No-one has pushed the idea that if the 2004 elections had been held a mere month later than they were, our dear W would have lost in a landslide to a flat worm.

No need to insult platyhelminthes!

If you can find us all 1 solitary success Chimpy had in 8 years , it would justify your harping on this particular topic ………..

Well, he DID succeed in becoming a “war president.”

Hooda: I wasn’t expecting the Spanish Inquisition…

Makes me think of the Inquisition in “History of the World, Part I”:

Friars: “Hey, Torquemada, what do you say?”
T: “I just got back from the auto-de-fe.”
F: “Auto-de-fe? What’s an auto-de-fe?”
t: “It’s what you oughtn’t to do, but you do anyway!”

And that kinda makes me think of rethugs who obstruct EVERYTHING that President Obama is doing– which they “oughtn’t to do [if they gave a DAMN about the US] but [they] do anyway.”

Only it was FUNNY when Mel Brooks did it.

NO more republicans, no more killing the Constitution, NO more money for your friends. NO more BS. We are back to being America again, instead of a dictatorship.

And THAT’S what I call par-TAAAAAY!

Bi-Partisanship is not and never has been the issue, folks.

Good point, Zim. But the rethugs believe in BUY-partisanship.

President Obama announced today that the sun rises in the East.

Rush Limbaugh proclaimed that Obama should fail because all right-thinking Americans should know that the sun rises out of Rush’s derriere….

My neighbors hate me, and it’s YOUR fault! I laugh so heartily at some of your posts that I wake them up.

Only THAT scene was INTENTIONALLY funny. . .

President Obama announced today that the sun rises in the East.

The Republicans instantly responded with vehement protests that sun actually rose in the north and that asserting it rose in any other direction showed that Obama was unwilling to work in a bi-partisan fashion.

—

you give them too much credit; they wouldn’t take a principled stand like choosing a direction whence the sun rises.

more likely, they’d just argue that it’s unamerican to claim that the sun rises in the east, that that’s where the commies live and we’ll be damned if we’ll lose the sunlight race to those pinkos, that the east and the sun are both loaded with pork, and that even discussing which direction the sun rises contributes to our moral decay and puts american lives at risk. and the terrorists are gonna attack us any minute now and we’ll all die.

and set boehner’s copy inside a lucite bowling ball so he can break his foot when he drops it.

Keltoi at Night Says:
ralph the wonder llama Says:

Are you frickin’ serious?

You’re trying to make the claim (without actually saying so) that Bush’s Social Security reform was popular with the American people?

In deference to your status as Ringmaster and Tamer of Trolls, Ralph, I try to always respond to you if I have the time, even if the topic has gone stale.

No, I never said nor suggested Bush won re-election because of SS reform. I merely said it was a campaign issue, Kerry opposed Bush’s position and Kerry lost.

It sounded like you were implying causation there. If not, why bring it up the way you did?

The central point is that Democrats obstruct when they are in the minority just as the Repubs do now. It all has to do with gamesmanship and political jockeying and very little to do with the public good.

The central point was more specific than that. You said that the Democrats did EXACTLY the same thing when they were in the minority. I and others vigorously dispute that.

I pointed out the behavior of the Democrats when the nation truly faced a crisis — 9/11.

Another point worth noting is that you are trying to compare Dem opposition to an unpopular president, pushing an unpopular initiative, in his second term. His patterns had been set, and Democrats recognized that his bipartisan talk was just that — talk. Years of being told that they were “either with me or against me”, a sentiment that was further by such respected right-wing voices as Ann Coulter, who cast opposition to the President as “treason” understandably helped to erode any impulse to work with the President.

But Bush’s first term was marked by a pretty compliant democratic caucus. not as compliant as the Republicans, but still.

Yet here we are, in the first month still of the Obama presidency, and the Republicans march in lockstep to oppose a fairly popular initiative that is widely recognized as a necessary step for a nation facing a crisis.

The two situations you try to present as analogous are far from it.

Your LA Times article makes the point that the public was on the side of the Democrats in the SS battle, something I noted earlier.

Question: Why is “obstruction” such a dirty word? It is a political tactic. Both parties employ it when it suits them. We are confusing the relative virtues of the Party’s priorities with the morality of a political tactic. And any time you use the words “morality” and “political tactic” in the same sentence you know you have a problem.

You have a good point here. Republicans have a knack for imparting unsavory connotations to otherwise useful words. Perhaps it’s their habit of spitting them out as if they were the salty lumps of orange goo in the bottom of a Cheeto bag. But “obstruction” of a measure to address an immediate crisis while offering nothing in its place (unless you consider the policies that got us to this point) is an abrogation of their duty as legislators. It’s a political calculation, sure, but most Americans I think recognize that our economic woes demand some kind of response other than “business as usual”.

It’s beginning to look like they are shouting into the wind, or braying at the moon.

You’re trying to make the claim (without actually saying so) that Bush’s Social Security reform was popular with the American people?

In deference to your status as Ringmaster and Tamer of Trolls, Ralph, I try to always respond to you if I have the time, even if the topic has gone stale.

No, I never said nor suggested Bush won re-election because of SS reform. I merely said it was a campaign issue, Kerry opposed Bush’s position and Kerry lost.

The central point is that Democrats obstruct when they are in the minority just as the Repubs do now. It all has to do with gamesmanship and political jockeying and very little to do with the public good.

http://articles.latimes.com/2005/may/07/nation/na-social7

From the LA Times article:

Despite Bush’s continual urging for politicians to put ideas on the table, many Democratic strategists say there is no down side to opposing Bush’s plan and offering nothing in its place.
“The public will be satisfied to hear the Democrats just say no,” said Guy Molyneux, a senior vice president of Peter D. Hart Research Associates, a Democratic polling firm. “As far as the public is concerned, Social Security’s financial problem is not urgent, and Congress should take its time.”

The Dems won that battle. They offered nothing as a counter-proposal and Just Said No. And it worked, good for them.

Question: Why is “obstruction” such a dirty word? It is a political tactic. Both parties employ it when it suits them. We are confusing the relative virtues of the Party’s priorities with the morality of a political tactic. And any time you use the words “morality” and “political tactic” in the same sentence you know you have a problem.

How does it feel to have Newtie’s old flabby arm rammed up you rectum making your mouth move, Eric?

And how does it feel to have NO real ideas of your own?

p.s. to the side debate – it was the AARP and 20 million cantankerous senior citizens that shut down the Social Security heist Dubbie and pals wanted to orchestrate. A very Bipartisan grassroots thing.