Kevin Drum has a good impeachment scenario:
Since we’re going for style points here, I’m putting my money on a scenario in which South Carolina decides to nullify the healthcare reform law and prohibit its enforcement. Obama nevertheless directs the IRS office in Charleston to dispatch tax delinquency notices to uninsured residents. Governor Nikki Haley instructs the state police to barricade the IRS in order to prevent it from delivering outgoing mail, at which point Obama sends in Army troops to reopen the office. This is taken as a tyrannical abuse of federal power, and Rep. Joe Wilson files immediate impeachment charges. The impeachment bill passes with 220 votes — 201 from the Tea Party, 18 from the rump Republican Party, plus Bobby Bright — and is sent to the Senate. Chief Justice John Roberts presides, wearing robes decorated with the scales of justice stitched in gold lame, but Tea Partiers and Republicans eventually rally only eight Democratic supporters and the charges fail by a single vote. Mary Landrieu, who spends the entire trial vacillating loudly and publicly about the weight of history, eventually provides the one-vote margin of victory and immediately commissions a book about her experience, Keeping Faith: How One Woman Made a Difference in Trying Times.
In fact you need 67 votes to remove, not 60 as Drum assumes, but otherwise this seems pretty reasonable (EDIT: Drum says this will all happen with Republicans have 58 seats, so the 8 Dem turncoats will indeed leave them one short). What I look forward to most is the pro-impeachment editorials from David Brooks and Ross Douthat.
I want to be clear on one thing: I hope the Republicans don’t take the House, that’s why I’m giving money to Democratic candidates and doing phone-banking and canvassing. But if they do, I hope they’re crazy enough to try impeachment, which will be a big flop politically.
What are your impeachment scenarios?
TR
Wrong link — that one goes to Benen on the Tides Foundation’s effort to contact Beck’s advertisers.
lamh32
Damn it DougJ,
now I got big pimpin’ in my damn head!!! Bun B’s verse is probably my favorite between Jay Z, Bun B & Pimp C.
heck, this line, and the “…read a book u illiterate sonofabitch…” are the 2 lines, I’ve actually used in conversation with my friends.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@TR:
Thanks, I fixed it.
Midnight Marauder
This is your second stellar use of Bun B’s verse in “Big Pimpin'” this month, I believe. You’re on quite a roll, DougJ.
burnspbesq
It starts in Arizona, not South Carolina. A Federal judge issues an order to show cause to Joe Arpaio, basically saying “bring the documents you’ve been withholding, or bring your toothbrush.” Arpaio does neither, the Marshal’s Service goes to take him into custody when he is held in contempt, and a nasty firefight ensues.
steviez314
Nancy Pelosi, no longer Speaker, retires in 2012. Jane Hamsher runs for her seat and wins as the Democrats take back Congress.
Upon being sworn in, Hamsher introduces Articles of Impeachment.
Mnemosyne
I still think Tony Rezko and ACORN are going to come into it somehow. Because they can’t really whip up the fear without black people at the bottom of it.
Bob Loblaw
This is bloggy masturbation at its finest. The Republicans aren’t going to impeach anybody. They aren’t even likely to win the House anymore.
They not-so-secretly fear what winning the House would entail. They know their base are a bunch of psychos. They just want tax cuts and a halt to further regulations, and the ability to play perpetual spoiler as the economy continues to do its thing.
Alex S.
My ideas are not quite finalized, but they involve Darrell Issa and Jim DeMint (obligatory participation of South Carolina), maybe a presidential veto and a bill that redefines citizenship as a states’ rights issue. At some point during the process Virginia Foxx claims that Michelle Obama tried to kill her with poisoned cake.
MikeBoyScout
I think Drum missed the likely pro-business bipartisan Obama counter move – IRS resends using Federal Express.
Teatards would collapse in the face of free enterprise opposition.
burnspbesq
@Bob Loblaw:
You got a problem with masturbation? Who are you, Christine O’Donnell in reverse drag?
KC
What I’d like to see is Steps 1-3 of your scenario unfold, up to the barricading of the IRS offices. Then the federal government decides to boycott South Carolina and cuts it off completely – no Medicare, no Social Security, no Medicaid, no road money, the Army drives all of its vehicles out of the state and tears up the Interstates behind them, all of the federal money that the state relies upon – gone.
Then we’ll see the slow-motion charge of a hundred thousand PowerScooters down the road to the state capitol, driven in five-mile-per-hour fury by all of the Tea Partiers who want the government to give back their Medicare – before the scooters break down. Finicky little machines.
In all seriousness, though, I don’t know if impeachment is an inevitability, but there’s a high probability of it, just because it’s a Democratic President who must be delegitimized at all costs. The real cost of an impeachment, though, will be the removal of impeachment as an enforcement tool for the Congress. Two Democratic Presidents, neither of which lied us into war at the cost of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, authorized torture for prisoners, and everything else, impeached for … what compares to that? Now, whenever the next Republican President punches more holes in the Constitution, impeachment will be seen as more of a “political” tool, rather than the check on executive authority it is supposed to be. Which will be the final revenge for Nixon’s buddies like Cheney – a Republican President will have to kill someone on live TV before he can be impeached without Republicans screaming about ho2w it’s only politics – and even then, who knows?
jl
Doesn’t somebody have to bombard a fort in South Carolina, someplace in that scenario?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
A tale told by an idiot media full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
IOW, lots of investigations are launched and a constant stream of subpoenas are issued from various House committees, and the cable news droids periodically moan with the approach of an impending climax, but actual articles of impeachment are never drafted.
Meanwhile entire forests of paper and oceans of electrons die in the noble cause of sending out fundraising appeals to bilk the suckers out of every last dollar they haven’t already given up for the cause.
Napoleon
Because Michelle gave him a BJ. That is all they will need.
Mark S.
O’Keefe dresses up as a pimp and invites Obama to his “office,” which is really just a canoe with a bunch of dildos strewn around. Michael Steele, no longer the RNC Chairman, plays the part of Obama. House goopers say it’s good enough and pass articles of impeachment on a straight party vote.
Hunter Gathers
Charges (ACORN, Black Panthers, birth certificate, take your pick) filed by March, trial during the summer, House gets 220 votes for impeachment, Senate gets 55 votes (conservadems vote for impeachment in increase their Whitey cred) in September, and then it dies. Obama destroys Palin in 2012, Teabaggers start nationwide riots, THE END.
