If this PPP poll of NC Republicans is any indication, a Clinton presidency in 2017 is going to be splendiferous quantities of awesome from day one.
Dragon and Phoenix must fight, for it is the way of all things. They have fought since the dawn of time and will still battle across the skies long after the memories of our deeds have faded into dust.
Or something like that. I know it involves eternity and mythical creatures. You know, like “moderate Republicans” and stuff.
Open thread.
Kryptik
Why wait, huh? Why not impeach her before inauguration at all and petition to void the election wholesale, you dips? Just pass a law before the new gov’t takes office declaring any Democratic victory null and void or something, since you’re so intent on making that the prevailing attitude anyway.
Peale
Should Democrats care?
I think the list of Democrats who the Republican voters don’t want impeached is fairly short. Maybe we should try running Mondale again. He’s still alive and kicking.
Linda Featheringill
The Republicans are awfully sure that Hillary will become President.
I do think, however, that the spectacle of the 11-hour email inquisition may have guaranteed her election.
dmsilev
Wasn’t there some GOP Rep who proposed pre-impeaching Clinton? Clearly, those who propose to wait until she actually takes office are RINO squishes.
Emerald
And they may get their chance to impeach. After the debate, the Biden dropout, and the Benghazzzzziiiiiiii hearings, two polls in Iowa have Hillary up by 41 and 38 points over Sanders.
Over at the GOS, the Berniacs are busy unskewing as fast as they can.
The Orange
dmsilev
I wonder what the same poll would have found in _South_ Carolina?
(Motto: “The Crazier Carolina”)
low-tech cyclist
Verdict first, charges later – that’s our modern GOP!
BGinCHI
White people be crazy.
Hal
Do people not realize you have to break the law to be impeached? That’s it’s not simply to remove someone you don’t like? Of course I’m sure the average NC republican voter already has a ready list of criminal offenses Hillary Clinton has committed.
BobS
On the bright side, maybe it will cause her to be more cautious with respect to the destruction of other countries. Not too probable, since it is the equally bloodthirsty Republicans we’re talking about, and there’s also the likelihood the other two stooges -Susan Rice and Samantha Power – will be tagging along, but one can hope.
dmsilev
@Hal: “High crimes and misdemeanors”. Maybe take that out of context and just impeach her for “Misdemeanors”. I’m sure at some point in her life, Hillary has crossed a road outside of a painted crosswalk zone.
low-tech cyclist
@Emerald:
One of those polls is by Loras College, which ought to be “Lorax College,” dammit.
NonyNony
Check out page 11 with the various Republican candidate favorables/unfavorables among Republicans.
Jeb is in trouble. 45% unfavorable among NC voters. Trump is only at 35%. Yow – Jeb is not going to be the nominee unless some major change happens in the next few months.
Also on page 12 with the first and second choices – Trump is first choice, Carson is second. But if the race were just between Ben Carson and Donald Trump, Carson wins. That’s interesting – Carson is the only one that beats Trump in that question. Cruz, Jeb and Rubio all lose (though Rubio comes the closest). Maybe I’m wrong – maybe the clown car falling by the wayside will actually help Trump instead of hurting him.
Iowa Old Lady
@Emerald: Trump is also unskewing the polls that show Carson ahead. Loser!
MattF
Well, they can’t actually prove that she’s done anything wrong, so impeachment is the only option.
jayjaybear
Since impeachment is a political rather than a legal procedure, “high crimes and misdemeanors” is whatever House leadership says it is. There doesn’t need to be any actual crime, only the surety of a majority to impeach. The major problem the Batshit Caucus in the House has had with impeaching Obama was the lack of a 2/3 majority vote to convict in the Senate, otherwise the nutcases would have already had him in the dock.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Hal:
Actually, the US Constitution is deliberately vague on what the grounds for impeachment are, because the writers wanted to leave their options open for getting rid of politicians even if they couldn’t prove actual crimes. I’m currently reading Ron Chernow’s excellent biography of Alexander Hamilton and he talks about that.
NonyNony
@Hal:
You do not, in fact, need to break the law to be impeached. That’s a common misconception. All that you need to have is a majority in the House of Representatives willing to write up articles of impeachment indicating that you are guilty of something that rises to the level of bribery, treason, high crimes or misdemeanors and send it off to the Senate. Voila – you’re impeached.
To get a conviction you also need is a 2/3 majority in the Senate to vote that the House is correct and you are guilty of whatever crime they wrote you up for.
So basically all it would take is for a majority in the House to agree to articles of impeachment indicating that Clinton was guilty of the murder of Vince Foster or whatever it is that the fever swamps think she did in Benghazi or whatever crime they want to make up. Done – she’s impeached. Off to the Senate to see if they convict her (which, if somehow the GOP could get control of 2/3 of the Senate, they might.)
