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

http://www.unconditionalconfidence.com/mt/mt-static/FCKeditor/UserFiles/Image/nervous.gif

That's why I didn't criticize him for staying out of the NYC marriage debate! Endorsing the legislation would have killed any chances of GOP support.

“He was clearly out to pick a major public fight with Republicans over tax cuts for the rich.”

Giv'em hell Barry

The public's on his side if chooses the words carefully.

^^^

yep. Klein's OTM I think. this is gonna get ugly, but I'm glad Obama didn't cave.

some insane political brinksmanship going on here, polling data and economic realities are in Obama's favor tho I think

Picking a fight at a Wednesday morning press conference is not bad, but remember when Presidents use to hold them at night? Can Obama stay strong on this is the question. He will probably settle for a package with less than 17% on the revenue side, when in years past the 50/50 ratio Sanders wants was considered mainstream. But will Republicans agree to anything on the revenue side?

Someone posted something along these lines a long time ago, but the chamber of commerce types are the true GOP daddies and there's no fucking way they'll let the US default on its debts..

they're also the ones whose taxes will tick upward slightly if a deal on obama's terms is accepted...

a default will, if it happens, have many of the same effects of slashing the safety net directly. it'll primarily hurt the lives of those who are more closely dependent on the health of the public sector, which basically includes everyone except your megarich CoC types. ruining the ability of the public sector to borrow on favorable terms is kind of their goal anyway? i'm not so sure i see a way out of this. maybe mike konczal got in my brain.

The Republicans have turned into a petrified ideological shell w/little intellectual honesty and their partisan supporters should be told to put down their flags 'cause despite their protests they can objectively be shown to prize certain things more than the Republic, namely an attachment to classic liberal economic theory (wed to its fearful moralism) that shows they either haven't understood much of the 20th century or that they find greater stability, sustainable growth and nuanced views on the functioning of the economy that take into account costs that Ricardo never saw as morally suspect. They should be repeatedly kicked in the nuts. Every time they call someone a 'socialist' they should be called childish or actually told to stfu and make an argument based on facts and not on paranoid delusions and that pandering to puerile talking points just makes them sound like children. What was Ickes famous line? I always loved it. It was something like, when asked if he was going to listen to Wilkie's speech, he responded that if he wanted to hear a baby cry, he could go home and hear his own kids.

CoC types won't want this but Norquist will love it. When even ppl like the Bachmanns are getting lots of money from the gov and then they don't, a large part of the electorate will either vote against the Republican leadership or abstain.

basically rich fucks are currently analyzing which scenario is worse for them, higher taxes or debt default, and this will dictate how the GOP goes. Hard to say how that will shake out.

xp

They should be repeatedly kicked in the nuts.

can't be said enough really

I know it's lame to announce stuff like this, but Michael White I always enjoy your posts, esp on this thread. Could say that about lots of others on this thread, even (and particularly) those I disagree with

You're welcome!

*chugs*

Sorry, ill-advised post-happy hour "I love you guys" style post!

http://spencerackerman.typepad.com/attackerman/2011/06/the-white-house-counterterrorism-strategy-sort-of-blows.html

never liked john brennan!

people who work in politics are horrible

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/06/13/lisa-baron-s-salacious-memoir.html

yikes

"When people find out that I worked for Ralph Reed during the 2000 Republican presidential primary in South Carolina, they always ask the same thing: Was it true Ralph told voters that Senator John McCain fathered a black child?" she writes. "And my answer is always the same, 'How would I know? I was in a Greenville hotel room giving Ari Fleischer a blow job.'"

^^^ Henry James would kill for this opening sentence.

I'm also thinking about the kind of mouth that would receive Ari Fleischer's dick.

big deal, ari fleischer fucked us all in the face

amirite

x-post from yesterday

The point was to highlight a $3 billion perk available to those who buy these jets — a perk Republicans won’t touch because it would count as a (cue scary music) tax increase.

There's been some nitpicking of this item--some Republicans are claiming this deduction was part of something that Dems created and others are suggesting that is only a minor part of the deficit. Neither of those points is really much of a defense of keeping this item.

love sullivan's fierce line on gop dogma and obstruction

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/06/boehners-economic-terrorism.html

"That's the nature of today's GOP. It needs to be destroyed before it can recover."

damn!

The second option is to bypass them, invoke the 14th Amendment, and order the Treasury to keep paying its debts

wait waht

like, how does that work

desperation

no I mean I don't understand what the 14th Amendment has to do with superceding Congress and the President "ordering" the Treasury to do anything.

also lol

Well, read the link:

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2011/04/29/The-Debt-Limit-Option-President-Obama-Can-Use.aspx

Furthermore, it’s worth remembering that the debt limit is statutory law, which is trumped by the Constitution which has a little known provision that relates to this issue. Section 4 of the 14th Amendment says, “The validity of the public debt of the United States…shall not be questioned.” This could easily justify the sort of extraordinary presidential action to avoid default that I am suggesting.

Some will raise a concern that potential buyers of Treasury securities may be scared off by a fear that bonds sold over the debt limit may not be backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. However, given that the vast bulk of Treasury securities are 3-month bills that will turn over many, many times before this issue ever reaches the Supreme Court, it is doubtful than anyone will be concerned about that. And the Federal Reserve could assure investors that it will always be a buyer for such securities.