That’s if the Giant Shitpile doesn’t blow up. If it does, all bets are off.
burnspbesq
Drum doesn’t know how the IRS works. The notices will probably be issued from Covington, Kentucky or Fresno, California. Then an elite team of IRS collection personnel, led by our very own Yutsano, will parachute in to do the dirty work, supported by Predators borrowed from the CIA, which by that time will no longer be using them in Pakistan.
Violet
I don’t have a impeachment scenario, but I’m mulling an unexpected outcome of the healthcare lawsuits. If one of the lawsuits about requiring people to buy health insurance gets heard by a judge and deemed unconstitutional, isn’t there a possible outcome that Medicare is thus unconstitutional? Because seniors are required to use Medicare first, instead of some other health insurance, or none at all. And if they’re required to use it, that must be unconstitutional, right?
So I’m thinking an interesting outcome could be that Medicare is also found to be unconstitutional, based on a result of the other lawsuit. The resulting melee would be sweet to watch for awhile.
trollhattan
It’s Friday and quite honestly, I’d rather begin drinking than think of yet another way Republicans may/will continue their campaign of ruining the nation.
But, next April’s teabagfests should be verrrrry interesting.
Lev
They could try to impeach Obama over the ACA violating the Constitution, which would be a problem if it’s found to be Constitutional in the courts. Then again, even the wingnuts might not have the cognitive dissonance to square that peg. My guess would be over Holder dropping the New Black Panther Party case or something similarly “black”, though that would apply more to impeaching Holder specifically than Obama.
Still, it would be entertaining to see how all that would play out, just like it would have been interesting to see how a McCain presidency would have played out. I’m glad we didn’t have to go through that one, but I’d be very interested to visit that parallel universe.
Scott
Immediately after being sworn in, the Republicans file an impeachment bill with every single minor scandal listed as the charge, everything from “Being born in Kenya” and “Being a Mooslam” down to “sleeveless wife” and “David Letterman raped Trig.”
Every anchor from Fox News and CNN, every WaPo columnist, and every poster on FreeRepublic and FDL will have absolutely colossal orgasms and explode.
John Roberts will ride into the chambers on the back of a griffin, screaming “I AM THE GOD OF HELLFIRE!”
All Republicans will vote to impeach and convict, joined by at least half of the Democrats, who will figure that if they go along on this, maybe the Republicans will compromise with them later.
Lev
@Violet: I think you can opt out of Medicare. You can do Medicare Advantage, I guess.
Yeah, I’m not really all that worried about those health care lawsuits. Even if the individual mandate is found unConstitutional, there’s a bunch of other things they can do instead of it. But those insurance companies donating to Republicans 8-to-1 might want to realize that they could be funding their own destruction here.
debbie
@KC:
An image ready made for South Park!
MobiusKlein
I see Obama & handlers intentionally getting him caught with another woman to improve his cred with white men (ala Big Dog Bill).
They flub it by accidentally letting the teleprompter be seen out of the corner of the sex-tape video, and given Obama’s uh, wooden performance, everybody believe it really was staged. The Senate is about to vote to remove from office, when 33 brains simultaneously stroke out due to a vengeful god striking the hypocrites dead on the spot.
Obama wins the next election in a landslide.
Omnes Omnibus
God willing and the creek don’t rise, none of this will happen. If it does it will go this way. Gohmert introduces the articles; they include Obama’s support for terror babies. There are others, but no one reads them. All Republicans but 2 vote for them (recall petitions are filed). Only 22 Senators vote to convict.
Jay C
@Bob Loblaw:
Bob may have a point: there are a lot of differences between now and 1998 which would work (and probably very well) in Obama (and the Democrats’) favor;
1. In the Gingrich Era, the GOP went after Bill Clinton for what were, in effect, personal derelictions, not policy disputes. Barack Obama, if nothing else, seems to be able to keep his pants zipped – no “bimbo eruptions” on the horizon, here; so any impeachment talk would have to be basically on purely political grounds – and it’s far from clear that that would be a winning strategy.
2. The GOP, even assuming they DO take control of the House, are going to be put on the spot, right away, and very roughly, to show some sort of direction for the country’s policy (especially in the economic sphere): if they immediate revert to the “government by investigation” mode operative in the Clinton Era, I think they will engender the biggest and quickest case of political “buyer’s remorse” we’ve seen in… well ever.
3. And pace Kevin Drum, any resort to violence in pursuit of any political aims by anyone; however sanctimoniously “justified”, will, I think, create a backlash of epic proportions. The GOP knows that, despite their self-delusive rhetoric, the Teabagger fringe is just that: a fringe (albeit a VERY loud and cohesive one) – and while they may be able to ride current problems to short-term electoral success. if the rest of the 70% + or so of sane voters turn on them, the Party is done for in 2012.
JPL
Speaker of the house Boehner brings impeachment hearings because the President stole a piece of pie from the White House kitchen without paying for it. When a photograph of Senate Majority leader DeMint and Justice Roberts in bed together appears, the hearings are suddenly canceled. No horses will involved in this scenario, only a bunch of asses.
General Stuck
Jane discovers the Real Whitey tape, After viewing it, Greenwald declares it torture, and a posse of progressives saddle up with the Tea Baggers to deliver the evidence, then a fearful congress does it’s usual fearful best, rededicates the Black House as once again the White House, and that, as they say, will be that.
And Loblollypop will show up and declare it dint happen, and the usual idiocy ensues.
Now everyone go fuck themselves.
Violet
@Lev:
I don’t think you can opt out of Medicare part A. The rest maybe you can. If it’s required, isn’t that unconstitutional?
Suffern Ace
Silly. Obama suddenly shows up at Malia’s swim practice and there are no pictures to prove that he was there. 15 minutes are unaccounted for in the log and the press wasn’t even informed that he was going and that there would be 11 year old girls in bathing suits present for them to gawk at. Why the interest in girls in bathing suits, they wonder. Why the need to be where little girls are swimming? And we know the story is false anyway, since Kenyan’s don’t swim unless they are anti-colonialsts and African Americans are absent fathers who never participate in their children’s lives.
