"A black sheriff?!": The Official Topic of Obama and New Era American Politics

[Brehvolution]

Is that an onion article? 

[Dickie Dee]

Is that an onion article? 

No!!

[youtube=560,345]yes  [/youtube]

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Yes 

[close]

[Oblivion]

Obama needs more ingenious ideas like the spending freeze. They'll definitely open up new doors for him when he steps down as president.

[Phoenix Dark]

President McCain's influence moves from sunday talk shows to the White House

[Mandark]

Discretionary spending freeze


Okay, the policy isn't that bad cause they're freezing it at levels that are abnormally high thanks to the stimulus bill.  But it's symbolic, out of an administration that was meant to be willing to confront the actual big issues.  A health care bill would do much more for deficit reduction than a discretionary freeze, but they totally failed to get that message out so now they're kinda capitulating.

It's not good popular politics, either.  People might say they care about the deficit, but only when the economy's bad.  Job creation's about the only thing that really wins approval.

The only way this is good is if some Blue Dogs feel they have the cover to support other parts of the agenda.  But I get a feeling this wasn't something they negotiated.

[Eric P]

another internet sensation believing his own hype

http://politics.theatlantic.com/2010/01/fbi_arrests_james_okeefe_at_landrieus_office.php

FBI Arrests James O'Keefe At Landrieu's Office

James O'Keefe, the conservative filmmaker who posed as a pimp in video stings at ACORN field offices, has been arrested by the FBI at Sen. Mary Landrieu's (D-LA) office in downtown New Orleans, in connection to what appears to be an attempt to wiretap the offiice, NOLA.com reports:

    FBI Special Agent Steven Rayes alleges that O'Keefe aided and abetted two others, Joseph Basel and Robert Flanagan, who dressed up as employees of a telephone company and attempted to interfere with the office's telephone system.

    A fourth person, Stan Dai, was accused of aiding and abetting Basel and Flanagan. All four were charged with entering fedral property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony.

O'Keefe gained notoriety for his secretly filmed ACORN videos, which caused a firestorm of media intrigue surrounding ACORN after O'Keefe posted them on the Andrew-Brietbart-owned blog Big Government last year.

UPDATE: Here is an affidavit signed by FBI Special Agent Steven Rayes. joseph basel et al.pdf


According to Rayes, O'Keefe and another man, Stan Dai, have admitted to federal agents that he helping plan, coordinate, and prepare for the attempted infiltration and wiretapping, and  the two men who allegedly posed as telephone company workers have admitted to entering Landrieu's office under false pretenses.

O'Keefe entered Landrieu's office and told a staffer there that he was waiting for someone to arrive, according to the affidavit. Special Agent Rayes states that two men, Joseph Basel and Robert Flanagan, then entered the office wearing blue denim work pants, blue work shirts, flourescent vests, tool belts, and carrying hard hats, and claimed to be workers for a telephone company.

O'Keefe then recorded them with his cell phone (which the staffer noticed) as Basel asked to see the office phone, "manipulated" the handset, and tried to call it with his cell phone, Rayes states. Basel and Flanagan said they needed access to the phone system, at which point the staffer directed them to the GSA office in the building, according to the affidavit. They went there, were asked for credentials, and said they had left their credentials in their vehicle; neither of them actually work for a phone company, according to the affidavit.

UPDATE II: The Swamp's Mark Silva reports that Flanagan, 24, is the son of the acting U.S. attorney in Shreveport, William Flanagan.

[Phoenix Dark]

They should have let them carry on. Anything that gets Landrieu out of the senate is fine with me

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

The spending freeze is another defensive Democratic move and gives the GOP argument (too much spending!) some legitimacy.  Oh wellz.

[Eric P]

two of the people arrested have ties to the us intelligence community

http://rawstory.com/2010/01/men-charged-attempting-bug-landrieus-office-intelligence-links/

fascinating article

[Human Snorenado]

I wonder what Black Jimmy Carter is gonna say tonight.  I've decided that my time will be better spent at a Magic the Gathering booster draft at the local nerd store, so let me know.

[Phoenix Dark]

I'll have it on in the background as I raid.

[Great Rumbler]

I'll probably just watch Mythbusters.

[Phoenix Dark]

if i hear "bipartisan" 5 times i'll turn it off

[Mr. Gundam]

Stop quoting the fucking Bible. 

