Congress // Current TV

Who Voted For CISPA?

H.R. 3523: Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (On Passage of the Bill):... more

Radical_Centrist
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24 days ago
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The History of History

There is an immutable fact about history – if you weren’t there, if you... more

omnipotentpoobah
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26 days ago
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CISPA: Explained In 2 Minutes (Or Less!)

CISPA is the new Internet spying bill going to a House vote in Congress later this... more

Radical_Centrist
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1 month ago
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Rep. Hoyer predicts Democrats will regain House

I sure hope he's right, but they'll also need 60+ in the Senate, a tough haul.

lazloman
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1 month ago
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1 comment

Boehner: ’1 in 3 Chance’ of GOP Losing the House

I have a few thoughts on where the Weeper of the House and his party may have gone... more

StewSteve
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1 month ago
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Stop CISPA - Read What You Need to Know

The time to fight back against the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act... more

eternal_springs
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1 month ago
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10 comments

Violence Against WOMEN Act headed for a Senate vote, but stuck in the House

Armed with 61 Senate cosponsors—yes, enough to beat a filibuster with a vote to... more

LOrion
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1 month ago
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Deepak Chopra: Divided Politics & Bad Marriages

Whether the Democrats and Republicans like it or not, they are in bed together and may as well be married. Neither has a majority in both houses of Congress that can impose one-party rule. The filibuster provision in the Senate allows a minority to stymie the majority. The Constitution doesn't guarantee that political bedfellows will get along -- there were no parties when the Constitution was written, and now we observe a marriage from hell. Unlike civil marriage, there's no chance for a divorce.

Is it possible to approach the situation in the role of a marriage counselor? There are several aims when a counselor faces two spouses whose relationship has become rocky.

- Provide a safe place for honest discussion.
- Air grievances without becoming obsessed by them.
- Find an opening for compromise.
- Encourage adult behavior rather than impulsiveness and a desire for revenge.
- Find a renewed basis for the relationship to move forward.

These aims aren't always reached, and in the end the marriage dissolves. But since the Democrats and Republicans can't divorce, our only hope is that reconciliation is possible. For that hope to materialize, the points I've listed must become feasible. What they imply is a process. One of the biggest problems in Congress is that both sides want to skip the process and jump straight to the results.

The results are also familiar from bad marriages. Both sides want to win, to be proven right, to make the other eat humble pie, and to bypass compromise out of a sense of self-righteous certainty. We hear the word "ideology" applied a lot to the most rigid partisans on the left and the right. But I think ideology is a mask for being a bad spouse. This marriage will never work when one or both spouses insists on getting their own way, no matter what.

Another problem with refusing to start the process of reconciliation centers on posturing. The term "political Kabuki theater" applies here. both sides say and do things for ritualistic purposes, like passing a budget that has no chance of being enacted, accusing the other side of being totally at fault, making demands that are stalking horses to satisfy the most extreme wing of the party. This resembles nothing more than two warring spouses fighting through their lawyers with wildly inflated blame, knowing all the while that the actual settlement will be a compromise.

I don't think that compromise has become a dirty word, especially among the Tea Party, merely because of extreme intransigence or the vaunted ambition of making government less corrupt. Congress is no more corrupt than human nature and no less. The reason compromise is a dirty word is that when it is reached, neither side is satisfied. When Solomon offered to settle a dispute between two mothers by cutting the baby in half, the compromise was deliberately outlandish in order to bring the true mother to light -- she would be the one who selflessly gave up her claim so that the baby might live.

In Congress we see bad-faith compromises that are designed not to work. The health care act is a prime example, and so is the debt-ceiling deal. The Right sabotaged a viable compromise by forcing legislation that they could denigrate in public afterwards. In the final analysis, Congress is acting as badly as its constituency wants it to. The public decries how divided our current politics is while electing rigid representatives who make the division worse. The voting public is acting like the families of two bickering spouses, pleading for an end to the fighting while at the same time telling each party that they are right and the other spouse is totally at fault.

What this comes down to is human relations. In the coming year leading up to November, both parties seem ready to adopt a scorched earth policy. Kabuki theater and ideology will have a field day. But behind the scenes, expectations have moved in a direction that nobody wants. Lincoln's words about a house divided still apply. If Congress keeps up its current behavior, we may see all reasonableness come to an end, and the marriage may turn as ridiculously vicious as the one in the movie The War of the Roses, where nothing less than destroying our spouse is acceptable. Without the process of reconciliation, the only foreseeable outcome is a massive crisis with debt, entitlements, or Iran, that forces husband and wife to cling to each other because peril has forced them to go into survival mode.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/divided-politics-and-bad-_b_1429124.htmlWhether the Democrats and Republicans like it or not, they are in bed together and may... more

JRBarilla
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1 month ago
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Secretary of the Senate Reveals 2011 Senate as the Laziest in 20 Years

"In her latest report, Secretary of the Senate Nancy Erickson revealed a slew of... more

Truthitswhatsfordinner
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1 month ago
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If Ron Paul Were US President…

Imagine a possible future where Ron Paul wins the Republican nomination and goes on to... more

JRBarilla
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1 month ago
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0 comments

President’s Weekly Address: It’s Time for Congress to Pass the Buffett Rule

In this week’s address, President Obama urged Congress to pass the Buffett Rule,... more

williamlanders
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1 month ago
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Obama calls Ronald Reagan a ‘wild-eyed, socialist, tax-hiking class warrior’

By David Ferguson Wednesday, April 11, 2012 16:06 EDT President Obama made the... more

KB723
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1 month ago
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124 comments

Fox News host: Dems ‘invented’ war on women because ‘stimulus didn’t work’

By David Edwards Monday, April 9, 2012 12:15 EDT One Fox News host on Monday... more

KB723
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1 month ago
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89 comments

The Ed Show - Bernie Sanders Gives Republicans an Economic Reality Check

"Anti Progress, No Doubt!!!"... more

KB723
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1 month ago
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30 comments

Where Did Congress Go To College? [Infographic] - Careers Articles

interesting

cclark_productions
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1 month ago
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Where Do You Stand?

How familiar are people nowadays with the current political system? Bills are being... more

revo2485
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1 month ago
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0 comments

Ron Paul practices transparency down to the last cent

Ron Paul's presidential campaign regularly reports expenses well below the $200... more

Radical_Centrist
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1 month ago
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3 comments

Vague Cybersecurity Legislation Threatens Civil Liberties

Using cryptography to protect communications could be taken as a way to defeat an... more

Paisano1
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1 month ago
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0 comments

Rep. Joe Walsh, sexist coward

Illinois GOP lawmaker slams opponent Tammy Duckworth, a Black Hawk chopper pilot who... more

Cabal
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1 month ago
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1 comment

Big Oil Whores: Senate Blocks Repeal of Oil Tax Subsidies

Yes, we called them 'Whores," and we mean it! -- The Menendez bill would... more

StewSteve
added this
2 months ago
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5 comments

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