Issa calls for an investigation. Fed up with yet another subpeona, demanding photos of all the girls in their bathing suits to be reviewed by Congressional Staff. The White House counsel delivers the response back that Issa can stick it up his ass. That minor children are protected from such invasions of privacy. Undeterred, Issa Doubles Down. What is the President Hiding? Republican party members everywhere protest and Congressmen start e-mailing pictures of minor children in swimsuits to show how safe it is. How insulted they are that the President has placed the privacy of a few girls ahead of the public’s right to know something vague. For weeks on end “Peek-gate” is discussed.
In the meantime, the President, finally having enough of us, gives a speech at the UN asking if anyone there would like to take the country off his hands. He won’t put up a fight.
So I guess it will be treason.
FlipYrWhig
@Mark S.:
OK, I’m glad no one else was around, because that to me was a gen-u-ine LOL.
Mike B
I don’t even want to guess how this will play out. I’m sure we are not even capable of imagining the horrors that will be uncovered by Independent Counsel James O’Keefe in his entirely responsible investigation.
freelancer
@Napoleon:
Win.
Loneoak
My dream scenario is a caucus of liberaltarians impeaching Obama for trying to continue the drug war in California after we pass Prop 19 by 83%.
But whom am I kidding?
It will be because the Justice Department refuses to enforce the O’Donnell-Nelson Anti-Dildo Act of 2015.
Mark S.
@Violet:
I think they are arguing that it’s unconstitutional because it makes you buy insurance from a private company.
BR
When Obama finally is forced to acknowledge the reality of peak oil as we face oil shortages in the summer of 2012, GOPers decry it as a conspiracy between Obama and his Sharia law-loving allies in Saudi Arabia and other anti-colonialist regions of the world.
Violet
@Mark S.:
Yeah, I have gathered that too. But if you focus on the “making you” part instead of the “buy from a private company” part, then there could be some crossover.
les
@Scott:
Without reading further, I have a winnah! Roberts’ entry is perfect.
JPL
@Violet: For some reason the republicans passed and Clinton signed a law stating that if you refuse Soc.Sec. you must also refuse Medicare. I never understood the point of that law. Medicare Advantage is where the government pays the insurance companies extra to cover your health care. It’s part of Medicare. For all that extra money the government pays to insurance companies, you are entitled to take exercise classes at places such as Curves which donates heavily to Repubs.
Trentrunner
I’m pro-snark, but this is really stupid.
Clinton’s impeachment was a HUGE distraction (nicely opening us up to 9/11), and a colossal waste of just about everything.
That journos–and pundits like you–masturbate to fantasies about this just about ensures that it will happen again; meanwhile, the people get screwed in unimaginable ways.
Not funny.
JPL
@Trentrunner:
but what will the children say.
General Stuck
@Trentrunner:
Then click your heels three times Dorothy, and visit a Kansas tea party
Martin
@Lev:
You can’t opt out of A as Violet notes. That’s hospitalization coverage, and hospitals are 80% people over 65. You can opt out of B if you are working and have a group plan (employer-paid or other) from a group of 20 or more. Part C (Medicare Advantage) replaces both A and B.
jwb
@Jay C: “and it’s far from clear that that would be a winning strategy.” It wasn’t even a winning strategy with Clinton.
Kryptik
The house vote numbers come off as rather optimistic to me. You just know there’s gonna be at least 20 idiot blue dogs who will go all in with the impeachment vote, because that’s the way you improve your conservative creds, don’cha know.
Martin
@JPL: The Advantage plans lose the excess funds after next year, so the cost to the govt will be the same as for A+B. The exception is for 4 and 5 star plans that will be eligible for up to a 5% bonus. There’s only one such plan now, Kaiser Permanente in CA, so the other guys really need to step up their game.
NR
I find it strange that so many people here are cheering the idea of the power of the federal government being used to force citizens to give money to private corporations.
I guess this means that the corporate takeover of the U.S. is complete. Hearts and minds, and all that.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@NR: Obviously you don’t drive in the state of Ohio.
General Stuck
Congrats! You just won today’s borrowed teatard meme award
Malron
@Trentrunner: Trent, I agree with you. While America spends its time navel-gazing at millions of dollars wasted on a sham impeachment, millions of Americans will be suffering.
I’m sorry, this shit is not the least bit funny on any level.
scav
He’ll produce definitive proof that he was in fact born in Hawaii (turns out he’s been followed by a time-stamped movie camera for every single moment since conception) and they will impeach him because he misled them for so long about his Kenyan-Alien antecedents.
General Stuck
@Malron:
But for those on the gallows level.
Martin
@NR: Keep saying it. If we’re lucky, in 4 years people will be really happy having coverage and job mobility and still hate the idea, and then we can easily pass a public option or single payer. The GOP knows that’s the path we’re on. They’re trying to kill the whole exercise before that happens.
Violet
@NR:
Firebaggering?
I don’t recall people here “cheering” that aspect of it, but instead seeing it as a means to an end given all other circumstances. John Cole is on record as preferring single payer. Most people here would prefer a public option to keep costs in line, etc. But that was taken off the table and I certainly would rather have something than nothing. So we are where we are. It ain’t perfect but it’s better than it was.
Angry Black Lady
Great title, John!
Uh, now what y’all know bout them Texas boys
Comin’ down in candied toys, smokin’ weed and talkin’ noise
That’s my favorite lyric!
Steve
@NR: I already give defense contractors thousands of dollars every year so they can build missiles, I can survive buying an insurance policy.
Angry Black Lady
oops, i meant dougj.
oops, my bad! :D
scav
@NR: If the alternative is seeing people dying and crippled in the streets while Daddy Gotbucks is cheering on their death rattles as sweet music to preserve his definition of freedom from caring about others, well, yeah, I guess I could give a few minor whoops. It’s not like the corps don’t own large chunks of us anyway, we might as well get a little health care out of the deal. And ditto Violet.
Suck It Up!
@steviez314:
you read my mind.
General Stuck
@Violet:
More like a few of us huddled in a small corner of the firebagging netroots, Oboting on against all odds. It’s a bug, not a feature.
NR is just probing the wire
BR
Here’s what I don’t get.
If HCR is deemed unconstitutional, is Romney’s MA HCR unconstitutional?
And Another Thing...
