USA Federal shutdown. What's happening?

[Matthias]

Why does there have to be a study of Planned Parenthood? Because some pro-life political action group says so? Well, in that case, I think Susan B Anthony foundation is spending its money on hookers and blow! In fact, I swear it! Where is the study!?

[MathiasOfAthens]

You've shown me that they have sued SBA List, but nothing that refutes the investigations.

Without any significant study of Planned Parenthood showing what they're really doing, everyone is just throwing out assumptions. The Susan B Anthony organization is the only one that seems to be scrutinizing them. The results of the previous investigation did find disturbing things going on in these clinics and not just a few. I have a strong distaste for organizations that claim to have a noble cause but use their resources for illegal acts.

SBA are pro-life, and the quotes above show they will lie or mislead to achieve their goal. A lot of political and social ideologues will do that but with Planned parenthood I believe there is enough information out there to discredit SBA claims and the conservatives lies.

http://www.plannedparenthood.org/fil...2010-09-03.pdf
Pro-Life source which cites the correct number of abortions provided for by PP though they make some outrageous claims elsewhere.
SBA source: Planned Parenthood is an abortion organization. It provides more
abortions than any other organization in the United States, about one of
every four U.S. abortions.
4

The quote above is the reason why Conservatives want to stop funding PP clinics, despite many of them not having a single thing to do with Abortion, which you can see from the first link.

Anyway, I brought up a point earlier. PP has disclosed their records. They receive federal funds. They also use other funds from other sources to fund abortions. Chamber of Commerce uses donations to fund Campaigns in the US, mainly Conservative. They also receive foreign donations. Difference with PP is they are not required nor have they voluntarily disclosed their revenue and expenses records. Hypocrisy on ideological grounds within the GOP?

Personally, I don't care for the pro-life agenda at all nor am I some support of SBA, but I'm just seeing a lot of misinformation from both sides. Right now, there is reason to contest that the organization provides much of these screenings, mammograms, and tests they are claiming they are. It's more like 50-50. Some clinics do, some don't. And if Planned Parenthood were defunded, they already make MORE THAN ENOUGH money to survive on their own.

Perhaps, maybe not. That I dont know. Oh and the NPR that the Republicans are also trying to defunct has opposed PP abortion policies in the past.

Heres some facts and figures about PP: Dont believe all that hype that PP doesnt inform abortion seekers. The information is as available as the sun on a sunny day.

I don't understand why its so important for the GOP to defund this and I don't see why its so important for the Dems to vigorously defend them. They are incredibly irrelevant in the grand scheme of current events.

Ideological grounds. PP is still the largest provider of abortions despite them being funded solely by outside donations, not federal funds. Weakening an abortion provider for pro-life conservatives is a primary goal like Universal Healthcare is for a Liberal.

[Cougar109]

I don't understand why its so important for the GOP to defund this and I don't see why its so important for the Dems to vigorously defend them. They are incredibly irrelevant in the grand scheme of current events. They are an unnecessary part of the budget anyway. There are plenty of local clinics that provide these very same services for free, except for the abortions.

Ideological pandering, not much else. Same as everything else in D.C. these days.

[MathiasOfAthens]

Don't you love people who tell you your wrong with out telling why, please do tell me how losing citizens can ever be good for a Goverment. I see no facts in your argument so I don't know why you are laughing, makes you look condescending

By the way welcome to the real world where we many times have to choose one thing over another...But I really would love to hear what you think it says about me.

Oh dont act like you care. Conservatives only care about the kid in womb but once he comes out its no Child Care Aid, no healthcare for the kid, no aid for the mother, no family assistance, no education assistance, nada.

George Carlin
Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don't want to know about you. They don't want to hear from you. No nothing. No neonatal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you're preborn, you're fine; if you're preschool, you're ed.

Oh and I provided sources for the reasons why I said the conservatives were/are wrong. Sometimes they flat out lie or misrepresent themselves.

