Still Think Theres NO Difference Between Republicans & Democrats?

[Segami]

Well, here's one difference for starters!......

[Hydra]

1. Thank God they haven't given up ground on that yet!

[iandhr]

2. Ding Ding Ding

[East Coast Pirate]

3. The question is,

why didn't they do it when they had the House, the Senate and the Executive branch?

[LearningCurve]

6. The same reason the Republicans didn't stop spending when they had the same

It's always better to scream your "core principles" when there's zero chance getting anything passed.

[Mojorabbit]

39. I am starting to think that is how it works. nt

[Recursion]

9. They did in 2009. The House passed it, the Senate GOP filibustered it

The House passed it, and its cloture vote went down on a party-line vote in the Senate.

Obama and Reid called them out over it, and you didn't notice, which is another example of how the "bully pulpit" is mythical.

[Hekate]

13. Thank you for your good memory of actual events. Much appreciated. nt

[LearningCurve]

41. This does not match my memory at all

I've also been unable to find anything on the internet that shows this ever happened.

[DesMoinesDem]

83. The BOG likes to make up their own reality and then high five each other.

Facts are not important to them.

[LearningCurve]

93. Not familiar with the BOG

I feel like I should be able to figure out, please help. Barack Obama Group?

[Jackpine Radical]

101. You got it on your first try.

Barack Obama Group

[LearningCurve]

105. Sometimes I get lucky.

Thanks for your kind post.

[leftynyc]

96. You may want to apologize

for accusing the poster of making something up. You know, if you have the grace and all.

http://www.onlinesentinel.com/politics/House-Democrats-pass-minimum-wage-hike-bill.html?pagenum=full

[LearningCurve]

109. This is an article about the MAINE state House

I definitely have the grace to admit I was mistaken if someone, somewhere actually provides a link supporting the claim I questioned. And I certainly did not accuse anyone of making anything up, honest mistakes do happen, on my part as well. If I was the one mistaken about a piece of history, I genuinely wanted evidence that I was, and still, am unable to find.

I am curious how much grace others will extend as it appears I am correct on this issue.

[leftynyc]

95. How hard did you try?

Took me all of 10 seconds to find this:


http://www.onlinesentinel.com/politics/House-Democrats-pass-minimum-wage-hike-bill.html?pagenum=full


AUGUSTA — The House gave initial approval Wednesday to a bill that would increase the minimum wage to $9 an hour by 2016 and have it rise incrementally with inflation thereafter.

The bill, which failed to receive a single Republican vote, aligns with a national effort among Democrats initiated with President Obama’s State of the Union address. In his speech, the president called for raising the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour to increase the earning and purchasing power of low-income Americans and help lift them into the middle class.

[LearningCurve]

107. I tried harder than this

This is an article about MAINE!

[cali]

98. too bad you don't know how to do the most fucking basic research

destroys credibility not to be able to to something that basic, dear.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/10/AR2007011001666.html

http://bobgeiger.blogspot.com/2007/01/senate-republicans-block-minimum-wage.html'

yep, you've got some mad skills there, dude. NOT.

[LearningCurve]

108. I think my credibility is still intact

The first link, is from a bill in 2007 that passed! The second, doesn't work at all, but even in the link, it refers also to 2007.

So apparently not only can I not find anything supporting the claim that in 2009 a Democratic House passed a minimum wage bill only to have Republicans somehow filibuster it in the Senate when there were 60 votes to overcome, no one else can find it either. I will refrain from the temptation to respond in kind on your evaluation of my "mad skills," and chalk it up to well-intended honest mistake.

[Tanuki]

27. Thank you for accurately rebutting a common RW talking point! eom

[LearningCurve]

42. Democrats failed to pass minimum wage is a Republican talking point?

I'm not sure if that's what you meant, but that's what your post seems to mean. I'm pretty certain that is unlikely to be the case, but the talking point you are referring to is unclear from this thread.

[Hekate]

58. Clearly you have a steep learning curve ahead. nt

[LearningCurve]

40. I can find nothing about this anywhere

Do you have a link or source?

[heaven05]

103. they

gave you links and sources. Cali is right about you, fer sure! geez

[LearningCurve]

106. No "they" did not

The only working link given is from 2007, for a bill that passed. If anyone, anywhere gave a link or source to this supposed minimum wage bill in 2009 that was filibustered in the Senate as claimed, it sure isn't in this thread or my Inbox.

