Cigar
10-08-2014, 08:02 AM
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They shouldn’t be there in the first place
This Republican House has the least public mandate of any Congress in history. In the 2012 elections, the Republicans won 234 seats to the Democrats 201. But the Democrats won 48.8% of the popular vote, to the Republican’s 47.6%. The Democrat’s vote tally was nearly one-and-a-half-million higher. There is no precedent for this, not even close – never has the legitimate preference of the voters been so distorted.
If the Democrats had won – because they got the most votes – the Tea Party would be far less influential. There would have been no debt ceiling crisis, roiling markets and shaking consumer confidence, and no government shutdown lasting sixteen days.
With the Senate having passed a bi-partisan Immigration bill with more than two-thirds of the chamber voting yea, the house would, by now, have followed suit, with a final bill coming out of conference, bound for the president’s desk.
They don’t realize we get it already
The Republicans have voted more than 50 times to repeal or defund Obamacare.
“They have been obsessed with repealing the Affordable Care Act,” President Obama told a Democratic National Committee meeting in Washington. “You know what they say: 50th time is the charm. Maybe when you hit your 50th repeal vote, you will win a prize. Maybe if you buy 50 repeal votes, you get one free. We get it.”
No one likes them
The lowest point in the average of the polls that Nancy Pelosi’s Democrat-led House ever reached was 17%, as Obamacare was being passed. Generally speaking, the Democrats mainly stayed above 20%. Hardly amazing, but worthwhile remembering, given what was to come. The Republican controlled House has been by far the most disliked in modern history. An associated Press poll from the last week of September had them at 7%. It’s not just the least popular Congress, though: It’s also, according to Gallup, the least popular institution of any kind ever recorded.
They don’t do anything
The 113th Congress remains on track to be the least productive in modern history. Just 142 public bills have been enacted into law in the current session, down from the 906 the 80th “Do-Nothing” Congress passed in 1947-48. At this same point in the last Congress, which set the record for the fewest bills passed into public law in the modern era, 151 bills had made it into law.
They don’t represent society
Backers of Rep. Steve Southerland threw the Florida Republican a men-only fundraiser earlier this year. The invitation came complete with instructions that attendees should “tell the missus not to wait up” because “the after dinner whiskey and cigars will be smooth and the issues to discuss are many.”
In 1950, 98% of House Democrats and 97% of House Republicans were white men. In the 64 years since, that share has fallen 51 points for Democrats, but only 8 points for Republicans. Today, 89% of House Republicans are white men, compared to just 47% of House Democrats. On election night 2012, Democrats took pride in the fact that, for the first time ever, women and minorities would compose a majority — 53% — of their caucus. Meanwhile, the share of women and minorities in the GOP House conference went down, from 14% to 11%.
They’re too into Israel
Recent polls make it clear that, in the U.S., the strongest support for Israel’s right-wing policies now comes not from Jews, but from Republicans. Around the time of the Gaza conflict, Pew reported that the share of Republicans who sympathize more with Israel had risen from 68% to 73%, far larger than the proportion of Democrats.
Republican love for Israel knows almost no bounds, stemming, perhaps, from an absolutist trait in the conservative worldview. Israel is the Middle East’s only “good guy,” surrounded by a sea of “bad guys.”
In 2013, Israel’s GDP was $291.3 billion. The U.S. has subsidized about 25% of the tiny country’s annual defense budget in recent years; and U.S. military aid is roughly 1% of Israel’s economy. Yet the Republicans still complain that the Obama administration hasn’t been sufficiently supportive. For all their unwavering loyalty, however, it is really strange that, after the surprise defeat of Eric Cantor, there are now exactly zero Jewish Republicans in the House.
Their outreach to the Black community still faces hurdles
“To a significant extent, the Republican base does have elements that are animated by racism. And that’s unfortunate,” Democrat Steve Israel said recently on CNN.
“I couldn’t be consistent with myself and my core beliefs, and stay with a party that was so unfriendly toward the African-American president,” former Florida governor Charlie Crist said in an interview.“I was a Republican and I saw the activists and what they were doing, it was intolerable to me.”
“The reason why Fox News and the GOP attract people like Cliven Bundy, Ted Nugent, and George Zimmerman is because they have spent the entire Obama years using racial divides as a political weapon,” Bill Maher argued earlier this year, later going on to argue that Fox News called the New Black Panthers scary, but portrayed white militia members as heroes.
An interesting proxy for measuring racial prejudice is a person’s views on interracial dating and marriage. The Pew Research Center has been polling on this question for 25 years. In 2012, 18 percent of Republicans disapproved of blacks and whites dating each other.
They’ve wasted a huge amount of money
The Republicans have cost the taxpayer, directly and in terms of hindered economic potential, a huge amount since taking over the House.
The lawsuit against the president will cost up to $350,000, billed at a rate of $500 per hour.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that the House Republican’s prolonged showdown with the administration over the raising of the debt ceiling, a procedure, up till then largely a formality, increased government borrowing costs by $1.3 billion.