[Matthias]

Don't you love people who tell you your wrong with out telling why, please do tell me how losing citizens can ever be good for a Goverment. I see no facts in your argument so I don't know why you are laughing, makes you look condescending

By the way welcome to the real world where we many times have to choose one thing over another...But I really would love to hear what you think it says about me.

It says you think military families are more deserving than single mothers. It also means you think that this is a choice we have to make.

Maybe you should point out in the law where an unborn fetus is a citizen?

Also, why the heck is China's economy growing and becoming a world power, what with all the aboritons and the one-child policy and decreasing population?

Maybe the world isn't black and white in other words. To say that a declining population is never good for a country is naive.

http://www.plannedparenthood.org/abo...lance-5552.htm

The accusation is that planned parenthood uses federal money to pay for abortions, so the burden of proof is on the accusers to prove it. They have not, so to claim as fact that planned parenthood uses federal money to pay for abortions is, indeed, wrong. There is no proof, only accusations, and most of the accusations are more like "it frees up money for abortions" or some such, which means they have no basis in fact and don't back the accusation.

[Admiral Piett]

You link to a pro-life political acition committee because you can't find any real facts? Aren't you supposed to be ultra-neutral here? Do you honestly believe this?

I won't tell you exactly what I do and don't believe, I'm just seeing conflicting information from both sides and I get the feeling neither or are 100% correct. As such, PP shouldn't be so rigorously defended or attacked. It's really insignificant. I see both sides being partially right and partially wrong. The organization HAS been using their resources for illegal activities and has been primarily doing abortions rather than provide low cost or free services to young women. I think the thing to keep in mind here, though, is that other organizations and local clinics already do this - without federal funds.

And what exactly have Democrats said about union busting that is keeping this bill from passing? Oh yeah, nothing. Not only that, Democrats have been spineless overall on that issue. Obama hasn't done anything. Union busting bills are happening throughout the country though in quite a few states. Like Ohio and Michigan as well.

It depends really. Some are openly rousing support for those protests simply as a means to rouse up an extreme base, much in the same way the GOP has been doing with the Tea Party. Both the Tea Party and the SEIU etc are funded by lobbyists using astroturf tactics to gain the upper footing in political maneuvers for 2012. That's what its all leading up to, who will control Congress then.

Never said Tea Partiers couldn't work in the IRS, though I think it's sad and hilarious at the same time.

No, you said that the Tea Party would hate me because I wanted to work for them. Which was clearly an opinion with nothing to show for it.

Will it? Hard to tell right now. If anything, the movement could grow if the GOP doesn't do what they want.

That entirely depends upon the events of 2012. The same thing may happen for the Dems as well. Both parties are showing signs of stiring up polarizing elements and growing increasingly apart.

Dude, it's statistics. The Democrats are already relatively conservative. The country is 20% liberal, 40% moderate, and 40% conservative by self-identification. We are a conservative country. So we have a much larger conservative wing, with a much much larger and more influential extremist portion. The Democrats represent those 20% liberals and fight over the moderates, the moderates are the majority of the party. The Republicans represent those 40% conservatives, and the moderates are not as important for their votes.

Not the correct stats dude, what percentage of the US identifies itself with the Tea Party? Plus, how many candidates in Congress and in the coming Presidential race identify themselves as Tea Party? Most Republicans are simply riding the Tea Party rhetoric for personal benefit. Excellent examples of this are Jim DeMint, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Mike Huckabee, and Newt Gingrich. I'd bet you that if the Tea Party became gradually weaker and more radical, most of these freshman Congressmen would gladly jump ship and maintain the country club GOP establishment.

The Tea Party isn't comparable to any liberal extremist group; it's much bigger and more powerful within its own party.

You are overestimating it. The Tea Party is a divided organization. Note the Paulites vs Palinites. Also unions such as SEIU are arguably more financially sound as they can rally support in foreign countries as well. I've not heard of the Tea Party doing this. There are no dues for being Tea Party, but there is for being in a union.

