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Senate goes Nuclear. Who is to blame.

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shady28 said:
The problem with ending filibusters goes back to having a 2-party system. Without filibuster, then there is no need for compromise. Compromise would still be enforced if there were more than 2 parties with real power as long as there was no supermajority.

That's where comparisons to other countries political systems falls apart. In those systems, the majority party still has to compromise and work with at least one other political group in order to obtain a majority significant enough to pass legislation. Many countries have more than 3 parties, they may have 6 or 7.

With our two party system devoid of filibuster, the majority in the Senate no longer needs to work with anyone. For all practical purposes, whoever is in the minority in the Senate has zero power to oppose the power of the reigning / majority party.

This makes the Senate a pointless institution from the standpoint of being a part of congress. As these parties have shown their ability to vote in lock-step on many issues, the Senate effectively represents one party.

Of course, the filibuster is only stopped for appointment confirmations.
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Having a minority in the Senate have that much power was never part of the checks and balances system.

The Senate is supposed to work with the President and Congress top get things done, that is where the compromise is suppose to happen.
 
MooseNSquirrel said:
Having a minority in the Senate have that much power was never part of the checks and balances system.

The Senate is supposed to work with the President and Congress top get things done, that is where the compromise is suppose to happen.
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how do you have compromise without filibuster?

The minority has no power to stop any agenda, therefor there majority has no reason to engage them.
 
eskimospy said:
Bite them in the ass how? Be specific.

If the Republicans retain their majority in the House and gain a majority in the Senate by 2016 do you think the average Republican will be more or less conservative than they are now? It seems obvious the answer is more.

With that in mind do you HONESTLY think that the Republicans would respect the filibuster and not repeal the ACA with a simple majority? Honestly? If so, that's awfully naive.

Do you honestly think the even more conservative Senate than the one in 2005 that came within a hair of eliminating the judicial filibuster over a small handful of nominees wouldn't eliminate it in 2016 if they control the presidency? If so again I find that to be awfully naive.

So then the question becomes, how would this bite the Democrats in the ass? Republicans already refused to cooperate on significant legislation, so that's out. Republicans were already at basically maximum obstruction in the Senate at all times anyway, so that's out.

Counterfactuals will of course be impossible, but all I see this doing is making it slightly easier for Republicans to do what they were going to do anyway as soon as they had the chance. I mean seriously.
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The Dems just changed the rules so that if the Reps take the WH and have a single member majority in the Senate then they could appoint Sarah Pallin to head the Dept of Education. That is fucking scary. How about judges? Usually neither side can get judges that lean wildly to their side and usually have to settle with judges that slightly/moderately lean their way, now it only requires 51 votes for them to appoint uber right wing judges (or left wing, doesn't matter).

I agree that there hasn't been a whole lot of compromise going on in politics these days but despite its recent overuse the filibuster has been sort of a checks and balance that keep the ruling party from radically shifting government by appointing people at the fringe of their party instead of people that are more moderate.


Bottom line is, the Dems did it to stop the Reps from blocking what the Dems want to do. When the Reps regain power, and they will eventually (perhaps next election), they will be able to use the exact same rule to do the exact same thing. There is a reason why the rule has survived until now, now precedent has been set and both parties get to use it.

Hell, your side won't even be able to get "payback" on the Reps when/if they regain power. Instead the Reps will have precedent to not only abuse the rule just passed but to pass worse rules that will basically invalidate the minority party. That is just a bad fucking idea regardless of which side is in power.

Counterfactuals will of course be impossible, but all I see this doing is making it slightly easier for Republicans to do what they were going to do anyway as soon as they had the chance. I mean seriously.
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Except the Dems just willfully and purposely removed the one safeguard they had to prevent them from doing batshit crazy stuff. Again, bad idea.
 
Darwin333 said:
The Dems just changed the rules so that if the Reps take the WH and have a single member majority in the Senate then they could appoint Sarah Pallin to head the Dept of Education. That is fucking scary. How about judges? Usually neither side can get judges that lean wildly to their side and usually have to settle with judges that slightly/moderately lean their way, now it only requires 51 votes for them to appoint uber right wing judges (or left wing, doesn't matter).

