US Politics - Holiday 2011

[DanteGabriel]

The GOP congressional caucuses are jamming their thumbs in each other's eyes over the payroll tax:

All the available information suggests that the current payroll tax debate is hurting Republicans badly and buoying the President. You can see it in the body language of Boehner, Cantor and the rest of the leadership. The fact that Senate Republicans voted overwhelmingly for the compromise speaks volumes.

But the real tell is elsewhere.

A short time ago Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) said, “It angers me that House Republicans would rather continue playing politics than find solutions.” Yesterday newly-appointed Republican Senator Dean Heller (NV) similarly lambasted his former House colleagues: “There is no reason to hold up the short-term extension while a more comprehensive deal is being worked out. What is playing out in Washington, D.C., this week is about political leverage, not about what’s good for the American people.” (Heller was actually in the House until earlier this year.)

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2011/12/clear_as_day.php?ref=fpblg

And the Wall Street Journal is laying into House Republicans also:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204791104577110573867064702.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

I keep waiting for this retrograde shitheel party to self destruct. Go, fuckers, go.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

The GOP congressional caucuses are jamming their thumbs in each other's eyes over the payroll tax:

http://talkingpoints...y.php?ref=fpblg

And the Wall Street Journal is laying into House Republicans also:

http://online.wsj.co...Opinion_LEADTop

I keep waiting for this retrograde shitheel party to self destruct. Go, fuckers, go.

Yeah, this is stupid on the part of the House Republicans. I get their point, and they may be right on the merits, but it's a losing issue not to pass the two month extention.

That being said, those folks in Washington debating this shit don't seem to understand that payroll companies can't turn on a dime to implement legislation effecting payroll adjustments.

[Tempra]

Fuck the house republicans and especially Eric Cantor. Now it is troublesome that citizens have to live with the month to month uncertainty of whether their taxes will be increased? What about federal employees who spent most of the year worrying about being furloughed w/o compensation?

[awesome possum]

This is what happens when you give in to temper tantrums and hissy fits. It only encourages the spoiled brats to keep throwing tantrums in order to get their way.

[awesome possum]

Yeah - I actually feel a tiny bit of sympathy for Boehner. He cannot control the tea bag contingent that was voted in last election. The Democrats ought to be able to hammer them for this. Whether they figure out how to or not is another story.

They won't, because that would involve not being spineless.

I feel no sympathy at all for the Boner. It's not that he can't control the tea party contingent, it's that he's an idiot. The tea party causus is relatively small with just 60 members, and maybe a dozen of those members are douches who just jumped on the tea party bandwagon when it was circling DC. There are 242 Republicans in the House, 192 Democrats. If they really wanted to pass, well, anything, they don't need the teabaggers to do it.

As I said before, the tea party is the GOP's goat to do whatever awful, nasty, obstructionist bullshit they want. As soon as the voting tide looks like it's going to turn on the GOP, they're going to cut loose the teabaggers and cry, "We wanted to be good Americans and work with the president to help this country, but the tea party wouldn't let us! Promise!"

Does everyone realize that the US has a negative interest rate right now, or that it did at least a couple of weeks ago? Investors will pay the US for the privilege of buying its debt. There has never been a better time for stimulus spending.

Listen, hippie, you can come up with all the excuses you want. There's no way we're going to get even more socialist than we already are! Might as well just rename the US: Kenya Jr. Sheesh.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

Ron Paul win in Iowa:

Proof that the Republican Party has finally jumped off the deep end, or proof that they're coming back from the brink of sanity?

[Fez]

Ron Paul win in Iowa:

Proof that the Republican Party has finally jumped off the deep end, or proof that they're coming back from the brink of sanity?

They jumped off that end a long time ago. This would just be swimming further out to sea. And if he won the nomination (which he wouldn't, even if he had the most delegates something strange would go down at the convention) it would almost certainly mean a 3rd party candidate backed by the corporate types; a Mitch Daniels or Chris Christie.

Speaking of Ron Paul though, Grantland just put up this handydandy chart comparing Ron Paul to Chris Paul to RuPaul.

[Maithanet]

Ron Paul win in Iowa:

I don't know if people are familiar with the Iowa Electronic Markets for Politics, but they're pretty neat and in many respects better than polls at predicting what is going to happen. They work by letting people bet real money on political outcomes. Here's the graph for who will finish in the Top 2 in Iowa. The way this particular stock market works, you can buy or sell a politician's stock for whatever to going rate is. If they finish in the top 2, then you receive 1 dollar for every stock you have. You'll notice that at the moment, people are buying Paul to finish in the Top 2 in Iowa at 90 cents on the dollar. Romney is trading at 80 cents. Gingrich was at 75 cents a week or so ago, but has plummeted to only 20 cents.

