Tag: Tpm

I’ve talked to enough members over the last 24 hours who believe that, ‘Hey, we don’t like this two month extension [but] if you can get this fixed, why not do the right thing for the American people, even though it’s not exactly what we want.

John Boehner, completely misunderstanding the position of his caucus. Either it’s exactly what we want or we blow up the country. Right, John? Right?

On top of the terrible politics, they even admit that [Ryan/Wyden] dismantles Medicare but achieves no budgetary savings while doing so – the worst of all worlds. Thanks for nothing.

A “Very Senior” Democratic Aide weighs in on the Ryan/Wyden “plan” to save Medicare by dismantling and replacing it with a system already shown to be at least 25% more costly. The problem here is that Serious People know that Medicare must be destroyed. The only thing they are more certain of is Social Security’s imminent end. Therefore, anyone favoring Medicare as it stands (or, gods save us, the atheistic but sharia-mandated nightmare that would be Medicare for All) is going to be fighting the GOP, some non-trivial number of Democrats, and the always totally objective, non-partisan MSM “referees” running this rotten discourse of ours.
So get ready. They’re coming for this. This is who they are. All the deficit whinging is merely prologue for a pitched fight to end every part of the already dwindling social safety net.
I’d also advise anyone who thinks voting doesn’t matter to go ahead and take the long position on stock in whatever company is going to clear the dead from the streets. Halliburton, presumably. Once your vote didn’t really matter because there’s no difference anyway, there’s going to be a lot of business in that particular sector.
Source: tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com

Six Things

All of which the Tea Klan have declared unconstitutional (bulletized for your enjoyments; click through for detail):

1) Social Security
2) Medicare
3) Minimum Wage
4) US participation in the United Nations
5) Unemployment Benefits
6) The Civil Rights Act

With the possible exception of the UN, these all poll in the ridiculously favorable range, so: Would it kill the DCCC or other national messaging group to make a 30 or 60 second commercial detailing this? Apparently it would.

Six Things

The Good Guys of the SS

Rich Iott: [5th SS Wiking Panzer Division] were doing what they thought was right for their country. And they were going out and fighting what they thought was a bigger, you know, a bigger evil […] this particular unit was one that was never charged with war crimes
Anderson Cooper: [Actually, members have been charged with with the murder of 58 Jews]
Rich Iott: The war on the eastern front was extremely brutal on both sides. Nobody was lily-white, that’s for sure. Horrible things that happened on both sides.

What is difficult to overlook is her record of being totally ineffective as a four-term assemblywomen, her inability or unwillingness to work with others, even within her own party, and her extreme positions on issues such as Medicare, social security, education, veterans affairs and many others.

Nevada Senate Minority Leader Bill Raggio ®, in his endorsement of Harry Reid over Sharron Angle. Curious. Honestly don’t know if this helps or hurts a candidate such as Angle. I know Reid can’t mind it, though.

Let it Snowe

I tend to agree with Josh Marshall here:

the key issue senate Democrats now have in dealing with Joe Lieberman isn’t his position on the the Medicare Buy-In [it’s that Lieberman] isn’t negotiating in good faith. […] it’s as clear to [Republicans] as it is to anyone else that he’s now basically mocking his Democratic colleagues by moving the goal posts every time a new agreement is struck.

[…]

it’s definitely time for the Democratic caucus to strip Lieberman of all the benefits he receives as a member of the Democratic caucus. But that doesn’t accomplish anything at the moment. The only path I can see for the Dems is that they need to try to put 60 votes together with Sen. Snowe.

Two birds, one stone: give Snowe the chairmanship of Homeland Security (and whatever the hell else she wants) in exchange for her cloture vote. She can do whatever she wants to on final passage. She keeps the chair so long as she votes for cloture. Every time, every issue. Period. Irregular as hell? Sure. But it would drive home the point that playtime is over. If you value your committee appointments and/or office accommodations and caucus with Democrats then YOU WILL VOTE FOR CLOTURE. Or you will find yourself in the Senatorial equivalent of Siberia. Likewise, if you’re a Republican willing to deal on the issues of the day: we’ll make your life much more comfortable in exchange for some painless votes on ending debate.

Either way, Lieberman should find himself so far down the power ladder that he has a hard time buying bean salad at the Senate cafeteria. Only then will this idiocy even begin to stop.

And, by the by, if you believe for one second this isn’t entirely about tweaking the smelly hippies that caused Joe all his problems: you are without a clue. That’s all it’s about. Joementum could care less about policy or what’s best for the most people. He’s got some petty axes to grind and the issue to do it on today happens to be insurance reform. Tomorrow: cap and trade. The Senate is, was, and will be 59-41. Plan accordingly. Find the trapping that Lieberman most prizes and strip it away. You might get it back when… It’s childish, but also the only way to proceed when dealing with a child.

[T]he unmistakable message of the award is one of the consequences of a period in which the most powerful country in the world […] became the focus of destabilization and in real if limited ways lawlessness. A harsh judgment, yes. But a dark period. And Obama has begun, if fitfully and very imperfectly to many of his supporters, to steer the ship of state in a different direction. If that seems like a meager accomplishment to many of the usual Washington types it’s a profound reflection of their own enablement of the Bush era and how compromised they are by it, how much they perpetuated the belief that it was ‘normal history’ rather than dark aberration.

Josh Marshall, nailing it.