact that Filibuster comes from the dutch word for pirates should tell you all you need to know about it as a political tactic.Vrijbuiter =/= pirate.
Fine, it's more of a privateer, same difference.
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The invasion of Iraq overthrew a secular dictator that most Muslims hated. The invasion of Afghanistan is... crazy maybe?The fact that we have refused to play along and have targeted everyone has made it harder for them to get what they want here.Not sure I buy this because of a) invasion of Afghanistan; b) invasion of Iraq; etc., etc.
**twitch**
um ok So I want to make sure I understand your point. Your saying that it was right to attack a country for with provocation because no one liked the guy in charge? To lie and make up excuses why we went in the first place? But it was wrong to retaliate against those who actively attacked us? Or am I perhaps reading that wrong?
I think you're reading it wrong, CJ.
I think the argument is that attacking Iraq did not play into al-Qaeda's hands because it took out the secular regime of Hussein.
EDIT: Never mind.
FURTHER EDIT: I think that the war in Iraq was a HUGE propaganda victory for Islamic fundamentalism and must have led to a couple of recruitments over the years.
But we've gone pretty far from filibustering and gay marriage. Why? Because threads that stay on topic suck!
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The invasion of Iraq overthrew a secular dictator that most Muslims hated. The invasion of Afghanistan is... crazy maybe?The fact that we have refused to play along and have targeted everyone has made it harder for them to get what they want here.Not sure I buy this because of a) invasion of Afghanistan; b) invasion of Iraq; etc., etc.**twitch**
um ok So I want to make sure I understand your point. Your saying that it was right to attack a country for with provocation because no one liked the guy in charge? To lie and make up excuses why we went in the first place? But it was wrong to retaliate against those who actively attacked us? Or am I perhaps reading that wrong?
I didn't put a value judgement on either war. I was talking specifically in the context of our governments actions in helping along the radicalization of Muslims. I'll stand by my belief that the war in Iraq wasn't bad for that while the one in Afghanistan was.
I'll argue with you about my feelings on if we "should" have gone to war in Iraq if you want to necro the thread about it.
No I'm good, I hid that thread for a reason. I do not need an brain hemorrhage.
So let me ask this instead. Is it better to do the wrong thing, but for the right reason than it is to do the right thing, yet for the wrong reasons?
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FURTHER EDIT: I think that the war in Iraq was a HUGE propaganda victory for Islamic fundamentalism and must have led to a couple of recruitments over the years.
But we've gone pretty far from filibustering and gay marriage. Why? Because threads that stay on topic suck!
Yes, well I shall not get much into that debate, other than I think filibustering has been used many times by both sides and what is good for the goose is good for the gander.
Just because a minority is preventing bills that you like doesn't mean their aren't minorities stopping bills you hate.
Doesn't matter if I hate the bill or not. THey should have no right. Period.
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I also think that Mama Kelsey has learned nothing from her past experiences in starting threads expressing her disappointment re: the American political scene and gay marriage.
On the one hand, I haven't seen CJ in awhile (hi!), so, I don't mind, but otoh, maybe Mama Kelsey, in the future you should consider posting your cries de couer (sp?) in a more supportive, friendly atmosphere, like, say, the FAWTL Refugees thread?
Unless you want to grar. 'Cuz I can grar all day long!
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Just because a minority is preventing bills that you like doesn't mean their aren't minorities stopping bills you hate.Doesn't matter if I hate the bill or not. THey should have no right. Period.
Yet they do, and the system was set up that way for a reason. deal with it or run for congress and change it.
I also think that Mama Kelsey has learned nothing from her past experiences in starting threads expressing her disappointment re: the American political scene and gay marriage.
On the one hand, I haven't seen CJ in awhile (hi!), so, I don't mind, but otoh, maybe Mama Kelsey, in the future you should consider posting your cries de couer (sp?) in a more supportive, friendly atmosphere, like, say, the FAWTL Refugees thread?
Unless you want to grar. 'Cuz I can grar all day long!
I am in the mood to debate (Read: royally pissed off), yes.
Grar!
Vive le Galt!
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Giraffes do it in the street!
0.o
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There's no such thing as freedom from religion.
It's freedom of religion to practice or not practice as you wish, not to levy one person's rights to vote their conscience over another's.
Yep, and I live in NC and just had a whole lot of religious nuts force their beliefs down my throat yesterday. I don't buy this "protecting marriage" crap; if they were serious about that stance, they would focus their attentions to banning divorce (which is really the only threat to marriage since, by definition it ends marriages), but I will wager that will never happen (and actually hope it does not happen).
