.
Eugene Robinson, in the Washington Post:
… No matter how contemptuous they may be about Obamacare, opponents have only two viable options: Repeal it or get over it.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) the Canadian American who appears to be running for president, has grabbed headlines and air time by being the loudest advocate of an alleged third option: Congress could refuse to fund Obamacare, thereby starving it and effectively killing it. This is a ridiculous fantasy, as Cruz, who has brains beneath all that bombast, surely knows.
Congress needs to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government beyond Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. The idea, if you can call it one, is that Republicans can refuse to pass any funding bill that contains money for implementing Obamacare…Cruz gets to preen before a national audience and demonstrate the fervor of his opposition to Obama and all that he stands for. “If you have an impasse, you know, one side or the other has to blink,” he said recently. “How do we win this fight? Don’t blink.”
The GOP establishment is blinking like crazy. Trying to defund Obamacare has little support among Republicans in the Senate. “I’m for stopping Obamacare, but shutting down the government will not stop Obamacare,” Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) said recently, demonstrating a grasp of reality.
The Republican majority in the House, though, is . . . what’s the word? Unpredictable? Uncontrollable? Unhinged? They pay little attention to wise political advice and less attention to their leader, Speaker John Boehner of Ohio. And while they can’t lay a glove on Obamacare, they’re fully capable of knocking themselves out.
Apart from cheering confusion to our enemies, what’s on the agenda for the end of the work week?
TenguPhule
NotMax
The fringe has traveled well away from clown territory.
sadist (noun)
1. (Psychiatry) a person who has the condition of sadism, in which one receives sexual gratification from causing pain and degradation to another.
2. a person who enjoys being cruel.
c u n d gulag
It’s rather a complicated term, but I often refer to them as Manichean Christo-Fascist Nihilists.
Yeah, I know – it neither has a good beat, nor can you dance to it.
So, instead, I offer – Syphilitically Insane Loons.
I’d use Insane Clown Posse, but it’s already been taken.
The Republican Party – ‘Hoist by their own Teatards!’
Tommy
My grandparents were world travelers. A HUMP pilot during WWII. China and India. Know where he liked to travel years later, China and India. He liked the place. Wanted to go back. Did again and again. If they would have given him dual citizenship I am sure he would have taken it. A proud, proud American. But nothing wrong with having a little love for another nation.
PurpleGirl
Paying bills this morning and doing paperwork. This afternoon, maybe a museum but I don’t know which one.
NotMax
@c u n d gulag
If one may, playing off the Auguste clown nomenclature, might consider the term Disguste clowns.
Linda Featheringill
@Tommy:
I don’t think that anyone here cares about Cruz’s dual citizenship except when supporters try to say that there’s one rule for Cruz and another one for Obama.
I suppose that if one really thought that Obama was born in some alien place, Cruz’s claim that he is just as qualified to be president as Obama might make sense. People who think Obama was born in Hawaii find Cruz’s releasing of his birth certificate, etc., very confusing.
Linda Featheringill
This morning when elderly cat hopped up onto my desk to say good morning, I found that she was very ungroomed. I gave her a good combing and a treat but I find the lapse in grooming disturbing.
She’s about 19-1/2 years old and generally in good health. I guess I thought she’d last forever.
Betty Cracker
@Linda Featheringill: Aww, I hope she rallies. 19-1/2. Wow.
PurpleGirl
@Linda Featheringill: Hoping that your cat is okay.
Re: Cruz’s citizenships — Since his father is Cuban, I believe he also has Cuban citizenship. Maybe that should also be renounced, or maybe he doesn’t want to call too much attention to it.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Betty, perhaps one of your slightly embellished front page ‘tales’ about mooning Bebe Rebozo’s yacht or some such might be in the works in reaction to some of the vile stuff from the latest release of the Nixon tapes?
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
A couple of photos from Nathan Fillion’s twitter feed.
NotMax
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Flash from the past: Fillion from back when he was delivering singing telegrams.
kindness
Getting through Friday’s workday, then a weekend of sanding & staining a rack I’m making for the living room electronic toys.
Gotta love the Serious Elders who do have a clue. Guess I might start paying attention to pre-season NFL as it is the 3rd week.
@c u n d gulag:
You could use Insane Clown Posse but that is taken and in all honesty they have more integrity than Republicans.
sm*t cl*de
She’s about 19-1/2 years old and generally in good health.
My previous Siamese got to 21. Sadly, I never got around to enrolling him to vote.
Randy P
This is the first time Friday has been part of my work week in awhile. I’m one of those lazy overpaid incompetent gubmint employees the Republicans like to kick around. Oh also we’re in ratings season but we’re told no matter what you get, there will be no raises or bonuses this year.
I’m fully expecting a week of unexpected vacation Oct 1. That train wreck is inevitable. These Klowns literally are unable to envision consequences, even immediate ones. Go ahead, point the gun barrel at your foot. Pull the trigger. Be surprised if it hurts.
It has been said many times and it’s still true. Obama has been blessed in his enemies. As have we all.
WereBear
Wow. So a Republican “demonstrating a grasp of reality” is news.
I knew it would come to this.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Randy P: The latest is not Oct. 1st, but refusing to raise the debt ceiling.
ETA: Sorta like condeming pot smoking and then asking for an injection of meth instead.
Schlemizel
Anybody heard any more about the St. Paul meet-up tomorrow?
I’ve been really dispirited & not spending much time here so I might have missed the final details.
brantl
I believe the first part before the first comma, I don’t believe the other two parts. Not at all.
the Conster
Today’s my birthday and the end of the third week of my new job, and my first full paycheck. Dinner with my daughter and her husband tonight, and then that will be that.
Ben Cisco
Fucked in the head!
BruceFromOhio
Vertically fornicated? Batshit crazy? Suicidally demented? And there’s still plenty of English left in the dictionary.
@the Conster: Happy Birthday, Conster! Nicely done!