[Groogrux]

Anybody else watch the State of the Union speech tonight?  I sat through all of it.  I liked a lot of what was said, and I am curious to see how it's going to be implemented. 

[ToxicAdam]

I'll let GAF's Pantherlotus sum up how I feel about tonight's speech:

Originally Posted by PantherLotus:
The part I really want is the last 4/5 minutes where he starts resetting the Change message.

If you don't hear that appeal to every inner-political dork, to every person that ever wanted to serve our nation to make it better, to every person of this great nation that both loves and lives for the Constitution and capital-F Freedom, you have no clue how important that moment was (and why Republicans were literally hypnotized to applause).

The moment was something being overlooked here, I think. The room was absolutely silent, and he had every single one of them with his fist around their heart. Huge moment. Speaker Pelosi and I can't have been the only two watching and listening that were near tears. Simply amazing.

[Mandark]

Anybody else watch the State of the Union speech tonight?

Unfortunately.  It's still mind bottling that this man has "Constitutional law professor" on his resume.

Yes.  It does bottle the mind.

[pollo]

Agreed with that right wing blog comment. A whole lot of nothing said. You're a good speaker, but you promised a lot of shit that doesn't make sense.

[Eric P]

i, for one, can't wait for the republicans to get in charge again so that they can solve the issues of the day

[Van Cruncheon]

well, at least they'd round up the gays and the socialists and the abortion doctors

[Eric P]

i don't think so

i mean they had their supermajority, total democratic acquiescence, and the pure belligerence to do whatever they felt they could, but in the end it didn't really amount to much beyond foreign adventurism

[Human Snorenado]

i don't think so

i mean they had their supermajority, total democratic acquiescence, and the pure belligerence to do whatever they felt they could, but in the end it didn't really amount to much beyond foreign adventurism

Be fair- they also had a deregulatory jamboree and for kicks threw a tax cutting bacchanalia in there as well.

[Eric P]

all of which seemed to have helped the deficit which is suddenly so important

[Human Snorenado]

all of which seemed to have helped the deficit which is suddenly so important

Of course it is!

spoiler (click to show/hide)

The President is not only a Democrat, but BLACK!

[close]

[Mandark]

Obama says they plan on repealing DADT.  That's a good thing, but boy howdy is it gonna be a depressing spectacle.

Get ready for a ton of beating-around-the-bush, passive aggressive defenses of the policy as soon as it's up for debate in Congress.  Maybe 5% of prominent conservatives still have the balls to be honest about this.  The rest are going to talk about troop morale how wonderfully successful it's been and how we're in the middle of a war.

Oh hey, it's started already!  Wheeee!

[Phoenix Dark]

I thought it was going to be in the defense appropriations bill?

Oh well, nothing destroys troop morale like a never ending quagmire/lack of body armor/ getting blown up/etc gays in your foxhole

[brawndolicious]

gays in your foxhole

that could be a movie title.

[Phoenix Dark]

http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/01/breitbart-and-shuster-battle-on-air-over-okeefe.php?ref=fpb
 

[The Fake Shemp]

So how is the GOP explaining that spending freezes and small business tax cuts and other GOP platform agenda items are now evil and liberal?

[Phoenix Dark]

spending freezes on our military and tax cuts for abortion clinics omfg obama!

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

spending freezes on our military and tax cuts for abortion clinics omfg obama!

yeah, pretty much follow the health care playbook.  Just outright lie about it.

[Phoenix Dark]

http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/glenn-beck-thinks-president-obama-go

[Powerslave]

clear your inbox pd

[Oblivion]

My man, Cenk has the right idea on how Obama should achieve bipartisanship:

You don't get bipartisanship by asking politely. Obama made the mistake of asking Republicans over for tea in his first year in office and thought he could charm them into voting his way. You don't swing votes by asking politely, you swing them by implicit political threats. You do it with political force.

So, in financial reform Obama shouldn't ask Republicans to vote with him, he should dare them not to. He should say:

    "You want to vote with the bankers. Go ahead. I dare you. Every day I'm going to talk about how these bankers took hard-earned taxpayer money and turned it into record bonuses for themselves. I'm going to show pictures of their yachts and mansions. And then I'm going to say you want to protect them so you can hang out with them on their private jets and play with them in their vacation hideaways. I'm going to take a cut out of you and put it on a picture of their yacht. I'm going to name names. I'm going to make you famous. You still want to vote with the bankers. Make my fucking day."

