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

that's when I reach for my revolver

this debt ceiling nonsense is the worst kind of kabuki.

otm.

It's time for Obama to conclude that being tough on domestic issues will win over independents....But I'm not counting on it.

What is the consensus that not limiting the debt ceiling would collapse the US economy? It seems like a number of armchair economists are saying i would definitely happen, but even entertaining the possibility is telling. What would be the Republican gain from doing this? Destroying the value of all their funds? Proving in a single swoop that political gain is more important than the welfare of American people?

I can't take them seriously, and any Dem who purports to do so is basically using EVIL REPUBLICANS as a body shield while caving in to their plutocratic ideals.

yeah i wish they'd just start reaganing, call the gop's bluff, and explain why the debt's mostly republican tax cuts, medicare part d, refusal to let the government bargain for medication prices, iraqistan, and the fallout of the bush/cheney deregulation recession. except they've been doing that now for two and a half years, and who won the last election? "citizens united." it's a little scary when you think about it. reminds me of how effectively they swift-boated a decorated war hero in favor of a national guard pilot

It's time for Obama to conclude that "being tough" (in lib-fantasy terms) on domestic issues is incompatible with raising a billion campaign dollars

public financing of campaigns would be ideal. until then

Really? Perhaps outside the Beltway, Obama would get just as many donors through showing he's fully capable of holding asshole GOP feet to the fire. I'd send money if there was proof of that.

well you have to have a lot of money see.

suzy, that's a nice thought, but it's never been done before, and our owners prefer to be as unoriginal as possible.

Speak for yourself: I don't have an owner.

oh, you kid

Do you think Obama's Wall Street backers want him to give the Republicans what they want in order to get the Republicans to play nice re the debt limit? I thought even the Chamber of Commerce is not in favor of playing around with the debt limit?

Again, i think the debt limit bluff is a huge bluff that has benefits for both sides. Since basically both sides are beholden to Wall Street interests the debt limit bluff:

-proves to R voters that Republicans are serious about cutting spending
-proves to D voters that Republicans are recklessly political and we can't afford to let them win in 2012
-proves to I voters that Obama is the big adult in the room and he and his party will gladly rise above partisan nonsense to compromise on the points where both party's interests lie (psst: plutocratic interests)

The Senate is likely to vote Wednesday on the Democrats’ bill to eliminate $20 billion in unnecessary tax perks for the five largest oil companies.

That's from a Public Citizen e-mail. Contact your senator...

Jane Mayer on the Obama administration's crackdown on whistle blowers.

New Kansas restrictions on abortion coverage may result in legal challenges.

The debate over whether legislators broke their rules could underpin a legal challenge. Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, which performs abortions at its suburban Kansas City-area clinic, is considering a lawsuit.

"Frankly, we will take a good, hard look with attorneys to determine whether to litigate based on the way in which this law was made," said Peter Brownlie, the group's president and chief executive officer. "The purpose is not just to have an orderly process. It's for citizens in the state to know what the hell their legislators are legislating."

Abortion opponents brush aside such complaints.

"Whatever," Mary Kay Culp, executive director of the anti-abortion group Kansans for Life, said after hearing one round of criticism. "Cry me a river."

Oooooooooh can I cut a bitch? Pretty please?

x-post re that long New Yorker article--

Thanks. Have only skimmed this long sad piece but will read it later. I wonder if someone at Obama's Justice Department is pushing these prosecutions of whistleblowers (not to excuse Obama)?

high five suzy my reaction to that shit was just visceral...like, wait, you said what? WHAT? no you didn't, no you didn't, I can't even, no you didn't

JD, let's just say that faced with such a woman, I would not be rendered speechless. People like that say things like that because they are c. 4000 miles from my left hook.

More on Obama's oil "plan", this time from David Roberts:

The downsides of the strategy are obvious:

• There will be more drilling, more spills, and more greenhouse gas emissions. In other words: bad policy.
• Drilling will not -- can not -- lower gas prices, so insofar as this is seen as an Obama promise, the promise will be broken. By ratifying his opponents' lie, he becomes complicit in it.
• By adopting the right's solution, Obama sacrifices the chance to present a clear alternative based on the truth: reducing demand is the only solution to oil addiction and high gas prices. You can't be on the side of the good guys if you're promoting a "what the bad guys said, only a little less" approach.

What are the purported upsides that are meant to offset these downsides?

• Republicans and conservative Dems, seeing that Obama is a reasonable guy willing to meet them halfway, will offer some concessions of their own in the name of a grand bargain.
• The American public will see that Obama is a reasonable guy, not one of these rigid partisans, and they will respond with approval.

The problem is that the downsides are real and the upsides are fantastical. They don't happen. They are precisely what post-truth politics has left behind.

http://dailydish.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451c45669e201538e84b1cc970b-550wi

maybe he's dancing

. . . i hope you dance . . .

so what was really happening in that photo? brooks realized he was in a very important photo shoot of newt gingrich descending a staircase, and tried to duck out of the way? fucking undignified.

it's really true ... sometimes pictures can convey the truth (in this case, that Brooks is a simpering toe licker to the GOP) so much more infallibly than mere words.

knew Ben Stein was long gone when he was doing his Darwinism = Nazism bit but re: IMF rape case -

The prosecutors say that Mr. Strauss-Kahn "forced" the complainant to have oral and other sex with him. How? Did he have a gun? Did he have a knife? He's a short fat old man. They were in a hotel with people passing by the room constantly, if it's anything like the many hotels I am in. How did he intimidate her in that situation? And if he was so intimidating, why did she immediately feel un-intimidated enough to alert the authorities as to her story?