TriassicSands
@NotMax:
The Republican politicians are the sadists, while many of their constituents are masochists (a match made in Hell!), since they vote against their own interests repeatedly and never seem to get tired of hurting themselves. As the mainstream of the Republican Party moves further and further out into lunatic land, poor white southerners assume a permanent position holding their ankles and begging for more and worse.
The GOP may not be able to repeal or defund Obamacare, but they certainly can make life miserable for millions of people while they continue to wage their insane war on Obama. It really is frightening that millions of Americans are so far gone that they not only support the GOP’s day-to-day insanity, but through primaries continue to push the party deeper and deeper into Wonderland. Every sane person knows that shutting down the government is a terrible idea and refusing to increase the debt ceiling is even worse, yet here we are and no sane person would bet money they couldn’t afford to lose on the Republicans in the House not doing one or even both. We’re in a state of constant siege with the GOP always looking for their next hostage, hoping that eventually they’ll find the one that destroys the Obama presidency.
Republicans are no longer a loyal opposition party with legitimate, though different ideas about how to govern. They’re the political equivalent of a rogue elephant trampling everything within reach. The more harm they do, the more they think they’re succeeding. These are, quite simply, really lousy human beings.
NotMax
@Triassic Sands
Put in mind of the ancient limerick.
The once was a sadist named Lume
Who took a masochist up to his room
They argued all night
(Had a terrible fight)
About who should do what and to whom
raven
Less than a week until football!
raven
Hey, Cole called me John Snow last night. Who dat?
Comrade Dread
Speaking of unhinged Republicans, Sen. Coburn became the latest loon to talk about impeachment.
MattF
I’m starting to think that Cruz is taking his cues from the life and works of Tricky Dick Nixon. It should be recalled that Republican party leaders didn’t have much use for Nixon in the ’50’s. Eisenhower was once asked to give an example of his Vice President’s contribution, and Ol’ Ike said, essentially, ‘Give me a week or two and I’ll think of something’. But Nixon paid attention to the Republican base, and the base rewarded him for that. Cruz and Nixon are/were both smart and ambitious, and they are/were interested in power, not approval from their elders.
SiubhanDuinne
@the Conster: Congratulations on the birthday and the paycheck!
Suffern ACE
@Comrade Dread: honestly, at this point tge Republicans might as well try to make 2014 about whether to continue the Obama presidency and hope what’s left of the independents go along with them.
PurpleGirl
@the Conster: Happy Birthday and congratulations on the job.
raven
Oh noze, Obama just said “past history”! Is there no hope.
brantl
@kindness: Don’t sand, use a cabinet scraper if you can.
Highway Rob
Mrs. Highway and I have tix to this. Show starts at 5 p.m. Outdoors, at the Austin Formula 1 track. Weather Channel says it’ll be 97 degrees.
‘Cause nothing says “funny” like heat stroke.
Suffern ACE
Hmmm. I got nothing.
NotMax
Would that I had the spare cabbage to arrange to have hand-stitched samplers delivered to each GOP Congressperson’s office reading “Simon Legree is not a role model.”
Elizabelle
CNN is bringing back “Crossfire”, with Newt Gingrich as host. He or S.E. (“Sippy”) Cupp will debate Van Jones or Stephanie Cutler on a single topic for 30 mins each weekday. The two hosts will have two guests/bait.
Only plus: it’s a half hour less of “The Situation Room.”
I am sure we can find something else to do at 6:30 Eastern.
Elizabelle
@the Conster:
Lots to celebrate at dinner. Congrats, HB, have a good one.
NotMax
@Elizabelle
Demosntrating yet again that history repeats itself; the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.
Kirbster
The sequester was supposed to be the the doomsday scenario that nobody wanted, yet the Teahouse of Terror embraced it with gusto, so shutting the federal government down over Obamacare doesn’t even sound far-fetched anymore.
Today I get to call my current health care insurer and tell them to stuff it because I’ve found a better plan that costs me $160 less per month.
libarbarian
If this is so true, then why the fuck are Democrats trying to stop them? Why not let your enemy shoot itself in the foot? Why the fuck do we actually try to talk our mortal enemies out of harming themselves? Is it because we are so fucking stupid?
J
@c u n d gulag: It’s tough to come up with a short description that even begins to capture the Republican party of today.
I offer ‘Cretino-Fascist’
MomSense
@the Conster:
Happy birthday!
Since this is an open thread and I am sick of the Republicans, thought I would post something nice. Any of the soccer/football fans see this thank you video from the Barclays Premier League? Really well done.
http://worldsoccertalk.com/2013/08/17/to-the-millions-of-fans-that-make-the-premier-league-what-it-is-we-say-thank-you-video/
Baud
I think we’ve reached the point that we are just insulting clown cars.
MikeJ
@MomSense: Not nearly enough cursing or beer, but otherwise nice.
rikyrah
Suggestions for Videos
Rachel Maddow was in Elizabeth City, NC last night and did her entire show pretty much on the GOP Voter Suppression down there and why Elizabeth City is Ground Zero for the GOP Voter Suppression Efforts:
This video shows how the local Election Board closed the polling place on the college campus, made a precinct of 9000 people, and moved all of them to a facility with 35 parking spots. Maddow showed the dangerous road that the students would have to walk to in order to vote.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26315908/vp/52824304#52824304
This one is a background piece of how North Carolina’s voter participation has changed.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26315908/vp/52823877#52823877
The background of the student case at the center of the GOP Voter Suppression.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26315908/vp/52823882#52823882
Explaining why the college town has been targeted.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26315908/vp/52823962#52823962
How the DOJ is on the Voter Suppression…….and an interview with Congressman Butterfield, who used to be on the NC Supreme Court.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26315908/vp/52824015#52824015
Anya
@Comrade Dread: Someone should ask Chris Matthews what he thinks about that. He has a man crush on Coburn.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Traffic cop interviewed because of his record number of complaints.
