deficit commission is actually bipartisan.
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/62034

points 2-4 are actually democratic positions. Am I wrong?

if I am excuse the downvote

>> ^NetRunner:
@<A rel="nofollow" class=profilelink title="member since May 3rd, 2010" href="http://videosift.com/member/Lawdeedaw">Lawdeedaw, you seem confused.
I'm opposed to escalating Afghanistan. I'm also opposed to people trying to make sweeping generalizations about Democrats based on a series of false premises and fallacious logic. People are entitled to their opinion on Obama and the decisions he's making as President. What they aren't entitled to is their own facts about what Obama has said or done.
If there's a candidate in 2012 who's a better fit to my values than Obama on the ballot with a credible shot at winning, I'll vote for 'em.
Ron Paul is vehemently opposed to what I believe on 9 out of 10 topics. Even so, I don't see why the remaining Paultards think Ron Paul's empty campaign promises will get followed through on any more than anyone else who's ever run for President, especially given that he's got no support for his platform within his own party.
I definitely don't understand why they think they're going to win support from anti-war Democrats with their messaging strategy. All the CFL ever does is call everything we try to achieve "tyranny", unless they happen to agree with us on a topic, then they just call us hypocrites because we don't all immediately disown the Democratic party and swear undying loyalty to Paul the minute he makes an empty promise on the topic.
It seems mostly like just crap he tells his supporters so they'll repeat his line of reasoning thinking they're engaging in some sort of open-minded bipartisan outreach, when what he's really doing is prepping them to get all hostile and defensive when said "outreach" inevitably gets rejected.


Fair enough. I was just pointing out that Bush did not even follow his own doctrine. Also, santions (Of the economic type) are a blockade of sorts and are at least an aggression.

Lastly, I was saying, in relation to Obama's approach to war, he is nearly identiacal to Bush. I say this not because his strategy is similar, rather, he follows the base of his party in the matter. If they said Home, he would bring them home. If they say Escalation, he escalates. If they say carpet bombs, he throws carpet bombs.

At least this is MO, not actual fact. Perhaps he is doing what is best for the war. Howdy knows.

@Lawdeedaw, you seem confused.

I'm opposed to escalating Afghanistan. I'm also opposed to people trying to make sweeping generalizations about Democrats based on a series of false premises and fallacious logic. People are entitled to their opinion on Obama and the decisions he's making as President. What they aren't entitled to is their own facts about what Obama has said or done.

If there's a candidate in 2012 who's a better fit to my values than Obama on the ballot with a credible shot at winning, I'll vote for 'em.

Ron Paul is vehemently opposed to what I believe on 9 out of 10 topics. Even so, I don't see why the remaining Paultards think Ron Paul's empty campaign promises will get followed through on any more than anyone else who's ever run for President, especially given that he's got no support for his platform within his own party.

I definitely don't understand why they think they're going to win support from anti-war Democrats with their messaging strategy. All the CFL ever does is call everything we try to achieve "tyranny", unless they happen to agree with us on a topic, then they just call us hypocrites because we don't all immediately disown the Democratic party and swear undying loyalty to Paul the minute he makes an empty promise on the topic.

It seems mostly like just crap he tells his supporters so they'll repeat his line of reasoning thinking they're engaging in some sort of open-minded bipartisan outreach, when what he's really doing is prepping them to get all hostile and defensive when said "outreach" inevitably gets rejected.

@srd I think there are a lot of factors keeping us from getting additional parties here. For one, both parties have lost Presidential runs due to 3rd party candidates splitting their base in the last 20 years (Clinton in '92, Bush in '00), which really raises a lot of concern about "splitters".

Some form of runoff voting or European-style proportional representation would go a long way for the viability of 3rd parties. I think if we had either one of those, I personally would be all about promoting a new party that's a handful of ticks to the left of today's Democratic party.

As it is though, I poo-poo the idea of voting for the Green party because all they do is split the Democratic vote and make it easier for Republicans to win elections.

It's also why I really relish the idea of a separate and distinct Tea Party, since it will cannibalize Republican votes and make it easier for Democrats to win (and that's why Republicans everywhere are making sure the Tea Party doesn't actually get a candidate opposing a Republican in general elections).

If I knew that voting for a Green or Progressive party wouldn't have the net effect of helping Republicans win more elections, I probably would do so. I think a lot of progressives would join me in that (same with Republicans and a Libertarian party).

