Team WIN THE MORNING on Orange vs. Turtle and how it’s all Obama’s fault.
The Senate majority and minority leaders cut a deal that did not have Boehner’s blessing, sources say, and now the speaker is weighing whether to go down without a fight. House Republican leaders are strongly considering amending the Senate’s “clean” DHS funding bill and dumping it back on McConnell’s doorstep. That would complicate the fraught negotiations on the eve of a funding deadline for the domestic security agency and illustrate a new level of dissonance between the top two Republican leaders, according to multiple lawmakers and aides involved in the deliberations.
The discussions on whether to accept a Senate plan, which would fund DHS through September and allow President Barack Obama’s immigration policies to stand, are still in their early phases. And Boehner may ultimately back down if he runs out of time. But the fact that Boehner is initially distancing himself from the emerging bipartisan Senate deal underscores his conundrum — and the stiff challenge confronting the new Republican Congress in attempting to appease tea party conservatives and an uncompromising White House.
Please note that Republicans are “cutting a deal” but the White House is “uncompromising”. Even when GOP petulance blows up in their faces and puts the country in danger, the Village is forever wired in favor of the Republican party, and it always will be.
Making Boehner’s plight more challenging is the uncompromising position of Senate Democrats and the White House. Reid (D-Nev.) has said his caucus would not accept any changes to the Senate’s proposed standalone bill to fund DHS, which is expected to be approved by that chamber imminently.
Orange Julius is the real victim here of mean old Harry Reid and mean old Barack Obama.
Jesus wept. You’d never know that this whole idiotic mess was a direct result of Republicans willing to destroy the government over executive actions involving immigration enforcement that Reagan, Poppy Bush, and Dubya all took in the past, actions that WIN THE MORNING describes as “unilateral”. (They’re executive orders, guys. By definition they are unilateral.)
But it wouldn’t be complete without Tire Swinging:
Emerging from a tense closed-door Senate GOP lunch, Republican senators signaled they were ready to move on from a fight that has paralyzed the new GOP Congress in just its second month in power.
“There are some that object,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), “but I hope that we have convinced them that this is not a good idea — right now — to shut down the Department of Homeland Security.”
McCain, ever the voice of moderate reason.
Lurking Canadian
The President resolutely and stubbornly persists in being a Black Democrat no matter how many Republican representatives of unpopulated states and gerrymandered districts sit in the two Houses of Congress.
The President’s obstinacy on this point is the real crime.
schrodinger's cat
If anyone was ever in any doubt, the midterms proved that the MSM is in the tank for the GOP. Including PBS and NPR.
The Moar You Know
Ha ha they are fucked….
Oh wait. Can you run the federal government when it’s funded in 2-month increments?
The Founders sure weren’t prepared for a citizenry that elects people to the legislature specifically to sit on their hands and watch the country burn down.
Elizabelle
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yup.
And I was glad to see the White House and Democrats portrayed as “uncompromising.” More of this, please. Make the GOP own this.
BGinCHI
Politico is like the GOP in that neither one of them understand how government (and governing) works.
Amir Khalid
Is this gang-that-can’t-shoot-straight the same fearsome Republican party machine I keep reading about on this blog and elsewhere? They have the keys to the car, but apparently no idea how to make it go anywhere.
schrodinger's cat
@Elizabelle: BBC World News before the snooze hour is so much better than Ifill and Woodruff’s borefest. They only have one foreign correspondent, Margaret Warner. It is rather pathetic.
MattF
I think this is killing off the “Republican-controlled Congress will act like adults” meme. Which is a good thing– there are, after all, some fantasies that just can’t be sustained. Reality, of course, is that the teabaggers want to shut down the government. Probably too much to hope for, but if this leads to a revolt against Boehner, I’m setting up a popcorn mutual fund.
Bobby B.
It was always the Democrats’ fault. See next week’s Sunday news shows.
schrodinger's cat
@Bobby B.: Does anyone under 60 even watch them?
MattF
@Amir Khalid: You have to assume all the various Republicans understand exactly where things stand. The main question (IMO) is whether Boehner will get shot down. I think he’ll survive, but maybe not!
