American politics 2016: Lawyers, Guns, and D-Money

"There are two things that are unquestionably true about American politics:

1. Wielding power in a capitalistic, imperialistic, racist, sexist society means making necessary compromises and trade-offs that are difficult if not impossible to justify on progressive grounds.

2. Democratic and progressive politicians regularly make unforced errors that damage progressive goals and frequently cite non-existent or questionable political constraints to justify bad policies.

The trouble is distinguishing whether a policy decision is a necessary evil or an unforced error. About 90 percent of how you feel about the Democratic party will depend on which of these scenarios you think happens more frequently. About 90 percent of debates on Twitter ignore one of these two truths, which is why they are awful."

https://medium.com/@SeanMcElwee/two-truths-and-a-whole-lot-of-lies-2609b328bf03#.8w264npg7

Daughter of Illinois State Rep Accused of Attacking Mother's Opponent With Staple Gun

Meanwhile the EPA can't win for losing.

Ryan needs to shitcan the so-called Hastert Rule and just make bargains with the dems that can get at least 180 to 200 Republican votes, leaving the Freedom Caucus to stew in its own juice. It's that damn Hastert Rule that has handed them all their power, and the rule is entirely imaginary.

so not gonna happen

he'll lose the speakership if he does that

The Georgia General Assembly recently passed a bill, called the "Free Exercise Protection Act," that would allow faith-based organizations to deny services to people based on their religious beliefs.

But making the bill into law could create some backlash from the NFL, which Atlanta is hoping to host for the 2019 or 2020 Super Bowl.

"NFL policies emphasize tolerance and inclusiveness, and prohibit discrimination based on age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, or any other improper standard," Brian McCarthy, NFL spokesman, said in a statement. "Whether the laws and regulations of a state and local community are consistent with these policies would be one of many factors NFL owners may use to evaluate potential Super Bowl host sites."

http://news.wabe.org/post/religious-exemption-bill-could-bump-ga-super-bowl-list

priorities

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/03/21/why-we-cant-ignore-the-house-republicans-really-bad-budget/?hpid=hp_hp-cards_hp-card-posteverything%3Ahomepage%2Fcard

More on the House Republicans budget bill (that proposes lots of cuts, but not enough for the 40 member Tea Party Freedom caucus)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/03/21/these-photos-of-obama-in-cuba-are-going-viral/?tid=sm_fb

uh not what the White House wanted, I'm sure

unless they're just straight-up trolling right wing media

i would donate my 2004 Cuba photos to the White House for digital manipulation, but then again the only one i'm in is at Che's gravesite / memorial.

tomorrow is the meeting with dissidents and the ballgame, so nuthin can go wrong there.

how does this compare to photos of Nixon with the actual Mao? tell the wingnuts to sit on a chainsaw.

http://i.imgur.com/lvP1E8D.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CeFtox0WEAQJQwT.jpg

unless they're just straight-up trolling right wing media

^^^^

how would he be trolling right wing media?

In that Reagan speech under the Lenin bust, he condemned the Soviet system's stifling of intellectual curiosity, according to what I remember reading in the Cannon bio.

it'd be pretty funny if, back at the white house, the obamas are sitting around reading people rage about this and giggling

"mister president, maybe we should have the cameras face the other way? there's a huge che guevara mural behind you"

"nah, maybe o'reilly or limbaugh will finally have a brain aneurysm while yelling about this"

"Do you have any cigars about? I thought you'd have cigars. Never mind, doesn't matter"

"nah, maybe o'reilly or limbaugh will finally have a brain aneurysm while yelling about this"

― μpright mammal (mh

Change we can believe in!

nobody except the right wing media and maybe some cubans in FL give a fuck about these photos

speaker ryan growing a conscience? wtf is this

http://www.speaker.gov/press-release/full-text-speaker-ryan-state-american-politics

still reading thru it

"I’m certainly not going to stand here and tell you I have always met this standard. There was a time when I would talk about a difference between “makers” and “takers” in our country, referring to people who accepted government benefits. But as I spent more time listening, and really learning the root causes of poverty, I realized I was wrong. “Takers” wasn’t how to refer to a single mom stuck in a poverty trap, just trying to take care of her family. Most people don't want to be dependent. And to label a whole group of Americans that way was wrong. I shouldn’t castigate a large group of Americans to make a point.

"So I stopped thinking about it that way—and talking about it that way. But I didn’t come out and say all this to be politically correct. I was just wrong. And of course, there are still going to be times when I say things I wish I hadn’t. There are still going to be times when I follow the wrong impulse.

"Governing ourselves was never meant to be easy. This has always been a tough business. And when passions flair, ugliness is sometimes inevitable. But we shouldn’t accept ugliness as the norm. We should demand better from ourselves and from one another. We should think about the great leaders that have bestowed upon us the opportunity to live the American Idea. We should honor their legacy. We should build that more confident America.

doesn't know the diff between flare and flair but oh well, wisconsin

golden opportunity for a Dem House? lookin' like idiots so far...

