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

problem = the miniscule percentage of Catholics ready to break from Obama over diaphragms and colored condoms.

Obama's introduction on friday of the accomodation himself rather than having it done via press release shows though that the White House is more worried about this than Shakey is!

There seems to high percentage of Catholic inside the Beltway media types fixated on this--Chris Matthews, EJ Dionne, hmmm is Cokie Roberts...

If you don't have CNN or FOX, this problem is meaningless.

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, February 11, 2012

Unless you work at a Catholic-owned hospital, but yeah otherwise you could say this about just about any political thing we discuss here

"When you wear that blue condom, I go wild!"

you could say this about just about any political thing we discuss here

Except, you know, the important stuff.

Biden was among those reportedly telling O to backtrack, I-tol-ya-so ad nauseum.

i don't defer to Beltway media types about substantive policy (esp since they've been laughably wrong about such things by and large), and i'm damn sure not going to defer to their take on Catholicism or Catholic voters.

by itself, this flap isn't going to swing anyone but grannies who go to novenas (who probably weren't too keen on voting for Obama anyway).

A good pol never leaves a potential vote on the table. Even a small slice of novena-attending grannies is worth making an effort, if it looks like a net gainer.

my mother is an 83-yo granny who hauls a rosary. I'm sure she'll vote for Obama (again) as long as my sister drives her to the poll and tells her to.

you should drive her to the polls and tell her to vote for roseanne

roseanne-ary

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/us/even-critics-of-safety-net-increasingly-depend-on-it.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

Almost half of all Americans lived in households that received government benefits in 2010, according to the Census Bureau. The share climbed from 37.7 percent in 1998 to 44.5 percent in 2006, before the recession, to 48.5 percent in 2010.

The trend reflects the expansion of the safety net. When the earned-income credit was introduced in 1975, eligibility was limited to households making the current equivalent of up to $26,997. In 2010, it was available to families making up to $49,317. The maximum payout, meanwhile, quadrupled on an inflation-adjusted basis.

Interesting long piece. I was thinking about it as I saw on Facebook an annoying forwarded photo thing saying: "Got my tax form returned, the government did not like me listing as my dependents, 12 million illegal immigrants, x million on disability, x million on and so on." Conservatives are convinced all these folks are lucky duckies living it up on these far less than six figure amounts. But some want to work and some are Tea party types themselves in denial.

great opening: "Back in 2006, before the Obama administration made leak prosecutions routine..."

How are future Supreme Court appointments such a re-election vote crutch for a regime that has such contempt for a free press?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/sunday-review/a-high-tech-war-on-leaks.html

The White House's fixation on prosecuting whistleblower leak cases is horrible, but again how is enabling Romney or whatever GOPer to appoint Supreme court judges going to make things better. If we had had a Dem in office instead of Bush a more moderate (or even kinda liberal) Supreme Court could act as a screen to prevent such constitution damaging actions.

could have

acted

You're presuming that justices vote the way their presidents want them to. Besides, a liberal judge is apt to rein in King Obama.

Morbz wants things to get WORSE curmodgeon, not better

The revolution will then happen and the Mets will win the World Series again and Morbz will be on top of the world

Also: no president interested in legacies and such would return the extra-constitutional powers bequeathed to him. Any GOP or Dem successor to Obama would at best continue but probably worsen this state of affairs.

yep, these powers will not be limited/rescinded without a massive fight, would be a huge showdown between the judiciary and executive

Obama has made things worse in the prosecuting of whistleblowers and in many civil liberty areas, yes. Re the unintend consequences of appointing judges, other than HW Bush's appoinment of Souter, which appointees in the last 30 years have done other than what was expected?

as Bob Dole would say, stop lying about my record.

Re the unintend consequences of appointing judges, other than HW Bush's appoinment of Souter, which appointees in the last 30 years have done other than what was expected?

Kennedy, although expectations were low (third pick after Bork and Douglas Ginsberg).

