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

Lazy and misleading political commentary is the norm among professioanl journalists, and this fact is taken full advantage of by partisan hacks at think tanks.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/hendrikhertzberg/2011/05/daniels-in-the-lambs-den.html

Speaking of lazy commentary, this piece on the "alleged" non-scary possible Republican candidate Mitch Daniels and the Dana Milbank one in the Washington Post overlook his real Bush administration resume--the wrong numbers on the cost of the wars; the effect of teh Bush tax cuts,etc. One piece mentions but goes lightly on his defense of his attack on planned parenthood-- there are other places to birth control.

Daniels is scary because these guys give him legitimacy

get birth control

Daniels is also scary because he's so boring. He has the sort of face which would remain expressionless as he ordered the defoliation of El Salvador.

On Tuesday, at the Gilded Age Upper East Side mansion that houses the nascent Bloomberg View, Daniels lunched with a baker’s dozen of journo-pundits ranging politics-wise from rightish (Peggy Noonan, Ramesh Ponnuru) and leftish (Michael Kinsley, Josh Marshall) to neitherish (Mark Halperin), and outlet-wise from mass market (George Stephanopoulos) to niche market (me). Afterward, the informal consensus of the leftish contingent was summed up in this exchange:

“If we have to have a Republican…”
“…this one seems like he’d be better than the others.”

Yuck

relax guys republicans hate that guy. no shot.

George Will can't breathe without mentioning his name with an eroticized whisper.

ew

I thought they hated him for being "calling a truce" on social issues, hence the current grandstanding in IN.

*being all

so its like, "he wants to give all the money to the rich, but doesnt hate gay people"??

relax guys republicans hate that guy. no shot.

― goole, Thursday, May 5, 2011 8:36 PM (

Since he dropped Planned Parenthood they don't hate him anymore.

so he's a postmodern xp

hes syrian, so, it aint happening

more 'bipartisan' budget-massacre horseshit:

http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2011/05/claire-mccaskills-profile-in-cowardice.html

Afterward, the informal consensus of the leftish contingent was summed up in this exchange:

“If we have to have a Republican…”
“…this one seems like he’d be better than the others.”

These sorts of guys are never the nominee.

hi guys

i would like to read some articles/essays/blog posts about how and why the rich have a disproportionate influence w/ elected officials, and what, if anything can be done to change that.

thank you in advance!

max

koch bros funding wisco cheating

http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_3bffef6e-774e-11e0-a6a5-001cc4c002e0.html

^let's just call this 'exhibit A'

okay now reading this and...Wow!

I really hope Wisco Republicans don't get away with this

unbelievable. actually, no. totally believable.

caption time!

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c163/wvferrell/loldicks.jpg

bushco hunting for osama in lacrosse, wi

Obv I want to see more info come out, but Jefferson's severely deluded.

Only 200 sworn affidavits sounds small when you compare it to the entire list of 60,000 signatures...not so much when you compare it to the smaller size of the signers they were actually able to get in contact with...and exclude those that maybe agreed they were duped but wouldn't sign an affidavit.

Or the peopke they couldn't get in touch with cuz they're dead.

max, krugman's column today might be sort of what you're looking for. read "scare-mongers" and "deficit hawks" and "fear-mongers" as "gop status quo" and "koch catamites"

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/opinion/06krugman.html?_r=1&hp

"By looking for trouble in all the wrong places, our political class is preventing us from dealing with the real crisis: the millions of American men and women who can’t find work."

http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/06/news/economy/april_jobs_report_unemployment/index.htm?hpt=T2
http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/06/markets/commodities_oil_silver/index.htm?hpt=T2

hmm

http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/06/markets/Markets_newyork/index.htm

The jobs recovery picked up speed in April, as business payrolls swelled and the unemployment rate rose as more people returned to the workforce.

fell, right?

apparently it went up

no, I'm not 100% sure how/why either

i see it went up but it's a confusing sentence

ha

It's back up to nine percent, actually, as more local governments shed employees and kids return from college.

I never really thought about it, but we have Republicans slashing government jobs left and right in the name of trimming waste who then turn around and blame the President for the unemployment rate's increase.

