aofh's Comments (338)

“I expect that McConnell will be right about the health care legislation being a big issue in 2012. Given that so much of it won't take effect until 2013, expect Republicans to have a finger in the wind to determine which way the wind is blowing. I expect they will harangue the Democrats for creating an unGodly mess and screwing up big time. Don't expect significant specifics if there are any specifics at all. Don't expect a plan to fix the problems. This exercise is not about health care (or health insurance) but about returning to power (winning a majority in both Houses and the Presidency).

Frankly, I've always believed that Iraq was about securing political power here at home. And had they been competent managers they might have gotten away with dominating American politics for a hundred years. If the real goal was maintaining power, Iraq should be an object lesson for us.”

“Associate Propaganda (AP) is barking up the wrong tree. The problem with the GOP is not that it is flip flopping but that it refuses to join in the discussion in good faith. The GOP has put winning above everything including doing what is best for the country. The GOP will not argue the merit of its ideas, will not assess its policies in the light of history, and shouts down anyone who tries to do so. The GOP is not changing its mind because it has examined its ideas and policies and have concluded that they are not what is best at this time (or ever) but simply to be contrarian. And, perhaps worse, the GOP has shown that it will gladly pander to popular sentiment if the pander makes it look good--e.g. the Medicare drug fiasco they rammed through during the Bush years. This story (and others) should be chastising the GOP for promoting the GOP (its "brand") at the expense of the country. With the country in dire straights on so many fronts, we can't afford this kind of narcissism.”

“Not all Democrats are liberal. At least the party is honest with and about its members. Republicans aren't allow to think for themselves.”

“No, they lost touch with the country. People were anxious that the country was going in the wrong direction, and rightly so. The GOP is still out of touch. The hardliners cling to their core values without periodically taking a reality check to see if those values still work. They don't, and there is a long list of problem states--such as Argentina in the 80s--littering recent history showing those values don't work.”

“We never experience robust economic growth during the Bush years. The growth we did experience was anemic to moderate and we never fully recovered what was lost from the Clinton boom crash. We now know that much of the grow we did experience was snake oil.”

“There is more to education than what the government can put into it. The 50% dropout rate in inner cities has a lot to do the prospects those kids see for themselves. But high dropout rates are not resticted to just inner cities as Time magazine reported a couple of years ago. I don't imagine things will turnaround in this downturn.”

“The hidden treat is that they vote and elect people like Barraso.”

“Christmas doesn't have a lot to do with the birth of Jesus either. Some early, enterprising Pope or Bishop adapted the prevailing practices to Church purposes and it became the Christian tradition. God help her if she knew the truth.”

“I don't agree that it is the legislative process that needs to be addressed asap. Basically, you're asking the legislative process to fix itself, and that's not going to happen to anyones satisfaction. Rather, what needs to be addressed is the quality of the conversation in America. As a people we seem to be suffering from some sort of ADD. We want to see the world in black-and-white, we want instant fixes, we want bowdlerized memories. Until we start to accept things as they are, that most things are a shade of gray we are not going to elect legislators who will or can do what we need to have done.

Many of the problems we are facing now we were also facing in the late 70s. Ronald Reagan came along peddling a fantasy about a city on the hill. We bought it. Fortunately, high tech gained traction about that time and propelled us forward. But the rot was still there, and Reagan's vision ignored the rot making no effort to address it and making it worse. Now, high tech has matured. We can afford to hold on to Reagan's fantasy.”

“They are not irrelevant, they are worse: they're obstructionist. This debate and the final product would have been far cleaner if they were irrelevant. Far too often they set the tone and dictated the terms of the debate. The healthcare delivery system should have been the kernal at the center of the debate, instead profits were. The question is not when will the Republicans wake up, the question is when will we, the American people, wake up.”

“Clinton really didn't hand Bush that much. The tech bubble burst in March of 2000 and the economy was already in trouble. Bush's policies made a bad situation much worse. When Obama talks about sustainable jobs, it is the Clinton economy that he is thinking about. That economy was probably the pinnacle of Reaganomics based in financial manipulation. So what Obama inherited is more than Bush. It is more than Clinton, too. The struggle now, the real problem we have with Congress is in making a clean break from the ideology that got us into this mess. It behooves us to remember that the economy was in decline in November of 2000 and to use the Bush years to challenge tax-cut and deregulation advocates to show how those policies will make things better.”

“We like to suffer. America grew considerably after the "socialist" programs kick in after WWII and the Great Depression. I doubt people here really appreciate how much those programs reshaped our economy and way of life.”

“It seems to me that the problem is not with the filibuster per se but the fact that we have 40 people who automatically say no to every issue. More than 40, actually, because we have got the entire contingent of House Republicans doing the same. Frankly, I don't believe that all of those Senators and Congressmen are opposed to health care reform or every other issue they oppose as a party block. I also believe that were they acting independently they would have actively contributed to the HCR packages and other legislatislative initiatives in our common interest. Our problems stem not from the Senate rules but party ideology and discipline. It is the Republican party, not the Senate, that is antidemocratic.”

