US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

idk... tea party/ GOP favorability with indies not doing so hot right now

btw what was that 'noon deadline' shit I heard this morning, allegedly from the White House?

What the hell constitutes an "independent" then that's not covered by dems, repubs or Tea Partiers?

wafflers and ignoramuses mostly

people who want to cut taxes AND collect social security

also, ppl who probably arent voting for prez next year (perhaps me)

nobody wants your vote anyway

i'm watching o'reilly for some dumb reason. he's interviewing the Roskam, Republican chief deputy majority whip and asked him "is this about money, or about ideology?" Roskam says "it's all about the money". infuriating.

to o'reilly's credit, he's really grilling him about it and making him look stupid.

everyone is doing the "breaking news" thing and saying a deal is very close, that it's $39 billion in cuts, too late to finish the deal by midnight, but will probably do some quick extension to avoid a shutdown, then hash out the final bill over the next couple of days.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/white-house-reviewing-terms-of-spending-deal-20110408

Numerous GOP and Democratic sources on and off Capitol Hill tell National Journal that the outline of the deal is as follows: up to $39 billion in cuts from the 2010 budget, $514 billion in spending for the defense budget covering the remainder of this fiscal year, a GOP agreement to abandon controversial policy riders dealing with Planned Parenthood and the EPA, and an agreement to pass a “bridge” continuing resolution late Friday night to keep the government operating while the deal is written in bill form.

worth it imo

y'all realize we're gonna go through this shit all over again with the debt ceiling, right?!?

oh yeah this was just a dry run, I had almost forgotten!

it's kind of agonizing to think about what dems and republicans "learned" from this whole process, and how they'll apply those lessons to the forthcoming battles on the debt ceiling and next year's budget.

I've learned that planned parenthood works because it would have kept Lindsey Graham and Paul Ryan from being born.

how many of those stupid riders are going through, exactly? annoying how the major news outlets don't reference anything besides Planned Parenthood...

anyway, sounds like Boehner blinked. I wonder if there will be payback for this from the right.

It's too early to say who blinked when it looks like we all lost.

should have been a shutdown, imo, to perhaps remind bitches of what all the government actually does

the cuts are around $38-39 billion, and the original Republican proposal was for $30 billion in cuts. he may have "lost" from the bonkers tea party perspective, but he seems to have done pretty well for the rest of the party.

xpost

http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/budget_negotiations-0408.png

he lost bc the tea partiers don't give a shit about how much is cut. they care about what is cut and planned parenthood hasn't been cut.

They are saying the agreement which still has to be voted on at the end of the week(tonight is a temporary agreement to give them time to put the deal in paper form) won't include riders but will allow seaparate votes in the Senate on some of riders (including the planned parenthood one). Apparently the Dems think they will stick together and vote it down in the Senate.

The DC rider lives. DC will not be allowed to use its own money for abortions.
The bill will supposedly call for audits of Warren's new consumer agency and of the health care bill. Those are obviously just Republican tools to slow down things they don't like.

MSNBC commentators think there's a chance Tea Party folks will vote against the bill. They also think the left will be disappointed. Will any of this help the economy and the 9% unemployed--doubtful.

The Dems supposedly convinced Boehner to include some token defense cuts that Gates wanted (that were not in the original House bill). If Gates wanted them cut that means they were just pork projects.

hey bill are you the doctor_morbius posting on justin.tv msnbc live feed?

Yes! I still have a job!!

btw who was the house rep chowing down on his nails during the pre-vote speeches?

Forget the debt ceiling debate - they still have to debate a 2012 budget! All this bullshit was just for the remainder or 2011. Sigh.

i love how this looks like a crank letter to a local paper and in no way a letter by someone who actually is trying to be president of the country.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/opinion/lweb08trump.html?src=ISMR_HP_LO_MST_FB

To the Editor:

Re “Donald Trump Gets Weirder,” by Gail Collins (column, April 2):

Even before Gail Collins was with the New York Times, she has written nasty and derogatory articles about me. Actually, I have great respect for Ms. Collins in that she has survived so long with so little talent. Her storytelling ability and word usage (coming from me, who has written many bestsellers), is not at a very high level. More importantly, her facts are wrong!

As far as her comments on the so-called “birther” issue, I don't need Ms. Collins's advice. There is a very large segment of our society who believe that Barack Obama, indeed, was not born in the United States. His grandmother from Kenya stated, on tape, that he was born in Kenya and she was there to watch the birth. His family in Honolulu is fighting over which hospital in Hawaii he was born in-they just don't know.

He has not been able to produce a “birth certificate” but merely a totally unsigned “certificate of live birth”-which is totally different and of very little significance. Unlike a birth certificate, a certificate of live birth is very easy to obtain. Equally of importance, there are no records in Hawaii that a Barack Hussein Obama was born there-no bills, no doctors names, no nurses names, no registrations, no payments, etc. As far as the two notices placed in newspapers, many things could have happened, but some feel the grandparents put an ad in order to show that he was a citizen of the U.S. with all of the benefits thereto. Everybody, after all, and especially then, wanted to be a United States citizen.