JGabriel
Politico via Zandar @ Top:
Wait, someone made arrangements for something without telling John Boehner?
I hope the President laughs in his face and says, “Karma’s a bitch, John. ain’t it?”
JGabriel
The Moar You Know:
As Ben Franklin said, after the Constitutional Convention, when asked what kind of gov’t they’d given us: “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
Mustang Bobby
@Bobby B.: Shorter GOP to Obama: “Look what you made me do!”
Mike in NC
The entire staff of Politico need to have cinderblocks tied to their ankles and be thrown into the Potomac River.
Violet
I don’t understand how the Republicans are going to get blamed for anything. They’ll just blame the president for refusing to sign the fantastic bills they would have passed if he hadn’t said he’d veto them. If only he weren’t so uncompromising and anti-American we’d all have unicorns and rainbows. Duh.
debbie
The lack of self-awareness is astounding. Glenn Beck’s fuming over net neutrality. He’s bitching about the lack of FCC Congressional testimony and he’s freaking out because he says Google has “tweaked” the bill yet there’s been zero public input. I wonder if he realizes he’s complaining about exactly the same thing that Cheney and the oil lobby did at the beginning of the first term.
He’s even getting pissed at God because he doesn’t understand what’s going on.
MattF
@Violet: I’d guess you’re not going to see much reporting of ‘Republicans getting blamed’ in the short term, but I think it’s going to happen in the longer term. We shall see.
JGabriel
Amir Khalid:
The reason the GOP is so successful at acquiring power is because they’re so cynical about it. The thing is, running a country well requires a modicum of honesty, a touch of honor, and a dash of responsibility – none of which comport well with absolute cynicism, rendering the GOP utterly feckless when it comes to the actual chore of governing.
TriassicSands
You’ve got to hand to the Republicans — they claim government is the problem and then, every chance they get they either shut it down or push it to the brink of a shutdown. They may be hypocrites in countless other ways, but when it comes to showing just how much they hate government — and governing — they are true blue.
The question that persists in my mind is “What kind of perversity allows a voter to look at the performance of Senate and especially House Republicans and believe for even a second that those are people who should be elected to government?”
I guess racism is a big help in that regard. It’s not that they think Republicans are remotely competent, but they are demonstrably racist, which makes them preferable to Democrats. It makes me wonder, if Clinton is elected in 2016, will we start to see stories about her African American great-great grandparent?
Mike J
I cannot count the number of times we had to read about Democratic bills failing with 54 votes. Isn’t it instructive to see what’s considered obstructionism and what isn’t?
Belafon
@Violet: First is has to make it to his desk before he can veto it.
Roger Moore
@debbie:
It’s not a lack of self-awareness that’s their problem, it’s a lack of intellectual honesty. Beck doesn’t care about process; he cares about outcomes. Any argument he makes that isn’t directly about outcome is a lie, and his real reason for being angry is that he isn’t getting the result he wants.
The Ancient Randonneur
We should probably give him pass. Had he not been in the belfry with lanterns Paul Revere might not have made his midnight ride.
Violet
@Belafon: What I said was, the Republicans will just claim they would have passed this awesome amazing bill, but why should they bother if the un-American president won’t sign it. That’s how they blame him.
Roger Moore
@TriassicSands:
The voters see the Republicans destroying our government, and that’s exactly what they want. Plenty of Republicans, going back to Reagan and Goldwater, have said outright that government is the problem rather than the solution. You shouldn’t be at all surprised when Republican voters are perfectly happy to see government being blown up. That’s what they were voting for.
Luthe
@TriassicSands: You’ve gotta remember: everyone is sure that their Congresscritters are doing a damn fine job. The problem is all those stupid, stubborn SOBs from other states. As long as people continue to divorce the actions of their particular Congressworm from Congress as a whole, we’ll keep having the phenomena of strong approval ratings for a Rep in their home district and overall Congressional approval ratings in the single digits.