@Lev: I don’t think you can opt out of Medicare. Dick Armey complains about this all the time. Plus Medicare Advantage is an option within Medicare.
Violet’s question is verrry interesting abt implications for Medicare.
Several months ago I spent quite a bit of time trying to determine if there is a separation clause in ACA and apparently there isn’t. So if part of the law is found unconstitutional then the whole law is inoperative, I think the absence of a separation clause is legislative malpractice. OR there are conspiracy theories to be developed. Regardless, if the mandate is deemed unconstitutional there will be the biggest *&^%storm of our lives.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Here’s their 10 step plan (I found it written on the Union Station bathroom wall next to Larry Craig’s phone #):
1. Call a big press conference and announce they’ll soon release their plan to investigate.
2. Call a big press conference and announce they’ll soon release their plan to investigate.
3. Call a big press conference and announce they’ll soon release their plan to investigate.
4. Release plan to investigate. It looks a lot like The Contract on America with the title crossed out and Investigate Obama written underneath in Sharpie marker.
5. Bombard Obama with a ton of stupid inquiries.
6. Scream that he is uppity/obstructive when he doesn’t respond immediately.
7. Receive blow jobs from the Sunday show bobbleheads.
8. Claim they can’t get back to the People’s Business until Obama tells them the color of the dress his mother was wearing two days before she went into labor with him.
9. Learn one or more the leaders of the Very Serious Investigation has been caught hiking the Appalachian Trail (or as the kids now say, Choking on a Kosher Salami).
10. Retreat in disarray.
Menzies
I don’t see impeachment as likely as just Darrell Issa being a total and complete dick by subpoena-ing everyone (and their respective mother) and in doing so bringing any meaningful government business to a halt. God knows he’ll have help from all corners, since Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor will only be too happy to use those same “procedural tricks” they decried to make sure no Democratic legislation ever makes it close to the floor.
That said, I agree with what someone else already said – Republicans getting in power means they suddenly have to put their money where their mouth is, and while in the short term they might be able to dismantle all the successes of the Obama administration to date, unless the country falls into such near-apocalyptic condition that it becomes catatonic and unable to respond, they’re going to develop a very, very sharp division between the Mitch McConnells – the unabashed big-business conservatives – and the Jim DeMints – who pretend to be Tea Party populists because it plays to their electorates. Not that it’ll stop them voting for the same crap in Congress, but it might net us a few more fun candidates before things normalize again.
BR
@And Another Thing…:
Seriously? Even Prop. 19 has a separation clause. (Maybe I shouldn’t say ‘even’ – the guys behind that are a lot more savvy than folks give them credit for.)
Violet
@Menzies:
Why does everything think this is true? If Republicans take only the House, they blame Democrats in the Senate and the President for “blocking their agenda” etc. If they take both the House and the Senate they blame Democrats for “not being bipartisan enough to get things done” and the President for refusing to sign anything that does get passed.
The Republicans don’t have to do anything at all. They just blame everyone else for things not getting done. Of course if they can muster up enough votes to impeach or undermine the health care bill or stagnate the DADT repeal process, or give rich people and corporations an even bigger tax break, even better.
General Stuck
@BR: depending, if the SCOTUS rules part or all of HCR unconstitutional, it would put into question a hundred years plus of federal intervention via the commerce clause, and would no doubt, be the final nail in the coffin of this once great country. Find your own bridge, this one is mine.
NR
Well, hell, why stop with health care? Since everyone here is so happy about people being forced to give money to private insurance companies, let’s privatize Social Security, too. Let it be administered by corporations that take 20-25% of the money for profits. Same with police, fire departments, etc. Let’s let all that stuff be handled by private corporations too. The only thing the government has to do is keep forcing us all to pay these private corporations.
Since we’ve decided that this kind of corporatism is a good thing, let’s have more of a good thing. Why not?
Cat Lady
Whatever the Republicans do it will end up winning the day in the media, Halperin will announce it’s great news for John McCain, Candy Crowley will tell us that “some say” Obama is weak and arrogant, David Gregory (is he still alive?) will ask Karl Rove to dance, firebaggers everywhere will fap fap fap on blogs about how Hillary would have been the bestest president evah!, Glenn Greenwald will give us XVII updates on every. single. argument. made., Howard Kurtz will be ratfucking Tina Brown for his wife’s clients, Luke Russert will be interviewing Boston College coeds to see how it’s all going down with the new voters for 2012, and I will be drinking heavily.
+3
JPL
@BR: My concern is about Soc. Sec and Medicare. Do we have a choice about withholding taxes for those programs?
BR
@General Stuck:
Well would that then lead to something like Prop. 19 being held up as constitutional because it wouldn’t violate commerce clause rules?
General Stuck
@Cat Lady:
You go girl!!
BR
@JPL:
If taxation for Social Security or Medicare are unconstitutional then so is taxation to feed the bloated Defense Department budget.
Eh, I guess it doesn’t matter either way. Once BofA’s balance sheets implode along with the rest of the financial sector, there’s going to be a lot less money going around.
General Stuck
@BR: Commerce clause is what is used, or has been used by the feds to enact national mandates across state lines, and has long been hated by the federalists, several of whom now sit on the SCOTUS. I doubt it would affect state programs, but maybe our legal eagles here could enlighten on that.
Menzies
@Violet:
Yeah, I shortened the term on that a little much. I think that tactic would work for some time, but I also think that the situation would be somewhat analogous to how things were on the left after Obama’s election. People had a lot of hope for a dynamic style of leadership that seemed poised to bring new energy into the movement, and what they got was a pretty pragmatic wonk.
Similarly I think the teabaggers are hoping that electing these new candidates will somehow be their version of “hope and change” – that Christine O’Donnell, Ken Buck, Sharron Angle, etc. represent a wave of new leaders who will define the new conservative movement. Of course that isn’t about to happen, not unless the parties just completely split from one another and that “rump Republican Party” emerges, and that same base will just get angrier and more disappointed in both parties.
