All-Purpose NuILX thread for American Politics

a REPUBLICAN is refusing to lower taxes for people, that's crazy enough
unless we address our oil addiction by exploiting disgusting, last resort veins. fuck.

the weird thing that I don't get is that, paradoxically, if that amendment is approved it will essentially kill the project altogether - all the agencies involved have said they can't approve it in so short a timeframe, which means they will just reject it outright.

Boehner & McConnell must be aware of this, which would seem to indicate this is just a deeply cynical PR maneuver (ie "you can't make it look like we're against tax cuts unless we get to make it look like you are destroying jobs")

I guess I do get it, really

that being the case I guess I wouldn't be surprised if Obama retracts his veto threat and lets the bill go through as soon as he can receive guarantees that the pipeline project will be killed anyway

Boehner & McConnell must be aware of this, which would seem to indicate this is just a deeply cynical PR maneuver

HAI DERE

my mom, who voted for palin (decidedly not for mccain) in 08, just overheard me say i wasn't gonna vote for O in '12. response: GOOD! IT'S ABOUT TIME YOU WOKE UP!

my condolences

the ongoing agony of being multifacted in a binary world

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3645&utm_campaign=CBPPTwitter

Dem Ron Wyden teams up with Paul Ryan for Medicare plan. Why????

Wyden really likes to cut bipartisan deals. It is part of his modus operandi as a senator. Wyden also has built his career on good constituent service for the aged, so I expect that his staff's analysis of the proposal's effects differed from that provided in the linked article.

If you want a single issue to turn you against Obama, I don't know why you would pick the one that affects a small handful of individuals who in all likelihood are "combatants,"

sorry, i got off the Obama boat the second he started to seriously talk about "reforming" Social Security. everything since then has been noise, and i will only vote for Obama again in the increasingly unlikely scenario of Gingrich winning the GOP nomination (in which case it would really be a vote AGAINST Gingrich and yes if Romney or [God forbid} Ron Paul win i'm not voting for Obama again).

sorry, i got off the Obama boat the second he started to seriously talk about "reforming" Social Security.

lol don't even remember this. SS has been basically untouched in his presidency, this seems like weird thing to get het up about.

it was during the debt ceiling fiasco this summer.

and it isn't so weird a thing to get het up about if (like me) you see fighting for SS (and Medicare and Medicaid) to be quintessentially progressive issues.

well I think both programs are worth fighting for but a) neither party wants to fuck with either, and to-date neither has been able to and b) actual legislation/policy that Obama has implemented have been much worse

(in which case it would really be a vote AGAINST Gingrich

i guess the only reason why this seems unusual - voting as voting against, isn't there a lincoln quote about that? - is that it did kinda seem like you could be voting for the right guy last time

Obama is def preferable to McCain come on now

McCain is senile AND bonkers

what would be different?

we would MAYBE be at war with russia tbf

would've bombed Iran by now

Libya would have been an even bigger clusterfuck

don't ask/don't tell still in place

social security/medicare/medicaid totally gutted

7-3 majority of conservative assholes on the supreme court

no stimulus, no ARRA funding = even higher unemployment

probably would've fucked up the handling of the BP oil spill in the gulf somehow

EPA abolished

Bush tax cuts made permanent

Policy driven by intermittent rage.

war in Iraq still going on, probably even heavier presence in Afghanistan

Bin Laden still alive/Al Qaeda still functional

People everywhere prefacing everything they say with, "My friend..."

Sarah Palin in national office

osama bin laden somehow a member of GOP administration

We would never have really gotten to know Herman Cain.

planes do a 180 after take off & before landing, fly upside down in sky, you spend the whole flight only held in your seat by the seatbelt, can't go to bathroom, no peanuts &c

haha, questions not to ask liberals Part 567

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V5SReiHuxbs/THLBcj7hmhI/AAAAAAAADgc/bSUQupA5MeI/s1600/4+fanta.jpg

EPA abolished

eh, don't know about that one. it's very difficult to abolish a federal agency, despite the easy way that politicians bring it up on the campaign trail. even if you're johnny "mc-no-no" McCain. MCCAIN!

The sight of Ricardo reminds me: the performers who would be invited to a McCain white house would be of a different calibur.

dead?

Or as near as can be.

OBAMA BIDEN 2012
for superlative whitehouse in-house entertainment

I can think of better slogans, but not any that are grounded in reality.

Having spent the last few years studying the Supreme Court in my capacity as a non-lawyer, I've realized that the hot air breathed by whole sides -- if X wins he'll change the Court! -- has little to do with history. Even if eight conservatives sat on the court they would start to fracture in weird, unpredictable ways. Look at FDR's court! He appointed more justices than any since Washington, and no one expected Frankfurter, Reed, and Jackson to become the "conservative" bloc.

so there's a senate deal on the payroll tax extension. a key concession is that the review process for the keystone xl tar sands pipeline will be dramatically sped up - 60 days, rather than the 12+ months that was the previous timeline. i'm sympathizing with shakey's comment (this thread? another thread? don't want to look, sorry) that this could be a good thing for opposers of the pipeline. after all, since there's no way the state department's re-review will be complete in 60 days (and i don't even know if that counts the time for the Inspector General of the State Dept. to complete the review of the corruption-riddled initial review), obama could legitimately refuse to grant the permit on the grounds that the information he needs to make the decision isn't yet available. beyond that, though, this might end up being a good thing for enviros because it moves the deadline for decision from 12+months - after an election, when the momentum from the tar sands action movement would have mostly dissipated - to 2 months from now, when the momentum will only build. in fact, just now all the tar sands people were sent a fist-pumping LET'S FUCKING DO THIS alert, and with a more short-term target of 2 months, i think it's likely we'll be able to raise an even greater fuss than a few weeks ago when we surrounded the white house 5 people deep.

anyway, tl;dr but it's going to be fascinating to see how this plays out.

oh yeah, another key concession for the local DC area:

The bill would prohibit the District of Columbia from using federal or local tax money to pay for abortions for low-income women under Medicaid.

federal OR local tax money. WTF

No local taxes, because D.C. is actually administered by Congress, despite having a mayor and local police force, so they can make laws specific to D.C. if they're feeling pissy.

Having spent the last few years studying the Supreme Court in my capacity as a non-lawyer, I've realized that the hot air breathed by whole sides -- if X wins he'll change the Court! -- has little to do with history. Even if eight conservatives sat on the court they would start to fracture in weird, unpredictable ways. Look at FDR's court! He appointed more justices than any since Washington, and no one expected Frankfurter, Reed, and Jackson to become the "conservative" bloc.

you don't think things have fundamentally changed since then tho? in how we nominate people, in how they're vetted, in what kinds of judges can even make it?

He's an historian!