It’s not what you think. :D
boatboy_srq
FIFY, Mr. Robinson. The one doesn’t always accompany the other.
@WereBear: One wonders whether McConnell is finally realising that the Teahad, Fascism and the “angry mob” have more in common than anticipated. There’s only so far to the right you can run before Democracy gets left behind with all the Soshulism.
rikyrah
Where is the white liberal outrage on stop-and-frisk?
Opinion
by James Braxton Peterson | August 21, 2013 at 5:05 PM
Growing up as a teenager in Newark, N.J., the summers were often correlated with the dread of enhanced police presence in the city brought on by the infiltration of New Jersey State Troopers.
This practice of state police support in Newark continues to this day. Much like the entire nation, the citizens of Newark accept the appearance of enhanced security without much discussion about privacy and/or civil liberties especially significant given the state’s long history of racial profiling and the plethora of police stops casually justified as “driving while black.”
What we refer to now as “stop and frisk” has been tactical practice for urban police departments for nearly all of my life. That it has been formalized and institutionalized in the 21st century only serves to strengthen law enforcement’s reliance on it and faulty justifications for it.
Maybe if you’ve never been profiled; if you’ve never been stopped for no apparent reason, questioned about your destination, tousled and frisked, searched and put up against a wall or a car; maybe if you’re not painfully aware of how many of these kinds of encounters (between police and innocent citizens) have ended in the deaths of too many innocent victims to tally here; maybe if you have no connection to the utter humiliation of being publicly detained by police for no reason, then it might be difficult to comprehend the underpinnings of privilege in the recent discourses on the NSA, Manning, Snowden, and the unchecked access to our digital lives.
The left’s outrage directed at the Obama administration in the wake of Edward Snowden’s leaking of classified information has been palpable and well documented in both print and television media
………….
Yet how can we have a discussion about civil liberties and security, privacy and safety without connecting it to the physical surveillance to which black and brown Americans have been historically subject? In short, why aren’t the champions of Snowden, Manning, and others saying anything at all about stop-and-frisk and Stand Your Ground laws/policies. They have been and remain silent on the historical and perpetual encroachment upon the civil liberties – the freedom to walk the streets without being detained or shot – of black and brown citizens of the United States.
http://thegrio.com/2013/08/21/where-is-the-white-liberal-outrage-on-stop-and-frisk/
PaulW
@the Conster:
GRATZ
rikyrah
Syria and Snowden’s Shared Protectorate: A Question of Conscience
Thursday, August 22, 2013 | Posted by Spandan C at 5:41 PM
What’s the “civil libertarian” response when one of the movement’s contemporary ‘heroes’ evades the reach of American law shares his protectorate with governments that use chemical weapons on their own people? Evidently, silence. With the Syrian government blocking UN investigators from finding the truth about their apparent chemical weapon use with assistance from Russia, the deafening silence from the self-appointed defenders of civil liberties like Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras should tell you all you need to know about their real intentions and priorities.
Why the silence? I suppose you don’t want to start something up with the power that is now protecting the holder of the classified information that you hope will catapult you to fame and fortune. After all, you wouldn’t want to force Russia to decide between protecting Edward Snowden and protecting the Syrian regime, would you?
And where is the great hero Edward Snowden in all of this? Is the courageous defender of liberties too much of a coward to speak out against his and Syria’s common protectorate? Just what form of civil libertarian conscience allows one to stay silent in the face of mass murder protected by the government of the country they take refuge in just so that they don’t have to face a legal trial at home? Under what definition of civil liberty does avoidance of a criminal trial under full and complete due process of law outweigh wholesale slaughter of thousands by their government?
For all the moral force claimed by the Greenwald and Snowden Left, where is the call for them to stand up and denounce Russia’s open backing of Syria? For that matter, where is the call for Ed Snowden to leave Russia’s protection in protest?
You won’t see any of it – not from Greenwald and not from Snowden. You won’t see any of it because if they truly cared about civil liberties and government tyranny, Snowden would be on a plane out of Russia tonight, even if that means he has to stand trial here at home. If they cared even the slightest bit about civil liberties and state sponsored tyranny, Glenn Greenwald’s Guardian page would be lighting up in condemnation against Russia.
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2013/08/syria-and-snowdens-shared-protectorate.html
Betty Cracker
@raven: Isn’t that a character on Game of Thrones? I’ve never seen the program, but I believe I’ve heard that name connected with it.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
Thank you for the link!
rikyrah
Rick Perry’s Dilemma and The Real Reason Why Republicans Want to Defund Obamacare
Thursday, August 22, 2013 | Posted by Spandan C at 2:16 PM
Irony, thy name is Republican. The President of the Sovereign Republic of Texas, I mean Texas governor Rick Perry – who has beat his chest and stomped his feet against Obamacare to no end – is now putting his tail between his legs and his hat in hand begging the Obama administration for $100 million of that Obamcare pie – to improve and expand Medicaid services for the elderly and the disabled in the state. As Politico reported yesterday,
…………………………..
This is the danger the Republican party has created in describing Affordable Care Act in its entirety as the devil’s spawn. They have succeeded somewhat, preventing the overall idea from becoming popular (although that is about to change in 2014), but by the same token they have convinced their own idiot base that touching Obamacare in any form at all is anathema for their party. Their leaders are not allowed to accept 100% federal funding for Medicaid expansion (hence Jan Brewer is now persona non grata), to form marketplaces (exchanges) – handing it over to the federal government instead, or even to seek any funding under any program that is touched by Obamacare.
………………..
Rick Perry’s struggle with this issue highlights the broader Republican dilemma with Obamacare and the reason some are desperate to defund it at the eleventh hour: the Republicans in positions of power know that the Affordable Care Act will work. They know that when it comes into full effect next year, it will show the differences in uncompensated medical costs for hospitals in states that accept the Medicaid expansion vs. the ones that refuse it. They know that people will be galvanized over this issue, and this time, they will be aided by the hospital industry that does not want to have to provide uncompensated care. They know that their ideological interests (the Tea Party) will be aligned against their financial interests (the health care industry).