I think that raises the question of whether their reaction will be to stay home or to vote for even more extreme candidates in primaries, who will probably just get knocked out in the general. It depends, I think, on how Boehner/McConnell handle the burgeoning Tea Party presence, though my money is on them brazenly co-opting it anyway.
fucen tarmal
ok…surprising young upstart oregon st, led by head coach, and first brother-in-law craig robinson secure the final at-large bid in the ncaa field of 64, there is casual allegation of favoritism from the usual suspects, however it is widely assumed that the favored kentucky wildcats with retired retarded jim bunning leading the cheers will clean their clocks in the first round…in his espn broadcasted bracket the president dismisses his upset pick and the predicted run to the elite 8 as required to keep a happy residence at the white house. in round two they beat another sec team, ole miss. leading to a match-up for the ages in the sweet 16 against the equally surprising cocks of south carolina.
cocks vs beavers with the elite 8 on the line…as a nation titters, a scandal starts to break that the west wing employees have a gambling pool and the president is winning handily…
as the beavers beat the cocks at the buzzer, a full on shit storm ensues, allegations of fixed games and gambling and the shock at the impropriety of it all…of course nothing comes of the primary investigation, but the president is tried for telling the special prosecutor the same thing he said on espn, that he picked oregon st. to appease his wife and his in-laws. meanwhile michelle obama had denied that she or any one in her family would be particularly upset if her husband had picked oregon st to lose…
that is it, that is your scandal.
juicy huh?
Wile E. Quixote
@BR:
I want to see Mittens put on the spot about the MA health plan. That and his religious beliefs are going to doom his 2012 campaign because he’ll never be able to get the talibangicals and the teabaggers to support him. I’m hoping though that he’ll spend a fuckload of money trying.
I’ve got some absolutely fantastic ideas for ratfucking the Republicans in 2012, now I just need the cash to implement them.
PaulW
If the Republicans take the House, my Impeachment scenario with Style Points is that the Republicans impeach BIDEN, not Obama. They will investigate Biden’s history of plagiarism and have him voted out. THEN they force Obama to take a Republican – probably McCain – as Vice President. THEN they impeach Obama for being Hawaiian. Then newly installed McCain as Prez brings in Palin as VP and it will be as though the 2008 election never happened…
Otherwise, my impeachment scenario is pretty basic: the Republican House goes after Obama’s birth certificate. It’s easy, it’s simple, it satisfies their teabagger base who’s been pumped up with all this foreign-born conspiracy crap.
Wile E. Quixote
@NR:
You’re right, that sort of thing is horrible. You should protest it by chaining yourself to the White House fence, covering yourself in gasoline and setting yourself on fire. I’m sure that once you do the powers that be will see the error of their ways and pass a single-payer plan.
Violet
@NR:
I think your reading comprehension needs some work. Here’s what I said:
and
and
and
How did you get “so happy about people being forced to give money to private insurance companies” out of that? It’s not in there. People here were excited to see something move forward, recognizing that it’s not perfect and hoping that like so many other big programs before it (Social Security, Medicare, etc.) it was a first step not the final step.
I’m not at all thrilled with the requirement to buy insurance, but I understand why it’s necessary at this point. It was the only way to get enough buy in to move things forward. Not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, etc.
FormerSwingVoter
My impeachment scenario: Republicans win the House. They immediately impeach, lacking the understanding that a law has to be broken.
Everyone votes along party lines, which I think would move it to the Senate, where it dies.
BR
@Wile E. Quixote:
Jed (at dkos) is a good person to get in touch with – he’s a master with video. He and I did a lot of stuff during the primaries that Team Hillary was unhappy about :)
And Another Thing...
@JPL: No. Certain foreign nationals working in the US who can prove that they are making payments and are continuously covered by their country of origin can sign waivers of coverage in the US for Social Security. I don’t recall about Medicare witholding. My info is 15 years out of date, but would be surprised if it has changed.
After the first pay period of the year we’d always have somebody complaining to payroll about what’s this FICA stuff. They usually were very well paid employees who had maxed out so early in the prior year that they’d forgotten about it.
What Armey complains about is that he doesn’t want Medicare benefits and wants to opt out. He’s pretty emotional about it.
Suck It Up!
these scenarios assume that Obama’s supporters will sit back and take all this shit.
People are forgetting how this whole thing will quickly turn into a race war. These fools won’t even get passed GO before they feel the wrath of the black community on their asses. No way in hell we gonna let Obama go down for nonsense. Impeach the first black president? Did these guys watch our reaction the night he won? Do they know that the fear of his assassination is still in the back of our minds and will be set afire at any declaration of impeachment? Do they think we haven’t noticed the racist vile lies that they have been spewing for the past 20 months?
I’d like to think that the entire Dem party would come out and fiercely push back on this, but I’m not so sure anymore. And I certainly hope that other minorities in this country don’t sit back and think this doesn’t effect them.
The GOP won’t just flop on this, they will be torn to shreds. And I will be done with this country if in the next election, the public doesn’t make the GOP pay for the evil they have unleashed in this country.
I’m really pissed right now. Not just over this whole discussion but from a headline I saw in the New York Times:
A Small Town Boy From Ohio, at Cusp of Power in Washington
Isn’t that quaint?
BR
@Suck It Up!:
Orange Narcissist From Ohio Comes To Grips With His Feeble Mind
Steve
@And Another Thing…: It’s not mandatory to have a severability clause. It’s not necessarily all or nothing without one. Look at the Free Enterprise Fund case from a few months back.
eemom
As I said before, I’m firmly with the “not funny” minority on this one.
Hell, why not throw in some HCR Repeal “scenarios” too? Fucking hilarious. Or here’s an idea — how about “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran”?
In fact, SO not funny — bordering on offensive — do I find this little imaginative exercise, and SO much less funny does it get with each
tired repetitionwhimsical variation thereof, that I think I’ll just keep repeating what Cat48 said earlier, and my response.@cat48:
This times a zillion.
Also nothing amusing about accusing a man of “high crimes and misdemeanors” who has committed no crime at all except trying to do the fucking job he was elected to.
Don’t mean to be inflammatory here—but if ever the phrase “high tech lynching” was justified, well, this is it.
There is, also, nothing amusing about how low we have sunk as a nation if something like that is allowed to happen.