0.o
It's an inside joke. Never mind.
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Just because a majority says that something should be done this way does not always make it right. Same thing with the minority. A filibuster is a legal weapon used BY BOTH SIDES and it is in the system for a reason. Can it be abused? YES!!! So can anything else that is in the legal system. If you do not like it, then either vote in someone that supports your views or run for government and change it yourself. ~shrugs~ Nothing in life is perfect. I would much rather have the filibuster rule in there so when it is needed to stop something that is detrimental, then it is there, than not have it there and let something go through that could have been prevented. Also, just remember, government is run by PEOPLE. Inperfect, flawed, opionionated, foolish, ignorant people. The problem is that you want PEOPLE to change and they will not.
Just because a majority says that something should be done this way does not always make it right. Same thing with the minority. A filibuster is a legal weapon used BY BOTH SIDES and it is in the system for a reason. Can it be abused? YES!!! So can anything else that is in the legal system. If you do not like it, then either vote in someone that supports your views or run for government and change it yourself. ~shrugs~ Nothing in life is perfect. I would much rather have the filibuster rule in there so when it is needed to stop something that is detrimental, then it is there, than not have it there and let something go through that could have been prevented. Also, just remember, government is run by PEOPLE. Imperfect, flawed, opinionated, foolish, ignorant people. The problem is that you want PEOPLE to change and they will not.
Well said.
Well, they might not.
Remember how the democrats reacted to the proposed public union changes in Wisconsin? They left the state and refused to vote.
Was that better or worse?
I think I can speak to this.
I wish we had better filibuster rules.I think filibusters have an important place in the legislative process. That said, I think it is being continually abused. I think it ought to be easier to break a filibuster, however, but that once busted the topic debated merely requires a greater majority to pass. So something that requires a basic majority vote might require 60% to pass instead.
In Wisconsin it was their only recourse, and they only left the state when the Governor threatened to have them hauled in, using the State Police as his personal tool, and force a quorum. None of them wanted to do what they did, but lacking any filibuster power that's the option they were left with.
And when they returned they were greeted by a crowd of about 100,000 people cheering.
This is a by-product of the electoral process. If there weren't enough elected officials to uphold that point of view to use the filibuster, than the electorate had spoken. That is how the system works, is it not? If a position is unpopular, and representatives that hold that view are defeated, then that position is not whats wanted by the people.
This is a by-product of the electoral process. If there weren't enough elected officials to uphold that point of view to use the filibuster, than the electorate had spoken. That is how the system works, is it not? If a position is unpopular, and representatives that hold that view are defeated, then that position is not whats wanted by the people.
I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at here.
I think a lot of the problem, again, stems from the binary 2-party system that just sort of antagonize one another. The de-facto positions of both parties are designed to appeal to as many people as possible, and when there are two (and only two) ginormous political machines in place trying to vie for those voters the country is split evenly. Thus congress, or other bodies of legislation, are pretty evenly split and the situation self-perpetuates.The question then becomes what's an appropriate majority to change or enact laws that affect all citizens?
As far as the Wisconsin situation, they HAD been filibustering. All of the Republicans had basically conspired to break the filibuster, which requires a vote to end the session. The vote was called, all Republicans said "aye", and the vote was carried--all within about 3 seconds leaving the Democrats utterly baffled, none of whom had been allowed to vote, and unaware of what was happening. Damned dirty trick, if you ask me.
So...
The Deomocrats used the rules in place (aside from the dereliction of their duty) to not vote, and the Republicans used them to succeed, which did not allow them to vote, and they are pissed? A trick, no dirtier than leaving to prevent a vote, which is not in the rules. A trick which would have not been necessary had the Democrats stayed and done their job. Sometimes what you want can't pass. You don't take your ball and go home, you do your job, vote the position you were elected for, and rally more constituents to your cause for the next election.
My point was, if the people of Wisconsin were so in favor of the public unions, then enough representatives to harm them would not have been elected, and the majority would have been with those in favor of them.
This is how a representative democracy is supposed to work.
And yes, I'm just as disgusted when Rebublicans walk out.
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Is the system broken?
Dick Luger seems to think so. And I'm not sure I disagree.
Of particular interest:
"Unfortunately, we have an increasing number of legislators in both parties who have adopted an unrelenting partisan viewpoint."
or how about:
"Our political system is losing its ability to even explore alternatives."
Remember, kids, compromise is bad, mmmmkay?
The philibuster has come in handy when the other side has needed it to.
I don't think i want to see a 51% majority passing everything they want. The filibuster in theory forces comprimise.