[DesMoinesDem]

61. That never happened. Prove me wrong.

[sinkingfeeling]

99. I think you mean 2007. See this history....

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=U.S._minimum_wage_legislation

[pnwmom]

21. The Rethugs filibustered in the Senate, as you know. n/t

[LearningCurve]

43. 2009 the Democrats had a super-majority

In order for a filibuster to have happened, someone would have had to defect to fall short of the 60-vote threshold. Even in the case that something like that could have happened, I am unable to find anything on the internet that shows that it did.

I'm not ruling it out due to a lack of available data or belief in my own infallible memory, but I would appreciate some sort of evidence before I subscribe to this position.

[pnwmom]

45. No, we didn't. Not for 10 seconds.

Lieberman was one of the 60, and he was an Independent who had defeated a Democrat, and who voted with the Democrats when he felt like it. Bernie Sanders was much more consistent.

There were also a few Democrats from red states whose votes were difficult to count on, but we were better off having them as Democrats than as Rethugs.

[LearningCurve]

47. If not for 60 votes, ACA would never have passed

I find it hard to believe the same people who caucused with Democrats for ACA would balk at an increase in the minimum wage. I'd need to see some kind of evidence for this.

[pnwmom]

49. And getting the ACA through at all was a miracle.

There was also an economic stimulus bill at the time that was critical to getting the economy going again. I don't think you realize how difficult it has been to get anything passed since Obama got elected. There has been more obstructionism than in any time in American history. The Rethugs decided in a meeting very soon after Obama's election that their single legislative priority was to block everything that Obama proposed. This has never happened before and no one will ever convince me that a sense of entitled racism wasn't behind it.

[LearningCurve]

50. I don't disagree with a single sentence you wrote here except

that I don't realize the difficulty in getting things passed. It's why I consider 2009 such a wasted opportunity. There should have been a stack of bills ready to be voted on the day Obama took office. Sadly, that didn't happen.

[pnwmom]

54. It doesn't work that way.

There was no reason for Reid or the other Democrats to realize that they were now living in a brand new world, where the Rethugs would try to stop everything, no matter what. But even if they had, they couldn't have taken bills that had started in Bush's Presidency and turned around and passed them in Obama's.

There are all kinds of stages that a bill has to go through to get to the point where it can be voted on, and the Rethugs were using their ability to block at every step of the way. And one of the things they can do is delay. Just a single Senator could put a hold on a bill and delay it indefinitely. But the Senate rules that continued that tradition had already been voted on and approved before the Rethugs (Jim deMint, in particular) announced that they'd be blocking every proposal Obama put forth. So it was too late to stop those holds, and there were many.

[LearningCurve]

55. The same process for any bill also applied to ACA

There is no reason that multiple bills can't go through this process at the same time, except lack of desire to actually pass them. FDR's "first hundred days" comes to mind. The same mindset should have applied after the catastrophe of the Bush presidency.

[pnwmom]

56. Only a few bills can end up at the top of the pile. They can't all have the same priority.

And the system was so gummed up, it was a miracle that the ACA and the stimulus got passed. Other bills that always in the past had Rethug support (like a small employer jobs bill) failed to make it through.

But there WERE increases in the Federal Minimum Wage in July 2007, July 2008, and July 2009. I'm assuming this was because of legislation passed in earlier years.

http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.html

[LearningCurve]

57. You'll never hear disagreement from me about Republican obstruction

Where I part ways, is that there is no procedural reason whatsoever other bills could not have been passed in this time period. The desire for bi-partisan support, was just that, a desire. It was not necessary, Democrats had the votes. A lot of desire for bi-partisan support comes from a desire to cover one's ass politically. I feel what was lacking was courage to solely own as a party a number of reforms. To which my response is to paraphrase LBJ, "Then what good is it to hold office?"

[pnwmom]

63. The time period you're talking about was when hundreds of thousands of jobs were being shed

every month. And the third minimum wage increase in three years was already scheduled to go forward in July.

In the face of that plummeting employment, can you see why an additional minimum wage increase, beyond the one already scheduled, might not have been viewed as a priority during that very brief period of an almost-filibuster proof majority?

