Government Shutdown

[Army Husker]

My comment had nothing to do about the underlying partisanship to all of this. Just my aggravation that billions of dollars of spending were thrown in under the radar by a member of Congress. I'll leave the name out so as to not imply a party line. The biggest issue with the money? The cost of the dam is now 3 times what it was supposed to be. No oversight, just throwing money at anything in their jurisdictions.

 

And hence the last comment of firing all, not just one.

[rawhide]

Of course "she" had nothing to do with this bipartisanship last minute porker play; altruistically for the "public good"

 

http://www.foxnews.c...nd-dam-project/

[knapplc]

EDIT - thanks for pulling that article, rawhide. ^^^ That's where I first read about this, and it's a BS article. Lamar Alexander himself contradicts that article:

 

Sen. Lamar Alexander, who's a key figure on the committee that oversees what water projects get what money, says he and another senator asked for the cash.

LINK

 

McConnell’s office said he had no role in securing the language, which was authored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.).

LINK

 

 

Sen. Lamar Alexander, Tennessee Republican, is one of those lawmakers. In a statement Wednesday he said not raising the authorization level would cost taxpayers $160 million in canceled contracts.

 

“Senator [Dianne] Feinstein and I, as chairman and ranking member of the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, requested this provision. It has already been approved this year by the House and Senate,” Mr. Alexander said.

LINK

 

 

Fox must have run out of ink before getting to print that information. Oops.

 

/EDIT

 

---

 

Agree with canning all of them. Not only will that cash for the dam/lock project go to McConnell's state (Kentucky), but it'll also largely go to Illinois, benefiting the Democrat there (whose name I forget because I don't care).

 

I caught the story about this on Fox and they were going on and on about how Feinstein had hidden this pork into the bill and how reprehensible it was, never once mentioning that the request was actually made by Lamar Alexander, and approved by Feinstein. It's pork and it's crap, and that thing is way overbudget and we're likely getting sold down the river on the whole thing (pun intended), but the naming of Feinstein caught my eye because of the Fox comments I heard.

 

And believe me - I'm not defending Dianne Feinstein. When we're firing people in Washington she needs to be at the front of the line. It sickens me that it sounds like I'm defending her. I'm not. At all.

[carlfense]

[rawhide]

My only real point is that there is no spoon. Then you'll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.

 

 

Had to kinda throw in a matrix flavah. Boehner, Feinstein, Pelosi and McConnell do that to me

 

 

makes me want to WAKE UP

[tschu]

Sad thing is most head-in-the-sand Repubs and Tea-partiers really do think that this is Obama's fault and that they scored a big victory by costing the government $24 billion and conceding defeat on all counts. Great success.

 

When it comes to political events, confirmation bias reigns king

[krill]

I find Ted Cruz to be really confusing. Is he a senator, or the guy on late night BET televangelist shows selling miracle napkins, or a used car salesmen trying to sell you a car with blown head gasket? He would fit right in with any of those roles.

[strigori]

Much as I don't like Boehner on a personal level as a career politician and general sleazeball that's only interested in power, and probably $ post-public life, I don't think anyone could even get that caucus to agree that the sun rises in the east. There's true believer TP'ers, TP'ers that are worried about an even more extreme primary challenger, mainstream Republicans, and a few token moderates from Democratic-leaning districts. The liberal wing of the Democratic party stomps their feet and makes a lot of smoke when they are required to moderate on legislation, but nothing like what the Republicans have been doing.

I think the difference is the far left wing of the Democratic party still reside in the real world, and the Tea Party is a collection of zealots. And zealots can not be reasoned with. "Compromise" does not equal failure, which is something the rightwingers need to remember. Politics is all about compromise, otherwise nothing gets done.

[Husker_x]

I'm definitely more left than right-wing in my politics, but I was one of the few who didn't think a Romney presidency would have been an unmitigated disaster. He governed in a New England state, and I have a feeling--just a suspicion--he would have been a pretty centrist president.