That's how you get the opposition to vote with you. Who cares if their feelings are hurt, you'll get their votes if, and only if, they think their seat is on the line. Politics is almost always a matter of naked self-interest. Make it politically perilous for them to vote against you and all of a sudden they'll be in a lot more bipartisan mood.

This is one of the few things George Bush did well. Why do you think all those Democrats voted for the Iraq War, because they liked Bush? Because he asked them nicely? No, he made them believe that they will lose their seats if they didn't vote with him. And all of a sudden, he had a solid bipartisan vote in favor his policy.

The new conventional wisdom in DC is that the Democrats are devastated after the Massachusetts loss. And of course there are many who are suggesting that they listen to the Republicans from now on. What the hell are they talking about? The Democrats still have 59 senators! Let me do some quick math for you - that's 18 more senators than the Republicans have. That's a crushing majority, if you're willing to use it.

Bush and Cheney got everything passed with far less senators. Do you think Cheney would have been belly-aching that he only had 59 senators and that he couldn't do anything until he had 60 or more?

If Barack Obama finally does what he was elected to do -- stand up for the people and take on the establishment, there isn't anything he couldn't do with 59 senators. Hit the bankers, hit them hard and dare the Republicans to get in the way. The absolute worst case scenario is that you lose the vote but the Republicans make the dramatic mistake of filibustering to protect the bankers' bonuses. If you thought people were pissed before, wait till you see what happens to the party that makes that mistake.

It's not time to sulk; it's time to saddle up and ride. So far Obama has practiced unilateral disarmament. As the Republicans have pounded on him over and over again, he did not lay out his case or the case against the Republicans for fear of alienating them. What if they got mad and didn't vote with him? I hope to God he's passed that now with the wake up call in Massachusetts.

It's time to stand up for what you believe and challenge the craven positions of your opposition. It's time to show the American people that the Republicans are not on their side. They're with the bankers and the lobbyists. And we're coming for them. We're coming to their house. They can either get out of our way or get crushed. Come on, let's play ball. Let's fuck these guys up.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/how-to-get-bipartisanship_b_432607.html

[Brehvolution]

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2010/01/29/2189180.aspx

GOP Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-IN) held an off-camera/on-the-record talk with the press. He reiterated that they invited the President here and look forward to finding a way towards compromise.  However, he followed that with: "Before we can talk about compromise there has to be, the Democratic in the White and Congress have to abandon the habit of reflexively rejecting every idea just because it comes from Republicans[/u]."

are you kidding me? 

[Brehvolution]

 
I guess Faux news cut away from covering Obama addressing the GOP because the ass whipping was to great for them to handle. The truth hurts, eh Fox?

[Phoenix Dark]

this is rich

GOP Senator  Orrin Hatch is now warning that if Dems pass health care reform via reconciliation it will lead to permanent “war” between the two parties — even though he voted for more than a half dozen GOP bills passed through the process known as…reconciliation.

Here’s Hatch, in an interview with the Salt Lake Tribune, claiming that if Dems use reconciliation it would constitute one of the most despotic acts in the history of the republic:

    Hatch said Thursday that using reconciliation would be “one of the worst grabs for power in the history of the country” that would permanently impact relations between the two parties.

    “It is going to be outright war and it should be, because it would be such an abuse of the reconciliation rules,” Hatch said. “If they abuse those rules it is going to lead to even more heated animosities between not just the two parties, but even between individual senators.”

Which is interesting, because Hatch voted for…

* The College Cost Reduction Act of 2007, which passed through reconciliation;

* The Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005, which passed through reconciliation;

* The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which passed through reconciliation;

* The Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, which passed through reconciliation;

* The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, which passed through reconcilation;

* The Marriage Tax Penalty Relief Reconciliation Act of 2000, which passed through reconciliation; and

* The Taxpayer Refund and Relief Act of 1999, which passed through reconciliation.

Perhaps Hatch would argue that passing health care reform through reconciliation would constitute an abuse of the process in a way that his own votes didn’t. Maybe someone should ask him to explain?

