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

well, the Dems didn't replace themselves in the '60s! They "evolved," partly out of necessity when the most extreme Southern racists began to leave.

yup

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Party_System

ppl disagree as to whether we are still in this or not

I say this a lot but comparing politics today to politics in the 1800s seems pretty fruitless.

one thing you can say is that the party system changes (nominally) v. infrequently.

another thing you can say is that the gop's politics just simply cannot sell on a national level forever + at the same time the only people left in the party are people who have had second helpings of kool aid.

For the GOP's policies, see also the Dem's actions.

another thing you can say is that the gop's politics just simply cannot sell on a national level forever + at the same time the only people left in the party are people who have had second helpings of kool aid.

Maybe not forever, but as I mentioned above, it's working pretty well for them now in many states and in parts of the US govt.

well some states have a lot of kool aid, the massive economic downturn gave the gop a lot of cover, and the american political system allows a minority senate to fuck shit up. but that doesn't mean the gop hasn't boxed itself into a really poor place nationally.

Forbes columnist analysis! Warning: Quotes Rasmussen polls as truth

http://douglasschoen.com/why-president-obama-is-unlikely-to-significantly-improve-his-standing-among-male-voters/

Also warning: considers comparing poll results over the last 30 years to be in any way useful - oh yeah some of you guys love that shit.

rasmussen proves male voters are dumber, more racist, anti-obama

2 conservative House Dems lose their primaries to more liberal opponents, primarily because of their opposition to healthcare and climate change legislation

^^^in Pennsylvania btw

well, also because of redistricting

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/robert-draper-anti-obama-campaign_n_1452899.html

almost feel like there's a lesson here...

"I never made a commitment that somehow we were going to give carte blanche to large-scale producers and operators of marijuana – and the reason is, because it’s against federal law. I can’t nullify congressional law. I can’t ask the Justice Department to say, “Ignore completely a federal law that’s on the books” . . . .

The same person who directed the DOJ to shield torturers and illegal government eavesdroppers from criminal investigation, and who voted to retroactively immunize the nation’s largest telecom giants when they got caught enabling criminal spying on Americans, and whose DOJ has failed to indict a single Wall Street executive in connection with the 2008 financial crisis or mortgage fraud scandal, suddenly discovers the imperatives of The Rule of Law when it comes to those, in accordance with state law, providing medical marijuana to sick people with a prescription.

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/26/obama_justice_and_medical_marijuana/

This f'in guy etc.

http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2012/04/samuel_joe_the_plumber_wurzelb.html

Ohio congressional candidate Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher first gained national attention after querying presidential candidate Barack Obama’s about tax policy during a televised 2008 campaign appearance in the Toledo area.

As the GOP nominee to challenge Toledo Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur in the 2012 election, Wurzelbacher recently made news again when the Christian Broadcasting Network website published a letter he wrote about Obama’s religious faith as well as his own Christian beliefs. Wurzelbacher told the website he plans to distribute the letter titled: ‘I’m Blessed to be a Christian," to churches during his upcoming congressional campaign.

Wurzelbacher’s letter doesn’t address Kaptur. It mostly dwells on Obama. Wurzelbacher says he believes Obama is a Christian, and it’s not Christian for people to say otherwise.

Wurzelbacher’s letter also provided a colorful rendition of Obama’s background:

"Imagine being the child of a mixed-race marriage - especially in the turbulent 60’s and free-wheeling 70’s," his letter said. "And when you throw in that dad was a Muslim and mom an atheist - you know it could not have been easy - and they were communists for crying out loud!"

Yes, please, run against Obama instead of your opponent.

grr medical marijuana thing is so irritating

And Mike Lofgren, a veteran Republican congressional staffer, wrote an anguished diatribe last year about why he was ending his career on the Hill after nearly three decades. “The Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe,” he wrote on the Truthout Web site.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lets-just-say-it-the-republicans-are-the-problem/2012/04/27/gIQAxCVUlT_story.html

sigh:

Al Armendariz, a mid-level official at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) since 2009, resigned this week after conservatives expressed outrage at a metaphor he invoked at a town hall meeting nearly two years ago.

Armendariz, who took leave from Southern Methodist University to join the administration, commented at a meeting back in 2010 that the EPA’s enforcement policy was to find “people who are not compliant with the law, and you hit them as hard as you can and you make examples out of them.”

“It was kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean,” he said. “They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they would crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years. And so you make examples out of people who are in this case not compliant with the law.”

Critics focused on the “crucify” comment after climate-change skeptic Sen. James Inhofe (R) posted the video on to his web site. The calls for Armendariz’s resignation soon followed. On Sunday, he obliged.

A "mid-level" official? He's the administrator of EPA Region 6 (NM, TX, OK, AR and LA)!

I hear some people even wear crucifixes around their neck constantly, the sickos....

although i'm looking to replacing my tired "job-killer" self-references with "job-crucifying"

god, i'd love to clock out but i have to crucify at least 2 more dozen jobs to meet my quota for the week

you'd think polluters would leap at the chance to be associated with Jesus

In other news, I don't know if I'm the only one (maybe Morbz) who's disgusted when Dems start acting like macho shitheads.

xpost
of course, Armendariz' original sin (....sorry) was coming to the conclusion that the oil and gas industry are major polluters - shocking!

When President Obama appointed SMU prof Al Armendariz to the EPA regional post in Dallas back in 2009, it was to the sound of collective groaning from the energy industry and Republican politicos. Only months before, he'd authored a study citing oil and gas production as a major source of air pollution in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. And now he was supposed to regulate them?

Ever since, everyone from the industry right on down to the chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the Railroad Commission of Texas and Gov. Rick Perry has looked for an excuse to call for his head.

