2015 American Politics Thread: The 114th Congress Is in the House!

you don't suppose Kerry could have left JT in France and revoked his passport

the plans they made put an end to you

Freedom!

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2015/01/15/377526088/conservative-koch-brothers-group-puts-congressional-gop-on-notice?sc=tw

The American people are fed up with a Congress that fails to cut taxes on the rich with sufficient zeal and commitment. Oh, and incidentally, the American people DEMANDS that Congress eliminate the social safety net at the same time, so the government's greatly reduced tax revenue is no longer wasted on helping all those working poor people. All it does is spoil them.

^ We know this because the highly-paid spokesperson for the Koch brothers feed-the-rich organization has boldly declared it.

State of the Union tonight to include tax ideas that should have been included when Dems had majorities. Ideas are also still less inclusive than House Dem proposal upthread, but better to have these items as subject of discussion that Republican trickle-down ones I guess. Also on the bright side, hopefully no talk for now re grand bargain and chained cpi and such

what, campaign on taxing the rich and lose donations?

that might endanger the Dems' ironclad hold on our guvmint

Did you see that Stepford wife farmer/soldier and new Iowa Senator Joni Ernst give the Republican response to the State of the Union? Wow, that was horrible.

better or worse than when it was Jindal

http://imgur.com/i8SpBem

Ernst was nearly as bad as Jindal. Pretty scary...That fake, frightening smile as she talked about anything from wearing plastic bags over her falling apart shoes as a child to wanting to end Obamacare but of course not offering something better.

For some reason I watched on CBS, where George Bush's golf buddy Bob Schieffer said she seemed nice and direct

search Ernst and Stepford in twitter

Inside the Beltway goof Millbank worries in the W. Post that neither Obama nor Ernst were worried enough about TERRORISM and how it could come to the US again

It's nice that after appearing in Sidney Lumet's The Verdict, the late Milo O'Shea was able to find a new career as the US Secretary of Energy.

http://s.mcstatic.com/thumb/6780506/19010036/4/flash_player/0/1/the_verdict_a_fair_trial.jpg?v=2

Ted Cruz....

But on Tuesday, Republicans were offering few specifics and retreated to their familiar criticisms of Mr. Obama: that he is a tax-and-spend liberal whose policies they could never endorse.
“This president, to every problem his solution is, ‘More taxes, more government,’ “ Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, said. “The American people made clear the last thing we want is yet more taxes from Washington, more government spending, more debt, more regulations.”

Mr. Cruz likened Mr. Obama’s approach to the famous “Saturday Night Live” spoof of the Blue Oyster Cult song “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper.”

“To every problem,” Mr. Cruz said, “his solution was, ‘More cowbell! More cowbell!’ “

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/21/us/politics/republicans-have-one-word-for-presidents-proposals-and-veto-threats-no.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=b-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

You could at the same about the gops mantra of tax cuts and corporate welfare for oil companies

yep

and can someone tell me why the tea party aka the hard right of the gop gets its own sotu response? have there usually been multiple dem responses made by future presidential candidates or a lunatic fringe or what? someone link me to the dennis kucinich sotu responses.

I'm pretty sure whoever wants to respond can prepare a response

Yes, but I don't recall lefty ones. Maybe Morbs remembers some. I see there was discussion of the SOTU speech in the Barack Obama flaws thread

lol: http://www.inquisitr.com/1777070/joni-ernst-on-welfare-gop-senators-family-took-460000-in-taxpayer-handouts/

no surprise there

will never understand why this shit (cf. Bachmann family farm subsidies) doesn't get more traction in the liberal lamestream media

the right gets them because there is no one right wing voice of lunacy and because phony notions of balance.

obv liberal lamestream needs scare quotes

what a mess

http://www.buzzfeed.com/katenocera/anti-abortion-activists-target-republican-congresswoman-afte#.tpYLZgzZ20

Hyde Amendment not enough, of course

At the center of the controversy over the pulled vote and the target of much of the ire from anti-abortion activists is Congresswoman Renee Ellmers, a 3rd term member from North Carolina, who objected to language in the bill that would have required women to report their rapes to police prior to seeking an abortion. Ellmers and Rep. Jackie Walorski withdrew their co-sponsorship of the bill last week.

