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

As far as I'm aware, "I am willing to stand up against the tyranny of Agenda 21" means "I am psychotically insane OR I am willing to stand in solidarity with my psychotically insane brethren if it will get me a few votes".

So, it's a very _now_ look for Republicans.

Only 3rd on the agenda!

wait that can't be real

We worry about the "imposition" of sharia law yet:

WHEREAS, God has never rescinded his grant of said lands; and

WHEREAS, along with the grant of said lands to the Jewish people, God provided for the non-Jewish
residents of the land in commanding that governance must be in one law for all without drawing distinction
between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens, as contained in Leviticus 24:22, and

Oh c'mon, stop acting all surprised. Obviously Evangelical Christians are opposed Sharia Law bc they think divine testament law is the only law.

and that peace can be afforded the region only through a united Israel governed under one law for all people.

I'm sure the Palestinians will be delighted to hear it.

"reverenced"?

silly, Palestinians aren't people! xp

Other Republicans are pointing fingers at Sandra Fluke's "socialist Jewish boyfriend" (who does not love America or Israel enough among other things apparently)

http://thegraph.com/2012/03/sandra-flukes-boyfriend/

wow, this 'beta male' shit. kudos to the anti-woman internet underground, you have made it increasingly mainstream.

look at this clown's twitter feed

https://twitter.com/#!/brooksbayne

looks like some other conservatives have tried to ostracize him as an anti-semite. lol this shit.

https://twitter.com/#!/jstrevino/statuses/180664026236338176

Oh lord, that's the real Adam Baldwin. Bad show, Jayne.

yeah he's a total nut

wtf. tikkun olem was not invented by liberals. it was invented by the fucking besht. fuck conservatives forever.

Whether or not Boehner keeps his speakership is really not a big deal one way or another, but here's how I see it. Even if the Republicans were to take a whipping in November, while still retaining a much-diminished majority in the House, Boehner probably wouldn't fall to Cantor as a result, because the most likely R-reps to lose their seats in such an election would be the freshman tea-partiers, undercutting Cantor's core of support.

imo, the most likely way for Boehner to lose out to Cantor would be a very mixed election where 95% of the tea party R-reps came back, but about an equal number of "moderate" R-reps lost their seats, but Obama wins and the Senate stays Democratic. Then Cantor might-could assemble an insurrection and grab the speaker's chair. Not likely, tho.

he most likely R-reps to lose their seats in such an election would be the freshman tea-partiers

what are you basing this on

tea party's appeal undiminished in the GOP if the prez primary is anything to go by

i'm basing it on history. freshmen reps are always the most vulnerable segment of a congress. a big loss of seats is almost certain to include a large number of first timers whose seats flipped back. but, if you notice, i wasn't predicting a large loss of R-rep seats in november, only speculating on boehner's security in a couple of scenarios.

just asking cuz I was wondering if there was some recent polling data or something. no disputing that freshmen seats are the most vulnerable, they always have less money/fewer backers/weaker infrastructure

it's not their freshman-ness that's the vulnerability, it's that most districts are safe.

yeah there's a difference between a freshman who fits w/ a district's politics and flipped out the outlier and a freshman who won in a wave election

right

A little more on the Agenda 21 fite, this is funny:

http://blogs.knoxnews.com/humphrey/2012/03/rep-womick-wrong-about-murfree.html

"It's kind of like children have imaginary friends, and Republicans have imaginary enemies," House Democratic Caucus Chairman Mike Tuner of Nashville told reporters after the floor session.

Actually the lead sentence is pretty great too:

A state lawmaker was mistaken about the facts of a restaurant's zoning issues when he used the case of Papa's Butts and BBQ Hot Sauce Store as an example of the creeping influence of the United Nations in Tennessee, a city official said.

"It's kind of like children have imaginary friends, and Republicans have imaginary enemies"

^love this. somebody slap that on a bumper sticker.

It tells you how desperate the White House is to show its pro-business bona fides that it has thrown its support to this crappy piece of legislation. To her credit, the controversy-shy chairman of the SEC, Mary Shapiro, last week penned a letter to the Senate with a warning that the JOBS bill will undermine important investor protections. And on Thursday, a more reasonable alternative was offered in the Senate by Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat whose investigations subcommittee was the first to shine light on the financial antics of “Fabulous Fab” and his Goldman colleagues

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wall-street-credo-ripping-out-their-eyeballs/2012/03/12/gIQAakrPJS_story_2.html

With the so-called JOBS bill, on which the Senate is due to vote Tuesday, Congress is about to make the same kind of mistake again -- this time abandoning much of the 1930s-era securities legislation that both served investors well and helped make the US one of the best places in the world to raise capital. We find ourselves again on a bipartisan route to disaster.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/simon-johnson/fiscal-affairs-a-colossal_b_1362060.html

