The Democrat Thread

[Balta1701]

Remember when President Obama said that the Citizens United decision could open the door to foreign funding of ads in U.S. elections, and justice Alito was caught on camera saying "not true"?

According to a report issued Tuesday by the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy group in Washington, the chamber is getting “dues” payments of tens of thousands of dollars from foreign companies in countries such as Bahrain, India and Egypt, and then mingling the money with its fund to advocate for or against candidates in the midterm races.

 

The chamber firmly denies the charge, saying its internal accounting rules prevent any foreign money from being used for political purposes. Money, however, is fungible, and it is impossible for an outsider to know whether the group is following its rules.

 

...

Because the United States Chamber is organized as a 501©(6) business league under the federal tax code, it does not have to disclose its donors, so the full extent of foreign influence on its political agenda is unknown. But Tuesday’s report sheds light on how it raises money abroad. Its affiliate in Abu Dhabi, for example, the American Chamber of Commerce, says it has more than 450 corporate and individual members in the United Arab Emirates who pay as much as $8,500 a year to join.

 

Because of a series of court decisions that culminated in the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling earlier this year, these and similar 501© nonprofits have become huge players in the year’s election, using unlimited money from donors who have no fear of disclosure. (Not surprisingly, the chamber has been a leading opponent of legislation to require disclosure.) One such group, American Crossroads, organized by Karl Rove, announced on Tuesday a $4.2 million ad buy to support Republican candidates, bringing the group’s total spending to about $18 million so far.

Basically, if the Chamber is following the letter of the law as closely as possible, they're taking donations from overseas, using that to finance their operations, and that frees up those funds to spend on anti-Democrat ads. But...there's no way for anyone to check if they're even doing that, and not just openly using foreign contributions, because there are no disclosure requirements.

[mr_genius]

Remember when President Obama said that the Citizens United decision could open the door to foreign funding of ads in U.S. elections, and justice Alito was caught on camera saying "not true"?

Basically, if the Chamber is following the letter of the law as closely as possible, they're taking donations from overseas, using that to finance their operations, and that frees up those funds to spend on anti-Democrat ads. But...there's no way for anyone to check if they're even doing that, and not just openly using foreign contributions, because there are no disclosure requirements.

 

If the Democrats can't create a campaign ad from that, they might as well just give up.

[lostfan]

If the Democrats can't create a campaign ad from that, they might as well just give up.

Whenever the Democrats get a cookie like that they just wave at it like Josh Fields on a fastball. If they weren't so incompetent and scared of their own shadow I'd be a registered Democrat.

[lostfan]

Glenn Beck discovers what really caused slavery.

"Seemingly innocent ideas" lol. I guess the concept of owning another human being and forcing them to work is "innocent." Beck just talks out of his ass sometimes.

[bmags]

yeah, sometimes, yeah he does that. Just sometimes.

[lostfan]

Sometimes, other times it's choreographed

[BigSqwert]

Give Thanks for Your Freedom, Son, Or I’m Sending You to Jail

 

[Attorney] Danny Lampley . . . was jailed by Chancery Court Judge Littlejohn in Tupelo for failing to recite the pledge of allegiance in open court today. Danny was one of the local lawyers who represented the plaintiff in the Pontotoc school prayer case years ago, working with the ACLU and People for the American Way.

 

I’m informed that Danny rose and was respectful, but did not recite the pledge…

 

The order incarcerating him provides:

BE IT REMEMBERED, thi

s

date, the Court having ordered all pre

s

ent in the courtroom to

s

tand and recite the Pledge of Allegience, and having found that Danny Lampley, Attorney at Law, failed and refu

s

ed to do

s

o, find

s

s

aid Danny Lampley to be in criminal contempt of court.

 

[BigSqwert]

Lou Dobbs, hater of all illegal immigrants:

 

Dobbs has relied for years on undocumented labor for the upkeep of his multimillion-dollar estates and the horses he keeps for his 22-year-old daughter, Hillary, a champion show jumper

 

via

[StrangeSox]

RS interviews Obama.

 

"I still remember going over to the Republican caucus to meet with them and present our ideas, and to solicit ideas from them before we presented the final package. And on the way over, the caucus essentially released a statement that said, "We're going to all vote 'No' as a caucus." And this was before we'd even had the conversation."

 

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/209395

[NorthSideSox72]

RS interviews Obama.

 

 

 

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/209395

No surprise there, this has been the GOP tactic so far during Obama's administration. Block everything they can, offer nothing new and no solutions.

[Jenksismyhero]

RS interviews Obama.

