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

Ryan and conservative response yesterday was basically if you're not for slashing entitlements, you are not taking the deficit seriously and you just want to coddle people who don't work hard. I think Obama would be wise to also mention the right-wing attack from that one foundation that the Ryan plan cuts domestic spending but does not address the deficit well, or quickly enough because he has so many tax cuts and so much increased defense spending.

ryan's lashing out at the pentagon and then subsequent 'walk back' was interesting to see

http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/03/reid-senate-will-not-pass-a-budget-this-year/

Senate Democratic leaders do not plan to propose a budget this year, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters Friday, saying that they had already done so with the debt-ceiling agreement.

One of the current memes of Republicans from Romney to Ryan to anonymous commentators online is that the Dems can't criticize the Ryan budget when they don't have one (or have not voted for one--I think there is an Obama one and a Democratic rep from Maryland Van Hollen one). Is this anything to worry about? Is this Republican spin that should be ignored? And/or do I not have all the facts?

it's my understanding that the debt ceiling deal WAS the budget, the fact that the GOP wants to weasel out of it doesn't mean the Dems have to play along

GOP just wants to fight the same fight over and over, with no actual legislation passed

I keep seeing stuff like this, but often without the explanation that the debt deal serves as the budget. Thus, Republicans like to crow that even Dems won't vote for Obama's budget, when this is just procedural games.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0412/74801.html

But a version of President Barack Obama’s own $3.6 trillion budget proposal, which the House unanimously rejected last week, also could come to the Senate floor, ensuring an embarrassing replay of last year when not a single senator voted for the president’s budget.

The MacDonough ruling essentially means any senator can place a budget proposal on the Senate calendar. Reid still controls the floor and could choose not to bring them to a vote, though the political optics of such a move could be damaging.

Democratic aides have dismissed the ruling as irrelevant, arguing that the historic debt deal already serves as a legally binding budget.

how did the Justice Department advocate to the Supremes on the minor-offense strip search case? That's riiiiight:

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/03/the_obama_doj_and_strip_searches/singleton/

lol these police state assholes suck so bad imo

Not a good look, and it has been overlooked by many in the press. Eric Holder has not impressed me at all at Justice.

kind of irony-lolling that the first black President's overarching domestic mission appears to be "show everyone what it feels like to be black in America"

Holder's been kind of a disaster imho

Maybe infuriating the left and the right is exactly what Obama wants from an attorney general.

It would certainly be consistent with his record

Lots of the Dem cheerleader blogs like the Washington Monthly are only covering the fact that Holder turned in his homework to that 5th Circuit judge who wanted a 3 page single-spaced explanation that Obama still believes the judiciary interprets the law. But no mention of this other item

The Washington Monthly's latest cover story: The Incomplete Greatness of Barack Obama.

About that torture memo...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/07/wisconsin-s-repeal-of-equal-pay-rights-adds-to-battles-for-women.html

Still, even if the law isn’t an outlier, it’s not surprising that Grothman would see it as unjust, because he believes that the whole idea of pay discrimination against women is fraudulent.

Whatever gaps exist, he insists, stem from women’s decision to prioritize childrearing over their careers. “Take a hypothetical husband and wife who are both lawyers,” he says. “But the husband is working 50 or 60 hours a week, going all out, making 200 grand a year. The woman takes time off, raises kids, is not go go go. Now they’re 50 years old. The husband is making 200 grand a year, the woman is making 40 grand a year. It wasn’t discrimination. There was a different sense of urgency in each person.”

amazing

I try to think of stories like this whenever tempted to send NPR a dime:

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/06/149975915/obama-is-the-best-and-the-worst-president-discuss?ps=cprs

Xp especially amazing that Walker would sign that bill knowing a recall election is coming up. Like, he knows he's going to lose, so why not shit the bed on the way out?

Fritz Striker (alda_marbles) wrote:

I don't know about best or worst, but he's definately the most african-american president since Grover Cleveland.

