GOP Corruption and Obstruction

Dodging? Like you are dodging the more important issue of the venemous atmosphere promulgated by Republicans?

Now Republican thugs are terrorizing congressmen with death threats. Led by non other than Sarah Palin.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100325/ap_on_re_us/us_health_care_threats

Gun imagery was used in a posting on the Facebook page of Sarah Palin urging people to organize against 20 House Democrats who voted for the health care bill and whose districts went for the John McCain-Palin ticket two years ago. Palin's post featured a U.S. map with circles and cross hairs over the 20 districts.

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Unrest over sweeping federal health care legislation has turned to vandalism and threats, with bricks hurled through Democrats' windows, a propane line cut at the home of a congressman's brother and menacing phone messages left for lawmakers who supported the bill.

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In Virginia, someone cut a propane line leading to a grill at the Charlottesville home of U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello's brother after the address was posted online by activists angry about the health care overhaul. Perriello also said a threatening letter was sent to his brother's house. The FBI and local authorities were investigating.

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In Tucson, Ariz., someone either kicked in or shot out a glass door and a side window at the congressional office of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords early Monday, a few hours after the House health care vote. Giffords voted for the bill.

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Hey, what about Lindsey Graham making sure hearings can continue? That shows some civil service commitment right there.

Answer the question, Thrasher. You're dodging again.

I get an awfully familiar feeling about this, from Lebanese politics. Unless this de-escalates fast, we'll see serious political violence pretty soon. An attempted assassination, or perhaps arson or some such... or perhaps a tea party turning nasty, with a clash with counter-demonstrators or the police, resulting in someone dead. Those things can escalate real fast, and things can unravel quickly.

It'd be nice if you guys didn't do that just now. Trust me, it's no fun at all.

I'm surprised, dte. Normally you stand up for the truth whether it's always politically appropriate as a rightie or not, but we aren't talking about whether Obama is as bad as Bush but about threats of violence, ignorant racial slurs and inappropriate anti-social behavior. Are you condoning this stuff, along with your elected repubs in the House and Senate, saying its all deserved like the rape victim who wears the short skirt, or nitpicking on failed campaign promises while death threats are being made? Looks like the latter to me. Is it going to take someone getting assassinated for republicans to say this stuff should not be part of our politics?

@ rith: re:Lindsay Graham—was he able to stand up and stop some of the tantrum throwing? He's actually one of the few moderate repubs left, and I actually have more respect for him now than when I first came across him during the election. (Of course, his senate seat is in jeopardy because he's "too liberal.")

Nonetheless, most of the committee hearings yesterday, some of which like the Armed Services Committee hearing on north korea, had been set up for months and involved people traveling at great expense to appear, did not take place because repubs would not give the usual unanimous consent for them to proceed and thus wasted plenty of those tax payer dollars they normally are so concerned about.
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/03/25/1334814/burr-derails-hearing-on-military.html
Broadband hearings were also canceled:
http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-v...-commerce-committee-hearing-on-broadband-plan
Also transparerency hearings
http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/...interrupted-by-reconciliation-obstructionism/
It's childish, and really illustrates that bipartisanship is completely impossible until the adult repubs come to the fore and start taking their job of working for the American people seriously.

Edit: Late to the party, as usual. Thanks for posting about the hearings in the Health Politics thread, Rith.

I'm on my way out the door, but I just heard John Boehner in a presser finally say that threats and violence had no place in the political process, so kudos to him.

magerette said:

I'm surprised, dte. Normally you stand up for the truth whether it's always politically appropriate as a rightie or not, but we aren't talking about whether Obama is as bad as Bush but about threats of violence, ignorant racial slurs and inappropriate anti-social behavior. Are you condoning this stuff, along with your elected repubs in the House and Senate, saying its all deserved like the rape victim who wears the short skirt, or nitpicking on failed campaign promises while death threats are being made? Looks like the latter to me. Is it going to take someone getting assassinated for republicans to say this stuff should not be part of our politics?

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Obviously I don't condone the excesses. There's really no reason to comment, I figured, because it's fairly obvious some folks are going way around the bend. Am I supposed to apologize for them? I suppose I can if that will make everyone happy. I do have some issue with papering 40% of America as loons based on the stupid actions of some few. If we do that, then y'all lefties should be apologizing constantly over the enviro-nuts that spike trees in logging zones. I don't see the point in expecting that from anyone, since I don't figure y'all condone that dangerous and potentially lethal behavior any more than I condone the loons on my side of the aisle.

