American Politics Thread 2014

And then there was Newtie's innovation of speaking to an empty chamber after hours while still making out like you were addressing an assembly - dunno if anyone does that anymore...

oh, they do

lol

it is every american citizen's right to have the opportunity to watch their elected leaders conducting business, once the citizen has purchased a cable subscription package

Gingrich made his reputation doing that shit.

nothing is free in the US

― Οὖτις,

freedom is free

Thanks guys, ZS in partic!

And Shakey

Now, getting a flag that flew atop the Capitol for 30 seconds, from your congressman, that's free.

nothing is free in the US

― Οὖτις, Thursday, December 18, 2014

goddamn right. that's the way it should be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn5lEuiwtfQ

i remember when i was 17 hearing bill hicks talk about how he only really understood politics after getting high and watching c-span for 40 hours straight and thinking, oh, i guess i need to do that too. (i never did.)

oh, Morbs:

The nuclear option also freed Obama to appoint some more liberal judges, including Nina Pillard to the D.C. Circuit, who drew comparisons to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — and faced GOP opposition — for her work on gender equality.

x-post-- there is also C-Span radio on the FM dial in Washington D.C. and online

http://series.c-span.org/C-SPAN-Radio/

From Politico:

As Republicans take control of Congress, they are bringing in veteran influence peddlers to help them run the show. Nearly a dozen veteran K Streeters have been named as top staffers to GOP leaders or on key committees as lawmakers prepare to take the gavel in January.

For instance, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell named Hazen Marshall policy director earlier this week. Marshall, a former staff director for the Senate Budget Committee, has spent the last 10 years as a lobbyist at the Nickles Group representing dozens of clients like AT&T, Comcast and energy company Exelon….

And while former staffers-turned lobbyists often end up back in public service — the revolving door has been swinging for years — there is a notable increase in the pace of K Streeters making the move back to Congress this month.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/12/yeah-democrats-are-pretty-pro-corporate-too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYGV8bdrHrk

Being pro-corporate is one of the few bipartisan issues left in Congress.

covers a helluva lotta ground, doesn't it?

BILL MOYERS: You talk about the vocal right. And there's a powerful movement that seems to like the way the country is going. That seems to think this is the way it ought to be and that Occupy Wall Street and Steve Fraser, and others, they just represent the malcontents of a system that is really working for them.

STEVE FRASER: Yes. It is the consummate all embracing expression of the triumph of the free market ideology as the synonym for freedom. In other words, it used to be you could talk about freedom and the free market as distinct notions. Now, and for some time, since the age of Reagan began free market capitalism and freedom are conflated. They are completely married to each other. And we have, as a culture, bought into that idea. It's part of what I mean when I say the attenuating of any alternatives.

BILL MOYERS: Is there any vision of an alternative society to the financial capitalism that's driving this?

STEVE FRASER: Very, very little. The labor movement itself offers no such alternative. It is trying to defend its own very precarious existence and defend its shrinking numbers. Making valiant efforts to convince other unorganized working people that it might be to their immediate advantage to join the labor movement. But there's no alternative vision of a different kind of society.

Let me give you a very interesting example, to me anyway. When the Cold War first broke out, and we faced the Soviet Union, we depicted ourselves as the free world, as we all know. And as that, as a slave empire, whatever you want to call it exactly. But actually we talked very little then about capitalism. We talked about freedom and the free world, but not so much about capitalism. Why? Because the country had just emerged out of the Great Depression. Capitalism didn't have a very high reputation in 1945 or 1950. People were still very skeptical about whether it could indeed serve the general welfare. Right?

BILL MOYERS: It had failed. That's what led to--

STEVE FRASER: And it failed in the most traumatic way. It's the second greatest trauma in our country's history next to the Civil War. Horrible. It ruined millions of lives. It is axiomatic in our current political culture that when we say freedom we mean capitalism. And that is an indication of how we have been, you know, there's a philosopher who said that language is the house of being. It's where we live. And if you're living in a language that's been denuded of some of its key furniture like certain concepts like that, you're homeless. You have no way, you have no way to challenge even when you're faced with wholesale larceny. I mean on the part of the major banking institutions. I mean what-- let's call a spade a spade. These were thieves. And yet the we lack the kind of linguistic wherewithal, which is much more, it's spiritual, to confront it.

from an interesting conversation with Steve Fraser on the first and second gilded ages

http://pando.com/2014/12/18/the-war-nerd-more-proof-the-us-defense-industry-has-nothing-to-do-with-defending-america/

yeah that was good, you can tell he's really pissed off there

House to be down one piece of shit

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/29/politics/michael-grimm-to-resign-soon/

and wait for the majority whip to twist in the wind

How will they ever replace him

I take special pleasure in Grimm's downfall because his purported health-food restaurant where he was paying people off the books once screwed up my order three times in a night, after I argued with him on the phone about it

Some things never change:

Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, proposes a new $2,500 tax credit for families with children. But the most popular conservative idea for boosting incomes is overhauling corporate taxation. Mr. Obama has embraced that goal if Congress closes enough loopholes while lowering the 35 percent top rate to ensure the government will not lose revenue.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/30/us/politics/for-solution-to-income-stagnation-republicans-and-democrats-revise-their-playbooks.html?_r=0

How are any play books being revised here

speaking of, the new GOP senators-elect did their party crowd by voting to eliminate the food stamps program.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/john-mccain-arizona-tea-party-113849.html

McCain reminds upstarts that he knew how to be an asshole before they did. Kinda love this story a lot

WASHINGTON — James Risen, a New York Times reporter, will not be called to testify at a leak trial, lawyers said Monday, ending a seven-year legal fight over whether he could be forced to identify his confidential sources.

The Justice Department said in court filings that it would not call Mr. Risen to testify at the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former C.I.A. officer charged with providing him details about a botched operatio