They have other markets, like the race for the White House. Obama is at 55 cents or so. There's also congressional markets.

Anyways, I like it a lot because it is a lot more likely to be predictive than polls, because people are betting actual money on their estimate of what is going to happen. And you can really see the ebb and flow of a campaign pretty well. Here's the Presidential election in 2008. in December of 07, the Dems were trading at about 60 cents on the dollar, where they stayed until about September 08, and then gained steadily from there.

[TrackerNeil]

Yeah - I actually feel a tiny bit of sympathy for Boehner. He cannot control the tea bag contingent that was voted in last election. The Democrats ought to be able to hammer them for this. Whether they figure out how to or not is another story.

I'm saving my sympathy for this nation, which has been ill served by this Tea Party House.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

In the vein of Solyndra et. al...Chevy Volts cost the taxpayer $50,000 - $250,000 per car

[Shryke]

Ron Paul win in Iowa:

Proof that the Republican Party has finally jumped off the deep end, or proof that they're coming back from the brink of sanity?

National polls indicate it's proof Ron Paul has a small but vocal group of supporters in some places.

[Shryke]

They won't, because that would involve not being spineless.

I feel no sympathy at all for the Boner. It's not that he can't control the tea party contingent, it's that he's an idiot. The tea party causus is relatively small with just 60 members, and maybe a dozen of those members are douches who just jumped on the tea party bandwagon when it was circling DC. There are 242 Republicans in the House, 192 Democrats. If they really wanted to pass, well, anything, they don't need the teabaggers to do it.

As I said before, the tea party is the GOP's goat to do whatever awful, nasty, obstructionist bullshit they want. As soon as the voting tide looks like it's going to turn on the GOP, they're going to cut loose the teabaggers and cry, "We wanted to be good Americans and work with the president to help this country, but the tea party wouldn't let us! Promise!"

The Tea Party and their ilk are now the hardcore GOP base. You can see it as the Primary candidates desperately court them.

Boehner's problem is the same as the GOP primary candidates: they have to appease their crazy base while trying not to alienate everyone else

[Shryke]

TLDR: The claims that Obama asked for language about detaining US citizens to be added to the NDAA bill is false and based off edited youtube videos.

An edited video of Carl Levin claiming that Obama wanted the language in the NDAA caused outrage among many Americans, but the full Levin video reveals the opposite.

Hours prior to the YouTube proof video Sen. Levin stated on the Senate floor that the Obama administration requested that the provision be changed so that it does not apply to American citizens, but he explained the provision wasn’t changed because it already didn’t apply to American citizens [...]

Yes, NDAA was poorly written originally and even after the changes is a crappy bill; it was written in the Senate Armed Services Committee (McCain/Graham- hello), and as such is a nod to Republican authoritarian stances of the Bush administration. It was co-authored by a Democrat, whom many saw in the above shortened video from C-SPAN claiming the President had asked for “this language”.

Of course, the President did not ask for this language, and this is a matter of record

You might be wondering why the video was edited to lead you to believe that he did. That’s a great question.

You might also be asking yourself if the same people who were so willing to believe the author of the bill, Carl Levin, will be as willing to believe Levin’s full statement, in which he clearly says that the President did not want this language.

Had Obama not objected to the language, we would be stuck with the original bill since 83 senators voted yes on the original bill which also passed through the Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously.

People should be asking themselves about the agenda behind not holding the authors of the bill and indeed the Senate accountable for the language in this bill, as it is the same Senate who refused to fund Obama’s executive order to close Gitmo. We note their attempt to run an end-game around Obama’s push for civilian courts and their attempt to slide in permanent changes to restrictions regarding Gitmo. The President objected to those permanent changes.

One would think that anyone who cared about the issue of closing Gitmo would be up in arms at the Senators’ attempt to use a funding bill to get around Obama’s attempts to get around their refusal to fund the closure of Gitmo.

We are in no way defending NDAA.

http://www.politicususa.com/en/ndaa-breitbarted

[TerraPrime]

Yeah, this is stupid on the part of the House Republicans. I get their point, and they may be right on the merits, but it's a losing issue not to pass the two month extention.

But, surely, if it is a matter of important principles, the type of line-in-the-sand issues that separate one party from the other, then the politicians cannot be expected to budge?