"Why aren't you doing anything to help the 55,000 people I just severed?"

heard on the radio yesterday that the reason the rate went up is because to be counted as "unemployed" you have to be actively seeking work. so as available jobs fell, less ppl became unemployed because they gave up. now that there's an uptick in jobs, unemployment sees a transient increase as well

the total tax burden is at its lowest since 1958

http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/taxes/2011-05-05-tax-cut-record-low_n.htm

wonder how many questions about that the gop candidates will get asked at their next little debate

The fall in taxes is almost entirely caused by a weak economy rather than lower rates, says Curtis Dubay of the conservative Heritage Foundation. "It's easy to draw the wrong conclusion," he says.

gotta love the heritage foundation

O where is the life that Christopher Cross so fondly sang about

robert reich otm

http://robertreich.org/post/5244220848

Why isn’t Washington paying attention to what most Americans need in the here-and-now economy?

Because the White House and congressional Democrats don’t dare admit how bad the economy continues to be for so many people. They’re holding their breath, hoping the recovery catches fire next year before Election Day.

Republicans don’t dare admit how bad the economy is because they don’t want to increase public spending or strengthen safety nets. And their patrons on Wall Street don’t want to modify mortgages. Republicans would rather Americans believe their big lie that taming the deficit will create jobs and restore the economy.

So what does Reich suggest? Dems are a minority in the House, and there are too many moderate Dems in the Senate. I guess we need to dream that Obama would use his bully pulpit and would twist arms on the Hill to encourage action and counter Republican talking points.

Republicans as part of their big lie regarding the deficit have convinced themselves that the stimulus failed and thus any government public spending will fail. They don't care about the Krugman argument that the stimulus was too small and they don't care about new deal spending arguments either. They've won the mainstream media and much of the public over with these arguments.

Republicans are also confident they will win the Seante in the next elections so they are even more resistant to action.

Senate

it doesn't help right now, but Reich might suggest that the Dems could've done more when they had the majority in both houses.

but they were so convinced that the way to hold both was to do NOTHING, except for the snail's pace on what turned out to be a glass-one-eighth-full healthcare bill.

and yet don't DARE suggest rocking the duopoly boat... useless fantasy etc

max, if you're still interested in posts about oligarchic machinations, here you go

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/06/citizens-united-conservatives-spent/

sorry to be a broken record, but the nastiest skunk in the Obama Administration has taken his act on the road and squeezed out another smelly shit in the Irish petunia patch:

Geithner Blocked IMF Deal to Haircut Irish Debt

hi guys

i would like to read some articles/essays/blog posts about how and why the rich have a disproportionate influence w/ elected officials, and what, if anything can be done to change that.

thank you in advance!

max

― ban drake (the rapper) (max), Friday, May 6, 2011 12:18 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hey max,

i saw prof. alan brinkley speak once -- hes from columbia university -- iirc he was one of those who made an argument early on about this -- depending on how deep you want to dig i'd recommend getting familiar w/ his stuff here: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/history/fac-bios/Brinkley/faculty.html

max, it's the lobbyists.. i'm not saying they're bad but well, talking to people who work on the legislation and as liasons from the agencies to those who work on the legislation, my impression has been.. lobbyists have a strong influence on the process and everybody knows that this is the case, and you can't just blow them off because they represent powerful and well-connected interests.. it's like basically where does working class joe six-pack have a voice in the process that's going to outweigh the voice of those interests who have players right there on the hill, in contact, with connections and long-running relationships, etc.

it seems to me the interests of the lobbyists who work for corporations in whatever domain is being covered by legislation.. they are likely to align with the rich, basically. i have no idea how you untangle any of this

thx for all this stuff qualmsey/deej/daria! i read an article somewhere a month ago (salon? mother jones?) that cited a couple statistics about how--for example--the top one-third income bracket of a given congressional district/state has measurably disproportionate influence over the decisions of that rep/senator. i cant find the article now but it didnt quite touch on ~why~ this is the case. and i guess in certain ways its obvious--and part of it is about the mechanisms of power like you point out d-g--but i sort of want to see it spelled out as plainly and stupidly as possible. b/c this seems to me to be the biggest problem facing american liberal politics and id like to think abt what steps i should advocate to end it.

campaign finance reform, for one. if all elected officials could only draw from the same limited kitty then the influence of the plutocracy and their lobbyist cronies wouldn't be so profound. (in theory.) as it is, running for office is super-expensive, so pols have to play the game even to get a seat at the big show. and once they're there, they have to keep fundraising like maniacs in order to stay. it's one of the main things they do. keep your eye on this guy

http://www.progressivesunited.org/home/

if that's something you can get behind and advocate, you would be in good company