Bill to Treat Bloggers as Lobbyists Defeated 537
Lawrence Person writes "The attempt to require political bloggers to register as lobbyists previously reported by Slashdot has been stripped out of the lobbying reform bill. The vote was 55 to 43 to defeat the provision. All 48 Republicans, as well as 7 Democrats, voted against requiring bloggers to register; all 43 votes in favor of keeping the registration provision were by Democrats."
I feel a great distubance (Score:5, Insightful)
(Actually, they were silenced when their heads exploded like Dantooine when they found out that it was Republicans who blocked the bill.)
Re:I feel a great distubance (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I feel a great distubance (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I feel a great distubance (Score:5, Funny)
Dammit! You're right. "Dantooine is too remote to make an effective demonstration. But don't worry. We will deal with your Rebel friends soon enough." Damn Tarkin!
Sorry to make you cough up your mod point, but "What's in a name? That which we call a Alderan by another name would explode as sweet"
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You misspelled "kerplode."
Re:I feel a great distubance (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I feel a great distubance-Well Duh!! (Score:5, Insightful)
As a citizen, I'd like that astroturfing labeled as such
As a person with a brain, I'm offended by the suggestion that I can't just evaluate speech on the merits. And as a lover of liberty, I'm extremely offended by the suggestion that liberty be infringed in this way.
Astroturfing. (Score:2, Insightful)
I hate fake campaigns. I think we are smart enough to learn and I LOVE the freedom to be told (about such things including hotchickonyoutube).
Now, can we get back some of our other freedoms, even if the government (or people) don't like them.
I promise I'll shutup about abortion if I can carry a gun and smoke in a bar.
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Note the &&s (ANDs) there. They're not ||s (ORs) All three must be true, not just any one of them.
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Not typical democrat behavior? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Not typical democrat behavior? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not typical democrat behavior? (Score:5, Informative)
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Remember Jeff Gannon aka James Guckert?
I've never heard of a single liberal blog that gets funded this way. Most liberal bloggers are pretty frank about how they pay their bills as well. Very, very few afford their creators enou
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Consider it a little education. Your assumption that Republicans are somehow more idiotic and stifling than Democrats was wrong in the first place. If anything, Democrats are the folks who want the governmen
Re:Not typical democrat behavior? (Score:5, Interesting)
The actual grass-roots bloggers (and whatever their criticism of whoever they wanted to criticize) were never in jeopardy. But the Republicans and some Democrats made sure that astroturfers aren't in jeopardy either. Most of the Democrats were on the ethical side on this one. Sadly, they couldn't get a majority today.
Ross (registered Republican, but not very proud of that association right now)
Re:Not typical democrat behavior? (Score:5, Informative)
Close, it's $25,000 per quarter, which comes-out to $100,000 per year. Even cheap astroturfing would be allowed.
Re:Not typical democrat behavior? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, because K Street lobbying has certainly been "shut down" by registration. You also think that "a majority" of Democratic critics are getting paid +$25,000/quarter? Where do I sign up?
Re:Ethical=Making it harder to criticize politicia (Score:3, Insightful)
Um. Not one grass-roots blogger is paid $100k/year for their blog. So they aren't affected by the legislation.
You're joking, right? As a Republican linux user, I haven't heard too many alternative definitions. Seems pretty clear to me...
Astroturfing: fake grass-roots activity. If you're trying to look like you're just a part of th
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For a pejorative term, I'm not expecting the insulted to agree with the definition. The objection of the astroturfer doesn't serve to dispute the definition, IMNSHO. The original request for "everyone's" agreement, when taken literally, is not a necessary or even desirable condition for discourse.
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So to answer your question, this was supposed to bring blogger-shills under the same requirements as other lobbying groups. Personal
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Who bombs clinics, shoots doctors, and wants to jail anyone involved in abortions?
Who wants to stop churches from speaking out against lifestyles they find destructive?
Who wants to jail people for HAVING lifestyles they find destructive?
Who wants to limit the freedom of pastors? Of street preachers ?
Who wants to limit the freedom of the press? Who keeps insisting that one particular religion is innately tied in with government? Who wants to search every package, lugga
Re:are you that naive? (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone. There have always been people who have wanted to silence "the other side". Not just politics, but religion and science and pretty much every other field of human endeavour where people disagree.