OTOH, Since I do have problems with factually inaccurate inflammatory articles like Thrasher posted and quoted that do paper 40% of Americans (give or take) as crazy creeps (give or take), I think it's useful to highlight the easiest of the numerous logical fallacies in it to demonstrate that such papering is sloppy, misplaced, and hypocritical. He, as usual, has steadfastly dodged addressing the factual innaccuracies in his inflammatory article that loudly chastises me-n-mine for inflammatory behavior. He can't dismiss the source as biased like usual since it's his crappy source, so he simply won't acknowledge clear and simple evidence that it's crap. Doing so would force him to admit that perhaps 40% of Americans aren't quite as bad as he wants to portray, and that would really put an uncomfortable kink in his worldview.

Good on Lindsay Graham and John Boehner. I'm glad some of the righties have got some decency and wits.

DTE I already said that Obama hasn't lived up to his campaign promise of ending the wars. So what is hypocritical about that?

Did Obama start 2 wars while dropping taxes? No. Did Bush? Yes. Was Obama saddled with 2 wars from Bush that were hard to stop. Yes, apparently.

Thrasher said:

Good on Lindsay Graham and John Boehner. I'm glad some of the righties have got some decency and wits.

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Fingers crossed this is the start of a few republicans breaking away, I think they'd all gone too far down the route of complete intransigence on the healthcare bill to change their minds later on in the game but hopefully some of them have felt pretty shitty about quite how ridiculous it all got and might be ready to do their jobs properly going forward.

Thrasher said:

DTE I already said that Obama hasn't lived up to his campaign promise of ending the wars. So what is hypocritical about that?

Did Obama start 2 wars while dropping taxes? No. Did Bush? Yes. Was Obama saddled with 2 wars from Bush that were hard to stop. Yes, apparently.

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OK, last time. Seriously, last time.

Here's part of your article that you quoted. I did a cut-n-paste, but you're more than welcome to confirm it if you think I'm trying to lie, cheat and steal.
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The toxic clouds that are the inevitable result of the fear and the bitter conflicts so relentlessly stoked by the Republican Party — think blacks against whites, gays versus straights, and a whole range of folks against immigrants — tend to obscure the tremendous damage that the party’s policies have inflicted on the country. If people are arguing over immigrants or abortion or whether gays should be allowed to marry, they’re not calling the G.O.P. to account for (to take just one example) the horribly destructive policy of cutting taxes while the nation was fighting two wars.
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Your author is saying we require a toxic environment to cover up poor policy. Fine. I'm not even going to argue right-n-wrong about the policy itself. This is merely about consistency. The example of poor policy that must be covered up is "the horribly destructive policy of cutting taxes while the nation was fighting two wars." Did Barack drive thru a middle class tax cut as promised during his campaign? Documented with Barack's own website. Check. Is the nation currently involved in two wars? Not documented, but agreed by your own words (see your quote above). Check. Now, nice and slow… Is it still "horribly destructive policy" or not? A simple yes or no is all that's needed.

Why is this relevant? Because if it's horribly destructive policy that requires a toxic environment to cover up, then Barack must manufacture the same toxic environment himself. So, once again, nice and slow… If you say that it's not destructive policy, then you can't use it as evidence of a necessary GOP toxic smokescreen. The author's BS argument falls apart. If you say it IS destructive policy, then Barack is similarly guilty and HE must manufacture that same toxic smokescreen, which means you can't indict only the GOP. The author's BS argument falls apart.

Either way, your article damning strictly repubs for being ogres is pretty well debunked.

DTE, your contrived logic really leads to ridiculous conclusions. So let me get this right, you think damning the repubs for creating a toxic environment is wrong because Obama couldn't keep a campaign promise?

dte - on a technicality, yes Obama also made tax cuts while fighting two wars, you win in that respect.

But the context of the economic conditions and the intention and economic benefit of the tax cuts make it a somewhat weak argument on anything other than pure technicalities.

That whole article is propped up with weak arguments, Benedict. I can only work with the turd I'm handed. I would prefer to dig deeper because that article is just chok full of baseless and/or hypocritical accusations, but as we've seen, Thrasher either can't or won't follow even the simplest flaw, so digging deeper seems pretty pointless.

Again, the point being that the author's underlying justifications for pinning the toxic environment strictly on one side of the scale simply don't hold water. Thus, simply put, don't put this toxic environment shit all on me-n-mine.

DTE, you're missing what is meant by "toxic environment". This is a reference to an environment that encourages hateful and violent behavior, such as Sarah Palin's bulleye's on democratic targets, and coming to town hall meetings with guns, etc... This is CLEARY Republican behavior. This is toxic. And yes I am putting it all on you-n-yours since I haven't even heard of a single Dem who has done this. Really wondering about what you could be possibly thinking...

dteowner said:

If we do that, then y'all lefties should be apologizing constantly over the enviro-nuts that spike trees in logging zones. I don't see the point in expecting that from anyone, since I don't figure y'all condone that dangerous and potentially lethal behavior any more than I condone the loons on my side of the aisle.

