US POLITICS: AMERICANS, PLEASE WELCOME YOUR NEW PRESIDENT... SCOTT BROWN!

heckuva job, bahyie

WHO WILL THE INDIANA DEMOCRATIC PARTY NOMINATE?

so does this mean that barring a big swing in public opinion or the economy, GOP is favored to take the senate?

He's the one with a wife running a major health insurance thing, yes?

so does this mean that barring a big swing in public opinion or the economy, GOP is favored to take the senate?

that would take a 20-seat swing for the gop, i believe. not sure how big a swing that is, historically, for the party in power during an off-year election.

oh man, feel the genius here

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjZhNmU5ZjEzMGJkZmQ3ZGE0OWU3YzJjM2FjZDJmZTQ=

One of Goldberg's readers shows as much acumen:

Hi Jonah,

I know things are looking bad for the Dems right now but I would have thought Bayh had a secure seat. Any chance he wants to lay low for this election cycle and then challenge Obama in 2012? As Democrats go, Bayh occasionally shows a bit of common sense (and winning in Indiana suggests the voters think so to).

If 2010 turns out to be a bigger wipeout than 1994 then Obama will face a challenger. Bayh could point to his record of warning fellow Democrats of the mistakes Obama was making and a 2010 debacle would suggest he was right. I don't know if he could defeat Obama in a primary challenge but he could have a shot, especially in states with open primaries and states with a a more moderate (i.e. White) base. Running as the savior of a party must have some appeal to Bayh.

This stuff is better than following sports. I hope you and your family are doing well.

obama v. bayh in 2012, for the lols.

i.e. White base

tbh, i doubt bayh would pander to that base (but he might see it as a natural constituency). he'd be a pretty weak challenger/rallying cry for that base, tho.

Running as the savior of a party must have some appeal to Bayh.

oh, the funny things that right-wingers say ...

now, were hilary clinton to abruptly resign in the next year or two, then i'd wonder about a rematch (which would be ugly).

sorry, hillary clinton.

(alfred, do you read other people's posts? that's the exact thing i linked to, right above yours)

man so the fuck long evan bayh you slimy piece of shit

btw this asshole can make do more meaningful work outside of congress where "meaningful work" means for his bank account not the public

btw this asshole can make do more meaningful work outside of congress where "meaningful work" means for his bank account not the public

yeah, that sounds just about right. even nowadays and wr2 Blue Dogs, it isn't quite kosher for Democratic elected officials to just come right out and say that they're going onto the lucrative lobbying/whoring circuit instead of cutting loose w/ some pious-sounding malarkey about "meaningful work" and "public service" and that kind of shit.

He's the one with a wife running a major health insurance thing, yes?

― extra awesome blossom (suzy), Monday, February 15, 2010 5:34 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

xxxxxp
would be interested to know if this is true - lieberman's wife's involved in a health charity, would be super depressing if they're both so ironically sidekicked.

When he was governor, Bayh’s wife, Susan, was a lawyer for [Eli] Lilly. After it became clear he was going to be a senator, she started stacking up memberships on the boards of health-care corporations.

Susan Bayh got paid a little over $2 million for her service between 2006 and 2008. Her husband had a good 2008 also, collecting more than $500,000 in campaign donations from the health-care industry.

Bayh's wife is on the BoD of WellPoint and about five other similar companies.

Hadassah Lieberman also has a place on the board of a breast cancer charity, yes, but there was a push to remove her a few months ago because of Joe and her own place on health-related boards.

Anyone read the Holder profiles in the NYT this morning and last week's New Yorker? Grisly stuff. Digby:

after reading this thoroughly depressing profile of Eric Holder this morning in the NY Times, I think we can assume that Dick Cheney could go on television and admit to personally torturing KSM on the rack and nothing would be done. Eric Holder is no longer a non-political actor by his own admission. Or, rather, as a member of the Obama administration, he's now operating as a functionary of the Republicans and the national security state.

In case you were wondering, Lindsay Graham is now the de facto Attorney General and he will be deciding all the legal questions surrounding terrorism. It's an unusual arrangement, but the constitution does say that regardless of the outcome of elections, Republicans must be in charge of national security and criminal justice at all times.

Sullivan is correct that Cheney is now an admitted war criminal. But it will not be a problem for him in the United States. He might want to let that passport lapse though. He may not get such favored treatment in another country.

it's pretty maddening that bayh is getting top billing in the news today with his sound bite about the senate not working correctly when he's easily one of the worst "good guy" senators in the congress. he's tearing a page directly from the sarah palin playbook & i doubt that anyone in the media is going to hammer him on it like they (rightfully) did her

yeah this stuff about lindsay graham is utterly insane

it's pretty maddening that bayh is getting top billing in the news today with his sound bite about the senate not working correctly when he's easily one of the worst "good guy" senators in the congress.

