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

The national debt grew and grew and finally in the Obama years, exploded.

While, of course, the budget deficit shrank. But debt grew because these fuckers won't allow for any increases in tax revenue.

You can have low taxes, a low budget deficit, or low debt, and some combinations of two, but you can't have all three.

In short, these people are morons and deserve to be treated like morons.

aaaand The Houston Chronicle basically retracts its endorsement of Ted Cruz.

lurking behind all that (and the "47% freeloader" stuff from the '12 election) is a growing discomfort with participatory gov't itself.

if you want to shrink the state, well, then run on that, get elected, and do it. but the state, in more or less its current form, is electorally popular enough to be stable. it is hard to prune. GW did try to privatize social security and got fried, remember? you'd have to promise something better if you got rid of it. don't like the EPA? well, you could try to overturn the clean air and water acts, etc. go ahead and try!

and so the next step is a lot darker: the "right thing" may not be better for everybody, and may never be electorally popular. once you've decided on that, well...

wau @ that Houston Chronicle piece

from the free and self-reliant people Who populated the West by kicking out the Mexicans with the U.S. Army, killed or swept aside the Natives with the U.S. Army, homesteaded said stolen land thanks to the Homestead Act (Government largesse, anyone?) and traveled and did business thanks to government sponsored railroads. The totally free-market based Post Office then instituted free rural delivery. This all 19th century Federal government at work, enslaving honest Americans with hand-outs and eroding their dignity.

Their whole narrative is rampant and hypocritical self-regard dressed in puerile romanticism.

More on Cruz at Sullivan, from a reader who went to law school with him:

On the Ted Cruz ego vs. paranoia discussion, I will say I knew him pretty well in college, law school, and beyond, and it’s hard to believe that he’s actually become someone who believes this stuff. He’s incredibly well-educated, and at least used to have a circle of friends that included people very different from his general conservative bent. Sarah Palin, for instance, wouldn’t have survived a day at Princeton, and certainly not as an editor on the Harvard Law Review. My sense is that being in the Senate has taken him too far outside his natural skill-set. He has always been a debater at heart – someone who enjoys taking extreme positions – not because he believes them necessarily, but because it’s fun.

Being a lawyer was a great fit in that way because you are paid to take a side, knowing that you are not tasked with crafting the outcome, but instead are playing your part in an adversarial system. Making policy, on the other hand, requires a very different mindset, and rewards different skills. I didn’t watch the filibuster, but having heard about it, it’s completely in his comfort zone, and exactly the kind of thing he knows how to do – talk for hours about why an extreme position actually makes a lot of sense because working out compromises with fellow legislators, or considering the actual consequences of taking such extreme positions – not naturally his strong suit, and not what he enjoys doing.

Honestly, I think Obama could figure him out in five minutes. Hell, Obama probably managed people much like Ted when Obama was editor of the Harvard Law Review. More importantly, Obama’s natural strong suit – using the rope-a-dope strategy – is perfect for sending Ted back to the private sector (where he would probably be happier anyway). There is no limit to the extremism of the positions Ted would take, given the chance, and the right encouragement. He treats every political discussion like a college-style debate, and the more ordinary people see of his scorched-earth argument style, I think the less they’re going to like it.

yeah but freedom!

I don't want your freedom.

fredb • a minute ago −
It is hard to believe that the country has elected such an extreme radical to the presidency that for the first time threatened to default on debt payments rather than work with Republicans who wanted to prevent long-term economic disasters. Obama's anti-American and communist ideas cause him to want to default on our debt like they would in the African countries he draws his roots from rather than live up to debts as is the tradition in our country. He also figures that recessions are good for the country because they drive up the number of people dependent on the government otherwise known as the people who vote for him, but he is wrong in that aspect as a government default would have had little impact on our economy.

which congressperson gets the wwf-style champion belt for this, that's all this is about, right?

live up to debts as is the tradition in our country

lol

why the fuck do you ppl find idiots to be so fascinating?

i find the "obama wants to default and destroy the economy" vs "a default doesn't matter" incoherence to be especially weird.

if you don't gawk at idiots you aren't really following american politics

why the fuck do you ppl find idiots to be so fascinating?

you tell me

http://simpsonswiki.com/w/images/thumb/1/16/These_Things_I_Believe.png/250px-These_Things_I_Believe.png

why the fuck do you ppl find idiots to be so fascinating?

― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), Wednesda

cuz it gives you the liberty to post clips from liberal blogs we've already read and agree with – oh, and Dennis Perrin?

ok, my work is done

nice how the country is still subject to sequestery austerity funding, but the democrats won! go team

nobody won anything

this has all been stupid bullshit from day one

Their whole narrative is rampant and hypocritical self-regard dressed in puerile romanticism.

― The normative power of the factual (Michael White), Wednesday, October 16, 2013 10:26 AM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yah. jo.gif basically. also explains the strength of its appeal, nothing that straight white males love more than jacking off. mix with religious repression, growing inequality, etc., get crazy time.

gop runs on that energy but it's umm not sustainable

hmm I didn't know about this!

The debt limit will be raised through Feb. 7, with Treasury permitted to use extraordinary measures to borrow after that date, if necessary. The plan includes a "motion of disapproval" wherein Congress can vote to disapprove of this particular increase within 15 days of the president's announcement. If the motion gets a majority in both chambers, he can veto it.

flexibility?