The filibuster in theory forces comprimise.
Maybe in theory. In practice, it seems to force gridlock. :(
"Unfortunately, we have an increasing number of legislators in both parties who have adopted an unrelenting partisan viewpoint"
That's not true. Partisanship, and in fact pretty extreme partisanship, has been a fact of life for the entire history of the nation. If the system is broken because of that, then it was built broken.
I wouldn't agree with the former since partisanship is inherent in having meaningful politics, but have no trouble admitting the latter. We live in the worst pre-alpha release of a government for a sorta-free society. I'd say it's like using the mechanical and electric punch card tabulators from the 1890 census to play the latest FPS with all the settings maxed out, but that's understating the problem. We're trying to do it on an abacus with half the beads missing and a generous collection of imaginary beads that we're just hallucinating but insist on counting anyway.
That might be a forgivable mistake two centuries ago, but the system had obvious showstopper bugs demonstrated as early as 1812.
So...
The Deomocrats used the rules in place (aside from the dereliction of their duty) to not vote, and the Republicans used them to succeed, which did not allow them to vote, and they are pissed? A trick, no dirtier than leaving to prevent a vote, which is not in the rules. A trick which would have not been necessary had the Democrats stayed and done their job. Sometimes what you want can't pass. You don't take your ball and go home, you do your job, vote the position you were elected for, and rally more constituents to your cause for the next election.
I don't think you understand the situation.
The Democrats were all in the room when the "vote" was passed, waiting for their turn to filibuster. The Republicans conspired to circumvent normal floor rules and voting procedure, denying people who disagreed with them the ability to vote. That's blatantly undemocratic.You say "trick which would not have been necessary had the Democrats stayed and done their job." The Democrats WERE doing their job, filibustering the bill. It was only after their ability to filibuster was, basically illegally, taken away that some of them (not all, only 14) fled the state, to prevent a quorum being present in the next day's session. Largely because they feared the Republicans would pull the same sort of trick again. In other words, it was this dirty trick which forced their hand.
Weren't you, upthread, defending the ability for a minority to filibuster? What's the point if the majority can just, illegally, ignore the filibuster and keep going? From what it appears, some Republicans even voted Nay to the vote to end debate, meaning that if the 28 Democrats that were denied a vote had voted, it likely would not have passed. So we're not even necessarily talking about the tyranny of a slight majority, but of a minority.
Basicly illegally. What did the courts say?
Yes I'm defending the ability to filibuster. It's a useful tool for the minority to use.
To be honest I had remembered things out of order, apparently. I thought they had fled, then when they returned with just enough for a quorum, the Repubs steam-rolled them.
My point was, if the people of Wisconsin were so in favor of the public unions, then enough representatives to harm them would not have been elected, and the majority would have been with those in favor of them.
This is how a representative democracy is supposed to work.
...and yet clearly doesn't.
In fact, I'd actually question whether that is strictly how it is supposed to work, but I don't think I'm the best person to have that conversation.
The filibuster in theory forces comprimise.Maybe in theory. In practice, it seems to force gridlock. :(
In practice it seems that the republicans get what they want all the time as either the majority or minority party, because they fall into one cohesive unit and act as one, whereas the democrats collectively have the spine of a school of jellyfish.
They're also masters of manipulating the golden mean fallacy. If democrats want to put no rocks on top of the mountain, and republicans want to put 10,000 rocks on top of a mountain, the democrats will budge and put 5,000 rocks. The republicans simply ask for 20,000 rocks on top to start with. Making your own position deliberately extreme forces the compromise happy democrats into doing what you want.
My point was, if the people of Wisconsin were so in favor of the public unions, then enough representatives to harm them would not have been elected, and the majority would have been with those in favor of them.
This is how a representative democracy is supposed to work.
This isn't actually the case, however, since none of the voting body campaigned on the promise to bust unions. This became part of the greater legislative agenda only after the 2010 election (the first since the Citizens United decision and one where Republicans outspent Democrats more than 2:1, primarily from out of state corporate donors) and the advent of ALEC. Emboldened by victory, and the sweet sweet cash of their new sugardaddies, the Republican agenda turned to public sector unions and specifically the teachers unions, who overwhelmingly donate to Democratic campaigns. Exempt from the anti-union legislation were poice and fire/rescue unions, who, alone among public sector unions, almost uniformly donate to Republican campaigns.
Basically what I'm saying is it is bad legislation, and now large parts of it are being ruled as unconstitutional. Read about it here.