 

 

 

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/209395

 

Kind of like the Dems and Obama with the stimulus bill. "Oh yeah, we invited them to a meeting. We aren't going to incorporate anything they want, but they can sit in on the meeting. That's bi-partisan action right there."

 

GMAB this is a GOP only tactic. That's Washington politics.

[bmags]

Kind of like the Dems and Obama with the stimulus bill. "Oh yeah, we invited them to a meeting. We aren't going to incorporate anything they want, but they can sit in on the meeting. That's bi-partisan action right there."

 

GMAB this is a GOP only tactic. That's Washington politics.

 

the initial stimulus proposal was 1.2 trillion and had a lot more actual spending. It finished at 800 billion with half in tax cuts. WHat the hell are you talking about.

[StrangeSox]

Republican Revisionism at its finest.

[Jenksismyhero]

the initial stimulus proposal was 1.2 trillion and had a lot more actual spending. It finished at 800 billion with half in tax cuts. What the hell are you talking about.

 

IIRC when the bill originated in the house the republicans were shut out of the meetings. Then, to try and save face, the senate offered up a bi-partisan meeting to discuss the various provisions of the bill, but basically stated out front that it was their way or the highway. The WH also chimed into the debate, again "inviting" the GOP to various meetings, but ultimately they were nothing more than "you can sit in the meeting but it's not like we're going to do anything you want." and IIRC, the stimulus was cut by moderate dems, not any concessions of the GOP.

 

Even still, my point was the bi-partisan efforts aren't real 95% of the time, and it's not ONLY the GOP. Most of the time it's the party not in power, because the main selling point at election time is ALWAYS "they've screwed everything up and did everything wrong and we voted the opposite way so vote for us and we'll make it better."

Edited October 7, 2010 by Jenksismybitch

[NorthSideSox72]

IIRC correctly when the bill originated in the house the republicans were shut out of the meetings. Then, to try and save face, the senate offered up a bi-partisan meeting to discuss the various provisions of the bill, but basically stated out front that it was their way or the highway. The WH also chimed into the debate, again "inviting" the GOP to various meetings, but ultimately they were nothing more than "you can sit in the meeting but it's not like we're going to do anything you want." and IIRC, the stimulus was cut by moderate dems, not any concessions of the GOP.

 

Even still, my point was the bi-partisan efforts aren't real 95% of the time, and it's not ONLY the GOP. Most of the time it's the party not in power, because the main selling point at election time is ALWAYS "they've screwed everything up and did everything wrong and we voted the opposite way so vote for us and we'll make it better."

You're right that it's not ONLY the GOP. Its also true that when the time comes that the Republicans take control of both houses (probably won't in 2010, but will again at some point, assuredly), the Dems will probably do the same damn thing.

 

But... right now, within the timeframe of the Obama administration, there is no doubt that the Republican Party has been far and away more likely to simply refuse any discussion and do nothing other than stand in the way. Part of that is the simple fact that they are the minority, and its hard to be obstructionist when you are the majority. And one could even make an argument that the Republicans should in fact do exactly that, because they don't have the seats to do anything else.

 

No doubt in my mind though, the Congressional Dems AND Obama have done more to extend an olive branch that the GOP in Congress. Not that its saying much. Both parties could learn a lot by looking back to the 90's, and seeing that even highly opposite leaders like Clinton and Gingrich, despite their own huge flaws, both understood the concept of comprimise. No one in either party seems to excel at that right now.

 

[Rex Kickass]

IIRC when the bill originated in the house the republicans were shut out of the meetings. Then, to try and save face, the senate offered up a bi-partisan meeting to discuss the various provisions of the bill, but basically stated out front that it was their way or the highway. The WH also chimed into the debate, again "inviting" the GOP to various meetings, but ultimately they were nothing more than "you can sit in the meeting but it's not like we're going to do anything you want." and IIRC, the stimulus was cut by moderate dems, not any concessions of the GOP.

 

Even still, my point was the bi-partisan efforts aren't real 95% of the time, and it's not ONLY the GOP. Most of the time it's the party not in power, because the main selling point at election time is ALWAYS "they've screwed everything up and did everything wrong and we voted the opposite way so vote for us and we'll make it better."

 

The stimulus was 50% tax cuts. And if you don't think there wasn't an effort to bring Republicans into the fold by esentially creating a smaller immediate stimulus as a result, you're really really mistaken.

[NorthSideSox72]

Don't know where to put this, since its both parties f***ing up, but I LOL'd...

 

Congress passes bill, doesn't know how, or why, or how it got through so fast

[BigSqwert]

Don't know where to put this, since its both parties f***ing up, but I LOL'd...