They know that if they continue to wholesale reject health reform while it begins to work – and work better in states that fully accept and implement it – on a large scale, they will be scorned by people who are being denied benefits they could otherwise get, forced to fund uncompensated care from state coffers, and be abandoned by their financial benefactors in the health care industry who are looking for a piece of the pie of Obamacare’s funding. If they drop their opposition, they will be seen as weak, unprincipled and compromised by their own base. Either way, it would threaten their ability to stay in power.
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2013/08/rick-perrys-dilemma-and-real-reason-why.html
rikyrah
Scott Walker’s Sand Grab: Wisconsin Wants a Piece of the Fracking Boom, No Matter Who Gets Hurt
BY MOLLY REDDEN
On the night that he was elected governor of Wisconsin in 2010, a beaming Scott Walker told the hundreds of supporters sandwiched into Waukesha’s little Country Springs Hotel ballroom that his state was “open for business.” It was shorthand for his promise to slash taxes and lay waste to state regulations, all to create a quarter of a million new jobs by the end of his fourth year in office. But halfway through Walker’s term, Wisconsin had added only a quarter of the promised jobs, it ranked 44th in private-sector job creation, and private-sector wages were falling at twice the average rate nationally. A non-partisan audit of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., a job-creation agency Walker started, found it repeatedly broke state laws in its first year. Still, among the detritus of the Republican governor’s job creation efforts, one sector of Wisconsin’s economy has been roaring: the sand-mining industry.
The hydraulic fracturing boom that has transformed the plains of North Dakota into an industrial mecca observable from space is fueled by tiny grains of silica sand from southwestern Wisconsin’s hillsides. In fracking, “frac sand” is used to prop open fissures in the earth, creating an escape route for natural gas. A single well can require 2,000 tons of sand over its lifetime. As fracking sites have proliferated across the nation, silica sand mines and processing facilities have too, with Wisconsin far and away the leading provider of frac sand. Just five years ago, there were fewer than 10 sites in the state; today, the state has greenlit a little more than 100, most of which are operational. Rich Budinger, the president of the Wisconsin Industrial Sand Association, estimates that the industry has brought 2,000 jobs to the state so far.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114320/frac-sand-mining-wisconsin-rides-fracking-boom
rikyrah
Key House Republican asks Holder to back off in Texas
By Steve Benen
Fri Aug 23, 2013 8:44 AM EDT.
As we discussed yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder is challenging new voting restrictions imposed by Texas Republicans, hoping to use the remaining provisions of the Voting Rights Act to protect Texans’ access to the ballot box. GOP officials, not surprisingly, weren’t pleased with the move, but there was one reaction in particular that I found interesting.
It’s worth noting for context that Sensenbrenner may be a conservative Republican, but he’s also earned a reputation as a long-time supporter of the Voting Rights Act. Indeed, among GOP lawmakers, it’s probably fair to say the Wisconsin Republican is the VRA’s most reliable ally. When Sensenbrenner says he’s working on a legislative fix in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling, I’m inclined to believe him.
That said, for Holder to back off now would be crazy.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/08/23/20152483-key-house-republican-asks-holder-to-back-off-in-texas?lite
rikyrah
will the Moderators approve my Maddow links post?
imonlylurking
Twin Cities meetup tomorrow. Imma try to spam every open thread today with it. I even set up a Facebook event for it. Because I really am that lame.
Is this going to work?
rikyrah
GOP ‘getting perilously close’ to impeachment madness
By Steve Benen
Fri Aug 23, 2013 8:00 AM EDT.
When fringe figures like Rep. Kerry Bentivolio (R-Mich.) talk about impeaching President Obama without cause, it’s a mild curiosity. When U.S. senators push the same idea, it’s more alarming.
Coburn apparently has given this a fair amount of thought, telling constituents, “What you have to do is you have to establish the criteria that would qualify for proceedings against the president, and that’s called impeachment. That’s not something you take lightly, and you have to use a historical precedent of what that means.” He added that he believes “there’s some intended violation of the law in this administration.”
……………….
And what, pray tell, has the president done that Coburn perceives as possible “high crimes”? In keeping with the recent trend, the Oklahoma Republican never got around to explaining what the grounds for impeachment would be. Coburn mentioned that he’d heard a rumor about the Department of Homeland Security choosing to “ignore” background checks for immigrants, but he did not elaborate.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/08/23/20152064-gop-getting-perilously-close-to-impeachment-madness?lite
imonlylurking
@Schlemizel: Saturday, Shamrocks, 5pm. I’ll be calling them later this afternoon to see if reservations are accepted or encouraged for larger groups. I can promise helium balloons but they may not be green.
Patricia Kayden
Actually, what the Repubs are doing makes sense to their supporters. They hate the Kenyan Socialist who stole the last 2 elections so much that they want Congressmen/women who will stop him from getting ANYTHING done. If that means shutting down the government or breaching the debt ceiling, that’s okay with them.
Dems need to rally in 2014 and vote as many Repubs as possible out of the House. Otherwise, Obama is a lame duck for the rest of his presidency.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
I don’t get the whole argument about the Obama administration being lawless or violating the Constitution (talking about the tea partiers in this comment) and it really makes me wonder what they think is in the Constitution.
raven
@Betty Cracker: Maybe so!
rikyrah
National Politics|By Amy Walter, August 21, 2013
There’ll Be A Democratic Primary. With Or Without Hillary
When people find out what I do for a living, the first question they inevitably ask is “Is Hillary running?” When I answer that I think she will, the follow up is almost always: “Will anyone run against her?” My answer is, of course. Why wouldn’t they?
My view is not necessarily conventional wisdom in DC. Talk among the chattering class here is that she’ll have a glide path to the nomination. It’s hers for the taking. She’ll have the money. She’ll have the political infrastructure. And, more important, she will have gobs of goodwill among a Democratic base eager to put the first woman in the White House.
