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

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

expect McCain to get pissy about something though.

Yeah but he'll get some tv time at least.

I had read that Reid was discussing with Senate Dems whether to end filbusters for agency position nominations and slots on the NLRB, but the discussion of that has led to this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/07/11/mcconnell-nuclear-option-will-be-reids-legacy/

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) engaged in a heated hour-long exchange over filibuster rules on the Senate floor Thursday, and by the end of the day, McConnell said Reid risked becoming the worst Senate leader in history.

If Reid goes through with the so-called nuclear option, McConnell said, “our friend the majority leader is going to be remembered as the worst leader here ever.”

WORST LEADER HERE EVER

He'll at least be remembered for something besides being a human turtle.

if I were Dick Durbin I'd kick Reid in the balls in front of the caucus and go "YEAH BITCH FILIBUSTER OVER"

caucuspunch

http://www.youtube.com/user/thetexastribune?v=2Q8Hr0O20LY

TX Senate debating HB2

I wish HB2 was called 2HB and instead of stripping abortion rights it was about mandatory playing of Roxy Music before repertory film screenings.

From the comments on that livestream:
So Texas DPS is taking away pads and tampons from woman going into the capitol building, but allowing concealed handguns. GOOD JOB TEXAS

The rumor going around on the right, based on a "DPS source," is that women planned to throw their tampons in protest. The people I expect would make up bullshit about protestors throwing things are pushing it; the people I expect would deny such things whether they were true or not are denying them. Awaiting word from my two nonbullshit sources.

@beetasays
Women are chaining themselves to the chamber. Some kicked out of gallery. Capitol is chaos. Amazing. #txlege

Good to see Texas women showing as much moxie as the suffragettes did.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/07/15/19487749-bachmann-explains-the-way-we-spank-the-president?lite

"Contrary to popular opinion, Republicans won't get patted on the back or get new votes because of passing amnesty. They're going to get blamed. And it's my prediction that the House Republicans could put themselves in a position where they could actually lose the gavel in 2014, because I think the president, even by executive order, can again wave his magic wand before 2014 [1] and he'd say now all of the new, legal Americans are going to have voting rights.'

"Why do I say that? He did it in 2012. Do you remember? Anyone who was here as a Latina under age 30, he said, 'You get to vote.' [2]

Does she just make this crazy stuff up spontaneously or does she have speechwriters who do so?

i'm amazed this has gotten attention, all the writeups of her deciding not to run again read like obits, 'and that's the last we heard of michele bachmann'. can only figure she's jockeying for a media gig.

What if Trayvon Martin was wearing Google Glasses?

well he'd've been white

wrong thread but didn't belong in that thread anyway

hard to know what she wants, she doesn't show any sign of behind-the-curtain canniness, she's full on all the way.

Yes, full all the way. You can see it in her eyes, like a kind of insanity.

being all o_O and smh over bachmann has been a cottage industry around my way for a looong time now and i don't think we've ever seen the bottom of it, or will. just one of those kinds of people. fwiw my impression of her is that she doesn't really have the gritted-teeth meanness of, say, palin. just one of the lord's servants on earth, concerned, happy, energetic forever...

a pat buchannan for the 21st century

a camera whore of no importance who keeps libs from thinking too long about what scum the Democrats are

So while Reid and Senate Dems are debating whether to get rid of the filibuster for nominations to agency positions and the NLRB(the even scummier Republicans won't let Dems get a vote on a nominee that is necessary to have a voting quorum on the board); the Republicans have already responded that if they take over the Senate they will get rid of the filibuster for legislation including Obamacare. I assume they'll try to find a way to get rid of it if they get majority status in the Senate anyway.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_07/may_cooler_heads_not_prevail045838.php

yeah the funny thing about all the OMG over reid possibly using the nuclear option to slightly curtail use of the filibuster is that everyone know's it's effectively dead as soon as the gop takes the senate back next year.