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

For those interested:

http://www.slate.com/id/2290036/

Yeah, I can't imagine anything making my moral apathy for Thomas and Alito any greater than that piece.

These Republican governors. From Huffington Post:

Eight Republican state senators have issued a rare public rebuke of Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R), writing an op-ed expressing "discomfort and dismay" with some of his recent comments directed at labor backers.

The controversy centers around LePage's recent decision to order a mural depicting the state's workers' history removed from the Department of Labor, arguing that it was biased against businesses and employers. When asked how he would react if protesters carried out their plan to form a human chain around the mural, LePage replied, "I'd laugh at them, the idiots. That's what I would do. Come on! Get over yourselves!"

Removing a mural about the history of your state for so-called ideological reasons...THOSE ARE YOUR PEOPLE. Unbelievable.

That whole thing is just the pinnacle of dumbfuckery. He also wants to change the names of rooms that are currently named for people like Cesar Chavez to name them after "mountains or something." And feels that the Department of Labor is not sufficiently sympathetic to business. HEY ASSHOLE YOU HAVE A DIFFERENT THING FOR THAT, IT'S THE DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE.

Yeah that is kinda next level. I "get" stupid anti labor legislation, but erasing benign historical murals is some baldfaced cackling villain type shot

They're like cartoon super-villains, without any caricaturing at all.

Baldfaced cackling villain type shot (nice Cheney-lip there, Mr. LePage:)

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Jja3NaVUusM/TWZbjAbfEcI/AAAAAAAAjT8/Tnzdo2TliQs/s1600/PaulLePageFaceCloseup.jpg

Steve Benen in The Washington Monthly also mentioned "the anti-union scheme, the plan to roll back Maine's child-labor laws, the tax cuts for the rich, the pointless fight with the NAACP" and concluded:
Maine voters pretty obviously made a mistake in November, electing LePage in a three-way contest where the sensible vote was split, but in case anyone's curious, the state does not have a legal mechanism that allows for the recall of a governor.

Impeach?

Just keep asking them how this creates jobs.

i still read this thread, some of the major news sites, one national and one local newspaper.... and all i can say is that i just don't give a fuck any longer. i keep track of it all, but all i can do is just shake my head.

hmm. http://www.salon.com/news/afghanistan/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2011/04/04/free_speech

Bam sent his re-election e-mail. Let the billion-dollar full-time whoring begin!

― your generation appalls me (Dr Morbius), Monday, April 4, 2011 10:25 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark

Starting a new war & announcing your Presidential campaign seem like two things that you should want to keep separate from each other, at least if you want my vote. Try and space them apart by a month, it's the least you can do.

he doesn't want your vote fyi

actually i was talking to him on the phone yesterday after the white sox game and he did specifically bring up adam bruneau's name

oh ok

Obama should head a telethon to raise money simultaneously for his reelection and the wars.

he would make a badass telethon host probably

oliver stone could direct

But Obama didn't start this war! He's only, er ... helping it along? Trying to speed things along?

i think they were referring to the other war

which war are we talking about
xpost

Did I miss a war?

Obama hosting a sort of Jerry Lewis-styled variety show telethon to fund his reelection and military campaigns would be both a new high and a new low in American politics on a Mike Judge level.

which tbh i'm still not prepared to call an 'american war' no matter how many punk frontmen and msg board posters try to convince me otherwise xxp

xpost

So I look in my academic-job-related-email-address-inbox and there's an email with the catchy subject line "Fecal matter sodomy"

Grimly fascinated, I open it and the text reads:

If you vote for the Democrats and some Republicans, homosexual fecal
matter sodomy will be the law of the land for your children and
grandchildren, and the U.S. military's reputation will be destroyed. About
90% of Blacks, 70% of Hispanics, and 50% of Whites have been voting for
fecal matter sodomy. This behavior is repulsive, offensive, and divisive.

Jim, www.debatejim.com

Today’s Democrat voter would rather vote for politicians who promise the
most of other people’s money, who destroy the entire economy in the
process, than they would vote for politicians who reduce taxes and
spending so that Democrat voters can have a secure job.

the link takes you to this Xtian conservative dickhead's website featuring truly pathetic snaps of him in a karate outfit attacking "B.S." (do you see?) etc. Has anybody else received this? Apparently he's spamming the hell out of universities nationnwide to prove that "no one is willing to debate with me, these sheeple are afraid of the truth". Could it be that the fecal approach isn't making people yearn for further, uh, contact? Gotta give it to him, it would make a pretty sweet login name

plunging a clogged toilet is essentially fecal matter sodomy right?

The crazy racist "90% of Blacks are voting for fecal matter sodomy" thing, oh man, I just . . .

90% of Blacks, 70% of Hispanics, and 50% of Whites have been voting for
fecal matter sodomy

lmfao

http://i53.tinypic.com/1zdvh1l.gif

dude i'm listening to that last lcd soundystem show while watching that, you have no idea how tripped out i am

Z S u are a treat

Remember everyone: as an American, come election time, it is your duty to VOTE FOR FECAL MATTER SODOMY

I'm imaging a squishy stool in the form of Harvey Feirstein addressing the nation from the Oval Office.

i'm a single issue voter. and that issue is fecal matter sodomy.

vote for obama

90% of Blacks

it's as if the only thing he knows about African-Americans came from listening to the Outhere Bros' "i wanna fuck you in the ass" a few too many times.

maybe he's angry at santorum voters

Former Bush speechwriter and current Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson's spin on budget talks. Could the excerpted sentence below about Obama be right?

I also need to find a tax expert who can systematically show that the Ryan plan, despite supposedly getting rid of corporate tax loopholes and farm subsidies, is a scam. I've read people attack it in general terms.

