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

A woman should give this fat asshole a haircut amirite

mos def gives us a look at what "doctors" at guantanamo are doing to the men who are hunger striking. a warning - it's pretty nauseating, in all seriousness

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/jul/08/mos-def-force-fed-guantanamo-bay-video?CMP=twt_gu

this book will be delicious
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/08/books/this-town-by-mark-leibovich-skewers-washingtons-insiders.html

Rick Perry not seeking reelection

idgi mos def asks to be force fed then hes all begging to stop make up yr mind bro

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/08/florida-banned-computers_n_3561701.html

Ha, Florida accidentally bans smartphones and computers in their quest to stop internet cafes that act as havens for gambling (or something)

Coming this fall (same 'ol, same 'ol):

http://mobile.nationaljournal.com/congress/house-republicans-draft-their-debt-ceiling-playbook-20130707

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/07/racists-love-ron-and-rand-paul-for-some-reason.html

i don't think chait really 'gets' the Old Right

Segregation was in large part a policy of government, not the free market. But it took intrusive federal power to destroy segregation.

I don't think "but" is the right word here. Wouldn't "consequently" make more sense?

BJSSP
Question: have we ever figured out who wrote those newsletters for Ron Paul? It's a question on the mind of every freedom loving American.

My guess is, Obama knows, but he's keeping it a secret, so he can embarrass Paul and establish the NAFTA superhighway, paid for by confiscating the gold at gun point out right out of every (white) person's home.
11 Minutes Ago Reply|Like

too many syllables for Chait.

"therefore"?

"butthole"

Al do you understand humor

I don't think you can use "butthole" as a conjunction

*waits for it*

what if you shortened it to "butt"

Segregation was in large part a policy of government, not the free market. Butt took intrusive federal power to destroy segregation.

I don't think you can use "butthole" as a conjunction

That's What Steve Said

"Very, very few Rand Paul fans are glad Abraham Lincoln was shot."

u suuuuure about this jc?

they are unhappy he was shot as late as 1865

dunno about rand but i doubt there are even one in a hundred ron paul fans who don't sputter with fury at the mention of lincoln's name.

More sequester damage.

Also, Chuck Todd wises up.

Meanwhile, in Texas...

"The engagement from advocates on both sides of the issue showed that the legislative and electoral process is working, said state Rep. Greg Bonnen, R-Friendswood, a physician."

fuck this dude

Chuck Todd...otm? it feels so fucking weird to say that. i mean, it's nothing original, but for once he seems to have accidentally pulled his head up out of the sand

But he's still naive re some things:

that copycat bullet: And if Republicans are trying to stop Democratic laws from being implemented or preventing executive-branch appointees from being confirmed, then you can bet that Democrats will return the favor the next time there’s a GOP president

Since when have Democrats ever shown that they will play hardball like Republicans? Yea, Dems opposed Bork and a few other people, but they have never done anything to the extent that Republicans in the current Congress have.

Feel like the debt ceiling hostage crisis we deal with every couple months is due to the dems trying to use it to extract concessions from the gwb administration..

obv a little bit apples and oranges there

they have never done anything to the extent that Republicans in the current Congress have.

that's because Dems have fewer beliefs, or are less able to fake having as many.

nobody has every done anything to the extent that republicans in current congress have, so it's a bad comparison

Which is why Chuck Todd should not have phrased his "copycat" bullet the way he did.

the Dems have so few instances of hardball post-LBJ that it's no wonder the GOP yells BORK BORK BORK and MIGUEL ESTRADA ad nauseum

HARRIET MYERS

lol

dems did not take down harriet miers

Charles Krauthammer still happily takes credit.