Frankensteinbeck
@TriassicSands:
After six years of unprecedented obstructionism, watching SCOTUS go from ‘partisan’ to ‘the embarrassment of the legal profession’, seeing shaking the president’s hand become controversial, the constant use of accusations that have no interpretable meaning other than ‘blacks aren’t really Americans’, the Coca Cola freakout, media attempts to blame Ferguson on blacks, BIRTHERISM AS A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION ISSUE, for Christ sakes, and conservatives as hardcore as Mitch McConnell primaried because they agreed with Obama on even issues as basic as keeping the government operational, I’ve come to the conclusion that a plurality of this country considers keeping Those People in their place more important than all other issues combined.
JGabriel
@Violet:
There’s a viewpoint that the oppositional party to the President will always be blamed for gov’t shutdowns.
Strictly speaking, I don’t think this is true. The Republicans are always viewed as the party that wants to cut gov’t – not quite accurate, in so much as they love big government when it’s spying on its own citizens and giving money to the rich. But due to this erroneous view, whenever the government is fully or partially shut down, the GOP gets the blame – because a shutdown, full or partial, is the epitome of cutting government.
Violet
@MattF: The Republicans don’t get blamed for things. Or, if they do, they rarely pay a price. See: the last time the government got shut down. Republicans were blamed but votes didn’t care and voted them all back into office plus some in the midterm.
wasabi gasp
Does “uncompromising” read too “unspineless”?
Mike J
@Luthe:
My congressman is doing a fine job.
The problem is not congress. The problem is Republicans.
priscianus jr
Please note that Republicans are “cutting a deal” but the White House is uncompromising”.
@Elizabelle:
@Violet:
You’re over-interpreting, Zandar. The American press is bad enough without it having to be automatically bad every single time.
“Uncompromising” is not NECESSARILY a negative term, nor is “cutting a deal” especiallly positive. As in “uncompromising” adherence to principle vs “cutting a [back-room] deal.”
tamiasmin
Didn’t “uncompromising” used to be a compliment?
What would a compromise look like in this case? “We’ll give you half the money you need to run DHS if you’ll deport half the people you said you wouldn’t deport.” Clearly, a win for compromise.
Frankensteinbeck
@Roger Moore:
Ronald Reagan said ‘The nine most terrifying words in the English Language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’ What we don’t remember today is the context. Back then, he was talking to people who had personally experienced ‘I’m here to help’ as ‘I’m here to help the people you oppress.’
MomSense
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yup.
Glidwrith
OT: Can anyone send up the signal flare for Ruemara? If she hasn’t found housing for Comic-con, Mr. Glidwrith and I have got a queen-sized air mattress with her name on it.
I am at work and will try to monitor the threads for her response.
Belafon
@Violet: I meant to add something, but I didn’t have edit buttons, and then got distracted. The one thing that hurts them right now is the thing that hurt Democrats: They control both chambers of Congress. As long as it gets stuck in Congress, Obama’s name never comes up.
What’s really got them messed up is that McConnell has already broken the “We can’t get it out of the Senate.” They did, on a bill that Obama would sign. If they try to say what you suggested, Obama can point at the Senate and go “they did it, House, why can’t you?”
Of course I’m ignoring the media spin.
ET
Republicans have boxed themselves into a corner and are now having to deal with the consequence. Drop the Hassert rule and have Boehner grow a pair. This many really, really wants to maintain speakership so he really wants it to look like Republicans can govern – even if they really can’t.
Elizabelle
@Roger Moore: Maybe those voters need to see it. Airplanes not able to take off because government employees control the airspace. TSA screeners keep us “safe” in this age of ISIL.
So many government services, every day, that these ignorant anti-government weasels ignore.
Best part is that some of them have government jobs. Because they are fearful tightwads, and relish the security they would deny the rest of us.
Lurking Canadian
@tamiasmin: It means you go out for tire rims with marinara, and you are allowed to decline when the waiter offers to sprinkle a little fresh ground anthrax on top.