[Guest Raidne]

So, how are Republicans loving the Citizens United decision now? All hail the rise of the "super-PAC," i.e. an independent-expenditure only committee, which, after the Speechnow decision, expanding the application of Citizens United, can now raise unlimited sums of money from corporations and unions - right from their general treasury filtered through a 501©(4) organization - and also spend however much money they want as long as they don't "coordinate" those expenditures with the candidate.

I can think of one Republican who is almost definitely not a fan right now, as the Mitt's super-PACs bash him right back to the starting line in Iowa. Bet he's regrets consulting for Freddie Mac. Sure does suck when corporations can spend millions of dollars calling you a Freddie Mac lobbyist who accepted $1.6 million and you can't even afford the airtime to say that all your work was in consulting on the issues of transparency and disclosure and the nature of government-sponsored entities, not lobbying, and your firm, as an entity was paid between $1.2-1.6 million, not you personally.

But don't fret - if elected President, he has a solution!

http://www.newt.org/sites/newt.org/files/Courts.pdf

This NEWT 2012 campaign document serves as political notice to the public and to the

legislative and judicial branches that a Gingrich administration will reject the theory of judicial

supremacy and will reject passivity as a response to Supreme Court rulings that ignore executive

and legislative concerns and which seek to institute policy changes that more properly rest with

Congress.

By way of explanation for the source of his own brilliance, Gingrich says "I think part of the advantage I have is I’m not a lawyer....And so as a historian I look at the context of the judiciary and the Constitution in terms of American history.”

Of course, one could certainly raise an objection to this line of reasoning....

Laurence H. Tribe, a law professor at Harvard, said a lack of legal training was helpful only up to a point.

“The advantage of not being a lawyer is the ability to look outside the box,” Professor Tribe said. “The disadvantage is to be so woefully ignorant of what’s inside the box.”

I love that quote so much I'm thinking of sigging it.

[TrackerNeil]

But, surely, if it is a matter of important principles, the type of line-in-the-sand issues that separate one party from the other, then the politicians cannot be expected to budge?

Very naughty, TerraPrime! :devil:

As to this about Ron Paul winning Iowa...who cares? (Other than his rabid little base of fans.) Ron Paul is not going to be the Republican nominee unless catastrophe strikes, and in that case all the rules go out the window anyway. If Paul should win Iowa, the opinion leaders, knowing well that the GOP cannot nominate a candidate who opposed the Iraq invasion, not to mention Paul's other lunacies, will begin to assail him.

[awesome possum]

But by assailing him, they'd have to admit he exists.

I don't think Paul has a chance in hell. He may win Iowa, then he'll have his week in the spotlight. People will look him up and see some of the really intelligent, rational things he has to say on a lot of subjects.

Then they'll see everything else he has to say and wonder how their crazy great-uncle managed to sneak his way into the GOP nominee picture.

[TrackerNeil]

Oh, and I have to respond to this, from the last thread:

No, it will not be fun, Sarah is so popular with Republicans it is truly insane. the only people who are not on her side in the party are the strategists and Wall Street, she'll be unstoppable for the nomination because people are excited to vote for her. Yes it will energize the democratic base to vote against her, but even with Sarah as the GOP nominee energizing the Democrat base, democrats are not going to get as large a voter turnout as they did in 2008, Sarah guarantees a larger GOP turnout and she will have vastly more enthusiastic grass roots support than McCain ever had, it will rival if not exceed what Obama managed at the Grass Roots level four years ago. She's the most formidable candidate out there because she's the only Republican that Republicans en masse want to vote for. Romney is dangerous because independents and blind democrats might vote for him, Sarah's dangerous because she can bring more firepower.

Lockesnow, this is crazy. Palin may indeed have a dedicated core of fans, but she's nowhere near universally loved by Republicans. In addition, the GOP elite despises Palin, and you can bet that, were she to begin making headway in actual primaries, they'd loose their wrath upon her. Add in her thin resume and her penchant for saying foolish things and you've got the making of a disastrous nominee.

[DanteGabriel]

Libertarians, take heart! You'll get the opportunity to put your money where your mouth is, and support a within-sniffing-distance-of-viable Libertarian candidate in this Presidential cycle:

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/12/how-gary-johnson-just-made-life-easier-for-barack-obama.php?ref=fpnewsfeed

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

Woo hoo!* I feel bad for you Democrats. All you'll have e is a warmongering liar who actively hates civil liberties and responsible spending, or you could vote republican.

*I will not be voting at all.