US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

Without a full caucus, by midnight meetings!

Are the Dem. State Senators still in jail?

I call "getting your bill passed unchanged" a sign of decisive victory

yep. keep yr eye on the ball, policy is what ma.tters

I pretty clearly referred to the narrative in the post Dan c-&-p'd above.

in the face of concrete law, the narrative isn't really that important

You're right, narrative isn't importantn but wouldn't it be nice if the public had an option to believe in something different?

ugh can we ban the word "narrative"?

Pleased about this (at least until Morbius inevitably tells me why I shouldn't be)

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/white-house-threatens-to-veto-key-legislation-over-union-busting-provision.php?ref=dcblt

After all the handwringing in this board about the Dems' failure to sell universal health care to the people, now we're just willing to pretend things like "narrative" don't exist. Let's just dissolve all unions asap.

narrative exists for cable hosts and the 2% who watch em. rest of America is busy skipping meals to afford a smartphone.

haha that describes way too many people I know

SO Biden has been authorized to negotiate for the White House and has indicated that they can negotiate on the policy riders the Republican House wants. So which of these subjects of riders is the White House gonna throw under the bus: 1. Planned Parenthood; 2. NPR; 3. The EPA.

OK, so it turns out that the Ohio House Speaker didn't call people in the gallery "goddamned visitors," but what he said was actually stupider:

It’s hard to hear, but here’s exactly what Speaker Batchelder said:

“Well, she may, or she may not goddamn get it.”

You’ll notice that Batchelder is talking to one of the House clerks while looking over to his left while he says it. We’ve confirmed with a House source that the clerk was informing Speaker Batchelder that House Assistant Minority Whip Debbie Phillips (D-Athens) wanted to make a parliamentary point of personal privilege.

In other words, she wanted to assert her personal right as a Member of the House to honor someone who had died, particularly someone who died today.

Representative Phillips wanted to honor the memory of Bill Sams, the Council 8 Regional Director for AFSCME and President of the Southeastern Ohio AFL-CIO. A former lawyer, a husband, father, and grandfather. Bill Sams had just been at the SB 5 protests the day before at the Statehouse. He would have been there today except he died.

That’s what Speaker Batchelder was cursing about.

This link has footage -- check out the chanting from SB5 opponents in the gallery.

After all the handwringing in this board about the Dems' failure to sell universal health care to the people, now we're just willing to pretend things like "narrative" don't exist. Let's just dissolve all unions asap.

Narrative matters when you are arguing a position. If your argument loses, the narrative you've built also loses, plus there is now a concrete piece of law that directly refutes it.

It isn't really that hard to think through IMO.

Republicans never let silly things like laws prevent them from continuing to voice their own narrative. They count on people not understanding or remembering what is the law.

and that is a sure path to victory most times.

Narrative matters when you are arguing a position. If your argument loses, the narrative you've built also loses, plus there is now a concrete piece of law that directly refutes it.

It isn't really that hard to think through IMO.

yeah but Republicans just keep on alienating more and more people; the Tea Party can't expect to keep winning elections if the majority thinks they are going to get fucked over

That doesn't change the fact that when they fall out of power, all of the energy will end up being put towards moving things closer to today's status quo than anything else, which is still a victory for the right.

Basically, my point is that the narrative can't and shouldn't be the goal; the narrative is a tool, and one that Democrats don't know how to use.

rest of America is busy skipping meals to afford a smartphone.

I skip meals because it makes me feel good.

yeah but Republicans just keep on alienating more and more people

which means less and less with the only 'people' mattering the corporations 'who' pay for campaigns. 'the people' can only vote for the last two candidates standing

http://i.imgur.com/17jxH.jpg

i'm sort of against stuff like this but i have to give grudging props for excellent use of monopoly dude

Also "spats."

I lolled at "real estate"

also the tear drop on the picture

dog cologne

it would have been too personal/stalkery into Real World minutiae to add "Peanut Butter (for the wife)" but I would have smirked

"To Doug, the 'real world' happens on TV, and he hasn't lived there for quite some time..."

Missed opportunity for all sorts of Real World punnage and pwnage - seriously, someone should get hold of a few of his episodes and GET TO SPLICING.

Narrative matters when you are arguing a position. If your argument loses, the narrative you've built also loses, plus there is now a concrete piece of law that directly refutes it.

It isn't really that hard to think through IMO.

