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MmeGigs -> RE: Partisanship and Rational Thought - Incompatible? (2/18/2009 5:07:13 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: corysub
I think your right. When in power, both parties seem corrupted by that power and forget that they were sent there by the voters to represent them not business interests or social agenda driven interests, represented by people who get paid a lot of money to lobby and gain the favor or our representatives.
This isn't about the behavior of political parties or lobbyists, it's about the behavior of individuals.
quote:
The next time a democrat tells me how much they love our military and support the troops...or bring up the shame of poor after care for our veterans...Shame on them...all this rhetoric about the poor hospital care for our armed forces and a rail line between Disneyland and the Casino's is three times as important! Shame on them... This has nothing to do with partisanship...
Sure it does. I'm sure you'd be mad about the cut regardless, but the blamethrowing and such is all about partisanship. The stimulus package was a group effort, despite the fact that only 3 Rs voted for it. The Republicans have been insisting that spending that is not directly related to economic stimulus - no matter how worthy or important the project or how urgent the need - be stripped from the bill. They say that these things should be considered as part of a budget/spending bill or on their own, not as part of the stimulus, and they have a point. The Democrats have taken a lot of these things out in order to try to get Republican votes for the bill. The report from the conference committee didn't say anything about who suggested taking out the $2 Billion for VA construction, or about who argued for or against the idea. You're suggesting that it's all on the Democrats, but there doesn't appear to have been an uproar from Republicans about this particular cut when the bill went to the floor, and I haven't seen it mentioned in editorials about why the bill sucks. You're suggesting that this $2 Bil was taken away to build the railroad. How do you know that the railroad money didn't come from the $16 Bil for school construction that was cut, or the $40 Bil that was cut from aid to the states? How do you know they didn't take the $2 Bil away and give it to NASA - they got $2 Bil, or take it out to preserve tax cuts? Truth is, there probably was no direct tradeoff in any of these things.
You've found a way to blame Reid for this and extending the blame not just to the Democrats in Congress but to the entire Democratic rank and file. That's irrational. I think that you'd be hard pressed to find anyone out there who is completely happy with the stimulus bill. Actually, I think you'd have a hard time finding anyone who isn't pissed off about it, at least a bit. There are definitely parts of it that I don't like. The left (the actual left, not the Democrats) aren't too pleased with it. I think that most folks would agree with you about the VA cut, but I'm betting we'll see that project come up again soon, along with a lot of the other stuff that was cut.
So basically, you really don't know who is responsible for cutting this out of the stimulus bill, but you're lashing out at 1/3 of the population for it, most of whom are most definitely not responsible and probably don't like it any more than you do. Does that make sense to you?
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