Cruz caves on shutdown, but calls it a personal win

Thrasher said:

US politics. He is the lead republican Tea Party member in the Senate. You probably don't care, but here is more about his shenanigans to defund Obama care. The desire by Republicans to defund Obama was the motivation behind the government shutdown and coming very close to defaulting on US debt, FYI.

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I know who he is, I read the newspapers. I didn't know about the term "to cave" yet.

I've read the term "suicide party" regarding the Teamen, I think I like that.

dteowner said:

The two party system certainly has limitations. You end up with very broad groups.

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Austria has a similar problem - and it's even worse in a way : BOTH parties rule for several years now ... Just imagine Democrats & Republicans forming ONE government ... And THEN rule for lots of years ...

That's quite disturbing Alrik! It means that either SPÖ and ÖVP have found a recipe for near perfect coalition government or that Austrians are a very weird nation...

I don't quite know since I don't live there, but it seems to me that there is also a lack of real alternatives ... And that's why the racist FPÖ became so strong : They were looking like the only alternative through several years ...

dteowner said:

Yeah, why would anyone be concerned about unending national debt? That's just silly to worry about Barack adding $6 TRILLION (a 60% increase from the first 240 years of presidents) to the national debt in 6 short years. So who's the moron again?

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Thing to remember - Bush added 6 trillion of his own PLUS a mandated $1.3 trillion that 'came active' under Obama. In other words, Bush actually mandated nearly 7.5 trillion in debt. Also, let's not forget that the ONLY time of truly sound economic growth (shrinking debt, budget surplus, etc) was under Clinton (who I still hate, but let's be real here. Reaganomics have been proven again and again to not only NOT WORK ... they are destructive.

The biggest problem I have is that the Republicans not only ruined the economy, they have proven again and again that they will do whatever it takes to make Obama look bad (not that he needs help), including hurting Americans and wasting billions on theatrics.

As for the Dems, one of the reasons for Obama's uselessness is that he CAN'T unite them in action. Whereas the Republicns would vote 100% against a declaration that today is Saturday if Obama was seen to have said that today was in fact Saturday ... the dems would have several people splitting off noting that it is already Sunday in Japan so that such a declaration is not appropriate ...

Agreed. Also, the current debt debacle is has its root in a deregulation mentality from the Republicans. Regulations put in place after the Great Depression were removed, and then look what happened...

*sigh*
For the millionth time, the Glass-Seagal thing was signed by Slick Willie. Last time I checked, the democrats still claim him. Blaming it on republicans over and over won't change that basic fact, no matter how badly you'd like it to be true.

dteowner said:

*sigh*
For the millionth time, the Glass-Seagal thing was signed by Slick Willie. Last time I checked, the democrats still claim him. Blaming it on republicans over and over won't change that basic fact, no matter how badly you'd like it to be true.

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And Clinton and others believe it actually helped mitigate the disaster in 2007/8. And we should listen to Clinton, since he is the only President since ... crap, I don't even know ... who actually did good things for the economy rather than playing 'Dennis Moore' (Monty Python skit ... steals from the poor, gives to the rich ...)

dteowner said:

*sigh*
For the millionth time, the Glass-Seagal thing was signed by Slick Willie. Last time I checked, the democrats still claim him. Blaming it on republicans over and over won't change that basic fact, no matter how badly you'd like it to be true.

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For the trillionth time (like it matters since you don't seem to care about the truth) it was authored by congressional Republicans. You should know better that legislation is written/repealed by Congress, not the President. It wasn't Clinton's idea.

Keep wishing, Thrasher. You're so wrong it's not even funny and a simple check of the wiki would show you so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm–Leach–Bliley_Act

On November 4, the final bill resolving the differences was passed by the Senate 90–8,[15][note 4] and by the House 362–57.[16][note 5] The legislation was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on November 12, 1999.[17]

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Unless you're going to claim that republicans held those sort of majorities in congress, I invite you to admit you're full of shit.

Are you losing touch, DTE? I'm hoping this is fake indignation. Bother to check who authored the bill. From your own source:

Respective versions of the legislation were introduced in the U.S. Senate by Phil Gramm (Republican of Texas) and in the U.S. House of Representatives by Jim Leach (R-Iowa). The third lawmaker associated with the bill was Rep. Thomas J. Bliley, Jr. (R-Virginia), Chairman of the House Commerce Committee from 1995 to 2001.

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Thus "Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act".. Tsk, tsk….

During debate in the House of Representatives, Rep. John Dingell (Democrat of Michigan) argued that the bill would result in banks becoming "too big to fail." Dingell further argued that this would necessarily result in a bailout by the Federal Government.[6]

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Duhhhh….

The House passed its version of the Financial Services Act of 1999 on July 1, 1999, by a bipartisan vote of 343–86 (Republicans 205–16; Democrats 138–69; Independent 0–1),[7][8][note 1] two months after the Senate had already passed its version of the bill on May 6 by a much-narrower 54–44 vote along basically-partisan lines (53 Republicans and 1 Democrat in favor; 44 Democrats opposed).[10][11][12][note 2]
When the two chambers could not agree on a joint version of the bill, the House voted on July 30 by a vote of 241–132 (R 58–131; D 182–1; Ind. 1–0) to instruct its negotiators to work for a law which ensured that consumers enjoyed medical and financial privacy as well as "robust competition and equal and non-discriminatory access to financial services and economic opportunities in their communities" (i.e., protection against exclusionary redlining).[note 3]

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Also you can see Republicans controlled both the House and Senate.

It was clearly a Republican bill from the get go and the great recession was caused by it.

I'll help you out. 90-8 and 362-57 is known in the real world as "bi-partisan support". There's simply no way around it. Keep wishing, pal.

Nope, barely passed crap, authored by Republicans.