For What Its Worth…
there’s something happin in here
what it is aint exactly clear
theres a man with a gun over there
tellin me i got to beware
i think it’s time we stop, children
what’s that sound
everybody look what’s goin down
there’s battle lines being drawn
nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
young people speakin there minds
getting so much resistance far behind
it’s time we stop,
hey what’s that sound
everybody look what’s goin down
–stephen Stills
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What ever happened to an exchange of ideas?
I have lived through many presidencies. I have never seen anything like the vitriol I am seeing with this one, and the last 2 were doozies.
When did we ever have just an exchange of ideas at the political level? It became vitriolic the day everyone realized that George Washington wasn’t going to be President for Life.
I agree. The last three Presidents have had vitriolic attacks against them. The Bush Sr. Presidency wasn’t but the attacks against Reagan were vicious. Clinton got them because he was seen as a lying corrupt President. Bush was attacked because he was seen as an illegitimate President by those that can’t count and those that disagreed with anything he did. And Obama is attacked because we take him at his word about what he wants to do and because of the way he favors only HIS side of the country. He has trouble representing all Americans, in many eyes. He is too partisan. He’s been caught in too may lies and misleading statements. No one trusts him, even on his own side. Too many failed promises.
Look at this blog.
I was tempted to leave it because I feel that I’m banging my head against a brick wall. We’re talking at cross purposes and from different principles.
Our interpretation of events don’t seem to be in the same world. You get frustrated because 87 Tea Party members supposedly caused a lot of trouble and you blame them.
I see that there were many others involved and state that they have responsibility too for the delays. You don’t acknowledge that, stating that the TP is at fault.
All I saw was the TP actually attempting to compromise and during the negotiations, winning on some points and losing on others. You saw obstinacy on the part of a few.
Then the downgrade happened and the rating agency spelled out what is the primary reason for the downgrade – the long term debt.
You only seem to consider that the delay is the cause and then state that only Obama had enough cuts, disregarding the fact that it was the TP that forced him to consider ANY cuts.
Or that if the ceiling had been raised with no fuss as you desire….the downgrade would have happened because of now cuts.
We seem to be unable to see where the other is coming from and our philosophies of government and our priorities are opposed.
An exchange of ideas is great. But you have to be willing to listen to the other person. I accepted that there had to be a debt ceiling raise AND that republicans had acted badly along with Democrats. I accept and even blame Bush for being a spendthrift.
But I don’t see any acceptance from you that Obama’s policies, as codified by Pelosi and Reid, are, in any way, at fault for a huge chunk of the current and future debt nor that the Democrats were just as “obstinate” as the Tea Party. Compromise happened and you’re not happy about it because the negotiations caused gridlock.
So, until we lessen the importance and power of government over our lives, the rancor and competitiveness at the political level will just become worse. The bigger that gov’t gets, the more vitriolic and vicious will be the fighting.
It used to be only somewhat important who ran the gov’t. Now its a matter of life and death. And our gov’t should not have that much power over the citizen.
Who is “you”? If you’re talking about Moonhowler, you’ve just put a lot of words in her mouth. That’s a large part of the problem.
Ahhh, the eternal question! Isn’t that a song by “the Who”?
If you look at the rationale the S&P used for the downgrade, both parties share some of the blame. One, the delay in dealing with this. Two, not enough deficit reduction. Three, the difficulty of getting even the smallest spending cuts agreed to. All of these were cited by S&P as reasons for the downgrade.
Regarding the TEA Party…when last I checked they don’t pass legislation, don’t set the tax rates, don’t appropriate funds, and don’t slash spending, and certainly don’t decide what the debt ceiling needs to be raised to. Congress does.
A leader “knows the way, shows the way, and goes the way”. I’ve known many leaders in my lifetime. Some military, many more civillian. One thing I can say regarding our President: the is not a leader. His conduct during this entire process has been shameful. He acted like a petulant child and brought little value to the debate.
But what has really, really steamed me is the Administration, the Senate Majority leader, and House minority leader (and their allies in the MSM) blaming the TEA Party for the downgrade, and then for the drop in the stock market. When is this President going to take responsibility for ANYTHING?!!!! 3 years, and he’s never taken responsibility for anything negative that has happened since he took office. Zip. Zilch. Nada.
I am hopeful though. I think the President will get a hard lesson in leadership come Nov 2012. This lesson will revolve around “accountability”, which goes hand-in-hand with “responsibility”.
@Steve, that needs to be qualified with. ‘in your opinion.’
