US Politics Thread |OT| THE DARKEST TIMELINE

[Brehvolution]

Summers withdraws from Fed consideration

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2013/09/15/summers_withdraws_name_for_fed_chairmanship.html

http://money.cnn.com/2013/09/16/investing/stocks-markets/index.html?iid=HP_LN

S&P nears record after Summers' withdrawal

dat invisible hand

[Human Snorenado]

Are you guys ready for GOVT. SHUTDOWN THUNDERDOME???

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/09/no-endgame-in-sight-to-avert-a-government-shutdown.php?ref=fpa

WHO RUNS BARTERTOWN???

[Joe Molotov]

TEABAGGEDDON II: STARVE HARDER

[Howard Alan Treesong]

"He should work with us to delay his health care law for everyone.”

Yes, Obama should fully dedicate himself to undermining his agenda. Why won't he do that? It would be ... BIPARTISAN.

[Great Rumbler]

The current situation with the GOP in Congress would be hilarious if they weren't actively screwing over the country with their antics.

[Joe Molotov]

http://www.businessinsider.com/did-ted-cruz-just-force-republicans-into-a-government-shutdown-they-dont-want-2013-9

Sounds like we're off to the races!

[Phoenix Dark]

Gov shutdown for a few days, like last time. Just watch how insane republicans go when Obama mentions social security checks might be delayed....and eventually they'll fold.

[Brehvolution]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/18/house-conservatives-obamacare_n_3946919.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
Hey look! The GOP actually put together an alternative to Obamacare!

Under the proposal endorsed by the Republican Study Committee, individuals who purchase coverage approved for sale in their state could claim a deduction of $7,500 against their income and payroll taxes, regardless of the cost of the insurance. Families could deduct $20,000.

Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the RSC chairman, said the group wanted an alternative "that actually lowered cost and increased access, and did it in a way that doesn't have the mandates and the taxes" that are part of what's come to be known as "Obamacare."

The RSC legislation includes a number of proposals that Republicans long have backed to expand access and hold down the cost of health care, including features that permit companies to sell policies across state lines and that let small businesses join together to seek better rates from insurers.

No overall cost estimates for the bill were available.

Officials said the legislation contains no provision to assure insurance coverage for millions of lower-income Americans who are scheduled under current law to be enrolled in Medicaid, a state-federal health care program for the poor.

Nor are there replacements for several of the requirements the current law imposes on insurance companies, including one that requires them to retain children up to the age of 26 on their parents' coverage plan and another barring lifetime limits on coverage.

 

[Phoenix Dark]

Legislating is hard, a lesson the current GOP doesn't seem to understand or care about. You need a mechanism in the bill to cut costs...

I wonder why they allow small business exchanges (decided by the employer), but not individual exchanges. Actually, no I don't.

[Great Rumbler]

In the brief filed Sept. 9, the state says that Michigan has defined marriage as being between "one man, one woman" in order to "regulate sexual relationships between men and women so that the unique procreative capacity of such relationships benefits rather than harms society."The state also says that before a 2004 court ruling asserting the right of same-sex couples to get married in Massachusetts, "it was commonly understood that the institution of marriage owed its very existence to society’s vital interest in responsible procreation and childrearing."

[Human Snorenado]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/rubio-obama-should-stop-threatening-government-shutdown

The balls on these guys   

[Human Snorenado]

PD EXPLAIN

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/09/18/michigan-claims-right-regulate-sexual-relationships/

[Great Rumbler]

Do you even read this thread?

[Phoenix Dark]

Do you even read this thread?

Guess he's unwilling to pledge the $25 necessary to see your posts. 

[Human Snorenado]

Shut up, Dog. I'm senile.

[Brehvolution]

[Phoenix Dark]

[Great Rumbler]

"Oh, I see you chose to sign up for ObamaCare!"

[Joe Molotov]

Is Uncle Sam performing the state-required trans-vaginal ultrasound in that video?

[Joe Molotov]

Unsuprisingly, House Republicans pushed their shitty-ass food stamp bill through to the Senate.

Basically, it would cut benefits for "able-bodied adults" who aren't caring for children to only 3 months of food stamps during any 3-year period, unless they also work part-time or are in a job-training program.

Because when the economy is shitty and it's hard to find a job, clearly that's the right time to start cutting people off from getting food. Obviously, the Senate will kill it, but Republicans just wanted to make sure no one had forgotten how much they hate poor people.

[Phoenix Dark]

The retreat by Cruz has led to public questioning from House Republicans about his motives and political acumen, not to mention joking speculation that he may be part of a vast and devious liberal conspiracy to undermine conservatives.