I agree that there hasn't been a whole lot of compromise going on in politics these days but despite its recent overuse the filibuster has been sort of a checks and balance that keep the ruling party from radically shifting government by appointing people at the fringe of their party instead of people that are more moderate.


Bottom line is, the Dems did it to stop the Reps from blocking what the Dems want to do. When the Reps regain power, and they will eventually (perhaps next election), they will be able to use the exact same rule to do the exact same thing. There is a reason why the rule has survived until now, now precedent has been set and both parties get to use it.

Hell, your side won't even be able to get "payback" on the Reps when/if they regain power. Instead the Reps will have precedent to not only abuse the rule just passed but to pass worse rules that will basically invalidate the minority party. That is just a bad fucking idea regardless of which side is in power.



Except the Dems just willfully and purposely removed the one safeguard they had to prevent them from doing batshit crazy stuff. Again, bad idea.
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eskio said he was ok with government getting more extreme and polarized.
 
michal1980 said:
how do you have compromise without filibuster?

The minority has no power to stop any agenda, therefor there majority has no reason to engage them.
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Which for Democrats is their idea of a "compromise", i.e. you do what they say because anything short of that is "obstructionist" in their eyes. Don't cha love it when radicals redefine such words as "Compromise" and define any dissent to them having absolute control as being a "obstructionist".
 
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monovillage said:
"A Pyrrhic victory is a victory with such a devastating cost that it is tantamount to defeat.'
Congratulations Democrats.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory
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Actually, that is the victory the Republicans reaped when they decided to obstruct. They just had to take everything to extremes so Mommy came and spanked them and sent them to bed.

They got so excited trying to outdo each other in who could fuck Obama best they fucked themselves in the ass. Only in a bubble world could they not have seen it coming.
 
Darwin333 said:
The Dems just changed the rules so that if the Reps take the WH and have a single member majority in the Senate then they could appoint Sarah Pallin to head the Dept of Education. That is fucking scary. How about judges? Usually neither side can get judges that lean wildly to their side and usually have to settle with judges that slightly/moderately lean their way, now it only requires 51 votes for them to appoint uber right wing judges (or left wing, doesn't matter).

I agree that there hasn't been a whole lot of compromise going on in politics these days but despite its recent overuse the filibuster has been sort of a checks and balance that keep the ruling party from radically shifting government by appointing people at the fringe of their party instead of people that are more moderate.


Bottom line is, the Dems did it to stop the Reps from blocking what the Dems want to do. When the Reps regain power, and they will eventually (perhaps next election), they will be able to use the exact same rule to do the exact same thing. There is a reason why the rule has survived until now, now precedent has been set and both parties get to use it.

Hell, your side won't even be able to get "payback" on the Reps when/if they regain power. Instead the Reps will have precedent to not only abuse the rule just passed but to pass worse rules that will basically invalidate the minority party. That is just a bad fucking idea regardless of which side is in power.



Except the Dems just willfully and purposely removed the one safeguard they had to prevent them from doing batshit crazy stuff. Again, bad idea.
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This post sums up why this rule should have stayed in place.

Can anyone name a nominee who was a Republican that got blocked? I can't, yet under Bush he didn't fire everyone and he appointed Democrat leaning judges (after a nominee got blocked).

I'm too troubled to look up the stats but what Republicans have been nominated by Obama? I bet it's close to 0. There is no reason not to approve of a judge who is either independent, or bipartisan if your choice is that or a die hard liberal.