All true. But, it was also true in 2008. More important, being a frontrunner – especially this far out from 2016 – is a very dangerous and precarious spot to be. Long before the first bumper stickers are printed or the first volunteers start their door-knocking, Hillary Clinton has already been dragged into a veritable A-B-C of controversies: Anthony Weiner, Benghazi, and the Clinton Foundation. News organizations have already designated “Hillary” beats for enterprising reporters to rack up scoops (and dig for scandal) for the next three years. GOP organizations from the RNC to the opposition research group American Rising have already been filling my inbox with negative and/or unflattering stories about the former Secretary of State.
This scrutiny was going to come no matter what – but it’s just coming a lot earlier than expected. A stagnant second term for Obama plus Capitol Hill gridlock equals a bored and restless press corps. And everyone knows a bored press is a dangerous press. Moreover, these aggressive political reporters are under more pressure than ever to serve new and juicy political morsels to their anxious editors every day. Plus, as my friends at NBC’s First Read have pointed out, Hillary herself is just as responsible for the frenzied coverage. Her speech to the American Bar Association criticizing changes to the Voting Rights Act was an overtly political move. And, there will be more speeches like this in the near future.
This isn’t to suggest that Hillary Clinton is going to be intimidated out of the race. However, it should serve as a reminder to any and all potential Democratic White House wannabes that there’s no telling what will happen to a frontrunner over the course of three long years.
This is why there is no real downside for Vice President Joe Biden or Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley to run in 2016, regardless of whether or not Hillary Clinton is in the race.
http://cookpolitical.com/story/6115
rikyrah
August 22, 2013, 11:26 am 109 Comments
Karl Rove Shouldn’t Pretend He Understands Health Policy
by Paul Krugman
……………………..
It’s always helpful here to keep your eye on the problem of Americans with preexisting conditions. That’s the best starting point for understanding why Obamacare has to look the way it does; it’s also often the best way to see what’s wrong with alleged Republican solutions.
So, ask the following question: how is it that many Americans with preexisting conditions have health insurance now? The immediate answer is, they get it from their employers. But why do employers do that? Well, employment-based health insurance is tax-advantaged: it’s a benefit employers can provide that isn’t counted as taxable income, which makes it better, in some cases, than offering higher wages instead.
But for company health plans to receive this tax-advantaged status, they have to obey ERISA rules, which essentially require that the same benefits be made available to all full-time employees — no discrimination based on health history, and you can’t provide benefits only to your highest-paid workers. So employer-based insurance is, when you come down to it, a lot like Obamacare, with enforced non-discrimination and a fair bit of subsidization of less-well-paid workers.
Now comes Rove, and his big idea is to make the tax break on health coverage available to everyone, not just beneficiaries of employer plans. Great! Now employers can say “Here, we’ll eliminate your coverage, but we’ll pay you more, and you can use the money to buy tax-deductible insurance on your own!” Except that employees with preexisting conditions won’t find insurers willing to offer them affordable coverage — oh, and lower-paid workers won’t be able to afford coverage even if they’re healthy.
So Rove’s “solution” would actually have a devastating effect on millions of Americans who currently have decent coverage.
It goes on from there — the interstate competition zombie shambles on — but you get the point. Rove has nothing but the usual catchphrases, and obviously hasn’t thought for a moment about the actual issues.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/22/karl-rove-shouldnt-pretend-he-understands-health-policy/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto&_r=0
Ben Cisco
@rikyrah:
“I have no idea WTF I’m talking about, but the rubes hate that n*gger, so I’m running with it.”
raven
This is swell
(CNN) — An 88-year-old World War II veteran was brutally beaten and left for dead by two teens outside a lounge in Spokane, Washington, where he loved to go play pool.
rikyrah
The Morning Plum: John Boehner searches for a way out
By Greg Sargent, Published: August 23 at 9:01 am
John Boehner to conservatives: Guys, c’mon, check it out, we’ve already won! Can’t we just declare victory and throw a party?
With pressure mounting for a defund-Obamacare stand, John Boehner held a conference call with Republicans late yesterday in which he provided the clearest glimpse yet of how he’ll try to get out of this mess. He said the plan is to pass a Continuing Resolution this fall funding the government temporarily at current sequester levels — effectively acknowledging the threat of a shutdown is off the table.
Conservatives are greeting this as full scale surrender, which is why Boehner sought to package the extension — at sequester rates — as already representing a victory for austerity. As Lori Montgomery relates, GOP aides say they may use the debt limit for a stand against Obamacare later, but even that’s not clear, with one claiming: “This is all in the discussion phase right now.” The key nugget:
This is exactly what GOP-aligned commentators who recognize that a shutdown is nuts have urged: declare the sequester cuts as a victory — which in some ways they are — and don’t ruin things with insane Obamacare brinksmanship. But conservatives won’t accept this, because the sequester has been their only real victory in the epic struggle over the size and scope of government that has defined the Obama era, which won’t be settled until Obamacare lies in smoking ruins.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/08/23/the-morning-plum-john-boehner-searches-for-a-way-out/
Doug Milhous J
Testing
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@raven: Another random attack. RIP, Shorty.
Xantar
@libarbarian:
Because a government shutdown harms real people, and we shouldn’t be in favor if that just because it gives us a political advantage.
Shakezula
The 50th anniversary of the March on Washington promises to be exciting and cause massive wing nut head explosions.
NotMax
@raven
Another chapter of Leopold & Loeb MMXIII
Botsplainer
I’ve seen some interesting stuff out there lately – from Levin caterwauling about how the party with control of a little over half of a third of the government can’t get its way to FReepers commenting about how conservatives “control all the land, if you look at the electoral map”. You’ve got vote suppression galore in purple states like North Carolina and Florida, and outright disenfranchisement in Texas.
