Discuss!

This is the first time I'd ever voted straight Democratic slate. While I don't think my local Republican congressman was bad (in fact he was pretty moderate), I felt nothing would change without a divided government once again. Both NH house members were replaced with Democrats.

It was pretty refreshing to hear Bush actually answering (in his own way) questions at the press conference this afternoon. I can't remember the last time he was asked anything but softball questions.

I certainly don't believe a quick exit from Iraq is in anyone's interest, I do think that stirring the murky planning pot can only be a good thing, since I'm not sure how it could be worse at this point.

I'll now step aside and let the thread chaos begin - gentlemen start your engines! (well Doug, you start your engine once you've tracked down your engine parts )

-Zeke

Well despite my wanting Orrin Hatch out of office, other Utah voters re-elected him. This will be his 6th term, a new state record. When he first ran he focused on his opponent being in office for a long time. Of course our Democratic candidate wasn't the best choice which just helped Hatch.

I only just, moments ago, saw the Rumsfeld headline. WOW!

Now there's a man who knows how to get outta the way when he's in the path of an irresistable force.

So what does this all mean to an outsider? Bush is still in charge but has no powers to do anything, or what?

The US has three branches of government, the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial. We can ignore Judicial for this conversation.

The President, currently George Bush, is in charge of the Executive branch. He and it are responsible for the day-to-day running of the country, running the military, citizen benefits, collecting taxes, running foreign affairs, etc. The elections we just had didn't affect the Executive branch. (The president is somewhat equivalent to the British Prime Minister.)

These elections changed the makeup of the Legislative branch. The Legislative branch, or Congress, is in charge of making laws. These laws range from criminal offense laws to making budgets, declaring war, and so on. (Incidentally, the US has not officially declared war since WWII.) We have two subdivisions of Congress: the Senate and the House of Representatives. A proposed law must pass both divisions (or Houses) in order for it to become enacted. (Congress is somewhat equivalent to British Parliament, and the Senate and the House of Representatives somewhat equivalent to the House of Lords and the House of Commons, respectively.)

What's happened is that the Democrats have a majority in both houses of Congress, which means that it will be much easier for them to pass laws. Formerly, the Republicans had a majority in both houses. What this means to the President is that it will be harder for him to propose laws and get them passed. While the President has no lawmaking powers, it is in his interest to encourage Congress to pass laws that benefit, notionally, the country, but, in reality, his agenda. When the whole of Congress was controlled by his party, it was relatively easy for him to get laws passed, like the recent one that effectively gave him carte blanche to torture "enemy combatants" and declare anyone he wanted to as an "enemy combatant". Now that the opposing party is effectively in charge of making laws, he becomes hobbled in his ability to promote new laws.

It's also a signal to the Republican party that the US public is not happy with their performance.

Excellent summary!

I would add that many in the US are not happy with the performance of either party, but voted specifically to create gridlock. Not as much gets done by government this way, but that could be considered a good thing depending on your point of view.

Gridlock would work better when one party controls one house of Congress and the other party controls the other house, regardless of the affiliation of the president.

Of course, the notion that the Democrats control the Senate is a little iffy, as two of the "Democrats" are independents: Lieberman (who tends to vote as a Republican anyway) and Bernie Sanders, who votes pretty liberally.

Following on to Bitt's post, it's worth getting a little more into the procedural aspects of how the Legislative and Executive branches intertwine.

Fundamentally, the Executive is "in charge" of the government, including defense, environmental protection, drug regulation, and more. One would argue that the President's primary function is appointing all the people who head all of the various government agencies that you've heard of. Meanwhile, the Legislative does more than just pass laws. The Legislative branch has a number of "checks and balances", including:

- Congress must approve all of the relevant Presidental appointments: the President's cabinet, Federal court judges, and so forth.

- Congress can call hearings, compel testimony, and demand that witnesses are sworn in. Lying in such a setting is grounds for charges of perjury.

- Congress controls the money and must pass legislation to authorize the budget, every year. Obviously, the government spends an awful lot of money doing all the things that it does. Congress has the power to reallocate money to anything they want, and can technically direct the President and his agencies to do a variety of things with that money.

- Of course, Congress can't pass any law they want, because the President can veto it. Congress can then attempt to override the veto, but they need a super-majority of votes to do it.


In short, expect all of these mechanisms, and more, to be leveraged in the next two years as the President and Congress jockey for power. Right now, both sides are talking of working together, but it's just a matter of time until they hit irreconcilable differences on some important issue. That's when all of this starts to matter. Without compromise, neither side will accomplish its agenda. And, if the Democratic congress feels that their agenda isn't making any headway, you can expect them to spend their time doing investigations instead.

The next two years are going to be quite interesting to watch.

(For the purposes of this discussion, I'm overlooking the distinction between the House and Senate. Had the Senate remained in Republican hands, with the House in Democratic hands, then things would have been much more complicated than they are now.)

Since this is a summary intended for non-Americans, I thought I'd point out that the President *does* have one law making power: any law passed by Congress must be signed into law by the president, or he can elect to veto the law. If he vetos the law, the congress can overrule the veto with a 2/3 majority vote.

And, when he signs something into law, it now appears to be the norm for the president to add a signing statement which interprets the law they way he thinks it ought to really be. Thus, the "ban" on torture... except when the president feels like it.

It's interesting that whole notion of a "signing statment" doesn't have any basis in law. It would seem to be a userpation of the authority of the court system. They have the responsibility to interpret the law. The signing statment would seem to be trying to preempt the court.