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/senate-republicans/hatch-vows-reconciliation-will-lead-to-permanent-war-beween-parties-but-he-backed-many-reconciliation-bills/

How do you work with people like this? It seems like Obama has more than enough cover to say "ok we tried, but they stood in the way. This issue is too important for the American people, I cannot and will not allow it to be hijacked any longer by obstructionists with no interest in serious debate or discussion" and give full support for reconciliation, while behind the scenes seeing if a public option or medicare buy-in are possible.

[ToxicAdam]

(Image removed from quote.)

Amazing how all of that still went on before global warming became an issue. Let's continue the fallacy that if you are against it, you are against the environment. Seems to be working real well.

[Brehvolution]

Let's see, who's against global warming?
Big oil, coal, and every industry with high carbon emissions
Creationists
So it's really hard to not drop deniers in this same group of liers.

[Eric P]

you know who else supports climate change science?

bin laden.

so one more thing you liberals have in common with a certified america hating terrorist

[Mandark]

IIRC, TA's argument is that because the clean air and water acts in the 70's passed, that proves that there's no constituency in US politics that's naturally distrustful of the environmental movement, nor any business lobbies which try to block action for selfish reasons.

[Eric P]

when was bin laden first active?

the 70s

it all adds up

the green movement is bin laden's long term plan

[The Fake Shemp]

[Phoenix Dark]

Obama annihilating republicans for 90min in a Q&A
http://www.dailykos.com/tv/w/002521/

[Robo]

Obama annihilating republicans for 90min in a Q&A
http://www.dailykos.com/tv/w/002521/

 

[Oblivion]

Wow, Obama's actually hitting back pretty hard. It's kinda refreshing.

[Phoenix Dark]

but obama, think of the children in the front row 

[Mandark]

The Senate rejected a version of the spending freeze but reinstated Pay As You Go.  I'm not clear on the differences.

It passed on a 60-40 vote, which is kinda mind boggling.  All the GOP senators voted against a provision whose entire purpose is to limit new spending.  I've googled for 10-15 minutes and can't find a statement or press release explaining it.

[Human Snorenado]

This country is sooooo fucked once Scott Brown is seated.  Some poll came back with the result that only like 26% of the country knew about 60 seats in the Senate to invoke cloture.  Dems are gonna get blamed hardcore for nothing happening between now and November.

[Phoenix Dark]

because it says tax increases are a way to reduce the deficit/pay for shit?

[Mandark]

This country is sooooo fucked once Scott Brown is seated.  Some poll came back with the result that only like 26% of the country knew about 60 seats in the Senate to invoke cloture.  Dems are gonna get blamed hardcore for nothing happening between now and November.

Supermajority requirement + intractable opposition party = long term fucked.  That's how California got stuck in its perpetual crisis.

So what's it gonna be?  Institutional reforms, grown-ups taking charge of the GOP, or gradual descent into a fiscal nightmare?

[Human Snorenado]

There are no grown-ups left in the GOP.  None who wouldn't immediately have to apologize to Herr Limbaugh after saying something he didn't like or working with the enemy.  Best hope is that the Dems in the Senate go nuclear in the next session of Congress, and pass whatever they can through reconciliation in the meantime.

But probably gradual descent into a fiscal nightmare.

[Stoney Mason]

There are no grown-ups left in the GOP

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

Almost ancient but I really enjoyed this story:

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/01/hbc-90006368

[Oblivion]

Can't get over Obama's ass whooping of the republicans yesterday.

He handled them as if they were democrats.

[Phoenix Dark]

 

[Mandark]

That's now my second favorite political tweet ever.

I should watch that House Retreat thing.  Sounds like Obama respectfully and politely destroyed 'em.

[Human Snorenado]

That's now my second favorite political tweet ever.

I should watch that House Retreat thing.  Sounds like Obama respectfully and politely destroyed 'em.

Good WH link:  http://www.whitehouse.gov/videos/2010/January/012910_BaltimoreMD.m4v

[Phoenix Dark]

Dude pop some popcorn, it's amazing stuff. And you don't have to be a political genius to dissect many of the arguments made. Example
[youtube=560,345]QGcR222Z98o[/youtube]

[Mandark]

I've seen a couple clips and I'll definitely watch the whole thing.

Predictably though, most coverage at the big legacy outlets are like this WaPo piece.  GOP and Obama say they want bipartisanship, but spar politely at retreat.  Some say it's the Republicans' fault, some say it's Obama's fault, blah blah blah.

I've got nothing new to say about this that Bob Somerby didn't say a decade ago.