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

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amateurist is that 'isthmus' story about the conservative wisconsin chief justice choking his colleague?

http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_0eccd0ea-9f33-11e0-b4f1-001cc4c03286.html

prosser and walker should both be in jail

('isthmus' link didn't work for me; sorry for double-posting)

now what in the hell

is wisconsin chief justice david prosser gonna have to choke a bitch?

house votes to reject authorization of us mission in libya, but rejects a bill that would limit funds for that mission - weiiird/lame party breakdown too. ron paul voted against limiting funds, which is confusing me

amateurist is that 'isthmus' story about the conservative wisconsin chief justice choking his colleague?

http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_0eccd0ea-9f33-11e0-b4f1-001cc4c03286.html

prosser and walker should both be in jail

― reggie (qualmsley), Saturday, June 25, 2011 12:03 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah. holy wtf.

i hate it when people bait me into choking them, they are such a-holes.

he's not chief justice btw

very interesting account of how the votes for the gay marriage bill were gotten

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/nyregion/the-road-to-gay-marriage-in-new-york.html

i'm a bit confused as to how cuomo managed to get those moneyed republican donors to back this issue - i suppose he convinced them that the tax cap was going to happen and asked for a couple votes in return?

not that i'm all that gung-ho about cuomo either, but here's nate silver on how his approach tpo leadership differs from obama's

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/cuomos-presidential-moment-forms-contrast-with-obama/?gwh=1A723B3D51CFAD0874EF51418F24EFEA

I’m generally of the view that individual politicians receive both more credit and more blame than they deserve, with legislative and electoral outcomes usually determined by broad cultural, economic and political undercurrents. But the type of leadership that Mr. Cuomo exercised — setting a lofty goal, refusing to take no for an answer and using every tool at his disposal to achieve it — is reminiscent of the stories sometimes told about with President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had perhaps the most impressive record of legislative accomplishment of any recent president.

It’s also a brand of leadership that many Democrats I speak with feel is lacking in President Obama.

Mr. Obama has some considerable achievements, including his health care bill and the reversal of the military’s ban on openly gay and lesbian soldiers. But he often seems to achieve them by outsourcing much of the work to Democrats in Congress or to his various lieutenants. And his considerable speaking abilities sometimes seem to be directed more toward healing the country in times of crisis than toward persuading it to move in a new direction.

I just returned from dinner and drinks with a good liberal friend who agrees with the right wing criticism of Obama we often read: the president is pedantic, hectoring, and unduly defensive when criticized, and his rhetoric overrated. And he's not a guy who follows politics as avidly as some of us. "I just don't know what the guy will STAND for," he said. "He doesn't take any risks."

yeah i dunno, cuomo sold out a couple liberal constituencies and only really ended up with this result by a single vote thanks to the help of rich donors

The trick then is to persuade PACs to hire lobbyists to persuade the Wall Street plutocrats on meaningful social legislation.

maybe im being pessimistic, im incredibly happy that gay marriage was legalized, but id be a lot more impressed if cuomo was able to pass a bill that pissed off rich people

xp

Eliot Spitzer can tell us a thing or two about what happens when you make unpleasant noises in front of Wall Street plutocrats.

yeah. :-/

maybe im being pessimistic, im incredibly happy that gay marriage was legalized, but id be a lot more impressed if cuomo was able to pass a bill that pissed off rich people

xp

― ☂ (max), Saturday, June 25, 2011 10:43 PM (40 minutes ago)

yeah again my understanding is that the tax cap/weak rent rules/etc was pretty much a trade for gay marriage

and it's prob a bad look to be cynical about this already but cuomo just HAD to get this to pass - while this is obviously awesome and huge it's pretty great insurance against crtitism from the left over the rest of his record this session

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/business/global/26bridge.html

we're #1! we're #1! lol

Washington Post is pushing the notion that Republicans will accept defense cuts as long as they get to keep tax breaks for rich oil companies and get to maintain the Bush tax cuts for the rich.

Lets do both. Why can't Obama say "Reagan raised taxes. Republicans who are are you with-- Reagan or Norquist." Yes, Reagan cut taxes initially but then he later raised them a number of times.

By do both I mean--cut defense spending AND get rid of tax breaks and rich folks Bush tax cuts.

Obama just keeps saying "we need revenue" which I guess sounds better politically even if it will not educate anyone on the real facts.

Yglesias re Cuomo's leadership versus Obama and the differences:

if the US Senate operated on a 50 vote rule, then both the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank bill would have gone further in advancing progressive priorities, there would have been more economic stimulus in the 111th Congress, the DREAM Act would have passed, and it’s conceivable that some kind of nationwide carbon pricing scheme would be in place.

Which is just to say that political institutions matter, a lot. Getting concurrent majorities in two legislative houses, as Cuomo did, is very hard. Getting a 60 percent supermajority is harder.

