MERGED: The Politics Thread

[DruulEmpire]

O'Donnell was right about Palin and he was right about Trump.

Pawlenty ... wel-ll ...

[TheZookie007]

What...the...fuck.

ThinkProgress: "Gang of Six Plan Reduces Social Security Benefits by $1300 a Year, Cuts Corporate Tax Rates"

Meanwhile:

ThinkProgress: "Bill Clinton: I Would Invoke The 14th Amendment To Raise The Debt Ceiling 'Without Hesitation'"

And for those of us with short memories (mainly Republicans, I suppose), a reminder:

ThinkProgress: "130 Republicans Who Are In Congress Today Voted To Hike The Debt Ceiling Under Bush Without Hostage Threats"

[DruulEmpire]

Clinton is right.

[pedonbio]

Some days as an exercise in reflection I try to put myself into the shoes of someone I dislike. Today it is John Boehner. He has spent his adult life being a lap-dog to a variety of masters (Gingrich, mostly) who demanded he compromise his integrity for the promise of later rewards. Being Speaker of the House is quite a reward, except that the great speakers--Calhoun, Longworth, Rayburn--were men who could deliver. When any of them made a deal, they could deliver the votes. Boehner has 240 members, 40 of whom have told him to go fuck himself. The only way he has any voting strength is to beg the minority leader for a few votes, 'cuz 200 votes won't deliver anything.

No wonder he's drunk all the time.

[TheZookie007]

Clinton is right.

I agree. It's time to invoke the power of the Presidency. This whole debate about how much to screw the middle class is unneeded in order to settle the debt ceiling stuff. Really.

[SamV]

The whole problem is that all parties (Lib Dems, Conservative Repubs, Libertarian Tea Partiers & the Prez) have been using the threat of a US default to force those on the other side(s) to give up staying hunkered down in their damn idealogical bunkers. The problem is as time ticks down no one wants to look like they blinked to the extremists in their own political bases, who seem to be the only ones who are calling the tune these days.

At the same time I love when these guys (but especially those on the right) get up before the cameras and talk about how they are doing what the American people want, like they are obeying some imagined majority of the electorate. Yet poll after poll has shown a majority of those who are asked want a balanced approach to bring down the US debt and that is regardless of their stated political affiliation. So why is it our elected representatives, who have supposed been put in to office to carry out the will of the people, not actually do that?

[pedonbio]

The whole problem is that all parties (Lib Dems, Conservative Repubs, Libertarian Tea Partiers & the Prez) have been using the threat of a US default to force those on the other side(s) to give up staying hunkered down in their damn idealogical bunkers. The problem is as time ticks down no one wants to look like they blinked to the extremists in their own political bases, who seem to be the only ones who are calling the tune these days.

At the same time I love when these guys (but especially those on the right) get up before the cameras and talk about how they are doing what the American people want, like they are obeying some imagined majority of the electorate. Yet poll after poll has shown a majority of those who are asked want a balanced approach to bring down the US debt and that is regardless of their stated political affiliation. So why is it our elected representatives, who have supposed been put in to office to carry out the will of the people, not actually do that?

SamV, that just isn't real. I know you like to say that it's everybody's fault, but it's not. There have been certain limits to political extortion in the past; default has never been used as a threat before, regardless of who was in power. As I pointed out above, forty of the 240 House Republicans have refused to cooperate in any way with their own leadership. The forty are the least experienced, most extreme freshman members who will deservedly be flushed down the toilet in 2012.

And since when did preserving Social Security and Medicare become "extremism"?

The Teabaggers (as they originally called themselves) are creating what will probably be the biggest Republican train wreck since 1964; for that I am grateful, but it is not pretty to watch. 

[3deroticer]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVuGwc9dlhQ&feature=youtu.be

I cant point finger at Japanese govt, without thinking that our nuke policy may be the same. You gotta love George Carlin when you see this video.

[TheZookie007]

And since when did preserving Social Security and Medicare become "extremism"?

I wonder! What's most evil about this is, none of these Teabaggers will even have to draw SS or Medicare, because of their government pensions, etc. -- which we (as taxpayers) all foot the bill for. Son of a bitch.

The Teabaggers (as they originally called themselves) are creating what will probably be the biggest Republican train wreck since 1964; for that I am grateful, but it is not pretty to watch. 

All unnecessary and at such great cost to millions of Americans. I dislike the Teabaggers, but I completely loathe the moneybags who started this whole process.