The vote was to take place on the same day as the March for Life, when hundreds of thousands anti-abortion protesters march through D.C on the anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade court decision. The House instead passed a bill banning taxpayer funding for abortions.

yeah I heard that on the NPR report. "It's on YOU, women, to show a police report before we let you go to the clinic!"

I like how the House GOP's backup tactic was to ban something that doesn't exist. good job guys.

Looking forward to the Werewolf and Dracula Protection Bill.

I love how it's suddenly not "murder" if it's a rape. Sometimes I'm afraid of what an illogical fruitcake far right nutter country we can be. This stuff is embarrassing.

the rape exemption is like a "two wrongs make a right" type of thing iirc

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/end-obamacare-and-people-could-die-thats-okay/2015/01/23/f436df30-a1c4-11e4-903f-9f2faf7cd9fe_story.html

hey, an honest conservative

Honest about how some folks could die, but not honest about the merits of the conservative Burr-Coburn-Hatch plan alternative to Obamacare, that has been criticized by both sides

honestly I respect people who oppose abortion in all cases including rape and incest more than those who make exceptions only for that.

Likewise, thousands of people die in homicides in the United States every year. We could reduce this number substantially, but we have (at least implicitly) decided that the costs — financial and otherwise — of more intrusive monitoring, additional policing, stricter sentencing and other, harsher measures are not worth the benefit. (Though we should continue debating whether marginally higher costs are worth marginally fewer deaths.) A sentry on every street corner and a government-monitored camera in every private room and hallway in America would significantly lower the homicide rate. But I wouldn’t make that trade-off.

holy cow, this dude is talented! i haven't seen lies this twisted flacked so confidently in a little while

I bet he read Ayn Rand.

Yeah, balancing that against "We could reduce the speed limit to 10, like the Care Bears on the left would like!" is a deft stroke.

10 isn't enough, cut the speed limit to 0

The Parmenidean Monad already took care of that.

Now this is the kind of free speech the Supreme Court likes

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. — A network of conservative advocacy groups backed by Charles and David Koch aims to spend a staggering $889 million in advance of the next White House election, part of an expansive strategy to build on its 2014 victories that may involve jumping into the Republican primaries.

The massive financial goal was revealed to donors here Monday during an annual winter meeting hosted by Freedom Partners, the tax-exempt business lobby that serves as the hub of the Koch-backed political operation, according to an attendee. The amount is more than double the $407 million that 17 allied groups in the network raised during the 2012 campaign.

The figure comes close to the $1 billion that each of the two major parties’ presidential nominees are expected to spend in 2016, and it cements the network’s standing as one of the country’s most potent political forces. With its resources and capabilities — including a national field operation and cutting-edge technology — it is challenging the primacy of the official parties. In the 2012 elections, the Republican National Committee spent $404 million, while the Democratic National Committee shelled out $319 million.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/koch-backed-network-aims-to-spend-nearly-1-billion-on-2016-elections/2015/01/26/77a44654-a513-11e4-a06b-9df2002b86a0_story.html?hpid=z7

their father built joseph stalin's oil pipelines, and now they're the primary donors to the GOP. why does the left not hammer that point home every day? imagine if the family who was the #1 donor to the democratic party was that close to stalin

well, because the head of the Democratic Party is Stalin.

maybe they'd be able to fight fire with fire if that were so

pitts is tops

"In America, it has come to seem normal that a major news organization functions as the propaganda arm of an extremist political ideology, that it spews a constant stream of racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, paranoia and manufactured outrage, and that it does so with brazen disregard for what is factual, what is right, what is fair, what is balanced — virtues that are supposed to be the sine qua non of anything calling itself a newsroom."

http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/contributors/2015/01/26/fox-news/22364439/

McCain keeps it real for his war criminal homie

just for posterity, the 9 democratic senators who voted to approve the keystone XL pipeline:

Bennet (D-CO)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Donnelly (D-IN)
Heitkamp (D-ND)
Manchin (D-WV)
McCaskill (D-MO)
Tester (D-MT)
Warner (D-VA)

I don't see any surprises there