In fact, I'd actually question whether that is strictly how it is supposed to work, but I don't think I'm the best person to have that conversation.
The original US Senate enacted rules that prohibited filibusters. These rules were removed because they had been so rarely used in 1806. At the time everybody thought they just weren't needed. No filibuster was actually done until the late 1830s.
So if we define "how it's supposed to work" as reflecting the designs and actions of the guys who initiated the system, which is a questionable position the best of days but remains inexplicably popular, we should never see a filibuster and there should be no objection to eliminating the things entirely.
If we define how it's supposed to work as applying to general principles of good government, fair representation, meaningful elections, and the like, there's even less of a leg to stand on.
I meant, as is, that's how it's supposed to work. Not as intended.
As intended means representatives are people that aren't paid to represent people, and have their own jobs to support themselves.
Basicly illegally. What did the courts say?
Yes I'm defending the ability to filibuster. It's a useful tool for the minority to use.
To be honest I had remembered things out of order, apparently. I thought they had fled, then when they returned with just enough for a quorum, the Repubs steam-rolled them.
Yes that also happened. The Republicans later invented a way to push the bill through despite rather clearly-worded laws on the matter regarding a quorum. What I'm talking about is the debate session in which the Democrats were rather successfully filibustering. They had 28 people in line to filibuster, out of, like, 38 Democrats.
Here is an analysis of the second illegal vote, the one on the bill itself. I'm going to go out on a limb and say you probably don't like Rachel Maddow, but the video embedded breaks it down succinctly as well. Ignore her snark and spin if you like, her narrative is accurate.
What did the courts say? Thing is the Wisconsin supreme court justices are elected and so the same money problem applies. And there's a whole bunch of things that were hinky with the latest supreme court elections, including the chief justice's former protege (IIRC) being in charge of the election results in Waukesha county, and then "losing" the votes, reporting last among all districts, and mysteriously "finding" just enough votes to put him ahead. She pulled the same thing in the recall referendum a few weeks back and has refused to step aside despite obviously being either incompetent or colluding with the Republican party of Wisconsin.
I meant, as is, that's how it's supposed to work. Not as intended.
As intended means representatives are people that aren't paid to represent people, and have their own jobs to support themselves.
That would be awesome, but I suspect we'd have trouble getting that through Congress. ;-)
I know, right?
Basicly illegally. What did the courts say?
Yes I'm defending the ability to filibuster. It's a useful tool for the minority to use.
To be honest I had remembered things out of order, apparently. I thought they had fled, then when they returned with just enough for a quorum, the Repubs steam-rolled them.Yes that also happened. The Republicans later invented a way to push the bill through despite rather clearly-worded laws on the matter regarding a quorum. What I'm talking about is the debate session in which the Democrats were rather successfully filibustering. They had 28 people in line to filibuster, out of, like, 38 Democrats.
Here is an analysis of the second illegal vote, the one on the bill itself. I'm going to go out on a limb and say you probably don't like Rachel Maddow, but the video embedded breaks it down succinctly as well. Ignore her snark and spin if you like, her narrative is accurate.
What did the courts say? Thing is the Wisconsin supreme court justices are elected and so the same money problem applies. And there's a whole bunch of things that were hinky with the latest supreme court elections, including the chief justice's former protege (IIRC) being in charge of the election results in Waukesha county, and then "losing" the votes, reporting last among all districts, and mysteriously "finding" just enough votes to put him ahead. She pulled the same thing in the recall referendum a few weeks back and has refused to step aside despite obviously being either incompetent or colluding with the Republican party of Wisconsin.
I can't stand Ms. Maddow, but if there is a trascript of it, I will read it.
That would be awesome, but I suspect we'd have trouble getting that through Congress. ;-)I meant, as is, that's how it's supposed to work. Not as intended.
As intended means representatives are people that aren't paid to represent people, and have their own jobs to support themselves.
You mean making being independently wealthy a necessarily qualification for office? Aside from that being de facto the case now, I don't see how it would make things any better. I don't think it would even do much for the price points for the typical bribe.
It wouldn't be a career, at least.
No salary, no benefits, no special perks, and bound to what they pass.
It wouldn't be a career, at least.
No salary, no benefits, no special perks, and bound to what they pass.
Do you think handing brain surgery over to enthusiastic amateurs is a good idea too?
You mean making being independently wealthy a necessarily qualification for office? Aside from that being de facto the case now, I don't see how it would make things any better. I don't think it would even do much for the price points for the typical bribe.
Hmmm...good point.
You think being a representative is the same as brain surgery?
How is that even remotely the same thing?