I don't know where I said anything about lazy military men not deserving to be paid? I don't think the military government workers should get paid while no other government workers get paid. I actually care for both equally, and don't think one is somehow "superior" to another. Not to mention, the conservatives use the military like a lapdog when it comes to politics, riding that horsie all the way home with their crap. I'm sick of it. They should stop hiding behind soldiers. If they want to call government workers lazy s, then they should be consistent.

The Democrats have little in difference from the Republicans when it comes to the military. Only the radical left views the military with disdain. (With exception of Westboro)

Yeah, what a terrific idea to not pay the Pentagon officials and the staff in CENTCOM. That's going to go well in the middle of three conflicts and two others going on behind the scenes. Not to mention the Intelligence agencies, it promotes more risks to the stability of our security apparatus.

I agree with you in general that the military is too large and it does not seem shrinking, but that can wait until we begin pulling out from our worldwide bases. Until then, if anything, military men need to be paid more.

Don't get me wrong, sir, I do want to see us no longer being world police and we should go back to defending our own borders and having brief involvement in preventing genocide, but we can't achieve this goal by attacking military funding first. The first thing that needs to happen is a shift in policy - then we can begin defunding.

I didn't blame them for all the evil in the world, I blamed them for the lack of compromise on this bill and in general.

Which is unfounded. The entire Congress, not one party, has the responsibility for passing a budget.

I don't ignore such organizations on the left, but they aren't part of this holdup on compromise, they aren't nearly as large or powerful, and they have almost no power over the Democratic Party.

Yet your posts almost always step in line to defend them and say nothing of their activities and instead just blame the Tea Party for anything.

Ah yes, welfare as a racist conspiracy.

What conspiracy? There is nothing theoretical about the tactics Congressmen use to gain minority support, including redistricting to include or exclude certain ethnic neighborhoods in inner cities. Instead of providing them with a more even playing field or genuinely providing more open opportunity for advancement, they promote certain programs that keep giving them money without genuinely making conditions any better for the impoverished and the inner cities. A perfect example of this is current spineless failure that is the NAACP. It used to be a genuinely effective organization in the 60s and 70s. But with the loss of its original leadership, the organization no longer challenges blacks to rise above the conditions they live in and instead promote the very things that prevent them from achieving an equal level of success with whites. Congress has perpetually proved that it is not interested in promoting a newer, more successful generation for minorities. Much of the issues we are facing today are almost the same as they were 40 years ago.

Obama made a very good speech about this very thing early in his Presidency.

It's rather sickening in the reverse of this, cause when I worked at Walmart it was a common practice for people to sell their food stamps to others so they can go buy cocaine. I'm not saying that these benefits are inherently bad, I'm saying they are being used in a deliberate attempt to 'satisfy' that particular vote, instead of accepting the challenge to actively help them or clean up the streets so that the impoverished are not being perpetually fed into generations of gang violence and drug/arms trade. This is part of the issue going on on the border too. The status quo is not working and the impoverished deserve to be given a chance for something more than just continued food stamps. Much of these minorities are actually quite conservative (especially Hispanics) and only support Dems because they don't challenge their clamor for more benefits. I believe benefits are best given where they are best due. Too many people that don't need it have it and too many that don't have it desperately need it. Dems too often claim the moral highground on this issue and act as if they are acting nobly but in reality its nothing more than self-interest. It's one of the reasons I left the Democratic Party. Few are actually interested in genuinely making things better, one of them being Dennis Kucinich.

Here, I almost completely agree with you. Except, Democrats are not liberals for the most part, so actually, they are following their convictions for the most part. They pass lukewarm conservative policies all the time, and that is their conviction. Few of the Democrats in Congress are "liberal" at all. Note the statistics above. It makes sense.