Too soon to judge Sotomayor and Kagan.

doesn't even make sense to compare them because judges today are picked *specifically with the goal of not having unexpected consequences*

Kennedy still largely agrees with the other conservatives

doesn't even make sense to compare them because judges today are picked *specifically with the goal of not having unexpected consequences*

... when was this not a goal

it wasn't as explicitly a goal recently

There are various books claiming that the Republican presidential appointment of Earl Warren, who became a liberal favorite, was not thought out the way most of the current appointments have been done.

Some liberal and left wing groups worry that Sotomayor and Kagan will be less than liberal despite all the analysis of their history.

You're not going to stop either-or'ing every goddamn issue where both wings of the duopoly break the limits of tolerability... but plz do so anyway. Let's just get a second party, albeit one different from Tom Friedman's, by any means necessary.

Oh, there's a long list of justices whose decisions didn't square with the president's, starting with Samuel Chase, whom Jefferson's Dems in Congress tried to impeach.

... when was this not a goal

― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Monday, February 13, 2012 12:41 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

sometimes judges were picked based on their 'jurisprudence' (i.e. cardozo, who received unanimous support from both parties)

or justices were picked for "balance" (i.e. we need a Catholic, a southerner, a Jew).

doesn't even make sense to compare them because judges today are picked *specifically with the goal of not having unexpected consequences*

... when was this not a goal

― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Monday, 13 February 2012 17:41 (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"& so, mr president, we have our shortlist. and now, if you will close your eyes, put your hand in the bag and withdraw only one additional name"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17014744

Obama budget that the House will oppose released today (plus arm sales to Bahrain story below):

the plan would levy a new $61bn tax on financial institutions, in an effort to recover the costs of the financial bailout. And it would raise a further $41bn by cutting tax breaks for oil, gas and coal companies.

Token items like this keep me in the voting for Obama camp (no matter how annoyed I was this morning re this item I heard on the Democracy Now radio program and just read about elsewhere: The Obama administration has quietly moved forward with a new package of arms sales to the regime in Bahrain, after international pressure forced them to delay its planned $53 million arms sale. Using legal loopholes that only require congressional authorization for sales of $1 million or more, the administration split the arms package and moved forward with the new sales without notifying the public.

Human Rights Watch has condemned Obama’s support for this repression, saying in a press release that the “decision to move forward on a $1 million arms sale to Bahrain sends the wrong signal to a country that is engaged in serious human rights abuses

http://presstv.com/usdetail/225971.html

"reasonable adult" moderate.....grrrrrrr

Will DJP or Tim3llison or someone defend the Bahrain thing, or explain it to naive me? Does Obama really believe this military aid is a "carrot" that will get Bahrain to shape up, or that this aid is somehow necessary to counteract Iran or help the US maintain a presence in that part of the world?

why is it incumbent upon me to defend the Bahrain thing

fuck off

black people are the most responsible for obama's decisions iirc

I didn't realize that saying Obama is the candidate most in line with my political beliefs with the best chance of winning automatically means I approve of every fucking thing his administration does

well actually I did realize that, which is why I shouldn't be on these threads because oftentimes you guys are fucking morons

I won't defend weapons sales but it's pretty obvious why Obama thinks it's important to prop up the Bahrain regime - to annoy Iran and keep them from becoming the running the country by proxy

I hear he's trading arms for handos

Um, I said Tim3llison (whose race I do not know) or someone too, but sorry for singling anyone out. My error. Shakey, do you think this will really annoy Iran though?

Annoy is probably the wrong word. I'm pretty sure this is merely to warn them.

Iran will totally see this as (yet another) aggressive move to assert US hegemony in the region, no doubt about it

It also makes sense in the contect of the long-standing enmity between Sunni Arab kingdoms and the Shia Persian Islamic Republic

So the citizens of Bahrain are screwed--either they have their own current autocratic regime or one controlled by Iran.

mostly

would probably prefer Iran tho, given the shi'a majority

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/02/gop-drops-demand-for-offsetting-payroll-tax-cut.php

Can we believe TPM or its sources on this?

dude