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

My $0.02.

Political power often rests on the perception of that power, much like a poker hand. Obama's emphasis on compromise and getting something done speaks directly to his indifference to accruing personal political power. As a personality trait, this is a lot less pathological than being power-hungry, but what's missing seems to be an agenda he is passionate about implementing, requiring him to seek the power to put it into effect. Instead he just keeps feeding the Republican beast in the hope that this is a proper product of an idealized, orderly political process.

I can get behind that analysis.

btw I'm partly wrong: lots of Corner-ites are pissed off at Boehner.

I expect their presumption is that, if he got that much, he could have got more.

It's a beautiful scorcher of a day in Florida, so if you want to take five minutes and read this and its comments.

is it wrong that i think "the economy will eventually get better in the long run regardless

yup, it is wrong to think this

also, i'm less concerned with how this affects the 2012 election and more of how it will affect the debt ceiling and FY12 budget battles.

wow, some of those nro comment section stooges have such twisted priorities it's hard to believe we live in the same country

xp

pretty much agree with ezra klein this time that economic fundamentals (not the markets obv) will drive obama's political future. i can't imagine austerity improving on this shit, so i think dems will wish the worked a lot harder on painting austerity as bad, and this deal as very bad for average americans.

the fact that teabaggers are unhappy isnt evidence of any success here in terms of anything afaict. i think 12 will be the mirror of 08, this time favoring gop- as long as the gop doesnt nominate somebody below the gwb-line of inanity, they can take it.

most of the gop falls under the gwb-line at this point

What happened to all the EPA cuts? Did Dems compromise on that stuff?

I haven't been following politics but if the tea party becomes a viable 3rd party then I don't see why we can't have Paul/Ventura in a viable 4th party. I would love that :3

the conversation on the topic may be stale now, but i was def. someone who Morbz would say was "bullying Nader voters." at the time, i didn't think that the country or the Democratic Party were so far gone that a Nader vote was necessary -- plus i really believed that Gore would've been a very good President. i still hold those opinions.

this time around, though, i'm not so inclined to badger anyone voting third-party against Obama b/c the rot within the country and the Democratic Party is too pronounced to be ignored any longer. in fact, i could see myself voting third party myself.

What happened to all the EPA cuts? Did Dems compromise on that stuff?

they dropped the EPA rider. PHEW. for now. until the next budget.

lorax, I have incontestable evidence that ron paul and jesse ventura did 9/11

that said, i do think that Obama will be reelected and that the economy will most likely continue to "recover." the economic recovery, though, is going to be painfully slow and it may be a while before we get back to where we were before the financial world went to hell. a late 1990s economy def. ain't in the cards as far as i can tell.

xpost: a Ron Paul/Jesse Ventura campaign isn't one that would get my vote. it might get my laugh tho'.

lorax being a paul fan puts his trutherism into some perspective at least

Not sure if it's been discussed already but this is an interesting theory - that the Republicans have privately given up on the White House in 2012 and are concentrating on the Senate.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/apr/09/us-elections-2012-congress

I expect their presumption is that, if he got that much, he could have got more.

― Aimless, Saturday, April 9, 2011 6:32 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

but doesnt this logic work in basically any situation. like, you're arguing that 'its a bad deal, but that means they think it could have been even worse' & yet you can say this no matter what the deal turned out to be

The logic of politics and the logic of NRO pundits does not resemble logic as you understand it.

1) doesn't mean it's wrong all the time
2) you're questioning the logic of the tea party

xp

"logic" doesn't belong within 10 inches of "tea party"

Would Obama get yalls' vote again? He might just be more fascist than W. Bush.

i was questioning aimless' logic not the tea party

aimless was trying to figure out their logic, not give his own

xpost i'm having trouble getting past this part of the article, lorax:

This post discusses fascism as an appropriate term to describe current US political process. As a teacher of Advanced Placement US Government, I agree.

The incorrect use of 'fascist' + "AP government high school teacher" = dumb take on serious problem.

This was commented on the other day: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/justice-memo-upholds-libya-strikes/

I don't know shit about Ron Paul except that he's supposed to be Grass Roots (I think).

Libya strikes was overstepping our boundaries for a millionth time. We need to fix our own fucked up country before we mess around with other countries.

I wouldn't stop reading my article just because an AP governemnt teacher wrote it.

someone needs to take a hard look at some of these people w/n the Justice Dep't. the spirit of Haldeman lives on there.

i just convinced my mom to vote non-republican in 2012. we don't talk politics that often because usually she just laughs and says "i don't know what's going on", but the winning argument was something along the lines of "yeah mom, the republicans pretty much hate the federal government, and some of them have even said they want to abolish the EPA entirely." she was like "really?? why??", and i was like "lol it's a long story", and she said "well i won't be voting for THEM next time, sheesh!"

\_o_/

Obama's emphasis on compromise and getting something done speaks directly to his indifference to accruing personal political power.

If this were true, then maybe he shouldn't be running for, you know, the presidency, literally the apex of accruing personal political power.

obviously
running for president vs. what you actually do as a president

can some democratic politician please please please capitalize on this bullshit?

http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2011/apr/09/tom-philpott-budget-panel-may-cut-care-for-13/

The House Budget Committee, chaired by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), has told a veterans' group it is studying a plan to save $6 billion annually in VA health care costs by canceling enrollment of any veteran who doesn't have a service-related medical condition and is not poor.

