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

It's one of those weird tricks of American politics that both ends of the spectrum are on the right.

oh, balls, what "other end"?

Obviously he meant Alan Grayson Dennis Kucinich Bernie Sanders, who rules congress with an iron fist

I haven't seen the polling data or anything, but isn't this just another case of Tea Party activists coming out for a primary that average joe never bothers to vote in? Come the actual election Republicans are going to look at that ballot and go "oh shit" and even if they don't particularly like that Murdouck (or whomever) they'll vote for them anyway, so it looks like these states are veering hard to the right when really it's just a percentage of nutters imposing their will on the majority just by turning up.

prog Dems need to do the same

they have been!

Reps. Tim Holden (D-Pa.) and Jason Altmire (D-Pa.), both members of the dwindling conservative Democratic coalition, lost their primary races on Tuesday. Before the defeat of the two incumbents, there were just 25 Blue Dogs left in Congress, after the coalition's members were wiped out in the 2010 election.

Holden lost to progressive candidate Matt Cartwright, an attorney who attacked the incumbent for voting against President Barack Obama's health care reform. Holden is the second House member to lose to a newcomer in the 2012 primaries. The other lawmaker was Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio). Both were also targeted by the anti-incumbent super PAC, the Campaign for Primary Accountability.

Getting a progressive Democrat into Pennsylvania's newly redrawn 17th Congressional District was a priority for progressive groups, including MoveOn and the League of Conservation Voters. The latter ran the largest independent expenditure campaign in the race, which included a $230,000 TV ad buy on broadcast and cable networks in the Scranton media market. The spot criticized Holden for opposing Obama's clean energy plan.

The League of Conservation Voters "targeted Representative Tim Holden for defeat explicitly because he has opposed policies that will curb harmful global warming pollution and build a clean energy economy," said Gene Karpinski, the group president. "Tim Holden is the first candidate this cycle to lose because he is out of the mainstream on global warming and clean energy, but he won't be the last.”

^^^This is not a bad way to get involved and be useful. Of course, supporting your new progressive nominee through the general is just as important.

^^^this is totally what Occupy should be doing imho. primary challenges. put people in office.

I don't think Occupy wants to associate itself with either of the parties, even though I imagine a huge majority would vote Democrat over Republican if a gun was put to their head. I think it's a good tack to maintain some degree of purity. Arguments against are pretty good too.

yeah it's clear they don't. their loss.

(altho really it's all of our loss, imho)

As long as their hands are clean

Shakey rong *ding*

about which part...?

looks like biden's gay marriage 'gaffe' was just a trial balloon

needs those youth votes

Lest we forget: if Republicans hang onto the House, win the presidency and then obtain 50 Senate seats, they would be able to implement Paul Ryan’s budget on a straight party-line vote via reconciliation procedures that eliminate the de facto 60-vote requirement the GOP has created in the Senate for non-budget legislation. And that’s aside from the possibility that a couple of Senate Democrats might be picked off through deal-cutting.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_05/the_senate_landscape_shifts037256.php

lol that's not going to happen

looks like biden's gay marriage 'gaffe' was just a trial balloon

― wolves in our wounds (mayor jingleberries), Wednesday, May 9, 2012 3

Yeah I don't believe this "accidentally" happened.

HE WENT ROGUE

he went rouge

I'm impressed Newsweek ran this story about the Justice Department's failure to prosecute Wall Street.

I forgot about Holder's corporate connections.

wait, corporate connections of senior Obama officials? How can that be?

The law firm at which Holder once worked.

the House springs into action!

Turning their budget knife to domestic programs to protect the Pentagon, House Republicans on Thursday approved legislation cutting food stamps, benefits for federal workers and social services programs like day care for children and Meals on Wheels for the elderly.

President Barack Obama's Wall St. reform law would be rewritten under the legislation, passed on a 218-199 vote, while his controversial overhaul of the U.S. health care system would also be cut. The legislation would deny illegal immigrants child tax credits they can currently claim, while new curbs on medical malpractice lawsuits are credited with driving down Medicare and Medicaid costs.

The bill, passed after a passionate, sometimes hyperbolic debate, would spare the military from a $55 billion, 10 percent automatic budget cut next year that's punishment for the failure of last year's deficit-reduction "supercommittee" to strike a deal. It also would protect domestic agencies from an 8 percent cut to their day-to-day operating budgets next year, but would leave in place a 2 percent cut to Medicare providers.

The legislation is a dead letter in the Senate

Nice way to waste time

they have a plan!

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lDh5Uu1LAK0/TmtkKhwOvLI/AAAAAAAAA_8/D1IGoN0Nrtg/s1600/Review+Battlestar+Galactica+The+Battle+Space+Between+Human+and+Cylon+link.jpg

"Alright everyone, let's yell a lot and then pass something we know isn't going anywhere so we can say the Dems are socialists who won't cut anything except the military."

in other news Joe Arpaio going down

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/paulgunobamaletter-screen.jpg

for freedom,

http://i.imgur.com/H7nKm.png

In 2011, NYPD Made More Stops Of Young Black Men Than The Total Number Of Young Black Men In New York

^ that, that, that's never going to work

http://ontd-political.livejournal.com/9642012.html

crazy shit:

During New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s first year in office, the New York Police Department stopped and interrogated 97,296 people on the streets. By 2007, with the Bloomberg administration pushing the a stop-and-frisk strategy, police made more than a half a million stops. Last year, the figure rose to a record 685,724 people. And according to a New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) report, the vast majorities of stops — about 87 percent — were of blacks and Latinos. Despite robust defenses of the tactics, they appear to be less effective than the Bloomberg administration and NYPD claim.

Most troubling, the NYCLU report seemed to bear out charges of racial profiling in stop-and-frisk situations. In precincts where blacks and Latinos are least represented among the population (14 percent or less), blacks and Latinos were nonetheless the target of 70 percent of stops. Perhaps most staggeringly, the the Wall Street Journal highlighted that the number of stops of black men between the ages of 14 and 24 (168,126 ) exceeded the total city population of black men in that age range (158,406).

Along with the wildly disproportionate stops, blacks and Latinos were more likely to get frisked. Yet they yielded a smaller percentage of weapons than whites.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3u92skbFG1qz82gvo1_500.jpg

!

oh great we're gonna have someone sucking on someone's tit meme for another three weeks

someone's been sucking on the cranky-pants tit

In the wake of personal evolution completion on marriage, MoveOn asks, "Will you chip in to our special 'thank you' donation page for President Obama's re-election campaign?" Never much liked you, but UNSUBSCRIBED and FUCK YOU.

what's a special thank you – taking Biden out back and letting him suck our dicks?

well that's a pleasant image to start my day

good morning!

morning!

I think MoveOn are the ones with their mouths open in that scenario. God, what lackeys.

Didn't MoveOn start out as Clinton boosters? They started off on their knee pads, amiright?

but last fall they dressed themselves as warriors for the 99%.

MoveON started out as Howard Dean boosters

no, I think AP is right in that their first crusade was to "move on" from the blowjob impeachment.

MoveOn started during the Clinton impeachment.

xpost

MoveOn did come of age during Dean's primary run, though.

Back when we were all, "Not only are we going to the blogs, Tom harkin, we're going to the web zines and AOL and Drinking Liberally and Netroots Nation and Youtube, and we're going to MySpace and Xanga and Second Life ... And we're going to Flicker and Flickster and Classmates.com and the comments section of The Washinton Times, and then we're going to Meetup.com, to take back the White House! YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Dean was pre-youtube