Yeah. As Digby said, Bayh is right for the wrong reasons.

hey does anyone here understand the deficit? because I fuck as hell don't, not on a micro or even macroeconomic scale. but help me counter someone who keeps throwing this at me:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2009/03/21/GR2009032100104.html

my take on this:

1) this is a comparison between actual historical spending and 'projected' spending during a time of extreme economic volatility, assuming slow recovery
2) deficit spending during recessions is not inherently bad, in fact, it is probably necessary, because if money does not circulate during a recession it freezes up
3) uh, dunno.

why do I get in these online arguments with a childhood friend who has gone insane? I do not know.

akm, you should read krugman's nyt blog, has lots of v. readable stuff on the subject

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/opinion/05krugman.html?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/28/opinion/28krugman.html?em

I actually think that Brad DeLong does a way better job of putting the deficit into perspective than Krugman does. Check out his blog.

Pretty sure the guys over at Baseline Scenario have discussed this issue in the past month or so as well. Both them and DeLong are reliably liberal, if that matters to you.

these for example

http://baselinescenario.com/tag/deficit/

I dont get how these pols think quitting their jobs is the way to the white house

hey does anyone here understand the deficit? because I fuck as hell don't, not on a micro or even macroeconomic scale. but help me counter someone who keeps throwing this at me:

dont really understand the deficit but this is my understanding:

1) biggest contributors to the immense deficit are the wars in iraq and afghanistan, rising medical costs, and bush-era tax cuts
2) this is the important bit >>> econ 101: gov't spending is counter-cyclical, i.e., gov't should be spending, even if it increases deficits, when the economy is hurting (and vice versa obv.)--so our first concern should be getting the economy on an even keel

yeah that seems to be the agreement of everything I've read. and it kickstarted some dormant shit in my brain dating all the way back to the 80's when I had a high school history teacher who talked an enormous amount about Keynes.

I've been arguing with someone who is not mentally stable and is mainly enraged that the Constellation project was canceled though. It's like fighting with a 13 year old.

I dont get how these pols think quitting their jobs is the way to the white house

in sarah palin's case, it's because she's a nitwit.

a nitwitter.

1) biggest contributors to the immense deficit are the wars in iraq and afghanistan, rising medical costs, and bush-era tax cuts
2) this is the important bit >>> econ 101: gov't spending is counter-cyclical, i.e., gov't should be spending, even if it increases deficits, when the economy is hurting (and vice versa obv.)--so our first concern should be getting the economy on an even keel

This is right, but one other thing is that a lot of this is automatic. In a recession the gov has to spend way more on unemployment, food stamps, etc, even if they don't pass any new spending legislation. This isn't a huge part of the overall budget, but it's a big reason why the deficits are much higher now then they were a few years ago.

Also, it's not just the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which iirc are a relatively small part of the overall defense budget. More is spent on stuff like building, maintaining and staffing bases all over the world in dozens of countries.

Notably, in a recession, tax revenues also fall, thereby exacerbating the problem noted above ("a lot of this is automatic") and contributing to the deficit and debt problem.

I've never seen Josh Marshall so subdued.

in other news, Cenk Uygur does a nice Taibbi stand-in by ripping Henry Paulson a new one wr2 Paulson's vomit on yesterday's Times editorial page:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psShP07gtyU

thanks for those links don and others, they gave me some nice background. I came to realize I was talking with people who essentially see any government spending on any social programs as funding a welfare state of drug addicts and who think the government is about to kick their doors down and take their guns, so i just ducked out of the debate. frighteningly I'm seeing more people that I thought were rational falling prey to teabagger mania; I know of one or two reasonable conservatives with less hyperbolic views but they are suddenly in the minority.

Looks like Paulson doing some kinda Masonic hand sign in that youtube still!

can't stand the young turks -- it's always so rambling that i can't figure out his main point. he should start by stating exactly what's been said and riff off afterwards.

he looses a lot of credibility by naming himself after genocide perpetrators, even if I do agree on his politics. But yeah, Keith Olbermann he is not (and as we've already established, even Olbermann is kind of longwinded).

bayh is such an awful and insincere speaker, i have no idea how he ever won an election

nepotism & $$

so there is a big push now to get healthcare with a public option pushed through the senate with reconciliation, with something like 16 senators already declaring support. does anyone think they have a chance in hell of pulling this off? are there 51 votes for this?

I'd say the chances are pretty low due to Harry Reid's being a fucktard

dunno that reid has anything to do with it--its a last ditch effort by a bunch of idiots to reestablish their 'progressive' bonafides before the election, and also cover their asses in the event that hcr doesnt go anywhere

Reid's cooperation would be required to bring it to a vote, and he's not going to bring anything to a vote that he thinks won't pas

but yeah I agree this is primarily just political grandstanding