2nd commenter on that Chait piece makes the obvious point:

davidinnashville
I'd point out that there's another link between libertarianism and segregationism. You claim that "Segregation was in large part a policy of government, not the free market." But, as Gavin Wright has recently reiterated, much of segregation was a matter of custom, practiced by private businesses who did so not because of an economically costly "taste for discrimination" but because their white customers demanded it. Sitters-in were arrested not because they violated segregation laws but because they were regarded as trespassers. The most important, and controversial, federal intervention in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was its ban on discrimination in public accommodations. This was viewed in the South (and I was growing up white in SC at the time) as an unprecedented assault on the rights of businesspeople to run their own businesses. Assaults on job discrimination likewise attacked customary recruitment practices that led whites to regard access to certain jobs as a "right."

(and I'd go a little farther and say that business owners didn't segregate just to suit their customers, but because THEY WERE RACISTS THEMSELVES.)

The (almost certainly incorrect) libertarian argument would run that racist business owners whose customers prefer they not discriminate on race are given such large economic incentives not to discriminate that this will override the inherent racism of the owner.

Progress! Orrin Hatch!

A Senate panel on Wednesday quickly and easily approved a first-of-its-kind anti-discrimination measure that would provide workplace protection to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Three Republicans on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee voted for the bill, which supporters hope will improve its chances to pass the Senate with the 60 votes it will need.

Four Republican senators — Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Mark S. Kirk of Illinois, who voted for it in committee, along with Susan Collins of Maine, one of the bill’s sponsors — are now on record supporting the bill, which has been debated in one form or another for more than a decade in Congress but has never passed the Senate.

Supporters said they were emboldened by the 15-to-7 vote on Wednesday and took it as yet another sign, after last month’s Supreme Court decision invalidating the Defense of Marriage Act, that gay rights are on an inexorable climb.

but then there's the House.

The (almost certainly incorrect) libertarian argument would run that racist business owners whose customers prefer they not discriminate on race are given such large economic incentives not to discriminate that this will override the inherent racism of the owner.

― Aimless, Wednesday, July 10, 2013 1:31 PM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

isn't this part of marxist thought as well, ironing out the inefficiencies in capitalism

Pareene reviews This Town.

Read a few reviews of the book and some excerpts. It appears the book confirms what we know about inside-the-beltway types and maybe gives one more insider info about them. Thus, I have little interest in reading the book.

like pareene sez i just want to know more precisely whom to hate

— or Mike Allen’s formerly secret John Bircher dad —

lol wut

isn't this part of marxist thought as well

To be clear, this mechanism would work well only if the business owner were racist, against the wealthiest majority element of society and therefore was selecting to serve only an impoverished minority among his potential customers. If such segregation were still legal in the USA, a white racist who wanted to cater only to whites could easily find a genteel way to frame his racism that would allow his white customers to overlook it, because when you get down to it, it's no skin off their noses. Maybe a little sign near the door saying "We practice voluntary segregation."

Nice! http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/mr-takano-grades-little-johnny-boehners.html

http://www.thenation.com/blog/175176/comeys-crickets#axzz2YlFOxBDa

So apparently there's more to our new FBI chief than just his one good deed, but hey it's summer, and who cares what a negative lefty Nation mag columnist thinks

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/07/11/19418669-rand-paul-defends-secessionist-staffer?lite

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren and a bipartisan group of lawmakers have introduced a bill aimed at re-creating the Glass-Steagall Act, the Depression-era measure that separated commercial and investment banking.

“It will take a lot of tools to get rid of too-big-to-fail, but one of them ought to be that if you want to do high-stakes gambling, good on you, but you do not get access to people’s checking accounts and savings accounts,” Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, told Bloomberg Television’s Peter Cook in an interview today.

The bill sponsored by Warren along with Senators John McCain, an Arizona Republican, Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat, and Angus King, a Maine independent, would separate traditional banks that offer checking and savings accounts insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. from “riskier financial institutions.” The latter category includes companies involved in investment banking, insurance, swaps dealing, hedge funds and private equity, according to the lawmakers’ statement released yesterday.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-07-11/warren-joins-mccain-to-push-new-glass-steagall-bill-for-banks

i literally did a dance at my desk