Gin & Tonic
@Frankensteinbeck: Actually, the canonical reference for that quote is a 1986 press conference when he was in Illinois to expand farm subsidies. That sentence was followed by a big “but”, then “In order to see farmers through these tough times, our administration has committed record amounts of assistance, spending more in this year alone than any previous administration spent during its entire tenure. No area of the budget, including defense, has grown as fast as our support for agriculture.”
Violet
@Elizabelle: The bad thing is, they’ll do what they did last time–cave on all the things middle class and upward folks need, plus Medicare and Social Security, and squeeze everything else. No national parks close. No TSA shut down. Cut where people don’t see it and move on.
Frankensteinbeck
@Elizabelle:
No. The more things go down the tubes, the more they’ll blame blacks and liberals. Destroying the government will become even more important to them. Ever see an abusive alcoholic destroy a family? Exactly like that.
Villago Delenda Est
My nym.
Again and again.
Wipe them out. All of them, Katie.
Frankensteinbeck
@Gin & Tonic:
You are proving my point. He has to demonstrate to them that the government has some other purpose.
Villago Delenda Est
@Luthe: My Congressman is Peter DeFazio.
He is doing a fine job, the best job he can do in a House of Representatives under the control of racist shitstains.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mike in NC: Are you sure you’re not looking to get a job with Freedom Industries?
srv
That thug in the WH even has President McCain and the House at odds with each other.
rk
@TriassicSands:
I think it’ll be wall to wall misogyny, plus all the old skeletons will be dug up, polished and we’ll have round two of filegate, travelgate, lewinsky, vince Foster etc. It never ends with right wingers. It’s hatred of Democrats period. Obama gets bonus hatred because he’s black, otherwise the level of vitriol will remain the same for Hillary.
Also I don’t understand why Boehner wants this horrendous job. I look at him and see a guy who under different circumstances with less crazy people would be an aimable drunk, happy to compromise to get things done. But he’s so weak that he’s become an utter failure. If I was him I’d resign and support Louis Gohmert as leader and wave a cheerful goodbye with my middle finger.
Lurking Canadian
@Mike in NC: I believe the classical method invoves a rooster, a serpent, a cat and a sack.
Villago Delenda Est
@Lurking Canadian: DING DING DING DING DING
SiubhanDuinne
@Frankensteinbeck:
I remember all those things except “the Coca-Cola freakout,” and there I’m drawing a blank. Remind me, please?
Petorado
@ET: The reason Boehner keeps his post is because he’s a general who’s afraid of his troops … and the troops like it that way. He goes where the wingnuts lead him and not vice-versa. He can’t make a decision and whip the votes to get behind it. When Ted Cruz talks House Republicans fall in line, but in comparison Boehner is simply ineffectual as a leader.
Mike J
@SiubhanDuinne: Coke commercial with a song in more than one language, and most of those languages weren’t english.
Amir Khalid
@Mike J: You mean, “I’d like to buy the world a Coke”? Damn, that was a long time ago. I was still a kid then.
Cacti
The Republican caucus is split between two warring factions:
Those who want the cheap labor provided by our shadow workforce from south of the border, and those who are blinded by hatred for brown people, whom they don’t consider fully human.
This, of course, is Obama’s fault.
raven
WASHINGTON — The Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to confirm Loretta Lynch as the next U.S. attorney general, bringing her one step closer to becoming the first African-American woman to hold the post.
The panel voted 12 to 8, with all Democrats voting for Lynch. Republicans were split: Sens. Orrin Hatch (Utah), Jeff Flake (Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.) supported her nomination, while Sens. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), David Vitter (La.), Jeff Sessions (Ala.), John Cornyn (Texas), Mike Lee (Utah), Ted Cruz (Texas), David Perdue (Ga.) and Thom Tillis (N.C.) opposed her.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: It was the multilingual “America the Beautiful” from, IIRC, the 2014 Super Bowl.
Amir Khalid
@Gin & Tonic:
I see. In either case, the one-world thing is a very old feel-good advertising trope. I didn’t know anyone could still find it offensive.
WaterGirl
@Glidwrith: I just sent ruemara an email with your offer, so she is sure to see your kind offer.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mike J:
Oh, right. I remember now, thanks.
wasabi gasp
More of a leggo my eggo kinda country.