I'm much more in favor of people putting together a bipartisan bi-ideological campaign to implement some electoral reforms like instant runoff voting and proportional representation than I am in favor of people leaving the Democratic and Republican parties and trying to create viable 3rd and 4th parties under our existing electoral system.

@cybrbeast, we have proportional representation here too, and it doesn't help 3rd parties in the least.

I'm of two minds about the "not much difference between the parties" thing. On the one hand, I find there to be horrendously extreme differences between the parties. One wants to try to deal with health care costs and the environment, the other doesn't want to change anything. One wants to try to get our budget balanced, one wants to just cut taxes without doing anything to spending. One wants to make sure everyone -- including people on the terror watch list -- can buy untraceable guns, the other thinks maybe we should make sure that there's a good way to trace guns to their owners.

On the other hand, there's a lot of bipartisan submission to corporate influence, and an abject refusal to ever say things as left wing as you'd hear coming from the mouths of right-wing European parties on topics like jobs, health care, environment, etc. It's still newsworthy when a politician just says "government can do good things for people".

Mostly though, I don't think there's some simple electoral fix that would break the sway corporations hold in this country. We've essentially set up some deep legal precedent that what in normal circumstances would be called bribery, is instead classified as protected political speech (i.e. campaign contributions, lobbying, revolving door job offers).

I think some tweaks could be done to help 3rd parties get into the mix, namely lowering the barriers that have been erected around getting on the ballot, plus mandatory instant runoff voting. That could pretty quickly turn us to a multi-party system. I just doubt it'd make any difference since you still need 3/5ths majority to overcome minority obstruction in the Senate, and it does nothing to keep the new parties from being subverted by corporate influence, which is really what's driving the similarity between the parties here.

>> ^marinara:

netrunner says ron paul's a hypocrite b/c he opposes the senate bill in general.
i think he might be a wacko libertarian, but a hypocrite?


@marinara, let's make it simple:

Ron Paul on TV wants people to think he's in cahoots with Alan Grayson to shape the bill with a bipartisan amendment.

Ron Paul in e-mail wants people screaming "Kill the bill" at Senators.

If he cares about getting the Audit the Fed thing done, one way to do that is to cut a deal with Democrats, and take the good with the bad. If what he really cares about is stopping evil socialist Democrats, he shouldn't appear in a segment with one and pretend it's a bipartisan love fest. Instead, he should make his position clear.

Add in that this Audit the Fed thing is a signature issue of his, and he doesn't even mention that he'd rather kill this bill than pass Audit the Fed as part of it.

I find the whole thing hypocritical.

So, I got this e-mail from Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty group, literally today. The first paragraph was as follows:

Dear NetRunner,

I'm not sure if you saw my email last week warning you about how dangerously close Congress is to empowering the Fed. Due to a backroom deal between Senator Reid and Senator McConnell, Republicans in Congress have ended their filibuster of Dodd's "Fed Empowerment" Act.

Time is running out to kill this legislation that would dramatically expand the powers of the Federal Reserve.

I sincerely hope you will take a few moments to read my message and take action to demand that your senators kill the Dodd "Fed Empowerment" Act.

The e-mail goes on to implore people to call their Senator to vote against the bill.

You might wonder why I quote this. It's because the "Dodd 'Fed Empowerment' Act" is the exact piece of legislation they're hoping to amend with the Audit the Fed language.

That's either hypocrisy or incompetence.

For comparison, here's an e-mail I got from Alan Grayson's campaign, also today:

Dear NetRunner,

Last year, I asked the Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board who received $1 trillion in funds that the Fed handed out to domestic banks and financial institutions. He said, essentially, "I'm not going to tell you." More recently, I asked the Chairman of the Fed who received the half trillion dollars - that's $500,000,000,000 - that the Fed handed over to foreign central banks. He said he didn't know. Half a trillion dollars, and he doesn't know!

That kind of ignorance and arrogance must end. We need to audit the Fed. And now we're closer than ever.

The House passed our bill to conduct the first independent audit of the Fed in its 96-year history. Now it's time for the Senate to act.

A bipartisan group of Senators is pushing for an amendment to audit the Fed. This amendment is similar to the legislation that we passed in the House last year. It's called the Federal Reserve Accountability Amendment. It will ensure that the American people know to whom the Fed is lending our money.