The Democratic Party is a very moderate party compared to the Republican Party. They are much more heterogenous and much more big tent. They don't have the unity of the Republican Party and its extremist base. Most Republicans are birthers. Think about that, let it settle in. With that kind of extremist unity, you can do a lot (of damage).

Well you can say that if you are comparing the US with Europe, but we aren't. Other countries aren't the issue. We're talking about increasing polarization in American politics and with only two parties that is dangerous. To be perfectly honest, if we had something more like a Dutch system of having a dozen parties, I would actually have little issue with radicals as they have their own platforms to represent them. But in the current system, its dangerous to have two entirely polarized parties. It results in crap like this, deadlock, with both sides pointing fingers instead of taking responsibility.

Though, DADT was repealed, so you kinda lost that argument.

What does DADT have to do with gay marriage? What does it have to do furthermore with the overarching degree of failures for Dems to act on social issues in exchange for maintaining power? You yourself admitted the Dems are pandering to a social conservative base by not acting on these issues. The only reason DADT was successful was because many in the Chiefs of Staff already supported getting rid of it and because the policy promoted more equality in the military, and as we discussed before, both sides agree to improving the military.


In summation, you and I really are in agreement on a lot of things, we just disagree on how exactly these goals are achieved. I want to do so in a realistic fashion and without dehumanizing the conservatives and the Tea Party, because some of their concerns are absolutely legitimate. Especially as far as the budget is concerned.

[MathiasOfAthens]

Goper says cutting PP funding creates jobs.

[Border Patrol]

SUMMARY: This conflict is because one party which shall remain nameless is full of s that wouldn't compromise if their lives depended on it. And only that party.

[Admiral Piett]

Oh dont act like you care. Conservatives only care about the kid in womb but once he comes out its no Child Care Aid, no healthcare for the kid, no aid for the mother, no family assistance, no education assistance, nada.

George Carlin
Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don't want to know about you. They don't want to hear from you. No nothing. No neonatal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you're preborn, you're fine; if you're preschool, you're ed.

Oh and I provided sources for the reasons why I said the conservatives were/are wrong. Sometimes they flat out lie or misrepresent themselves.

Rather, Cougar's post is more correct.

Goper says cutting PP funding creates jobs.

I agree, that's pretty retarded.

[Pyrich]

SUMMARY: This conflict is because one party which shall remain nameless is full of s that wouldn't compromise if their lives depended on it. And only that party.

hehe, several years back one party was turning the lights out on the other party. It's like they want to return the favor or somthing.

is it some kind of symbolism?

[Exarch]

less than 6 hours before the deadline, gents

any moment now somebody's going to have to give in or bring out the blackmail files to blackmail xyz senators to toe the line

[Admiral Piett]

less than 6 hours before the deadline, gents

any moment now somebody's going to have to give in or bring out the blackmail files to blackmail xyz senators to toe the line

Haha, yeah, where's Lyndon Johnson when we need him?

[Exarch]

Haha, yeah, where's Lyndon Johnson when we need him?

indeed, it must say something about our cynicism when we fully expect senators to blackmail each other;

perhaps black and white photos of senators with russian honeytraps?

EDIT: oh yea, yo republicans, time to weigh up which you want the most
1) obama admin. to fail miserably
2) USG shutdown

[MathiasOfAthens]

SUMMARY: This conflict is because one party which shall remain nameless is full of s that wouldn't compromise if their lives depended on it. And only that party.

Assuming your talking about Democrats here since your always toeing the Conservative line... there are more legitimate points you can attack dems on than being stubborn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgxJG...&feature=feedu

Notice the part where he says its a matter of principle and they wont budge on this small bit of defunding the number 1 abortion provider of non abortion related funding.

Rather, Cougar's post is more correct.



I agree, that's pretty retarded.

Sorry I might of missed that bit, who is Cougar?

[Cougar109]

Sorry I might of missed that bit, who is Cougar?

Yo.

[MathiasOfAthens]

LOL you mate, ok Ill try and find the post he said you wrote.


