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

The First Bomber (another funeral attack this weekend) has quite an array of righty shits approving of his tactics:

http://www.salon.com/2012/06/04/obama_again_bombs_mourners/singleton/

oh you sillies, New Dems don't like labor unions any more than Republicans. at best, they tolerate them b/c they get out the vote (just like the non-Teabag GOP tolerates but doesn't really like the Jesus Freaks).

http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/06/04/a-bipartisan-solution-to-endorse-breaking-up-the-big-banks/

A Weekly Standard columnist routinely criticized by the left, now advocates (for his own reasons) breaking up big banks.

This will never happen.

Bravo to Paul Krugman, who often flails on American TV:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r-AKruzmkk&feature=youtu.be

I'm just seeing a big white space. Is it his HardTalk appearance?

He was excellent on This Week yesterday.

I just looked at my mail-in ballot for the first time, and I'm like, "Wtf is Roseanne Barr doing on here."

xpost i'm also just seeing a white space.

am guessing its video of klugman being badass on the BBC's newsnight in the UK? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqDnnzY_tU8

"This is not a household, this is an economy" is a great line. "Your spending is my income, my spending is your income."

Brits in this clip take dangerous rhetorical tack with Krugman. "Don't you think ..." "You must agree that ..."

"No," says Krugman.

Harry Truman and the do-nothing Congress may be the stuff of legend, but guess what? That probably had little to do with Truman's victory. Truman won because the economy was on a tear for the entire year before the 1948 election: Nominal GDP skyrocketed (chart below) and real GDP was growing at a pretty healthy clip too. Economically speaking, it was a terrific peacetime performance.

Obama doesn't have this. He's got about 3% nominal growth and 2% real growth. There might be justice in blaming this on Republicans, but probably not electoral victory.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/06/myth-harry-truman-and-do-nothing-congress

Sometimes justice is enough

Tim, the restrictions of the Sunday talk show format – you cannot get too "partisan" lest you offend one of the seven conservatives who always outnumber the moderate who's supposed to be the "liberal" – often make Krugman look wan.

The governor has laid out very detailed plans. People can go to mittromney.com and learn about them for themselves. But I think what we really have here...

(CROSSTALK)

KRUGMAN: ... ...I know from detailed plans and there is nothing there. There is not...

Nice, he was able to get past Stephanapoulis and George Will and cut to the point

I agree, Alfred. He was stellar on Sunday, though. Every comment right on point.

—stats about today's election to decide the future of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker:

70 percent: How much more expensive the governor's recall election is than the state's second-most expensive race (the 2010 gubernatorial campaign)

$30.5 million: Amount raised by Walker to fight off the recall effort

$3.9 million: Amount raised by his challenger, Tom Barrett, the Democratic mayor of Milwaukee

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/06/wisconsin-walker-recall-money-stats

Thanks for nothing DNC

can't risk another 4 years of nothing for something.

at least they sent Bill Clinton, friend of sterling vulture capitalists, last week.

http://www.people-press.org/2012/06/04/partisan-polarization-surges-in-bush-obama-years/

http://www.people-press.org/2012/06/04/partisan-polarization-surges-in-bush-obama-years/01_pp_12-05-25_values_slideshow/

pew survey day!!!

republicans in a very 19th century mood

The polling finds little support for the broad notion of American “declinism.” As has been the case in previous political values surveys, a large majority agrees that “as Americans we can always find a way to solve our problems and get what we want.” The public’s confidence in the nation has not been dulled, even as Americans have become more skeptical about prospects for economic growth.

Yay! U-S-A!!!U-S-A!!!

Plus we can get some great Friedman and David Brooks pieces out of this polling.

Rick Perlstein in Wisconsin. Note his argument with a poster.

omg at that Quad Printing thing

Andrew Sullivan discovers the obvious: Republicans are big fat liars.

Stop comparing BO to LBJ, Kevin Drum says.

So can we stop hearing about how much more Obama could have gotten done if only he'd been more willing to really use the power of the presidency, like LBJ did? There's no more than the tiniest grain of truth to it. Washington DC is a far different place today than it was in 1964, and Obama has to deal with his Washington, not LBJ's.

At least a few of us have made this same point--and that getting difficult legislation through in the shadow of an assassination is, as a practical matter, easier.

Washington DC is a far different place today than it was in 1964

Obama's part of Washington DC yo.

I don't think he says otherwise: "Obama has to deal with his Washington, not LBJ's" (emphasis mine).

if Dem voters really wanted LBJ-Redux in 2008, they would've or should've voted for either Hillary or Biden in the primaries. the kind of political hard-ball that was LBJ's forte has never been in Obama's repertoire.

i mean -- i get pissed about Obama's fecklessness as much as anyone else here. but it was readily apparent from the get-go that Obama just wasn't an LBJ-type and fussing about it now is pointless. so i guess i do agree w/ Kevin Drum and Clemenza on this point.

