The Democrat Thread

[Balta1701]

That's f***ing lame.

We heard it in the other thread. People do stupid things, the kid is their punishment.

[kapkomet]

We heard it in the other thread. People do stupid things, the kid is their punishment.

 

 

You throw "the kid is their punishment" labels. I'm glad you view a child as punishment. Oh wait, you'd rather allow the abortion as "woman's rights" and not think twice about it. Got it.

[CrimsonWeltall]

You throw "the kid is their punishment" labels. I'm glad you view a child as punishment. Oh wait, you'd rather allow the abortion as "woman's rights" and not think twice about it. Got it.

 

Many Republicans take the "no, except rape/incest" stance, which clearly shows that it's not about the child, but about how the woman got pregnant. Got raped? Not your fault, have an abortion. Had sex? YOUR FAULT, you have that kid.

[kapkomet]

Many Republicans take the "no, except rape/incest" stance, which clearly shows that it's not about the child, but about how the woman got pregnant. Got raped? Not your fault, have an abortion. Had sex? YOUR FAULT, you have that kid.

 

 

Nice stereotype.

 

Now, they'll be some bulls*** log and graph that supports this stance.

[Texsox]

Many Republicans take the "no, except rape/incest" stance, which clearly shows that it's not about the child, but about how the woman got pregnant. Got raped? Not your fault, have an abortion. Had sex? YOUR FAULT, you have that kid.

 

What Kap was trying to say is abortion is not an easy question. Everyone has empathy for the people involved. The fact that some people will accept abortion for rape/incest is more about empathy for the victim of a crime than actually believing abortion is ok. They themselves may choose to have the baby, but allow an option for others. I'll bet some pro-choice supports would object to a person who used abortion as birth control. After six or seven abortions because she wasn't using birth control, some people may object,

[southsider2k5]

Many Republicans take the "no, except rape/incest" stance, which clearly shows that it's not about the child, but about how the woman got pregnant. Got raped? Not your fault, have an abortion. Had sex? YOUR FAULT, you have that kid.

 

Versus the stance that the kid is disposable.

[farmteam]

Versus the stance that the kid is disposable.

 

Erm, isn't one of the more, shall we say "contentious" points of debate, that whether or not what's being aborted is a "kid" or not? If that's the issue, framing an argument (which is a pretty liberal use of the term given the quoted text) using the central issue ("kid") as a given premise is going to accomplish zero.

[Balta1701]

What Kap was trying to say is abortion is not an easy question. Everyone has empathy for the people involved. The fact that some people will accept abortion for rape/incest is more about empathy for the victim of a crime than actually believing abortion is ok. They themselves may choose to have the baby, but allow an option for others. I'll bet some pro-choice supports would object to a person who used abortion as birth control. After six or seven abortions because she wasn't using birth control, some people may object,

Well, that's certainly not how I read what Kap had to say.

 

I think you're wrong on the other half too. I think the whole reason this is a debate in the first place is that there is a lack of empathy on all parts...it's just a question of the person's politics who they will have empathy for and in what way. And that's why this issue is one where there is no easy answer...because you can't have empathy for everyone. If you want to try to have empathy for the child by ending abortion, then either you're having no empathy for the mother, or you're having no empathy for the child who has to grow up with a parent who didn't want them, or you're having no empathy for anyone by viewing the fetus as punishment. IF you try to have empathy for the mother, then it's hard to have empathy for the fetus.

[StrangeSox]

Bachmann: God sent the hurricanes and earthquakes because he's upset about the deficit.

 

"I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?' Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we've got to rein in the spending."

 

 

Whoops! That wasn't Pat Robertson ridiculously claiming that God created a (very minor) earthquake and a (relatively unexceptional) hurricane because he was upset about the government's finances. It was Michele Bachmann. She's running for president.

 

No, that's not an Onion link.

[NorthSideSox72]

Bachmann: God sent the hurricanes and earthquakes because he's upset about the deficit.

 

 

 

No, that's not an Onion link.

When people earlier pointed out lefty and righty crazies, people that are bloggers and what not, blaming Congress or Fracking or little martians for the natural disasters... it could be dismissed, because these are just idiot screamers. But this idiot screamer is running for President, and there are people who actually support her. Now that is scary.