SiubhanDuinne
@Gin & Tonic:
That, too (or instead).
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: Yea, but. It’s “America the Beautiful.” Practically the national anthem. You gotta sing it in American.
JustRuss
@Amir Khalid: No, it was much more recent, a couple* years ago. I don’t remember what the song was, but I vaguely remember the right-wing freak out. I think it aired during the Superbowl, but could be wrong.
*I’ve reached the stage in a life where “a couple years” means less than a decade, YMMV of course.
piratedan
@Amir Khalid: It’s 65% marketing, 33% overhead and 1% ownership and 1% lackeys… the capitalist political structure
Iowa Old Lady
@raven: Good. I wasn’t sure Lynch would make it through the committee, bizarre as that is.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: Here’s their official spin on it. So a version aired during the Super Bowl, and an expanded version during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Winter Games.
Glidwrith
@WaterGirl: Thanks!
Gin & Tonic
@raven: I haven’t checked every R, but it’s interesting that the three “Ayes” are from Senators who are not up for re-election in 2016, and at least some of the “Nays” are from Senators who are. I’m wondering if the latter got a free pass to vote “N” once there were enough “Y” votes to get the nom through.
samiam
Serious question. Why in the fuccckkkkk do I read more Politico news here than if I visited right wing sites?
Seriously guys. Do you have nothing else better to do but post articles from fuckkkkking Politico and other right wing sites for fuckkkkkks sakes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They want 2 things every time they post an article. To tell their toothless wingnut readers what they want to hear and the get a rise out of the left. You people fall for it every single time. You complain about how the Dems are not as good at messaging and then you go and prove it by reinforcing the rights message. Even if you are pointing an laughing you are still reinforcing it. Doesn’t matter what you are saying about it.
Tree With Water
First off, I’d support the complete overhaul (if not outright dismantling) of the department, beginning with the re-naming of the zieg heil-sounding name, Homeland Security.
In revealing its true colors, the GOP is bleeding voters support week by week. Even American journalists will sooner or later be forced to acknowledge the inmates have taken over the republican party asylum, or reduce themselves to level of the unrepentant flunkies of the National Enquirer or FOX “news”.
I already write off the political judgement and/or simple honesty of any practicing journalist who would argue FOX practices journalism, and the woods are full of them (I uncharitably referred to the mass phenomenon as professionally chicken-shit the other day, and stand by that remark). Certainly the network news departments have all bankrupted themselves in my eyes by acknowledging Murdoch and Ailes as peers, if only implicitly. But then, it figures that one corporate board would of course recognize another as oklee-dokley. Remember, corporations are people too, my friends. My guess is that at least 50% of network journalists endorse that view, too. If I were King, I would therefore order that every reporter must begin all reports by stating, “I do… I do not [choose one] believe FOX News practices journalism”. As it is, I find it prudent to always assume the worst. What other choice is presented me by the corporations than to do so? Not a single one that I can see.
Belafon
@Amir Khalid: Because we have people that consider singing America the Beautiful in anything other than the King’s English to be against Jesus.
jl
In order to be fair and balanced, Balloon Juice should do posts on stories with headlines like ‘GOP in disarray, WH stands firm on legal precedent”. Surely there should be many of those these days.
Edit: though with current SCOTUS, what ‘legal precedent’ means is problematic. Can’t be any legal precedent for Obama, can there?
Belafon
@samiam: That’s a lot like thinking that ignoring trolls makes them go away. It doesn’t. What they write has to be criticized.
raven
@Gin & Tonic: I think it’s always some bullshit like that. Fuckin idiot Manchin is always no except in the real clutch.
catclub
@Violet:
Notable exception:
George W Bush was blamed ( rightfully) for the shitty economy 5 years into Barack Obama’s presidency.
Unfortunately, Mitch McConnell was not blamed as much.