"Cruz is the leader of a secret cabal of leftists that are seeking control of the conservative movement," quipped one senior House Republican leadership source. "Their aim is to force the party to take on suicidal missions to destroy the movement from within."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/19/ted-cruz-shutdown-house-republicans_n_3954461.html

[Great Rumbler]

[Boogie]

Well, he is Canadian, after all.   

[Joe Molotov]

Does anybody remember Charlie Sheen when he was kind of going crazy…And he was going around, jumping around saying 'Winning, winning, we’re winning,' Well I kind of feel like that, we are winning. And I’m not on any drugs.
~Rand Paul

 

[Dickie Dee]

Does anybody remember Charlie Sheen when he was kind of going crazy…And he was going around, jumping around saying 'Winning, winning, we’re winning,' Well I kind of feel like that, we are winning. And I’m not on any drugs.
~Rand Paul

 

[Dickie Dee]

Republicans who pressured House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) into taking up a bill to defund Obamacare and risk a government shutdown are following in the tradition of two American civil rights icons, according to one GOP lawmaker.

“It only takes one with passion — look at Rosa Parks, Lech Walesa, Martin Luther King,” Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL), who was elected to the House last year, told the New York Times in a story published Friday. "People with passion that speak up, they’ll have people follow them because they believe the same way, and smart leadership listens to that.”

The House passed on Friday a continuing resolution that will provide funding for the government but defund the health care law. Passage of the bill, which has no chance of winning approval in the Democratic-controlled Senate, greatly raises the risk of a government shutdown.

#YOHO

[Phoenix Dark]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2424555/Bill-Clintons-mistress-Gennifer-Flowers-Wed-today-wasnt-Chelsea.html

The Madonna of Little Rock, Arkansas

:deadpos

[Joe Molotov]

K-Thug on the looming government shutdown:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/opinion/krugman-the-crazy-party.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1379682075-AK2L9pTlYQWoqCyKo+X74g&_r=1&

TL;DR - Republican party is now a runaway train of crazy that will probably kill us all, have a nice day!

[AdmiralViscen]

Has this shit been posted?

[Phoenix Dark]

Sounds like the Ted Cruz 2016 train is already off the tracks

Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace said Sunday morning that he’d received opposition research from other Republicans about Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) in advance of Cruz’s appearance this morning, a serious indication of how upset the GOP is with the Senator leading the risky charge to defund ObamaCare.

“This has been one of the strangest weeks I’ve ever had in Washington,” Wallace said. “As soon as we listed Ted Cruz as our featured guest this week, I got unsolicited research and questions, not from Democrats but from top Republicans, to hammer Cruz.”

“This was a strategy laid out by Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ted Cruz without any consultation with their colleagues,” said Karl Rove. “With all due respect to my junior Senator from Texas, I suspect this is the first time that the end game was described to any Republican Senator. They had to tune in to listen to you to find out what Ted’s next step was in the strategy.”

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/foxs-wallace-stunned-gop-leaders-sent-me-opposition-research-on-ted-cruz/

[Great Rumbler]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/atlasshrugged/atlas-shrugged-movie-who-is-john-galt?ref=recently_launched

[Mupepe]

Ted Cruz has been rustling too many damn feathers to actually be a contender in 2016.  I think only the most hardcore teatards believed he ever had a chance.  Rand Paul on the other hand seems to have taken just enough crazy from his father to entice hardcore libertarians and he can also manage to navigate the US political game pretty well.  I think he's the perfect combination in this political climate to rally support from the Republican base.

[AdmiralViscen]

That is true within the GOP, but the way things are going I can't see any GOP candidate garnering mainstream report. The CNBC polling on this shutdown fight is bad news for that party.

[Human Snorenado]

If the Dems nominate a woman, it won't matter who the GOP runs.  The self-inflicted wounds the GOP inflicts on itself trying to deal with a woman candidate on the other side will be enough to propel Clinton, Gillibrand, whoever to an easy win.

[Phoenix Dark]

This has to be the most intellectually dishonest derp I've seen in awhile
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/09/23/its-official-obamacare-will-increase-health-spending-by-7450-for-a-typical-family-of-four/

$621 billion is a pretty eye-glazing number. Most readers will find it easier to think about how this number translates to a typical American family—the very family candidate Obama promised would see $2,500 in annual savings as far as the eye could see. So I have taken the latest year-by-year projections, divided by the projected U.S. population to determine the added amount per person and multiplied the result by 4.