Violet
@BR:
Freakishly Tall Ooompa-Loompa Might Get Keys to Chocolate Factory
General Stuck
@Suck It Up!:
You and me both, about a lot of things, not the least of which concerns my supposed own side politically. I much prefer anger to disappointment. It’s choosin’ up sides time, and if you ain’t on my side, then you’re on the other. And i don’t care who it is. These are not days for polite political discussion over tea and crumpets.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Sometimes gallows humor is the possible response. No one here is hoping for any of these scenarios, but, if the Republicans win, I would not be surprised if they try to impeach. In my opinion, they are that reckless and short sighted.
BR
@eemom:
This.
I had a lot of problems with Russert, but the one thing he would do at least some of the time was force a GOPer to acknowledge that they were a) lying, b) being hypocritical, or c) both. Rachel Maddow is really the only journalist left who does that, but she’s marginalized by the opinionmakers.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m sorry, but this is not “gallows humor.” Gallows humor is when you are stuck at the “gallows” with no way out — it’s not fantasizing about all the bad shit that would happen to make you get there.
How about “assassination” scenarios? There are plenty who have realistically worried about that kind of end to this presidency. Wouldn’t that be even BETTER “gallows humor,” by your definition?
dirge
Tried this out in another thread, but it got lost in the noise…
If you figure you’re getting an impeachment circus anyway, you might as well set yourself up as the ringmaster, so…
In the run-up to the 2012 elections, Obama catalogs his war on terror crimes, pardons everybody involved and submits the whole thing to the house as articles of impeachment against himself.
He gets to look like he’s taking responsibility for his actions in a really ballsy way and forces the Republicans to make the case that he’s being too tough on terror, which would be hilarious to watch, while preempting any talk about impeaching him on any other grounds.
I think this is the absolutely correct way for a president to acknowledge having given orders that break laws, and I think it’s potentially good politics too.
NR
@Violet:
Okay, so you’re not happy about it, you’re just excited about it? All right, then change my comment about people here being happy about the government forcing everyone to give money to private corporations to people here being excited about the government forcing everyone to give money to private corporations. My point still stands. If this is something to get excited about, you all should be just as excited to see it happen in other places, too.
As was repeatedly pointed out back during the HIR debate, this corporatist monstrosity is not comparable to Social Security or Medicare. Social Security and Medicare both started out as government programs. This HIR bill is not a government program. The only thing it is a first step towards is more corporate control of our health care system. But you all are apparently just fine with that, so like I said, it looks like the corporate takeover of America is complete. They’ve won the hearts and minds of the people.
Chyron HR
@NR:
Why, we’re so excited that everyone was talking about a completely different subject until you wandered in and started bitching about all this cheering that the voices in your head are doing.
fucen tarmal
@dirge:
i like it, but….
you give the republicans the high ground of not being cynical…the attack becomes that obama is a cynical politician who has been in washington too long. that he no longer trusts the republicans(good faith assumed, per logical fallacy) and thus we usher in president palin.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: I would have used the more accurate term “black humor” or “black comedy”,” but I did not want anyone to assume that I was referring to racial jokes. Also, impeachment, we survive and it likely breaks GOP power for quite a while. Assassination is something I am afraid our political system would have trouble surviving and coming out whole.
General Stuck
@NR:
Jeebus dude, give it a rest why don’t you. The only way a mandate wasn’t necessary, was to go full single payer. Everyone knows that, and the PO was so weak, it wouldn’t have made much difference. There are lots of regulatory benefits for consumers in the bill, and expansion of popular medicaid program. Yes, the corporations are going to do ok, but they now have to spend more of their intake on actually providing health care. The system still sucks, and the magic po pony would have done little in the short run to change that. I agree that having a for profit hc system in this country is still headed for collapse fairly soon, and nothing much would have stopped that, and then will be the political will and oxygen to make single payer happen. In the meantime, a lot more people will be eligible for hc. I mean, half the country are idiots, and elect idiots to represent them. Huffing and puffing on blogs will not change that fact.
russell
I say steviez314 won it at 6, but my scenario is this:
And then we kick their sorry asses the hell out of the Union.
Sayonara SC.
Violet
@NR:
No, you are incorrect. People were happy about the entirety of the health care law, not necessarily happy about specific segments of it. But sometimes you have to take the bad with the good and in this case it seems that most people determined that the “making people buy insurance” part of it was less bad than letting the whole thing fall apart and failing to move the health care situation forward yet again.
Have you asked people here if they specifically are happy, or excited, about that one issue aside from every other aspect of the health care debate? Because if you isolate the “you have to buy health care” issue, assuming nothing else changes but the mandate to buy health insurance, then probably people wouldn’t be happy about it. But it doesn’t exist in isolation so you can’t just select out that one part. It comes as a package along with other things.
And your point fails. The mandate to buy health insurance doesn’t exist in isolation from other aspects of the health insurance law, therefore it by itself isn’t transferable to other issues.
We will see. There is also the possibility that down the road people may realize that a public option is really the right way to go and it could be passed. Then there really will be a government program. However, you have to start somewhere and compromise was essential. At least this way people who didn’t have health insurance before will be able to get it now. I’m glad of that. I would guess they are too.
eemom
That’s a pretty gigantic leap of faith, especially coming from folks who have no hesitation about assuming — insisting, actually — that a majority Republican Congress absolutely, inevitably, would result in the passage of Articles of Impeachment when there has been nothing even remotely resembling any crime at all.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Yes, and if they do impeach over nothing, that should be the thing that causes people to finally realize just how nuts they are. I get that you disagree with the premise of the post and do not find any humor in the subject at all. The fact that someone does find humor in black comedic projections does not mean that the person wants the bad thing to happen.
Davis X. Machina
You’re not thinking cynically enough…
It would take massive hypocrisy, of course, but if the the House GOP really wanted Obama’s scalp, they’d impeach him for war crimes, civil liberties abuses, or both. And promise up front not to go after Biden, too.
That’d put a lot of Democrats between a rock and a hard place.
If one or more articles on those grounds get voted out of a GOP-controlled House Judiciary, they’ll pass the whole House easily, with the help of 25-35 Democratic votes. And they won’t all be from the right, from Blue Dogs, either, needless to say.
dirge
@fucen tarmal:
Don’t think so, since in this scenario he’s taking responsibility in a way that’s never been attempted before. And it shouldn’t be hard to spin self-impeachment as an expression of trust in the political system, even though you’re really mostly trusting your PR people to keep the narrative favorable.