Calouste
@Cacti:
FTFY
piratedan
@catclub: well the bigger problem (imho) is the methodology that is used, Bush’s economy is mentioned as a throwaway… yeah Bush wrecked the Economy but Obama hasn’t reacted to the new shiny in the appropriate histrionic fashion… yada yada yada… as if nearly wrecking the financial underpinnings of the Western world was to be expected with a total screw up in charge, but lets not rehash that piece of information and how it still reverberates even today in everything from Wall Street shenanigans to the still crippled real-estate market and the very real effects of devastating the middle class on down and the job market.
I’d love some links to some forward thinking national publications that constantly show where the innovative application of liberal policies are being implemented/working/discussed but they get short shrift considering the constant parade of idiocy that is being passed along as domestic policy and the willful refusal to address the challenges of today by what is supposed to be one of our main political entities.
SRW1
Here’s a little joke for our language afficionado Amir Khalid:
In German the proverb the title of the post alludes to is
“Der Geist war willig, aber das Fleisch war schwach.”
To demonstrate the power of their new translation algorithm, scientists fed that sentence into a computer with the request to translate it into English and then back again into German. The output in German was
“Der Schnaps war gut, aber das Steak war ranzig.”
Elizabelle
@schrodinger’s cat: Re even NPR and PBS being in the tank for the GOP:
probably why people are abandoning a lot of news programs in droves. If you know it’s corrupt, why give it your ears, eyeballs or full attention?
Amir Khalid
@SRW1:
They shoulda used Google Translate. It comes out correctly there.
SRW1
@Amir Khalid:
You gotta differentiate between politics and policy. The Republicans are pretty good at politicking but suck at doing policy.* Which is fine as long as they are the opposition, especially with a ‘both sides do it’ press. Where it becomes somewhat problematic is when they are the majority and supposed to get stuff done.
*For an example, contrast their output with regard to ‘Repeal’ to that of ‘Replace’ when it comes to ACA.
Fred Fnord
@catclub: By some people. For others, it melded seamlessly into ‘The Obama Recession’ in his second year.
But really, Bush responsible? I’d hesitate to say that. I think it would have been handled better under Gore, but the deregulation that caused it was pretty bipartisan and a lot of it was done before Bush took office.
Villago Delenda Est
@samiam: Derp. Derp. Derp.
jl
@Belafon:
” That’s a lot like thinking that ignoring trolls makes them go away. It doesn’t. What they write has to be criticized. ”
I agree. The reactionaries are relentless in attacking anything that is published or aired in any format that they don’t like. We do need to have higher standards there, we should onlhy attack things that are not true or are misleading.
They almost never have anything intellectually respectable to back up their attacks, but that does not stop them. We need to have higher standards there too. But, we cannot give reactionary screeds, or biased, but very widely read and influential media reporting, a free pass.
I guess BJ blog front posters could make a point to provide links to better coverage. For some types of stories, TPM blog is good bet:
House GOP Defiant Toward McConnell-Reid Plan To Avoid DHS Shutdown
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/house-gop-defiant-dhs-funding
We need to have standards there too. For example, references and links to stories about fake, nonexistent studies that are purported to find that polar bears are thriving with climate change, we shouldn’t do stuff like that.
SRW1
@Amir Khalid:
While we’re at it, here’s another one for you, Amir.
A German tourist who is not so fluid in Inglese is sightseeing in London. After an exhausting day he decides to visit a restaurant for an evening meal. When the waiter comes to his table and requests his order, he tells him:
“I would like to have a bloody steak.”
Asks the waiter in return:
“Would you like to have some fucking potatoes as well?”
jl
@Amir Khalid:
” They have the keys to the car, but apparently no idea how to make it go anywhere. ”
I think, sadly, they can make the car go places. Just that where the car goes will be determined by money, influence, force and chance, and whatever sketchy scam will get them through to the next day (which they think can always look after itself).
Elizabelle
@samiam:
I agree with samiam on this one. Review the topics from yesterday. Seemed to be a parade of ugliness and despair, for the most part. Donald Trump. CPAC. Todd Akin. No clue what people elsewhere are fussing about re Patricia Arquette, and don’t care to know. Glad she won her Oscar.
Ron Fournier. Dylan Byers for the overnight.