Liberal economists and some Dem Senators versus Steve Jobs, Boehner, Obama and bipartisan types

Steve Jobs supported earlier draft

This above bill has not received much critical attention except for the few blogposts listed above. Some are just assuming that the Senate will clear up the House mess of a bill. But with techie and Obama support for the bill, it will be up to Dem senators to go against the tide.

pfft, fat chance of that ... Dem congress-critters spread their legs even wider for Sillicon Valley than they do for Wall Street.

so it's like a robot-bestiality sorta deal

om/politics/obamas-evolution-behind-the-failed-grand-bargain-on-the-debt/2012/03/15/gIQAHyyfJS_story.html

So Pelosi was gonna "reluctantly" accept this, before it blew up

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obamas-evolution-behind-the-failed-grand-bargain-on-the-debt/2012/03/15/gIQAHyyfJS_story.html

The piece does not have the details re whether anyone in the White House said maybe we should not propose increasing the Medicare eligibility age and instituting chained CPI, which would cut Social Security cost-of-living increases, in exchange for a minor amount of tax increases.

Ugh. Boehner -- a prisoner of his caucus. Obama -- a feeble negotiator.

Speaking of the caucus, Paul Ryan is gonna try again today with another House budget plan that whacks at entitlement programs and the tax system in order to uh, grow the economy. Yeah, right. It may be a dead on arrival plan with the current Senate, but unfortunately it will encourage the media elites, blue-dog Dems, and other bipartisan types to say "but don't we have to cut those programs, maybe not to the extent Ryan is proposing but blah blah blah". Meanwhile none of those 'reasonable adults' will discuss just letting the Bush tax cuts expire; making hedge fund managers pay income tax rates rather than reduced capital rates; getting rid of corporate loopholes, raising the Social Security payroll tax cap, etc. But you all know that.

x-post re W. Post article looking back on Grand bargain failure:

The Post is making the case that there was a potential deal, and Obama blew it by failing to properly handle the easily-spooked Republican caucus. What the story actually shows is that Obama’s disastrous weakness in the summer of 2011 went further toward undermining liberalism than anybody previously knew.

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/03/how-obama-tried-to-sell-out-liberalism-in-2011.html

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones, per his nature and views, is less bothered by Obama's role, although not crazy about it

It was a lousy deal; the revenue increases were dubious; it got derailed after the Gang of Six released its plan and Obama asked Boehner for more revenue; and it got scuttled completely when Boehner refused to accept Obama's offer to go back to the original deal.

Ironically enough, we need to thank the Gang of 6 for coming up with a plan with a much larger amount of tax income. It's existence accelerated the unraveling of the weaker Obama/Boehner plan. Obama and then chief of Staff Daley had been so desperate to try to get a deal that they seemingly would have agreed to anything (and for some reason did not realize that Boehner's caucus would never agree to any tax revenue)

I just posted Obama cheerleader's surprising about-face: http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/03/how-obama-tried-to-sell-out-liberalism-in-2011.html

*Jonathan Chait

oh duh

the comments to the Chait article are, um, interesting ... shoot the guy who wanders off the Obama wagon trail, apparently.

the problem with being dismissive of Obama, sadly, is that the people in opposition to him are actively championing things like the laws that led to the shooting of Trayvon Martin

seems weird to me that anybody cares about this deal anymore. it's a deal that's basically going to be ignored/rewritten, and the debt ceiling got raised - so who cares

that being said I don't dispute Alfred's basic calculus re: Boehner and Obama's roles

I think Obama has to be judged on the outcome of the negotiation - not on things he offered or promised in the course of it. I think at some point he might have been offering the moon just to see how stubborn the GOP was willing to be. That doesn't mean that he wouldn't have started piling on conditions or caveats if he got a bite. We don't really know what his strategy was. In any case he succeeded in making the GOP look pretty extreme.

The issue may come up again at election time and in a lameduck session after the election, and Obama's strategic decision to try to come up with a Grand Bargain on the deficit by giving up certain liberal ideals (re Medicare, Social Security) to get a certain amount of tax revenue, may be brought up again when some Dems try to campaign on the idea that Republicans want to take away your Medicare and Social Security. By offering to give up those things, Obama arguably hurt the Dems message.

lol the dems don't have a message

may be brought up again when some Dems try to campaign on the idea that Republicans want to take away your Medicare and Social Security.

I don't think so. these are arcane details of the negotiations for most of the electorate, nobody is going to care. soundbites can't encapsulate this kind of complexity.

A Dem campaigning on preserving Social Security and Medicare isn't going to be damaged by some GOP attack dog saying "but Obama once offered, behind closed doors, in negotiations that were eventually unsuccessful, to maybe alter those programs!"

not gonna happen