 

[southsider2k5]

FWIW, it is being termed as a "joke" but hopefully this helps to get her out of the race quicker.

 

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-wo...,0,936614.story

[Rex Kickass]

It's as much of a joke as she is.

[BigSqwert]

It's as much of a joke as she is.

 

I wonder if she will visit the families of the handful of people that died in the storm and explain to them the gist of her hilarious joke.

[StrangeSox]

Jesus hates deficits. It's right there in the Bible, Matthew I think.

[Rex Kickass]

FEMA Funding stalled in Senate because bill won't pass Filibuster without banning Federal Funding from ACORN. Seriously.

 

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2011/08/...rn_funding.html

 

I've been poking around today on an emerging issue: What will be cut in order to fund FEMA's obligations for Hurricane Irene recovery? The search takes me to the text of the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, which was narrowly passed by the House but sits stalled in the Senate. That stall is the reason that FEMA has to move around money meant for Joplin disaster recovery in order to take care of Irene. I don't see why there's a hold-up, because Republicans did a good job making sure no DHS money could go to liberal groups.

[Balta1701]

Dana Milbank

On Monday, six years to the day after Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans and obliterated the notion of a competent federal government, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Craig Fugate offered an anecdote that showed just how different things were with Hurricane Irene.

 

On the podium in the White House briefing room, he recalled the satellite images of Irene’s path. “Do you remember seeing the satellite, how big that storm was and how close it was to the state of Florida?” he asked. Fugate, the former emergency management chief in Florida, said that a decade or so ago, “Florida would have had to evacuate based upon this track.”

 

Instead, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s improved models predicted landfall in North Carolina, and, in fact, “the track was only about 10 miles off of where they actually thought it was going to come ashore.”

 

This was just one piece of the overall anticipation of Irene and response to the storm that has earned high marks for FEMA and NOAA. Like the killing of Osama bin Laden, it was a rare reminder that the federal government can still do great things, after all other possibilities have been exhausted.

 

Such successes might provide an antidote to the souring of the public’s confidence in government. By coincidence, a Gallup poll released Monday showed that only 17 percent of Americans have a favorable view of the federal government, a new low.

 

More likely, however, Americans won’t have long to savor this new competence in government. NOAA has already been hit with budget cuts that will diminish its ability to track storms, and FEMA, like much of the federal government, will lose about a third of its funding over the next decade if Tea Party Republicans have their way.

 

In the spending compromise for this year worked out between congressional Republicans and the White House, NOAA’s budget was cut by about $140 million (House Republicans had sought much larger cuts) and money for new satellites was cut by more than $500 million from President Obama’s request. NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco warned in May, “we are likely looking at a period of time a few years down the road where we will not be able to do the severe storm warnings . . . that people have come to expect today.”

 

Congressional Democrats and the White House were somewhat more successful this year in resisting cuts to FEMA that Republicans had proposed. But under the House Republicans’ plan to freeze discretionary spending at 2008 levels over a decade, FEMA cuts are inevitable. According to an analysis by the Center for American Progress’s Scott Lilly that takes into account inflation and population, this amounts to a 31 percent cut in real per capita spending on discretionary functions such as FEMA.

 

Tea Partyers who denounce Big Government seem to have an abstract notion that government spending means welfare programs and bloated bureaucracies. Almost certainly they aren’t thinking about hurricane tracking and pre-positioning of FEMA supplies. But if they succeed in paring the government, some of these Tea Partyers (particularly those on the coasts or on the tornadic planes) may be surprised to discover that they have turned a Hurricane Irene government back into a Katrina government.

 

The Irene government would seem to have its benefits. Before the storm struck, 18 FEMA teams deployed from Florida to Maine, repositioning as the emphasis moved to New England. Food, water, generators and tarps were in place along the storm’s path. In Vermont, when the storm forced evacuation of the state emergency operations center, the workers relocated to a FEMA facility. In North Carolina, FEMA provided in-the-dark local authorities with generator power. And everywhere, FEMA, given new authority by Congress after Katrina, didn’t have to wait for states to request help.

