Haha! Dems win the house!

OnDborder

As I'm sure you all know...
In reality, it's not our elected politicians pulling any strings anyway.. They do as told by the lobbyist's and donors..
Hell, they don't even read the damn bills they vote on.

Dowaco

If he is the first then it is long overdue. Congress should reflect the diversity of the country.

Maddogg6

If they accurately represent the people that voted for them - Its perfectly fine for me - BUT - because muslims are NOT the majority here - any religious influence in their politics probably wont be tolerated so much as christian / catholic / jewish influence has in the past.

Bottom line - religion has no 'real' bearing in politics (well, its not supposed to anyway). But, maybe we will learn more about these 'mystrious' yet often portrayed as terrorists - people and their beliefs / concerns. ??

I personally dont accecpt ALL muslims just want us infidels dead like all these 'terrorist' movies out of hollywood insinuates.
Hollywood has a history of influencing popular opinion of those things we are not personally familiar with - and not always accurately.

Pompey

I was just reading somewhere a conservative estimate of the cost of the midterm election was US$2.6 billion.
In our parliamentary elections last year the total spent by all parties and candidates came to around US$8.7 million

wow...

calidan

2.6 billion could be used to feed Africa. It's sad that our country does this crap.

BWX

If Africa had a government (governments) like ours we wouldn't need to "feed them".. And they would have their own currency that is actually worth something.. Same goes with any group of people anywhere on the planet. Give them freedom and they will prosper.






EDIT


This whole thread reminded me of a few pics..

TheBlackCat

I agree with what Maddog said. The republican "plan" is part of the problem. The Republican party was explicitly told they could not oppose Bush. And they didn't. There is only one instance where any sizable number of Republicans went against Bush, and it took about a year of negotiations just for the Republican leadership to even let it come to a vote. When the legislature is not permitted to disagree with the president, that is not freedom, it is a monarchy. The democrats, however, have different opinions on different issues. That is a good thing. They are elected by different groups of people with different backgrounds and different goals. Obviously you can't expect those sorts of people to agree on every issues, and their representatives to congress reflect that fact. The fact that republicans are not permitted to disagree is extremely scary to me. That means they are not reflecting the goals of the people who elected them, but instead some uniform set of goals established by someone else. Representatives are meant to represent. When supposed representatives are able to agree pretty much uniformly on an extremely diverse set of issues that should send up warning flags, the people they represent wouldn't agree on that many issues so people representing them shouldn't, either.

As for people changing their minds, I hate to break it to you but the world changes. The world is slightly different each day. World conditions change each day. New world events happen each day. The information we have available increases each day. The repercussions of decisions we made in the past become more clear each day. Claiming that once we make a decision we must stick with that decision even if the situation changes or we get new information is a recipe for disaster. We don't need people to continue down a path once it has become obvious that path was the wrong one. We need to figure out why it was wrong and change the path so that it will make things right. Every day you have to look at what has happened, re-evaluate your previous decisions, and move forward based on what you have learned since yesterday. Things change. Wrong courses of actions become right ones, right courses of action become wrong. The world does not just sit still. Things change, and we have to change with them or we will fail.

As for the economy, the implicit assumption people are making is that anyone is responsible for the economy, that politicians can be blamed for upturns and downturns in the economy. The fact is that the economy is inherently cyclical. Periods of positive growth are followed by periods of negative growth. That is just how the economy works. Even if the government did absolutely nothing that influenced the economy it would still happen. And the recession that occurred when Bush came into office was long overdue, it should have happened years before. The fact that it didn't is significant, but I doubt you could give credit for that Clinton or Bush Sr., probably having more to do with the .com boom than anything.

And as for the debt, massive tax cuts combined with massive spending causes budget deficits. Increasing taxes and cutting spending decreases or eliminates budget deficits. We have 2 options long-term: decrease the debt, or destroy our economy. Those are the only options. Debt reduces trusts in the stability of the US economy, hurting the value of the dollar and hurting investments. You may not like taxes, but ultimately the money is going to either be paid back somehow or the government will effectively go into bankruptcy (it is a bit different with national governments but the effects are not pretty) and our economy will collapse. You just can't borrow indefinitely. Remember the money collected from taxes doesn't just disappear into a black hole never to be seen again. It is put back into the economy, largely our own economy. It is spent on scientific research, roads, construction, government employees, building vehicles and equipment, schools and libraries.

As for the Muslim representative, I fully support him. We live in a diverse society, our representatives should reflect that. The country was specifically set up by the framers to be open to all people regardless of their religious background.

Maddogg6

this thread reminded me of this pic...
http://fileanchor.com/78269.jpg

Al_Vampyre

Guys this is a protest vote it means nothing (unfortunately) when it actually comes to voting for the next President people will generally return to their normal voting pattern

Sandok

BWX, that just isn't true... I just advise you to roam the countries with freedom and you'll see that it doesn't mean prosperity...

