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

I wonder when a TV prez will be based on Barack Obama 2009-11, so ppl will realize they've been played

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nk-7VvZUPFY

i heard somewhere that WW character Josh Lyman (Bartlett's deputy COS) was based on Rahm?

yeah WW was dope season 1-3 (maybe 4). y'all are missing out.

do you really want to have yet another West Wing argument

LET'S DO THIS THING

Bulworth is infinitely smarter and less than 2 hours long.

"The West Wing" had better raps and the negroes didn't eat fried chicken.

I don't understand that as a dissent!

outta the park

The first episode of "The West Wing" is the only one you really need to watch.

okay i think we can forego the west wing argument in favor of the bulworth argument, way more lols to be had imo

Bulworth would be better just because looking at Halle Berry > The West Wing

I recognize that inductive reasoning means that I am arguing that Catwoman > The West Wing

Beatty's tits are bigger than Stockard Channing's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8lUY9jS8oQ

Oliver Platt in Spanish is an obscenity.

Hate to quote an entire article, but this from TPM is just ROFLicious:

What was supposed to be a routine vote in the House -- to knock down an amendment authored by conservative Republicans -- turned into pandemonium on the House floor Friday, as Democrats tried to jam the plan through, and hang it around the GOP's necks.

The vote was on the Republican Study Committee's alternative budget -- a radical plan that annihilates the social contract in America by putting the GOP budget on steroids. Deeper tax cuts for the wealthy, more severe entitlement rollbacks.

Normally something like that would fail by a large bipartisan margin in either the House or the Senate. Conservative Republicans would vote for it, but it would be defeated by a coalition of Democrats and more moderate Republicans. But today that formula didn't hold. In an attempt to highlight deep divides in the Republican caucus. Dems switched their votes -- from "no" to "present."

Panic ensued. In the House, legislation passes by a simple majority of members voting. The Dems took themselves out of the equation, leaving Republicans to decide whether the House should adopt the more-conservative RSC budget instead of the one authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan. As Dems flipped to present, Republicans realized that a majority of their members had indeed gone on the record in support of the RSC plan -- and if the vote closed, it would pass. That would be a slap in the face to Ryan, and a politically toxic outcome for the Republican party.

So they started flipping their votes from "yes" to "no."

In the end, the plan went down by a small margin, 119-136. A full 172 Democrats voted "present."

Moments after it failed, RSC Chairman Jim Jordan took to Facebook.

"Our Republican Study Committee (RSC) balanced budget came within 18 votes of passing on the House Floor today," he wrote. "I am disappointed we did not win, but this is the closest we have ever been to passing our balanced budget. I am motivated to keep fighting to balance the budget and begin paying down our national debt."

off-subject (since I haven't seen West Wing or Bullworth):

So Obama finally talks like a Democrat for once and Republicans are crying (Ryan and others who were invited to the GW speech)

Washington Post writer Lori Montgomery is a little over-dramatic and seemingly partisan herself here but ...

They expected a peace offering, a gesture of goodwill aimed at smoothing a path toward compromise. But soon after taking their seats at George Washington University on Wednesday, they found themselves under fire for plotting “a fundamentally different America” from the one most Americans know and love.

“What came to my mind was: Why did he invite us?” Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) said in an interview Thursday. “It’s just a wasted opportunity.”

The situation was all the more perplexing because Obama has to work with these guys: Camp is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, responsible for trade, taxes and urgent legislation to raise the legal limit on government borrowing. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (Tex.) chairs the House Republican Conference. And Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is House Budget Committee chairman and the author of the spending blueprint Obama lacerated as “deeply pessimistic” during his 44-minute address.

At a time when the parties risk economic catastrophe unless they can come together to raise the debt limit, Obama’s partisan tone made no sense, Republicans across Capitol Hill said Thursday. Even some Obama allies wondered whether the president had made a tactical error.

“Yes,” the tenor of the speech was surprising, said Erskine Bowles, who headed Obama’s fiscal commission and is working with a bipartisan group of six senators to develop a compromise plan to rein in borrowing.

Asked about the president’s decision to deliver such an address at a particularly sensitive moment, Bowles defended Obama, and said his sharp tone would not derail the bipartisan group’s work. “This is not easy,” he said. “There are plenty of opportunities to make mistakes.”

Administration officials note that Ryan and other Republicans have been just as pointed in their attacks on Obama.

Still, Republicans said, did Obama have to attack the men to their faces? “Reagan had the decency to insult his enemies when he was out of town,” grumbled one GOP aide.

For Ryan, the misadventure began Sunday morning, when he was bumped from the lead spot on “Meet the Press” by David Plouffe, the senior White House political adviser, who suddenly appeared on the show to discuss the president’s new deficit-reduction plan.