 

“We have to go fast; we have to base it upon the potential impacts,” Fugate said Monday, describing the Irene response. “That’s why we look at these forecasts we get from the hurricane center, and we make the decisions based upon what the potential impacts could be. If you wait till you know how bad it is, it becomes harder to change the outcome.”

 

That’s one model. The other model is to have a weak federal government, without the funds to forecast storms or to launch a robust emergency response in time to do any good. You might call that the Tea Party model.

[BigSqwert]

Zing!

The difference between corporations and people is that Rick Perry would never execute a corporation.

[Balta1701]

And going along with my last post...FEMA has run out of disaster funds for the year. They have an emergency surplus that they use to pay people to actually go into disaster zones, but unless Congress chooses to appropriate additional funds, there will be no Federal Disaster Relief funds going to help rebuild from the next mess.

Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Craig Fugate said Monday that the agency's fund has fallen to less than $800 million. With less that $1 billion on hand, the agency is only authorized to pay for emergency repairs. That means that long-term projects, like rebuilding roads, schools and other damaged structures in the tornado-ravaged southeastern states and Joplin, Mo., will have to wait.

 

While individuals eligible for assistance from those earlier storms will continue to get their checks, FEMA will put other spending on hold in order to have enough cash on hand for new emergencies like Hurricane Irene.

 

Fugate said he hopes to resume funding those long-term projects at some point, but that Congress will have to appropriate additional funds for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 in order to do so.

 

He added that he's not even sure that the disaster fund has enough money to cover all the costs that will be associated with Hurricane Irene, which caused flooding and other damage in a heavily-populated area stretching from North Carolina to Vermont over the weekend.

[kapkomet]

Dana Milbank

 

 

These evil mothaf***as. They're killing people before they're even killed.

[Balta1701]

Oh great, really?

POTUS has requested a Joint Session of Congress at 8 PM on 9/7 to lay out his plan to create jobs, grow the economy, and reduce the deficit

 

Could at least wait until Friday where I could either miss it while giving blood or get completely toasted post-blood donation by playing a drinking game?

[StrangeSox]

We're going to have a massive jobs program that cuts spending!

[Balta1701]

We're going to have a massive jobs program that cuts spending!

Technically that might actually be true...if you take people off unemployment and Medicaid by making them employed, you might well pull that off.

 

But I think it will do a much better job of stimulating distilleries.

[Balta1701]

If you’re going to propose things that can pass Congress and they create jobs, then I don’t think it matters whether or not they’re popular. The job creation will be rewarded. But if you’re going to pass something that can’t pass Congress, then it doesn’t matter at all whether it would hypothetically work, all that matters is that it polls well. And as Chait says, the things that Keynesian analysis suggests would create jobs — much larger budget deficits, higher inflation — are not popular things to campaign on. The smart move, if you’re just going to give a speech for speech’s sake, is to make the speech be full of nonsense bromides that voters like to hear. Except one problem President Obama will face is that for a “nonsense bromides” strategy to be maximally effective, it would be really useful for the entire progressive echo chamber to get really excited about his bromide agenda and start loudly insisting that the bromides would be super-successful in reducing unemployment if implemented. But Paul Krugman, Rachel Maddow, etc. won’t do that. A speech full of bromides will be disparaged as bromidish. These are the wages of the “hack gap,” the fact that the progressive media ecology is less leadable than the Conintern. Consequently, the president will probably try to split the difference in a way that leaves everyone unhappy and sniping at him from all directions.

Link

[Balta1701]

Wow, the Speaker of the House has actually come back and asked the President to reschedule his address on Thursday the 8th, rather than Wednesday the 7th, ostensibly because the House is not in session on the 7th and that would give them more time to prepare (but there's also a Republican debate scheduled on that night).

 

September the 8th, of course, is opening night of the NFL season.

 

If there's such a thing as "scheduling hardball", i think we've seen both the White House and the Speaker play it today. Kinda neat. I should drink for that one.

[Balta1701]

@lukerussert: House historian says public move by Boehner to tell Obama to change date is unprecedented.

Something done by House Republicans gets called unprecedented! Drink!