The e-mail goes on to implore me to call my Senators and ask them to support the Audit the Fed amendment.

This is part of why all warm feelings I once had for Ron Paul are long since gone. I'm on his e-mail list, so I know what he's asking people to call their representatives about. I know that he parroted Republican scare stories during the debate on health care. Now he's literally asking people to phonebank against reforming Wall Street, even while he's going on TV to blow his horn about how he hopes to amend the bill he's campaigning to keep from being brought to a vote (aka filibuster).

He should be embarrassed.

He wasn't saying that you need to get rid of Medicare and Social Security at all.

He did use Social Security (and Defence) - the top expenses the US has - as an example that the budget isn't even close to balanced, but he also said that a balanced budget isn't an issue as long as there is cheap credit. If Greece is bailed out and the first world countries are able to get cheap credit then there is no issue with the unbalanced budget. As long as banks etc. loan confidently to first world countries then there isn't a problem and no government programs have to be eliminated.

That also means it would be very good for the economy (though not necessarily the safest bet personally) to buy US Bonds right now, which are effectively personal loans to the government. If the government has access to money then everything will continue as it should.

>> ^NetRunner:

I like how he tries to sound bipartisan, but the upshot of what he said is that we need to eliminate Medicare and Social Security immediately or the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket.

I like how he tries to sound bipartisan, but the upshot of what he said is that we need to eliminate Medicare and Social Security immediately or the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket.

That's a pretty minority viewpoint, even among rightwing economists.

The main thing that would cause a US default was if a) you needed 60 vote supermajority in the Senate to pass any laws in the US, and b) one political party was doggedly committed to filibustering any and all attempts by the majority party to raise taxes, or cut entitlements.

That sort of thing would be a good sign to investors that we can no longer manage our fiscal situation, unlike us running up a high debt/GDP ratio in an economic crisis which is completely normal.

@blankfist way to be bipartisan, you socialist authoritarian statist who wants to take away my precious offshore holding company.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M230_Chain_Gun

That, my friends, is the wonderful work of our tax dollars!

Look at that M230 Chain Gun go to work! Goddamn I love the effects of 30 MM rounds on target! Fuck man, my hard earned tax dollars are fucking putting them to shame!

The above statements are dark humor and petty sarcasm. I am fuck, shit pissed, that my tax money paid for this. You should be too, fuck the health care bill, fuck the bipartisan bullshit. I think more money should be spent dealing with this shit seen in the video above.

This video shows the endemic entropy of our world. Just wait until your drive to work is monitored by aircraft! Oh, wait it already is!
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/52259

Below is a theatrical representation of what a 20 MM gun does.

First things first: Beer tasty. Bipartisan agreement at last!

Second thing is, Firedoglake is pretty much off its rocker at the moment. They're following the underpants gnome philosophy of political activism:

1. Demand single-payer health care
   
2. Oppose all Democratic reform plans for being too moderate
   
3. ???
   
4. Strongly progressive health care passes
   

I can see why you find this appealing, since you yourself follow the underpants gnome philosophy of political activism.

I wanted more from the bill too, and I'm annoyed Democrats didn't pass something more left wing. However, I never expected to win all the battles all the way all at once.

This is about as maximally market based as it can be without utterly tossing out the goal of increasing coverage and making things better for the poor. From here, the only way we're going to go is more and more left, so be careful what you wish for when it comes to problems with this bill.

The mandate is only going to get firmer if too many people cheat the system. If premiums keep going up, we're going to be talking about more stringent price controls, not a return to denying people with preexisting conditions. Your choice from here on out is privately managed socialism, or government managed socialism -- and if privately managed keeps being a total boondoggle, we're going to wind up with Medicare for all (yay!).

Oh, and the FDL myth thing is a mixed bag of true statements that merely mean the bill isn't perfect (e.g. "the bill isn't universal", it only brings us up from 82% coverage to 92%, and the bulk of the remainder are undocumented immigrants), and things where they are at best being misleading.

For example, under #4 they say: "it will impose a hardship on most middle-class Americans." They say this because their choices will go from paying $13,100 for health care or $0 for nothing to potentially facing a penalty of $2,085 if there is a qualifying plan available on the market for less than $5,243/yr and they still don't buy insurance. However, they fail to mention that if there isn't a qualifying plan available that cheap they don't have to pay a penalty at all. For there to be a plan that cheap, prices would have to drop 60% from where they are now -- and no one thinks they will -- which means this bill puts no "burden" on them at all.