When I mention the 1976 film Network, I'm sure everyone's mind is cast back to the famous "I'm as mad as hell" speech. I wonder how many people, though, think of this lesser-known-but-incredibly-prescient speech from the film?

[3deroticer]

Vilifying those that need social security and medicaid! and now Florida the first state to drug test those that received unemployment check! Costing the tax payer even more of what social worker already train to do, watching for drug addicts. But the Pharma corporation will love it and so will the prison industry. Is this the new Jim Crow law? busting people for pot?

[TheZookie007]

Last night the president called upon the American people to let their Congressmen know what they are feeling about this unneeded impasse. And boy did they ever.

WSJ All Things D: "Obama: I Want You To Crash John Boehner's Web Server"

[pedonbio]

Last night the president called upon the American people to let their Congressmen know what they are feeling about this unneeded impasse. And boy did they ever.

WSJ All Things D: "Obama: I Want You To Crash John Boehner's Web Server"

Interesting. 18 hours later Boehner's site has a sign saying that it is up and running, but the e-mail function doesn't work.

[pedonbio]

What has been obvious since the last election has now become news: John Boehner can't deliver. Apart from passing a bunch of fascist-fantasy misanthropic crap, the Republican House "majority" can't deliver a debt-ceiling bill.

[TheZookie007]

I think you explained why in an earlier post: "The forty are the least experienced, most extreme freshman members who will deservedly be flushed down the toilet in 2012." Those nitwits who think that because they saw Sarah Palin become a VP candidate that they have sense enough to become representatives...and they're being "led" by a drunken fool who goes on crying jags. Talk about rising to the highest level of one's incompetence.

[SamV]

^ The PETER Principle => Dickhead!

 

[3deroticer]

WendyFiore posted this an apparently she is more into politics than I am and I think it's interesting but I am a bit jaded.

http://www.americanselect.org

[pedonbio]

The late French historian Marc Bloch once observed that, "Time is the mother of truth." An assortment of nuts and creeps were swept into office by the Teabaggers, usually against the efforts of their established Republican operatives. Political parties work very hard to0 select candidates. This includes a very thorough vetting process, similar to the more formal investigation that federal appointees get. Virtually all the 2010 Teabaggers candidates refused to authorize vetting, denouncing it as "elitism".

Now we are finding out why.

Joe Walsh, Congressman from Illinois's 8th District, neglected to mention that he owes $117,000 in unpaid chi1d support.

Luther Olsen, a state senator in Wisconsin facing a recall election in two weeks, neglected to mention that in 2004 he knocked up the underag3 babysitter, then (apparently) used campaign funds to pay off her and her parents for an abortion.

These guys could have avoided their current problems either by not running, or by not making a big deal out of their "family values" commitment. It reminds me of Grover Cleveland, who openly discussed his illegitimate chi1d (for whom he had paid support).

As Bill Maher says, this stuff just writes itself.

[TheZookie007]

You see, Grover Cleveland was gangsta. He had his baby mommas but still didn't appear on Maury. Gotta love it.

This is a disaster for John "Bonehead" Boehner. He can't keep these Teabagger rabble in check. He couldn't deliver on his mandate to create so-called jobs. He is even in danger of being booted out of office by the very Teabaggers he thought he was in charge of. No wonder he's hitting the bottle so hard.


Meanwhile:
AlterNet: "How to Rescue the American Dream from the GOP's Nightmare", by George Lakoff

We are now faced with a nontraditional, radical view of 'democracy' coming from the Republican party. It says democracy means that nobody should care about anybody else, that democracy means only personal responsibility, not responsibility for anyone else, and it means no trust. If America accepts this radical view of democracy, then all that we have given each other in the past under traditional democracy will be lost: all that we have called public. Public roads and bridges: gone. Public schools: gone. Publicly funded police and firemen: gone. Safe food, air, and water: gone. Public health: gone. Everything that made America America, the crucial things that you and your family and your friends have taken for granted: gone.

The democracy of care, shared responsibility and trust is the democracy of the American Dream. The democracy of no care, no shared responsibility, and no trust has produced the American Nightmare that so many of our citizens are living through...

There is a distinction between government as the administration of what we, as a public, provide each other, as opposed to government control. The Right wants to focus only upon control, not upon all that our tradition has given us. They do not just hide the vast positives, but they also hide the fact that governmental control, control over our daily lives, is more private than public. Private government for profit runs our lives – the health care we receive, the food we eat, the cars we can drive and the gas to fuel them, the news we get, loans for our homes, and on and on. Public government is for the benefit of all of us. Private (especially corporate) government is for the private profit of top management and stockholders. If you are concerned about your life being controlled for the benefit of others, look to the private sphere.

