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

Info out on big money supporters for campaigns:

For Obama, the sheer number of bundlers — and the volume of donations they represent — signals another potential juggernaut like 2008, when he shattered all records by raising $745 million. During his first campaign, he had 47 bundlers who raised $500,000 or more — a total he is already more than halfway to matching.

Obama’s biggest bundlers include longtime supporters such as Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, former New Jersey governor and senator Jon Corzine, and fashion editor Anna Wintour. But there are new names on the campaign’s bundlers list as well, such as Marc Benioff, a tech CEO who runs salesforce.com.

Several of the key bundlers, including Benioff, held events at their homes in which Obama came. These events usually gave donors special access to Obama, including the chance to ask the president direct questions in a closed-door atmosphere.

Hollywood super-agent Ari Emanuel, the brother of former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, helped raise between $50,000 and $100,000.

Romney did not release a full list of bundlers, but his campaign was required to disclose bundling by six registered lobbyists, totaling $517,000 in contributions. The lobbyists included Patrick Durkin of Barclays, who raised $168,000, and Wayne Berman, with Ogilvy Government Relations, who raised $102,000.

The lobbyist bundler requirement was put in place by an ethics law sponsored by then-senator Obama, who has not accepted contributions from registered lobbyists or corporate PACs in his presidential bids. The Obama campaign attacked the GOP field on Friday for declining to identify their top fundraisers.

Obama’s biggest bundlers include longtime supporters such as Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, former New Jersey governor and senator Jon Corzine, and fashion editor Anna Wintour.

old new jersey politicians never die ...

So, in the too-good-to-be-true-in-modern-America department, looks like Elizabeth Warren is stillborn:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-15/obama-eliminates-warren-as-consumer-head.html

Ugh

ugh x2

a Constitutional balanced budget amendment has been sent off to the states for ratification

is there any chance something like this will pass? it would cripple this fucking country.

(also it'd probably be repealed in a few decades, but in the meantime it'd be crippling.)

No chance at all.

that will pass, that is

An ugh to this to--Obama talking to college kids rationalizing his approach as taking a middle of the road approach and as being right because he believes it's in the middle

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_07/to_merry_principle_to_a_politi030918.php

“If you are only talking to people who you agree with, then politics is always going to disappoint you,” Obama said. “Politics will always disappoint you. You think about some of the issues we’ve worked on over the last couple of years, I think the College Republicans here would say that I was pretty liberal president, right? But if you read the Huffington Post, you would think that I was some right-wing tool of Wall Street. Both things can’t be true, but I think that what it has to do is, this sense of, ‘We have a position and we can’t compromise on it.’

“And so, one of the challenges of this generation is, I think, to understand that the nature of our democracy and the nature of our politics is to marry principle to a political process. That means you don’t get a 100% of what you want. You don’t get it if you are the majority; you don’t get it if you are in the minority. And you can be an honorable in politics understanding that you are not going to get 100% of what you want.

he's right, but the devil's in the details--as in, how and where and when you compromise. and when to show a bit of steel.

think the College Republicans here would say that I was pretty liberal president, right? But if you read the Huffington Post, you would think that I was some right-wing tool of Wall Street. Both things can’t be true

oh sure they can

My god -- no one heckled him, eh.

a Constitutional balanced budget amendment has been sent off to the states for ratification

huh?

think the College Republicans here would say that I was pretty liberal president, right? But if you read the Huffington Post, you would think that I was some right-wing tool of Wall Street. Both things can’t be true

sure he can ... lotsa socially-liberal Wall Streeters!

xpost w/ goole

XD

A few days ago the House passed a measure to prohibit spending on energy efficiency standards for lightbulbs.

but somehow, i think, that stupidity is overshadowed by the upcoming vote on the amendment offered by Rep. Sandy Adams (R-FL) to prohibit federal websites that teach children about energy efficiency.

ugh god fuck these people in their eyeholes

the funniest thing about that is that he apparently thinks there are droves of children out there reading about energy efficiency on federal websites that just have to be stopped

Energy efficiency websites: the facebook killer?!?!

lol Sandy Adams is a woman, but actually looks mannish.

http://images.politico.com/global/news/110714_sandy_ap_328.jpg

i just assume that anyone that stupid is a man

also i guarantee you that north florida has the highest percentage of men named "Sandy"

Ha! Probably right.

ugh god fuck these people in their eyeholes

― Johnny Fever, Sunday, July 17, 2011 11:38 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

that's a winning party platform IMO

persuasive speaker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qqP927AvZo

"I have no problem with Tinkerbell"

god, government is so stupid & boring

that woman would earn a C in public speaking

a C???????????

grade inflation

"taxpayers are paying over $60 for this wasteful website"

well, she WAS reading out the text of an amendment to a law. still.

that woman would earn a C in public speaking

― by another name (amateurist), Monday, 18 July 2011 06:32 (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

a C???????????