Do you guys envisioning this economic "recovery" not think 2008 (and the bubble that preceded it) marked a sea change? My little sphere in which I've been carving out my living is now operating on an ENTIRELY different agenda, and I'm no longer going to match my earnings of 2000-09 in the same fashion. Shittier salaries with shittier benefits for many/most of us are the new reality.

may be a while before we get back to where we were before the financial world went to hell.

ie, I don't think this is happening in my lifetime. (Perhaps not after it either.)

we might get there once our society is not heavily dependent on a resource that is rapidly depleting. in other words, probably not in the next 20-30 years. there's always the chance of getting to the "happy" 1990s situation, but it won't (can't) last for long.

eg, I am turning down my 401k 'contribution' percentage, cuz I NEED THE FUCKIN' MONEY NOW.

Watching my parent generation lose a good chunk of their retirement money was pretty epic. Can't say i would be the least bit surprised if the same thing happens when my generation is supposed to retire.

the 'the economy will recover cause...it always does!' idea is pretty dangerous - not just does it allow us to cut spending when we need it most, but also prevents us from publicly thinking about what kinds of gov't policy we'll need in a world with a large population of long-long-term unemployed. the # of jobs that would need to magically appear for us to get 5% unemployment is pretty much insane. I wouldn't be surprised if, absent a world war, we never hit that again in my lifetime.

but also prevents us from publicly thinking about what kinds of gov't policy we'll need in a world with a large population of long-long-term unemployed

it also -insert stereotypical annoying enviro guy, sorry- prevents us from thinking about if an economic system that is based on neverending growth on a planet with limited resources is a good idea.

Can't say i would be the least bit surprised if the same thing happens when my generation is supposed to retire

moving my pitiful nest egg to FDIC insured accounts (not that that will even matter by then?) about 3-5 years before i think about retirement.

-insert stereotypical annoying enviro guy, sorry-

ZS i find yr enviro-guy perspective rewarding. also you do great gifs.

I'm trying to figure out wtf up with taxes. my mother's taxes have gone up (significantly) every year since Obama was elected and she's on a fixed income (her money comes from the , survivor's benefits from my father's 'alternative to SS' that government employees paid into for a long time) of like, $24k a yar or some shit. So she's super pissed at Obama and the democrats after years of supporting them. I can't even talk to her about it. I'm like, "I don't think that should have happened" but she does taxes for people every year so she's not making a mistake. Meanwhile, mine (decidedly more than that) seem to have stayed exactly the same.

I just decimated my 401k to buy a house (not as an investment, because we need somewhere to live and have no other good choice now). It wasn't a hard decision since it's not like I think it's going to accrue more worth in that account that it will as a tangible thing like a house. I'd frankly rather have a home paid off by the time I retire.

It seems unfathomable to me that we cannot raise taxes on the super wealthy right now and not give a tax cut to almost everyone else. Hell even 'everyone making under a million' could probably get it if they taxed the super wealthy as much as they should. Perhaps this Tea Party charade will fall apart in the next two years, but I have little faith that the Democrats would do the right thing if they were restored to both parties of Congress, WTF they couldn't even get a fucking budget done last year when they held all the power.

don't know anything all about those tax woes, but the senate gop filibustered the budget. the dems had 59 (59!) votes and that wasn't enough. the gop plays this game over and over again and never gets called on it

David Brooks wrote another idiotic thing the other day praising the Ryan budget and saying that liberal Democrats who think you can fix the budget by just raising taxes on the rich are wrong. But he did not address any of the evidence showing that Ryan's figures were wrong, that Clinton raised taxes and achieved a surplus(admittedly due in part to a tech boom; but the raised tax rates didn't hurt that); that years of trickle-down theory has never worked; and that the left also wants to reduce corporate welfare, defense spending, agri-business welfare, etc.

Josh:

I think Obama believes that America wants a president who uses his personal political power to simply gather together consensus mainstream ideas (but unfortunately he's letting the Republicans and the mass media define consensus and mainstream). I think he egotistically at times thinks he's being post-partisan but noone on the right or the left and maybe not the middle is buying that.

Thinking anyone in congress, the 'liberal' part included, cares anything for the poor or middle-class is a big mistake. All this "Oh the republicans are filibustering" and "Oh we have to have more than 59 votes we don't want to ram this thru" are just covering their asses for people that will still vote for them. Why would you raise taxes on you, your colleagues, and your biggest campaign contributors?

since weve had so little to lol about lately, the american spectator:

But in fact, the Indian wars are a very fitting historical precedent, because in significant ways the American Indians of the 19th Century are the precursors to 21st Century Islamist terrorists.

Indeed, just as modern-day Islamists terrorize the international frontier; so, too, did warring Indian tribes terrorize the American frontier. Historian William Osborn estimates, in fact, that more than 9,000 Americans were massacred by the Indians from the 16th to through the 19th centuries.

Now, obviously the analogy is inexact. Whatever their faults, the Native Americans were not jihadists bent on dominating and exterminating infidels. They were a largely primitive peoples who mostly lacked the Americans' appreciation for, and understanding of, private property rights.

http://spectator.org/blog/2011/04/06/the-19th-century-indian-wars-p

hahahah holy fuck

Whatever their faults

Whaaaaaaaaa