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

We live in crazy times.

A Republican member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives who once posted a comment on Facebook about shooting at police officers accidentally dropped one of his guns on the floor at the start of a committee meeting Tuesday morning.
State Rep. Kyle Tasker (R-Nottingham) explained to onlookers that he had donated blood that morning and the effects caused him to drop his gun at the start of a House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee meeting. The committee was meeting to amend an abortion bill pending in the Legislature. The gun did not fire.

State Rep. Steve Shurtleff (D-Concord), a member of the committee, said that he was sitting three seats away from Tasker in the committee room when he heard “a clang” and saw that the gun was on the floor. Shurtleff said Tasker routinely wears two guns in a shoulder holster to legislative meetings.

Shurtleff said Tasker routinely wears two guns in a shoulder holster to legislative meetings

...and has a penis that struggles to reach an inch and a quarter when fully erect.

outlaw giving blood

http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/03/20/reid-pulls-jobs-act-bill-after-amendments-fail/

The bullet has been dodged for now. But I would expect Senate Republicans to claim that Reid went back on his word on a deal to trade a vote on the JOBS Act for judicial confirmations. No doubt they’ll start filibustering those nominations now. Conversely, 40 of the 54 members who voted for the strengthening amendments could simply filibuster the underlying JOBS Act and block the bill, upholding the bargain of allowing it a vote. And so it’s a test of wills between the parties to see what will happen next.

Wait, did he really drop his gun at a Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee meeting? Dude must have a highly attuned sense of irony.

when i get home, i am very tempted to post that clip from parks and recreation where Ron Swanson's gunshot-blast ringtone goes off in the middle of a gov't committee meeting ... seems fitting.

great paragraphs in american political advocacy journalism

A newly-founded group behind an ad showing an actor portraying President Obama throwing an elderly "grandma" off a cliff is sponsoring a rally with Rep. Paul Ryan (R) next week. The group, AmericanDoctors4Truth, is an offshoot of the anti-Obamacare group Docs4PatientCare and made the ad in response to a video from a liberal group which tied Ryan's plan to reform Medicare with video of a man pushing an elderly woman to her presumable death.

honestly reminds me of

http://www.theonion.com/articles/peeing-calvin-decals-now-recognized-as-vital-chann,386/

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!!!

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201203210005

As part of the promotional rollout for his new book, Hollywood Hypocrites, Jason Mattera yesterday unveiled an ambush interview he conducted with U2 lead singer Bono. Or at least, that's who Mattera thought he had ambushed.

The video was posted at conservative websites like Breitbart.com and Glenn Beck's The Blaze, but was later marked "private" on YouTube and pulled from Breitbart.com. Why? As explained by The Blaze,"There is widespread discussion on Twitter that the person Mattera interviewed in the videos may have been a Bono impersonator."

. . .

During an appearance on Sean Hannity's radio program yesterday, which includes a brief snippet of the Mattera interview with "Bono," Hannity and Mattera touted "bad boy reporter" Mattera's impressive ambush interview skills. Asked by Hannity how he managed to get an interview with "Bono," Mattera replied that it was "basic shoeleather journalism." (Hannity promised to run the video on last night's edition of his Fox News program, but said on Twitter this morning that Mattera's appearance was preempted by election coverage and that they would run the video tonight instead.)

Mattera and Hannity complained about how "Bono" refused to answer Mattera's inquiries about controversy over U2's taxes. As Mattera put it, "He just filibusters forever without any actual explanation."

In light of the speculation that Mattera was actually interviewing a Bono impersonator, some of the exchanges in the video take on newfound hilarity, including Mattera browbeating "Bono" for saying that he doesn't have control over U2 (transcript via The Blaze):

Mattera: By dodging taxes on royalties are you raiding the poverty programs you purport to champion?

Bono: No.

Mattera: No? Don't you want governments to be generous with other people's money and not yours?

Bono: I don't have control over that...

Mattera: How do you not have control over that? It's your company. Are you not in charge of your own company?

Bono: It's not my company.

Mattera: You have no say in what U2 does?

Bono: Not particularly.

Mattera: You don't? You don't have a say in what U2 does?

Bono: No.

Mattera: You don't? You don't have a say in what U2 does?

Bono: No.

lol

that is beyond classic

btw if one of these young dickheads approaches you this is how you answer

Washington Post elitist inside the beltway columnist Dana Milbanks sours on Paul Ryan (for using the standard Republican boilerplate):

Ryan’s justification was straight out of Dickens. He wants to improve the moral fiber of the poor. There is, he told the audience at the conservative American Enterprise Institute later Tuesday, an “insidious moral tipping point, and I think the president is accelerating this.” Too many Americans, he said, are receiving more from the government than they pay in taxes.
After recalling his family’s immigration from Ireland generations ago, and his belief in the virtue of people who “pull themselves up by the bootstraps,” Ryan warned that a generous safety net “lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency, which drains them of their very will and incentive to make the most of their lives. It’s demeaning.”
How very kind: To protect poor Americans from being demeaned, Ryan is cutting their anti-poverty programs and using the proceeds to give the wealthiest Americans a six-figure tax cut.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/paul-ryans-budget-hurts-the-poor/2012/03/20/gIQAX73LQS_story.html

More beating of a dead horse, this time from the right:

The conservative Club for Growth on Wednesday came out against the new House Republican budget proposal authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (Wis.).

The Club faulted the Ryan plan for not balancing the budget quickly enough and for turning off the automatic spending cuts triggered by the failure of last year’s supercommittee.

http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/217279-club-for-growth-comes-out-against-ryan-budget

So the Club for Growth would go along with the defense cuts.

