American Politics Thread 2013: I'm a cool Rodham grandma in the USA

They haunt my dreams at night. I have this one nightmare where I’m about to ask for a vote on a clean continuing resolution and then one of them—I think it’s Steve King from Iowa—looks at me with this eerie smile and says, “No, John. No you won’t.” And then the rest of them are suddenly standing behind him and they all chant in a chilling monotone, “No, John. No you won’t.” And then I wake up screaming, “No, John!!! No you won’t!!!” and I’m crying, and my wife is crying, and I’ve sweat through my sheets.

DC gettin downright apocalyptic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=kKmdRZnjm2k

Why am I looking for a plan under the ACA that covers self-immolation? Oh, no reason.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/10/05/us/05states_337_2/05states_337_2-articleLarge.jpg

I get it, but I really wish they could find a better symbol of the shutdown's effects than the closing of national parks.

https://scontent-b-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/1383175_10103323715075209_1994725259_n.jpg

Federal judge cock-punches Darrel Issa for his "I murdered my parents, please be lenient because I am an orphan" chutzpah - http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2013/10/fast_and_furious_judge_amy_berman_jackson_lets_congress_know_what_she_thinks.html

How Democrats Got a Spine http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/10/the_intransigence_of_democrats_from_obama_on_down_to_red_state_senators.html

Wow reps can say "fuckin" in the press now?

If you're like 99 years old and face no danger of ever losing an election, sure.

NWS getting feisty. (Can't vouch for the reality of this but it's funny anyway.)

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F3Giv78jzGM/Uk9OB_mwD3I/AAAAAAAAORI/5FGBx368RmA/s1600/NWS.png

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pentagon-to-recall-most-furloughed-workers-hagel-says/2013/10/05/eb7ed346-2deb-11e3-8ade-a1f23cda135e_story.html

Paradoxically, however, the Pentagon’s announcement could actually relieve political pressure on lawmakers to end the shutdown by canceling furloughs for as many as 300,000 federal employees.

http://i.imgur.com/Rjh9vCA.png

real nice

NWS thing seems legit

http://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=NWS&issuedby=AFC&product=AFD&format=TXT&version=6&glossary=0

whoa http://politicalwire.com/archives/2013/10/06/shutdown_has_put_house_in_play.html

A new Public Policy Polling survey finds that if the 2014 midterm elections were held today, Republicans "would be in grave danger of losing control of the House of Representatives."

But they're not

"Pastor says he turned his father's $40,000 retirement into $396,000 by flipping this 'Obama blunder'"

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/1379353_778533211290_811579556_n.jpg

But they're not

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Yeah, if elections were next week, Dems would probably lose, because OMG, Obamacare! And they shut down the government! And they want to take away our guns!

wow you guys really have opened my eyes to the reality of the situation http://i.imgur.com/xTIBfWr.gif

The administration's people said "entitlement reform" a couple times this weekend. Charles Pierce:

This pivot can still work. The president has demonstrated that he can be brought to a deal if someone properly engages his impulse to be a conciliator. They're never going to be able to do that by asking him to chloroform the Affordable Care Act. But if they start talking about The Deficit, they can get him to listen. If he starts to think about bipartisanship and about problem-solving, and about the rosy dream he painted in his famous 2004 speech at the Democratic convention, a speech that now sounds as though it were delivered by a five-year old, then he can convince himself to do anything. At which point, I will believe that, in doing what he did when he did it, Ted Cruz is the smartest man alive. And I do not, under any circumstances, want to believe that.

the thing is in the past all of obamas demands re entitlement reform have included revenue increases which is something the republicans are incapable of agreeing to, so grand bargaining is prob a non starter, as it was before

But if they start talking about The Deficit, they can get him to listen. If he starts to think about bipartisanship and about problem-solving, and about the rosy dream he painted in his famous 2004 speech at the Democratic convention, a speech that now sounds as though it were delivered by a five-year old, then he can convince himself to do anything.

but yeah youre soooo smart charles pierce *j/o emoticon*

Austerity, man. It'll be a good bargain, not a grand bargain.

adjectives cost money

austerity != entitlement reform

I didn't say it did, but philosophically, no, there's no real difference. In GOP bizarro world, the debt is out of control, and we can't saddle our kids with it, so everything must get reduced, including SS and Medicare, which are gonna go bankrupt soon anyway.

Yeah, they've already alienated the Chamber of Congress - Republicans might as well just jettison their other core constituency: old people.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/10/07/us/fed-up-on-the-prairie-and-voting-on-seceding-from-colorado.html

cute

so grand bargaining is prob a non starter, as it was before

Until Obama "caves" again.

youre in a cave

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/10/07/us/fed-up-on-the-prairie-and-voting-on-seceding-from-colorado.html

cute

― j., Monday, October 7, 2013 10:31 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they shd call their state farm subsidies

I wish xp

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ4N556wv-fmnhDlTlG8MBHnTZmmzyZhpsQizv5LFQM3rfdF6uBxA

http://i.imgur.com/5WBZeXd.png

lawl

tiny bit of good news (not sure on the specifics of this or if its some horrible trick) http://wonkwire.rollcall.com/2013/10/07/house-approves-backpay-furloughed-workers

is there any sort of significant movement to reform the districting/gerrymandering process? any group that's pushing a proposal to end it that has any weight behind it? anything, anywhere?

the next scheduled gerrymandering parade is 2020 - if there's any chance of reform before then, it would have to begin now (to give reform time to work through the machine, and also so that it would be possible to say that no one knows which political party reform would harm or benefit in 2020) , or else get pushed off to 2030 or later.

xpost yeah, i posted about that on one of the several shutdown threads. didn't get much press, but it was surprisingly a unanimous vote.

seems we are very far from any sort of gerrymandering reform

its a super thorny problem and the best solutions are quite radical so idk

yeah, totally. there's the idea of auto-districting (letting a computer handle the district layouts) but then of course you'd have to agree on the parameters for who would be included in each district.

it just seems like there's this glaring flaw in the way things are set up right now. not sure that our heroic patriotic founding fathers realized that partisan district-drawers in the 21st century americans would have access to so much information about the location and political preference of citizens.

i just wonder if there's any group or even just an idea that has a chance, or if everyone has essentially given up hope to solve one of the biggest underlying causes of this whole mess.

same despairing question applies campaign finance reform

yeah. perhaps on campaign finance reform, advocates are waiting to see just how bad it will get. one of the big cases for the supreme court this year holds the possibilities of loosening limits on federal campaign contribution limits. NYT article on it from earlier this year:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear a challenge to federal campaign contribution limits, setting the stage for what may turn out to be the most important federal campaign finance case since the court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United, which struck down limits on independent campaign spending by corporations and unions.

The latest case is an attack on the other main pillar of federal campaign finance regulation: limits on contributions made directly to political candidates and some political committees.

“In Citizens United, the court resisted tinkering with the rules for contribution limits,” said Richard L. Hasen, an expert on election law at the University of California, Irvine. “This could be the start of chipping away at contribution limits.”

people overrate gerrymandering as the problem and underrate the rural/urban population distribution element

lots people think gerrymandering is overrated as a cause of our current problems, like the reason republicans control the house despite getting ~a million less votes than the democrats has more to do with partisan population density patterns than with how you arrange the districts, because democrats tend to live in highly concentrated democratic areas theres just no way to slice them up so that the house reflects the national popular vote

which is not to say its not a big problem but there are maybe bigger underlying problems that make the whole thing so difficult to fix

ha xp

anyone remember that NH "free state" project? maybe progressives with the luxury of working remotely or freelance should start moving in to tightly held tea party districts