You could probably make an argument that the Left's narrative was actually hurt here, that by leaving the state and extending the battle it just gave a very corporate US media more and more of an opportunity to flood the airwaves with anti-union propaganda. "Have working-class Americans sacrificed enough?" Even the 'liberal' outlets were taking the question seriously, and repeating it over and over during that week.

Though i can't fault the protestors at all and stand 100% behind them.

the lag time did give wisco folk time to deliberate. now they're taking shots at duffy at his town halls

http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/break-out-tiny-violins-wi-rep-eager-c

You could probably make an argument that the Left's narrative was actually hurt here, that by leaving the state and extending the battle it just gave a very corporate US media more and more of an opportunity to flood the airwaves with anti-union propaganda. "Have working-class Americans sacrificed enough?

Or the Dems could have won the elections in November.

but then we wouldn't be having so much fun now at high noon on capitol hill

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/03/31/federal_budget_showdown_riders/index.html

really hoping the shutdown goes through tbh

(scott walker apparently has backed down, by the way)

http://budget.wispolitics.com/2011/03/huebsch-suspends-implementation-of.html

I don't understand what court orders that is referring to

dane county circuit court judge maryann sumi issued a temporary restraining order because the wisco budget-repair bill was passed unconstitutionally. the secretary of state, who publishes the laws, complied, so walker's administration went around him and published it via another state office. sumi reiterated her restraining order, and added a $2000 a day contempt of court penalty for non-compliance. apparently that was enough to get the walker administration to obey her ruling

huh, interesting. what are the grounds for arguing it was passed unconstitutionally? they had a majority present, didn't they?

btw for some real fun check out what the right wing blogs are saying about maryann sumi

her kid is a big lefty & union macher, oh nooooo

xp the grounds of the stay are that WI has some kind of open meeting law that dictates the timing/procedure for bills (of a certain kind?) and the GOP went right through those. it's related to but not identical to the quorum & majority stuff going on at the time

right I remember there being some complaining about it being passed in the middle of the night or something. ah arcane procedural laws

ok shakey if you haven't actually been following Wisconsin (and you clearly haven't) then just stop making these pathetic announcements about how 'we lost' ok? the battle is still very much in play there

Is Amateurist still around? As much news as we get from those parts, the better

lol dude sorry I wasn't up on today's second temporary injunction and the convoluted legal maneuvering going on, how dare I voice an opinion

not to silence you or anything, but I really wouldn't call what's going on there 'losing'

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/13/main-street-bigger-than-tea-party/

look dude get back to me when the legislation is repealed/struck down k thx bye

ah who knows, you're right in that if it doesn't keep up, it's all for nothing, but that's why blithely chiming in with the 'opinion' that we've all already lost is like watching you spit in the direction of 100,000+ people

look the initial goal was to defeat the legislation and vote it down. that didn't work. getting it struck down through the courts or through repeal is an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT BATTLE

really it's kind of analogous to Prop 8 here in California - there was the battle to vote it down in the general election (which failed), and since then there's been continual legal efforts to get it repealed, which has been a much longer, more complicated, less high profile process (and one that's been impacted by developments at the national level), which is still unresolved years later. But the fact remains that the CA electorate in '08 voted to be homophobic assholes, the pro-gay rights movement can't really claim a "victory" just because it was a high profile battle and the losers were really visibly angry about it afterwards. they lost the election.

I see what you're saying. But I don't agree that the issues at hand compare to the wedge issue of Prop 8, all I see is that the crowds are finally starting to show up in numbers on the right side of the battles.

let me put it this way: I am more proud of the public response in Wisconsin than I was for even one moment during all of 2008 -- election night in SF was a huge party, but even that was more a moment of sane relief than anything we could truly be proud of, and we all knew the idealism in the air was naive. I don't think it is naive to be encouraged by Wisconsin, so I hope you can understand why my temper would be short with someone content to post that battle is procedurally lost, when in fact the daily news coming from Wisconsin shows that 'procedure' is actually hanging by the slightest of threads

i think that shakey's take is more or less correct. and yes, i know that the union-busting law is tied up in court now (as if the teabaggers let technicalities like laws and regulations stop them from ramming through what they want) and the protests were encouraging. still, worst comes to worst if this bill goes back to the WI legislature before any recall or no GOPers switch their votes and the WI Dem Senators don't skip town again then the bill becomes law (perhaps there will be more legal proceedings, but like shakey said that's a different battle).

and given that the Teabags in the OH and NH legislatures have been ramming through their own union-busting bills it isn't as if the bastards are all that chastened.