Simplistic? Maybe, but so too was the President’s campaign promise. And this approach allows us to see just how badly that promise fell short of the mark. Between 2014 and 2022, the increase in national health spending (which the Medicare actuaries specifically attribute to the law) amounts to $7,450 per family of 4.

Pigeon addressed it on GAF http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=83320165&postcount=13

wtf

[Positive Touch]

it must be pretty sweet to make hundreds of thousands of dollars by shitting out columns that'd get failed in a basic college course

[Human Snorenado]

it must be pretty sweet to make hundreds of thousands of dollars by shitting out columns that'd get failed in a basic college course

aka, "being Megan McArdle"

[Joe Molotov]

I thought I was reading something from Fox Nation, but then I saw it was Forbes, so close enough.

[Eric P]

ACORN's long term plans were to get Bill Di Blasio to become mayor of NYC?

http://nypost.com/2013/09/24/acorn-sowed-seeds-for-de-blasio/

The leftist group ACORN has been plotting for more than a decade to install Bill de Blasio at City Hall, a Democratic Party source has told The Post.

“Without exaggeration, ACORN’s long-range plan since 2001 was to elect de Blasio mayor,” said the Democratic insider. “De Blasio was a big ACORN project.”

The Democratic mayoral candidate has marched in lock step with ACORN, now renamed New York Communities for Change, even before he took public office in 2001.

The group backed de Blasio that year over Legal Aid Services director Steven Banks in a six-way Brooklyn City Council race, despite Banks’ reputation at the time as a one of the city’s leading champions of the poor and liberal causes.

Eight years later, ACORN was back at de Blasio’s side and, with the union-financed Working Families Party, helped him become public advocate, a perch he used to become the Democratic nominee for mayor.

A key cog in the de Blasio political machine is Bertha Lewis, the former ACORN head who also co-founded the Working Families Party.

On primary election night earlier this month, when she stood on stage t next to de Blasio, Lewis made it clear ACORN’s work had paid off.

“We’re baaaack. The right wing will have to deal with it,” she chuckled.

But Lewis scoffed that she or the organization had a “master plan” to elect de Blasio as the city’s chief executive.

“Shame on us,” she quipped. “We don’t think that far ahead. We take one race at a time.”

But she added: “There’s no doubt we were there for Bill. New York ACORN supported Bill for council. Then we supported him for public advocate.”

De Blasio told The Post he’s proud to stand with Lewis and her group.

“Bertha Lewis is one of the city’s most passionate and effective progressive leaders, and I’m proud to have worked with her for years,” he said.

NYCC/ACORN has been crusading for more subsidized housing and a higher minimum wage. It’s also at the forefront of the fight against the expansion of charter schools.

It receives hundreds of thousands of dollars from unions to organize workers, and its agenda mirrors labor’s.

De Blasio is on the same page. He has vowed to impose a moratorium on co-locating charter schools within public schools and has even recommended charging them rent — a potentially crippling financial blow to the charters.

De Blasio’s most startling alignment with ACORN came on the Atlantic Yards redevelopment project in Downtown Brooklyn, which originally drew protests from local residents.

De Blasio, who lives in neighboring Park Slope, initially was skeptical. But he came on board in 2006 after being convinced by ACORN — an early supporter of the complex — that there would be a huge payoff in affordable housing units.

The first tower isn’t scheduled to open until next year.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

i both can and can't believe that the specter of ACORN is being used by the Post to strike fear into the hearts of Post readers

[close]

[Joe Molotov]

But how does George Sorors factor in?

[Brehvolution]

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/09/23/one-big-trader-lost-millions-betting-on-romney-study-finds/

A new academic paper digging into presidential betting in the final weeks of the 2012 election finds that a single trader lost between $4 million and $7 million placing a flurry of Intrade bets on Mitt Romney—perhaps to make the Republican nominee’s chance of victory appear brighter.
The most plausible reason for the betting, the authors conclude, is that “this trader could have been attempting to manipulate beliefs about the odds of victory in an attempt to boost fundraising, campaign morale, and turnout.”

[Great Rumbler]

“this trader could have been attempting to manipulate beliefs about the odds of victory in an attempt to boost fundraising, campaign morale, and turnout.”

I can believe that.

[Great Rumbler]

A fairly eye-opening quote from Bill Kristol:

The long-term political effects of a successful Obama health care bill will be even worse--much worse. It will relegitimize middle-class dependence for "security" on government spending and regulation. It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Just kidding! He didn't actually say that about Obama.

...

He said that about CLINTON. Back in 1993.