So Obama has managed to lighten his liberal baggage, turn Republicans against each other and ensure they would be (justifiably) blamed for a shutdown. Not a bad month’s work.

This strategy may succeed because Republicans are genuinely divided. One bloc — the faction of the serious — is led by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), author of the 2012 House Republican budget. Few details of that document are surprising, but the cumulative effect is comprehensive and impressive. House Republicans propose major tax reform, including lower top rates, a broadened tax base and the closing of loopholes. The plan sets hard spending caps and adopts a number of recommendations from the president’s fiscal commission, which were largely ignored by the president himself. Ryan’s proposal takes on corporate welfare and farm subsidies, consolidates job-training programs, and includes welfare and litigation reforms. Most important, Ryan begins the Medicare debate in earnest, proposing a system of means-tested premium supports — taking seriously the challenge of 80 million baby boomers beginning to make their way into the system. Unlike his more libertarian colleagues, Ryan makes the case that entitlement reform, properly designed, can actually strengthen the social safety net for the poorest.

The less-than-serious faction of the Republican Party is intent on squeezing more savings out of the 2011 budget or pursuing a government shutdown as an end in itself.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/on-the-budget-obama-has-republicans-cornered/2011/04/04/AFbin9eC_story.html

Any plans to reduce "entitlement spending" are bullshit, especially after the Obama administration accepted the Bush tax cuts in November, but no one in Washington wants to have that discussion. So this is all a lot of posturing.

Dahlia Lithwick: the Obama administration's capitulation to its critics on trying KSM by military commission is cowardly, stupid, and tragically wrong.

lol at describing ryan's budget proposals as "serious"

Gov. Walker hires lobbyist's inexperienced son for $81,500 job.

http://www.startribune.com/local/119207744.html

Federal government tells Maine governor, "Uh, we paid for that painting."

The federal government is stepping into the labor mural controversy in Maine, demanding that the state either put the artwork back up at the Department of Labor or repay the cost of the mural.

In a letter first obtained by the Associated Press, Gay Gilbert, a senior U.S. Labor Department official, writes that the federal government appropriated the funds to Maine for the mural.

"We understand, however, that the mural is no longer on display in your headquarters," writes Gilbert. "Thus, it is no longer being used for an administrative purpose permitted by the Reed Act. Accordingly [...] the state must [...] return to its UTF [Unemployment Trust Fund] account the amount of the Reed Act funds represented by the mural."

While some of the state GOP there hop off the bus:

We should be focused like a laser on the agenda the governor laid out – reducing our tax burden, getting rid of unnecessary government regulation that stifles innovation and entrepreneurship, and putting into place thoughtful welfare reform.

Instead, we find ourselves continually diverted, responding to yet another example of our chief executive picking a personal fight not worth fighting. "Government by disrespect" should have no place in Augusta, and when it happens, we should all reject it.

Every day a new cartoonish action by a governor...

http://www.samefacts.com/2011/04/watching-conservatives/moment-of-deceit/

A blogger taking on David Brooks predictable endorsement of the Ryan budget proposal.

Oh gawd, our country's longterm budget fate is in the hands of the Gang of 6 in the Senate...

The larger budget battle will begin even before the 2011 fight is resolved. Ryan plans to open a voting session Wednesday on his 2012 blueprint in the House Budget Committee. If approved, the measure would then go to the House floor, where GOP aides declined to speculate on its fate.

If approved by the House, the blueprint would go the Senate, where the Democrats who control the upper chamber are unlikely to accept much of Ryan’s vision for the nation’s fiscal future. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) is instead at work with five senators of both parties on a deficit-reduction strategy that is likely to trim spending on entitlement programs less dramatically than Ryan’s plan while raising additional revenue through an overhaul of the tax code

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/house-republicans-unveil-35t-budget-blueprint-for-2012/2011/04/05/AFT6IDjC_story.html?hpid=z1

Vote for Obama and the Dems, they will:

trim spending on entitlement programs less dramatically

well this is technically o/t but it's great reading so far, peeps who read this thread might be into it: perry anderson on lula's brazil

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n07/perry-anderson/lulas-brazil

When, midway through his second term its test came, he handled it with aplomb. The crash of Wall Street in 2008 might be a tsunami in the US, he declared, but in Brazil it would be no more than a ‘ripple’ – uma marolinha. The phrase was seized on by the press as proof of reckless economic ignorance and irresponsibility.

But he was as good as his word. Counter-cyclical action was prompt and effective. Despite falling tax revenues, social transfers were increased, reserve requirements were reduced, public investment went up and private consumption was supported. In overcoming the crisis, local banking practices helped. Tight controls, holding multipliers of the monetary base well below US levels, and greater transparency had left Brazilian banks in much better shape than those in the US, protecting the country from the worst of the financial fall-out. But it was concerted, vigorous state policy that pulled the economy round. Lula’s optimism was functional: told not to be afraid, Brazilians went out and consumed, and demand held up. By the second quarter of 2009, foreign capital was flowing back into the country, and by the end of the year the crisis was over.

...however, while i'm talking to myself, why do old-line marxists always pull sneaky shit like this when they write? god let it go already

Consecration of the new position he had won for his nation came with the formation of the BRIC quartet in 2009, bringing the heads of state of Brazil, Russia, India and China together in one-time Sverdlovsk, with a communiqué calling for a global reserve currency

ahem...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg (Russian: Екатеринбу́рг, also romanized Ekaterinburg), formerly Sverdlovsk (Свердло́вск) is a major city in the central part of Russia, the administrative center of Sverdlovsk Oblast... Between 1924 and 1991, the city was known as Sverdlovsk (Свердло́вск), after the Bolshevik party leader Yakov Sverdlov.

Wrong thread?

nope!

in yr FACE, dowd

http://twitter.com/#!/TheRickWilson/status/55254121749544960

haha jeez