Although nate Silver may have meant that Obama needs to try harder to get 60 and needs to get more involved in the sausage-making details

well exactly - i seem to recall obama possessing a filibuster-proof senate and then being one vote short (just as cuomo is), and a house that would do just about anything

obama's presidency is pretty much over as far as progressive legislative accomplishments go, unless dems make an unforseen move in one of the next two elections, which seems unlikely - what we've got is what we've got

all moves are 'unforseen' we have no idea how the economy or congress is gonna look 4 years from now

As cynical as it is, we really kinda deserve it. America is a pretty right country and it's getting less 'liberal' with each election. As in whatever passes for 'scary liberal agenda' in the public mind is in US political reality some mythical creature on the far side of an ever-widening chasm.

Take another look at our foreign policy and domestic policy will make much more sense.

i mean the "difference" btw obama and cuomo is partly about the senate and its dumb rules, but its also partly that cuomo had the help of some seriously rich donors and lobbyists. rich people get what they want! and its nice that they wanted gay marriage in this case.

The country isn't moving right – the left hasn't acted like The Left since the early seventies. Confronted by a party that's wishy-washy and aspires to absorb the most risible elements of the GOP, it's no wonder that voters prefer the GOP's straight lines.

its also partly that cuomo had the help of some seriously rich donors and lobbyists

really can't be said enough, which is why the Obama vs. Cuomo debates I've seen this weekend were fruitless.

x-post to Iatee
But we have a general idea based on what seats are up for election in the next go-round, and the Dems are just trying to hold onto the Senate, no one is talking about them pushing up over 60, and no one is predicting they will suddenly have 60 some senators who are not bought off by Wall Street no matter how liberal they may be on some other issues

The people have been told (by the media-government complex) that what used to be "left" is not in the discussion, so what're they supposed to do? Make politics the center of the lives, which they don't have time for while/if they're working for a living.

and the right's selective amnesia is a sight to behold. mitch mcconnell:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/06/27/mcconnell.debt.spending/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

"Since the day the stimulus was signed, Washington has added $3.5 trillion to the national debt and roughly 2 million Americans have lost their jobs. More recently, a slew of troubling economic indicators and dire warnings from credit agencies about the dangers of our debt show that the time for serious action is now.

"We have seen the consequences of giving Washington a blank check -- and we think it's time Washington make some of the hard choices that the average American has made over the past two and a half years."

you'd almost think the recession started under obama and the gop didn't add like $5.0 trillion to the national debt when mcconnell was senate majority leader

by "blank check" I assume he's talking about the fiscal stimulus plan that saved the world's largest economy from completely tanking? he'd prefer that didn't happen?

I wonder what he thinks unemployment would have looked like in the absence of that blank check

yes because then it would make the GOP taking back the WH easier

xp

People born in the USA after 1930 have never seen or experienced the sort of cascading liquidation of assets that would have happened in the absence of the sorts of actions taken by the Fed and the stimulus bill. They are clueless and the dark abyss of their ignorance has yet to be fully disclosed. I would hate to govern such petulant children and would be tempted to treat them with the same contempt the Republicans so clearly feel toward them.

while this is obviously awesome and huge it's pretty great insurance against crtitism from the left over the rest of his record this session

a couple people on my facebook linked that nyt article about the plutocrats who in their wisdom deigned to give us a victory, w/ a note along the lines of "heartening evidence that it IS possible to effect progressive change in washington!" and then a comments thread full of obligatory non sequitur michelle bachmann disses

The NYT picks up on Obama's transparency problems.

Wall Street re Obama: "Obama hasn’t been too bad to banks. He could have been worse."

Also:

But this election cycle, Wall Street’s Washington hands say it will be unlikely for any of the top bank C.E.O.’s to back one candidate over another publicly — at least this early — because the role of government has become so integral to these big firms.

While it may appear that a Republican candidate like Mitt Romney — a former private equity executive — would be a natural for Wall Street to support, there are still worries that he may not become the nominee. Many of the other Republican candidates — like Michele Bachmann — are not taken seriously or are too socially conservative for Wall Street.

The conventional wisdom, of course, is that Wall Street has turned its back on Mr. Obama out of frustration with his so-called antibusiness rhetoric and “fat cat” comments about bankers.

But Wall Street’s absence may be more about optics — the way things appear— than reality. Behind the scenes, it seems that many bankers are not running away from the president as quickly as some might suspect.

While many of the biggest name financiers feel that they can’t publicly support Mr. Obama through campaign contributions the way they did in 2008 — “it would be bad for business,” one brand-name chief executive of a major bank acknowledged — some still plan to vote for him. And some begrudgingly acknowledged that they don’t yet see a viable alternative to Mr. Obama among the Republican field.

more on mcconnell and "washington" -

http://baselinescenario.com/2011/06/27/what-is-this-washington/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/column-in-praise-of-mitch-mcconnell/2011/05/19/AGoMj1oH_blog.html

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/06/obama-has-finally-become-dick-cheney/241116/

starting to wonder how much these assholes stand to make if the US defaults. salon says Cantor's got money in ultrashort securities

http://www.salon.com/news/eric_cantor/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/06/27/eric_cantor_conflict_of_interest

x-post- Mcconnell does not always tell the truth as the item Tracer posted shows. What's Ezra talking about? It's kind of like when Ezra was on the Paul Ryan is brave meme.