Indefinite Detention? But I Have Soccer Practice at 4: U.S. Politics 2012

suggest that if Boehner keeps his post = possible
repubs keep the house = likely
repubs win the senate = not so likely
and also win the white house, = SO NOT GONNA HAPPEN

shitty GOP prez candidate will depress GOP voter turnout, which will dim their chances of retaking the Senate. House is probably secure tho.

Which means the next four years will be just like the past four, no?

oh if Obama wins and the GOP retains the House it's safe to assume even less will get done. only accomplishments will be pulling out of Afghanistan and other foreign-policy-related stuff

Which is sweet! I can't wait to post more indignant Bam-aims-drones-at-citizens stuff!

texas responds to the DOJ's objection to its voter id law by amending its complaint: the Voting Rights Act is (partly) unconstitutional! it “exceeds the enumerated powers of Congress and conflicts with Article IV of the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment.”

http://electionlawblog.org/?p=31583

lol gtfo

good luck, texmerica

Oh yay, Rush is on Twitter

“I’m not going to be hanging on Twitter 15 hours a day and tweeting, ‘Just had breakfast, have a wonderful day! Bye! Here’s a picture of me eating some cornflakes!’ None of that stuff,” he said

lol like Rush eats cornflakes without frosting

“Just things I want people to see and there’s a really good one today that I want people to see, and I’m going to tweet it out.”

Definitely do not need to see Rush tweeting one out

What's frosting? Is that some new painkiller all the kids are doing?

“I’m not going to be hanging on Twitter 15 hours a day and tweeting, ‘Just had breakfast, have a wonderful day! Bye! Here’s a picture of me eating some cornflakes!’ None of that stuff,” he said

lol like Rush eats cornflakes without frosting

― thuggish ruggish Brahms (DJP), Thursday, March 15, 2012 4:08 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

unsurprisingly, he sounds like what olds thought twitter was in 2008

I dunno where else in the country this is bubbling up, but our legislature here is all freaked out about Agenda 21. (Which they just discovered, even though it's been around since 1992.) My favorite part is this:

the measure matches up nearly word-for-word with a model posted on the website of the John Birch Society

As far as I'm aware, "I am willing to stand up against the tyranny of Agenda 21" means "I am psychotically insane OR I am willing to stand in solidarity with my psychotically insane brethren if it will get me a few votes".

So, it's a very _now_ look for Republicans.

Only 3rd on the agenda!

wait that can't be real

We worry about the "imposition" of sharia law yet:

WHEREAS, God has never rescinded his grant of said lands; and

WHEREAS, along with the grant of said lands to the Jewish people, God provided for the non-Jewish
residents of the land in commanding that governance must be in one law for all without drawing distinction
between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens, as contained in Leviticus 24:22, and

Oh c'mon, stop acting all surprised. Obviously Evangelical Christians are opposed Sharia Law bc they think divine testament law is the only law.

and that peace can be afforded the region only through a united Israel governed under one law for all people.

I'm sure the Palestinians will be delighted to hear it.

"reverenced"?

silly, Palestinians aren't people! xp

Other Republicans are pointing fingers at Sandra Fluke's "socialist Jewish boyfriend" (who does not love America or Israel enough among other things apparently)

http://thegraph.com/2012/03/sandra-flukes-boyfriend/

wow, this 'beta male' shit. kudos to the anti-woman internet underground, you have made it increasingly mainstream.

look at this clown's twitter feed

https://twitter.com/#!/brooksbayne

looks like some other conservatives have tried to ostracize him as an anti-semite. lol this shit.

https://twitter.com/#!/jstrevino/statuses/180664026236338176

Oh lord, that's the real Adam Baldwin. Bad show, Jayne.

yeah he's a total nut

wtf. tikkun olem was not invented by liberals. it was invented by the fucking besht. fuck conservatives forever.

