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

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."

ol' "Hurricane" Mondale, they used to call him

We should not forget that for four years, Walter Mondale was Vice President of the United States of America.

and each day during that term, he bathed in the blood of the innocent, in an enormous stone tub built for this very purpose

It's weird how some things only seem aberrant with forty years of hindsight.

Mondale was such a no-hoper, i voted for him

in defense of lost causes by slavoj morbius

some shit going down in north carolina tonight

McCrory to sign bill barring LGBT protections against discrimination

I still have a killer Mondale '84 t-shirt fyi

wtf is wrong with these people

that bill sounds like it's trolling for a rematch on the Romer v. Evans law. what a weird moment to try and do that.

Conservatives only wage culture war fights they've already lost; trans issues and "bathroom panic" is generating a lot of heat this year. No consolation to those being harmed or feeling threatened by any of this but the gay marriage cases of last year were inevitable when "traditional marriage" amendments swept ballots in many states in 2004.

This is in the NC bill too

In addition to voiding the bathroom provision of Charlotte's ordinance and spelling out state policy on discrimination in employment and public accommodations, the bill also would prohibit cities and counties from adopting so-called living wage ordinances because that would require businesses to pay workers more than the state-established minimum wage
Read more at http://www.wral.com/nc-lawmakers-bar-lgbt-protections-against-discrimination/15594951/#qPCRsZIZpmbY7Mbd.99

Sadly there's probably no way to mount a federal constitutional challenge against anti-home-rule statutes enacted by states, I think they can do whatever they want there.

move the fuck out, gay ppl

'radical breach of trust and security under the false argument of equal access'

https://governor.nc.gov/press-release/governor-mccrory-takes-action-ensure-privacy-bathrooms-and-locker-rooms

move the fuck out, gay ppl

― we can be heroes just for about 3.6 seconds (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, March 23, 2016 9:19 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes, that should solve all the problems. can they all move in with you?

soonz i die

youd leave more room, tho

i have no idea what that means

if all the NC fags move to NY they'll drive your rent up though

^this guy goes or i do. enough already.

huh?? i'm scarcely needling you any more than you or i would anyone else; i'd call it teasing more than anything else. i think you're projecting something much nastier onto what i've posted than what was intended.

speaker ryan growing a conscience? wtf is this

press release: i am so presidential

Conservatives only wage culture war fights they've already lost;

Yup.

Stephen Prothero just came out with an entire book on that very subject