EDIT:

Ideological grounds. PP is still the largest provider of abortions despite them being funded solely by outside donations, not federal funds. Weakening an abortion provider for pro-life conservatives is a primary goal like Universal Healthcare is for a Liberal.

Ideological pandering, not much else. Same as everything else in D.C. these days.

As you can see we both responded to the same post and our answers were almost identical. You compared my response to someone else to his response above which is wrong. You lose sorry.

[Matthias]

I won't tell you exactly what I do and don't believe, I'm just seeing conflicting information from both sides and I get the feeling neither or are 100% correct. As such, PP shouldn't be so rigorously defended or attacked. It's really insignificant. I see both sides being partially right and partially wrong. The organization HAS been using their resources for illegal activities and has been primarily doing abortions rather than provide low cost or free services to young women. I think the thing to keep in mind here, though, is that other organizations and local clinics already do this - without federal funds.

Your problem is you don't know the difference between objectivity and neutrality. You see a political action pro-life group say one thing and Planned Parenthood say another, and suddently it's "conflicting information from both sides". This is due to a lack of critical thinking. Just because there are two sides to every issue doesn't make them equally viable or logical.

Then you say that Planned Parenthood primarily does abortions and has been using resources for illegal activities, even though you have absolutely no proof, just the opinion of a political action committee.

It depends really. Some are openly rousing support for those protests simply as a means to rouse up an extreme base, much in the same way the GOP has been doing with the Tea Party. Both the Tea Party and the SEIU etc are funded by lobbyists using astroturf tactics to gain the upper footing in political maneuvers for 2012. That's what its all leading up to, who will control Congress then.

I have a hard time seeing how unions are "extreme" compared to the Tea Party in any way. Labor has been a mainstream political group for a long time in the US. And it ain't astroturfing, you might want to look that up. You see, when a union spends money and represents itself as a union at a protest, that is very different than when corporations spend money to fund a Tea Party protest and stay undercover in terms of funding.

No, you said that the Tea Party would hate me because I wanted to work for them. Which was clearly an opinion with nothing to show for it.

Dude, the Tea Party, as a whole, does indeed hate you. Hell, some crazy Tea Partier recently crashed his plane into an IRS building, killing an IRS employee, because he hated them so much. The cognitive dissonance of a Tea Partier to work at the IRS is mind-boggling, but possible, given the minds of Tea Partiers in general.

That entirely depends upon the events of 2012. The same thing may happen for the Dems as well. Both parties are showing signs of stiring up polarizing elements and growing increasingly apart.

Uhh.. no. Nothing like the Tea Party exists on the left.

Not the correct stats dude,

http://www.gallup.com/poll/120857/co...cal-group.aspx



The US is a conservative nation. This has been the case for a while now, the numbers haven't changed much. Will you finally admit it? Or will you just ignore it?

Also, to illustrate the difference in terms of party makeup:

what percentage of the US identifies itself with the Tea Party? Plus, how many candidates in Congress and in the coming Presidential race identify themselves as Tea Party? Most Republicans are simply riding the Tea Party rhetoric for personal benefit. Excellent examples of this are Jim DeMint, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Mike Huckabee, and Newt Gingrich. I'd bet you that if the Tea Party became gradually weaker and more radical, most of these freshman Congressmen would gladly jump ship and maintain the country club GOP establishment.

Doesn't matter, I wasn't talking in terms of the Tea Party. Interesting question, why don't you find out? I'm sick of looking up facts for you that you later ignore and deny.

You are overestimating it. The Tea Party is a divided organization. Note the Paulites vs Palinites. Also unions such as SEIU are arguably more financially sound as they can rally support in foreign countries as well. I've not heard of the Tea Party doing this. There are no dues for being Tea Party, but there is for being in a union.

Dude, the Tea Party isn't the only extremist part of the conservatives, it's just a symptom of how extreme it is, and how large and powerful within the Republican Party.