Ryan doing his part to ensure that there is a booming kidnapping industry in the US, I see

A few days ago my home state became much more disgusting. Let's see if the ACLU wins.

Lots of things are keeping the ACLU busy in Florida.

Keeping my natural bias in mind, I dare you guys to find a more reprehensible governor in the U.S. than Rick Scott. He's Ron Paul reconceived as a plutocrat: a businessman who doesn't believe in government in any form.

Brewer seems pretty terrible. Christie?

Kasich and Brownback and Walker seem bad, but not as corrupt as Scott.

http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2010/jun/04/rick-scott/rick-scott-former-healthcare-ceo-defends-columbiah/

Christie's worst feature is that he's a mean-spirited, bullying asshole (a trait common among Republicans generally, but also among prosecutors generally [Christie's job immediately before being government). to his credit, though, he hasn't bilked either the federal or the New Jersey state government for $1B+ for Medicare/Medicaid fraud.

phew

Snyder might be worse, Alfred: he's straight up relieving elected officials of their duties in many cities*

bono thing turns out to be a impersonator

so is the real Bono

As for knucklehead representatives and cable tv news hosts, we have:

CNN's "The Situation Room" ran a segment tonight that showed a potentially "terrifying new reason" to be worried about U.S. tensions with Iran. Rep. Peter King, during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing Wednesday, said there could be "hundreds" of Iranian-backed Hezbollah agents in the U.S. CNN's clip showed Hezbollah agents marching-- but not in the U.S.

"bono" video here:

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/03/bono-impersonator-mattera-breitbart-blaze-video.html?mid=rss

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yrch66gdjjk

Christian Etelin, a lawyer who has previously acted for Merah, said his client had violent tendencies.

"There was his religious engagement, an increasing hatred against the values of a democratic society and a desire to impose what he believes is truth," Mr Etelin said.

just sayin

Republican congressional salesmanship:

On the day before the budget rollout, top Republicans gathered in Speaker John Boehner’s smoky Capitol conference room with National Republican Congressional Committee officials and went over key phrases. Call the Medicare reform “bipartisan,” they were told. Frame it as helping to “fix Medicare and keep it from going bankrupt.” Be sure to point out that Americans 55 or older would not be affected. And say it gives seniors the choice of “staying in the current Medicare system or using the new one.”

Using this phrasing, 46 percent in an internal GOP poll — conducted in January — would support the Republican argument that Medicare is going bankrupt, Republicans were giving them a choice and the GOP is trying to preserve the program. The Democratic argument that Republicans were ending Medicare registered at 37 percent.

The precise, strategic sales job of the Ryan budget is a far cry from last year’s clunky rollout, and a sign that Republicans have learned some lessons in political strategy on the divisive issues underlying the Ryan vision.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74330.html

lol I think that one can be easily countered with "what about anybody who's 54? 53? 52."

Boehner's conference room was "smoky"? i thought smoking was banned in D.C. govt buildings? or is that just a little of the ol politico novelizin'?

here's the thing that makes me uneasy about the "pshaw Medicare is fine" argument:

the studies that were cited that showed the system running fine right up until I want to retire, at which point it stops paying benefits at its current level

did no one else notice this or do ppl just not care or am I mistaken

Be sure to point out that Americans 55 or older would not be affected... Using this phrasing, 46 percent in an internal GOP poll

all this tells you is that 46% of the GOP is over 55 lol

i think if you're in boehner's presence you're legally in the 8th district of ohio, so light 'em up fellas

does anybody think pshaw medicare's fine? social security yes, but iirc everybody pretty much agrees that medicare is heavily out of whack

yes it is

Almost no one in Congress has yelled louder than Walsh, a onetime American history teacher who is conducting a one-man political science experiment: He vows that he will do nothing to help his constituents and instead focus entirely on his “mission to sorta scream from the mountaintop” to tackle the nearly $16 trillion federal debt.

lol this guy is gonna lose so hard in Illinois

pretty sure boehner smokes like a chimney. just look at him and listen to his voice.

One of my best friends, a reporter for a certain newspaper, said it sucked to have to bum a smoke off Boehner after the '08 election.

Ryand and the Republicans want to effectively turn Medicare into a voucher program and limit the amount of money folks can get under Medicare and Medicaid without addressing the underlying problems of health care and medicine costs that Medicare and Medicaid pay for being higher in the US than in other countries. As they see it, if the US government expenses for Medicare do not go up, then they have solved its problems. Medicare needs to be fixed but it's more complicated than Republicans have discussed.

i think they are following a supply-side kind of logic that the medical industry is charging more and more and more because they know medicare will always foot their bills. there's no "discipline".

i think that has a ring of truth to it (in a very half-assed way) w/r/t university costs, but medicine, i'm not sure.

Most Democrats would probably agree that doctors charge Medicare and Medicaid way more than the procedures actually cost.

and they charge private insurers way more for those same procedures! that's the big mystery.

a friend who worked at a dentist's office once showed me the markup the doctor was pushing on Medicare: a deep cleaning that cost a few hundred dollars was now $1300.

wtf at this bullshit

If confirmed, the decision would seem likely to anger environmentalists
uh, yeah
—and do little to quiet Republican criticisms—
uh, yeah
and is unlikely to lead to an immediate fall in gas prices.
should be "will never lead to", but uh, yeah
But it could reinforce the White House's argument that Obama supports an "all of the above" energy policy, including the exploitation of domestic oil and natural gas deposits.

god this "strategy" is so fucking stupid

I do think it's commendable, though, that Obama shows such a willingness to compromise with the laws of physics

an empty gesture that makes nobody happy! awesome!