[Hekate]

80. I wonder

what attracted Steep Learning Curve to this site?

[LearningCurve]

110. A reasonable position

Given that an increase already happened in 2007, I can see this being a lower priority. I do think though, that a whole bunch of other bills could have been passed concurrently with the bailouts and ACA, and the opportunity to do so again any time soon is unlikely.

[annabanana]

94. I don't remember the repubs being coy about their plans

to obstruct .

Dem leadership assumed too much that "collegiality" was still a thing.

Bad, dumb mistake.

[heaven05]

104. Mcconnell

said that very thing. I want Obama to be a one term POTUS. During first inaugural ball no less, the repugnant rethugs were meeting and ended that meeting saying they were going to block anything Obama tried. You need to stop with your BS. Research is easy these days. Do some work yourself. geez

[LearningCurve]

111. I don't believe anyone is disputing Republican obstructionism

Certainly not me. However, I have done the research. So have others in this very thread, and no one has found anything that supports the claim anything like the Senate filibustering a minimum wage bill happened in 2009. People have certainly asserted they've got links, but they have all been to: articles about 2007, broken, or the state of Maine. No, I did not make that last one up.

So the work has been done, I might suggest others do the same.

[Recursion]

64. OTOH it passed both chambers in 2007, and W signed it

Maybe Republicans are more willing to let laws pass when a R is in the WH.

[pnwmom]

66. And furthermore, that bill

included an increase in July 2009.

So in the face of massive job losses every month, there probably wasn't much will to vote on an additional increase in the minimum wage.

[DesMoinesDem]

65. Prove it.

Sorry, that didn't happen.

[pnwmom]

67. It's all moot anyway. There was already an increase scheduled for July 2009.

And in the face of an economy that was losing hundreds of thousands of jobs every MONTH, Congress can hardly be blamed for not having an additional increase in the minimum wage at the top of its list of priorities.

[East Coast Pirate]

79. Well I should have known something

and I'm obviously up to something. After all, who could hate a prince and his merry court?

[Hekate]

81. Why do you need to be so ugly? Pnwmom is not known for lying, but for factual statements.

Have we met before, perchance?

[DesMoinesDem]

82. There is nothing ugly about calling someone out for lying.

It is the lie that is ugly. A lie that he made.

[Hekate]

84. Hold a mirror up to your own face

[Hekate]

88. Not at all, but I see your original trollery was hidden by a jury

[leftynyc]

97. Glad you feel that way

Since you were LYING about it never happening:

http://www.onlinesentinel.com/politics/House-Democrats-pass-minimum-wage-hike-bill.html?pagenum=full

[tabasco]

33. The question is,

why don't you educate yourself?

[East Coast Pirate]

60. Isn't that what I'm doing by posting to a political discussion forum?

[Hekate]

86. Not really. In this particular thread what you and several others are doing can only be described

as shit-stirring. Really enhances the discourse.

[East Coast Pirate]

90. Sure, that's my only motive.

I actually don't care about these things.

[Egalitarian Thug]

77. You're not waiting for an answer, are you? n/t

[East Coast Pirate]

78. Well no...

I'm just thankful I haven't been waterboarded.

[Iliyah]

4. Whoa Hooooooooo!

Even most economics state that this is the right thing to do to help the economy.

[1awake]

5. Of course there's a difference between

Republicans and Democrats... at least on a few things. Still won't be voting for anyone who supports the NSA surveillance/spying attacks on the American people, and will do my best to spread the word on any politician that does.

I've never been a one issue kinda voter... until now.

[East Coast Pirate]

7. History of the federal minimum wage in real and nominal dollars.

[2ndAmForComputers]

24. ...and now you know the REAL reason right-wingers hate the 1960's.

[Robb]

30. Witness. This is why one age group remembers getting by on MW "just fine." nt

[Butterbean]

34. I'd always wondered about that, this definitely explains it.

I'm a gen xer, so of course that concept has never been something real to me. It always puzzled me how anybody could have ever gotten by on minimum wage, ever. Now I see how. When I started working, I think minimum wage was like $3.85 an hour or something.