The Democrats have little in difference from the Republicans when it comes to the military. Only the radical left views the military with disdain. (With exception of Westboro)

No, they have quite a difference. No doubt the military is used for political football, but the Republicans have staked the claim as "patriots" and "true Americans" and began the strategy of "if you're against the war, you're not a patriot" not to mention, if you opposed the funding of the wars, then you "opposed the troops". Yeah.

Yeah, what a terrific idea to not pay the Pentagon officials and the staff in CENTCOM. That's going to go well in the middle of three conflicts and two others going on behind the scenes. Not to mention the Intelligence agencies, it promotes more risks to the stability of our security apparatus.

Freaking A! It's hilarious, because you can actually see the consequences of not paying the military, but conservatives are blind to all the other consequences outside of the military! Freaking hilarious.

I agree with you in general that the military is too large and it does not seem shrinking, but that can wait until we begin pulling out from our worldwide bases. Until then, if anything, military men need to be paid more.

Hey, no doubt about that, so it's no surprise that Republicans have voted down bills to increase benefits for military and veterans, and also that they started the policy of having tons of private contractors who get paid by Uncle Sam in six figures.

Don't get me wrong, sir, I do want to see us no longer being world police and we should go back to defending our own borders and having brief involvement in preventing genocide, but we can't achieve this goal by attacking military funding first. The first thing that needs to happen is a shift in policy - then we can begin defunding.

They're entertwined. As long as we have a huge military, the military will have lots of influence in how spending is appropriated and do what it can to make sure that its share stays the same or increases.

Which is unfounded. The entire Congress, not one party, has the responsibility for passing a budget.

But it only takes one party to stop everything in the US, and you know this. Hell, if you have 40 die hards or 39 die hards in the senate, opposed to a moderately conservative party like the Dems, who don't vote lockstep, you can filibuster everything, like Republicans actually did.

Yet your posts almost always step in line to defend them and say nothing of their activities and instead just blame the Tea Party for anything.

The topic doesn't have to do with them. If it did, I'd mention them.

What conspiracy? There is nothing theoretical about the tactics Congressmen use to gain minority support, including redistricting to include or exclude certain ethnic neighborhoods in inner cities. Instead of providing them with a more even playing field or genuinely providing more open opportunity for advancement, they promote certain programs that keep giving them money without genuinely making conditions any better for the impoverished and the inner cities. A perfect example of this is current spineless failure that is the NAACP. It used to be a genuinely effective organization in the 60s and 70s. But with the loss of its original leadership, the organization no longer challenges blacks to rise above the conditions they live in and instead promote the very things that prevent them from achieving an equal level of success with whites. Congress has perpetually proved that it is not interested in promoting a newer, more successful generation for minorities. Much of the issues we are facing today are almost the same as they were 40 years ago.

Uhh, they are the same issues, ever since ol Ronnie boy became Prez. That's because our policy has been to provide welfare so that we don't have a third world country while not implementing any policies to eradicate poverty. The Republican solution is to stop welfare, so we have a more third world country. Oh, and blame teachers and schools. Not poverty. Tax cuts haven't destroyed poverty. Oh, and increase the income gap too. Oh, and pretend we live in a perfect meritocracy where everyone has the same opportunties to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, so anyone that doesn't succeed only have themselves to blame. Ehhh, many Democrats have supported this stuff too. Democrats are not very "liberal" as I already explained.

It's rather sickening in the reverse of this, cause when I worked at Walmart it was a common practice for people to sell their food stamps to others so they can go buy cocaine. I'm not saying that these benefits are inherently bad, I'm saying they are being used in a deliberate attempt to 'satisfy' that particular vote, instead of accepting the challenge to actively help them or clean up the streets so that the impoverished are not being perpetually fed into generations of gang violence and drug/arms trade.