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This is blatantly untrue. Most (nearly all) liberals think that religious people have the right to free speech. Every dunderheaded political thing that Pat Robertson has said on television is protected speech. Liberals would oppose the government trying to stop Pat Robertson fro
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Except that the Government doesn't generally decide which organizations are churches. Yes, they have set some VERY basic criterion, but only for the purpose of definition. Ju
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I agree. Churches shouldn't be threated into feeling like they're walking on eggshells to avoid possibly political statements. Furthermore, the line between religious philosophy and politics isn't as clearcut as most people would like to think. Whether you believe it or not, religion (and being religious) is about more than just talking on Sundays about a big invisible man in the sky; it's a way of life (which is inextricable from politics). Provided that a church's rhetoric doesn't directly advocate vi
Kudos to the party of Lincoln (Score:2)
It was about stopping astroturf not bloggers (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It was about stopping astroturf not bloggers (Score:5, Informative)
(19) GRASSROOTS LOBBYING FIRM- The term `grassroots lobbying firm' means a person or entity that--
(A) is retained by 1 or more clients to engage in paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying on behalf of such clients; and
(B) receives income of, or spends or agrees to spend, an aggregate of $25,000 or more for such efforts in any quarterly period.'.
Doesn't sound like treating bloggers as lobbyists, it sounds like treating lobbyists posing as bloggers as lobbyists.
Re:It was about stopping astroturf not bloggers (Score:5, Insightful)
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Nah, use a big green H on the forehead to denote tham as Rimmer.
Re:It was about stopping astroturf not bloggers (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It was about stopping astroturf not bloggers (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It was about stopping astroturf not bloggers (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly, here's an explanation written by Stephen Bainbridge, a law professor at UCLA:
http://www.stephenbainbridge.com/2007/01/blogger_Re: (Score:2)
Re:It was about stopping astroturf not bloggers (Score:5, Insightful)
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So, how much did you get paid to post this?
The following is a comment I posted yesterday [slashdot.org] explaining why someone else was potentially wrong when they made the same assertion. As no one disputed the points I raised yesterday (in a
Re:No, it was about stopping bloggers (Score:5, Informative)
And I don't think it was dems not wanting competition. MoveOn.org is equal to anything the right has going in this area, and I can promise you the Dems sure don't want it to have to fall under K street kinda rules.
Ah, but you are a troll posting anonymously...
Disgraceful (Score:2)
Goes to show... (Score:3, Insightful)
The Second Amendment guarantees the First.
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Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't there already a law that limits how much political speech can happen leading up to an election and who can say it?
We can all find the bad in pretty much every law on the books. What i can't find is the "good" about any political-speech-restriction laws.
There are lots of voices out there that i'd just as soon not have to hear, but silencing them via government intervention seems pretty unAmerican (for historical values of "American").
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
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Let's just consider a simple scenario, a very simple scenario that doesn't deal with many of the issues facing this problem. You are a voter who has decided to vote based on the opinions of 10 random people. You believe that this is a good representation of the public and want to vote the way the public does. If there are no lobbyists, then your vote will be
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
1. We have important laws against lying about someone and presenting it as factual information. I cannot start a blog about bmajik or run commercials about you in which I call you a child molester, unless of course this is true. If you are a candidate for office, I still cannot create a blog or run commercials about you in which I call you a child molester, unless it is true. The Supreme Court has ruled that such things do not count as free speech, unless reasonable people believe it to be a parody.
2. We have serious problems with freedom of speech when corporations monopolize the process of distributing information. If enough corporations choose to unfairly favor one candidate or political viewpoint to the exclusion of other political viewpoints, then the freedom of speech of citizens is actually reduced in favor of the bias of the majority corporate viewpoint, which is in the hands of a select few individuals. This problem is present because the average citizen is financially unable to start a television station or cable news network, even if strongly motivated to do so. (There are also a limited number of broadcast slots available, and a limited number of cable lines which can be run in any one area without excessive disruption of life.) Thus, laws which ensure the fairness of the limited number of major gateways for political speech can actually increase freedom of speech. We may hope that the internet may eliminate this problem in the future, but for now it has only reduced it.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
This is about money, not speech. You can say anything you want. But you can't get paid for doing anything you want. I think speech should be free - you don't need money to speak. If receiving money changes what you will say - then what's that all about? it's amazing how many people confuse money and speech, although I suspect the confusion is deliberate in many cases.
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The bill in question would've put restrictions on anyone who was getting paid $100,000 or more per year to blog for political reasons from another group. Plus McCain/Feingold restricts the medium, not anything content wise. The idea here is to restrict the possibility that one would be able to outspend their opponent.
The fact that people can get paid $100k+ for this activity boggles the goddamn mind.
You're asking the wrong question. (Score:3, Insightful)
You're asking the wrong question. Why? Because here we're talking about laws that put restrictions on speech that is both political and commercial. Commercial speech, as I sure hope you already know, is not protected by the First Amendment in the USA. So the real question is whether we should restrict commercially produced political speech.
In both the case of PACs and the case of this proposed law, the idea is that such speech is restricted in a particular way: such speech is allowed, but it must disc
Re:Good (Score:4, Interesting)
Because there will always be de facto limits on speech whether or not there are de jure limits.
For example, no country at war is going to allow people to publish information about troop deployments. In such a situation it is important to define reasonable de jure limitations on speech, because in the heat of battle government will act to restrict speech, whether it is legally empowered to do so or not. Having reasonable limitations thought out in advance and enacted into law acts constrains those actions.
Another example is obscenity. The regulations on obscenity do not really prevent anybody who wants obscene materials from getting them. What they do is tell people who are up in arms about obscenity to go home: anybody who is receiving obscene materials is an adult or near adult seeking them out. The restriction on obscene material are a burden on producers and consumers, but on balance they ensure that such materials remain available.
These restrictions are like liberatarian antibodies. The immunize the body politic against severe censorship.
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Can anyone explain why there are _any_ limits on political speech? Isn't that the most important kind of speech to protect? Why do you need to "register" as a PAC?
Let me as a European hazard a response; As far as I know all sides of the American political spectrum subscribe to the principle of Democracy.
And democracy is about 1 man = 1 vote.
That principle is under thread from groups (possibly under the guise of bloggers) that have large sums of corporate/interest groups money to spend. The idea of registering those that get paid to influence political decisions, be it through politicians or voters, might be good for traceability and avoid undemocratic behaviour.
Speech (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know what part of Congress shall make no law can't be understood by the U.S. Supreme Court, but I think the wording here is very clear. And for political speech, I would have to agree even more with your sentiment, there can't be
Whoah, that's one hella tendentious blurb. (Score:5, Informative)
Where the submission writeup says "previously reported by Slashdot," it should say "previously misreported by Slashdot." And presupposing that the way Slashdot "reported" it is right, as it happens, is a major piece of spin in this context. Because it's used to set up the rest of the blurb as an insinuation that Democrats were endorsing a bill that restricts freedom of political speech for bloggers (when in fact it's a bill that restricts commercial speech by people paid specifically to pretend they are unpaid advocates.)
First Amendment (Score:4, Insightful)
What's so frickin' hard about this? Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. No law means no law.
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They're debating who counts as people.
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Talk Radio (Score:4, Insightful)
Whether or not you agree with the Rush and Hannitty's of the world, considering them under this bill is still a first amendment violation.
Read the bill (Score:3, Informative)
In other words, it doesn't cover bloggers in any true sense of that word as most of us understand it - it covers people masquerading as "grass-roots" bloggers, but who are actually bought and paid for shills making at least $100,000 a year for online "lobbying" efforts.
Remember This! (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember this the next time you step into the voting booth!
Re:Democrats (Score:5, Insightful)
Stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
Those who doubt that the Democrats are just a very slightly more socialist twist on the same
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Hmmm... that's what I want my government to do "consolidate their power".
Just remember that for every power a Democrat (or Republican) consolidates now, in a few years, a Republican (or Democrat) is going to use it against you. Whenever you grant new powers to "your side", you must understand that "the other side" will use them in similar or worse ways in no time at all. The only solution is to strip them of pow
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What in the world does this have to do with the question of who controls economic resources? Nothing at all. It has fsck-all to do with the socialist/capitalist axis.
Democrats have been in favor of a slightly more regulated market, but that's not socialism either; market socialism and planned economy capitalism are both possible. (The former existed briefly during the Spanish Civil War, the
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Capitalism is liberalism's economic facet, communism is socialism's economic facet. Both liberalism and socialism have political facets as well, and this
Re:Democrats (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Democrats (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it really funny that
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I find it sad that so many people are sheep and look for the easy way out and compromise their true believes/feelings to fit one of the two most popular parties. Certainly there isn't a "perfect" party out their for everyone, but most times there is a better "fit".
"old adage that if you vote third party you are throwing your vote away."
It's not clear from your post how you feel, but never fall for that line of thinking. If you show
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Is the reporting and journalistic standards of newspapers a technology issue? After all, your typical newspaper uses more advanced computing technology to publish their stories than the typical slashdot poster's computer. Just because it's on the interwebs doesn't make it a technology issue.
Re:Democrats (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a mistake to think of "us vs them" as "democrats vs republicans", whichever way around you think of it. Everybody in congress is on the same side, and it's not your one.
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Look, I don't understand why, but you seem to live in a completely different reality than I do. In my reality, the Democrats often put a lot of effort into silencing people who do not agree with them. Just this week, we've had two separate stories about people trying to squelch dissent. The Democrats are pushing the Fairness Doctrine, a law giving the government arbitrary control over what the media can or can say po
That's not all they've done. (Score:3, Insightful)
The issue is about the definition of a "lobbyist." The Democrats started off from a good premise -- something needs to be done about lobbying and the corporate/big-money influence on politics. Fair enough. However, where you should probably start get
Re:Conspiracy theorize all you want (Score:5, Informative)
certain political bloggers who make or spend $25,000 per quarter and who encourage readers to contact their elected representatives would be forced to register as lobbyists.
A blogger who gets money from coroporations, parties, or organizations to blog for them is a lobbyist and an astroturfer. This doesn't cover Billy Blogger who talks about the local sports team, or even unsponsored political blogs. It isn't a way to surpress dissent, any more than requiring the same of lobbyists is. "But it's on the Internet" does not change the fact that politically active bloggers with $100,000 salaries or budgets are lobbyists and should be treated like the normal K Street type.
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Re:Conspiracy theorize all you want (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps you should actually read the bill [loc.gov]*. Note that the part labelled "definitions", a "grassroots lobbying firm" is defined as someone who "is retained by 1 or more clients to engage in paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying on behalf of such clients; and receives income of, or spends or agrees to spend, an aggregate of $25,000 or more for such efforts in any quarterly period."
The "500 person" rule you're concerned about describes the action of influencing, not the influencer. Specifically: "The term `paid attempt to influence the general public or segments thereof' does not include an attempt to influence directed at less than 500 members of the general public."
To be affected, you must be all three of these:
So if you're a regular blogger, you likely are safe.
*=if that doesn't work, search for S.1 on thomas.loc.gov
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The phrase "paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying" is not specifically defined in the bill; however, it is specifically defined that the bill does not affect blogs with less than 500 readers. This means you simply have to be a blog with 500 or more readers. Contrary to your little list, there is no minimum defined payment amount in the bill.
You also conveniently left out that large lobby groups who don't rely on public communication are exempted! T
Re:Conspiracy theorize all you want (Score:5, Informative)
No. It's defined in Section 220 as "any paid attempt in support of lobbying contacts on behalf of a client to influence the general public or segments thereof to contact one or more covered legislative or executive branch officials (or Congress as a whole) to urge such officials (or Congress) to take specific action with respect to a matter described in section 3(8)(A), except that such term does not include any communications by an entity directed to its members, employees, officers, or shareholders.". It's in Definitions 18-A, which is right at the top of Section 220.
The payment part is in the definition of a grassroots lobbying firm, which is also in the Definitions section (right below the previous definition).
The LOC links, by the way, only seem to work for 5 minutes.
Re:Conspiracy theorize all you want (Score:5, Informative)
Members, employees, etc. (Score:3, Interesting)
My cable company tries to get me to write congress so they can take over the land line market. This might be included because I am a customer not a memeber.
My cell phone company has had some gripes too and again I'm a customer not a member.
Now, the solar power company I sell for has a definite agenda when
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Then I woke up a bit more.