People smarter than I am tell me that the Treasury has an almost infinite ability to avoid a debt crisis. I hope they are right. But I am hypothesizing a situation in which the Treasury reaches the end of its rope and a day comes when it needs $X billion to pay interest and it has less than $X billion in cash. Under those circumstances, when default is the only possible alternative, I believe that the president and the Treasury secretary would be justified in taking extraordinary action to prevent it, even if it means violating the debt limit.

Constitutional history is replete with examples where presidents justified extraordinary actions by extraordinary circumstances. During the George W. Bush administration many Republicans defended the most expansive possible reading of the president’s powers, especially concerning national security. Since default on the debt would clearly have dire consequences for our relations with China, Japan and other large holders of Treasury securities, it’s hard to see how defenders of Bush’s policies would now say the president must stand by and do nothing when a debt default poses an imminent national security threat.

Given that the Supreme Court in recent years has been unusually deferential to executive prerogatives –I feel certain President Obama would be on firm constitutional ground should he challenge the debt limit in order to prevent a debt default. Should the Court rule in his favor, the debt limit would effectively become a dead letter. Is that really the outcome Republicans want from a debt limit showdown?

Etc. etc.

I don't understand what the 14th Amendment has to do with superceding Congress...

Shakey, the way it works is, Obama must call up Boehner at midnight and shout "I call fourteensies!" before Boehner can shout "I block fourteensies!" Then Obama has fourteen days during which he may bribe every member of the Supreme Court with cream-filled pastries and bags of T-Bills. If, at the end of that time the Supreme Court Justices have not absconded to the Bahamas, a ruling is issued that states "Boehner is a poopyhead".

lol

thx Ned I never noticed that clause

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/30/the-wageless-profitable-recovery/#

Bruce Brtlett been terrific the last month explaining the fiscal wrinkles:

Bruce Bartlett.

Take home quote from linked article, above:

With regard to corporate profits, the report noted that the preliminary estimate for the first quarter of 2011 was $1.668 trillion, an increase of $465 billion of just under 40 percent since the recovery began.

“Aggregate employment still has not increased above the trough quarter of 2009, and real hourly and weekly wages have been flat to modestly negative”...

brooke jarvis ran it as "corporate profits=88% of real income growth. Wages/salaries=1%."

cable news sideshow:

Following up on an earlier item, Time’s Mark Halperin appeared on MSNBC earlier to critique President Obama’s press conference. With a smile usually reserved for children who’ve learned a new vulgarity, the pundit said of the president, “I thought he was kind of a dick yesterday.”

He apologized, and soon after, MSNBC announced it’s suspending him.

“Mark Halperin’s comments this morning were completely inappropriate and unacceptable. We apologize to the President, The White House and all of our viewers. We strive for a high level of discourse and comments like these have no place on our air. Therefore, Mark will be suspended indefinitely from his role as an analyst.”

Sargent otm:

I’m sorry, but this is crazy. Halperin’s crack was crude and dumb, but it doesn’t deserve indefinite suspension. Halperin’s use of an expletive is trival when compared with the degradation of our political discourse we witness on a regular basis from Halperin and many others — degradation that is seen as perfectly acceptable because no curse words are employed. Suspending Halperin only reinforces a phony definition of “civility” in our discourse, in which it’s unacceptable to use foul language and be “uncivil,” but it’s perfectly acceptable for reporters and commentators to allow outright falsehoods to pass unrebutted; to traffic endlessly in false equivalences in the name of some bogus notion of objectivity; and to make confident assertions about public opinion without referring to polls which show them to be completely wrong.

I care less about Halperin’s use of the word “dick” than I do about the argument he and Joe Scarborough were making — that Obama somehow stepped over some kind of line in aggressively calling out the GOP for refusing to allow any revenues in a debt ceiling deal. This notion that Obama’s tone was somehow over the top — when politics is supposed to be a rough clash of visions — is rooted in a deeply ingrained set of unwritten rules about what does and doesn’t constitute acceptable political discourse that really deserve more scrutiny. This set of rules has it that it should be treated as a matter of polite, legitimate disagreement when Michele Bachmann says deeply insane things about us not needing to raise the debt limit, but it should be seen as an enormously newsworthy gaffe when she commits a relatively minor error about regional trivia. This set of rules has it that it should be treated as a matter of polite, legitimate disagreement when Republicans continually claim that Dems cut $500 billion in Medicare in a way that will directly impact seniors, even though fact checkers have pronounced it misleading, but it should be seen as “demagoguery” when Dems argue that the Paul Ryan plan would end Medicare as we know it.

yep

We strive for a high level of discourse

get my revolver

Rather, a “bipartisan” bill is a bill that the opposing party treats as bipartisan, while a partisan bill is a bill that the opposing party treats as partisan. That puts the agency where it belongs: on the minority party. The idea that the president can “be bipartisan” is dead wrong. He can be partisan, designing bills that the opposing party would never want to vote for, but he can’t be bipartisan unless the opposing party lets him. And knowing that any reputation he gets for bipartisanship will be used in his reelection campaign, why would they do that?

klein

I thought bipartisan simply meant the issues where lobbyist have bought off both parties.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/images/climatechange8wide.jpg

^ these dudes meeting in DC this week

pederasts?

pederasts with fetishes for adult feet

stupid motherfuckers arrrgh blind with raaaaage