Gimlet
CBS gets into the rumor click business.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-possible-halloween-revolt-against-cops-by-anarchists/
Last Updated Oct 27, 2015 1:58 PM EDT
The FBI has issued an alert to law enforcement about a possible “Halloween Revolt” by a dangerous anarchist group, an official has confirmed to CBS News.
Federal officials issued a bulletin to local police departments about the potential for attacks against their officers, CBS News has learned.
As first reported by the New York Post, a group known as the National Liberation Militia may be planning to dress in costume, cause a disturbance, and then ambush police who come to help. The Post reports the group has recommended members wear typical holiday masks and bring weapons like bricks and firearms.
NYPD officials told the Post there is no specific threat to New York City, and they are monitoring the situation.
Betty Cracker
Sherrod Brown endorsed Hillary Clinton today.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Emerald: To say I’m not a Berniac is an understatement, but one of those polls looks like it deserves to be unskewed
No idea about the other sample.
dogwood
If Hillary Clinton is elected I look forward to the new Republican talking points. Hillary is the most left wing Marxist ever elected. And that Obama fellow was a prince of a guy to work with compared to her.
BobS
@BGinCHI: Yeah they are
raven
And she needs to look these motherfuckers in the eye and say “bring it, punks”.
Gimlet
Impeach?
I’m sure a friend of mine said that Fox News expected her to be arrested any day now for crimes related to her email server.
shell
Definitely getting a head start on their sored-ness.
(Republican wins= the American people have spoken!
Democrat wins=Fraud! Invalid! Secession! Impeach! Busloads of illegal immigrants organized by the DNC! A black guy holding the door for people going into vote! And thats just for starters.)
rikyrah
THE ASSAULT AT SPRING VALLEY HIGH WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED IF THE GIRL WAS WHITE
Damon Young, 10/26/15
I do not know what happened in that classroom at Spring Valley High School before Deputy Ben Fields violently assaulted a teen girl who was, apparently, “resisting arrest.” I’m quite sure, however, that information will find its way into the public sphere very soon. We will also know more about Deputy Fields — his work history, his relationship with the students, his personal life — and we will definitely know more about the girl who was the victim of assault. Perhaps her name won’t be made public, but her academic record and behavioral history will likely be. There will also be conversations about the need to have actual police officers in schools, and whether their presence helps control or helps contribute to an adverse environment.
All of this context will congeal to cloud and color how this case will be deconstructed, assessed, and, ultimately, decided. And this will be the wrongest thing to do, because none of that matters here. At least not in a macro sense. The only thing that matters when deciding how to think about and discuss this story is race. Specifically, the race of the officer (White) and the race of the student who was assaulted (Black). This is where the conversation about this — any conversation about this — needs to start. And then, once you acknowledge that the most meaningful conversation to have about this story needs to start with race, you’ll be more prepared for the next conversation, which is a bit more complex.
I have no doubt that if the student who was assaulted happened to be a Black boy instead of a Black girl, the assault still would have occurred. I also don’t have much doubt that if the student who was assaulted happened to be a White boy, the assault still might have occurred. Maybe it wouldn’t have. But I’m not confident in saying that. I can still see it happening.
http://verysmartbrothas.com/the-assault-at-spring-valley-high-would-not-have-happened-if-the-girl-was-white/
NonyNony
@Betty Cracker: “Democrats mostly decide not to endorse the guy who has famously refused to join the Democratic Party for decades” is such a non-story. Of course most of them are endorsing Clinton – it’s surprising that Sanders has picked up any endorsements from Democrats to be quite honest. That isn’t how political party machines work.
If Sanders thought he was going to gain a lot of Dem endorsements then I’d think he was a fool. But something tells me that he knew going into this that he wasn’t going to win the “invisible primary”.
Arclite
The only thing that would have been funnier is if the percent not for impeachment was 27% instead of 24%.
goblue72
The GOP has successfully converted (in the minds of its supporters) “impeachment” into “recall” – a la California’s recall of Gov. Gray Davis. (which gave us the Governator, whose piss poor management of the state’s budget we are still clawing our way out of)
Gimlet
@rikyrah:
If she wouldn’t get out of the desk, he should have dragged the desk into the hall.
goblue72
@Arclite: I’d say its safely within the MOE for Crazification Factor.
Amir Khalid
@Hal:
I did ask the other day if President Hillary could be impeached for Secretary Hillary’s high crimes and/or misdemeanours, and removed from office upon conviction. I’m not sure, but I think the answer was maybe.
goblue72
@NonyNony: They Reich Wing has successfully erased “a well-trained militia” as a qualifier from the 2nd Amendment. Why anyone is surprised they’ve turned “high crimes and misdemeanors” into “member of Democratic Party” is beyond me.
dogwood
@jayjaybear:
I disagree. They didn’t care that they didn’t have a 2/3 Senate majority when they impeached Clinton. Impeachment was a problem with Obama for two reasons. First anything they could drum up would lack the salacious personal stuff that the public and press gravitated to in ”98. And second, job approval isn’t the same as personal favorability where Obama scores high. Selling Obama as a crook or a sleeze wouldn’t play well outside of the Fox News bubble.
