Flashback: Republicans passionately defend raising the debt ceiling.

[Parsec2010]

Hypocrites. The lot of them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDYLa...layer_embedded

[ThinkTwice]

You know Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling while a senator . so there all hypocrites.

Just Politics!

[Larry]

Obama didn't successfully prevent the ceiling being raised.

And he didn't demand that the Democratic Party platform be written into the Constitution, either.

You can try real hard to claim that they're the same.

They aren't. It's not even close.

[Teller]

It's amazing how party affiliation tints one's view of hypocrisy.

[Larry]

It's amazing how party affiliation tints one's view of hypocrisy.

Shouldn't be. It's been happening for years. Decades.

(Heck, it's probably been happening forever. I've only noticed it for years.)

It's one of the things that makes me wish I could raise one eyebrow like Spock. (I can do the finger thing, but not the eyebrow.)

A bunch of people will take sides on an issue.
Then the party label changes.
Instantly, the partisans on both sides will swap positions.
And then will loudly announce that the other side are all hypocrites, because they changed sides.

[Bang]

See, i I can do the eyebrow thing all day long. But not the finger thing.

~Bang

[Teller]

Pretty much, Larry. I don't know about you, but I tend to look at people (not you specifically, Parsec) who call other people "hypocrites" with a whole lot of skepticism.

---------- Post added July-30th-2011 at 08:23 PM ----------

See, i I can do the eyebrow thing all day long. But not the finger thing.

~Bang

Finger, half eyebrow for me. Mine looks more like a mongoloid version of The Rock though.

[Burgold]

I don't think it's unfair to call them hypocrites... they are. Mind you, it's hard as hell to find any politician that isn't a hypocrite, but that's just one part of the problem.

There's a part of me that believes that both sides already know what deal they can pass and that that's why they're acting like idiots of this order, but there's also a part of me that believes that the level of idiocy, partisanship, and rancor really is this high.

[Larry]

But I also think that there's an important point to be made, here, about the "they're both bad" line.

The actions we're seeing, here, where one house of Congress is threatening to cripple the country unless they get concessions, has never happened, in our nation's history.

Every single time in our nation's history that this has happened, the measure has passed, quietly, and without a single thing being attached to it.

(Yeah, I assume, this being Washington, that there's a lot of "outside the public view" political maneuvering, where various legislators maneuvered so that they could try to look good, and to get somebody else to actually vote for the thing. This is Washington, after all.)

But there has never been a "this measure will not pass, unless we get . . . " before.

And, as far as I'm aware, only once in our nation's history has our Congress ever used threats to attempt to coerce people into voting for a Constitutional Amendment.

That was after the Civil War, when the Congress used it's Constitutional authority to determine it's own members, to refuse to seat any legislators from the Confederate states, until said states had ratified the 13th and 14th Amendments.

No, what's happening here isn't "just politics". This is a naked abuse of national elected office that our nation has only used before in response to a Declaration of War against the US.

[Larry]

But I also think that there's an important point to be made, here, about the "they're both bad" line.

The actions we're seeing, here, where one house of Congress is threatening to cripple the country unless they get concessions, has never happened, in our nation's history.

Every single time in our nation's history that this has happened, the measure has passed, quietly, and without a single thing being attached to it.

(Yeah, I assume, this being Washington, that there's a lot of "outside the public view" political maneuvering, where various legislators maneuvered so that they could try to look good, and to get somebody else to actually vote for the thing. This is Washington, after all.)

But there has never been a "this measure will not pass, unless we get . . . " before.

And, as far as I'm aware, only once in our nation's history has our Congress ever used threats to attempt to coerce people into voting for a Constitutional Amendment.

That was after the Civil War, when the Congress used it's Constitutional authority to determine it's own members, to refuse to seat any legislators from the Confederate states, until said states had ratified the 13th and 14th Amendments.

No, what's happening here isn't "just politics". This is a naked abuse of national elected office that our nation has only used before in response to a Declaration of War against the US.

[Hubbs]

It's one of the things that makes me wish I could raise one eyebrow like Spock. (I can do the finger thing, but not the eyebrow.)

See, i I can do the eyebrow thing all day long. But not the finger thing.

~Bang

Finger, half eyebrow for me. Mine looks more like a mongoloid version of The Rock though.

Full finger thing and eyebrow thing here. I can out-nerd you all.

[G.A.C.O.L.B.]

I can't do eyebrow or fingers. Not even halfway. I've tried so many times. Biggest disappointment of my life

[Thiebear]

I wistfully look back at the Clinton years as the 'baseline".

[Burgold]

I think that's so, Larry.

I bet there is a huge component of the GOP that is really regretting their decision to back and fund the Tea Party at this moment. My theory is that the Republicans believed that they could capitolize on the Tea Party and use it to really pump up their party... that the TP gang would fall in line. What happened is that they seem to be inflexible ideologues who are holding the country hostage and may do incredible damage to it for the sake of hurting Obama or an inability to bend to the demands of reality.

The great danger is that these guys are young and once elected, people tend to stay in Congress a long, long time. I honestly think that several of these guys are so blinded by their ideology that they don't understand what they are likely to cause.

[AsburySkinsFan]

They're all idiots and hypocrites, and we keep electing them en masse.