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2012/04/did_epa_regional_chief_armenda.php

Texas Commission on Environmental Quality

I bet this guy is a laugh riot

There's really nothing macho about being the world's most heavily protected warlord, Alfred.

Romney has said earlier in the day Monday that “even Jimmy Carter” would have made the same call.

lol

on several levels

reminds me when Mondale accused Reagan (!) of being soft on the Commies.

exactly

probably already posted somewhere, but:

http://voteview.com/images/polar_House_Means.jpg
http://voteview.com/images/Polar_Senate_Means.jpg

http://voteview.com/political_polarization.asp

Can we get Tori Amos's "Crucify" named official song of the EPA?

i will nominate it at the next all hands meeting

so, unexpected televised speech from afghanistan at 7:30pm (EST) tonight?

https://twitter.com/#!/natlsecuritycnn/statuses/197400468731871232

It's one year since Bin laden was killed and Obama wants to remind folks

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/obama-make-televised-speech-afghanistan-730-pm/story?id=16255583

Obama, whose secrecy-shrouded trip came on the one-year anniversary of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, met in Kabul with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The two leaders signed a long-term partnership agreement that governs the United States' role in Afghanistan after NATO-led combat forces leave in 2014. NATO leaders are due in Chicago in late May for a summit at which they are expected to spell out how the alliance's troops will hand over security duties to Afghan security forces throughout 2013.

Obama's trip also carried a strong political flavor: He has been using the May 1, 2011 bin Laden raid to pummel presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney

Have received emails from two different entities asking me to pester Pelosi re her recent Simpson-Bowles comments:

We need to speak out now to stop House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi from agreeing to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits.

Recently, Leader Pelosi expressed support for the Bowles-Simpson plan that would have slashed Social Security benefits — a plan that when it came out she rightly deemed "simply unacceptable."1

And the Washington Post reported that last year she agreed to a "grand bargain" President Obama negotiated with John Boehner that would have slashed benefits not just for Social Security, but for Medicare and Medicaid too.2

We've learned from past battles that preemptive concessions by Democrats can lead to disastrous outcomes

hmm, that seems worth pestering her about. I wonder what kind of calculation she's making there. (fwiw I can't see the GOP getting behind the Bowles-Simpson plan at all so there's that...)

has everyone read that Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann piece about why shit's so bad between the political parties? Matt Steinglass at The Economist wrote a good response.

SHEEPLE ALERT at Alfred's link:

MommyBoy, Dude...we compromised when government was 15% of GDP and it grew to 20%...we compromised again and it hit 25%...we compromised again and it hit 30%....call us crazy...but compromised yet again and it grew to 35%. Today? It's 41% of GDP. Dude...Are you one of the sheeple? Do you not see what's happening? Wake up.

American politics are nothing like Dutch politics, because we don't have ten parties in our legislature. And yet in some ways American politics are very much like Dutch politics: they share themes like anger at ruling political elites, immigrant/native tensions, existential anxiety at the shrinking industrial economic base and widening inequality. And most important, as it turned out after the Dutch centre-right and centre-left cut their deal, it seems that voters—however partisan they may be—really like a compromise. This is something we saw in America as well, last summer after the debt-ceiling impasse, when voters expressed wide relief that the two sides had cut a deal, any deal. For all the ideological convictions they may profess to hold, ultimately, most voters like to see the politicians in Washington cooperating to get things done. This may not always be such a great thing—politicians may receive a bump in the polls from reaching a compromise that is, substantively, awful. But it suggests, at least, that there is a political resource available for politicians who would like to strike deals with each other, and that our march towards partisan gridlock and failure is not entirely irresistible.

this is 'how it's supposed to work' but if you are guaranteed to get primaried for being the moderate dude, the national 4% 'bump in the polls' for your party is not really of much use to you

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/cold-truth-about-obama-and-fdr-by.html

Depressing read

would lead nicely into William Burroughs' Thanksgiving Prayer

Never read that before. Wow.

http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/william_burroughs_thanksgiving_prayer

Greenwald on the quisling courts, most recently bowing to the Obama DOJ in exculpating John Yoo:

(1) not a single War on Terror victim — not one — has been permitted to sue for damages in an American court over what was done to them, even when everyone admits they were completely innocent, even when they were subjected to the most brutal torture, and even when the judiciary of other countries permitted their lawsuits to proceed; and,

(2) not a single government official — not one — has been held legally accountable, either criminally or even civilly, for any War on Terror crimes or abuses; perversely, the only government officials to pay any price were the ones who blew the whistle on those crimes.

# of DOJ requests to the FISA court to eavesdrop on and/or physically search Americans/legal residents: 1,745

# of FISA court denials: 0

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/04/more_federal_judge_abdication/

Can the Obama administration just announce its criteria for drone attacks? They might get support on a few of them, although I am sure Greenwald would say we or Yemen should have recaptured this guy and put him back in jail:

Yemen's government and the al Qaeda-linked group both identified one of the men as Fahd al-Qasaa, who escaped from prison in 2005 after being convicted of a role in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole warship in Yemen's port of Aden. That attack killed 17 U.S. sailors.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-05-06/news/sns-rt-us-yemen-attackbre8450b2-20120506_1_ansar-al-sharia-al-qaeda-yemen-s-defence-ministry

And that one former CIA guy on his book tour touting torture says he wants Obama to have the military catch and torture these guys to get more (unreliable) info, rather than taking them out with drones

tot in-touch liberal petition-signing spam:

Tell Mitch McConnell: Do the Right Thing

I wonder whether he will try to demand something for his caucus' votes on student loans. Does he pay attention to these petition-signing things sent in by libs?

# of DOJ requests to the FISA court to eavesdrop on and/or physically search Americans/legal residents: 1,745

# of FISA court denials: 0

this is fucking criminal police state shit imo