Standard & Poors estimated that the Republican-initiated shutdown, which lasted just over two weeks, cost $1.5 billion per day, and took a total of $24 billion out of the U.S. economy.
Almost continuously, since 2012, the Republican controlled House has been investigating Benghazi. “The Department has devoted thousands of man-hours to responding to the numerous and often repetitive congressional requests regarding Benghazi,” Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs Elizabeth King said in a letter to Congress. That estimate included “time devoted to approximately 50 congressional hearings, briefings, and interviews which the Department has led or participated in.”
In May, the Republicans formed a special committee to re investigate Benghazi – the budget is $5,650,000 – bigger than the budgets for the committees on Veteran’s affairs, Intelligence and the budget itself.
When House Republicans voted to appoint a special counsel for the IRS investigation, House Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Sander Levin responded by saying, “The IRS has spent more than $14 million in taxpayer money accommodating Republican requests, turning over more than 600,000 pages of documents, none of which substantiate the GOP’s wild attempt from the get-go to tar the administration.”
Its amazing that a fiscally conservative party has contrived to spend or waste this much money. Would anyone seriously suggest most of it had been well spent?
They can’t get their story straight
Despite having actually issued fewer executive orders than most of his predecessors, the Republicans have accused the President of being aggressively unilateral. In June, Republican Speaker John Boehner criticised the President’s use of executive orders, saying Congress must act to avoid Obama from acting like a “king.”
When Boehner was forced to cancel a vote on his border legislation after he didn’t have enough votes to pass it, he then issued a press release demanding that Obama act alone to secure the border. “There are numerous steps the president can and should be taking right now, without the need for congressional action, to secure our borders…” The logic being that it is not okay for Obama to take executive action unless the House is paralyzed by Republican infighting.
They’re going backwards in their thinking
Fewer Republicans today than in 2009 believe in evolution, according to a Pew poll last year. The poll showed that less than half – 43 percent – of those who identify with the Republican Party say they believe humans have evolved over time, plunging from 54 percent four years ago. Forty-eight percent say they believe “humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time,” up from 39 percent in 2009. According to a recent National Science Foundation study, only 28 percent of conservative Republicans believe that humans evolved from earlier species. The fact these statistics are going backwards, in the twenty-first century, is amazing.
And all of this without the Republicans having control of the Senate. FROM: http://sheppardpost.com/
If you can't argue and debate the 10 points, then don't prove the article correct. :wink:
They shouldn’t be there in the first place
This Republican House has the least public mandate of any Congress in history. In the 2012 elections, the Republicans won 234 seats to the Democrats 201. But the Democrats won 48.8% of the popular vote, to the Republican’s 47.6%. The Democrat’s vote tally was nearly one-and-a-half-million higher. There is no precedent for this, not even close – never has the legitimate preference of the voters been so distorted.
If the Democrats had won – because they got the most votes – the Tea Party would be far less influential. There would have been no debt ceiling crisis, roiling markets and shaking consumer confidence, and no government shutdown lasting sixteen days.
With the Senate having passed a bi-partisan Immigration bill with more than two-thirds of the chamber voting yea, the house would, by now, have followed suit, with a final bill coming out of conference, bound for the president’s desk.
They don’t realize we get it already
The Republicans have voted more than 50 times to repeal or defund Obamacare.
“They have been obsessed with repealing the Affordable Care Act,” President Obama told a Democratic National Committee meeting in Washington. “You know what they say: 50th time is the charm. Maybe when you hit your 50th repeal vote, you will win a prize. Maybe if you buy 50 repeal votes, you get one free. We get it.”
No one likes them
The lowest point in the average of the polls that Nancy Pelosi’s Democrat-led House ever reached was 17%, as Obamacare was being passed. Generally speaking, the Democrats mainly stayed above 20%. Hardly amazing, but worthwhile remembering, given what was to come. The Republican controlled House has been by far the most disliked in modern history. An associated Press poll from the last week of September had them at 7%. It’s not just the least popular Congress, though: It’s also, according to Gallup, the least popular institution of any kind ever recorded.
They don’t do anything
The 113th Congress remains on track to be the least productive in modern history. Just 142 public bills have been enacted into law in the current session, down from the 906 the 80th “Do-Nothing” Congress passed in 1947-48. At this same point in the last Congress, which set the record for the fewest bills passed into public law in the modern era, 151 bills had made it into law.
They don’t represent society
Backers of Rep. Steve Southerland threw the Florida Republican a men-only fundraiser earlier this year. The invitation came complete with instructions that attendees should “tell the missus not to wait up” because “the after dinner whiskey and cigars will be smooth and the issues to discuss are many.”