[HooptieWagon]

70. Shit was a lot cheaper then.

A new VW Beetle was about $1600. Good-running used car $100. Milk under 50¢/gal. Gas about 35¢/gal. Apt rent under $100/ month. Costs now about 10X as much...except healthcare, insurance in general, and higher edu, which went up much more. OTOH, wages have only gone up 5X as much as then....except CEO salaries which have soared. Almost all the wealth created/accumulated in the past 40 years has gone to the top 2%, and almost all the wealth lost has been to the bottom 50%. Its class warfare, and The Rich won.
It used to be possible for a family to live modestly, but comfortably, on the income of a single hourly wage-earner. It used to be possible to go to college on the income from a low-paying job , if you really scrimped and worked yourself ragged. Now not possible. It used to be that a health emergency didn't result in bankruptcy.

[Butterbean]

72. I remember my parents paying cash, 5k, for a brand new Pacer when I was a kid.

I am dating myself big time. I also remember when I got my driver's license, being appalled that premium gas cost $1/gallon. I was just indignant about that pricing (my parents wanted my sister and I to put premium into their car when we used it) and so much preferred pumping $0.85/gallon gas into my little Honda hatchback that ran on fumes. Ah, the good old days....

[HooptieWagon]

74. My parents bought a new 71 Buick sedan for $2400.

VWs, Pintos, and Vegas all cost in the 16-1800 range at the time. I bought several $100 cars in the 70s...drive them for a year or two until they died, and sell them to a junkyard for $50. Yea, they were gas-guzzlers, but gas was cheap then.

[mick063]

8. Who has the energy to create a list of differences and similarities?

Done at different eras, for example, every decade.

I believe it would likely prove the following point:

Nothing in this world is static.

We applaud a snapshot in time of a single issue and ignore a trending convergence of multiple issues.

The peasants thrown a piece of meat is how I personally view the graphic. Digging ourselves in a hole, but happy it is at two feet instead of four feet.

[deutsey]

29. +1

[noiretextatique]

31. exactly right: we get a few more crumbs with democrats

and the big winners are the usual suspects: big oil, big pharma, wall street, etc, etc, etc, ad

[uhnope]

36. President Gore would NOT have invaded Iraq or crashed the economy

That's a pretty big difference in my book

[East Coast Pirate]

59. Absolutely right Gore would not have invaded Iraq.

That's why I dislike Nader to.this day.

Rolling back Wall Street reforms had a lot to do with the economy crashing.

[uhnope]

62. Don't blame Nader. Gore won. Blame SCOTUS that installed Bush by fiat

and blame Gore a little because he ran a terrible campaign and should have won by enough to make any of the vote rigging irrelevant

[East Coast Pirate]

71. Not blaming or not blaming Nader.

I think he's an asshole with a narcissistic personality disorder.

Couldn't agree more that Gore and Kerry ran TERRIBLE campaigns that should never have been close. In fact, I wasn't posting to DU at the time but I was reading it. I vividly remember someone here saying "why doesn't he fight back Goddamn it!" That mystifies me to this day.

[tabasco]

38. You think the minimum wage is a crumb?

Must be nice to be part of the comfortable class of whiners, out of touch with reality.

[mick063]

87. Yes

I will hammer away relentlessly at the inept leadership of the party.

Are you one of them?

You call it crying. I call it a street fight.


Peasant meat is your gig, not mine. More is expected.

In the face of the onslaught, minimum wage to where it should have been under Clinton is a crumb.

A mere crumb. You applaud crumbs.

[Kablooie]

10. There's no difference between Republicans and 3% of Democrats, I guess.

[MisterP]

11. differences there just to get us to vote for the similarities?

[Whisp]

12. Excellent. K&R

some people here should be blushing.

but they won't.

[PatrynXX]

14. between R and D

obviously different. however many are Conservadems in the Senate hence why nothing got passed from 2009-2011

[loudsue]

15. Proof that NOT ONE single republican values American workers.

That should be a campaign slogan for every local dem candidate.

[Mr_Patriot]

16. Repukeblicans

That graphic is one of the biggest reasons why you just cannot vote Republican is you want to make positive changes in society.

[kimbutgar]

17. But but raising the minimum wage would hurt the job creators!

Not! Actually more money in people's pockets will have them spend more on goods and services. But you can't tell that to a teabagrethug they will scream and shout at you that you are wrong. And that it hurts the poor poor job creators and we have to protect those millionaires.

