U.S. Politics, 9 trillion

[Shryke]

Agreed, and it's an area in which Obama could scale back significantly without congressional involvement. You can blame alot on the filibuster (and I have), but you can't blame this one. I suppose you can hardly expect any president to voluntarily give up power, but Obama's failure to do so is still a disappointment.

It's not even an area where you can see an obvious political advantage for keeping the policy up.

I mean, the Republicans would almost certainly yell and scream about "Soft on Terror" or some such, but with illegal wiretapping, this isn't a hard PR battle to win.

[TrackerNeil]

Always reminds me of this cartoon.

That cartoon makes the geek in me go "Squee!"

[alguien]

So, after all that drama this summer, the House passed the Zadroga bill.

The price seems the same. So... did anything else about it change?

Or was it passed because election season is coming up?

[awesome possum]

My favorite part of the Taibbi article:

Scanning the thousands of hopped-up faces in the crowd, I am immediately struck by two things. One is that there isn't a single black person here. The other is the truly awesome quantity of medical hardware: Seemingly every third person in the place is sucking oxygen from a tank or propping their giant atrophied glutes on motorized wheelchair-scooters. As Palin launches into her Ronald Reagan impression — "Government's not the solution! Government's the problem!" — the person sitting next to me leans over and explains.

"The scooters are because of Medicare," he whispers helpfully. "They have these commercials down here: 'You won't even have to pay for your scooter! Medicare will pay!' Practically everyone in Kentucky has one."

A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can't imagine it.

I really do think most of them are innocently misled. Sure, there are the bigots, idiots, and cranky old ignorant people but most of them don't know any better. They're sheep being led by some of the cruelest, most evil shepherds imaginable. I can only hope the sheep smarten up one day.

[Shryke]

I think that whole way of thinking was summed up perfectly in the Health Care debate with the statement:

"Keep your government hands off my Medicare"

[ThinkerX]

What the more paranoid sorts are starting to ponder now:

http://www.vdare.com/roberts/100923_collapse.htm

Of course, the author is a nameless nutjob with no credentials whatsoever, and the rhetoric is a bit over the top....

[Lord O' Bones]

Just rather that you cannot dismiss anyone from the possibility of being hired based on race and gender?

I think it has something to do with your last ten most qualified hires being white men. And then on the 11th hire, maybe you go "uh oh, this minority is just about as qualified as this 11th white guy; better do that to prove I'm not one of those racists."

This has absolutely happened. And that sucks. But I'm not sure that the evil it caused wasn't better than the evil it tried to correct.

[IheartTesla]

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Obama has either utterly failed to lead his party, or his party isn't actually a political party at all.

"I belong to no organized party.....I am a Democrat."

[BloodRider]

Did anyone notice the Jim Greer apology?

In and of itself not very interesting, but what is fascinating is the fact that he basically cops to the fact that he never believed the whole 'Obama is a socialist' meme, and that it was done to stir up the base against him using racism. Holy Cow!

More fuel to the fire that the Republican party has absolutely NO integrity or intellectual capacity beyond rhetoric.

[Lord O' Bones]

That gets back to my original question and some of my confusion on how far the Act of 1964 went. Where does the Civil Rights Act end and where does Affirmative Action begin? Where does the EEOC fit in?

I'm sure I could google my way to some answers, but board explanations are usually much more entertaining.

For my part, I think that Affirmative Action is more pendulous and should go away at some point; hopefully soon, whereas Civil Rights should remain a standard of our civilization.

But I admit I'm too discouraged by the necessity of either to have ever tried to be much of a scholar of those movements.

[TrackerNeil]

I really do think most of them are innocently misled. Sure, there are the bigots, idiots, and cranky old ignorant people but most of them don't know any better. They're sheep being led by some of the cruelest, most evil shepherds imaginable. I can only hope the sheep smarten up one day.

You're more generous than I am. Motivated enough to go to a rally is motivated enough to spend some time thinking about one's beliefs. Those who can't bother to educate themselves about the issues they supposedly care about don't get sympathy from me.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Tracker,

So if someone thinks about the issues and still disagrees with you they are objectively wrong?

[Lord O' Bones]

Tracker,

So if someone thinks about the issues and still disagrees with you they are objectively wrong?

That's not what he said.

Dipshits "motivated to go to a rally" did not necessarily, by no stretch of the imagination "think about the issues." On either/any side.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

LoB,

Tracker said this:

You're more generous than I am. Motivated enough to go to a rally is motivated enough to spend some time thinking about one's beliefs. Those who can't bother to educate themselves about the issues they supposedly care about don't get sympathy from me.

The clear implication is that those who are attending these rallies couldn't possibly be educating themselves on the issues. By extension the implication is that if they educated themselves on the issues they wouldn't go to the rallies or would agree with Tracker. Hence, my question.