Turning the DC court full on liberal is a dream of dreams for any Democrat who knows his weight in legislature. IIRC it is evenly split at the moment, so yea POTUS needs to nominate someone who will keep that court even steven.
 
the way checks and balances were suppose to be:
president, house, and senate all negotiate to pass a bill. to override a presidential veto takes 67votes.
the minority party in both the house and senate are powerless. all they can do is bitch and moan.

then someone idiot came up w/the bright idea of needing a supermajority of 60votes to do anything in the Senate. but to prevent it from being abused, you must spend time + energy to talk and talk on the senate floor.
that way the person who fillabusters has a mental and physical cost.

then in the 21st century, some bigger idiot had the idea of just saying fillabuster means the bill is fillabustered. abuses galore follows.

go back to the old ways of either making the minority party powerless in the senate like they are in the House. or have some senator of the minority party pay the physical cost by keep talking on the senate floor to fillabuster.

yes/no?
 
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monovillage said:
"A Pyrrhic victory is a victory with such a devastating cost that it is tantamount to defeat.'
Congratulations Democrats.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory
Click to expand...

Actually, that is the victory the Republicans reaped when they decided to obstruct. They just had to take everything to extremes so Mommy came and spanked them and sent them to bed.

They got so excited trying to outdo each other in who could fuck Obama best they fucked themselves in the ass. Only in a bubble world could they not have seen it coming.
 
The senate was not designed with the filibuster in mind. It was in fact created by accident. This is just a fact. If you believe the senate is a bad place without the filibuster, that means the founders intended the senate to be that bad place.

Secondly, America had functioned without judicial nominations being filibustered for the majority of its history.

Third, in case you might have forgotten nextjin, your boss is a republican Obama nominated. Additionally, the DC circuit is not currently balanced. There is an even split of regular justices, but the senior justices that still rule on plenty of cases lean heavily republican. If you actually believe in an ideologically balanced DC circuit court you should have been against the republicans refusing to let anyone be nominated.

Finally, I am not aware of a single liberal judge that bush appointed. There might be one, but it was extremely rare. That's what comes with being the president. You nominate the guys you like.
 
eskimospy said:
The senate was not designed with the filibuster in mind. It was in fact created by accident. This is just a fact. If you believe the senate is a bad place without the filibuster, that means the founders intended the senate to be that bad place.

Secondly, America had functioned without judicial nominations being filibustered for the majority of its history.

Third, in case you might have forgotten nextjin, your boss is a republican Obama nominated. Additionally, the DC circuit is not currently balanced. There is an even split of regular justices, but the senior justices that still rule on plenty of cases lean heavily republican. If you actually believe in an ideologically balanced DC circuit court you should have been against the republicans refusing to let anyone be nominated.

Finally, I am not aware of a single liberal judge that bush appointed. There might be one, but it was extremely rare. That's what comes with being the president. You nominate the guys you like.
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Your guys were against this. Your guys said this would destroy America.

glad your so supportive of destroying America
 
michal1980 said:
Your guys were against this. Your guys said this would destroy America.

glad your so supportive of destroying America
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Your guys said this had to be done to preserve the constitution. Glad to see you're so into destroying the constitution.

See how silly this is?
 
So we have the filibuster taken out of the picture as far as judicial nominations are concerned. That's it. And for this narrowly defined rule change we have folks going apeshit like the filibuster was used to nuke ALL legislative negotiations in the Senate.

The Dems clearly haven't done that of which they're not being given credit for. Neither have the Dems proposed or even floated this idea as a threat to the Repubs to rein in their excessive use of the filibuster.

The filibuster is still alive and well in the Senate, and yet we have our conservatives screaming to the heavens that their blatantly excessive use of the filibuster was supposed to be protected and was a traditional and normal part of doing business in the Senate. Repeat: the conservatives here are insisting that their Repub Senators egregious and wholly excessive use of the filibuster is a traditional and completely normal every boring day use of that showstopper. Really?

It looks like our conservatives are now attempting to redefine what is the traditional use of the filibuster as "a practice that is used to effectively obstruct/block any and all legislation that is submitted by the majority opposition party".

That is precisely what the Senate Repubs have been doing since Obama took office, especially the ver. 2010.3 where Tea Party extremism is now the norm. They have effectively taken power away from the Dem majority and have given themsleves the power to decide what legislation gets allowed on the floor via filibuster. Is that what the tradional use of the filibuster is? Because it sure seems like that's what our resident conseratives are advocating.