The term used by Ms. Collins-“birther”-is very derogatory and is meant in a derogatory way. Had this been George Bush or almost any other President or Presidential aspirant, they would never have been allowed to attain office, or would have been thrown out of office very quickly.

For some reason, the press protects President Obama beyond anything or anyone I have ever seen. What they don't realize is that if he was not born in the United States, they would have uncovered the greatest "scam" in the history of our country. In other words, they would become the hottest writer since Watergate, or beyond.

Open your eyes, Gail, there's at least a good chance that Barack Hussein Obama has made mincemeat out of our great and cherished Constitution!

DONALD J. TRUMP
New York, April 7, 2011

Her storytelling ability and word usage (coming from me, who has written many bestsellers), is not at a very high level.

as much as i resent dignifying anything shitheel says with a response...uh?

anything this shitheel*

Her storytelling ability and word usage (coming from me, who has written many bestsellers), is not at a very high level.

nice syntax trump

Give him this: He doesn't use any staff to translate his letters into English.

are you the doctor_morbius posting on justin.tv msnbc live feed?

Oh, hell no.

So I don't even want to share with yall my gross napkin estimate of how much we spent as taxpayers over the last week in senior executive OH SHIT meetings and shotgun blasted WHAT TO DO IF YOU HAVE ANY KIND OF GOVERNMENT ANYTHING LIKE A BLACKBERRY OR A LAPTOP OR A VISA CARD OR A PASSPORT OR A PLANE TICKET OR A JOB AND YET ARE NOT ALLOWED TO USE ANY OF THEM e-mails, and resultant WAIT WHAT ABOUT ME I HAVE AN IPAD AND A TRAIN TICKET responses

I was on a "mission essential" short list which gave me a kind of pre-emptive survivor guilt over a lot of this crap and I hated it. I especially hate the ultimate #1 dbag fed (former Microsoft salesman to the DOD, talk about a job that should really be going to the disabled and/or mental), an irretrievable republican who has no problem whatsoever repeating nonsensical GOP TPs from the 90s, whom I spotted snickering to himself during the end of our main jane "this is going to suck" briefing while our appointed leaders were trying to do their best to soften the this is going to suck bit. He knew he was on the short list because of his job title so I guess he thought it was a good time for some chuckles. Fuck that guy, you should all hate that guy.

also the phrase "furlough averted" sounds kinda disgusting to me.
oh, furtive aversion? overt burtation. burp, hurl!

i like the cut of yr jib

I will admit I had been holding a perverse Mel Gibson fascination with the possibilities of the DC landscape sans civil service commutertronics come Monday AM

should have been a shutdown, imo, to perhaps remind bitches of what all the government actually does like restrain tombots

― mookieproof, Friday, April 8, 2011 11:42 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

As far as the two notices placed in newspapers, many things could have happened, but some feel the grandparents put an ad in order to show that he was a citizen of the U.S. with all of the benefits thereto.

This is really fucking funny.

ezra hates the deal http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/2011-is-not-1995/2011/04/06/AFxPaT5C_blog.html

yeah this basically sucks

hurrah, the government will still fund planned parenthood, *three cheers*

id be willing to bet that a shutdown will be avoided

― ban drake (the rapper) (max), Friday, April 8, 2011 3:03 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

bummed no one took me up on this bet

I should have bet on a Democratic shutoff.

Not sure this is bullshit on par with the tax cut extension, but this is bullshit nonetheless. Obama should have come out and said, hey, you don't cut spending when you're emerging from a recession. It didn't work in 1937, it's not working in the UK, it shouldn't happen here. Then he could use it as a campaign promise: "if reelected, I promise to cut $40 billion of bullshit." He could have come off the grown up and the campaigner, offering it as a pantomime challenge: "will the Republicans step up and agree with me to tackle these future cuts in 2012?" Because this shit deal (natch) just sets the stage for further shit deals in the waning months of his first term, which is a weak position.

But the republicans know this. When the economy tips back again, inevitably, when he's in his second term, he'll take the blame, and when he tries to flip that back on the republicans, they'll say the economy sucks because he didn't go far enough when he had the chance. And then the stage will be set for a republican to easily take back the white house, let alone the house and senate, and do some real damage. Because as much as we joke about the the weak republican presidential prospects for 2012, the dem bench ain't exactly that deep, either.

a) the economy is going to continue to get better, not worse
b) Obama is going to sail to reelection

There is going to be some sort of 3-5%-vote attracting progressive in the general election next year who will threaten Bam's reelection, and let cowardly liberals revive their Nader hate from 2000.

i wouldnt bet on it!

Why would a liberal who felt--rightly or wrongly (there are arguments to be made either way)--that Nader put Bush into the White House, and therefore was a little angry at him, be cowardly?

this will be an enlightening and civil conversation and we will all emerge better friends because of it