Precious Roy wrote:
[quote]funny how things play out wrote:
Back in 2006, the Senate was considering W's nominee to the Supreme Court, Samuel Alito. One democratic Senator voted against this nominee and stated for the record on the floor of the Senate regarding this nominee:
"There are some who believe that the President, having won the election, should have the complete authority to appoint his nominee, and the Senate should only examine whether or not the Justice is intellectually capable and an all-around nice guy. That once you get beyond intellect and personal character, there should be no further question whether the judge should be confirmed.
I disagree with this view. I believe firmly that the Constitution calls for the Senate to advise and consent. I believe that it calls for meaningful advice and consent that includes an examination of a judge’s philosophy, ideology, and record."
Btw, that Senator was Barack Obama.
Funny how these things play out.
Obama didn't say that Alito should not even get a vote because they are coming up on an election year. (Yes, I know the Democrats passed a resolution in 1960 stating that there should be no appointments in an election year, but those were largely dixiecrats who became the southern conservative christian republicans of today)
Republicans are not talking about discharging their duty to confirm the nominee. They are saying that Obama's term is only three years. And we wonder why Obama has not been able to work with Republicans.[/quote]
President Obama would not work with the Republicans on the Affordable Care Act. And Prof. Gruber, often described as its "key architect," admitted... well, I'll just draw this extended passage from Wikipedia:
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In November 2014, a series of videos emerged of Gruber speaking about the ACA at different events, from 2010 to 2013, in ways that proved to be controversial; the controversy became known in the press as "Grubergate".[29] Many of the videos show him talking about ways in which he felt the ACA was misleadingly crafted or marketed in order to get the bill passed, while in some of the videos he specifically refers to American voters as ill-informed or "stupid". In the first, most widely-publicized video taken at a panel discussion about the ACA at the University of Pennsylvania in October 2013, Gruber said the bill was deliberately written "in a tortured way" to disguise the fact that it creates a system by which "healthy people pay in and sick people get money". He said this obfuscation was needed due to "the stupidity of the American voter" in ensuring the bill's passage. Gruber said the bill's inherent "lack of transparency is a huge political advantage" in selling it.[30] The comments caused significant controversy.[31][32][33] In two subsequent videos, Gruber was shown talking about the decision (which he attributed to John Kerry) to have the bill tax insurance companies instead of patients (the so-called "Cadillac tax"), which he called fundamentally the same thing economically but more palatable politically. In one video, he stated that "the American people are too stupid to understand the difference" between the two approaches, while in the other he said that the switch worked due to "the lack of economic understanding of the American voter".[34] In another video, taken in 2010, Gruber expressed doubts that the ACA would significantly reduce health care costs, though he noted that lowering costs played a major part in the way the bill was promoted.[35] In another video, taken in 2011, Gruber again talks about manipulation behind the "Cadillac tax", this time also stating that the tax is designed so that, though it begins by affecting only 8% of insurance plans, it will "over the next 20 years" come to apply to nearly all employer-provided health plans.[36] Journalist Jake Tapper stated that Gruber's description of the Cadillac tax directly contradicted a promise that Obama had made before the bill was passed.[36]
After the first of these videos came out, Gruber apologized for his wording, saying he "spoke inappropriately".[37] Some defenders of the ACA, such as Jonathan Cohn, called Gruber's statements about Americans "wrong and inappropriate" while maintaining that the trickery of which Gruber spoke was standard procedure for bills in Washington, and not a cause for scandal.[38][39] Opponents of the Act, on the other hand, were harsher in their criticism: commentator Rich Lowry said that the videos were emblematic of "the progressive mind, which values complexity over simplicity, favors indirect taxes and impositions on the American public so their costs can be hidden, and has a dim view of the average American",[40] while commentator Charles Krauthammer called the first video "the ultimate vindication of the charge that Obamacare was sold on a pack of lies."[41] Conservative S. E. Cupp wrote that the videos also showed "willful ignorance" on Gruber's part in thinking that the Act was successfully marketed to voters, stating that "the law has never cracked a 51% favorability rating" and that, in the first elections after the ACA passed, Republicans, who had opposed it, retook the House of Representatives and gained control of 11 additional state governorships.[42]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Gruber_(economist)#.22Grubergate.22_videos_controversy