2015 American Politics Thread: The 114th Congress Is in the House!

Kilgore seems little concerned about the email thing, while others are a little bit more unhappy, meanwhile Jeb Bush chuckles as his private emails issue was largely uncovered.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/top-democrats-are-alarmed-about-clintons-readiness-for-a-campaign/2015/03/11/36c0763a-c818-11e4-aa1a-86135599fb0f_story.html

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/03/11/two-names-the-press-omits-from-email-coverage-c/202847

How about that Secret Service (D'oh):

Two Secret Service agents suspected of driving under the influence and striking a White House security barricade disrupted an active bomb investigation and may have driven over the suspicious package itself, according to current and former government officials familiar with the incident.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/secret-service-agents-disrupted-bomb-investigation-at-white-house/2015/03/12/0eb74590-c8c4-11e4-aa1a-86135599fb0f_story.html?hpid=z1

onion is on it

WASHINGTON—Expressing gratitude for helping her escape certain punishment, Malia Obama quietly thanked two Secret Service agents Thursday for taking the rap after she crashed a government vehicle into a White House barricade while returning from a late-night party. “Thanks so much, you guys; I promise I’ll be way more careful next time,”

Prince Andrew of New York had this guvmint email archiving figured out -- his admin PURGES all official email after 90 days! Til now, I guess. A true Clintonite down to his corpuscles.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/cuomo-calls-policy-criticism-email-purges-29616981

as a paralegal that has to deal with compliance for discovery requests and lawsuits this shit is a circus

if this was something like bank of america instead of the gov't you'd have like 50 different backups of everything

fun charts too

Spending channeled through the tax code tends to overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Americans.

According to an analysis of $340 billion in tax subsidies for housing, education, retirement and savings in 2013, the top 1 percent received about $95 billion, more than the $90 billion received by the bottom 80 percent combined, said the Corporation for Enterprise Development, a nonprofit organization that seeks to build assets for low- and moderate-income families.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/18/business/economy/taxes-take-away-but-also-give-back-mostly-to-the-very-rich.html

, the top 1 percent received about $95 billion, more than the $90 billion received by the bottom 80 percent combined

reminds me of this fun chart:

http://www.motherjones.com/files/income-inequality-2.0.gif

I should save up my pennies to buy a lobbyist for myself

seriously though, that's astounding. if everyone receiving a bonus on wall street took half of their crazy bonuses and gave it to a minimum wage employee, it would double the wages of the ~1 million people who work for minimum wage.

^^^ THIS! (Or you should just go to school and better yourself, and get out of that minimum wage job.)

Exactly. And once this House budget proposal passes (with its changes to Medicare and Medicaid), those minimum wage workers will really learn how to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/03/18/give-house-republicans-credit-for-producing-a-budget-this-cruel/

Dick Cheney likes lattes. Seated in his favorite brown-leather chair in the sunlit study of his home in McLean, Virginia, the former vice president of the United States can toss back two of the warm java blasts in an hour. They come from a stainless-steel machine in the kitchen and a slender, mustachioed housekeeper named Gus, who serves them in custom-ordered white Starbucks cups outfitted with cardboard Starbucks sleeves.

that's the first paragraph of the playboy interview, apparently (choosing not to click because i'm at work)

I'd prefer a Playboy interview with Gus. xPOST

Two lattes in an hour!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

they keep his heart beating

new from evil angel: dick's warm java blasts vol viii

Was reading on ilm that Azealia Banks was being interviewed in Playboy, didn't realize Cheney as well.

his wife did write softcore porn

http://www.amazon.com/Sisters-Lynne-Cheney/dp/0451112040

lol

What do women want? A new edition of
By A Customer on May 1, 2004
Format: Mass Market Paperback Verified Purchase
Just focus for a moment on the nickname of the husband of the authoress, and it becomes E-Z to understand why Lynne Cheney's throbbing pudenda compelled her to write this novel more than two decades ago. As directed by the Commander in Chief, the White House gynecologist has since infibulated the author. Yet potent testimony of the intensity of gratified female desire remains between the well-thumbed pages of the few yellowing copies of "Sisters" that have not been purchased and burned by Attorney General John Ashcroft and his staff members.