"...Most of those seats are hopelessly Republican, but not all of them. Six of the districts have a Cook Partisan Voting Index score (a measure of how much more partisan a district is than the median) of “Republican+10” or less. Democrats held two of them, the 3rd and 10th districts in Pennsylvania, as recently as 2010. Illinois’s 16th district, held by Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger, is only R+4, but no Democrat emerged to challenge him. Given their thin margin for error, Democrats need surprises in seats like Kinzinger’s to win the majority. But they cannot get his.

If this pattern continues, dozens more Republicans (in the states where candidates can still file) will see no general-election opposition from Democrats. To give one glaring example, Virginia’s 2nd district, which Mitt Romney won only narrowly in 2012, has an open seat; incumbent Scott Rigell is retiring. But while two Republicans have announced they’re running, no Democrat has declared yet, and filing closes March 31. There’s also no Democrat currently running in Colorado’s 3rd district, an R+5 seat where incumbent Scott Tipton only won 53 percent of the vote in 2012."

https://newrepublic.com/article/131919/retaking-house-democratic-pipe-dream

yeah one thing I know for sure is that the Dems will actively screw up every opportunity handed to them this season

wow at Ryan's makers/takers recant. it's not often you see someone in his position admit that they were completely wrong

would be cool if all Bernie's $$$ was going to challengers for those House seats instead

xp

Kizinger's kinda hot tbh

that Ryan statement is really odd, trying to think of what could have motivated it

Growth? It's been known to happen. Rarely.

He's probably dying.

don't underestimate electoral panic

i suppose there is the possibility that he genuinely realized he made a mistake (over and over) and wants to atone. but wasn't he handing out copies of the fountainhead to everyone like 2 years ago? and now suddenly he realizes it was all a giant mistake? someone needs to ask him if ayn rand is still his favorite author

of course he can pretend he doesn't thumb through The Fountainhead before his P90X routine.

yeah there's gotta be some political triangulation/calculation to saying this at this particular juncture, I just don't get what it is. Maybe that's undergirded by some personal revelations, and in that case I can't help but wonder what those were as well.

"cut your losses"

lol @ those paragraphs leading into praise for the Kemp-Roth '81 tax cut ie more Laffer cruve "trickle-down" horseshit

but wasn't he handing out copies of the fountainhead to everyone like 2 years ago? and now suddenly he realizes it was all a giant mistake? someone needs to ask him if ayn rand is still his favorite author

― Karl Malone, Wednesday, March 23, 2016 12:40 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If we can forgive 19-year-olds, perhaps we can also forgive Paul Ryan.

Maybe, and I'm talking just an outside chance here, but maybe Ryan suddenly realized that makers/takers is widely used by white supremacists as coded language for whites/minorities and he became deeply ashamed of himself.

David Stockman: "Kemp-Roth was always a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate."

Every Republican running for President is proposing more massive tax cuts for the rich.

Ryan may be changing his phrasing, but not his core values or any substantive House bills.

Back In January Ryan began talking about this--

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-paul-ryan-stopped-referring-to-makers-and-takers/

At a Wisconsin 4-H fair in 2012, Ryan encountered a Democrat who objected to what then was one of Ryan’s signature rhetorical tropes — his distinction between “makers” and “takers,” the latter being persons who receive more in government spending than they pay in taxes. He had been struck by a report that 60 percent of Americans were already — this was before Obamacare — “net receivers.” But his encounter at the fair reminded him that, for a while, he and many people he cared about had been takers, too.

The morning after a night “working the Quarter Pounder grill at McDonald’s,” Ryan, 16, found his father, who had been troubled by alcohol, dead in bed. Janesville’s strong sinews of community sustained Ryan and his mother; so did Social Security survivor benefits. When GM’s Janesville assembly plant closed, draining about $220 million of annual payroll from a town of 60,000, many relatives, friends and constituents needed the social safety net — unemployment compensation, job training, etc.

“At the fair that day, I realized I’d been careless with my language,” he writes. “The phrase gave insult where none was intended.” He has changed his language and his mind somewhat but thinks the fundamental things still apply.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-paul-ryan-rethinks-the-makers-and-takers-idea/2014/08/29/62d02090-2ee4-11e4-9b98-848790384093_story.html

pffftt

what an asshole

man George Will has always wanted to sit on Ryan's lap.

imo there's a difference between trumpeting your ideals, no matter how misguided they are, and being dumb enough to think your job in congress is do just stand around yelling about those ideals instead of doing your job

paul ryan is pretty bad, but he seems to actually have an interest in working and maybe finally realized some of his peers who ran on the same rhetoric aren't very bright

he's so bright it took him several decades to realize he was a "taker"

it's a net product over your lifetime, I am sure all his hard work now makes up for that

lol

Fun with Chait:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/03/reminder-liberalism-is-working-marxism-failed.html

How much hippie punching would you like in one screed? What if he worked in slams against college students _and_ political correctness in his clueless ahistory?

he still thinks the DLC won

I want to thank Cruz for an amazing turn of phrase here

"If a Republican cannot carry the state of Utah, which Donald Trump cannot, you are looking at a Mondale-level bloodbath."