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

fallows btw

ditto. Obama is the most inept "smart guy" in the WH yet.

like my Dad used to say (mostly about me), "how could someone so smart be so stupid?"

or wr2 the Dems: "can't ANYONE here play this fucking game?"

i have to believe that the meeting in q will still happen? i mean come on. unless there's some legal-constitutional problem with any executive official performing any work that is unfunded by congress.

Obama is like a weekend dad who spends all day, every day, at the office and then comes home clueless to the kids on Friday. The kids fight, and the best he can do is either "go tell your mom" or "figure it out yourselves." Then he goes back to reading the paper.

Seriously, really bummed that with no real competition on the president front, and with dwindling congressional allies, Obama's not more vocal. I realize the guy has a lot to deal with right now, but seriously, he's been blessed with such a motley crew of White House contenders that he should take advantage of the freedom.

Hey, what's Bill Clinton been up to these days? Or Joe Biden? Where are the charming, toothy attack dogs when you need them?

it seems like HRC would be designated as an "essential" employee.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyfSWO-wfUk

The first question soldiers stationed in Iraq asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates during his Thursday stop had to do with military pay.

Gates said if the government shutdown begins on Friday and lasts for one week, troops would get half a paycheck midmonth. If it continues from April 15 to April 20, he said, troops would not get a paycheck.

In that scenario, all troops eventually would be back-paid in full for the affected time, Gates said.

"When I start to think about the inconvenience that it's going to cause these kids, and a lot of their families, even half a paycheck delayed can be a problem for them," he later told reporters. "So I hope they work this whole thing out."

Unborn babies more important than soldiers in the field?

well they have to keep churning those kids out so they can send them off into the meat grinders around the world

Don't tar "pro life folks" with the same brushes. I know plenty who openly admit to using birth control.

Are pro life folks actually opposed to condoms and all birth control, en toto?

Depends. Catholic doctine is against both abortion and birth control. Amongst Protestants, it varies from sect to sect.

Is it about women having sex and not "paying the price" for their non-reproductive sexy fun times? Because if so, your answer is "Yes."

lots of ppl use birth control and have abortions despite being ideologically opposed to both

so, like, every white, middle class-to-rich girl at my high school (even the southern baptists) was on birth control*. "heavy periods" i think was the story. my sister (white, middle class, southern baptist) had "heavy periods." what's up with all these rich white kids and their heavy periods?

(*information via my hs gf)

no disrespect to anyone who's ever suffered with heavy periods btw. just curious...

I would just like to say that both opinion pieces currently on CNN.com about this debacle are terrible, misinformed, poorly conceived nonsense

here's one by a guy who wrote a book with the subtitle "How Libertarian Politics Can Save America"

and here's one by a guy who states flatly that everyone agrees that since the 1970s the Democrats have become more liberal and the Republicans have become more conservative

just ugh I STAB YOU

http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2011/OPINION/04/08/howell.shutdown.factors/tzleft.howell_william.jpg
http://www.entertainmentearth.com/images/%5CAUTOIMAGES%5CRC452lg.jpg

hey, he's half right, that's pretty good for CNN.

meanwhile, i'm a prophet: the Repugs are calling off the country!

Good luck, comrades...

http://www.pocomoketattler.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/assclown.jpghttp://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2011/OPINION/04/08/howell.shutdown.factors/tzleft.howell_william.jpghttp://www.entertainmentearth.com/images/%5CAUTOIMAGES%5CRC452lg.jpg

http://youtu.be/1aJEv98xTcw

uh

ooops

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1aJEv98xTcw

grrrrrrr

oh, white people

Seriously, really bummed that with no real competition on the president front, and with dwindling congressional allies, Obama's not more vocal

I can't decide if the reason is his personality (always wanting everyone to get along) or it's a political strategy to try to win independents(get everyone to blame Congress while he thinks he will look like the post-partisan adult in the room)

http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/archives/2011/04/pew-poll-obama.php

This article re a Pew Poll on low support for Obama by less educated white people has inspired incredibly ugly comments about Obama. They don't dislike him for reasons expressed here, they dislike him because he's a Kenyan born friend of Al Sharpton!

There is no way Obama is going to win independents, whatever that means and whoever they are. It was a small miracle he got what he got the last time from that quadrant, but that was before the incessant dis/misinformation campaigns that sent said "independents" back to the Republicans, the Tea Party, or to the "libertarian" wing of either of them. I mean, my dad is an "independent," and the odds of him voting Democrat are fuck-all.

idk... tea party/ GOP favorability with indies not doing so hot right now

btw what was that 'noon deadline' shit I heard this morning, allegedly from the White House?

What the hell constitutes an "independent" then that's not covered by dems, repubs or Tea Partiers?

wafflers and ignoramuses mostly

people who want to cut taxes AND collect social security

also, ppl who probably arent voting for prez next year (perhaps me)

nobody wants your vote anyway

i'm watching o'reilly for some dumb reason. he's interviewing the Roskam, Republican chief deputy majority whip and asked him "is this about money, or about ideology?" Roskam says "it's all about the money". infuriating.

to o'reilly's credit, he's really grilling him about it and making him look stupid.

everyone is doing the "breaking news" thing and saying a deal is very close, that it's $39 billion in cuts, too late to finish the deal by midnight, but will probably do some quick extension to avoid a shutdown, then hash out the final bill over the next couple of days.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/white-house-reviewing-terms-of-spending-deal-20110408

Numerous GOP and Democratic sources on and off Capitol Hill tell National Journal that the outline of the deal is as follows: up to $39 billion in cuts from the 2010 budget, $514 billion in spending for the defense budget covering the remainder of this fiscal year, a GOP agreement to abandon controversial policy riders dealing with Planned Parenthood and the EPA, and an agreement to pass a “bridge” continuing resolution late Friday night to keep the government operating while the deal is written in bill form.

worth it imo

y'all realize we're gonna go through this shit all over again with the debt ceiling, right?!?

oh yeah this was just a dry run, I had almost forgotten!

it's kind of agonizing to think about what dems and republicans "learned" from this whole process, and how they'll apply those lessons to the forthcoming battles on the debt ceiling and next year's budget.

I've learned that planned parenthood works because it would have kept Lindsey Graham and Paul Ryan from being born.

how many of those stupid riders are going through, exactly? annoying how the major news outlets don't reference anything besides Planned Parenthood...

anyway, sounds like Boehner blinked. I wonder if there will be payback for this from the right.

It's too early to say who blinked when it looks like we all lost.

should have been a shutdown, imo, to perhaps remind bitches of what all the government actually does

the cuts are around $38-39 billion, and the original Republican proposal was for $30 billion in cuts. he may have "lost" from the bonkers tea party perspective, but he seems to have done pretty well for the rest of the party.

xpost

http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/budget_negotiations-0408.png

he lost bc the tea partiers don't give a shit about how much is cut. they care about what is cut and planned parenthood hasn't been cut.