Political Discussion

[banca rotta]

I wouldn't go there Goingdown. We can go on forever if we start blaming those on the TV and radio who are making their living exercising their free speech.

The guy is obviously a nut job and he will probably get the chair for this.

Tomorrow I can do something stupid and blame it all on Goingdown and others for annoying me or just blame this bkforum.

Times like these we must put the politics and blame aside. They guy is nuts and that's why he did it, period!

[GoingDown]

I just watched an interview with the mother of the 9 year old girl killed yesterday. What a beautiful child and what a strong mother. My contempt for those that want to use such tragedies to score political points knows no bounds. The gunman here was apparently a nutjob. Can't we just support the victims without trying to blame one side or the other of our political divide?

The problem is that this nutjob specifically chose to target Gabby. We have to ask ourselves why he did this? Did he listen to too much right wing talk show hosts who have said some horrible and unfounded things about Gabby. She was a moderate, not a liberal. But Sara Palin did have a huge political campaign against her, and many horrible things were said against her during campaign ads funded by Republicans and other right wingers. I have to wonder how much this nutjob was influenced by talk radio (Or as some people call it-- hate radio) and Fox News on cable with hosts like Glenn Beck who says some truly outrageous things.

The political climate in Arizona has become very mean spirited. The debate over immigration and healthcare issues has elevated to levels that I have never seen in my entire life.

We need to step back from this and let everyone cool down and let some reasonable thoughts prevail.

I am always so amazed about the people who are against "illegal" immigration from Mexico. The Mexicans were here first. This is their land. We are the guests here, especially in Arizona. We need to start treating these people with more respect and dignity.

From what I hear, Jared was anti-"illegal" immigration, and I have to wonder how much of the hate speech about immigration issues on talk radio influenced what he did?

[tobee43]

i keep listening to the new and i'm hearing nothing about this 22 year old???

i can understand someone going crazy when they are losing their homes, and jobs and whatever...we all have, but don't go out and kill people...no matter what our political views are. i have to reserve my judgment on exactly why this happened until more information is released about this 22 year old person that is NUTS.

my heart is broken and goes out to all those that have lost loved ones in this terrible devastating travesty.

[BobMango]

I just watched an interview with the mother of the 9 year old girl killed yesterday. What a beautiful child and what a strong mother. My contempt for those that want to use such tragedies to score political points knows no bounds. The gunman here was apparently a nutjob. Can't we just support the victims without trying to blame one side or the other of our political divide?

[banca rotta]

I know right after I heard about this tragedy I was already wondering how many will politicise this and how long before it begins.

It looks like the killer had serious problems.

I don't know much about Giffords, but it looks like she is a "middle of the road moderate" and was even considered a blue dog dem after being a former republican.

Besides killing and injuring innocent people the psycho now fueled more media pundits declaring war against the "right wing kooks" and the tea party protestors which will probably result in more violence and less freedom for Americans. What a shame.

[keepinitreal]

The unseemly rush to blame Sarah Palin, the Tea Party and Republicans for murder in Arizona

January 9, 2011

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, by all accounts an outstanding public servant and person, is battling for her life in hospital after being shot by a 22-year-old man at close range at a “Congress On Your Corner” event in her home district. Six people are dead, including a judge and a girl of nine, and a dozen others are being treated for their wounds.

It is, as President Barack Obama said, an “unspeakable tragedy”. It is also, as he added, “a senseless and terrible act of violence has no place in a free society”. That much we know and the President wisely did not seek to make political capital out of the carnage or jump to conclusions about the motivations of the gunman, named as Jared Loughner.

That, of course, hasn’t stopped some on the Left clamouring to blame Sarah Palin, the Tea Party or Republicans in general for what happened.

Paul Krugman of the “New York Times” suggests darkly that Giffords was shot because she was “a Democrat who survived what was otherwise a GOP sweep in Arizona” and “violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate” (those reponsible for such a climate being, of course, Republicans).

TBogg of FireDogLake wades straight in and blames Sarah Palin for the shooting because of a graphic of crosshairs placed on the districts of moderate Democrats who voted for healthcare reform. Was the Palin graphic clever? No. But martial imagery is standard political fare and, as Matt Lewis points out, there’s no shortage of Democrats who’ve engaged in it (VerumSerum has found a Democratic Leadership Committee target map).

Jane Fonda pins it on Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and the Tea Party.