Yep.

Speaking of fussing: Walker wins handily in Wisconsin.

that sucks ;_;

thanks DNC ... you can go back to glad-handing hedge-funders with piece of mind now.

ugh fuc

Bill Clinton was gladhanding hedge-funders last night, I'm sure he slept great.

i dunno -- obviously the dnc/bo didn't help, but shit was more or less brought to the front in wisconsin and this is what wisconsin chose

it is disheartening on a bunch of levels

there seemed to be a lot of confusion about when the voting was happening and where...that's what my friend in Wisconsin was saying anyway.

guess 30.5 v 3.9 million will do the trick.

So if Obama was like LBJ, then that would mean the White album would be coming out pretty soon. I like.

Pretty inevitable that Walker would win, no? There was an anti-Walker movement way before there was an anti-Walker candidate, and by the time they drummed someone up a) Walker had raised a ton of money and b) polls were pretty consistent that it was close at best. The downside of this is that his win will seem as validation. The upside is that perhaps more Dems will ultimately win spots in the legislature. Not that that matters in the near future.

What's sad is that the effects of the stuff Walker did and will do won't be really seen for a few years, and by then, it will be too late. But then, that's the way these cycles run, no?

oh I don't know: in Florida we're already seeing the effects of ramming changes in take-home pay without union approval.

i'm pretty sure that there's a certain overweight governor in Trenton who's also licking his lips in anticipation of all the union busting he's gonna unleash on us Garden Staters now that his buddy Scott Walker can claim that he has a "mandate" from "the people." not that Fat Governor needs an excuse to be a boor, but it's another club for him to use.

I would be all "lol Minnesota > Wisconsin" but I'm still miffed about that Vikings stadium deal.

There was an anti-Walker movement way before there was an anti-Walker candidate

Also, iirc, the anti-Walker candidate had no intention of reinstating collective bargaining.

Walker should be Mitt's running mate to really troll America

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57447954-503544/wisconsin-recall-walker-opens-slight-lead-as-votes-are-counted/

With 56 percent of the expected vote in, Walker led Barrett 57 percent to 42 percent.

obama could not have moved this needle

one thing that has always been under-remarked upon is that plenty of ppl in WI are against walker but were not comfortable with the idea of a recall. call it typical quish liberal squeamishness about hardball or extraordinary steps but it's a very real sentiment. if your pitch is that you want everything to go back to normal, how do you mount a challenge like this?

How do you go back to normal, without a challenge when Walker was never interested in normal. Combine the fiscal advantage with the squeamishness and you get this result. Plus with the economy bad, some folks are gonna resent unionized employees more.

how the fuck should i know

you wait it out and try to unseat him in a normal fashion i guess. or you try a recall and lose!

if this loss is about liberal squeamishness about hardball/extraordinary steps, then us libs need to get over it.

Oh Tim Geithner

Kevin Drum quoting and adding to an Ezra Klein piece.
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/06/no-healthcare-reform-was-not-mistake

Although Obama didn't have the leverage to get more stimulus spending even if he'd wanted it, he could have done more on the housing front. A full-court press on cramdown would have been a good start, and serious pressure on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to support principal reductions would have made a difference too.

...

But even here, this was a plain and simple mistake, not something that slipped through the cracks because they were spending too much time on healthcare. Tim Geithner just didn't like the idea of pressing harder on the mortgage relief front, and Obama went along.

Peter King & Bam -- no light betweem 'em on The War on Terrah...
"Drones aren't evil, people are evil":

http://www.salon.com/2012/06/10/obama_defender_rep_peter_king/singleton/

[url=http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/06/why-obama-caved-national-security]Kevin Drum has excerpts from Daniel Klaidman's Kill or Capture, depicting Obama's national security policies. On closing Guantanamo:

The administration officials nearly got their heads taken off, as anxious senators demanded to know how the White House planned to manage the exploding politics of terrorism. "Where's your plan?" they shouted over and over again. Among the most agitated were liberals like Barbara Boxer and Barbara Mikulski, who were up for reelection. These were the same representatives who had pilloried the Bush administration for its fear-mongering tactics in the war on terror, but behind the grand doors of the LBJ Room, all politics were local. We're going to get clobbered back home, the Democrats protested.

An adviser to [David] Ogden, watching the drubbing unfold in horror, handed a note to Ronald Weich, the Justice Department's assistant attorney general in charge of congressional relations. It simply read, "I fear for our Democracy." Weich, who knew the Hill as well as anybody in Washington, turned the piece of paper over and scrawled on the other side: "Welcome to my world."