Barack Obama will win the 2012 electionFollow

The more you alienate the moderates the smaller your base grows

The Tea Party is not the majority by any measure: caucus size, popularity, whatever. They're just very loud and very good at running over the rest of their party.


Only a handful of those are considered competitive. There won't be any "major shift" regardless since the GOP will still control the House. At worst (from your perspective), the Democrats retain control of the Senate. At best, the Democrats filibuster every single bill that comes through and forces the GOP to collect 60 votes which they won't have. And Gbaji will cry about how unfair it is now that the Democrats are filibustering.

No, I meant the best realistic option.

Might want to double check your math there.

Edited, Apr 1st 2011 10:47am by Jophiel

Oh, don't worry about that. I have no problem asking for money :)

lulz

The singer or the walrus faced failed diplomat?

If you're doing the math against the entire budget, someone needs to explain the concept of "discretionary spending" to you. Someone besides me though.

I must say, I'm actually happy that Varus is taking this action. Good for him for sticking up for what he believes in, and trolling actual people who affect these decisions instead of trolling just us forum-goers.

Huh? It's a "compromise" with what they think they can pass in the Dem controlled Senate. You get that, right? I mean, I suppose the House could have passed a bill which cut 1.7 Trillion dollars from Obama's proposed budget as a starting point and then negotiated from there, but it does kinda make sense to do some preliminary analysis and have some meetings with the guys in the other party and in the house prior to putting pen to paper and voting in a budget bill.

That's why I keep saying that the amount the GOP has proposed is already a compromise. And it's a pretty darn huge one if you take into account recent spending increases.

Wait, it's a pre-compromise? Hahahahaha, what a joke.

Lol. You're kidding, right? I know it's April 1st and all, but this is a bit over the top, even for you.


I'll give you a hint why your response makes no sense: The bit about the GOP starting at a position of cutting 1.7 Trillion dollars wasn't just pulled out of thin air. It's the amount that the proposed budget is over budget. Thus, that's the amount of money the Democrats are over spending and makes it a reasonable starting point is to reduce spending by. Cutting that much makes us "even".


As opposed to the "sky's the limit" comparison you're trying to make. Not even a good effort really, even by your standards.

Edited, Apr 1st 2011 2:19pm by gbaji

I'm not getting my news from anywhere Joph. Unlike you, I don't sit around regurgitating what others are saying. I'm looking at what you are saying, finding it to be lacking in sense, and pointing out the glaring problems (and stating a few opinions of my own along the way of course).


Here's the deal, in case you're still confused. I'll put it in really simple terms:

When you are doing something "new", that's a new cost. Like spending money on "green jobs", and health care, and god knows what other incredible wastes of money the Dems have been spending money on over the last two years. A "compromise" when doing something new would be to give up something that already exists. So if say a group of people (lets call them "Democrats") want to spend a trillion dollars on some new stuff they think is critically important, that same group should perhaps give up a trillion dollars of spending on other stuff that they already talked us into spending. That way they have to pick which thing they think is *really* important before making us (the taxpayers) pay for their stuff.


But the Dems haven't been doing this. And there's this other group (we'll call them "Conservatives") who have been warning all along that if you keep spending new money on new things, without reducing the amount of money you're continuing to spend on the old things, eventually you'll run out of money and get yourself into trouble. Yes, this is a pretty common sense sorta thing, which most people learn after their first run-in with a credit card in college, but the Dems for some reason forgot that lesson and insisted on doing this anyway. Now we're in financial trouble and the conservatives are trying to come up with things that the Dems should have give up on spending to make up for all the new spending in the first place. Now, to be anywhere near fiscally sane, the amount given up should equal the amount they added, right? But the Dems aren't going to stand for that! Nosirreee! They want to keep spending more money (Bad Dems!). So want to pretend that the new amount of spending isn't really new. It's just normal spending. So we have to compromise from a position of not cutting anything instead of one in which we cut an amount equal to what they increased the spending by.


Is there anyone who really thinks that makes any sense? Really? Because that's what you're arguing here. And yes, I'm well aware of all the wrangling that politicians do over this, but at the end of the day, what matters is that we're spending more than we can afford and have to cut that spending. The amount the GOP put into the house bill is a drop in the proverbial bucket, but it's giving us a really good idea of just how unwilling the Dems are to do anything to take responsibility for all that money they spent. If they're fighting this hard over 61 billion dollars, how on earth are we ever going to make up for the trillions of dollars they've spent over the last few years?



I'd add a prediction, but of course we all know that Obama promised us that our taxes wouldn't go up. Hmmm....