Ben Stein is a product of Yale Law, in case that's not evident from his line of questioning.

what a horrible little man

Ben Stein has never been a chambermaid, obv, but he doesn't yet grasp this simple fact.

x-post

The American public will see that Obama is a reasonable guy, not one of these rigid partisans, and they will respond with approval. from above re Obama and oil drilling

Greg Sargent in Washington Post online :

It seems clear that Obama and his advisers think laying down a firm marker — playing the game the way Republicans do — makes him sound like just another Washington politician. Saying “no,” as Krugman puts it, risks miring Obama in the same mud as all the rest of the partisan mud-slingers on both sides. The health care wars left Obama splattered with that mud. Signaling openness to compromise at the outset while articulating general principles as opposed to bottom lines — whatever it does for the Dems’ negotiating position — is central to Obama’s political identity and is the best way to recapture the aura that propelled him into the White House in the first place. It might be called “Beer Summit-ism.”

I’m not endorsing this view. I’m just reminding folks that there isn’t any big mystery here. This is who Obama is.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/why-does-obama-deal-with-hostage-takers/2011/03/03/AFkw054G_blog.html

I'm not so sure this strategy is going to work (with winning over independents or with keeping Dems satisfied)

There's way more on (the futility of) Obama's compromising political identity in this great article by Robert Kuttner, including a nice compare/contrast between Obama and Clinton.

Santorum.jpg tells Hugh Hewitt that John McCain doesn't understand how torture works: http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/05/17/santorum_mccain_enhanced_interrogation/index.html

Cough, cough.

i like Kuttner generally and for the most part i like this article. but he also repeats the "Obama as 3D chess/rope-a-dope master" trope that some have trotted out at various points during his Presidency to try to explain his tepid moves (even if Kuttner does go on to knock it down later in the article). instead of the Ockham Razor's answer of "the tepid half-steps are EXACTLY what Obama wants."

Occam

suspicious of anyone praising Clinton while slagging Obama tbh

this is the hugest, multibillion dollar story that is basically not that interesting.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/credit/2011-05-13-lower-swipe-fees_n.htm

http://www.tirereview.com/Article/87587/debit_card_swipe_fee_change_will_impact_dealers.aspx

yes that's a summary of the issue in "tire review"

i don't even know what to think of it apart from a reaction to hope that the banks lose.

Obama-as-'compromiser' doesnt need any deeper explanation than a few Tom Tomorrow panels.

Xxp Occam's razor (or Ockham's razor[1]), often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae

well shut my mouth

http://www.csnews.com/top-story-swipe_fee_reform_foes_taking_different_policy_tactic-58701.html

"convenience store news" no less

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/161565-bank-fight-tests-reids-allegiances

^^ really interesting. lol senate.

lol insider baseball.

another article from a few weeks ago

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/28/swipe-fees-interchange-banks-merchants_n_853574.html?view=print

The swipe fee debate, as mundane as it may appear, is emblematic of how Washington works today -- and helps explain why Congress hasn’t passed an appropriations bill in years, can’t write an annual budget, is flirting with defaulting on the country’s debt and effectively gave up on job-creation efforts in the midst of a brutal economic downturn. There are, to be sure, a variety of reasons that Congress is zombified, but one of the least understood explanations is also one of the simplest: The city is too busy refereeing disputes between major corporate interest groups.

As swipe fees dominate the Congressional agenda, a handful of other intra-corporate contests consume most of what remains on the Congressional calendar: a squabble over a jet engine, industry tussling over health-care spoils and the never-ending fight over the corporate tax code.

The endless meetings and evenings devoted to arbitrating duels between big businesses destroy time and energy that could otherwise be spent on higher priorities. In America today, over 13 million people are out of work and millions more are underemployed. One out of every seven is living on food stamps. One out of every five American children lives in poverty. Yet the most consuming issue in Washington -- according to members of Congress, Hill staffers, lobbyists and Treasury officials -- is determining how to slice up the $16 billion debit-card swipe fee pie for corporations.

“Every time we go in to an office and tell them we’re here to talk about interchange, they cringe,” says Dennis Lane, who makes regular lobbying trips to Washington and has owned a Massachusetts 7-Eleven for 37 years. “I think there’s been more lobbying -- there’s been more hours and minutes spent on Capitol Hill discussing interchange reform -- than there has been talking about a shutdown of the government.”

The combination of high financial stakes and scant public attention to the faceoff between card companies and retailers has blurred party lines. Dozens of unlikely and influential figures have rushed to random sides of the swipe fee trough: Anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist, hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, the Christian Coalition, teachers unions, Koch-funded think tanks, the NAACP, Karl Rove, Dick Morris, Walmart and Google. Even Mickey Mouse has made an appearance.

so what was really happening in that photo? brooks realized he was in a very important photo shoot of newt gingrich descending a staircase, and tried to duck out of the way? fucking undignified.

also is it just me or is there a giant poop stain on the door behind the security guy

no that's Newt Gingrich

lol

kudos