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

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

that's the city where nicholas & family were imprisoned and shot. obv the soviets changed all kinds of town names but that one always struck me as kind of ashamed.

ekaterinburg i mean.

I look duly ashamed by my failing to understand the link between the renaming of Soviet cities and US politics. :)

WashPo: "House Republicans huddled late Monday and, according to a GOP aide, gave the speaker an ovation when he informed them that he was advising the House Administration Committee to begin preparing for a possible shutdown."

sorry i was just complaining as an aside about perry anderson's writing

the point was to compare lula to obama, kind of

house republicans eagerly anticipating a short taste of the government free world they urgently seek

Glenn Greenwald today:

One thing is for certain: right now, the Democratic Party is absolutely correct in its assessment that kicking its base is good politics. Why is that? Because they know that they have inculcated their base with sufficient levels of fear and hatred of the GOP, so that no matter how often the Party kicks its base, no matter how often Party leaders break their promises and betray their ostensible values, the base will loyally and dutifully support the Party and its leaders (at least in presidential elections; there is a good case that the Democrats got crushed in 2010 in large part because their base was so unenthusiastic).

In light of that fact, ask yourself this: if you were a Democratic Party official, wouldn't you also ignore -- and, when desirable, step on -- the people who you know will support you no matter what you do to them? That's what a rational, calculating, self-interested, unprincipled Democratic politician should do: accommodate those factions which need accommodating (because their support is in question), while ignoring or scorning the ones whose support is not in question, either because they will never vote for them (the hard-core right) or will dutifully canvass, raise money, and vote for them no matter what (the Democratic base). Anyone who pledges unconditional, absolute fealty to a politician -- especially 18 months before an election -- is guaranteeing their own irrelevance.

It was often said that Bush/Cheney used fear as their principal political weapon -- and they did -- but that's true of the Democratic Party as well. When it comes to their base, Democratic leaders know they will command undying, unbreakable support no matter how many times they kick their base, because of the fear that has been instilled in the base -- not fear of Terrorists or Immigrants (that's the GOP's tactic), but fear of Sarah Palin, the Kochs and the Tea Party

that they have inculcated their base with sufficient levels of fear and hatred of the GOP

Seems to me the GOP have done most of the heavy lifting to make this happen.

i think that's right on, but weirdly only half true. the contemporary american right IS terrifying, and not only the "GOP" but the socially-rooted backlash itself that the official party is trying hard to chase after and domesticate.

greenwald has this funny trait of being unable to heap scorn on one party at once

lol xp

greenwald has this funny trait of being unable to heap scorn on one party at once

Because there's plenty of blog colleagues who heap scorn on the Republicans already?

I read Greenwald these days when I need a slap to remind me why I left the Democratic party years ago.

sucker, I never joined

which means you're probably ahead of me in the bar in heaven.

although I think the only time I haven't voted for a Democrat was 1992, when I voted for my dad for President

(my logic being if I was voting for the person I'd like to see running the country, that person was him, and really screw both Clinton and Bush)

actually that's not true, I've voted Green in local elections several times

i think that in both economics and nat'l security Something Is Happening Here that is bigger and deeper than whatever one half (or the other) of our duopoly is up to in narrow terms.

any day's news will remind me why I'm not a Democrat...

Although I am usually a registered Democrat bcz in NY, the primary is usually the election. (This was until we started having Republican mayors.) However, I may ditch that in the near future, as I imagine our govs, sens and mayors will be scum (and the congresspeople interchangeable) for the rest of my residency.

Well, sure, goole, that's why paranoics like Oliver Stone have something genuine to worry about.

But election-wise we are stuck unless you consider the write-in vote for DJP's Dad an option...

What will Harry Reid do today? Below is from Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent. Reid is supposed to meet with Boehner this afternoon without Obama. Boehner's meeting with Obama apparently included the below:

With a government shutdown looming and budget talks apparently at a standstill, Democratic aides are accusing the GOP of moving the goalposts for compromise yet again.

A senior Senate Democratic aide tells me that in today's private meeting at the White House, Speaker John Boehner signaled to the President and to Harry Reid that Republicans were not willing to support any budget compromise that can't garner the votes of 218 Republicans in the House. That would be a break from the GOP's previous posture: Republican leaders had appeared willing to reach a deal that could pass the House with Republican and Democratic support, even if it meant losing some Republicans.

why the hell don't they call the bluff

218/242

i wonder what the significance of this number is

Hell. I didn't leave the Democratic party so much as they left me.

^Reagan quote

i gave a little money to the obama campaign in 2008 because i figured if i was gonna vote for him i might as well do something that mattered more, and the democratic party sent me a like WELCOME TO THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY! letter and card and like BADGE, and i wasn't sure if i was actually in them or if i was in some kind of ranger-rick junior democratic party deputy club for people who made $20 donations, and i sat down and wrote this sort of mid-sized email like, hey, pulling for you guys in 08 and honestly have been pulling for you guys in every election i've been conscious for, but i don't really actually want to like be in your party because i mean you know the national security state and the corporate domination of the legislature and the betrayal of labor and the rightward collapse of the party system. so i'm not in the democratic party, as far as i know.

but i used to be.

your penultimate post reads like an excised verse from "Losing My Edge."

someone will be writing a three-paragraph exegesis of it any minute now i hope

i sat down and wrote this sort of mid-sized email like, hey, pulling for you guys in 08 and honestly have been pulling for you guys in every election i've been conscious for, but i don't really actually want to like be in your party because i mean you know the national security state and the corporate domination of the legislature and the betrayal of labor and the rightward collapse of the party system.

rofl. did you go through a couple drafts? its really hard to let political parties down gently.

probably would have been better to do it in person

im a registered democrat because when i registered to vote everyone i knew was all about being "independent" and "eff the two party system" or whatever stuff 18-year-olds say so my contrarianism/self-loathing projection kicked in and i registered as a democrat

i'm still registered as a Democrat. i also live in Hudson County NJ where even corpses are registered Democrats and anyway i can still vote in primaries and thereby do my part to keep a check on some of the scuzziest scuzballs that Hudson County tends to puke out onto the world.

i gave up on obama after scotty brown was elected (shoulda given up on him after he appointed geithner -- when it really became clear that The Fix Was On -- but can't turn back the clock).

speaking of dem politics, debbie wasserman-schultz is the new chair of the DNC

And Boehner now wants 40 billion in cuts rather than the 33 he originally proposed.