Whether or not Boehner keeps his speakership is really not a big deal one way or another, but here's how I see it. Even if the Republicans were to take a whipping in November, while still retaining a much-diminished majority in the House, Boehner probably wouldn't fall to Cantor as a result, because the most likely R-reps to lose their seats in such an election would be the freshman tea-partiers, undercutting Cantor's core of support.

imo, the most likely way for Boehner to lose out to Cantor would be a very mixed election where 95% of the tea party R-reps came back, but about an equal number of "moderate" R-reps lost their seats, but Obama wins and the Senate stays Democratic. Then Cantor might-could assemble an insurrection and grab the speaker's chair. Not likely, tho.

he most likely R-reps to lose their seats in such an election would be the freshman tea-partiers

what are you basing this on

tea party's appeal undiminished in the GOP if the prez primary is anything to go by

i'm basing it on history. freshmen reps are always the most vulnerable segment of a congress. a big loss of seats is almost certain to include a large number of first timers whose seats flipped back. but, if you notice, i wasn't predicting a large loss of R-rep seats in november, only speculating on boehner's security in a couple of scenarios.

just asking cuz I was wondering if there was some recent polling data or something. no disputing that freshmen seats are the most vulnerable, they always have less money/fewer backers/weaker infrastructure

it's not their freshman-ness that's the vulnerability, it's that most districts are safe.

yeah there's a difference between a freshman who fits w/ a district's politics and flipped out the outlier and a freshman who won in a wave election

right

A little more on the Agenda 21 fite, this is funny:

http://blogs.knoxnews.com/humphrey/2012/03/rep-womick-wrong-about-murfree.html

"It's kind of like children have imaginary friends, and Republicans have imaginary enemies," House Democratic Caucus Chairman Mike Tuner of Nashville told reporters after the floor session.

Actually the lead sentence is pretty great too:

A state lawmaker was mistaken about the facts of a restaurant's zoning issues when he used the case of Papa's Butts and BBQ Hot Sauce Store as an example of the creeping influence of the United Nations in Tennessee, a city official said.

"It's kind of like children have imaginary friends, and Republicans have imaginary enemies"

^love this. somebody slap that on a bumper sticker.

It tells you how desperate the White House is to show its pro-business bona fides that it has thrown its support to this crappy piece of legislation. To her credit, the controversy-shy chairman of the SEC, Mary Shapiro, last week penned a letter to the Senate with a warning that the JOBS bill will undermine important investor protections. And on Thursday, a more reasonable alternative was offered in the Senate by Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat whose investigations subcommittee was the first to shine light on the financial antics of “Fabulous Fab” and his Goldman colleagues

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wall-street-credo-ripping-out-their-eyeballs/2012/03/12/gIQAakrPJS_story_2.html

With the so-called JOBS bill, on which the Senate is due to vote Tuesday, Congress is about to make the same kind of mistake again -- this time abandoning much of the 1930s-era securities legislation that both served investors well and helped make the US one of the best places in the world to raise capital. We find ourselves again on a bipartisan route to disaster.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/simon-johnson/fiscal-affairs-a-colossal_b_1362060.html

Liberal economists and some Dem Senators versus Steve Jobs, Boehner, Obama and bipartisan types

Steve Jobs supported earlier draft

This above bill has not received much critical attention except for the few blogposts listed above. Some are just assuming that the Senate will clear up the House mess of a bill. But with techie and Obama support for the bill, it will be up to Dem senators to go against the tide.

pfft, fat chance of that ... Dem congress-critters spread their legs even wider for Sillicon Valley than they do for Wall Street.

so it's like a robot-bestiality sorta deal

om/politics/obamas-evolution-behind-the-failed-grand-bargain-on-the-debt/2012/03/15/gIQAHyyfJS_story.html

So Pelosi was gonna "reluctantly" accept this, before it blew up

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obamas-evolution-behind-the-failed-grand-bargain-on-the-debt/2012/03/15/gIQAHyyfJS_story.html

The piece does not have the details re whether anyone in the White House said maybe we should not propose increasing the Medicare eligibility age and instituting chained CPI, which would cut Social Security cost-of-living increases, in exchange for a minor amount of tax increases.

Ugh. Boehner -- a prisoner of his caucus. Obama -- a feeble negotiator.