“Looks like we have a lot of people crying because they didn't get what they wanted. Sunshine liberals. The late Ted Kennedy was the most effective member of the modern Senate because he knew the reality of lawmaking is incrementalism. Rather than crying because we didn't get what we want, we should be strategizing how to improve what we've got. People will be happy when this passes and is signed into law. The notion that government can't have a broader role in health care won't go back into the bottle. To Rep. Obey and others, I say stop whining and get on with the job. Just because one bill passes doesn't mean the job is finished.”

“Shame on Max Baucus, Kent Conrad, Ben Nelson, Charle Shumner (sic), Dianne Feinstein (sic) and the host of other Democrat interested in protecting the status quo. And shame on Rep. Obey and others for not being able to convince their colleague to support a better bill.”

“Another sweatshop. What amazes me is the number of posters here who justify this kind of abuse in the name of profits or because it was something they had to do. We are enablers. Amazon nor any other employeer (especially of that size) has to abuse their employees in the manner described here. People are more than happy to work and will even go that extra mile if they feel they are treated fairly. Amazon clearly has a staffing problem that is probably driven by its business model. The localities where these centers are located are poorer for it as are America and England.”

“This is an oversimplification of both guns and people. Guns certainly makes it easier to kill and maim especially with all the automatic paraphernalia, but ultimately they are inanimate objects with their own intrinsic value. People don't always kill with them out of intent. Fear and paranoia make them all the more dangerous.”

“Don't kid yourself about genocide. The internments during WWII could easily have become genocidal; the hatred was there. Geoncides are usually committed against a hapless, reviled minority with the implicit blessing or indifference of the majority. Those who advocate and perpetrate genocidal solutions think that violence is the only answer.”

“The Second Amendment, like the other nine, was an afterthought to a document created to reform a government that had already been in existence for several years under the Articles of Confederation. The Constitution created a three-tier structure the purpose of which was to keep in check the government and make it accountable to its constituents--white, male and mostly property owners at the time. That government was broke. It could not afford a standing army or even the arms for a volunteer army. The notion that the Second Amendment authorized citizens to keep guns to keep the government in check came much later.

This kind of obsession with guns puzzles me. I read an observation which may interpret this kind of obsession with the gun: "Hatred or violent urges, often covering a sense of weakness, inferiority, or fear of being attacked and hurt by others. The gun thereby strenghtens ability to stand alone against such attacks, and expresses the feeling that violence is the only answer."”

“Bull. Killing or capturing bin Laden won't affect Al Qaida one way or the other. America will be happy, and it is America that McChrystal is trying to pacify with that statement. The death of bin Laden will be a feel-good moment and nothing more. A stablized Afghanistan with a functioning economy will be worth a hundred dead bin Ladens.”

“Hoyer continues to surprise me in this. As this piece points out, for so long the limelight has shown upon the President and we've somehow come to hold the President responsible for Congress' job. The Republicans are trying to uphold this distortion. It is good to hear committee chairmen holding hearings and pushing bills. It is great to hear individual Congressmen speak out in one way or another about some piece of legislation or area of concern. It is good to see (or think) that our government is behaving the way the framers designed it and that we are electing a king every four years.”

“That's not how I read the post. What I read is that there are representatives who are deliberately not doing their jobs and their constituents are not taking them to task for it. How many times during the summer recess did we hear of representatives at townhall meetings (when they bothered to have them) tell their constituents that there was no healthcare bill or that the proposals were too long to read and it was impossible to know what was in them? Everyone who has taken civics in high school should know that was BS. Regardless of your political persuasion, you should see that such a representative is not making an honest effort at doing the job and is outright lying about it. It would be more honest for the rep to say I don't like this proposal and I'm not going to read or support it.”

“"...the GOP seems intent on strengthening those things (i.e. the self-fulfilling GOP notion that government can never function appropriately)"

I suppose that the real benefit to the GOP in this strategy is that circumvents debate about the effectiveness of their policies. The downside for the country is that you can't have a solution if you don't acknowledge the problem. What moral cowards.”

“That's not the point. The point is that there are multiple voices and multiple points of view and the unified NO of the Republican party is enfeebling the debate. By not participating, the Republicans are telling the rest of us that what we think doesn't matter, that they know what is best. But they are also keeping their best ideas out of the debate and withholding their worst from scrutiny. Rather than striving for the best, they are trying to ensure mediocrity.”

“I think we already have multiple sides but that's obscured by the two party system. There are liberal, moderate and conservative Democrats. There are conservative, moderate and liberal Republicans though the media seems to portray them with a single face.”