Even the local sheriff (a Democrat) has been getting in on the act. Sheriff Clarence Dupnik (a Democrat) said:

When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And, unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.

Well, we’ll see. Personally, I’d be more reassured by a sheriff who concentrated on facts rather than over-heated, sweeping generalisations.

So what are the facts we know so far? From what we know about Loughner, he was a deeply disturbed young man who railed about literacy rates, spoke of flag burning and creating a new currency.

Former classmates talk of “nonsensical outbursts” and a person “on his own planet”. His favourite reading apparently included “Mein Kampf” and “The Communist Manifesto”. My colleague Jon Swaine has a summary here of the raving of a person who most people would judge to be a complete nutcase even if he hadn’t gone out and shot people.

Oh, and another former classmate said he was “left wing, quite liberal”. Naturally, this doesn’t stop Jacob Heilbrunn, pontificating that the shootings are evidence of that the “radical right is becoming even more radicalised and violent”.

Ben Smith sums up the current picture of Loughner pretty well:

The obsession with the gold standard and the hostility to the federal government resonate with the far right, the burned American flag with the left, but the discussion of mind control and grammar sound more like mental illness than politics.

This is highly inconvenient for certain people on the Left so they ignore it. They would much prefer the shooter to have been a white male in his 50s, the description the sheriff gave of a second person of interest (we’ll see if such a person materialises) but they’ll still try to make hay with a weirdo like Loughner.

Giffords herself doesn’t quite fit the likely victim of an enraged Right-winger. She is a Blue Dog Democrat, a deficit hawk and voted to lift the ban on guns in DC and voted against Nancy Pelosi for Speaker. On Thursday, she took part in the reading of the Constitution in the House, reading aloud the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of religion, speech and peaceful assembly.

She’s certainly not the “progressive” that Hanoi Jane tweeted about and provoked as much anger on the Left as on the Right for her political stances. Just the other day, a blogger at DailyKos said that Giffords was “dead to me” for failing to back Pelosi.

Plenty more will emerge in the coming days about Loughner’s motivations and those of any accomplice. It seems certain that the attempted assassination was politically motivated but in exactly what way is, at this stage, very murky.

This is a time for sombre reflection and a calming (rather than an escalation) of rhetoric. Sadly, however, some see it as another opportunity to score political points and vilify those they hate.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyharnden/100071004/the-unseemly-rush-to-blame-sarah-palin-the-tea-party-and-republicans-for-murder-in-arizona/#dsq-content

[tobee43]

The Tea Party gang IMO is to the right what the hope and change gang is to the left.

I happen to agree more with the tea party bunch but I honestly had no illusions the repubs would do the right thing anymore then I thought last week that santa would actually climb down my chimney.

It's impossible for them to do the work of the people by the design of the system. Once they get elected in order for them to qualify for any party support they must cave in to the party leaders which are controlled by the banksters.

I think the real test (and I already know the outcome) will be in a couple of months when the D&R criminal gangs raise the national debt ceiling to over 15 trillion.

That will be the test. If they vote no and force across the board austerity starting with bringing home the troops, closing the borders and throwing the banksters in prison, then they will be serious about real change for the better.

I just don't see any of them doing the right thing. until they are forced to by the USA's inevitable bankruptcy.

well...actually i'm more on the side of the "coffee with half and half" party myself....but i thought it worth sharing...

and i very much agree with you...only time will tell what's going to happen here.......and it's pretty frightening.

[banca rotta]

The Tea Party gang IMO is to the right what the hope and change gang is to the left.

I happen to agree more with the tea party bunch but I honestly had no illusions the repubs would do the right thing anymore then I thought last week that santa would actually climb down my chimney.

It's impossible for them to do the work of the people by the design of the system. Once they get elected in order for them to qualify for any party support they must cave in to the party leaders which are controlled by the banksters.

I think the real test (and I already know the outcome) will be in a couple of months when the D&R criminal gangs raise the national debt ceiling to over 15 trillion.

That will be the test. If they vote no and force across the board austerity starting with bringing home the troops, closing the borders and throwing the banksters in prison, then they will be serious about real change for the better.

I just don't see any of them doing the right thing. until they are forced to by the USA's inevitable bankruptcy.