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Except for one crucial distinction: in this case, the threats of violence, or implied violence, come from elected members of Congress and high officials of the Republican Party, not some random nuts spiking trees. I'm surprised you can't see the difference.

Your apparent inability to make this distinction, by the way, *does* suggest that up to 40% of Americans are either dangerous nutcases or their active sympathizers, since I would tend to consider your opinions as roughly representative of the Republican mainstream.

Thrasher said:

DTE, you're missing what is meant by "toxic environment". This is a reference to an environment that encourages hateful and violent behavior, such as Sarah Palin's bulleye's on democratic targets, and coming to town hall meetings with guns, etc… This is CLEARY Republican behavior. This is toxic. And yes I am putting it all on you-n-yours since I haven't even heard of a single Dem who has done this. Really wondering about what you could be possibly thinking…

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So then, was it a toxic environment when Jesse and Al (prominent democrats, PJ) were running their character assassination campaign on the Duke lacrosse team? Where was the democratic leadership saying that this was inappropriate to encourage racial hatred as they did? Where was the democratic leadership demanding an apology once the Duke team was vindicated? Where were you when 6 blacks beat the dog shit out of a white kid in Jena? Oh, that's right, Jesse and Al were down there justifying it and encouraging more. Where was the democratic leadership then? *crickets chirping*

That's right, folks. Y'all didn't do shit. You've got no legs to stand on now.

dteowner said:

So then, was it a toxic environment when Jesse and Al were running their character assassination campaign on the Duke lacrosse team? Where was the democratic leadership saying that this was inappropriate to encourage racial hatred as they did? Where was the democratic leadership demanding an apology once the Duke team was vindicated? *crickets chirping*

That's right, folks. Y'all didn't do shit. You've got no legs to stand on now.

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Did Jesse and Al call for violence, or use violent imagery in "character assassination campaign?" If so, what?

Honest question -- "Duke lacrosse" rings some faint bells, but I really have no recollection what that was about; it probably didn't register very loudly on my radar.

In the time I've been following American politics, I have not seen rhetoric of this level, ever, from either side. I have seen such rhetoric elsewhere, though -- specifically, in Lebanon: there it's quite common for politicians to characterize each other as traitors, criminals, and agents of foreign governments. Assassinations are also a regular occurrence.

How about an article penned by Jesse himself?
http://www.blacknews.com/pr/duke301.html

Divorced Mother Of Two, Working Way Through College, Allegedly Raped, Abused By Gang.” Had the headline read that way, the fury would have been great. The facts that the police didn’t arrest anyone, that the gang was not talking, that it took two days for the police to search the scene of the crime would have added to the anger.

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Demanding anger, claiming racial bias.

Black women; white men. A stripper; and a team blowout. The wealthy white athletes – many from prep schools – of Duke; and the working class woman from historically black North Carolina Central. Race and class and sex. What happened? We don’t know for sure because the Duke players are maintaining a code of silence.

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Nothing inflammatory there, eh?

The Duke scandal should lead colleges across the country to hold searching discussions about racial and sexual stereotypes, exposing the myths that entrap so many. But it shouldn’t take the brutalizing of a mother of two to raise these issues. Justice must be pursued at Duke.

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Oh, as long as the justice meets Jesse's goals, eh?

How about this little turn of events?

The Rev. Jesse Jackson said Saturday his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition would pay the college tuition of a black woman who alleges white members of the Duke University lacrosse team raped her.

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What's the problem? Just ask Al.

Al Sharpton told Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly on April 19 - the day after the first two players were charged - "There is a lot of racism that's in the air."

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Where's the democratic leadership, cautioning against a rush to judgment? Where's the democratic leadership, demanding Jesse and Al apologize for creating a toxic environment? *Chirp chirp*

How about Jena?

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/09/19/jackson.jena6/index.html

"If I were a candidate, I'd be all over Jena," the prominent civil rights activist said Tuesday in Columbia, South Carolina, the The State newspaper reports. "Jena is a defining moment, just like Selma was a defining moment."

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Yeah, Selma was a nice peaceful event, eh?

Jackson is slated to be on hand for a march in Jena this Thursday. The Rev. Al Sharpton, Martin Luther King III, and hip-hop artist Mos Def are also expected to be on hand.

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Peaceful marches? Yeah, the tea party marches were supposed to be peaceful too. You bring that many people together, you're inviting the loons as well.

How'd it turn out?

In the background, groups shouted "Black power" and "No justice, no peace."

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Doesn't exactly sound peaceful, does it? Who whipped up this toxic environment? Must have been Dubya.

But let's just get thru this, right? Rational thought, and all.

Sharpton called Jena the beginning of the 21st century civil rights movement.

"There's a Jena in every state," Jackson told the crowd in Jena on Thursday morning.

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Where's the democratic leadership calling for calm and diffusing the big nasty toxic environment? *crickets still chirping*