[close]

[AdmiralViscen]

Ted Cruz would be pretty scary if he wasn't shoving his party in a woodchipper fulltime

[Joe Molotov]

The ex-Pope said that he never covered up sex abuse:
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/09/24/ex-pope-breaks-silence-denies-sex-abuse-cover-ups/?hpt=hp_c2

"As far as you mentioning the moral abuse of minors by priests, I can only, as you know, acknowledge it with profound consternation. But I never tried to cover up these things."

So, now we got that cleared up.

[Dickie Dee]

Placere intelligere

[Great Rumbler]

"'Green Eggs and Ham' has some applicability, as curious as it may sound, to the Obamcare debate," Cruz said after he finished, to a few audible chuckles from the Senate gallery.

Americans "did not like green eggs and ham, and they did not like Obamacare either," he added. "They did not like Obamacare in a box, with a fox, in a house, with a mouse."

The whole point of Green Eggs and Ham was that the protagonist was being stubborn and silly about something he'd never tried before. In the end, he liked green eggs and ham! 

[Oblivion]

sometimes i wonder if they're doing this stuff on purpose

then i remember, Republicans.

[Great Rumbler]

[AdmiralViscen]

Ted Cruz just voted yay for cloture

[Phoenix Dark]

But Wednesday's vote was on the motion to begin debating the spending bill. There will be another vote to close debate on the bill in the coming days. That's the one that Cruz said he wants Senate Republicans to oppose unless they get their way on defunding Obamacare.

That's why Cruz, Mike Lee (R-UT), Marco Rubio (R-FL) and others voted in favor of Wednesday's motion. But it seems that the procedural machinations weren't clear to some of their constituents.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/senate-gop-s-constituents-are-confused-about-obamacare-vote

[Mupepe]

The average person is dumb.  News at 11.

[Great Rumbler]

You made the monster, now deal with it.

[Steve Contra]

I know it's asking a lot from our idiot media, but I would love a little recognition that the entire Republican party just got played as a PR stunt for Ted Cruz 2016.

[Joe Molotov]

I know it's asking a lot from our idiot media, but I would love a little recognition that the entire Republican party just got played as a PR stunt for Ted Cruz 2016.

I've seen it mentioned a bit, but it's usually down a ways down in the opinion section below the main OMG CRUZ TALKIN headline.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/25/opinion/borger-cruz-spectacle/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Nevermind. None of this has been about reality. Rather, it's about cementing a new definition of leadership: Positioning yourself as the spokesman for your political base by telling it exactly what it wants to hear. In Cruz's case, it's the tea party base. Lucky for him, there's a made-for-TV bully pulpit, plenty of time to talk and the talking points are easy and oh, so, predictable.

...

Cruz gets to cuddle the tea party while taking on the evil establishment — and by that he means the awful folks in his own party who would not shut down the government over a doomed move to kill Obamacare. Imagine that: Republicans refusing to catapult a man they don't like into the presidential arena. Maybe they're part of Cruz's evil establishment, but if they are, they're trying to save him — and the party — from itself on the issue of shutting down the government. Cruz is thinking 2016, but they're thinking about the repercussions for the GOP if the government shuts down.

[AdmiralViscen]

The average person is dumb.  News at 11.

They're right this time. If Cruz had a problem with the second vote then why did he schedule his rant to delay the first one?

Reid just got unanimous consent to advance the calendar a day and vote on the second cloture a day early. If this is the important one then why did Cruz consent to that? It's all horse shit.

[Phoenix Dark]

So far the ACA exchange rates look good, although they are limited by income. Then again it's understandable considering most people who make 50k+ a year tend to already have employer based insurance.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/final-word-on-obamacare-coverage-cheaper-than-expected

There will be glitches and rough bumps, such as the people who are seeing their employer health insurance get canceled due to grandfathered plans not complying with ACA regulations/quality demands. But overall I think a lot of low and middle income people are going to have good experiences with it, just based off the exchange rates I've seen thus far.

On a work note, it sounds like we will end up accepting kids through the Medicaid expansion after all. Delta is going to be handling the expanded Medicaid coverage for children in the state, which is good news for providers. We don't accept straight up Medicaid due to how poorly they pay providers; for instance the cost of a small filling (without insurance) is $155, and Medicaid pays $10 of that. However we do accept Medicaid plans through Delta for children, and the provider rates are much better.

[Brehvolution]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/obama-ridicules-gop-fear-mongering-of-obamacare

I wish he would make a national address just like this. I think it needs to be done.

[Joe Molotov]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/corker-lays-into-cruz-for-shutdown-strategy

[Steve Contra]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/corker-lays-into-cruz-for-shutdown-strategy

Good stuff this government shutdown.