Still, when Ryan, Camp and Hensarling were invited to attend the speech because they had served on Obama’s fiscal commission, Ryan concluded that Obama was extending an “olive branch” in the budget wars and that it would be good form to attend.

Afterward, Ryan was furious. The speech “was extremely political, very partisan,” he fumed to TV host Charlie Rose.

Camp said he received a call from fiscal commission co-chairman Alan Simpson, who was also in the audience and was “concerned about the partisan nature of the event and how unnecessary and unproductive and unhelpful it would be.”

Washington Post

finding all this political jujitsu kinda hilarious tbh

how unnecessary and unproductive and unhelpful

a la the House GOP demanding insane shit and acting like they own the place?

i do still wonder why they were invited to their own funerals, so to speak, like--what was that about tactically

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_RElTb5BSUM8/SAuEx3XHu-I/AAAAAAAAABg/EeaDqzZfltY/s800/waaambulance.jpg

next week we will hear some shit about dems voting 'present' on a crucial budget item

digby will be outraged!

(sorry, i really don't read her much tbh, just funnin')

what was that about tactically

being confrontational obviously throws the GOP off-balance

this is the problem with talking about "coming together" instead of "I welcome their hatred"

i wonder why they were tactically naive enough to go, given the garbage they talk about obama day in and out. he's been itching for an opportunity to whip them again, like when they invited him to their retreat a couple years back

like when they invited him to their retreat a couple years back

^^^yeah this is what I was reminded of too

“Reagan had the decency to insult his enemies when he was out of town,” grumbled one GOP aide.

omg hahahahahahaha

jon stewart did a segment on this last night & while one part of it pissed me off his characterization of the GOP was pretty otm: "this radical muslim socialist whose word i'll take that he was born in this country is being so mean to me."

Reagan had the decency to forget who he was talking to when a 5x7 card wasn't given to him.

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e70/SexyBeautifulOne/Bernie-1.jpg

"this radical muslim socialist whose word i'll take that he was born in this country is being so mean to me."

lol yes this is very OTM

Into the lion's den

I don't recall candidate Obama being compared to Hitler and Stalin during the 2008 campaign

huh.

I guess most of that came AFTER his election, if I'm being charitable

gotta love whenever they pull out anything noted racist choad mickey kaus says and attrib him as a democrat like it's ok

"I thought the president’s invitation...was an olive branch. Instead, what we got was a speech that was excessively partisan, dramatically inaccurate, and hopelessly inadequate to address our countries fiscal challenges...What we heard today was a political broadside from our campaigner in chief. This is very sad and very unfortunate. Rather than building bridges, he’s poisoning wells."

And that's why I, Paul Ryan, am a Republican. We don't roll like that.

"No one, it seems, has ever sat him down and explained to him how thoroughly mediocre he really is."

so amazing. boy, that would have done it!

never even heard of Mickey Kaus before. He looks like a Disney villain.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/47/Mickey_Kaus_head_shot.jpg/200px-Mickey_Kaus_head_shot.jpg

Kaus was all over Obama during the '08 campaign. Which is fine--but quoting him being all over Obama in '11 in about as meaningful as quoting Limbaugh or Beck. It's not like he's a suddenly disillusioned supporter.

mickey kaus is horrible and isnt even fun to read the way the corner is

he's one of these democrats who hates unions and hispanics and young liberals and the black political establishment and womens' groups and maybe gay people too? can't say i've read him about gays, maybe he doesn't care one way or another

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/11/22/hack_list_25

And Palestinians, don't forget them. xp

I used to read him on salon and he was annoying. One of those contrarian conservatives who says he is or was a Democrat...

ha plenty of dems hate palestinians, competition is not thin there!

So big shock, the House progressive budget did not pass today (nor did the Van Hollen Md Dem on the budget committee one) and a Tennessee Democrat wants to push that mediocre bipartisan Simpson-Bowles bill:

from the hill.com

The House also rejected three other alternative proposals. One, from Van Hollen, was defeated in a 166-259 vote. A Progressive Caucus budget was rejected in a 77-347 vote, and one from the Congressional Black Caucus was rejected 103-303.

A fifth proposal that would have implemented the recommendations of Obama's debt commission was not offered. Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) withdrew his proposal Thursday night, indicating that a House vote against it might spoil efforts in the Senate to reach an agreement based on the recommendations of the president's fiscal commission

I'm a history and literature guy, not an economics one, so bear with me...

It's a fact that FDR's decision to suddenly lower the deficit and cut gov't spending in 1937-38 almost destroyed the economy again. Can someone explain Keynesian theory? How does "spending" take a capitalist economy out of depression?

'Suddenly' may be the key part of that, Alfred

Billy Ocean?