It’s debilitating. At some point it’s just sad to know so much and be able to do so little.
raven
@Elizabelle: It’s all bullshit
schrodinger's cat
@Elizabelle: The reporters who are not completely in tank for the GOP think it is all a big joke. Just watch Ifill’s Washington Week, there is a lot of chuckling and knowing looks exchanged. They are so smug and self satisfied. I can’t stand to watch for more than 5 minutes.
Elizabelle
@schrodinger’s cat: They look like people who play journalists on TV.
Ripley
@schrodinger’s cat:
Age or IQ?
@samiam:
You misspelled ‘fuck.’
'Niques
@Amir Khalid: When you go through life with a chip on your shoulder, angry at everything and everyone, I think you have no problem finding fault with anything that makes someone else smile.
Elizabelle
@raven: Yeah. I think it’s angst with me. We don’t have Obama for that much longer, and who knows what will happen next? Our institutions are so corrupt.
The people we’re laughing at are ridiculous. But they vote. They turn out their voters.
I wonder if we’re unintentionally demoralizing ours.
jl
@Fred Fnord:
But really, Bush responsible?’
Not sure whether you are talking about the first or second recession under Bush II.
I think it is fair to say that the GOP was responsible. It is true that that some very unwise financial deregulation occurred under Clinton. But the driving force behind it was the GOP, and the GOP deregulatory fervor continued unabated during the Bush II term. I can’t find the pics right now of the GOPer pressers with some fools wielding a hedge clipper and a chainsaw, but here is a Brad DeLong post reminding us of about continued destruction of sane regulatory policy in 2003.
Financial Deregulation and Republicans
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2008/09/financial-dereg.html
Clinton has admitted his mistakes, which is a good thing. As Krugman (who has admitted his own mistakes) says (paraphrasing): no human is perfect, everyone makes mistakes, and it is best to admit them, learn from them, and try to do better.
The GOP has not admitted any mistakes, and continues to press on with the same failed policies. I should say, failed policies in terms of public good, not failed in terms of benefits that flow to their paymasters.
Obama is responsible for a suboptimal macroeconomic policy, some of which I think was attributable to political miscalculation, some of which was due to flawed macroeconomic thinking by Obama and the economic and financial aides he listened most closely to in the early part of his term.
Mistake are excusable. I think mistakes in macroeconomic policy made in 2009 and 2010 are excusable. We knew much less than. We did not have the evidence of very clear natural and policy experiments in macroeconomics that took place in the US and Europe since then. These were unfortunate experiments that caused immense misery.
We know better now. Clinton learned. There are signs that Obama learned. No signs that the GOP learned anything other than new ways to sell policies that fail for everyone except their funders.
And, while Obama may be to blame for a poor macroeconomic policy, Obama is surely not to blame for producing the need for very good or flawless macroeconomic policy in order to prevent a miserable situation. Bush and the GOP are responsible for that, and more than Clinton, since their irresponsible deregulation continued unabated through the early and mid 2000s, well into the period where it was clear something was wrong with the real estate and financial markets.
raven
@Elizabelle: Sha-nah-nana-live for today. . .
bad version but introduced by the Schnozzz!
Elizabelle
@raven: Thank you. Cheered me up a tad.
The Moar You Know
Just saw the presser with Boehner insisting they’d “passed funding for Homeland Security six weeks ago” and that the Senate was doing nothing.
He looks truly awful, tired, angry, defensive and very stressed.
I bet Boehner and McConnell aren’t hanging out too much socially these days.
The Moar You Know
@samiam: you need a new keyboard, your “K” key is stuck bad.
boatboy_srq
@jl: The clown car has a billion seats, all filled, and every single person on board thinks s/he’s the driver.
jl
@The Moar You Know: I hope Boehner keeps handing Fox News and Politico difficult problems to solve.
Boehner is piss poor at accomplishing anything other than keeping his own miserable job by any craven means necessary. That is a story that needs more emphasis in our political press reporting.
