who, exactly is, and has been, "unbendingly partisan"?

[rusty charly]

"THE BUSH administration has signaled that it wants to discuss Social Security reform with the incoming Democratic majority in Congress. This may sound quixotic: President Bush failed to secure reform when his own party controlled the legislature, so what hope does he have now? But the president's top economic advisers, including his Treasury secretary, his chief of staff and his budget director, appear ready to drop what Democrats call privatization -- the diversion of payroll tax revenue into personal retirement accounts. Unless they want to define themselves as unbendingly partisan, the Democrats should accept the administration's invitation to discuss reform"


http://letters.washingtonpost.com/WARH02779379386A9FE7F33735F3D0


oh! so it's the Democrats who are "unbendingly partisan"???!!!!

[ixion]

1. sure, right after the dems finish investigating BushCo's war crimes and

crimes against humanity. ;-)

[marmar]

2. Me....

I fucking hate Republicans. :nopity:

[FormerDittoHead]

3. What's the opposite of "unbendingly partisan"? Bend over and take it? n/t

[papau]

4. SS reform is no wage cap and include investment income - if they want to discuss

a procedure for picking up the investment piece in the 1040 filing, or if corporate investment income should be included in the tax base, or if capital gains should get the current concept of only taxing half that leads to a tax rate half the size it should be on capital gains, well then why not talk.

Heck the Dems could throw in an increase in the full benefit retirement age from Reagan's 67 to 70 over the next 50 years, as the GOP could sell that as a reduction in benefits!

But if they do not want to discuss the above, will the Washington Post say they are being "unbendingly partisan".

[neoblues]

5. It's so funny to hear Republicons...

Suddenly so interested in "bipartisan" good will and working "across the aisle". Along with the insinuation that Democrats, having been in control for the last four years and more, ought to finally start allowing Republicraps to participate--that Democrats should finally start "working together", negotiating, compromising and working for "consensus".

Well, after so many years controlling how the Congress works (wink; wink), I think it really is long past time the Democrats finally did change how the situation works. Alas, I don't think we have the power to change it so much as I would want it to change. Nevertheless, we really should compromise our ideology, change our attitudes and behave entirely unlike Democrats. The Rape-uplicans want Democrats to change, we should change...

We should stop being interested in "working with" Repubs--but say that we are very interested in "working with them..." (of course, we wouldn't be lying, we just meant that we'd be interested in "working with them to undo every action taken by Republicans in the last few decades"). We should stop "compromising" or achieving "consensus" with Republicans, while saying that we "want to negotiate with, compromise with, and achieve consensus with them..." (again, what we mean is "we want to negotiate with them to remove all remaining Republican power and advantage, compromise with them by allowing them to remain in office instead of impeaching every last one of them, and achieving a consensus with them that Republicons have lied, cheated and stolen from America for far too long..."; and while some of those are impossible--that's okay, we only meant that we "wanted" to, not that we ever actually would).

Sadly, the Republicans are right in that Democrats need to change (not nearly so much as Republican need to change, but anyway). Unfortunately, in many ways, we need to act more like Republcans. We have to become more organized, we have to become more ruthless, more demanding and we have to communicate our goals to Americans. No doubt there are many more things like that that we need to do. We need to do it without appearing to do it. Doing some of these may be difficult without the money provided by corruption--an advantage the Republicans had, so long as it remained hidden.

We naturally have the advantage of having the Truth on our side, on having good intentions for the American people as well as all the peoples of the world. However, we have long failed utterly to communicate our goals, thoughts and beliefs to... to, well, anyone. I watch an interview with a prominent Democrat and Republican. They each answer a question. The Republican provides a confident, imbecilic and usually "evil minded" answer that expresses their talking points clearly (though inevitably dishonestly). The Democrat provides a shy, confusing, uninteresting and incomplete answer that nobody would understand even if they didn't stop listening 20 seconds in--and despite it's level of confusion, it usually doesn't even express the obvious points any 'average' Democrat would have answered. One wonders (a) was the "prominent" Democrat bribed or threatened to not give a real answer to the question, or, if not that, (b) how did this guy ever get to be an elected, professional politician? Surely our leaders cannot be that incompetent, but they really need to get their 'talking points' better prepared... Then again, the "Party" never seems to be able to present a coherent message. They always have an uphill battle--with the media almost always presenting them in the wrong light and with various types of disadvantages to that of their Republican opponents--that is, when the Democrats are actually included. We need to address the problem of unfair treatment in the media, but we also need individual Democratic leaders to be able to communicate better. I don't know what to do about it, public speaking training, a central Democratic "talking points" "think tank", whatever. Whatever it is, it represents a "change".

No doubt there are many changes we could benefit from... including many at the grass-roots level. We need every Democrat/Liberal to get involved and go out with the mission of getting another person who is open to the progressive/liberal viewpoint, who isn't registered to vote, to register to vote (what a badly written sentence; sorry). We also need every Democrat who hasn't donated, to donate whatever they can manage (by the end of the primaries anyway). If we could get some Democratic "Platform" Brochures made, and even if not, it should be the goal of every Democrat to "spread the word". Think Christian Evangelist here; "spread the Word", where the Democratic Platform--with rebuttals to the Republican platform included is the "Word". If every available Democrat could be bothered to either form or join a local, regional or state Democratic organization... If we thought of elections as being something like a Homecoming Dance--where you'd really want to bring a date--such that every Democrat actually arranged ahead of time to bring someone who is a "new" Democrat (perhaps the one they sought out and got registered) or a Democrat that rarely votes; we could practically double the Democratic vote. Everything we need involves personal involvement and responsibility--not necessarily alot, but some.

It's just not as hard as we seem to think it is; with the right leadership from the Party, it would actually be both easy and rewarding. Where, Oh Where, is our "Leadership"? Well, in the absence of much leadership, we have to do it ourselves.
We can learn from Republicans (a) how to organize, and (b) what not to believe, but we need to change in order to continue winning and achieve a real majority.

[Demit]

6. A discussion of SS 'reform' has to include the trillions that were borrowed

from the SS fund to finance the U.S. deficit over the past couple of decades. I see the Post slides right past this part of the story. Showing that any 'discussion' as envisioned by them is not going to be conducted honestly. Hopefully somewhere in the media coverage of this 'discussion' the fact will be confronted, that the U.S. owes the money to the fund, that it borrowed so that it could continue spending more than it was taking in, so that adminstrations could look like good guys for not raising taxes to raise revenue. Pay it back and there is no crisis in Social Security.