"Sisters" made its debut when Mrs. Cheney was an unknown scribbler, though her words undoubtedly inspired the life choices of her daughter Mary. It is shameful that partisan political pressure upon Lynne's publishing house, as well as her current status as Second Womyn of the United States, keeps this moist, glistening gem from being reissued. Readers across America would find "Sisters" a fine excuse for self-abuse if only this exquisite paean to Sapphic love, as well as to prophylactic-clad heterosexual bonking in the Wild West, became widely available once again! Forty-four bidders attempted to buy a yellowing copy from eBay, yet only one succeeded, at a price beyond rubies.

Obama has ended up following Cheney's worldview nearly to the letter, but I guess just not as lol, and that's what matters.

well he hasn't shot any friends in the face yet

still time tho

Outward Bound w/ Rahm

more drones than troops for O

Giuliani urges Republicans to confirm Lynch as AG

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/20/rudy-giuliani-loretta-lynch_n_6910424.html

Seems like this can go here (and not just the Rahm E thread)

Unless they get the crazy lefty money machine going nationally, it’s not going to matter that there’s a resurgent left,” said an adviser to Mr. Emanuel who did not want to speak publicly about strategy. “The liberals at Heartland Cafe in Rogers Park can think great thoughts and read poetry for Chuy, but nothing else will happen.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/us/chicago-mayors-race-is-cast-as-a-test-of-liberalism.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=2

"Crazy Lefty Money Machine," my fave early Paul Simon composition

really how many George Soroseseses are there?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/03/23/mitch-mcconnell-has-a-plan-to-derail-obamas-climate-agenda-it-might-actually-work/

Former Obama legal issues and appointments advisor, Law Prof Larry Tribe helping MCConnell with constitutional analysis (that others differ with) re state rights re fed regulations

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said he didn't know what the Republican party's environmental platform is, but he does know that GOP inaction on climate change is Al Gore's fault.

"You know, when it comes to climate change being real, people of my party are all over the board," Graham said after a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations while responding to a question about whether Republicans could work with Democrats to address climate change.

"I said that it's real, that man has contributed to it in a substantial way," Graham continued. "But the problem is Al Gore's turned this thing into religion. You know, climate change is not a religious problem for me, it's an economic, it is an environmental problem."

The senator then said that Republicans do not have a clear stance on climate change, or a plan to address it.

"I think the Republican Party has to do some soul-searching. Before we can be bipartisan, we've got to figure out where we are as a party. What is the environmental platform of the Republican Party? I don't know, either," he said.

Graham, who has said before that environmental policy could be a problem for the GOP in 2016, indicated that he would like to help the party develop an environmental platform.

"I'd like to have a debate within the party. Can you say that climate change is a scientifically sound phenomenon? But can you reject the idea you have to destroy the economy to solve the problem, is sort of where I'll be taking this debate," he said.

so basically he's about 30 years behind

god he's dumb

or MAYBE strategically and cynically "dumb"

what is the difference these days, who knows

all of those debate "questions" were literally addressed decades ago

the GOP has a long list of items that require soul-searching. i like to imagine them all wandering into the desert together to search for their souls, getting lost, and never coming back.

ohohohoh or maybe they get lost but then they FIND their souls and return and suddenly kick ass

wrapping your servitude to the owner class inside bait for the starving class takes a certain kind of genius/cojones/deathwish, take your pick.

What is the environmental platform of the Republican Party?

You have to destroy the economy to solve the problem

Seems like he kinda answered his own question there.

since the economy only really works for rich fucks anyways seems like a win-win

@ggreenwald
Congress, in its usual kneeling posture, says they have no problem at all with Israel spying on the US

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/24/congress-totally-cool-with-israel-spying-on-u-s-officials-negotiating-with-iran.html

digby makes the obvious point:

Israel is spying on the US, with US knowledge apparently. But Israel is sharing what it learns with opposition members of congress in order to influence policy within the US government.

These people want to jail Edward Snowden for espionage while actual members of the US Government are working with a foreign nation to undermine an anti-nuclear peace agreement!

That Bergdahl issue again, fuck.

george will has an opinion.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-income-inequality-benefits-everybody

Monopoly profits are social blessings when they “signal to the ambitious the wealth they can earn by entering previously unknown markets.” So “when the wealth gap widens, the lifestyle gap shrinks .” Hence, “income inequality in a capitalist system is truly beautiful” because “it provides the incentive for creative people to gamble on new ideas, and it turns luxuries into common goods.” Since 2000, the price of a 50-inch plasma TV has fallen from $20,000 to $550.

