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

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

The "Reply To Our Critics' page on Heartland's website is some Class-A denial work:

http://www.heartland.org/about/truthsquad.html

Wow, that poster seriously seems like it was put together by someone looking at the list of Most Used Skeptic Arguments on SkepticalScience.com!

http://i52.tinypic.com/30tierb.jpg

(people who haven't seen that site should check it out, btw. It has dozens of common skeptic arguments, including all of the ones on that poster, and then provides a response to each of them, and usually with multiple levels of technical lingo - one response will be a quick, simple summary paragraph, another will be much longer, with many citations, graphs, etc. it's a wonderful resource.)

you really don't have to do a lot to that poster to have a picture of an adult leg forcefully kicking a child. just in case it's useful to know that you can turn some of their promo materials 90 degrees and steer away a few curious attendees, hoos

huh

"global warming: kicking childhood dreams in the solar plexus"

2.

is all.

well 2 out of 100 detainees. and those are the 2 dead guys. (I dunno if there were any other deaths)

tbh I think its odd that there are any prosecutions at all. seems like something they could just has easily have buried/denied.

^ the world isn't ever as simple as it seems

i'm just...you're telling me a president authorized systematic torture of prisoners and enabled rendition to black sites around the world, and we're getting two fucking prosecutions out of this?

i know this is not important (i am in favour of a dedicated thread for all the joe biden e-mails i get) so i shouldn't interrupt, BUT, it's so funny to get an e-mail from BHO without even a friendly subject line & with a perfunctory More soon sign off.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/birthers-sue-esquire-more-100-million-over-satire-163444777.html

smh

hi, i'm new here but have enjoyed reading this and other threads for some time. but xp to hoos,i agree that these prosecutions are way too little and too late, but do you think that they could possibly portend more serious efforts on the part of the administration to curb detainee abuses in the future? or am i being hopelessly naive? that article sort of struck me as a tepid step in the right direction.

i'm not sure if i used "xp" right, btw. i think it means that i am responding to someone who posted further up in the thread, but i'm not totally familiar with the etiquette/conventions of this messageboard.

hmm

hi

welcome, Pat!

pat

Grrr. I was just reading Marc torture defender Thiessen's column from the W. Post from a few days back on taxes, defense cuts and the debt. Below he talks about the Republican hostage taking strategy. I did not cut and paste the part where he suggests that irresponsible Obama defense cuts are paying for the failed stimulus. What an idiot. :

Yet Republicans are letting the Democrats use the tax issue to extract concessions. GOP leaders need to realize that they are the ones with the leverage in these negotiations. What are Democrats going to say if GOP leaders simply refuse to go along with their demand for tax hikes or give them defense cuts in exchange? “Sorry, Mr. Speaker, no deal — let the country default”? Of course not. President Obama does not have the luxury of letting the debt-limit talks fail and then blaming the GOP for a government default. If the dire predictions of his treasury secretary are to be believed, the consequences of a default would be so calamitous that Obama cannot allow it to happen. He must sign whatever debt-limit increase Republicans give him.

This means Republicans hold all the cards. So why on earth are they even thinking about giving Obama deep cuts in national defense in exchange for dropping his demand for tax increases that he knows he will never get? In November, Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned that even a 10 percent cut from the Pentagon budget, roughly $55 billion, would be “catastrophic” to the U.S. military. Obama has already cut more than $400 billion in defense programs since taking office, and he has proposed an additional $400 billion in defense cuts over the next 10 years.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/make-no-defense-cuts-or-tax-increases-in-debt-deal/2011/06/27/AG5buWnH_story.html

Any defense cuts so far have been miniscule. What is he talking about?

The $400 billion in security budget reductions between FY 2012 and FY 2023 announced by President Obama on Wednesday turn out to be even easier than one thinks. As the New York Times reports this morning, these aren't really cuts. Using research we did at the Stimson Center, the Times notes that simply holding DOD's budget growth to inflation over those years yields $401.7 billion in savings from the current OMB budget projections. The President's goal is reached and the defense budget is actually not cut; the Pentagon keeps all its purchasing power by rising with inflation.

http://www.capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/gordon-adams/2213/its-still-easy-obamas-400-billion-defense-not-cut

Oh wait, he's saying 400 + 400? nm, I dunno...

dear God, please let this be so. and also please supply the swinging door to hit Timmy on his ass as he exits

That is potentially great news. Please leave Geithner. Not that Obama will replace him with someone more interested in helping the poeple rather than Wall Street (and someone that can get Congressional approval), but we can dream, right?

Typical Republican response on this:

Some Republicans are already urging Obama to select a replacement who comes from the business community.

“What would be smart is to bring a CEO on board,” Senator Rob Portman of Ohio said on Bloomberg Television. “Somebody who’s got business experience. Somebody who, again, understands the important connection between policies and jobs and the economy and the fiscal situation.”

letting CEOs keep their money and the workers pay their taxes in gratitude for the boss's prosperity

go bless america's distraction machine. instead of talking about something real, like how to finance a GI bill for our troops returning home from Middle East combat, we have retired republicans like alan simpson and pete domenici scolding the fuck ups in office

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-01/domenici-s-truth-squad-challenges-fellow-republicans-on-debt-cap-debate.html

Former U.S. Senator Pete Domenici, who helped forge four major federal budget agreements, has formed a “truth squad” to caution fellow Republicans about the hazards of breaching the U.S. debt ceiling.

happy 4th

(from krugman this morning)

Last December, after Mr. Obama agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts — a move that many people, myself included, viewed as in effect a concession to Republican blackmail — Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic asked why the deal hadn’t included a rise in the debt limit, so as to forestall another hostage situation (my words, not Mr. Ambinder’s).

The president’s response seemed clueless even then. He asserted that “nobody, Democrat or Republican, is willing to see the full faith and credit of the United States government collapse,” and that he was sure that John Boehner, as speaker of the House, would accept his “responsibilities to govern.”

so, so sad, on all levels

i sort of think he did that on purpose -- he'd be "forced" to concede to drastic republican spending cuts, then be able to boast during the election that he cut so much from the budget. he just underestimated how nihilist the tea party crew really is

Minnesota govt shuts down cuz GOP won't ... oh do I even have to say it

Amazing.

what the fucking shit.

Screenshot of drunk/angry/batshit tweeting by Fox News

the feed, still live & offensive as of this writing

they were hacked bro

gonna guess they were hacked

xp

or a hack, I guess, maybe? idk lol xp

can't believe aerosmith hacked the fox news twitter feed

sorry guys sometimes I just have to hack

They're gonna say Jon Stewart did it though. They're blaming him for a lot these days

Happy Independence Day.

From Obama and the NSA