Someone's forgetting Bill Clinton...

speaking of clinton, not sure where to post this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/us/welfare-limits-left-poor-adrift-as-recession-hit.html

Would have been nice to see someone ask Bill about this, and the various deregulation measures he signed off, when he has given interviews in recent years.

dream on

I know. Jon Stewart gave Bill C. a free ride the last time he was on his show.

More on that "Dems don't have a budget" meme that Republicans and Fox push, despite the 2011 Debt deal. The attached piece is troubling (and predictable) for many reasons -- retiring blue-Dog Dem Conrad's praise for Bowles-Simpson and his critique of Obama; cliched, annoying, falsehood-filled Republican comments by Wisconsin Republican Ron Johnson (who defeated Feingold) and Fox's Brett Hume on Ryan budget and more

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/04/conrad-i-advised-obama-not-to-support-bowles-simpson.php?ref=fpb

“This notion that we’ve not had a budget for three years is just wrong. Last year we passed the Budget Control Act,” he explained, referring to the bipartisan August debt limit deal that establishes spending levels for the next decade. “And if you read the Budget Control Act it makes very clear that it stands in place of a budget resolution. In many ways it is stronger than a budget resolution.”

The squabbling between the two senators underscores how the GOP hopes to frame the budget battles ahead of the election. The Republican line is that Democrats have failed to coalesce around a vision that addresses the nation’s long-term woes while Republicans have at least put their cards on the table in the budget plan by Rep. Paul Ryan.

Johnson dismissed the BCA as inadequate and charged that Democrats were afraid to bring a budget resolution that reflects their views to the floor. He added that by contrast, the Ryan budget has broad GOP support in the Senate.

“Absolutely. I think most Republicans in the Senate would [support it]. And we will probably try to force a vote on that.” He conceded that it’ll “probably not” pass the Democratic-led chamber.

The boy worries about homelessness, but his younger sisters, 9 and 10, see an upside in scavenging.

“It’s kind of fun because you get to look through the trash,” one of the girls said.

fucking hell

In the otherwise intolerable No One Left to Lie To, Hitchens devotes an excellent chapter to the consequences of Clinton's welfare "reform."

It's a success says politicians and the media and no one wants to hear otherwise

Researchers found that most families that escaped poverty remained “near poor.”

And despite widespread hopes that working mothers might serve as role models, studies found few social or educational benefits for their children. (They measured things like children’s aspirations, self-esteem, grades, drug use and arrests.) Nonmarital births continued to rise.

But the image of success formed early and stayed frozen in time.

same ol' same ol'

The other key point is that for all the legitimate complaining about GOP obstruction in the Senate — and there are still 32 nominees pending there — it’s still the case that Obama has hurt his own cause by being too slow to nominate judges and not particularly aggressive in pushing for confirmation. There are still more than 40 judicial vacancies without a nominee. Now, some of this may be because it’s nearing the end of Obama’s term, and there’s no point nominating someone whom the Senate won’t consider; after all, these are real people whose lives enter a professional limbo while they wait, and no one wants to go through the tortures of that particular purgatory without a reasonable chance of winding up on the bench. But the general number of vacancies without a nominee has held steady near 50 for most of Obama’s presidency, and that’s just too high.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/the-good-and-the-bad-of-obamas-court-picks/2012/04/09/gIQA6Wyu5S_blog.html?hpid=z3

Taibbi catches up to reality

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/why-obamas-jobs-act-couldnt-suck-worse-20120409

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/08/interview-with-harold-koh-obama-s-defender-of-drone-strikes.html

thought we had a drone/awlaki thread but guess not so here you go - "interview" with OLC head harold koh

How do we deliver justice to the enemy?” Koh asks during a panel, “In Search of Accountability: Justice After Nuremberg,” several weeks ago at the Holocaust Memorial Museum. “I think there are different ways. It can be delivered through trials. Drones also deliver.”

Uh...

On a previous subject:

Ryan and other Republicans are apparently wrapping their proposals within the flag of the 1996 welfare reform.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ten-miles-square/2012/04/a_safety_net_not_a_hammock036560.php#

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/04/top-teachers-union-takes-on-corporate-tax-loopholes-to-fund-education.php?ref=fpnewsfeed

How the NEA teachers union would use money from closing corporate loopholes versus how the Obama administration would.