[tobee43]

Tea Party Activists Angry at G.O.P. Leaders


January 1, 2011

As Tea Party politicians prepare to take their seats when the 112th Congress convenes this week, they are already taking issue with Republicans for failing to hold the line against the flurry of legislation enacted in the waning weeks of Democratic control of the House of Representatives and for not giving some candidates backed by Tea Party groups powerful leadership positions.

Just a month ago, Tea Party leaders were celebrating their movement’s victories in the midterm elections. But as Congress wrapped up an unusually productive lame-duck session last month, those same Tea Party leaders were lamenting that Washington behaved as if it barely noticed that American voters had repudiated the political establishment.

In their final days controlling the House, Democrats succeeded in passing legislation that Tea Party leaders opposed, including a bill to cover the cost of medical care for rescue workers at the site of the World Trade Center attacks, an arms-control treaty with Russia, a food safety bill and a repeal of the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military.

“Do I think that they’ve recognized what happened on Election Day? I would say decisively no,” said Mark Meckler, a co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, which sent its members an alert last month urging them to call their representatives to urge them to “stop now and go home!!”

“We sent them a message that we expect them to go home and come back newly constituted and do something different,” Mr. Meckler said. “For them to legislate when they’ve collectively lost their mandate just shows the arrogance of the ruling elite. I can’t imagine being repudiated in the way they were and then coming back and saying ‘Now that we’ve been repudiated, let’s go pass some legislation.’ ”

“I’m surprised by how blatant it was,” he added.

But Tea Party activists did not reserve their criticism for Democrats. “The Republicans, frankly, have been a disaster,” Mr. Meckler said. “They stood strong on some things, but the only reason they stood strong is because we stood behind them with a big stick.”

Still, the Tea Party could point to some impact already. Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, who will become House speaker when the Republicans assume the majority, has proposed new procedural rules that acknowledge Tea Party demands. House members will not be able to introduce a bill or a joint resolution without “a statement citing as specifically as practicable the power or powers granted to Congress in the Constitution to enact it.”

This was a leading demand of the Contract From America, a Tea Party manifesto that was issued as a prelude to the midterm elections. Proposed legislation will have to be posted online for three days before any vote, reflecting Tea Party demands for greater transparency.

More ceremonially, the rules call for the Constitution to be read aloud on the House floor when the session opens.

Tea Party pressure prevailed in blocking the Senate from passing a $1.2 trillion spending bill and a measure that would have created a path to citizenship for some illegal immigrants.

But Judson Phillips, the founder of Tea Party Nation, a social-networking Web site, declared after the approval of the arms-control treaty that “the G.O.P. has caved.”

Mr. Phillips, too, had urged his members to inundate their lawmakers with phone calls, e-mails and faxes urging them to stop considering legislation. “Give them no rest until they are out of town,” he wrote.

Tea Party leaders scoffed at the Republicans’ greatest victory from the lame-duck session — the extension of the Bush tax cuts as part of a compromise with the White House. Instead, Tea Party leaders complained that Republicans had abandoned a push for a full repeal of the estate tax.

Mr. Phillips said the tax cuts were more accurately described as “maintaining the status quo” because the lower rates had been in place for several years.

Despite its victories in November — more than 40 candidates supported by the Tea Party were elected to the House and Senate — the Tea Party lost battles for important leadership positions. Tea Party Patriots, for instance, had backed Representative Jack Kingston of Georgia to be chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee. Mr. Meckler and Jenny Beth Martin, also a co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, criticized Republicans for choosing Representative Harold Rogers of Kentucky instead, saying he was likely “to continue the big-spending, pork-barrel ways that lost Republicans the majority four years ago.”

In an opinion article on Politico, the two also criticized Republican leaders for choosing Representative Fred Upton of Michigan to lead the Energy and Commerce Committee, saying the choice “indicated they are not serious about expanding the nation’s energy-producing capability” through expanded oil drilling and a relaxation of regulations on nuclear power and coal.

The collapse of the spending bill, which would have financed government agencies through September, also means that the next Congress will have an almost immediate effect on decisions about government spending. Under a stopgap measure, the current Congress extended financing for government agencies until only March.

Incoming Tea Party lawmakers said they would push for drastic cuts to federal agencies whose functions they believe would be better handled at the state level, like the Department of Education.

Mike Lee, a senator-elect from Utah who had Tea Party support and defeated an incumbent Republican, Robert F. Bennett, said that he, along with other incoming senators, had signed letters to Senate Democrats asking them to delay voting on the arms-control treaty until the new Congress was seated. Mr. Lee was disappointed that the Senate approved the treaty anyway.