I think the real danger is that once you’ve started it you’ll lose control — give them subpoena power and they’ll head straight for your underwear drawer. But if you’re well prepared to ridicule the Republicans for failure to address the serious issues of executive accountability that you’ve raised you might be able to get the Village on your side and keep them there.
General Stuck
@eemom:
Well, I would call it suspecting, and not without some pretty decent empirical notions in that arena.
I guess it all has to do with what a persons evaluation is of the mental status of your average House wingnut. I watch them fairly closely and have for a while. They are politically insane right now, and desperate, and I would not put any fucking thing past them, even something that could obviously blowback and harm them. They just don’t care anymore, and everything is a hail mary for them. HCR pushed them over the edge they were already dangling from. I make humor out of about anything, even the darkest of possibilities. You can do want you want.
xephyr
Speaking of David Brooks, saw him tonight (with Jim Lehrer and Mark Shields). Big mistake. I wanted to whap him upside the head with a board. Otherwise I’m non-violent.
Citizen Alan
@General Stuck:
Please. I personally think that the mandate is within Congress’ power, but I’m not on the Supreme Court. However, I don’t think it’s a “borrowed teatard meme” to point out that if Romney had become president and passed a health care bill with a mandate, a lot more people on the left would be screaming about what a giveaway to the insurance industry it was. I’m trying to imagine a Republican Congress mandating that nearly everyone in the country be required to purchase products from a hated industry that overtly favors the GOP in its political giving and folks on the left being as sanguine about it as you are.
Actually, this reminds me of any interesting question — Has anyone checked the tax filings of the Supreme Court to see who is invested heavily in the health insurance industry? My expectation is that the Roberts 5 will strike down the mandate just to damage Obama and the Democratic Party, but I suppose if one or more of them are heavily invested in the insurance companies, that might sway them over.
Citizen Alan
@Malron:
It’s called gallows humor. I’m sure the quips and bon mots flying back and forth on the Titanic were hilarious!
Wile E. Quixote
@Omnes Omnibus:
As eemom pointed out this isn’t gallows humor. Gallows humor is my friend visiting me in the hospital after my left leg was amputated and saying “well at least you’ll have a great pirate costume at Halloween”. Gallows humor is me taking him up on it, tricking out my prosthesis to look like a peg leg and then using the picture on my Christmas cards that year with the caption “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When life cuts your leg off, dress up as a pirate for Halloween.” That’s gallows humor, this is just sick, masturbatory bullshit.
Steve
@Citizen Alan: Isn’t it odd that the health care bill was a big wet sloppy kiss to the insurance industry, and yet the health insurers are currently donating by an 8-1 margin to the party that promises to repeal the bill. Worth thinking about.
Wile E. Quixote
@xephyr:
To steal from the great DougJ (DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice) the only good thing that could come out of a meeting of Jim Lehrer, Mark Shields and David Brooks would be a double-murder and a suicide.
Omnes Omnibus
@Wile E. Quixote: As I noted above, black humor was probably the more accurate characterization.
ETA: I noticed your unmarked edit. Opinions clearly differ.
John Bird
Remember what motivated Byron Williams? The conspiracy, hinted at by every radio host on the right at some point or another, between Soros, Obama, and Petrobras to blow up the Deepwater Horizon well?
Think it’s too crazy to fly in Congressional hearings? I don’t.
General Stuck
@Citizen Alan:
It was almost word for word what the tea tards and goopers have been saying for months.
General Stuck
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’ve had the same reticence about using “black humor” on a liberal blog. And then spending the next 5 hours explaining what I meant by that. It gives me a chuckle Wile of all people here, giving lectures on suitable expressions for polite discourse. Irony alert.
eemom
Some of you are missing the point. I’m not suggesting that anyone here actually wants impeachment to happen — even though DougJisthebusinessandeconomicseditorofBalloonJuice has, in fact, said that while he doesn’t want the Repubs to win control of Congress, he does want to see impeachment happen if they do. Whatever — how sick of a fuck the FP’er is, is also beside the point.
Nor am I arguing about the likelihood of impeachment happening or not if the Republicans do win control of Congress.
I’m just trying to point out that if impeachment DID happen, it would be about as fucking funny and entertaining as Hiroshima. And that it makes just about the same amount of sense to assume that something good would come of it. And therefore that playing games over how it might come about, is just about the same as playing “Hiroshima 2011 for XBox.”
eemom
Now THAT, is funny — at least as originally applied to Brooks and Collins.
Shields and Lehrer really aren’t deserving of such a fate.
General Stuck
@eemom:
It would be a political act, and would only signify the current calamity that is our current state of the union. They cannot remove him from office without conviction in the senate.
If you believe, as I do, that we are at the beginning of some serious rebellion and even civil unrest in this country, then a toothless political act such as impeachment will only be the beginning of far more ugly things. I don’t want it to happen, nor hope it to happen, but black humor is a time tested way of dealing with dread of what may, or likely will happen. that is all it is. Now joking about something like assassination would be well over the line, but impeachment is for better or worse, a legitimate element of our governing structure, even if used improperly.
fasteddie9318
Just one, really.
“The Sheriff’s a ni*! That ain’t in no consatooshun nowheres!”
General Stuck
@eemom:
Maybe this will cheer you up eemom :-)
Uriel
@eemom:
Don’t be silly- that game is a PS3 exclusive. No way xbox could handle the graphics.
eemom
@General Stuck:
uh…..yeah. Thanks.
Wow. I like that song but I’d never seen that video before. Just another gut-wrenching example of how many of those 50 year old apocalyptic visions could have been written yesterday.
fwiw, I do believe we’re on the eve of destruction. If we’re gonna imagine what pushes us over the edge, however, I’d much rather fantasize about furious mobs storming Wall Street and and Capitol Hill, and good old fashioned French style head rolling, than fucking Speaker Orange No-Boner calling a vote on articles of impeachment while the Village idiots jerk off on Twitter.
tkogrumpy
@Suck It Up!: You can count on this white boy.
tkogrumpy
@dirge: Well,I like it.
Wile E. Quixote
@Uriel:
Yeah, I was pretty bummed out when they cancelled the Wii version for the same reason, the attachment that converted the Wiimote into a Norden bombsight looked pretty sweet.