 

Congress passes bill, doesn't know how, or why, or how it got through so fast

I don't believe the "doesn't know how or why" part of it.

[southsider2k5]

I don't believe the "doesn't know how or why" part of it.

 

It wouldn't be the first time that happened in this Congress...

[lostfan]

the initial stimulus proposal was 1.2 trillion and had a lot more actual spending. It finished at 800 billion with half in tax cuts. WHat the hell are you talking about.

This

 

I've noticed every major news story usually has 2 completely different versions of reality to it and the one a person learns depends on how often they listen to talk radio/sources that are heavily influenced by talk radio (Breitbart, Beck, etc.). Sometimes they are just different opinions or interpretations of things but sometimes they get manufactured out of whole cloth but it gets repeated so often that it's just accepted as true.

 

The Republicans' definition of bipartisanship is "the near-supermajority passes legislation exactly the way we want them to and even if it has one of the things they campaigned on in it we will vote uniformly against it, if it is passed it will be rammed down our throats"

[Balta1701]

the initial stimulus proposal was 1.2 trillion and had a lot more actual spending. It finished at 800 billion with half in tax cuts. WHat the hell are you talking about.

Ok, this is fundamentally untrue. There were a few people who were saying that we needed to shoot for the moon on the stimulus, that we would be in much worse shape if we went too small than if we went too big, and that $1.2 trillion should be a starting point. However...those people aside from 1 or 2 people were not in the administration. They were people on the outside like Krugman. They were the same ones saying it was too loaded with tax cuts, and needed more long-term, infrastructure based spending.

 

The people on the inside followed the Larry Summers point of view...that the stimulus did not need to fill the output gap entirely, but instead needed just to be a backstop against a full blown depression. Thus...the first proposal was about an $800 billion or so stimulus. Some in the administration did publicly say that Congress would probably add spending to it because Congress likes spending money, but that never happened, and in fact they significantly weakened it.

 

The Obama administration itself never put out a $1 trillion number on the stimulus package and they should have. They cut back to the "let's backstop it so that unemployment stabilizes" point of view. And voila, unemployment stabilized, isn't going higher, but has zero impetus to go higher, with no inflation whatsoever. Exactly what the people calling for a number >>$1 trillion said.

[Balta1701]

The stimulus was 50% tax cuts. And if you don't think there wasn't an effort to bring Republicans into the fold by esentially creating a smaller immediate stimulus as a result, you're really really mistaken.

If the Republicans told the President he'd have 75 votes in the Senate for a $500 billion stimulus, we'd have a $500 billion stimulus and 10.5% unemployment.

 

If the Republicans had told the President he'd have 65 votes for a health care bill that expanded coverage but did 99% of what the Republicans wanted, we'd have that bill.

[Rex Kickass]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archiv...s-a-nazi/64319/

 

An election year already notable for its menagerie of extreme and unusual candidates can add another one: Rich Iott, the Republican nominee for Congress from Ohio's 9th District, and a Tea Party favorite, who for years donned a German Waffen SS uniform and participated in Nazi re-enactments.

[StrangeSox]

Haha I was just about to post that.

 

Tea party candidates continue to be crazy:

 

Sharon Angle claims Dearborn, MI and a non-existent Texas town are under Sharia law.

 

And Iott's SS fetish, which at first glance you can pass off as historical interest, but a look at their website shows they completely white-wash that division and paint them in the light of a fight against communism and a fight for personal freedom (of the master race, of course!)

[bmags]

Ok, this is fundamentally untrue. There were a few people who were saying that we needed to shoot for the moon on the stimulus, that we would be in much worse shape if we went too small than if we went too big, and that $1.2 trillion should be a starting point. However...those people aside from 1 or 2 people were not in the administration. They were people on the outside like Krugman. They were the same ones saying it was too loaded with tax cuts, and needed more long-term, infrastructure based spending.

 

This was coming from his chair of the council economic advisors, and was the starting point. It became apparent in the senate that people did not want more than 800 billion and so that's what happened. Krugman was fighting for significantly more than 1.2 trillion.

 

Unbowed, unbullied: However, Romer remains unbowed in her belief for even more stimulus. "The only surefire ways for policymakers to substantially increase aggregate demand in the short run are for the government to spend more and tax less," she said in the National Press Club speech.

 

In fact, Romer had initially fought for a $1.2 trillion stimulus package. "We have to hit this with everything we have," she told Obama, according to Jonathan Alter, in his book, "The Promise: President Obama, Year One."

http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-09-03/busi...president-obama