And now in Louisville, the morning 3 hour AM radio hategasm that I thought ended with the move of that hag Mandy Connell to Denver has been supplanted by an even more hateful effort from some fat-voiced old fill-in dude from New Orleans.
They’re fascists, plain and simple. their demographic looks fascist, their aggregate percentage of the voting populace looks fascist, and they’re trying to drive the economy into the ground in order to groundswell their policies into place.
On the plus side, the country is too ethnically and culturally diverse for there to be any extermination campaigns, but that doesn’t negate there being great pain in overcoming this time period. Given what I’m seeing and hearing, it all comes down to the death throes of a worldview that was suckled at the breast of propaganda machine.
rdldot
@Kirbster: Cool. Who did you go with?
burnspbesq
Ahh, the joys of parenthood.
Was supposed to be getting on the road right about now, taking the kid back to Seattle for the start of sophomore year (aside: wait a sec, the kid is a sophomore in college-that makes me pretty damn old, I guess).
But noooooooooo.
On his last day of his summer job, the kid leaves a pair of shoes at work. At a mall that opens at 10:00.
boatboy_srq
@MomSense: @Suffern ACE: By Coburn’s logic, Shrub should have been impeached for far greater misdeeds sometime in ’03. But incompetence and overreach by the GOTea is feature-not-bug.
Amir Khalid
Isn’t “control of a clown car” a contradiction in terms?
jeffreyw
Thread needz moar puppeh!
burnspbesq
@Botsplainer:
FTFY. None of it is going to work, unless the states decide to test the limits of a U.S. District Judge’s ability to throw people in jail for contempt.
Amir Khalid
@jeffreyw:
PUPPEH!!
imonlylurking
@jeffreyw: CUTE!
burnspbesq
@Amir Khalid:
No more so than “Gareth Bale, loyal teammate.”
It’s official. I never thought I would ever hate another team more than I hate the Yankees, but I hate Real Madrid more than that.
Punchy
As usual, DougJ concern trolling for John Tester.
CONGRATULATIONS!
His name’s not “Ted”. It’s Rafael. Please proceed accordingly.
joes527
@rikyrah:
THIS.
The “Hillary is inevitable (the sequel)” meme that so many folks seem to be getting on board with is more like performance art than analysis.
Also, I think that the “gobs of goodwill” is a bit of an overstatement.
scav
@Amir Khalid:
nnnnnn. I dunno. I’m not sure the best caliber pratfalls just spontaneously erupt. So many of the home videos smell of the lamp. And we’re at Buster Keaton / Keystone Kops level here, not Greatest Home Administrators.
kindness
@brantl: Cabinet scraper won’t work. I’m building up from raw board. Glued several white oak boards together to make 24″ wide shelves. Used a biscuit joiner but there were still edges that needed sanding down. I love the grain of oak but when I’m sanding the shit I always wonder why I’m not using knotty pine instead. Se la vie.
raven – Game of Thrones it is. John Snow is the illegitimate son of Ned Snow and since most the rest of the family is now dead he has become something of an important cast member. Great show if you like medieval fantasy adventure/dramas. My only complaint is the speed at which the author kills off the characters you like.
El Caganer
@rikyrah: That’s insane. Like, really, really insane.
hoodie
@joes527: That smells like someone looking for controversy that doesn’t exist. Biden is the only serious challenger because of his position, but I can’t imagine that Joe will want to have a knock down, drag nomination battle with Hillary. He’s probably just keeping the option open if she decides not to run because he will have a big advantage over O’Malley and the others. She probably has lot more goodwill than in 2008 and she will crush in the female vote against all of the contenders I’ve seen. A lot of Obama supporters look on her more favorably now because of her loyal service as SoS, which undid a lot of the damage from 2008.
bemused
@rikyrah:
Does the tea party base screaming for defunding ACA not think there would be a gov’t shutdown and if there is, it wouldn’t affect them at all…just “those” other people? Would they gladly bear whatever the consequences are to themselves personally in the name of their “principles”? I think it’s safe to predict they would whine like babies and promptly blame Obama.
Villago Delenda Est
Nixon Library no longer referring to Watergate as a “coup”.
All because the National Archives, not a mob of Nixon apologists, are in charge now.
From the article:
A shrine to a crook. Yeah, that’s the ticket!
Villago Delenda Est
@bemused:
“Keep the government’s hands off my Medicare!”
All you need to know about these cretins.
MomSense
@MikeJ:
HA! Yeah I guess Barclays didn’t want to highlight the hooligans. There are so many great little moments in this, though. I love the kid who is old enough now that he doesn’t want to hold his Dad’s hand, and the kids on the Manchester City bus singing, and of course the Everton fan who still has a sparkle in his eye for his team. I’m a sucker for this stuff!
TAPX486
@boatboy_srq: There are four grounds for impeachments:
1. he was elected in 2008
2. he was reelected in 2012
3. he is black
4. he doesn’t have a white dog.
Case closed.
BruceFromOhio
@joes527: Also, I think that the “gobs of goodwill” is a bit of an overstatement.
Or is it ‘goodwill’ cloaking relief that at least one presidential candidate isn’t vertically fornicated and batshit insane? Personally, ’08 was a hoot – I was going to get to vote for the first AA prez or the first female prez, and I did not care which it was. This is icing, and the ‘glidepath’ let’s the Donkey Kingdom focus on illuminating the suicidal tendencies of the opposition, in contrast to battling each other.
Popcorn futures are up.
ETA @hoodie: A lot of Obama supporters look on her more favorably now because of her loyal service as SoS, which undid a lot of the damage from 2008.
This, also, too.
hoodie
@rikyrah: They don’t view the sequester as a victory, which is why Boehner is having a hard time selling it as such. To buy Boehner’s argument, you have to assume that teanuts really want smaller government. They don’t. They want to fuck people not like themselves.
bemused
@Villago Delenda Est:
Principles before brains.