― J0rdan S., Monday, 18 July 2011 06:33 (4 hours ago) Bookmark

a ¢

there have been lots of times in history in which gauging the political climate and deciding to meet halfway with the dominant opinions would have been a shitty thing to do, and a poor second to finding a way to persuade rather than compromise.

Fire Dog Lake on Obama's lecture to college students:

While there’s talk of marrying principle to compromise, in this clip Obama does not define that principle. In the whole of his public life, actually, he has not fully defined that principle. He has, however, defined compromise as the necessary element of the most important thing a politician can do, which is to get something done. To “do big things,” as he has been saying throughout the debt limit fight. And you cannot separate the appearance of this last lecture, produced four months ago, on the heels of his efforts to engineer a grand bargain, a compromise that would include major cuts to the social safety net.

Obama gives the example of Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation to underline his belief in compromise:

"Abraham Lincoln. Here’s a guy who didn’t believe in slavery, but his first priority was keeping the union. I’ve got a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation in my office, and if you read through it, most of the document is those states and areas where emancipation doesn’t apply because those folks are allied with the union so they can keep their slaves.

Here’s a wartime President making a compromise around the greatest moral issue that the country ever faced, because he understood that his job was to win the war and maintain the union. Can you imagine how the Huffington Post would have reported on that? It would have been blistering. “Lincoln Sells Out Slaves.” There would be protests, and we’re going to run a third party guy."

This is the second time the Huffington Post, obviously a thorn in the side of the President, is mentioned in this video. The first time, he says that “if you read the Huffington Post, you’d think that I was some right-wing tool of Wall Street.” He is not the biggest fan of their business and political coverage, I gather.

I don’t think anyone would disagree that Obama deeply believes this in his core. The man who came to power on a message of hope is saying that there’s no real hope in implementing the full governing agenda in the American system. That’s true, apparently, even if you have a large majority in the House and 60 votes in the Senate, which Obama had for several months of his first term. That’s true, apparently, even if we’re talking about issues and policies where the President has full authority on his own, with HAMP being the best example.

and 60 votes in the Senate

Fire Dog Lake seems to have an equally selective memory as to who comprised those 60 votes and how useful they actually were.

I have 2 relatives who keep insisting that if I disagree with Obama's compromises that I am as extremist as the right-wingers. No, that's not correct.

Another fun week ahead planned for the House:

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ Bob Greenstein explained:

The “Cut, Cap, and Balance Act” that the House of Representatives will vote on (this) week stands out as one of the most ideologically extreme pieces of major budget legislation to come before Congress in years, if not decades. It would go a long way toward enshrining Grover Norquist’s version of America into law. It is so extreme that even the budget plan of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan would not fully satisfy its requirements — the Ryan plan’s budget cuts wouldn’t be severe enough.

The bill also would threaten the U.S. government with default and would likely cause the loss of roughly 700,000 jobs in the year ahead. In addition, the bill would target programs for the poor for cuts, while protecting tax breaks for the wealthy and powerful.

yup, that's their game

elizabeth warren should have been in 'the fighter' instead of mark wahlberg

all these months looking at this thread and i finally read this sentence ;_;

my wife has been sitting on the news re: Warren for a couple of weeks now; anyone want to move to Boston to be her faculty assistant?

Ezra Klein sez a deal is imminent. Of course, it's the last sentence of the following passage that galls: "If it passes, Republicans will have escaped these negotiations without making any significant policy or political concessions."

And Obama and much of the mainstream media will hail it as a compromise, because Dems will vote for it (and its not quite as extreme as the House Cut, Cap and Balance proposal).

one benefit for the administration here is that Elizabeth Warren might well run for Senate in Massachusetts next year

huh. interesting.

how does this affect president scott brown? is his term up or is it kerry's seat?

Brown's term

goddamn it

what happened

Bachman left her church

well, fuck. I went to google to check out the news but my previous search had been an image search, and that's how I landed on some bachmann photoshops that make a glass of mayonnaise sound appetizing