Maybe. My main fear regarding a Romney victory can be summed up in three words: Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

 

Regarding the Supreme Court, the Democrats were fighting to maintain the status quo. The Republicans had a chance at a pivotal shift.

 

That's a really good point. Supreme Court picks could have been a game changer. We definitely got the best of the two options available, but when I look at Mitt Romney as a whole, not just cut down to the campaign version of him, I think he was a fairly flexible, deliberative politician. I don't know that he could have steered the ship any better with the Tea Party nutjobs making demands, but I don't think he would have governed as a Tea Party president.

 

In any event, the election is long over and now the shutdown is over. I'm kind of amazed how well this worked out for Obama. The Republican party essentially split itself into two, and now the big business side has to ask themselves some really though questions. Hopefully--on our knees now, brothers and sisters, praying--the Tea Party mounts a third party candidate in 16. Hillary sailing to a 20-point win will take the last of the starch out of the far-right.

[krill]

I think the difference is the far left wing of the Democratic party still reside in the real world, and the Tea Party is a collection of zealots. And zealots can not be reasoned with. "Compromise" does not equal failure, which is something the rightwingers need to remember. Politics is all about compromise, otherwise nothing gets done.

 

I really believe that what drives most of the Tea Party politician's uncompromising zealotry is fear of primary challengers. Not 20 minutes after the deal was done last night, the CEO of the Tea Party group Freedomworks said all reps that voted yes will face primary challenges. Those votes matter to these reps; a one or two term congressmen cannot fend off primary challenger that is backed with piles of outside money. It's a classic case of do what we say, or we'll find someone else who will, and "we" is increasingly not the majority of the people these reps ostensibly represent in congress.

[TGHusker]

http://www.wnd.com/2013/10/the-we-cant-win-wimps-caucus/

 

Pat's Buchanan's reaction - Republicans are wimps

[carlfense]

http://www.wnd.com/2...n-wimps-caucus/

 

Pat's Buchanan's reaction - Republicans are wimps

What I didn't see from that . . . editorial? . . . was any suggestion from Mr. Buchanan about how the Republicans could have won.

 

He engaged in some name calling, called Obamacare a monstrosity, and then???

 

 

I suppose that he hopes his readers won't notice. I also suspect that he's right.

[TGHusker]

http://www.wnd.com/2...n-wimps-caucus/

 

Pat's Buchanan's reaction - Republicans are wimps

What I didn't see from that . . . editorial? . . . was any suggestion from Mr. Buchanan about how the Republicans could have won.

 

He engaged in some name calling, called Obamacare a monstrosity, and then???

 

 

I suppose that he hopes his readers won't notice. I also suspect that he's right.

very true - the only hope the repubs had to win the vote was to have all of the Sen repubs stand in support of the house (too much to ask for the smug senators to stand arm and arm wt the house. I suspect many repub senators were secret ACA fans in the first place but were given the way out to vote against it because the dems had a super majority at the time anyway). If the senate had stood wt the house, then the hope would be that there would be a popular uprising in the populace to force change to ACA or delay it. But the populace has yet to feel the affects of it. Maybe the end game by some repubs was to bring the issue up - for awareness, let the bill have its affect (negative) on the economy and the people and hope for a tidal wave of change in 2014 elections.

[zoogs]

NYTimes: Losing a lot to get a little

 

Speaker John A. Boehner’s strategy always involved a gamble that his members would come away from this clash chastened. He intentionally allowed his most conservative members to sit in the driver’s seat as they tried in vain to get the Senate to accept one failed measure after another — first to defund the health care law, then to delay it, then to chip away at it. His hope was that they would realize the fight was not worth having again.

 

The worry among many Republicans is that the Tea Party flank will not get the message, mainly because their gerrymandered districts are so conservative they do not have to listen.

 

I thought this was interesting

[tschu]

Many Tea Partiers actually think that the problem is that they aren't conservative enough. See quotes from a couple days ago from the Heritage Found. and Tea Party. How's that for delusion