Food stamps are needed, the problem there is a lack of regulation to some extent, though your personal experience isn't indicative of widespread corruption. Food stamps aren't there to satisfy a particular vote. 20% of American children live in poverty.

This is part of the issue going on on the border too. The status quo is not working and the impoverished deserve to be given a chance for something more than just continued food stamps. Much of these minorities are actually quite conservative (especially Hispanics) and only support Dems because they don't challenge their clamor for more benefits. I believe benefits are best given where they are best due. Too many people that don't need it have it and too many that don't have it desperately need it. Dems too often claim the moral highground on this issue and act as if they are acting nobly but in reality its nothing more than self-interest. It's one of the reasons I left the Democratic Party. Few are actually interested in genuinely making things better, one of them being Dennis Kucinich.

Ah, so the problem is welfare and food stamps, not a lack of equal opportunity eh? Hard to see the logic there. Poverty is the issue, welfare and foodstamps are the symptom of poverty, and equal opportunity and poverty eradication are the solution. If you only take away welfare and foodstamps, suddenly those minorities will be free to get out of their crime-ridden, dilapedated neighborhoods with no obstacles, right? I mean, study after study after study that shows how income, where you grow up, what race you are, how much wealth your family inherited, crime in your area, your homelife, etc. etc. BY FAR determine whether a person succeeds in life and can become a good citizen are just all fluff. There is no cycle of poverty. Without any support, people in poverty will just build a utopia. Just look at Somalia.

Well you can say that if you are comparing the US with Europe, but we aren't. Other countries aren't the issue. We're talking about increasing polarization in American politics and with only two parties that is dangerous. To be perfectly honest, if we had something more like a Dutch system of having a dozen parties, I would actually have little issue with radicals as they have their own platforms to represent them. But in the current system, its dangerous to have two entirely polarized parties. It results in crap like this, deadlock, with both sides pointing fingers instead of taking responsibility.

Yes, but the US is a conservative nation, no doubt about it. And the Republican Party has become a much more extreme party, not the Democratic Party.

What does DADT have to do with gay marriage? What does it have to do furthermore with the overarching degree of failures for Dems to act on social issues in exchange for maintaining power? You yourself admitted the Dems are pandering to a social conservative base by not acting on these issues. The only reason DADT was successful was because many in the Chiefs of Staff already supported getting rid of it and because the policy promoted more equality in the military, and as we discussed before, both sides agree to improving the military.

The only reason DADT was repealed politically is because poll after poll showed overwhelming support to repeal it from the general public. The Chiefs of Staff had nothing to do with it, though they didn't hurt. And even then, the Republicans opposed it tooth and nail, because their base isn't the 70% who wanted it repealed. Most of those independents and moderates are ignorant idiots that don't vote. All the Republicans need are 30% of the population, who do vote, and are hardcore on the right issues.

In summation, you and I really are in agreement on a lot of things, we just disagree on how exactly these goals are achieved. I want to do so in a realistic fashion and without dehumanizing the conservatives and the Tea Party, because some of their concerns are absolutely legitimate. Especially as far as the budget is concerned

I will say their concerns on debt are legitimate. I don't think criticism is "dehumanizing". Their solutions are where I take issue with.

By the way, I notice how you didn't dispute that a majority of Republicans are birthers. Was it the Trump thing that finally convinced you, with his skyrocketing popularity among Republicans as soon as he dived in as a full-on birther supporter? Or more polls showing a majority thought he was born outside the US or were "not sure"? I mean, how can a party where the majority of its members are birthers be anything but extremist? Just curious.

[skh1]

Deal reached 10:50 EST
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news...-still-ticking-

Sounds like another short term extension. Details still coming in. The President to speak in 10 minutes.

[(s)AINT]

They pulled their head out of their asses it seems.

+0.1 credibility.

[hellheaven1987]

less than 6 hours before the deadline, gents

any moment now somebody's going to have to give in or bring out the blackmail files to blackmail xyz senators to toe the line

It is going to be fun.