Henry Ford doubled his employees’ basic wage in 1914, supposedly to enable them to buy Fords. Actually, he did it because in 1913 annual worker turnover was 370 percent. He lowered labor costs by reducing turnover and the expense of constantly training new hires.

All these thoughts are from John Tamny, a one-man antidote to economic obfuscation and mystification. Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), who called economics “the dismal science,” never read Tamny, a Forbes editor, editor of RealClearMarkets and now author of the cheerful, mind-opening book, “Popular Economics: What the Rolling Stones, Downton Abbey, and LeBron James Can Teach You About Economics.”

a one-man antidote to economic obfuscation and mystification

Carlyle quote from his well-thumbed Bartlett's.

whoops, i used the wrong link. i don't know why anyone would read it anyway, or why i chose to read it and share it with you all, but here's the corrected link.

btw, what the rolling stones can teach us about economics is that keith richards got so pissed about the tax rate in england in the early 70s that he moved to france.

Also, heroin.

LOL @ the great example Henry Ford being 101 year ago.

i love how debt doesn't factor into george's little fairy tale world

As George notes, if you can buy a made in China Iphone, or whatever you need at a bargain rate at Walmart, who cares about debt or the fact the 1% elite make that much more than you. Inequality brings you food and a phone.

That Will thing annoys me. Typically for conservative talkers, he's all on about how smart and clear-seeing he is, and how disappointingly stupid his opposition is being.

He posits a right-wing fantasy-land in which government spending is EXACTLY THE SAME as setting money on fire. In this view, the money ingested and expended by the wealthy and corporations is ever-flowing and miraculously regenerative, but governments are some weird monetary black hole.

Actually, the opposite is probably closer to the facts. Government spending is NOT simply flushed down the toilet; it goes back into the economy, usually pretty quickly.

- Directly buying things. For example, the Navy needs a lot of ketchup. So if you grow tomatoes or make ketchup, then - surprise! - tax dollars are flowing right back to you.

- Salaries and benefits to government workers.

Note: conservatives want you to think "pencil-necked EPA geek" when you hear the phrase "government worker." But that category omits all the soldiers, sailors, marines, police, firemen, teachers, etc. Those people are heroes when it's convenient for conservatives, but suddenly lazy and parasitic when it's convenient to lump them into the category "government workers."

And what do you think these folks do with their (allegedly lavish) paychecks? Set them on fire? No, they BUY THINGS. So if you sell groceries or cars or clothing to government workers, tax dollars are going right back into your pocket, as if by magic.

- Government contracting, which is OVERWHELMINGLY for defense. But even when it is not spent on guns, bombs, planes, and tanks, it is often spent on things like roads, bridges, etc. Guess who benefits? People whose jobs involve making those things. Also the people who sell food, clothing, housing, etc. to the people who make those things. And so on. I'm pretty sure the VPs of General Dynamics have nice houses. Somebody built those houses, somebody cleans them. I'm also pretty sure they consume groceries.

- "Entitlements" and "welfare," in all their varied and allegedly lavish forms. But do welfare recipients set their (allegedly lavish) checks on fire? No, they BUY THINGS. FROM PEOPLE. So if you sell groceries or cars or clothing or haircuts to welfare recipients, tax dollars are flowing right back into your pocket.

Indeed, poor people buy MORE things relative to their income. Because they have to. Otherwise, they'd starve. So it goes back to the economy fast. Much faster than corporately hoarded cash, for example.

not without precedent, of course, and as abhorrent as ever. DIPLOMATIC IMMMUNITY.

An 800-page independent report commissioned by the US-friendly Colombian government and the radical left rebel group FARC found that US military soldiers and contractors had sexually abused at least 54 children in Colombia between 2003 and 2007 and, in all cases, the rapists were never punished–either in Colombia or stateside–due to American military personnel being immune from prosecution under diplomatic immunity agreements between the two countries.

http://fair.org/blog/2015/03/26/colombian-report-on-us-militarys-child-rapes-not-newsworthy-to-us-news-outlets/