Still, he said he believed that the vote to extend the Bush tax cuts signaled that Congress had heard the demands of the Tea Party in the midterm elections.

“This changes by degrees,” Mr. Lee said. “As long as you have a Democratic president and a Democratic-controlled Senate, I don’t think there are many people who are expecting that the government’s going to be transformed overnight into something in the image of the Tea Party. That would be delusional.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/us/politics/02teaparty.html?hp

[WhatMoney]

Likely gridlock in Congress could threaten economy

Post-election gridlock in Congress could pose threat to a fragile economy if little gets done
Tuesday November 2, 2010, 6:51 am

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Political gridlock is supposed to be good for business. If bickering lawmakers can't agree on anything, the thinking goes, they can't pass laws and regulations that make the economy worse.

So will the midterm elections, which are expected to leave Congress at least partially controlled by Republicans and squaring off against a Democratic White House, be a help to the economy?

Don't count on it.

A standoff between the Obama administration and emboldened Republicans will probably block any new help for an economy squeezed by slow growth and high unemployment. Congress might also create paralyzing uncertainty for investors and businesses by fighting over taxes, deficits, health care and financial regulation.

"We expect massive gridlock and little cooperation," writes Brian Gardner, Washington analyst for the financial firm Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.

If times were good, gridlock wouldn't matter so much. A Republican Congress and Democratic White House butted heads in the mid- and late '90s, after all, and their sparring did nothing to derail a strong economy.

But now, nearly a year and a half after the official end of the Great Recession, the economy still isn't growing fast enough to bring down unemployment, which is stuck at 9.6 percent.

"Very few believe the government should sit on its hands," Yale University political scientist Jacob Hacker says. "But right now we're facing a period of drift."

In its Pledge to America, the GOP has vowed to oppose additional spending to stimulate the economy. Obama's plan to spend $50 billion on roads, railways and airports, for instance, is probably dead. And the new Congress may resist continuing to extend benefits to the 6.1 million long-term unemployed, at least without cutting the budget elsewhere.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has said lawmakers need to do more to jump-start the economy. Otherwise, more pressure will fall on the Fed to find a way to help, Gardner writes. But the Fed has already pushed short-term interest rates to zero. And its remaining option -- buying Treasury bonds to pump cash into the economy -- is risky and unproven.

Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, top Republican on Congress' Joint Economic Committee, says a GOP Congress would replace "the firestorm of new regulations thrust through Congress" by the Democrats with "a more reasoned regulatory environment."

Republicans have promised to repeal Obama's massive health care law and are likely to try to scale back the overhaul of financial regulation that the outgoing Democratic Congress passed last summer.

Health care companies, insurers and banks would welcome relief from regulation. But Republicans probably won't have enough votes to overcome a presidential veto. And tinkering with existing law risks creating even more uncertainty for employers already reluctant to hire workers or buy new equipment because of doubts about where the economy is going.

"It seems impossible to me there won't be more uncertainty after the election," says Yale's Hacker, co-author of "Winner-Take-All Politics."

Wall Street research also disputes the notion that gridlock is good for the stock market, showing that stocks do just as well, or better, when one party runs both the White House and Congress.

Reviewing stock market and election results dating to 1950, Fidelity Investments concluded that stocks soar the year after midterm elections, with or without divided government.

Stocks of small companies surge an average of about 46 percent in the year after a midterm election that gives one party control of both Congress and the White House, Fidelity's research found. That compares with a gain of about 24 percent after the government is left divided. Large-company stocks perform about the same either way.

William Galston, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a domestic policy adviser in the Clinton administration, says compromises in the next Congress are possible. Lawmakers in both parties might support a grand tax bargain that would trade lower corporate rates for fewer loopholes. Each could claim to have made the tax code more efficient.

And Obama might get more support from Republicans than Democrats for a free trade agreement he's working on with South Korea.

The two parties appear to be moving toward a deal to extend tax breaks passed during President George W. Bush's first term that are scheduled to expire Dec. 31. Obama wants to renew the cuts only for families earning less than $250,000 a year.

He says the government, having run a $1.3 trillion deficit for the just-ended budget year, can't afford to continue tax breaks for the wealthy, too. Republicans want the breaks renewed for everybody, arguing it would be folly to let taxes rise on anybody when the economy is so fragile.