"Give and take" has given way to "give nothing, take everything". The new mantra of the Repub Senate minority seems to be "Filibuster and filibuster often".

This strategy to block/obstruct any and all opposition legislation possible via filibuster until power can be returned to themselves is the traditional use of the legislative process? Since when?

Our conservatives actually think that the majority Dems in the Senate are supposed to just suck it up and take it up the wazoo as "business as usual" and have no other recourse except to let the minority party control the Senate as they have been?

And now we have our conservatives chanting "what goes around comes around". Really? So then our conservatives are completely OK with the Dems doing this exact same thing of complete obstruction/blockage of any and all of their own legislation possible like they've been doing to the Dems for the last five years?

By all means then, the moment the tables are turned, I'd definetely like to see the Rebubs in the Senate allow the Dems to completely obstruct any and all legislation the Repubs can come up with for five years straight. Really, I'd like to see that happen, although we all know the Repubs will pull the trigger first chance they get.

What I'm hoping for is that the Senate gets back to doing business "the traditional way". A time before the Tea Party coerced it parent party into brcoming a far right extremist entity. A time when backstabbing each other was done with wit and class rather than having wet behind the ears Tea Party freshman legislators bullying their way onto the political stage and taking their own party leaders as hostages to further their far right/far out of this world extremist agenda.
 
tweaker2 said:
So we have the filibuster taken out of the picture as far as judicial nominations are concerned. That's it. And for this narrowly defined rule change we have folks going apeshit like the filibuster was used to nuke ALL legislative negotiations in the Senate.

The Dems clearly haven't done that of which they're not being given credit for. Neither have the Dems proposed or even floated this idea as a threat to the Repubs to rein in their excessive use of the filibuster.

The filibuster is still alive and well in the Senate, and yet we have our conservatives screaming to the heavens that their blatantly excessive use of the filibuster was supposed to be protected and was a traditional and normal part of doing business in the Senate. Repeat: the conservatives here are insisting that their Repub Senators egregious and wholly excessive use of the filibuster is a traditional and completely normal every boring day use of that showstopper. Really?

It looks like our conservatives are now attempting to redefine what is the traditional use of the filibuster as "a practice that is used to effectively obstruct/block any and all legislation that is submitted by the majority opposition party".

That is precisely what the Senate Repubs have been doing since Obama took office, especially the ver. 2010.3 where Tea Party extremism is now the norm. They have effectively taken power away from the Dem majority and have given themsleves the power to decide what legislation gets allowed on the floor via filibuster. Is that what the tradional use of the filibuster is? Because it sure seems like that's what our resident conseratives are advocating.

"Give and take" has given way to "give nothing, take everything". The new mantra of the Repub Senate minority seems to be "Filibuster and filibuster often".

This strategy to block/obstruct any and all opposition legislation possible via filibuster until power can be returned to themselves is the traditional use of the legislative process? Since when?

Our conservatives actually think that the majority Dems in the Senate are supposed to just suck it up and take it up the wazoo as "business as usual" and have no other recourse except to let the minority party control the Senate as they have been?

And now we have our conservatives chanting "what goes around comes around". Really? So then our conservatives are completely OK with the Dems doing this exact same thing of complete obstruction/blockage of any and all of their own legislation possible like they've been doing to the Dems for the last five years?

By all means then, the moment the tables are turned, I'd definetely like to see the Rebubs in the Senate allow the Dems to completely obstruct any and all legislation the Repubs can come up with for five years straight. Really, I'd like to see that happen, although we all know the Repubs will pull the trigger first chance they get.