In 1950, 98% of House Democrats and 97% of House Republicans were white men. In the 64 years since, that share has fallen 51 points for Democrats, but only 8 points for Republicans. Today, 89% of House Republicans are white men, compared to just 47% of House Democrats. On election night 2012, Democrats took pride in the fact that, for the first time ever, women and minorities would compose a majority — 53% — of their caucus. Meanwhile, the share of women and minorities in the GOP House conference went down, from 14% to 11%.
They’re too into Israel
Recent polls make it clear that, in the U.S., the strongest support for Israel’s right-wing policies now comes not from Jews, but from Republicans. Around the time of the Gaza conflict, Pew reported that the share of Republicans who sympathize more with Israel had risen from 68% to 73%, far larger than the proportion of Democrats.
Republican love for Israel knows almost no bounds, stemming, perhaps, from an absolutist trait in the conservative worldview. Israel is the Middle East’s only “good guy,” surrounded by a sea of “bad guys.”
In 2013, Israel’s GDP was $291.3 billion. The U.S. has subsidized about 25% of the tiny country’s annual defense budget in recent years; and U.S. military aid is roughly 1% of Israel’s economy. Yet the Republicans still complain that the Obama administration hasn’t been sufficiently supportive. For all their unwavering loyalty, however, it is really strange that, after the surprise defeat of Eric Cantor, there are now exactly zero Jewish Republicans in the House.
Their outreach to the Black community still faces hurdles
“To a significant extent, the Republican base does have elements that are animated by racism. And that’s unfortunate,” Democrat Steve Israel said recently on CNN.
“I couldn’t be consistent with myself and my core beliefs, and stay with a party that was so unfriendly toward the African-American president,” former Florida governor Charlie Crist said in an interview.“I was a Republican and I saw the activists and what they were doing, it was intolerable to me.”
“The reason why Fox News and the GOP attract people like Cliven Bundy, Ted Nugent, and George Zimmerman is because they have spent the entire Obama years using racial divides as a political weapon,” Bill Maher argued earlier this year, later going on to argue that Fox News called the New Black Panthers scary, but portrayed white militia members as heroes.
An interesting proxy for measuring racial prejudice is a person’s views on interracial dating and marriage. The Pew Research Center has been polling on this question for 25 years. In 2012, 18 percent of Republicans disapproved of blacks and whites dating each other.
They’ve wasted a huge amount of money
The Republicans have cost the taxpayer, directly and in terms of hindered economic potential, a huge amount since taking over the House.
The lawsuit against the president will cost up to $350,000, billed at a rate of $500 per hour.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that the House Republican’s prolonged showdown with the administration over the raising of the debt ceiling, a procedure, up till then largely a formality, increased government borrowing costs by $1.3 billion.
Standard & Poors estimated that the Republican-initiated shutdown, which lasted just over two weeks, cost $1.5 billion per day, and took a total of $24 billion out of the U.S. economy.
Almost continuously, since 2012, the Republican controlled House has been investigating Benghazi. “The Department has devoted thousands of man-hours to responding to the numerous and often repetitive congressional requests regarding Benghazi,” Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs Elizabeth King said in a letter to Congress. That estimate included “time devoted to approximately 50 congressional hearings, briefings, and interviews which the Department has led or participated in.”
In May, the Republicans formed a special committee to re investigate Benghazi – the budget is $5,650,000 – bigger than the budgets for the committees on Veteran’s affairs, Intelligence and the budget itself.
When House Republicans voted to appoint a special counsel for the IRS investigation, House Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Sander Levin responded by saying, “The IRS has spent more than $14 million in taxpayer money accommodating Republican requests, turning over more than 600,000 pages of documents, none of which substantiate the GOP’s wild attempt from the get-go to tar the administration.”
Its amazing that a fiscally conservative party has contrived to spend or waste this much money. Would anyone seriously suggest most of it had been well spent?
They can’t get their story straight
Despite having actually issued fewer executive orders than most of his predecessors, the Republicans have accused the President of being aggressively unilateral. In June, Republican Speaker John Boehner criticised the President’s use of executive orders, saying Congress must act to avoid Obama from acting like a “king.”
When Boehner was forced to cancel a vote on his border legislation after he didn’t have enough votes to pass it, he then issued a press release demanding that Obama act alone to secure the border. “There are numerous steps the president can and should be taking right now, without the need for congressional action, to secure our borders…” The logic being that it is not okay for Obama to take executive action unless the House is paralyzed by Republican infighting.
They’re going backwards in their thinking
Fewer Republicans today than in 2009 believe in evolution, according to a Pew poll last year. The poll showed that less than half – 43 percent – of those who identify with the Republican Party say they believe humans have evolved over time, plunging from 54 percent four years ago. Forty-eight percent say they believe “humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time,” up from 39 percent in 2009. According to a recent National Science Foundation study, only 28 percent of conservative Republicans believe that humans evolved from earlier species. The fact these statistics are going backwards, in the twenty-first century, is amazing.
And all of this without the Republicans having control of the Senate. FROM: http://sheppardpost.com/
If you can't argue and debate the 10 points, then don't prove the article correct. :wink: