A filibuster with a point

[Bob78164]

As some of you may know, the Texas Legislature is on the verge of enacting significant restrictions on abortion. State senator Wendy Davis has decided to make a stand. Literally. She currently holds the floor, and as long as she does hold the floor, no vote can occur.

What makes this interesting is that the session will end at midnight Central Time tonight. So if Senator Davis can hold the floor for a little less than 7 more hours (as of this writing), she will have singlehandedly prevented the bill's passage. At least for the time being. --Bob

[silverscreenselect]

As some of you may know, the Texas Legislature is on the verge of enacting significant restrictions on abortion. State senator Wendy Davis has decided to make a stand. Literally. She currently holds the floor, and as long as she does hold the floor, no vote can occur.

What makes this interesting is that the session will end at midnight Central Time tonight. So if Senator Davis can hold the floor for a little less than 7 more hours (as of this writing), she will have singlehandedly prevented the bill's passage. At least for the time being. --Bob

I am in favor of the old-fashioned filibuster. If Wendy Davis or Rand Paul wants to stand up and make a point about particular legislation, let them, and then let the public via C-Span watch it and judge.

I can't stand the non-filibuster filibuster whereby 41 senators can actually prevent debate by a vote. I don't think our founding fathers envisioned minorities holding up legislation through these tactics (they were fully capable of requiring a 2/3 vote for treaties, impeachment, and amendments), and I doubt the public would either. I'd love to see the reaction if Mitch McConnell or Ted Cruz stood up for hours on end actually talking about immigration or whatever else he wanted to fill up his time with and then let the comedians have a go at what was actually said.

[flockofseagulls104]

I'd love to see the reaction if Mitch McConnell or Ted Cruz stood up for hours on end actually talking about immigration

No one, absolutely no one, has a problem with immigration. What we have the problem with is ILLEGAL immigration. There is a vast difference. And I am constantly amazed at the people who try, by language, to combine the two vastly different circumstances into one by leaving out the ILLEGAL part.

[silverscreenselect]

I'd love to see the reaction if Mitch McConnell or Ted Cruz stood up for hours on end actually talking about immigration

No one, absolutely no one, has a problem with immigration. What we have the problem with is ILLEGAL immigration.

Many people on the left have a problem with illegal immigration too. We are just trying to come up with a workable solution for everyone, including the millions of families with illegal parents and children born in the USA. The angry venomous posturings of those on the right may make their base feel good but they won't work.

My gut view is that Obama didn't really care all that much about the immigration issue when he brought it up in January but he knew it was a wedge issue with voters and that Republicans would jump all over it. Even Obama didn't realize that Republicans would continue to marginalize themselves with yet another group of voters by making abortions a hot topic again. They've managed in a very graphic fashion to make themselves appear as haeartless chauvinistic brutes taking on one woman in Texas.

That's a great way to expand your base, one that's demographically shrinking every day.

[SportsFan68]

I'd love to see the reaction if Mitch McConnell or Ted Cruz stood up for hours on end actually talking about immigration

No one, absolutely no one, has a problem with immigration. What we have the problem with is ILLEGAL immigration. There is a vast difference. And I am constantly amazed at the people who try, by language, to combine the two vastly different circumstances into one by leaving out the ILLEGAL part.

That's not quite correct, the part about no one having a problem with immigration. One problem with legal immigration is that it's glacially slow. Much more pressing here in Colorado, it doesn't solve the problem farmers and ranchers have finding the numbers of seasonal help they need. One Colorado farmer is on the record saying he would go out of business without a seasonal influx of undocumented workers from Mexico, and the same thing is true of lots of farmers who aren't on the record. President George W. Bush's administration proposed a guest worker program, with provisions emphasizing a requirement for guest workers to return to their homes when work periods ended, but legislators heard "amnesty" instead of "guest worker," and S.2611 died in 2006.

Progress on The Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 proceeds at a snail's pace. Instead of "amnesty," legislators are hearing "increased illegal immigration."

[littlebeast13]

Filibusters have a point? Looks like a lot of hot air to me....

lb13

[Bob Juch]

I'd love to see the reaction if Mitch McConnell or Ted Cruz stood up for hours on end actually talking about immigration

No one, absolutely no one, has a problem with immigration. What we have the problem with is ILLEGAL immigration. There is a vast difference. And I am constantly amazed at the people who try, by language, to combine the two vastly different circumstances into one by leaving out the ILLEGAL part.

BULLSHIT! PLENTY of people have problems with immigrants, legal or not, from Mexico and South America. They don't give a shit if they don't have a visa, they don't want them here. Of course many of these folks have ancestors who were discriminated against when they arrived in the U.S. The whole "illegals are stealing services from the government" is just a smokescreen for bigotry. In fact the "illegals" pay more in taxes than they get back. Many pay Social Security taxes that they'll never get back.

[Bob78164]

It was very, very close, but she pulled it off. --Bob

[silverscreenselect]

[quote="Bob Juch]They don't give a shit if they don't have a visa, they don't want them here. [/quote]

Many businesses want to keep a large number of illegal immigrants around because they are a very good supply of cheap, hard working labor.

[Bob Juch]

They don't give a shit if they don't have a visa, they don't want them here.

Many businesses want to keep a large number of illegal immigrants around because they are a very good supply of cheap, hard working labor.

Yep, South Carolina passed a mandatory e-Verify check for all employers in the state a few years ago. It exempted hotel maids, agricultural workers, etc.

[MarleysGh0st]

Filibusters have a point? Looks like a lot of hot air to me....

lb13

We interrupt this political debate to say, Found it!

[themanintheseersuckersuit]

Wendy Davis said Tuesday that she would have supported a ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, if the law adequately deferred to a woman and her doctor


http://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics ... -women.ece

[BackInTex]

Wendy Davis said Tuesday that she would have supported a ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, if the law adequately deferred to a woman and her doctor


http://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics ... -women.ece

I think I understand this..

Wendy's law: You can't have an abortion after 20 weeks.....unless you want one.

[silverscreenselect]

Wendy Davis said Tuesday that she would have supported a ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, if the law adequately deferred to a woman and her doctor


http://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics ... -women.ece

I think I understand this..

Wendy's law: You can't have an abortion after 20 weeks.....unless you want one.

No, for those people who understand English, which leaves out a large portion of the Republican party's most ardent supporters, this is what she said:

“It was the least objectionable,” she said. “I would have and could have voted to allow that to go through, if I felt like we had tightly defined the ability for a woman and a doctor to be making this decision together and not have the Legislature get too deep in the weeds of how we would describe when that was appropriate.”

Translation: As long as the legislature (or the court) doesn't try to second guess a medical decision of what's appropriate for a woman' s health in a particular situation.

[BackInTex]

Wendy Davis said Tuesday that she would have supported a ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, if the law adequately deferred to a woman and her doctor


http://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics ... -women.ece

I think I understand this..

Wendy's law: You can't have an abortion after 20 weeks.....unless you want one.

No, for those people who understand English, which leaves out a large portion of the Republican party's most ardent supporters, this is what she said:

“It was the least objectionable,” she said. “I would have and could have voted to allow that to go through, if I felt like we had tightly defined the ability for a woman and a doctor to be making this decision together and not have the Legislature get too deep in the weeds of how we would describe when that was appropriate.”

Translation: As long as the legislature (or the court) doesn't try to second guess a medical decision of what's appropriate for a woman' s health in a particular situation.

I and most of the Republican party understand fine. Its you, and a lot of the Democratic party that have no common sense when it comes to things like this.

So how would the law be phrased? How would it be enforced? Anyone who wanted one would get one. Real world. That's what we live in. Not your make believe state of mind.

The law allows for exceptions for fetal abnormalities and a threat to the woman’s life, but Davis said those didn’t go far enough.

What would not qualify under that that is not simply "I want one."? Answer, nothing.

[silverscreenselect]

So how would the law be phrased? How would it be enforced? Anyone who wanted one would get one. Real world. That's what we live in. Not your make believe state of mind.

The real world is that women don't wait until that late in a pregnancy to have an abortion because the baby is inconvenient. If they wanted an abortion earlier for personal reasons, when it is medically a much simpler and less risky procedure, they would have gotten one. These abortions only occur when there are major health issues involved, often those that don't manifest themselves until a later stage of the pregnancy.

Your reply, and those of the narrow minded Puritans like you who think you know better than a woman and her doctor about her health, indicates that you want to put yourselves in a position of making the call of when an abortion is medically justified.

It's rather sad that the same people who got on their high horse about government "death panels" under Obamacare deciding who gets treatment or doesn't want to take that same authority on themselves to decide which women have really severe enough health problems to justify an abortion. Of course, you care nothing about women's health, either in general or in the case of these pregnant women. You are just looking for any pretext to justify limiting abortions any way you can, regardless of how many women suffer or die in the process.

[Jessie]

So how would the law be phrased? How would it be enforced? Anyone who wanted one would get one. Real world. That's what we live in. Not your make believe state of mind.

The real world is that women don't wait until that late in a pregnancy to have an abortion because the baby is inconvenient. If they wanted an abortion earlier for personal reasons, when it is medically a much simpler and less risky procedure, they would have gotten one. These abortions only occur when there are major health issues involved, often those that don't manifest themselves until a later stage of the pregnancy.

Your reply, and those of the narrow minded Puritans like you who think you know better than a woman and her doctor about her health, indicates that you want to put yourselves in a position of making the call of when an abortion is medically justified.

It's rather sad that the same people who got on their high horse about government "death panels" under Obamacare deciding who gets treatment or doesn't want to take that same authority on themselves to decide which women have really severe enough health problems to justify an abortion. Of course, you care nothing about women's health, either in general or in the case of these pregnant women. You are just looking for any pretext to justify limiting abortions any way you can, regardless of how many women suffer or die in the process.

SSS, you are spot on! I listened many hours of testimony from healthcare professionals as well as ordinary Texans regarding HB2 last summer. Some of the testimony read by Senator Davis during her filibuster was simply heartbreaking. Difficult decisions regarding the termination of pregnancy due to fetal anomalies are best left to a woman, her partner and her physician...not a woman, her partner and a politician.

[BackInTex]

Difficult decisions regarding the termination of pregnancy due to fetal anomalies are best left to a woman, her partner and her physician...not a woman, her partner and a politician.

Like I said, her law would be "no abortions after 20 weeks, unless you want one."

Of course, you care nothing about women's health, either in general or in the case of these pregnant women. You are just looking for any pretext to justify limiting abortions any way you can, regardless of how many women suffer or die in the process.

Find one quote where I've ever said I was for restricting abortions through law. I've commented to the contrary, several times. I've only highlighted the hipocracy of politicians, and the likes of you.

[silverscreenselect]

Difficult decisions regarding the termination of pregnancy due to fetal anomalies are best left to a woman, her partner and her physician...not a woman, her partner and a politician.

Like I said, her law would be "no abortions after 20 weeks, unless you want one."

To say that women "want" abortions late in the pregnancy is like saying my father wanted his leg cut off in World War II. It's not something he would have chosen for the heck of it but it was better than the alternative. Women and their doctors weigh the risks and likely results both to mother and fetus of both continuing and terminating the pregnancy and make a decision. In most cases, it's not a clearcut decision one way or the other. However, it's not a decision that should be second guessed by politicians or courts or by no-nothings who claim that this all a matter of catering to a woman's whims and finding an agreeable doctor to go along with it.

There's no hypocrisy here, just a rather abysmal ignorance of what goes on in women's minds when they decide whether to continue a problematic late term pregnancy.

[BackInTex]

To say that women "want" abortions late in the pregnancy is like saying my father wanted his leg cut off in World War II.

Semantics, because you're losing the argument. You ignore the fact you accuse me of wanting to outlaw all abortions and then ignore the truth that I've never said such things and am actually on the same side of the debate as you are, but for completely different reasons.

[christie1111]

Sigh.

My neice had a pregnancy that was terminated late in the pregnancy. I don't remember how long it was because it doesn't matter. The child was determined to have heart defects significant enough that it could not survive birth. There were no surgical options that could have saved the child either in the womb (an amazing thing) or post birth. They had long discussions and difficult decisions to make.

It was a tragic thing. They mourned the loss and had a religious ceremony.

How dare any legislation deny them the right to have this tragedy end sooner.

[Bob78164]

Sigh.

My neice had a pregnancy that was terminated late in the pregnancy. I don't remember how long it was because it doesn't matter. The child was determined to have heart defects significant enough that it could not survive birth. There were no surgical options that could have saved the child either in the womb (an amazing thing) or post birth. They had long discussions and difficult decisions to make.

It was a tragic thing. They mourned the loss and had a religious ceremony.

How dare any legislation deny them the right to have this tragedy end sooner.

My sister had a similar situation. She learned late in her pregnancy that her daughter had no chance. In her case, though (and I'm not sure whether the issue here was medical or legal -- she lives in Pennsylvania), by the time she learned the news it was too late for her to have an abortion, so she had to go through childbirth, only to have her daughter die a few hours later.

BiT -- no one "wants" an abortion at 20 weeks or later. But sometimes it's the best of a bad set of alternatives, and I'd rather trust the women in that situation to make that decision than some politician trying to score political points. --Bob

[mrkelley23]

Wow. A thread which summarizes the whole "debate" about abortion in this country.

Wendy Davis admits that she might have voted for a bill which contained some abortion restrictions. Guess what? Very few people in this country are all the way to one side or the other on the continuum, no matter what Dailykos and Foxnews would have you believe.

I don't know what BiT thinks or believes about abortion and guess what? Neither does anyone on this Bored, unless they have knowledge from outside this Bored. Because he usually self-identifies as conservative, and because he has disdained traditional liberal causes, the usual suspects are climbing all over themselves to infer that he must want to ban all abortions always and let the OWGs on the Texas legislature decide everything about the issue. He might have phrased it a little more snarkily, but guess what? What BiT said in his post on this subject is almost exactly the same as what Bob#s said in the post immediately before this one. Semantically, it is the same. I would quibble that it is not JUST the woman wanting it, since a qualified medical professional must agree, but if a woman gets an abortion, even if it is the only choice possible from a long list of less desirable choices, she still wants it. No one is dragged into a clinic against her will -- that's kind of the whole point, isn't it?

So the shouting across the barricades continues, and no one listens and tries to empathize with the "other side's" point of view. Except guess what? It's not a zero sum game, and there are lots more than 2 sides.

[BackInTex]

Wow. A thread which summarizes the whole "debate" about abortion in this country.

Wendy Davis admits that she might have voted for a bill which contained some abortion restrictions. Guess what? Very few people in this country are all the way to one side or the other on the continuum, no matter what Dailykos and Foxnews would have you believe.

I don't know what BiT thinks or believes about abortion and guess what? Neither does anyone on this Bored, unless they have knowledge from outside this Bored. Because he usually self-identifies as conservative, and because he has disdained traditional liberal causes, the usual suspects are climbing all over themselves to infer that he must want to ban all abortions always and let the OWGs on the Texas legislature decide everything about the issue. He might have phrased it a little more snarkily, but guess what? What BiT said in his post on this subject is almost exactly the same as what Bob#s said in the post immediately before this one. Semantically, it is the same. I would quibble that it is not JUST the woman wanting it, since a qualified medical professional must agree, but if a woman gets an abortion, even if it is the only choice possible from a long list of less desirable choices, she still wants it. No one is dragged into a clinic against her will -- that's kind of the whole point, isn't it?

So the shouting across the barricades continues, and no one listens and tries to empathize with the "other side's" point of view. Except guess what? It's not a zero sum game, and there are lots more than 2 sides.

Now listen hear! You just quit being reasonable, you hear? I only serves to make the rest of us look silly.

[Bob Juch]

Wow. A thread which summarizes the whole "debate" about abortion in this country.

Wendy Davis admits that she might have voted for a bill which contained some abortion restrictions. Guess what? Very few people in this country are all the way to one side or the other on the continuum, no matter what Dailykos and Foxnews would have you believe.

I don't know what BiT thinks or believes about abortion and guess what? Neither does anyone on this Bored, unless they have knowledge from outside this Bored. Because he usually self-identifies as conservative, and because he has disdained traditional liberal causes, the usual suspects are climbing all over themselves to infer that he must want to ban all abortions always and let the OWGs on the Texas legislature decide everything about the issue. He might have phrased it a little more snarkily, but guess what? What BiT said in his post on this subject is almost exactly the same as what Bob#s said in the post immediately before this one. Semantically, it is the same. I would quibble that it is not JUST the woman wanting it, since a qualified medical professional must agree, but if a woman gets an abortion, even if it is the only choice possible from a long list of less desirable choices, she still wants it. No one is dragged into a clinic against her will -- that's kind of the whole point, isn't it?

So the shouting across the barricades continues, and no one listens and tries to empathize with the "other side's" point of view. Except guess what? It's not a zero sum game, and there are lots more than 2 sides.

I'll tell you what I believe: It's none of my business.