What I'm hoping for is that the Senate gets back to doing business "the traditional way". A time before the Tea Party coerced it parent party into brcoming a far right extremist entity. A time when backstabbing each other was done with wit and class rather than having wet behind the ears Tea Party freshman legislators bullying their way onto the political stage and taking their own party leaders as hostages to further their far right/far out of this world extremist agenda.
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so naïve. thinking its so easy to close Pandora's box once open
 
I wonder if, in the event the Senate goes to the Republicans, a lame duck Democratic Senate might undo this change, just so the Republicans have to go on record as exercising the Nuclear Option as well. (Not that I would be at all surprised if they did.)

tweaker2 said:
The filibuster is still alive and well in the Senate
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tweaker2 said:
What I'm hoping for is that the Senate gets back to doing business "the traditional way".
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And, in fact, I think both of these are sort of correct: The filibuster remains an option, even for nominations. It just has to be done the traditional, stand-up-and-talk way. You know, the Rand Paul and Ted Cruz way.
 
Hayabusa Rider: We've talked about a change in our system and one common thought was a possibility of a Constitutional change. I'm not calling for an end to the nation but it has occurred to me that it takes a crisis to motivate many. If the result of this action is as I and some others believe, then we will have that catalyst. What I would have is the lessoning of control by the few. In other places a consensus, a necessary collaboration must exist to govern. Here the imperative is to win and rule. I have always been uncomfortable with that.

M: The science says that it is the conservative brain that contains the traits of group loyalty and it is they who display this will to win over anything.

H: And so I believe that the potential for change exists but with perils.

But before I go further in a dialogue, I would ask a few things so that a clear understanding may be had.

In your posts you differentiate between Conservatives and Liberals, bit does this compromise the totality of possibilities? Let's use me since to many self professed liberals I am conservative, especially when my ideas conflict with theirs, yet I hope for more change than they, but not for its own sake. Then I have been a liberal, one who objected to war and imprisonment. In these cases both terms were often meant as pejoratives, but that matters not.

M: Nothing you say here says anything other than that you are a liberal to me. Mind you, I have to guess at the implications you express in this post. I can't be sure I am reading what you intended to say.

H: But we are talking about who would be appointed, or perhaps anointed for this task, so for the purpose of discussion, what am I? Where do I fit and more importantly others who do not identify with the conflation of party and ideology?

M: I have no idea, no idea at all where I fit. I am not somebody who thinks much at all about where I fit. Group identity is not my thing. I believe the truth is always a third way, a synthesis of opposites resolved at a higher level of understanding. I can't provide anybody with the synthesis itself, that happens internally. What I try to do is supply that portion of the paradox that I sense is missing in the person to whom my post is intended.
-----------

M: I want to answer the following but I'm not really sure if I understand what I am being asked:

H: Again, I ask to further discussion and thought. I only ask that you consider and answer honestly. My ego will not be harmed in any case. Are we what we and others call us? Do we want equality in participation of those we do not identify with or do we (and I've been using "we" in a larger collective sense), seek uniformity and exclusion?

Are you asking of humanity seeks uniformity or exclusion? That is part of the divide between liberal and conservative thinking. Evolutionary biology seems to suggest to my best understanding that we do both, that each is a mental condition and that the understanding that we are all one is an emergent phenomenon that is being expressed around the world more and more because of need. It might be called enlightened self interest, my welfare is dependent on yours and my good intentions to you will be reflected back at me. We create what we fear or something else if we do not.

H: What does your whole self say?

M: Self knowledge is probably the hardest thing there is. I would say I don't know much.

H: I bring this up because if the time for such change as we envision comes to pass that these will matter.

M: I would like to hear more about what you are saying here.
 
Science says anyone who keeps repeating the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over again is a batshit insane lunatic.
 
tweaker2 said:
What I'm hoping for is that the Senate gets back to doing business "the traditional way". A time before the Tea Party coerced it parent party into brcoming a far right extremist entity. A time when backstabbing each other was done with wit and class rather than having wet behind the ears Tea Party freshman legislators bullying their way onto the political stage and taking their own party leaders as hostages to further their far right/far out of this world extremist agenda.
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A simple question that can be answered quite easily. Is there such a thing as a 'far left/far out of this world extremist agenda'?
 
Ken g6 said:
And, in fact, I think both of these are sort of correct: The filibuster remains an option, even for nominations. It just has to be done the traditional, stand-up-and-talk way. You know, the Rand Paul and Ted Cruz way.
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oh really?!

yeah!
 
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