The institution of government, however, is not the point. We must instead defend the moral principles we seek to advance through our American government  — and through ethical business practices, voluntary associations etc. The traditional view of American democracy sees government as embodying these moral goals, to protect and empower everyone equally....

[mcgarp]

All us Americans should be proud!  We are around for the demise of a great legacy.  We were around to see the next great empire fall!  I hope I'm wrong, and I may have vented into another similar thread that I don't recall, but here we are!  The Romans failed, the Greeks failed, and now the Americans are about to fall!  Let us preach democracy and tell the world how great it is.  Problem is?  It soon will fall too.  The world isnt' going to come crashing down on us, but boy, we are gonna hurt.  I pray that every voter that lines up next time we vote and sees the word "incumbant" we automatically vote NO to that person!  We are in trouble here folks.  I don't expect to be the next Nostradamus, hell I'm not sure I can spell that right, but LOOK OUT!  These are gonna be some crazy times for us Americans!

[pedonbio]

All us Americans should be proud!  We are around for the demise of a great legacy.  We were around to see the next great empire fall!  I hope I'm wrong, and I may have vented into another similar thread that I don't recall, but here we are!  The Romans failed, the Greeks failed, and now the Americans are about to fall!  Let us preach democracy and tell the world how great it is.  Problem is?  It soon will fall too.  The world isnt' going to come crashing down on us, but boy, we are gonna hurt.  I pray that every voter that lines up next time we vote and sees the word "incumbant" we automatically vote NO to that person!  We are in trouble here folks.  I don't expect to be the next Nostradamus, hell I'm not sure I can spell that right, but LOOK OUT!  These are gonna be some crazy times for us Americans!

Mcgarp, we've weathered worse disasters, though few as self-inflicted as this one. But you've raised an interesting question, and one that haunted other people like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln: Can people govern themselves? If that can be done, what are the rules for doing it? Washington, Jefferson, and Washington's Secretary of War, Henry Knox, used to have long, thoughtful discussions about those questions around the Treaty of New York in 1790. That treaty set aside most of the land that would become the states of Alabama and Mississippi to the resident Native American tribes, mostly the Creek and Cherokee. The treaty failed miserably, because unauthorized white settlers poured into the area. That profoundly disturbed the three men because it violated "the spirit of '76", which was their shorthand for the purposes of the American Revolution. Apart from a few small examples, notably the Native Americans of the Northeast, Iceland, and Greek city-states, no group of people had ever governed themselves using what we would call democratic principles. The problem is that all governments have to have predictable control over their citizens, and by 1790 we had one gigantic failure.

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, stripped of the gauzy haze of emotion, frames the same question: Less than a century into the experiment in self-government, the country was tearing itself apart over a question all other countries had settled peaceably, just like the European despots had said we would. Now we have a small group of willfully ignorant people threatening to cripple the American economy to serve their own selfish ends. Ironically, a British writer of the early 19th Century named Hobsbawm (among others) had predicted that any democratic society was susceptible to this kind of extortion.

The United States has never been very good at empire building, largely because we were established as an anti-imperial society and prior to 1898 no American president had made any effort to get into the business of imperialism. Most of the rest of the world sees us differently, largely because of our spasmodic attempts at taking over pieces of the world. But you are absolutely right--Whatever the outcome of the present Teabagger effort, the myth of American economic invulnerability and safety is gone.   

[DruulEmpire]

mcgarp, I love you, man, and I appreciate and support all you're going through -- but you're losing me a little on two points.  First you're saying all the empires failed, but then you throw in that democracy must fail too.  Given that empire has held sway over the world for thousands of years and democracy has had only the past few centuries to give it a try, that hardly seems fair.  Our Constitution has been fine unto its day, but it's not even the sole go-to model anymore for when other nations create a constitution, they've moved on to try other things, so here in America we don't even get much sense of how the democratic experiment is going worldwide.  I don't know about you, but I'd like to see democracy emerge in the Arab world.  And next, you say it's all as simple as kicking out the incumbents -- but at this exact moment in America's history, there's a conspicuous contingent of freshmen politicians who don't seem to know anything about anything who are leading us, not to some abstract far-off crisis, but an immediate financial one.  I'd like a simple dream formula for making good choices myself, but "anti-incumbent" doesn't always wow me.  But that's just how I am.  The older I get, the more inclined I am to keep a good grip on the baby while throwing out the bathwater.