[Lord O' Bones]

LoB,

Tracker said this:

The clear implication is that those who are attending these rallies couldn't possibly be educating themselves on the issues. By extension the implication is that if they educated themselves on the issues they wouldn't go to the rallies or would agree with Tracker. Hence, my question.

I see what you mean. And agree with your dissection. However, you must know that TN is, basically right about this? I mean, based on available evidence?

Also, that's still not what You said.

[ThinkerX]

Trade War, anybody?

http://money.cnn.com..._currency_bill/

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Lawmakers say China's currency is unfairly cheap and passed a measure Wednesday that opens the door to tariffs that aim to help U.S. companies compete.

The legislation, which authorizes the Commerce Department to impose duties on imports from countries with undervalued currencies, passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 348 to 79. The Senate, however, is not expected to take up the issue until later this year.

The bill got support from both sides of the aisle, a rarity in recent sessions, with Democrats framing the legislation as a jobs issue.

"We can talk, or we can act. International trade is a high stakes, cut-throat business, and every time we simply talk, the other side acts, and every time they act, an American loses a job," said Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-California.

China said this year it would allow its currency, the yuan, to trade in a wider range against the dollar. But the currency has scarcely appreciated since then, inflaming critics who charge the undervalued yuan helps steal U.S. manufacturing jobs.

Estimations on the undervaluation of the yuan vary depending on the economic model used, but one estimate by the Peterson Institute of International Economics puts the number at about 24% against the dollar.

Hmmm....bipartisan support, no less...hmmm....

[Altherion]

Trade War, anybody?

Basically. China's reply so far was to impose 100%+ tariffs on US chickens because "an investigation had concluded that US imports were hurting the domestic chicken industry". If US politicians had made similar "investigations" regarding Chinese products, our manufacturing base would not be a shadow of its former self.

[MinDonner]

The clear implication is that those who are attending these rallies couldn't possibly be educating themselves on the issues. By extension the implication is that if they educated themselves on the issues they wouldn't go to the rallies or would agree with Tracker. Hence, my question.

Scot, you are overgeneralising. No-one's suggesting that this applies to everyone who goes to every rally, just to these specific people (who rely on government support) going to this specific rally (to protest against government support). They've made the effort to be outraged without bothering to even find out what they're outraged about, which is by definition wilful ignorance, and not something anyone should be encouraging.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

I think the idea in the article is that tea partiers are hypocrites for bemoaning publicly-funded health care from the perch of their Medicare-funded Amigos, while fanning themselves with their government pension check.

I don't see the hypocrisy. Medicare is a system that already exists, and not a voluntary one at that. You are required to contribute part of your paycheck to it, as is your employer. Asking that you be paid benefits that you were promised, and to which you paid into, is not the equivalent of supporting an entirely new program. Especially since this new program will offer benefits to which you were never entitled and that you will never receive.

Hypocrisy would be demanding your own Medicare payments, while arguing that other people shouldn't receive their Medicare payments. To the extent there is some of that in those protestors, that woudl be hypocrisy. But there's nothing hypocritical in opposing the ACA and still wanting to get your Medicare benefits.

Trisk - To be fair, there is a good solid legal argument to be made that the Civil Rights Act, in telling private businesses who they can and can't hire, did, in fact, overstep the constitutional authority of the government. There is no other statute really like it.

I don't think that's correct. While I understand the objections to the CRA of 1964, and have some sympathy to them, I think the National Labor Relations Act, which preceded the CRA of 1964 by decades, also did this to some extent. Under the NLRA, you can't refuse to hire or fire someone simply because they have engaged in union activity in the past, or because they actually engaged in union activity. That's not far from what the CRA did in regulating the basis for private employment decisions.

Of course, I'd agree that both statutes do something that hadn't been done before in terms of regulating private employment decisions.

[awesome possum]

The clear implication is that those who are attending these rallies couldn't possibly be educating themselves on the issues. By extension the implication is that if they educated themselves on the issues they wouldn't go to the rallies or would agree with Tracker. Hence, my question.

Scot,

It seems to me that if someone attends one of those rallies they are either educated in the issues at hand and ignore the fact that their attendance and support is hypocritical or they are completely ignorant of the issues at hand and go to said rallies because it represents the "side" they're on.

I don't see the hypocrisy.

Of course you don't. Heaven forbid the use of logic become involved when trying to maintain that Republicans are kewl and Democrats are poopyfaces.

Hypocrisy would be demanding your own Medicare payments, while arguing that other people shouldn't receive their Medicare payments. To the extent there is some of that in those protestors, that woudl be hypocrisy. But there's nothing hypocritical in opposing the ACA and still wanting to get your Medicare benefits.

Hypocrisy is protesting about wasteful government spending while bragging about the things you are able to get via wasteful government spending.