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/04/bogus-obamacare-deficit-study.html

Lori Montgomery is the author of several stupid W. Post articles. The article at least includes a suggestion that the study is a skewed right-wing thing, but the headline is all many people will read.

Meanwhile income inequality widens...

obama's weird refusal to sign an executive order prohibiting employers who contract with the federal govt from discriminating based on LGBT identity - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/stop-playing-it-cute-on-gay-rights/2012/04/12/gIQAWRGTDT_blog.html

Man Romney is really planning on giving up the dog owner vote!

Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who once strapped his dog to the roof of the family station wagon before embarking on a road trip, has again chosen to thumb his nose at the all-important dog vote by throwing a fundraising birthday party for his wife Ann at the house of Frederick Malek III. While to most people, Malek is just another rich guy who respects Romney's Reaganesque hair, to dogs, Malek is a living terror — when he was a youth, he was arrested for animal cruelty after police discovered that he and some friends had killed and barbecued a dog. What the everloving hell is wrong with Mitt Romney?

Fred Malek III has had a long, illustrious career in politics— he's worked for President Nixon and the first, less-shitty of the Presidents Bush. In 2008, he served as the National Finance Co-Chair of John McCain's Presidential campaign. He's had a formidable business career as well, serving important roles with Mariott and the Carlyle Group and Northwest Airlines. But before any of this, he was just a young, drunk, blood-covered West Point graduate standing around a spit containing a slowly rotating, skinned dog.

In 1959, a police officer in Peoria, Illinois, discovered five young men acting about as suspiciously as a person could act in one of the city's parks. By "suspiciously," I mean like villain being questioned for murder in an episode of CSI: Miami suspiciously— they were covered in blood (as was the inside of their car), and three of them appeared to be burying something. Turns out, the blood was animal blood. And later, officers discovered a skinned dog on a spit elsewhere in the park, a liquor bottle nearby, which is a visual horrific enough to sort of make you wish that the blood on the men's clothes had been human blood.

I don't see how the gay order thing is "weird" -- his opponents will call it ANTI-FREEDOM, case closed.

he's worked for President Nixon

Truly horrifying...

Morbs should employers be allowed to fire ppl when they find out that they're straight? What was that whole softball team kerfuffle I'm only vaguely recalling now?

ya got me, just like with DADT, I'm against anybody having to work.

otm

the john edwards sex tape is in the hands of his mistress, Rielle Hunter

The Huffington Post reports that the tape, which was made during the darkest moment in all of human history, was made while at some point before the summer of 2007, when Edwards was poised to run for President on the Democratic ticket and Rielle Hunter was pregnant with John Edwards' child and living with former aide Andrew Young. Hunter says she threw the tape away but that it was stolen by Young, who refused to surrender it to Hunter. Young is the guy who originally claimed to be the father of Hunter's baby as a way to "take one for Team Edwards." Young later disavowed Hunter's baby and told the news media that Edwards promised Hunter that after his wife Elizabeth died of cancer, he'd marry her on a rooftop in New York City while the Dave Matthews Band played.

x-post re Romney party at Fred Malek's house. Malek is that guy who Nixon asked to count the Jews employed at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and who then lied about it. Conservatives and Malek himself to this day still assert he is no anti-Semite (he's friends with Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League). He's a lobbyist and fundraiser for Republicans everywhere.

Malek has not been entirely honest about his Nixon-era assignment -- he did, indeed, recommend changing the employment status of Jewish employees and reorganizing the department to promote "loyal Republican economists." He's apologized, but he's also failed to tell the truth about what he apologized for.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-now/2010/06/the_malek_game.html

The thing I secretly look forward to every presidential election: the moment when Nixon crawls out of the grave.

he darkest moment in all of human history,

Edwards promised Hunter that after his wife Elizabeth died of cancer, he'd marry her on a rooftop in New York City while the Dave Matthews Band played.

Noooooo, not the Dave Matthews Band