PS: as often seems to happen to me, I just can't compose a post fast enough.  Bio seems to bemoan that there has never been true democracy.  Well, a hell of a lot of people over the centuries would surely appreciate RELATIVE democracy.  There are young people all over the planet who would take relative democracy over the status quo.  How pure it can be kept seems to be a whole other discussion.

How is it that we hardly ever fret over the "purity" of an empire?

By the way, you did spell Nostradamus right.

PPS: Anything imperial should fall.  Anything, even ours.  The time has come to disassociate ourselves from things imperial.  Heck, even I will be retiring soon.

[TheZookie007]

Is it fair to say that in the debt ceiling game of chicken that has been playing out over the past few weeks, President Obama blinked?

[pedonbio]

Bio seems to bemoan that there has never been true democracy.  Well, a hell of a lot of people over the centuries would surely appreciate RELATIVE democracy.

I don't know where that came from. The question that is still open is the one Lincoln asked: Can a government so constituted survive?

Washington, Knox, and Jefferson all asked themselves that in different ways after the Treaty of New York failed. Lincoln asked it because the South sure as Hell wasn't going to be a democracy if it won. The last thirty years have come awfully close to creating a corporate plutocracy. The episode since the 2010 election has moved us closer to that.

I agree that a lot of people would like to live with a government such as ours today. The problem is that we are pissing it away, largely because we are turning over officeholders time after time after time so each year brings a new crop of idiots to town. By the time the Teabag congressmen come to understand the horrible thing they have done, they will all have been yanked from office by a new crop of idiots. These guys have no depth at all.

The longest continuous democracy is Iceland, about 1,100 years. When their banks came demanding a "too big to fail" handout, the prime minister wisely set up a referendum and the people, wisely, told the bankers to go fuck themselves. That is a functioning democracy.

[mcgarp]

Well I never claimed my post was a well thought out post, I was just pissed about the fools not being able to reach a budget agreement.  Of course no form of government is perfect, including democracy, but I will agree that is probably the best out there.  I have to agree with the comment, we are just pissing it away.  Perhaps my encumbent thought wasn't perfect but we do need to find a way to get the two or three parties involved to get a little bit closer to being on the same page.  Of course their has to be differences or they would't be seperate parties, but they need to learn how to play a little bit nicer with each other.  Same team guys, same team!

[DruulEmpire]

We need another party.  I'd love to dial everything back to the relative civility of, say, the Seventies, but I see no realistic way of getting that right now, too many bridges have been burned.  We need a progressive party, a centrist party and a conservative party -- and each party should KNOW what they're about, instead of wrecking whatever identity and heritage they have lusting after Tea Partiers who are going to show them zero love if they disobey in any way.  Trouble is, a third party isn't going to happen, at least not easily, not without a lot more heartburn and heartache -- the closest we had to one lately was Perot, and that was ultimately just about a personality, albeit one shrewder than average.  If people were forced to build coalitions to get anywhere from the get-go, that might help put all this polarization out of style.

[pedonbio]

I disagree; we don't need another party. We need politicians who shake hands. I commend to anyone Michael Riordan's 1903 book, actually an edited collection of interviews, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall. It is still in print and available thru Amazon.

I am watching events in Wisconsin fairly closely, because Karl Rove and various Republican front organizations are pouring money into the Wisconsin recall races with a fire hose ($1.5 million into Green Bay television ads alone as of July 1--For comparison, both national parties together put less than $1 million into the Green Bay tv market in 2008), and the folks on the ground are using a lot of doorbelling and hand shaking to try to offset the money. We shall see what happens next Tuesday, but of the 11 votes held thus far (Ten primaries; one final), the right-wing candidates have lost all 11.

[TheZookie007]

That is very good news, pedonbio -- hopefully the people of Wisconsin can take their state back from these external invaders.

Matt Damon:

"I'm so disgusted," he told a reporter about the protracted negotiations. "I mean, no, I don't know what you do in the face of that kind of intransigence. So, my heart does go out to the President. He is dealing with a lot."

Still, despite any sympathy, he was furious with the negotiations' outcome, as well as the greater thrust of American economic policy.

"The wealthy are paying less than they paid at [any] time else, certainly in my lifetime, and probably in the last century," Damon said. "I don't know what we were paying in the roaring 20's; it's criminal that so little is asked of people who are getting so much. I don't mind paying more. I really don't mind paying more taxes. I'd rather pay for taxes than cut 'Reading is Fundamental' or Head Start or some of these programs that are really helping kids. This is the greatest country in the world; is it really that much worse if you pay 6% more in taxes? Give me a break. Look at what you get for it: you get to be American."