[libodem]

18. K&R

[cthulu2016]

19. A valid point. rec.

[Bonobo]

20. If it had been in danger of passing

I am pretty sure you would see those numbers change. That is the way it works. It is called political cover or CYA.

[Rex]

22. No there is a huge difference.

All the pretend DUers that get PPRd are proof of that.

[LWolf]

23. I never thought there was no difference.

If you are trying to repair the image of the Democratic Party, you're going to need a hell of a lot of bondo and paint.

Saying, "Quick, look over here at the part that HASN'T crashed" isn't going to make the rest disappear.

[Zoeisright]

25. Fuckin' A.

[MineralMan]

26. Yup. There is a distinct difference.

[liberal_at_heart]

28. a real democrat would vote for a living wage such as $15 or $18/hour and a real democrat also would

not prosecute Manning only to give Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, and the rest immunity. I'm done voting for centrist democrats. Never again.

[David Krout]

32. I always thought that regarding minimum wage, Democrats are much better

I think the NSA was even worse during the Bush administration too.

I also think the metadata program as it stands today is unconstitutional.

[uhnope]

35. People who think there's no difference and sabotage the Dems are borderline nuts.

Do they really needs a big list for a daily reality check?

[totodeinhere]

37. Of course there is a difference but the Democratic Party does need a lot of work.

The mere fact that a lot of people sincerely believe that there is no difference should tell us something. And of course the Democratic caucus in the House was absolutely right to vote to raise the minimum wage.

[Bradical79]

44. Did they try this before?

Like when they had control of both the house and senate?

[MrSlayer]

48. That is the $64 question.

And the answer is, of course, no.

All they did when they had full control was cower and compromise and bend over backwards for the Republicans. Scared to death to actually do the necessary things to help us.

[markpkessinger]

46. On some things, sure there's a difference . . .

. . . on others, like protecting war criminals, not so much.

[gopiscrap]

51. This graph needs to be shown to every working person

the fucking repukes are out to screw the poor and middle class!

[spanone]

52. some here think bu$h was better than Obama....

[duffyduff]

53. Congress has no intention of raising it or doing anything about the economy. n/t

[DCBob]

68. Many on left dont give a shit about this..

they are too busy bashing Obama about listening to their phone calls.

[totodeinhere]

73. And then there are those of us who care about both issues. n/t

[DCBob]

75. Sure, but which is more important?

Clearly on this site this issue pales in comparison based on the number of posts complaining about Obama doing this and Obama doing that.

[totodeinhere]

89. Nothing can be more important than our 4th Amendment rights. And it's not just about Obama. Our

rights have been eroding for a long time. But since you mentioned the president, a pardon of Bradley Manning would go along way toward rehabilitating his image.

[DCBob]

112. Surely you see the legitimate conflicting issues of personal rights and national security.

Last edited Fri Aug 23, 2013, 07:17 AM - Edit history (1)

You can't just say 4th amendment rights trump everything... you would do away with almost all security related activities.

[Egalitarian Thug]

76. Politics is just theater for ugly people.

And while you and I seem to agree about 98% of the time, I have to ask, just who are these people that say there's no difference?

It's like those vote rating guides; so and so voted with the party 92% of the time, so they're a good Democrat. But, what matters is when they vote and on what. It's nothing to vote for or against something when the outcome is a foregone conclusion, the politician's true agenda is usually found within the individual votes. As one example, Hillary didn't even vote on the bankruptcy reform bill, but it was her life's mission to get it to the vote and it was a done deal before the first vote was cast. So technically it can't be hung on her, but does that really matter to the people she screwed over in order to pay off the credit card companies?

You get the & R anyway...

[napoleon_in_rags]

91. Yep! That's why I'm here.

Whenever something pisses you off about Dems, you get hit back with something good.

[Myrina]

100. For the most part, since you asked, there is very little difference.

Especially since Ted Kennedy & Paul Wellstone died.

[Douglas Carpenter]

102. oh there is definitely a difference - that's obvious - on the big picture and major issues of

economy and foreign policy - when push comes to shove - the differences are no where near as great as many people think they are - but at the practical level and in many matters that effect day to day life - there are many real differences.