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

Will endear each of them to millions.

http://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/bush-clinton-cover.jpg?quality=65&strip=color&w=814

gross

why does Time Magazine still exist anyway

People wanna know what's happening in the world, week by week. The people who work during the day, and can read it small. And it's concise, and there's pictures in it. A certain class of people--it's a class of people that take the magazine seriously. I read it on the airplanes.

Obama going refreshingly off-script in his announcement of the Clean Power Plan, which is still live right now if anyone's reading this.

great link thx Karl

gonna be a lot of talk about this around my office

yeah, there's gonna be a million lawsuits, too

yeah I should hit up my former coworkers who went into energy/environmental law

http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0411/Murray_stunned_government_might_shutter_over_Planned_Parenthood.html

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said Thursday that Republican pressure to include a rider to a budget deal defunding Planned Parenthood is “stunning” to her as a woman and that Senate leadership will not back down in their support of women’s health issues.

“I am really stunned. And I am angry as a woman that we have come to this after weeks of negotiating on numbers… that there are those in the Republican party in the House who are willing to shutdown the government, take people’s paychecks away from them because they want to deny women access to health care in this country,” Murray told reporters. “Every woman and every man in this country ought to be saying, ‘What are you doing?’”

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said repeatedly Thursday that the spending talks between Senate Democrats, the White House and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) essentially have broken down in the 11th hour not over figures but over “ideology.”

i was naive to think that the GOP's ransom/govt. shutdown strategy would be limited to years in which democrats and republicans split control of congress. now i realize it's EVERY YEAR. shit, even if they controlled both houses of congress + the presidency, i could see them threatening to shut down the govt

If you value your health, don't read the comments.

i read the first one (which featured MAMAGRAMS in all caps) and closed the tab

I would never work for the government if my paycheck got held hostage every 4 months

we usually end up getting backpay, but it does throw a colossal wrench into everyone's work

And we have to deal with the Chinese hackers stealing our identity and our bank accounts. Thanks OPM.

Planned Parenthood defunding failed (gee what a surprise)

I forgot about that verse in "I'm Just a Bill on Capitol Hill" that starts with the making of a hoax/attack video

have ppl talked about jade helm anywhere on here?

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/camp-shelby-gunfire-soldier-reports-more-shots-fired-at-mississippi-military-facility/

this is nuts

Also: http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/anti-jade-helm-15-nuts-arrested-in-north-carolina-after-hoarding-weapons-and-making-bombs/

Greenwald on the Iran-deal speech that made some ppl all gooey:

Two recent foreign policy moves are major positive items on Obama’s legacy: normalization of relations with Cuba and agreeing to this deal with Iran. But, as he himself just proudly touted yesterday, the overall record of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate is one of violence, militarism and aggression that has left a pile of dead bodies of innocent people. That Obama feels the need (or desire) to boast about how many countries he’s bombed, and that the only mainstream criticisms of him in the Iran debate is that he is too unwilling to use more aggression and force, says a lot about Obama, but even more about U.S. political culture. And none of what it says is good.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/08/06/obama-summarizes-record/

Totally true. That's why the Iran deal is the best possible.

i would pay top euro to see greenwald interview the president's anger translator, luther, about aggression, force, U.S. political culture, and the 2009 nobel peace prize

xxxp ugh didn't know this jade helm nonsense has expanded from tx, sorry rest of america

i know that's a comedy sketch ref, but Obama has gotten plenty angry IRL 'to his left' if you pay close attention.

xp

he kept america safe compared to the last bozo. he is not christ though true

congrats on religifyin' the Not Perfect meme

i do forget how many whistleblowers Christ threw in jail tbh

you're still assuming that intelligent people can't separate the appalling from the terrible, I see.

You can't see that the Iran deal is good coming out of an administration whose Libya/drone policy is terrible.

that's a new one! xp

someone on my friend's FB feed literally said the next Dem president would bring on the extinction event more slowly

i don't want to go to war with iran. not sure about greenwald

you don't want to go to war with greenwald

‏@ggreenwald
Everything about Chuck Schumer's career should make this Iran Deal moment utterly unsurprising: amazing Dem pick to be next Majority Leader.

I'm disgusted but not surprised. In exchange he's supposedly not persuading other Dems to follow suit (which is why Gillibrand went on record supporting the deal a couple weeks ago)

yes, they are NY's very own calculated Good Cop Bad Cop.

http://national.suntimes.com/national-world-news/7/72/1582384/deez-nuts-running-president-polling-8-percent

nuts u can believe in

https://i.gyazo.com/d115aebea935ac4c2727eb5993839f57.png

former ilxor does well for himself

http://data.whicdn.com/images/68810376/large.jpg

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/250559-state-rep-planned-to-accuse-himself-of-gay-sex-scandal-to-hide

i think this is progress?

LOL

i kinda thought that's what Gov McGreevey did

Charles Pierce: "I am willing to believe that Senator Chuck Schumer bailed on the Iran deal because he knows that the deal is safe and, therefore, had a free one as regards to a contentious constituent issue. But it also does mean that he shouldn't be allowed within 20 yards of the Democratic Senate leadership."

So maybe you saw that Governor Bentley of Alabama made a big deal about pulling the state's funding of Planned Parenthood because that seems like the thing to do this month. Now it's been revealed that the state was only giving $5,000 to PP in the first place. Not a typo.

That's some stand you're taking, Bentley!

Have we posted much itt about Scott Walker's campaign finance corruption case? That decision that the WI Supreme Court just handed down is such garbage.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/10/us-no-fly-list-predictive-assessments?CMP=edit_2221

oh

“If the Government were required to provide full notice of its reasons for placing an individual on the No Fly List and to turn over all evidence (both incriminating and exculpatory) supporting the No Fly determination, the No Fly redress process would place highly sensitive national security information directly in the hands of terrorist organizations and other adversaries,” the assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, Michael Steinbach, wrote in a declaration to Brown.

Terrorist organizations would have “every incentive” to manipulate the Department of Homeland Security’s procedures for challenging no-fly list inclusion, Steinbach argued, “in order to discover whether they or their members are subject to investigation or intelligence operations, what sources and methods the Government employs to obtain information or what type of intelligence information is sufficient to trigger an investigation in the first place”.

Sounds very reasonable, until you realize that there is no evidence that any of these 'predictive intelligence methods' have any proved connection to any desired outcome. It appears the government is just profiling on a huge scale and using the no-fly list to intimidate large numbers of people by signaling to them they are under active suspicion.

a friend of a friend of mine got sent back from NYC via heathrow because he was allegedly on the no fly list.. unfortunately he was born in saudi arabia and is an engineer. think he has a scottish passport too.

@ggreenwald Glenn Greenwald retweeted David Frum
Same people who justified this now scampering to find justifications for the huge exception about to be made...

Obama and leakers: Who are the eight charged under the Espionage Act?

Obama has prosecuted more people under the 100-year-old act than any other president

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/12/5/obama-and-leakerswhoaretheeightchargedunderespionageact.html

btw p good article about the Kansas GOP budget circus in the NYT mAG last weekend.

Planning the post-presidency.. The best part:

"his drink of choice at the gatherings is an extra-dry Grey Goose martini"