Rush Limbaugh! Him sad man in him room.

Christine Lagarde, the IMF babe

this guy

http://www.rushimg.com/cimages//media/images/obamateaparty5/1193644-1-eng-GB/obamateaparty.jpg

digging Obama as movie villain here

so Christine Lagarde, the IMF babe,

gross

oh lol missed Shakes' post.

I love Sara Robinson tbh.

http://www.alternet.org/story/154144/why_patriarchal_men_are_utterly_petrified_of_birth_control_--_and_why_we%27ll_still_be_fighting_about_it_100_years_from_now?page=0%2C3&paging=off¤t_page=1#bookmark

That same frantic panic over the loss of the ancient bargain also lies that the core of the worldwide rash of fundamentalist religions. Modern industrial economies have undermined the authority of men both in the public sphere and in the private realms; and since they're limited in how far they can challenge it in the external world, they've turned women's bodies into the symbolic battlefield on which their anxieties over this play out. Drill down to the very deepest center of any of these movements, and you'll find men who are experiencing this change as a kind of personal annihilation, a loss of masculine identity so deep that they are literally interpreting it as the end of the world. (The first rule of understanding apocalyptic movements is this: If someone tells you the world is ending, believe them. Because for them, it probably is.)

scary as hell

http://www.democracycorps.com/attachments/article/954/dcor%20rpp%20fg%20memo%20100313%20final.pdf

http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/simgad/18053778015677764682

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/10/will-debt-ceiling-extortion-ever-return.html

i don't think i'd seen this put so succinctly:

The debt-ceiling fight was not brought on by Ted Cruz and his baying hordes. It was actually the preferred strategy of mainstream Republicans, especially Paul Ryan. The Ryanites opposed shutting the government down because they wanted to extort Obama with default. The crazies who favored the shutdown were actually willing to lift the debt ceiling so they could keep the shutdown going.

That is to say, debt-ceiling extortion was not the tool of Republican ultras, unwilling to acknowledge political limits. It was the tool of the calculating party leaders. They viewed the debt ceiling as a smart leverage play to fulfill their goal of winning concessions without giving any in return.

yeah this seems exactly right

The plan includes a proposal offered by McConnell in the 2011 debt ceiling crisis that allows Congress to disapprove of the debt ceiling increase, which means lawmakers will formally vote on whether to reject a debt ceiling increase until Feb. 7. Obama can veto that legislation if it passes. If Congress fails as expected to gather a two-thirds majority to override the veto, the debt ceiling would be raised.

let the republicans have their hissyfit, let them vote their consciences and reap the press associated with the presidential veto, just dont let them do any real damage

Chait noted the same paragraph: it looks like the burden is on Congress to keep the president from acting unilaterally to raise the debt ceiling under extraordinary circumstances. If I'm reading this correctly, this is a hell of an unexpected concession.

yeah but its just a one time thing, i doubt they are planning on trying this all again in a couple months anyway

never say never

i didn, i said doubt

Man, Limbaugh: " Now, the Democrats never stop whipping up their base. Have you noticed?"

uh...

lol republicans having a sad

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

I could be wrong, but I think I remember Pelosi saying she doesn't want to be speaker again. Who's next? Hoyer?

if you don't gawk at idiots you aren't really following american politics

Truth bomb

those comments were misinterpreted iirc. if the Dems re-take the House (not likely) she will totally be Speaker again.

xp

The office of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pushed back hard Friday against a report indicating the House minority leader is not interested in the Speaker's gavel if Democrats win back the House.

“The Leader fully intends to be a Member of a Democratic Majority in the 114th Congress,” Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said in an email. “The rest is up to her colleagues, as the Leader has long stated publicly.”

lol politics

i have been watching cnn for like an hour and a half today and have heard the phrase 'kicking the can down the road' approx. 146 times.

nobody's happy, because we're just kicking a can down a road.

<sadface> Basically we're already a European social democracy arguing over when retirement age should kick in, only with a magnificently overfunded military. I kind of sympathise with the Right over the deficit only they're specifically wrong on almost every single issue that crosses their path.

A child used to kick a can in the street

Xpost

kicking a can down the road is pretty much the essence of industrial capitalism. (also im weirdly tempted to argue that insofar as Brit Hume's description of the Cruz-ites upthread is correct then they've also got a problem with capitalism broadly defined.)

from the Beinart story:

Now that Republicans are backing off those demands, the press is saying they’ve caved. But that’s like saying that the neighborhood bully has caved because after demanding your shoes and bike, he’s once again willing to accept merely your lunch money.

Most of the press is missing this because most of the press is covering the current standoff more as politics than policy. If your basic question is “which party is winning?” then it’s easy to see the Republicans as losing, since they’re the ones suffering in the polls. But the partisan balance of power and the ideological balance of power are two completely different things. The Nixon years were terrible for the Democratic Party but quite good for progressive domestic policy. The Clinton years were, in important ways, the reverse. The promise of the Obama presidency was not merely that he’d bring Democrats back to power. It was that he’d usher in the first era of truly progressive public policy in decades. But the survival of Obamacare notwithstanding, Obama’s impending “victory” in the current standoff moves us further away from, not closer to, that goal.