In fact, if this family chooses to buy insurance of their own accord, they'll find their choices are vastly improved. Thanks to subsidies, the most they'll have to pay in premiums is $6305/yr (9.5% of income), compared to $13,100 they'd be paying without reform, and they will still pay no penalty if they decide not to buy insurance.

>> ^rougy:

^ You are lying out your ass.
There is nothing that says this had to be a "bi-partisan" bill.


First things first, I gave my honest opinion. You may think I'm wrong, or just simply disagree with me, but I said what I really believe.

As for the bill being "bipartisan", I'm not sure what you mean. Only Dennis Kucinich was talking about single payer in the Presidential primary. Edwards, Clinton, and Obama all had plans that left private insurance at the heart of their reforms. None of them proposed a public option as strong as Grayson's bill that would allow everyone to be able to buy into Medicare. None of them really even proposed a plan that regulates the private insurers as much as this bill will.

Democrats are honestly a center-right party. I'm on board for trying to pull them left so that they become at least a center-left party, but we're not there today.

I think that we got a pretty good bill, considering the kind of timid centrists we had at the heart of our party, and we'll have plenty of opportunity to improve the bill over the course of the next decade. We might even get a public option before most of this stuff comes into effect in 2014.

I for one expect that the public option will be a big topic in the 2010 and 2012 elections, especially in the Democratic Senate primaries, and hopefully in the 2012 presidential campaign as well.

Government is for fixing problems.

Unless it's an American government, then it's for licking the boots of the rich and selling-out the poor with a bullshit health care bill.

Good cop/bad cop bad joke bipartisan bull-pucky.

@burdturgler, gonna have to respond to that one in detail later, for some reason I can't get the clip to play more than the first few seconds while I'm at work. Looks like they're taking old clips of Obama drawing distinctions between himself and Bush & Hillary (they're polarizing 50-plus-one types, and I'm a big-majority bipartisan guy) and conflating that with commentary on the budget reconciliation process.

@My_design, it's true that Democrats passed one bill in the Senate, and a different bill in the House, and until the same bill passes both houses, Obama can't sign it into law. The House could just pass the Senate bill, and we'd be done. The House doesn't want to do that, because there are provisions of the Senate bill they want removed or adjusted. Normally you'd have a conference committee, and try to pass the conference report through both houses again, but with Republicans committed to voting against HCR no matter what, Democrats aren't going to do that.

Instead they're going to pass a separate bill that modifies the Senate bill under reconciliation. They're going to write it to meet the restrictions of reconciliation, which means not much will change, essentially just the tax & subsidy portions will be altered.

Once that smaller bill has passed both houses, the House will pass the Senate bill, and send both to the President, who will sign the original Senate bill into law first, then the reconciliation "sidecar" second.

All that is kosher under the Senate rules (and the Constitution). IMO, it's cool with me that the Senate passes everything by majority vote from here on out, even if the Republicans regain control (but that's the real "nuclear option").

Now, accusing Democrats as being hypocritical on reconciliation is a bit better grounds, but I think you're trying to draw an equivalence that isn't justified. Republicans have used reconciliation time and time again to pass their agenda. Democrats didn't like that, and certainly spoke out against it then.

Difference is in what they said about it. Republicans are saying that this has never been done before -- which isn't true. Republicans are saying that Democrats are trying to pass the whole bill under reconciliation -- which isn't true. Republicans are saying that the filibuster is some sort of Constitutionally-mandated thing -- it isn't, and just a few years ago they argued that the Constitution said the reverse.

Now, what you quoted Obama as saying was "I think we need a full debate", not "you shouldn't be allowed to pass this without approval from my party (which we'll never give, so stop trying already), and if you do it'll be the end of democracy itself!"

When Democrats opposed the Bush tax cuts, they said reconciliation was meant to balance the budget, not explode it. That, as opposed to what Republicans are saying, is actually factually accurate, and it's not inconsistent with what they're planning on doing with reconciliation now.

Hence, no real need for Rachel to trash Democrats for "lying", unless she was a) a right-wing ideologue creating political cover for Republicans or b) wants to try to be "neutral" and misrepresent things so Democrats and Republicans look equally guilty.