An activist executive?

--Dan.

I cannot think of anything the Dems did that was even in the same league of evil as what W has been up to for the past five years.

Oh, sure, Willy's willy got caught playing around. BIG deal. Oh, Dubya invaded an innocent country, killed tens of thousands, and fueled Islamic terrorism for the next hundred years. Bah.. a mere trifle.

Cheers

Well, there was the Clinton underhanded business dealings, but nothing that Trickey Dick Cheney hasn't done, eh?

The most frustrating thing is that after we elect them, we have no control over what they do for the next 4 years.

Shifting gears to the other half of the thread title, I heard something on the radio about efforts to bring Rumsfeld to trial for war crimes, but the Military Commissions Act would grant him imunity. Ah, but only immune in America, so if he set foot in another country (the radio program mentioned Germany) that he could be tried for "crimes against all human kind".

Would be nice to hold America up to the standards that it has imposed on other countries over the decades. Was this program just sensationalism, or is this on target?

killed tens of thousands,

Increase that by an order of magnitude.

Last I heard the figure was more than 600,000.

tanstaafl.

efforts to bring Rumsfeld to trial for war crimes,

The hell with Rumsfeld. Let's start war crime charges against President Bush.

I hear the Iraqis are working on writing a constitution. Why go to the trouble -- let's just give them ours. It's obvious we aren't using it anymore.

tanstaafl.

Okay, the other fun piece of fallout I'm seeing these last several days...

A host of republicans trying to distance themselves from Bush, saying that they disagreed with him all along, but that prior to Nov 7th, they needed to follow the party line in the name of strength and solidarity. And I'm not just talking about Rush Limbaugh, I mean lots of our elected officials are saying this (or something similar) now.

Just makes them look like rats fleeing a sinking ship...

Pretty sad really. It just proves how the system revolves around being reelected instead of actually doing a good job. Now that it is very clear the American people are finally putting the war at the top of their dislike lists, the republicans are scrambling to try and appeal to those people so that they can reclaim the congress later, and try to push a republican president in 2008. It's a shame this change in priorities for the voters didn't happen in 2004. I'd personally never vote for any of these congressmen again if they are suddenly "flip-flopping" now, instead of standing their ground years ago. "Sorry, we needed a unified party" isn't a great excuse for the lack of a backbone, or to the soldiers and civilians dead in Iraq. Sadly I think most people won't research the decisions of their representatives enough come the next elections to prevent this from happening again. And who knows what it will take to regain any of the civil liberties that have been lost these past 6 years, also made under this "front of unity".

I really hope that the people who are strong supporters of any political party rethink their votes from time to time. It's quite clear the republicans in power now aren't the same ones that promised things like the Contract with America and other conservative values. Repeatedly voting for the same party when it has dramatically changed and broken promises isn't going to fix anything.

Some of y'all's statements make me sick. War crimes? The USA is the only thing holding this piece of shit of a world together. Maybe y'all want to live under Sharia law and see the batshit crazy muslims get nukes, but I don't!

Ten thousand people? Cry me a river. That's just the calm before a very big storm.

One fourth of the world's population wants to destroy the rest, and that one fourth isn't us. It's Islam. We're not the bad guys here. We built the world's technology. We discovered the knowledge of this world. We built all the roads and hospitals in Africa. We built the machines that run on the muslim's black gold. The USA and Europe. All the wealth in this world was created by us. We've done nothing but good in this world. And now we have to stop this evil cult known as Islam led by their anti-Christ cult-leader Muhammad, aka Satan, or else they are going to take everything we've worked so hard to create.

Make no mistake, Islam is now a greater threat to us than Nazism. For they are not led by the Führer, but by who they believe to be God Himself. This is the beginning of a great war, Christianity versus Islam, with the Jews caught in the crossfire. These are the forces of Christ and Satan, and they are at war with eachother for the hearts and souls of earth.

You will have to pick a side. Don't wait until it's too late.

That was almost as funny as Borat. But I still can't put my finger on why it's so funny. If it's because of the obvious content of bullshit or because you might actually believe any of what you wrote.

The greatest threat to the planet in the past few years has been the USA - in many more ways than one.

More people have been killed (read: murdered) in the name of Christianity than have ever (or will ever) be killed with any ties to Islam. And don't even get me started on how perverted most of the Christian sects have become. In the US there's at least two Chrstian sects for every Baskin Robins flavour.

But if you think this war has anything to do with religion, from either side or any angle, you're smoking some crazy stuff.

I will go so far as to say that despite how attrocious the attacks of September 11th 2001 were, I consider the US' attack on Iraq far more "evil" - and Mr. George Walter Bush should have to answer for that. And spending some time in prison finding out just how loose a wizard's sleeve is, might be a good learning experience. At least it would make me happy to know he was there.

Tony,
What really struck me during the press conference (where Rummy was axed) was that the media finally seemed to grow a pair and ask tough questions. Where the hell were they over the last six years? Or did 'Dub just give absolutely zero interviews where he allowed questions (excepting for election debates)?

It was glorious listening to the utter crap he spewed about looking forward to 'working together'. It was the best political moment I can remember since seeing Mrs. Al Gore standing terrified watching Al stumble around on stage half in the bag at the MTV inauguration ball way back when.

Rhetorical question: If GW went to Singapore and vomited on the president just like daddy did in Japan, would he be fined for spitting in public?

-Zeke