When asked whether he thought tax cuts helped create jobs, he was more than clear in his belief that they do not, and struck again on the inequality in the nation.

"I didn't go start a small business with my tax break, and I don't know anyone else who did. No, everybody's socking their money away," he said. "I was against those tax cuts. I thought they were ridiculous. So little is asked of the upper class anyway. I mean, what percent of them or their kids are fighting in any of these wars? What percent of their day is occupied by the fact that there are men and women in positions over the world, risking their lives. If you walk down 5th Avenue, there's no sense of shared sacrifice."

[3deroticer]

http://current.com/shows/countdown/videos/special-comment-the-four-great-hypocrisies-of-the-debt-deal

I hope Rachel has a better response! I think people have drown out Keith Olberman and I don't think he explain it enough what the debt ceiling means. A big chunk of that debt belong to the people for that bank(heist) Bailout and now the rich don't have to pay for it, but the middle class once again take more cut from social services that we have paid into while working.

[pedonbio]

That is very good news, pedonbio -- hopefully the people of Wisconsin can take their state back from these external invaders.

Matt Damon:

Today the RNC chairman, Reince Preibus, formerly chair of the Wisconsin Republican Party, who originally directed attention to the legislature in Wisconsin as a predictor of "the future", announced at a press conference that whatever the results of the recall elections in Wisconsin will be "no indication for 2012" and suggested that the national press ignore the results. Polling indicates that it is possible that NO Republican state senator may survive next week's recall elections, despite the fact that Rove and Americans For Prosperity have poured more money into just 6 races than was spent in all Wisconsin legislative races last year.

[TheZookie007]

"Yeah they deserve to die, and I hope they burn in hell!"

[pedonbio]

Recall headquarters in Lacrosse after the fire last Saturday:

[TheZookie007]

Fight the power, bay-bee!

[mastert]

I was reading about literature passed out by the "Americans for Prosperity" group passed out last week. They wrote that the election was on the 11th instead of the 9th. The media called them out and apologized for the "printing error." With this, my stock portfolio getting annihilated, and what happened last week, I haven't been so angry about politics in my life.

[TheZookie007]

I knew it was just a matter of time before some crap like this happened:

Yahoo! News: "Mysterious company dissolves after giving $1 million to pro-Romney PAC"

Did someone create a company for the sole purpose of giving to a political action committee trying to boost Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign?

That's what it looks like. As The Ticket reported earlier this week, three firms gave $1 million apiece to Restore Our Future, a conservative "super PAC" planning to spend millions to help Romney's White House bid.

One of those companies was W. Spann LLC, a mysterious New York-based company that apparently closed up shop last month shortly after its contribution to the pro-Romney PAC. As NBC News's Michael Isikoff reports, the company was formed in March by Boston estate tax lawyer Cameron Casey and listed a midtown Manhattan address where the landlord says there's no record of the firm being a tenant.

The company gave $1 million to Restore Our Future on April 28, and according to records obtained by Isikoff, dissolved on July 12th, just two weeks before the pro-Romney PAC disclosed its donors to the Federal Election Commission. There's no indication in the records of what the company did or who its owners or principals were.

Casey did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Ticket.

As Isikoff notes, Rope & Gray, the law firm where Casey works, has previously done work for Bain Capital—where Romney used to work—but the company denies any involvement with W. Spann. The now-defunct LLC listed its address as 590 Madison, the same address where Bain's New York offices are based.

But W. Spann isn't the only mystery about big contributions to Restore Our Future.  As The Ticket previously reported, two other $1 million donations came from two equally mysterious companies:  Eli Publishing and F8 LLC. The two entities list the same Provo, Utah, address, according to FEC records, but there's no indication of what the companies do.

Still, there are hints at who the companies are affiliate with. Steven Lund, head of the anti-aging company Nu Skin, is listed as the registered agent for Eli Publishing, according to Utah corporate records. Lund has been a major financial supporter of Romney's previous campaigns.

Brittany Gross, a spokeswoman for Restore Our Future, offered no further information on W. Spann LLC or any of the committee's donors. "Restore Our Future has fully complied with all FEC regulations, including publicly disclosing donors on our July 31 report," she said in an email.

[TheZookie007]

On a lighter note, I hear that birthday boy Barack Obama (who turns 50 today) is going gray, or in the words of New York Magazine in 2008: "Barack Obama has begun talking about how he's 'going gray' lately, and it's true — the man's hair is going silver faster than you can say 'Anderson Cooper with a tan.'"