People
areWHO aren’t R probably would not agree.@Censored bybvbl
Really? Have you read all of our discussions? Do your remember them word for word? Do you expect me to go find every quote and copy/paste? What I wrote is what I am understanding from Moon. I did not put anything in there that she did not cover, discuss, or state. So, apparently, its YOUR jumping to conclusions that is part of the problem. Get off of YOUR high horse before you accuse people of putting words in someone’s mouth. If we go by your standard, any discussion will be shut down unless we go find each and every utterance said.
http://www:denverpost.com/littwin/ci_18641128?source=rss
“Ok, now it’s gotten personal. Like, 634 points worth of personal.”
I’ll say.
I blame President Obama 100 percent for allowing the teajadis to drive the agenda and set the terms of the debate.
@Starryflights
Hey! Starry and I agree! Its all President Obama’s fault! 🙂
It’s not possible for something this large to be one person’s fault or even the fault of one administration.
I heard on Fox this morning a quote from a voter who said something like this – when I needed to go to college, I voted for those that would see that money came my way in the forms of grants and scholarships, when I need a job, I voted for those that I thought would make that happen, when I invested in the stock market, I voted for those that would provide the best yield, now that I am ready to retire, I’ll vote for those that will not reduce Social Security and Medicare.
A few days ago, I posted a comment that congress was a reflection of us. I still think it is. We can only blame ourselves for non-interest, self-interest and apathy. I can only hope that the entire country is going through the group development process of forming, storming, norming, performing….. THIS is something to pray for.
By golly, Juturna, sometimes someone around here has a good time at bat. I think you just hit a homerun. As I said elsewhere on this blog, it is time for all of us to look in the mirror.
@Juturna
Well Said! Bravo!
We are leaving out the part that most of Congress if not all of it is driven by special interest.
Moon,
I think we could point to any group of similarly-minded folk, and classify them as “special interest”. Labor unions, the NRA, NOW, AARP, The American Legion and VFW, The US Chamber of Commerce, WWF, the TEA and Coffee parties and the Coalition to Ban Coalitions… This is what representative democracy is all about. We all have our “special interests”.
Moon-howler :We are leaving out the part that most of Congress if not all of it is driven by special interest.
Some special interest wields a great deal more power than other special interest. Just a guess, I would say thatbusiness, AARP and NRA probably carry a lot more weight than VFW.
The problem is, everyone always owes someone else because of the campaign contributions. I find it fairly disgusting.
@Moon-howler
Yep. And their biggest special interest is their own.
Getting re-elected seems to be the driver here.
@Moon-howler
“The problem is, everyone always owes someone else because of the campaign contributions. I find it fairly disgusting.
Like George Sorros?
@Steve, or the Koch brothers and yes, for all three.
@Cargo, I do feel I had words put in my mouth but I am used to it.
No one will ever agree because there are just different world views. And yes, I do feel that the tea party people were wrong to not vote for the debt ceiling to be raised. It had to happen. I don’t even think that should have been subject to negotiations. It had to happen.
And I don’t blame either Bush or Obama for the debt. It happened and it happened for good reason. Now, we may argue the underlying reasoning behind cars or stimulus packages, That’s fair. But I certainly don’t think Bush was off giddily rubbing his hands together shouting lets spend, lets spend. He didn’t ask for 9-11. Obama didn’t ask for the aftermath of the crash.
@Cargosquid
No. I don’t expect you to find exact quotes….too much verbosity to sift through. But I don’t expect you to automatically assume that because M-h may disagree with your opinion that she holds the exact opposite to be true. Some of us are capable of seeing the grey areas. Everything doesn’t have to be an “either” “or”.
Censored, you bring up an excellent point. There seems to be this assumption that if you think X and I disagree with you, that my opinion is -x. My opinion might actually be X + Z.
That binary often stands in the way of discussion. People don’t realize it but Elena and I disagree, or disagree to degrees fairly often. We might agree on the basic premise but we soon branch off. It doesn’t mean we are bitter enemies. I expect I could say the same thing about you and me. The difference is that we can often look for common ground or discuss our differences without locking in to an unretreatable position.
I think moderates often see the grey areas you speak of. I am almost never either or …..I land somewhere on that continuum.
As long as there are shows and people like Hannity and Limbough, people will never be able to find common ground. They will always be at each others’ throats.
I had lunch with 2 delightful ladies today. One was a retired bookkeeper and the other was a PE teacher. We talked about world events. Both ladies would have described themselves as fairly conservative. They both were breathing fire today over what they saw as hate and rancor and they were furious at both parties. However, when I asked them who was worse….the conservatives didn’t fare well at all. Neither did the Democrats but they came out a little ahead.
The bookkeeper described it as going to the voting book and knowing that you were going to step in 2 buckets of you know what. (she just said it.)
I look at who I find the most offensive and if I had to be aligned with someone, would I prefer it to be Al Sharpton or Hannity. Big Al wins each and every time. Now that’s pathetic. I still haven’t gotten over the Duke LaCrosse player debacle. Even with that, Sharpton still wins…
sad, conservs, sad.
