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

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

yeah, they were all expected. first veto on a major issue in obama's tenure, coming up.

Mary Landrieu we miss ye

Manchin has guaranteed his place in the Evan Bayh Hall of Fame of Worthless Democratic Senators

Protester Grabs Mic At Muslim Event: 'Islam Will Not Dominate Texas' (VIDEO)

Texan announces Islam unable to penetrate a bag of rocks.

good. slice and dice these scum

http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-pn-defense-sequester-20150129-story.html#page=1

The House member for my district is going to pass away one of these days or weeks, btw. He's at home under hospice care now. Brain tumor + stroke + another brain tumor is no way to go.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/01/mississippi-rep-alan-nunnelee-diagnosed-with-inoperable-brain-tumor/

x-post. Obama's proposals to increase defense spending and domestic spending above sequestration will get rejected by the republicans and the White House knows that. But his indication of approval for more defense spending (for a country that already spends more than the next ten countries together) will just be taken as a sign of approval by Republicans to try to cut domestic spending, while increasing defense spending. So how is this good?

I guess the point is that it is good for Republican defense hawks and fiscal types to fight it out, but Obama encouraging the defense types does not seem that helpful to me.

According to the Washington Post:

. Although members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have warned of problems sustaining readiness, the military budget after adjusting for inflation is still in line with what it was in 2007, when the United States had much larger troop commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq.

nothing's getting done until 2017. i think he's trolling them, setting the terms for 2016. so now you want to increase defense spending and defense spending only, after having a fit about the deficit/debt? let's see you argue that it's good to do that but bad to increase domestic spending. rubio/walker/paul/christie/bush will flub that debate question every bit as much as they'll screw up gay marriage, abortion, and immigration

xp that does suggest that they wouldn't push for that anyway, which they would.

I hope nothing gets done. There are a few Republicans talking "entitlement" reform and tax reform, which makes me nervous because of Obama's previous endorsement of chained cpi and a grand bargain.

so far my reaction to the last few weeks has been, "What new majority?"

Nothing significant is going to pass. Obama's recent actions have clearly proven that he's a) going to accomplish as much as he can by exec order and b) setting the stage for the Dems for 2016. No big compromises that would hand the GOP poltical capital are going to happen.