Matt McIrvin
@Xantar: Not only that, we don’t get the political advantage from the bad thing happening unless we’re visibly against the bad thing happening.
GregB
@Comrade Dread:
I’m noticing that a lot of trolls and also the ubiquitous boiler room propaganda e-mails are really pimping impeachment lately.
Seems like a concerted effort.
Also a concerted effort to promote and highlight any crime with black suspects too and compare that crime to the Trayvon/Zimmerman nightmare.
Fox News even replaced the white kid accused in that shooting of the Australian with a black kid in the line-up photos.
Villago Delenda Est
@MomSense:
Well, there’s the clause that states that no black man can ever serve as President, and there’s the clause that states that no member of any party but the Republican party can serve as President.
Oh, you mean the ACTUAL Constitution? Well, the teatards have never read that. They won’t because it’s sacred text delivered by Jeebus himself from Mt. Sinai to the Founding Fathers, and to look at it will make you go blind.
gbear
@imonlylurking: I sent a message to your email address. I can be there a little after 5:00. Shamrocks is a good choice. Best burgers in town and no parking meters in that neighborhood.
If anyone is coming over from Minneapolis, avoid taking 94 to Snelling or Lexington. State fair traffic and the bridge closure at Hamline will have those roads snarled up. Best to come in from the south (either via Fort Snelling or the Ford Bridge) instead.
Shamrocks is near the corner of Randolph Ave. and West 7th St.near the old Schmidt Brewery.
Matt McIrvin
@Botsplainer:
Except for the slow kind that works one teenager at a time.
MomSense
@Villago Delenda Est:
They apparently know nothing about the founding fathers, also too.
JoyfulA
@rikyrah: This is defining the left as straight white men who don’t have to worry about stop and frisk or the other terrors women and gays face. Or maybe young straight white men—they don’t seem concerned about Medicare vouchers, privatizing Social Security, or Voter ID, either. Or childless young straight white men who are blind to attacks on public schools. I could go on.
Those who are said to speak for us on the left need to remember that many horrors exist that can all be opposed and emphasized.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@the Conster: Good news all around. Happy Birthday.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Terrific. Thanks!
Villago Delenda Est
@MomSense:
Actual footage of Captain James Kirk schooling teatards on the Constitution.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
If the GOP leadership weren’t such a pack of gutless idiots they would pass a bill that renames “Obama Care” to “Health Care Reform” and magically solve the problem for their crazed base. Repealing HCR won’t work for GOP because as always with conservatives and libertarians they love their own socialism.
And a DHS employee is runing a Black Supremest Website
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/dhs-investigating-employee-running-racist-website-20041132
Ought to be fun seeing the conservatards have a ragegasm over it.
catclub
@rikyrah: I think Yglesias made an important point: ” The people who hate government, hate efficient government and love government corruption.”
The ACA is BIG expansion in efficient government. The only use the GOP has for government is for extracting spoils through corruption, and the worst possible thing is efficient government, because the citizens will like it and ask for more of it. Plus no spoils via corruption.
catclub
@bemused: The evidence so far (The FAA cuts to air traffic controllers voided due to outrage of rich white people.) is that they will not be inconvenienced by the sequester. Until some part of government that benefits rich white people gets cut and stays cut, the evidence is on their side.
boatboy_srq
@TAPX486: Agreed. As I put it, TABMITWH.
LABiker
I am sick of hearing that Ted Cruz is some kind of brilliant genius. Just because he spews gibberish in intelligible English doesn’t make the gibberish any less nonsensical. The guy’s a tea bagging idiot.
Jay C
@joes527: @hoodie: @BruceFromOhio:
Not to mention the fact that the Republicans pretty much shot their wad with the anti-Clinton hysteria back in 1999: I really wonder if cobbling up new “scandals” out of thin air – despite the predictable GOP frothing – is really going to have much impact on Hillary’s chances (should she want to run) in 2016. Nothing, I think, is going to persuade the Tea types to ever vote for her (or ANY Democrat) – but OTOH, there really isn’t much (so far, IMO) to get people NOT to vote for her.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@GregB:
No matter how many people try and point out that, horrible and terrible as that shooting is, it’s NOT the ‘White Trayvon Martin’, all I see from buttback is constant, repeated use of the actual “Trayvon Martin’ as a synonym for thug, and how both he and the awful kids that killed a man because they were bored are somehow living proof that all blacks are super-ultra savage worst-thing-ever-to-happen-to-America monsters and thus are the real racists
It’s a growing ugly swell that seems to be fucking everywhere now.
Steeplejack
@Linda Featheringill:
Hey, if your elderly cat is still “hopping up” onto your desk, that’s a good sign. Maybe she’s just having a bad fur day.
Seanly
I’m hoping that calmer heads prevail and that we can at least get a continuing resolution for the budget.
In one of my jobs, a bunch of the fellow engineers and CAD techs were raving loons – proto-tea baggers, I-used-to-be-a-Democrat-but-taxes-Chappaquidick and even a young flat taxer who’s probably now a Rand Paul acolyte. I was very glad that their political power was limited to their one vote (they were all too cheap to ever contribute). Now our Congress is overrun with the very same level of know-nothing idiots with zero empathy and compassion.
libarbarian
@Xantar:
If you think that trying to talk them out of it makes it less likely than you don’t understand how Teatards think. They see it as a sign of weakness and it only encourages them.
SFAW
@Villago Delenda Est:
Well, he can serve as 60 percent of a President
SFAW
@Villago Delenda Est:
1) The Yangs had a little be more on the ball, intellectually, than the Teahadis
2) You had to get a clip of a goddam Canadian reading it?
3) “Tronquility”? Goddam Canadian. I guess I should be glad he didn’t say “We, the People, eh?”
Chris
@Linda Featheringill:
Unless they also dispute the fact that he was born to an American woman, it doesn’t matter. For the same reasons that it doesn’t matter with Cruz and didn’t matter with McCain.