@Moon-howler
Moon,
In regards to my post at number 1, all of the positions listed are those that you supported or stated. I did not put words into your mouth. And when I describe what I think that you are supporting, I am not putting words in your mouth, I am describing what I think you are supporting.
two questions….do you agree or disagree with the statement that if the Tea Party had not forced negotiations for cuts ( such as they are), there would have been no cuts at all?
….. do you agree or disagree that if you had gotten a ceiling debt raise without any fuss or bother, the downgrade would have happened because of our inability to control our long term debt?
I am confused, because during our arguments, I saw support from you on two positions. One, the Tea Party was wrong to vote no on the debt ceiling raise at all. Two, that the Tea Party was wrong because they supposedly refused to negotiate, which I think shows that you supported negotiations of some sort on the debt ceiling. Of course, they did negotiate…that’s what Cap, Cut, and Balance was about. The compromise was the agreement to even raise the debt ceiling. We could have cut spending on other projects to pay our bills.
@Moon-howler
“I look at who I find the most offensive and if I had to be aligned with someone, would I prefer it to be Al Sharpton or Hannity. Big Al wins each and every time. Now that’s pathetic. I still haven’t gotten over the Duke LaCrosse player debacle. Even with that, Sharpton still wins…sad, conservs, sad.”
If these are your two yardsticks, and you would rather align yourself with Al Sharpton, I would suggest you do a little more research regarding his past. Hannity has never incited a riot which resulted in a Jewish shop owner being shot. Hannity never falsely accused law enforcement officers of rape. Hannity has never been caught on an FBI tape conspiring to launder drug money with a mobster (who was also and FBI informant). Oh yeah, and Hannity has never resorted to race-baiting. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, that perhaps you are not fully informed on the character of Al Sharpton. I hope this is the case.
A real pickle would be would be Sharpton or Limbaugh…… Hatred or meaness?? Hmm…
A real pickle would be would be Sharpton or Limbaugh…… Hatred or meaness?? Liar or druggie?? Hmm…
Both have had major issues with dishonesty in representing their causes. Sharpton is a liar some of the time. Hannity is a liar most of the time. Its a tight race.
Yea, Sharpton has a jaded past. That’s why I selected him as an opposite in the” people who make me sick contest.” I would say that several of the examples of Sharpton’s moral depravity are not direct. Sharpton is a street fighter of sorts and many of his controversial issues of involvement have been of a racial nature.
I am not sure either of us are accurately informed on all of Sharpton’s activities. On the other hand, that should give you a sense of how morally bankrupt I see Hannity’s nightly diatribe and his political involvement.
“Both have had major issues with dishonesty in representing their causes. Sharpton is a liar some of the time. Hannity is a liar most of the time. Its a tight race. ”
Could you please provide some examples where Hannity pressed obvious lies? As someone who regularly listens to his radio show, and occasionally catches his TV show, I can’t recall a single case where Hannity has lied. I may disagree with his interpretation of the facts at times, but at no time have I ever heard him say something, and said ; That is a lie.
Ya know…..I’ve been thinking……
I think that I’ll support a balanced approach.
Let’s repeal the Eisenhower tax cut and add a tax to the salaries of “revolving door” profiteers. Windfall profits of certain industries should be taxed so that they pay their fair share.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/08/sunday-reflection-why-gop-should-give-obama-higher-taxes-he-wants
This should make Starry happy. My only disagreement with this is that its NOT the Tea Party saying that they won. She’s wrong about that.
From We the Stupid.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/08/we_the_stupid.html
“I stand here in abject stupefaction. The so-called “right” or “Tea Party” in this republic is being so thoroughly rolled and defeated that I am struggling to come up with an adequate violent submission metaphor that does not involve prison rape . . . and they honesty think that they’re “winning.” Really? You call this winning?
* – Obama gets over $2 Trillion to spend before the 2012 election
* – There are no real spending cuts
* – There is a massive tax increase effective January 1, 2013
Obama is going to be handed something in excess of $2 Trillion — and he has made it perfectly clear that he will spend every penny of it before the November 2012 election. That’s why he kept saying, ” . . . so we don’t have to do this again”, meaning raise the debt ceiling again. The debt ceiling would only need to be raised if all of the money had been spent. Therefore, he has stated very clearly that he will spend every penny of any debt ceiling increase. He is going to burn through $2 Trillion-plus in the next sixteen months. This was the Obama regime’s plan from day one. Geithner appeared before Congress in early May and told them this in no uncertain terms. This outcome has been a known quantity all along.
There are no spending cuts in this plan. It is all accounting fraud. ”
The rest is just as good.