Not sure whether overall things would be better if Boehner tries to lead and fails, since if he does risk his job and loses it, that may usher in some true nutcase in his place. On other hand, the GOP revolts against him have been so inept and loony (because they are waged by inept loons from a teabagger tribe where each man is genius and a leader not a follower, and must always and only do what is best in his own eyes alone), I think Boehner could risk a lot more before he loses his job.
But Johnny Bones is a miserable cowardly two bit hood and penny ante ward heeler and punk. Sorry. I am trying to be civil and polite here, not sure how to put the truth gently.
jl
If Boehner tried to lead, he could try to forge a bipartisan group to pass legislation. Do people here think Pelosi would turn that deal down?
But he doesn’t. Whenever he can, he runs the place with a craven and very partisan ‘GOP majority only’ must pass legislation. Except when he is forced to break that rule to avoid catastrophe, or really bad press for the lousy and nutty House GOP caucus.
The press has let him slide on his BS about partisan ship and leadership every since he’s been speaker.
Boehner will go down in history and a contemptible self serving hack and mediocrity, that got plenty of ass covering from a biased corporate media.
Citizen_X
@Frankensteinbeck:
OT, but in 2015 USA, the four most terrifying words are “STOP RESISTING! STOP RESISTING,” because that is typically the last thing you’re ever going to hear.
The Moar You Know
@Citizen_X: Next Tea Party jackass who tosses out that tired Reagan bullshit is going to get this in response. I like pissing people off, so it’s a win. Thank you.
priscianus jr
@Tree With Water: ” … beginning with the re-naming of the zieg heil-sounding name, Homeland Security.”
You night find this interesting:
“… a comment or two by a native speaker of German. When the “Departement of Homeland Security” in the USA was founded German speaking journalists faced a dilemma. How could we possibly translate that?
Correctly that would be “Ministerium fuer Heimatsicherheit”.
In Austrian and German ears that sounds 100 percent Goebbels. Additionallly the secret service “Stasi” of communist Germany was an acronym of the “Ministerium fuer Staatssicherheit”.
We can’t do that the “Ami” [as Americans are commonly named here], was the gist of the discussion. They may sometimes behave, especially currently, like elephants in a microprocessor factory, but they do not deserve that translation.
What else? “Heimatlandsicherheit”? Says the same and sounds clumsy.
So more or less all German speaking journalists decided to go for “Ministerium fuer Heimatschutz”. This is still the shortest and least pejorative translation for DHS one can find. Not as aggressive as the other, but denoting something like “home-made, rugged, hillbilly style” in addition. From 1934 untill 1938 when Austria was ruled by a homegrown clerical/ fascist regime dominated by Catholic fanatics the word “Heimatschutz” was much used. ….
http://seclists.org/interesting-people/2006/Oct/5
* * *
According to the NY Times, the term homeland security originated in a 1997 Defense Department strategic paper.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/31/us/washington-talk-prickly-roots-of-homeland-security.html
The paper is “National Military Strategy: Shape, Respond, Prepare Now: A Military Strategy for a New Era.” Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 1997. It begins: ” Our National Military Strategy depends first and foremost upon the United States remaining secure from external threats.
and later:
“A secure homeland is fundamental to US global leadership. Unique military capabilities can also support domestic authorities in combating direct and indirect threats to the US homeland, such as the illegal drug trade, especially when the potential for violence exceeds the capability of domestic agencies.”
Does this conceptual origin reflect an approach in which global military strategy supersedes the responsibilities of domestic agencies and police?
The paper was authored by Gen. John Shalikashvili.
“Shalikashvili was born June 27, 1936, in Warsaw, the grandson of a czarist general and the son of an army officer from Soviet Georgia. He lived through the German occupation of Poland during World War II and immigrated with his family in 1952, settling in Peoria, Ill.”
“Shortly after Shalikashvili was tabbed by Clinton, the Simon Wiesenthal Center said documents it found indicated the general’s late father, Dimitri Shalikashvili, collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. The center said it found the elder Shalikashvili’s unpub”
ruemara
@Glidwrith: Thanks to you and the inestimable WaterGirl. I’ll try to be on in the morning.