Wile E. Quixote
@General Stuck:
You keep using these words, they don’t mean what you think they mean. Gallows humor is joking with someone who’s about to lose their leg to cancer that being an amputee sucks, but you can’t beat the parking. This wanking about as funny as telling that person “Hey, maybe the cancer has metastasized and gotten into your brain and lungs”.
Nor is this “black humor” or black comedy. Doctor Strangelove is a blackly humorous film, The Day After isn’t. The morons who keep saying that this is “gallows humor” or “black comedy” have about as much of an understanding of those two concepts as Alanis Morrissette does of the concept of irony.
Wile E. Quixote
@General Stuck:
You keep using these words, they don’t mean what you think they mean. Gallows humor is joking with someone who’s about to lose their leg to cancer that being an amputee sucks, but you can’t beat the parking. This wanking about as funny as telling that person “Hey, maybe the cancer has metastasized and gotten into your brain and lungs”.
Nor is this “black humor” or black comedy. Doctor Strangelove is a blackly humorous film, The Day After isn’t. The morons who keep saying that this is “gallows humor” or “black comedy” have about as much of an understanding of those two concepts as Alanis Morrissette does of the concept of irony.
General Stuck
@Wile E. Quixote:
Blow it out your ass whackjob
Wile E. Quixote
@General Stuck:
And of course your ability to form a witty comeback is as weak as your grasp of the concepts of irony, gallows humor or black humor.
General Stuck
@Wile E. Quixote:
After reading your violence laced bullshit for a couple of years now, you are going to lecture on humor of any kind. I don’t think so, but if you want a flame war, you caught me in the right mood. Now stfu and crawl back into your psycho hole.
witty enough?
mai naem
I don’t know about the scenario but I will gu-aran-tayyy you that Joe Lieberdick will be involved as one of the votes that will have to be bribed out of the a#$hole with money and promises of support for his reelection. Also too, Ben Nelson will talk about how awful Obama is and vote for impeachment. Mary Landrieu in Landrieu fashion will ask for some corporate whore item in exchange for the vote, will receive the bribe and then say that that was not enough and ask for further corporate whore items. And, yes I am calling Mary Landrieu a whore. Sue me.
Wile E. Quixote
@General Stuck:
“Caught you in the right mood?” Dude, the only mood you have is “pissy little bitch”, it would be something if I caught you outside of that mood.
I think I’ll crawl back onto your mom instead. OK, that was pretty lame, but nowhere near as lame as your attempt to explain the concept of “black humor” or as lame as your lack of understanding that sitting around speculating upon possible impeachment scenarios is only marginally less, sick, twisted and wrong than sitting around speculating upon possible assassination scenarios.
General Stuck
@Wile E. Quixote:
Are you on drugs? or do you need some?
Xenos
Not you two again. Sheesh.
As for impeachment, it has been promised to the teatard base. That base wants the spectacle, because they think along the lines of Tim McVeigh: blow something up and everybody will start to pay attention, and because people like them are the true Americans and the real majority, once they look around they will naturally agree with them and take action like I want them to. And part of this teatard base just can’t cope with change, with their own aging and disappointment in life, and if they can’t be the elite then they want the satisfaction of driving the whole nation down. And they feel justified because it is not ‘their’ country anymore, so fuck it.
So we definitely will see some attempt to impeach Obama – out of nihilism and the need to keep some sort of ‘populist; momentum going. And if they try it, it will very likely fail, will strengthen Obama but wreck the political process for another 40 years.
Because this will mean war. I want 50 years of illegal international operations leaked from the government, and I want every one of the fuckers from Kissinger on down to face war crimes trials. I want the voter caging GOP functionaries facing RICO indictments. I want the NSA leaking the full records of the blackberry emails maintained by the W. White House. At the point of maximum strength, with Obama winning in 2012 with some serious coattails, the Democrats need to snuff out the GOP. If they make this personal enough against Obama maybe he will be pissed off enough to really start to fight back on the battlefield the GOP has already chosen.
So I don’t mind some gallows humor, because in the end it is not my party that will be facing the gallows soon enough.
General Stuck
@Xenos:
It’s going to get a lot worse, though not with me involved.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
My scenario is that it won’t happen. There’s nothing to be gained by it.
Their best case outcome is making Joe Biden president, and probably breaking the country for a while, and alienating a lot of voters.
Worst case, they fail to remove the president, and alienate a lot of voters, insuring reelection for the impeached president.
It’s a move that is remarkably more stupid than the suggested impeachment of Bush was a few years ago, and it won’t happen for roughly the same reason that one didn’t happen.
This is pundit-blog churn, whose only purpose is to stir up traffic. Isn’t there a good dog bowel movement to talk about today?
Just Some Fuckhead
I agree with eemom, what a ridiculous wanktacular topic.
Triassic Sands
Barack Obama send in troops? Yeah, that I’ve gotta see.
Joey Maloney
@Jay C:
Yes, we well remember how the “Brooks Brothers riot” was the turning point in the 2000 election, how the country recoiled in horror and disgust from the sight of overfed, overprivileged Congressional aides using violence to shut down the election count. And then President Gore cruised to his narrow, but deserved, victory.
Uloborus
First, I really don’t think BJ is a blog for ‘pundits’ and is too good for this topic. It’s mostly a discussion group for moderate liberals. I mean, cats and food. An entirely joking thread is completely normal and expected and John ain’t claimin’ otherwise.
Second, a few of you folks think this is too horrible to be funny. There is no absolute standard of that, and most humor is offensive by someone’s definition. It’s cool that you’re not laughing, but we are and there really is no other standard.
Personally I think this is ripe for humor. It’s something that would be distasteful but not catastrophic, is distinctly possible, and if it does happen will inevitably involve a lot of weirdness. Sounds funny to me.
A. Lurker
I was going to suggest that maybe Obama could be impeached for his willingness to assert that he has the authority to mark a US Citizen for death, regardless of what any other branch of government says about it. Not to mention the whole defense and possible expansion of Bush-era torture programs.
Of course, to impeach him on those grounds, the majority of Congress would have to take a good, hard look at their own selves, and that ain’t gonna happen. So if they do impeach him, it’ll probably be because he didn’t provide his Kenyan birth certificate or didn’t wear matching socks with his shoes or some stupid shit like that.