Ruckus
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
I have a friend who is a retired cop. He doesn’t have the same record but close.
His reason? He went to work, he did his job and enjoyed it. But he never let it be his entire life.
It was his job, not his life.
raven
@kindness: Well, it’s spelled Jon on the website. I was thinking it was this one:
“John Snow (15 March 1813 – 16 June 1858) was an English physician and a leader in the adoption of anaesthesia and medical hygiene. He is considered one of the fathers of modern epidemiology, in part because of his work in tracing the source of a cholera outbreak in Soho, London, in 1854.”
Ruckus
@MomSense:
You don’t think they have read the constitution do you? They obviously haven’t read their bible either but that hasn’t stopped them from yelling about that.
Maybe it’s just their reading comprehension. Or lack of it.
rikyrah
The Sisters of Civil Rights Get Their Due
By Elizabeth Dias @elizabethjdias
Aug. 23, 20130
Many have never heard the names of all the Civil Rights Movement’s heroes. History remembers the “Big Six”—Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, James Farmer, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, and Whitney Young. But behind the scenes is an extensive list of names that often gets overlooked: women.
That’s why the Black Women’s Roundtable, an initiative of The National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, led a conference on Thursday to honor the women of the 1963 March on Washington. “We know our brothers did great work 50 years ago,” Melanie Campbell, NCBCP president and conference convener, told some three hundred women gathered at the Capitol Hill Hyatt Regency. “But we know, in Melanie’s opinion, our sisters did even greater work.”
Panelists from a range of women’s organizations shared stories of the African-American women behind many of the movement’s most pivotal moments. Martin Luther King, Jr. and fellow civil rights leader Andrew Young, for example, only met because their wives, Coretta Scott and Jean Childs, knew one another, and that connection eventually inspired their Birmingham Campaign. “Women were the backbone of the civil rights movement during a time when that was more the acceptable role,” says Ingrid Saunders Jones, chair of the National Council of Negro Women and former senior vice president at Coca-Cola Company. “When women convene powerful things happen.”
The most famous unsung heroine, most panelists agreed, was Dorothy Irene Height. President Obama called her “the godmother of the civil rights movement” and gave her a place of honor on the platform at his first inauguration. Height fought the “slave markets” of black women in New York City who worked as day laborers for 15 cents an hour. She was the president of Delta Sigma Theta, an international sorority of black women, and brought hundreds of Deltas to the March on Washington. Thelma Daley, a Delta who came to the March and who now chairs the Women in the NAACP, told the women at the conference that she and her fellow Deltas marched under the impression they would get to hear Height speak. “We didn’t know the dynamics then, we didn’t know the inner workings,” Daley remembered. “She was too much of a diplomat to tell the group ahead of time [that only men would speak]…but we looked at her stature on the stage, with great dignity, with great power.”
Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2013/08/23/the-sisters-of-civil-rights-get-their-due/#ixzz2coHuEA4G
Zippity
@raven: I’ve been seeing this pop up in my usual wingnuts Facebook feed this morning, asking when the President is going to speak about this. ‘Cause everything done by any African American is his responsibility.
Chris
@rikyrah:
I can see them doing it.
Back when the Gingrichites tried it on Clinton, it was after their revolution had pretty much run aground, the economy was markedly improving, the president they loathed had been reelected, their leader had become a figure of nationwide ridicule thanks to his “Clinton made me sit in the back of Air Force One!” petty lie, and they’d been unable to find any illegal dealings in Clinton’s past despite years and years of desperate searching.
Sound familiar?
It was essentially them picking up their last bucket of shit and flinging it at the wall in the hopes that that one stuck where all the others hadn’t (it didn’t). I can see them doing it again to Obama. If nothing else, it’ll tie up the government further, and their base will love seeing them make one final heroic attempt to bring down Obama for all the crimes they know he’s committed.
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
They keep reminding me of the Yangs in that shitty TOS episode.
(This is their approach to the Bible, too, incidentally).
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
Fuck! FUCK! Beaten to a TOS reference! I’m getting old and slow.
Chris
@Zippity:
They want him to speak about it so they can call him a racist for always talking about black people.
catclub
@rikyrah: Great links, rikyrah.
Another Holocene Human
The GOP will blink. They’re out of options. Literally their only fallback now is armed rebellion, and they know they will lose. Hence the bluster over the smelly heap of chickenshit.
They know they will lose, they’ve always known, and they’ve lost every temporary beachhead as well. Being spiteful keeps them warm at night but that’s just about all it does for them.
Another Holocene Human
@Elizabelle: oh lord, that sounds dreadful
Another Holocene Human
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: that was awesome!
I love what he said: “I hate to have someone look down at me. So I’m not going to–look down on anyone.”
Another Holocene Human
@rikyrah: Yeah, well put. I’m white and I’m outraged and I know that Gawker which is pretty white-heavy has been pushing the stop&frisk thing too. But glibertarians love to talk and definitely have a way of dominating forums, and it’s clear what THEY care about. I mean, just look at Rand Paul’s comments about drones. And I’ve seen it with NSA stuff, people posting that they don’t care if local cops read all the internets to get bad guys, just don’t want spooks, that is Obama, reading their emails.
It’s all about a system of racial preference, of race determining the police interaction, and their racial status has been challenged by being treated the same as “Mooooozlims” and “urban” people get treated (even though it’s not even close in reality).
Another Holocene Human
@catclub: seconded.
Groucho48
@rikyrah:
boatboy_srq
@Another Holocene Human:
It’s not like they haven’t tried that before, with equally predictable results. But they did it then anyway, so it’s quite believable that they’d try it again.
Kathy in St. Louis
I realize that this is not reason to dislike a person, but if I had to look at Ted Cruz’ face for 4 years, it would depress me to death. Sometimes you can just look at a person and see that something just ain’t right there. Ted is, indeed, one of those people. No wonder he is wildly popular with the teafools.