Joseph Quinlan, chief market strategist at U.S. Trust, expects the government to "kick the can down the road" with a deal to extend all the tax breaks for one year. Even so, renewing the tax cuts doesn't do anything new for the economy. They have been in place since before the Great Recession and throughout its dismal aftermath.

The prospect for a big breakthrough in economic policy seems low if the two parties battle each other to a standstill through the 2012 presidential election.

"Short-term gridlock is very bad for the outlook," Bank of America analysts say in a report on the election. "In today's challenging environment, inaction is dangerous."

Paul Wiseman, AP Economics Writer

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Likely...&asset=&ccode=

[Logan08]

This has actually happened in a few other places as well. Mainly at Mexican establishments in San Diego, I've seen this a couple of times and the Mexican flag never stays up for too long.

[GoingDown]

The culture that I want to retain is to be able to speak to the average person in English and be understood; to be able to order at McDonald's in English and be understood;

I adapted. I learned enough Spanish as a kid in grade school and high school to get by here, and I'm glad I did. I'm continuing to try to learn more Spanish every day. I have lots of opportunities to practice my Spanish speaking skills where I live. I think it is the best course of action because nothing is going to stop immigration from Mexico, so I might as well prepare for it. Rather than curse the darkness, light a candle.

to be able to send my kids to a good public school with a rigorous academic program where they don't have to hire a special teacher for the kids who don't speak English

The public schools were broken long before immigration became much of an issue. The real problem with public education is the corrupt administration of schools and the teachers' unions, which could be solved by a voucher system where kids could go to any school-- public, private, even Catholic schools-- rather than just being stuck in the public schools.

I want it to be unusual, very unusual, for a girl to get married when she's 15; or to have two or three kids of her own before she's 18 by two or three different fathers.

That's a social change that really has nothing to do with immigration.


I want American law, not Shiara law.

The odds of America becoming dominated by radical Islamic laws is very low. I just don't see that ever really happening. Remember, most of the immigrants coming from Mexico are Catholic.


I don't want the neighbors having rooster fights or keeping goats in their back yards.

Oh, you wouldn't like living in my neighborhood, then. I have a goat, for goat's milk. Goats are really cool pets as well. Some parts of Phoenix still have a rural feeling to them.

Culture is hard to define, but it's easy to recognize. If you go to Mexico and go off the beaten tourist path, if you go to a bar that the locals go to, you'll understand immediately that you're in a different culture.

What do you mean by this?

Too, I guess I just don't understand why people want to leave their home, their native land, and go to a foreign country and once there try to implement the same policies, politics and customs in their new home that made their old home a place they wanted to leave to begin with.

Didn't the Puritans do this same exact thing? .

...

[keepinitreal]

When the Comedians start, the Honeymoon really is over….


The liberals are asking us to give Obama time. We agree and think 25 to life would be appropriate.
--Jay Leno

America needs Obama-care like Nancy Pelosi needs a Halloween mask.
--Jay Leno

Q: Have you heard about McDonald's' new Obama Value Meal?
A: Order anything you like and the guy behind you has to pay for it.
--Conan O'Brien

Q: What does Barack Obama call lunch with a convicted felon?
A: A fund raiser.
--Jay Leno

Q: What's the difference between Obama's cabinet and a penitentiary?
A: One is filled with tax evaders, blackmailers, and threats to society. The
other is for housing prisoners.
--David Letterman

Q: If Nancy Pelosi and Obama were on a boat in the middle of the ocean and it started to sink, who would be saved?
A: America!
--Jimmy Fallon

Q: What's the difference between Obama and his dog, Bo?
A: Bo has papers.
--Jimmy Kimmel

Q: What was the most positive result of the "Cash for Clunkers" program?
A: It took 95% of the Obama bumper stickers off the road.
--David Letterman

[banca rotta]

American Veteran Removes US Flag from beneath Mexican Flag



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ6cC...eature=related

[banca rotta]

But on this issue of immigration, a lot of what you says sounds like some old speech dug up from Father Coughlin in 1930's or someone like him. I know times are tough, but why go back to the hatred and fear of the 1930's. I would like to keep moving forward, not go back to our darker times....

Here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHHfP-a0-2Q

Just in case you missed it the first time I posted it.

IMO the information in the above link looks like we are moving forward to much "darker times" then anything I have ever heard of mostly due to failed immigration policies.

I didn't make this up either. It's out there for us all to see.