If so, what do you make of China? Fastest growing economy in the world, soon to take over the US and do they have freedom to prosper with? lol no

TheBlackCat

I watched the beginning of the Bush's speech on the outcome of the election (CSPAN, realplayer stream, will not work with Real Alternative so you either need a stream saver or the real thing).

As you are probably aware, Nancy Pelosi was the Minority Leader of the House and is most likely going to become the Speaker of the House. She is already the first female leader of any party in either house of congress. This will make her the highest-ranking female political leader in U.S. history. She will basically be in charge of the House, setting the agenda for instance, and has a great many other responsibilities. This is truly a great moment for women's rights, considering it was just 85 years ago that women couldn't even vote at all.

Bush had this to say on the issue in his speech:



This is one of the most patronizing, condescending, chauvinistic things I could possibly imagine him saying. In regards to one of the most important events in equal rights in the history of our country, all Bush has to offer is help getting pretty drapes. Nothing about the historical importance of this event, no congratulations for her new position, nothing about working with her to set an agenda for congress and the country. The first thing that comes to his mind about her massive new responsibilities is making her office look pretty.

Just look at his face. He thought he was so funny, so clever. He had that annoying smirk he has when he think he said something humorous. Not a single person in the room laughed, which is promising, although if I was there I would have booed him off the stage and I am a little dissapointed not a single person showed any displeasure with the comment (although I guess that might be too much to ask).

I honestly cannot believe the president of this country in this day and age could possibly say something truly awful like that. Maybe in the lat 1800's. Today that sort of thing wouldn't be considered appropriate to say to a female manager at some tiny McDonald's, not to mention the most powerful female in our country's history. If he hadn't been the president he would probably have gotten socked for that one, and deserved it.

The statement occurs starting at about 1:55 if you want to see it for yourself.

Edit: there were additional circumstances that I was not aware of that completely change the nature of the joke. With that additional information it seems this comment was not offensive at all. See below.

calidan

Get off your high horse. Surely you have made a joke before that wasn't PC. Comedians do this all the time. It was a bad joke but don't act like democrats don't do the same thing. i.e. Kerry Enough said.

nitrousoxide52

Exactly, people didn't even look at the policies they just knew republicans put em' in a war they didn't want to be in.

Dowaco

Given the way Pelosi has talked about Bush. I think he was being gracious.

Pelosi:
Asked specifically if she was calling Bush incompetent, Pelosi replied:
"I believe that the president's leadership in the actions taken in Iraq demonstrate an incompetence in terms of knowledge, judgment and experience in making the decisions that would have been necessary to truly accomplish the mission without the deaths to our troops and the cost to our taxpayers."
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/05/20/pelosi.bush/

I'd like to see how she would fight a war without deaths and cost.

After someone calls you incompetent it's fair game to respond in a less than supportive way.

TheBlackCat

The President isn't a comedian, he is the leader of this country. And what he said was totally unacceptable. This is not an issue of PC. What Kerry said was true, but he can't say it because it is un-PC. In that regard he shouldn't have said it either. Then again, Kerry isn't the President nor is he currently a presidential candidate.

But what Bush said was simply an insult. There is nothing more to it than that. It did not hold any truths, it did not warn students about the need to work hard, iit is not some fact everyone knows but can't say out loud because of PC, it is just an insult based on gender stereotypes and it was obviously intended as such. Second, Kerry is not the President. The President should be held to higher standards than some Senator. If Kerry runs for President, than yes this becomes an issue. But for some random senator it is not. Third, Kerry was speaking to a handful of college students about staying in school. Bush was addressing the nation regarding a major change in our country's leadership. Everything about these two statements is completely different.

Comedians are paid to insult, Presidents are paid to be leaders and to set an example for the rest of us. Warning kids that they need to stay in school or they could wind up in a situation they do not like is good, although it certainly could have been phrased better. Interior decorating serves no benefit whatsoever.

The_Neon_Cowboy

* and democrats

Actually it was some arse hats speaking arbic that flew planes into a buildings.
A dictator seaking nuclear arms and a united nations who set on thier hands
on one side and on the other took bribes, falied to inspect, failed to act, failed
to inforce thier own resoultions. So some one had to do it... or why have the
U.N? If it's just a kids puppet show. Not really doing anything? Now if the UN did
thier job? there probubly wouldn't be a troop on the ground there... I see it more
as a failure of the U.N.

Heck what did they do in reagards to us attacking? nothing , yet another U.N. Failure

TheBlackCat

It appears there were extenuating circumstances regarding Bush's joke that I was not aware of. It seems the day before the election he was joking about the democrats "already picking the drapes for their new office" or something along those lines (a "counting your chickens before they hatch" sort of thing). So his joke was actually making fun of his previous joke. Given that additional information the joke makes sense and is perfectly reasonable so I retract my previous criticism.