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

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

lol good work everybody, let's take this on the road

That Prospect.org article makes a couple of dubious points and awards Bill Clinton too much credit but it's pretty damn good.

And if he was so intimidating, why did she immediately feel un-intimidated enough to alert the authorities as to her story?

Imagine she lives in a country where women and minority rights are taken seriously. Probably hard to imagine such a place if you're defending a rape.

This swipe shit is hilarious. There was an Al Franken book about how he became president on that one single issue.

Marshall at TPM:

Examining the Gingrich wreckage this evening, I'm starting to wonder if we might simply be in the filming stage of Gingrich's own version of "I'm Still Here...."

Senate fell short yesterday in getting rid of tax breaks for 5 richest oil companies

In the 52-to-48 vote, 3 Democrats joined 45 Republicans in opposing the bill, which was supported by the Obama administration and fiscal watchdog groups that saw the tax help for the oil industry as wasteful. Forty-eight Democrats, two independents and two Republicans backed it.

who were the 3 Damns besides Oil-in-Her-Veins Landrieux?

Guess who.

landreau and some other shits?

Joementum? Some western/southern 'maverick'?

Ben Nelson and Begich.

Ben Nelson is the worst fuckin piece of shit imo

“A Center for American Progress Action Fund analysis finds that the 48 senators who sided with Big Oil received over $21 million in career oil contributions, while 52 senators who sided with the American people received only $5.4 million in contributions.”

Wall Street and high gas prices. A theory:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/05/13/114190/speculation-explains-more-about.html

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/18/gingrich-gets-glittered/

Watching him walk back his anti-Paul Ryan comments has been amusing. He's been on Meet the Press 35 times but says this time he was trapped. What a clown

Newt Gingrich went "On the Record" with Greta van Susteren Tuesday night to respond to criticism over his comments on Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) budget plan.

"I want to set a precedent for new kinds of presidential campaigns," he told Greta van Susteren. "I made a mistake and I called Paul Ryan today, who's a very close personal friend, and I said that."

yeah he said he 'didn't go in hostile enough'

for david gregory

noted press bulldog david gregory

fun fact: yesterday was Ben Nelson's 70th birthday

Biblical threescore and ten, time to call it a life

lol

With rural states getting progressively redder, there’s just no way Democrats will ever have a reliable 60 vote majority in the Senate. As long as the filibuster is painless, Republicans will be able to strangle progressive legislation there. Balloonjuice

Aero, how can progressives win in rural states?

bbbbut I thought the TP is quaking in anticipation of the day when the red states turn blue, ie Fear of a Nonwhite Nation?

the O campaign people just emailed about jerome corsi

and then there's this: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/05/obama-campaign-selling-long-form-birth-certificate-merchandise.php

smh

lol'ed at the campaign merch

show us the long sleeve birth certificate shirt

this guy is fucking despicable

http://blogs.forbes.com/erikkain/2011/05/17/wisconsin-governor-scott-walker-to-prevent-same-sex-couples-hospital-visitation-rights/

^^^What the fucking fuck?

So funny i had to read a Walt Whitman quote to see that article.

I didn't know I could loathe him any more than I did.

gay partners showing up at a hospital is a huge budgetary problem apparently

hey, same sex life partners "violates the state constitution."

smgdh

same sex life partners visiting each other in the hospital "violates the state constitution."

http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/121956273.html

it's not just the hospital issue, it's a WI state register for same-sex couples, giving them some kind of less-than-marriage privileges, which walker and the AG don't want to defend anymore in court

Wisconsin Family Action sued last year in Dane County circuit court, arguing that the registries violated a 2006 amendment to the state constitution that bans gay marriage and any arrangement that is substantially similar.

really tho, is there any good reason that this dude should have

Wall Street and high gas prices. A theory:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/05/13/114190/speculation-explains-more-about.html
--curmudgeon

this is a joke of an article btw - it's built on a misleading quote about stable demand (*due to high prices*). the only mention of china comes from the bad guys.

err ignore the first line of above post

whipping on the guy who repealed don't ask don't tell when the opposition is scott walker

“The literati sent out their minions to do their bidding,” Tyler wrote. “Washington cannot tolerate threats from outsiders who might disrupt their comfortable world. The firefight started when the cowardly sensed weakness. They fired timidly at first, then the sheep not wanting to be dropped from the establishment’s cocktail party invite list unloaded their entire clip, firing without taking aim their distortions and falsehoods. Now they are left exposed by their bylines and handles. But surely they had killed him off. This is the way it always worked. A lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the onslaught. But out of the billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia emerged Gingrich, once again ready to lead those who won’t be intimated by the political elite and are ready to take on the challenges America faces.”

^^^ Don't know whether to laugh, cry, or shit a brick over that excrable piece of ur-Hollywood badness.

don't be intimated, guys!

It sounds like a bad poem that hasn't yet been broken down e.e. cummings style.

the firefight
s t a r t e d
w
h
e
n

Hah yes. Who is this Gingrich guy? He must be a true Washington outside, as I've never heard of him in the news for the past 20 or so years.