Protests (Page 3)

BWAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA!!!  I notice nobody took a swing at Big Joe.  

All the tough guys from Friday's protests must have still been asleep. LMAO

haha, I like this kid too.  Have to stand up for what you believe in. 

I haven't worn a uniform in 20 years, but the next big protest I'm going to get myself one and march with a sign that says, "I love donuts".

You mean to tell me there are people who don't like donuts?  Liberals I bet.

In general I feel the protesters are just a minority group of thugs who like to cause trouble.  They obviously don't care about people or tolerance because they're simply hate filled despicable terrorists.
With Milo at Berkley they were spewing their hate towards a gay jewish immigrant, so they most definitely don't care about gays, jews, or immigrants unless they profess their ideology of hate.

Anyways, here's my rub.  It's one thing to have a domestic terrorist group, but why is the left embracing this group?  Veritas is going to be putting forth video in the next couple days proving that Soros is behind the funding of this group and he's also one of the primary funders of Hillary's campaign.  The Berkley police were forced to stand down by the mayor to allow the rioters to assault people and destroy stuff.  There are pictures of the riot police sitting inside and being forced to allow the terror.  Multiple prominent Democrats are cheering the riots and egging them on and even stating how proud they are of these people.

What the F is wrong with the left and how on Gods earth do they believe this is going to help them win elections?

No question they would have approved him in a heartbeat had Hillary won.  He was of course a liberal judge, but fairly tame in comparison to anyone Hillary would have nominated. 

No.  He couldn't get anything done because he was black, and certain segments of the legislative branch decided that they wouldn't compromise anymore.

ok, that's the funniest thing I've seen all day. 

Funny how your view is.

I would say he was getting stonewalled from day 1.  The Republicans in Congress even said as much.

Accusing Obama of being a socialist, being a radical leftist, etc is a really narrow view.  Take a look at South America if you want a real taste of that.  Obama is liberal yes, and big government yes.  But he wasn't fully nationalizing entire industries, wasn't making himself president-for-life, wasn't a Marxist revolutionary.  Chavez, Castro, Bolivar, Guevara, etc are true leftists.  Everything in the USA is centrist by comparison.

So you put the lack of compromise between the executive and legislative brances over the last 8 years entirely on Obama? Or do Republicans maybe share a little of the blame. Congressman Pence in 2010. "On spending, on values, on taxes, there will be no compromise."  If you take out spending, taxes, and values, what's left for politicians to discuss? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QvwCwKHcaM

My opinion:
Obama set a very arrogant tone right out of the gate when he dressed down McCain.  He had a super majority though for two years so he really didn't need any help.  He and his colleagues pretty much did everything they wanted, but obviously spent a ton of cycles on the ACA and didn't get a whole lot else accomplished during that time.  The R's let his nominees go through without much resistance that I can recall and essentially let him do whatever he wanted.
Then after he lost the super majority they finally got a little "obstructionist" power to mess with things and Obama didn't recognize it and continued to push an aggressive agenda, but due to his inability to work with R's during the first two years he had already set his fate. 
I do completely agree with you that the Republicans started obstructing his agenda as soon as they had the ability to do so because they felt the country didn't want his agenda to continue.  Based on the continued landslides towards Republicans and ultimately Trump I would go so far as to say they were correct and the Country rewarded them. 
The Democrats are now making a conscious decision to do what they think is the best strategy going forward to get back into power by obstructing and blocking.  Unfortunately Trump has a super majority now so they're burning a lot of political capital for zero gain.  At least when the R's were obstructing they actually obstructed. 
We shall see how it works out in 4 years, but as of right now I feel very strongly Trump's support has grown tremendously since he took office and if he keeps going the way he's going it's going to be near impossible for anyone to compete.  

I think the days of compromise and bi-partisanship are behind us, at least in the House. 435 seats were up for grabs, and only a couple dozen were even considered competitive. Of those, something like 12 actually flipped. Representatives can push themselves to the extreme right/left and it only helps their re-election campaigns. There's a district in California that's so blue, a Democrat beat out a Democrat in the general election. How is that even possible? My rep is one of the idiots who boycotted the inauguration, and he can do it because he won in an absolute landslide. That little stunt didn't hurt him one bit. It's been 70 years since a Republican held his seat, and I guarantee that won't be changing next election. 

I have a little more hope for Senators, they have to appeal to a much broader base. But let's face it, a Democrat senator from California or a GOP from Texas doesn't have a whole lot of incentive to cross the aisle.

@tuwood Just to be clear, I assume you mean "majority of both sides of Congress".  When I see super majority, I think of 60+ votes in the Senate.

The Democrats had 58 plus 2 independents for brief moments during Obama's first term (I think they had it for like a month, then Ted Kennedy died, then there was another month before his replacement was appointed, etc...).

This just reminded me how much I hate redistricting / gerrymandering.  I view it as flat out un-American because it makes some of our votes worth less than others.  This is an interesting site to browse -- someone made a computerized population-neutral districting setup:

http://bdistricting.com/2010/

Of course the major parties would never go for it...

Yes and no.  You are correct in the usage of the term super majority so I probably was incorrect with that.  What I'm getting at is the 51 vote majority in the senate which was elevated to the status of supermajority when the nuclear option was invoked (I believe in 2011).

I'm sure we can split hairs as to who is obstructing and who was obstructing and I most certainly agree with you guys that the Republicans made a tactical decision to obstruct and it paid off. 

That was for federal (but not Supreme Court) judge confirmations only.  I'm pretty sure the filibuster is still allowed for other things not related to appointments... correct me if I'm wrong though.

Edit: part of the problem with the filibuster is that the Senate is old and lazy.  Awhile back they changed it so a Senator just has to declare his *intent* to filibuster and then they must try to invoke cloture to stop him.  In other words, speaking isn't even required anymore.

If they went back to requiring someone to actually stand at the podium and talk, you'd see it being used much more sparingly :P

Poor Terrorist, er Rioter, er "Protester" (oh, and that's a Yield sign.  "They're not sending their brightest, folks")