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> this is a way for corporations to sell their lies to the public without them knowing it
Usually, the public is smarter than that. [consumerist.com] But not necessarily when it comes to politics.
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That provision would not have made it illegal. It would have required astroturfers to register as lobbyists.
Re:Conspiracy theorize all you want (Score:4, Informative)
It's about fundraising bloggers and the astroturf types that have automatic email widgets on their blogs that generate automatic emails to legislators, even offering "sample wording".
Those are lobbyists, pure and simple.
Re:Conspiracy theorize all you want (Score:5, Insightful)
(19) GRASSROOTS LOBBYING FIRM- The term `grassroots lobbying firm' means a person or entity that--
`(A) is retained by 1 or more clients to engage in paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying on behalf of such clients; and
`(B) receives income of, or spends or agrees to spend, an aggregate of $25,000 or more for such efforts in any quarterly period.'
$100,000 is an extrapolation of $25,000 over a whole year. The bill said simply that a person who makes $25,000 a quarter for political astroturfing ($100,000 a year salary) or is given the same amount to spend on astroturfing is a lobbyist. It's straightforward, true, and doesn't affect bloggers at all.
Re:Conspiracy theorize all you want (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's say I run a popular website to stimulate a grass-roots election effort (thus 19 applies). The site gets millions of hits before an election, and my hosting is expensive (I never expected that kind of bandwidth usage!), so I have to pay $25k (this meets part B). I'm running out of money, and politician Bill McGreedy pays me $1 to "keep up the good work" (this meets part A). Oops. Now, this might get shot down at trial if the judge is a nice guy, since the case doesn't match the true intent of the law. However, you can bet your ass I'll need a good lawyer, and will have to go through a trial. Given the speed of the legal system, it won't be resolved until after the election, either. I think another poster had a more likely form of misuse however, which is that the bill can be used to assert hidden payment of bloggers and thus launch an investigation of them. That will either shut the blogger up or slow them down.
We don't need this law to "protect" us; We only need to tell people that random bloggers, just like people you meet on the street, might be lying. Don't trust random people you don't know -- It's that simple. A lying blog can always be countered with another blog which digs up the truth, and that is the appropriate way to respond.
Finally, I don't see the difference between one blogger paid 50k per quarter and 10 bloggers paid $5k per quarter. The latter is a yet more sinister approximation of a "grass-roots" effort, and would be completely legal under this (now defunct) part of the law.
So to recap, this law can be used for nuisance attacks, is based on the fundamentally bad assumption that you should be able to trust random people on the internet, and has a large loophole for exactly the type of shillery it is supposed to stop. Well intentioned as it may have been, I say good riddance.
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This was a "Paid fake bloggers need to register as corporate shills" bill.
This was a GOOD bill, guys. You can tell because the Republicans voted AGAINST it.
Re:Conspiracy theorize all you want (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Can't resist... Agreeing with republicans... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can't resist... Agreeing with republicans... (Score:5, Insightful)
Please don't link to a propaganda piece by a professional conservative lobbyist [wikipedia.org] and claim it to be equal evidence to the above cited UCLA law professor and the above cited Orginal Bill. Payment and Reach were considered separately in the bill. Why don't you read the actual bill, and see if that alleviates your concerns.
Re:Can't resist... Agreeing with republicans... (Score:5, Funny)
That's head-spinningly ironic, given liberals' tendency to explain their position at length, and conservatives' tendency to use ad hominem in place of debate, and make their srguments up out of thin air. See your post that I am replying to as an example of such non-factual argument.
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Of course, in the tradition of Voltaire, I defend the bloggers' right to write their insipid drivel - but it doesn't stop me from being disgusted by them, and the very word "blog."
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In fact, this is becoming a web epidemic. It seems that everything is called a blog these days, and the word has lost all meaning.
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Sigh.
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That's funny, I thought it was a reference to neoliberals. Why is it that you only associate the "neo" prefix with Nazis, when it is used in many other contexts, and has its own meaning? I think it probably says more about you than the post you are responding to.
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Because it was an anagram of "One"?
The parent is NOT flamebait (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been saying this for quite a while... America does best with the Democrats steering America and a strong Republican minority slamming on the political antilock brakes when the Democrats start driving recklessly. Today is a g
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