MattF
@Amir Khalid: What the Constitution says:
And that’s the whole thing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
anyone know what Preisdent Nixon is talking about here?
Maybe Jeb?$! stole his lunch out of the Lehman Bros’ break room fridge one time?
Amir Khalid
Is your dog getting fat in middle age?
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Republicans have pretty much given up on any pretense of respecting democracy. They’ve made it as clear as they can that they will not, under any circumstances, abide by the results of an election unless they win it.
To be truthful, though, I’ve been a little amazed at how timid they’ve been so far. I don’t know, to take one example, why they don’t just refuse to seat any Democrats in Congress at all. Each House is the judge over who gets to sit in it. What would keep the Republicans, who now hold the majority in both houses, from just saying, after the elections is 2016, “Well, we aren’t going to recognize the legitimacy of any Democrats who ‘won’ in 2016, and we won’t accept their credentials or let them get sworn in.”? They could wipe out the whole Democratic side in the House and keep 15 or more Democrats from taking their seats in the Senate. Yeah, it’s extreme, but not all that much more so than impeaching President Clinton or what they’ve done to President Obama, or talking seriously about impeaching the next Democratic president on January 20, 2017.
These are the same people (not literally, but in spirit) who began a war because they didn’t like the outcome of an election in 1860, after all…
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: I think the answer would be ‘yes’.
Davis X. Machina
@Emerald:
How can America be so wrong?
I’m not talking to America again.
America, you’re such a .….heifer!
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Gimlet:
Considering their size differential, he probably could have picked her and the desk up together and carried it into the hallway. But, no, she was refusing to Obey, so she had to be punished.
Amir Khalid
@MattF:
That’s just it. It doesn’t say if you can be removed from this post for something you did in that post.
Oatler.
They might go Old School Vatican on her and retroactively damn her to Hell.
coloradoblue
Because there wasn’t a “What a stupid f*cking question” option?
Davis X. Machina
@MattF: “Other high crimes and misdemeanors” is basically 100% operationally defined. Jerry Ford — when he was still Minority Leader, needless to say — said in 1970 that “An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.”
There’s no check on that, no court to appeal it to, except to turn the bums out who construe the Constitution in a way you don’t like.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and while I’m strolling around twitter procrastinating, this is apparently the Talking Point that Poppy, Bar and Dumbya came up with to help Jeb$?! save his campaign
(yeah, that’s Laura Inghaham) and I cite this response…
…only because Pethokoukis is an NRO/AEI/Commentary affiliated blowahard
Roger Moore
Actually Dragon and Phoenix are supposed to by symbolic of a harmonious marriage, so that’s not such a good symbol.
Mustang Bobby
@goblue72: They are very deft at turning chicken shit into pate de foie gras. They’ll forgive David Vitter and Newt Gingrich for their whoring, because they’re Christians: “We are all sinners.” But let Bill Clinton get his horn honked and it’s treason. Oh, and Nixon got railroaded.
nominus
I can’t wait to see who Hillary nominates for VP. I know it won’t be someone whom the GOP hates as much as HRC, but hopefully it will be someone that makes them shudder at the thought of taking over. Cheap impeachment insurance….although if they actually had the votes to remove a president I suppose the VP wouldn’t be an obstacle either, merely a speedbump on the road to a Ryan presidency.
NonyNony
@Amir Khalid: The answer is a resounding yes. A president can be impeached for anything that Congress can get a majority of the House to vote for. If they could get a majority to vote to impeach her for laughing during the Benghazi hearing last week, she could be impeached for that.
But the thing even many Americans miss is that while impeachment requires only a simple majority, conviction requires a 2/3 majority in the Senate. That’s the check that was put into place to prevent the impeachment process from getting too political while still making it relatively easy for a Congress to remove a president who was unfit for the office. It’s the reason we’ve never had a successful impeachment conviction in this country – everyone knows that the barrier to conviction requires real crimes, and the closest we’ve ever come to that was Nixon, who resigned from office rather than go through the trial in the Senate.
Turner Hedenkoff
I think a big chunk of Republicans are just trolling pollsters in these early surveys. The question sounds like a bit of trolling, too.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@rikyrah:
It’s still very possible that the student would have been assaulted if she was white.
Trust me, I can tell you as a white woman that violent white men have very little compunction about trying to shove me around. We’re only delicate little flowers who must be protected when it’s a non-white person who’s trying to abuse us. White man beating up a white woman? Eh, she must have done something to deserve it.
Now, a black or Latino cop manhandling a white woman? That’s a totally different story.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
As far as I can tell, President Hillary could be impeached for private citizen Hillary’s high crimes and misdemeanors, or just because the Republicans don’t like her.
Bobby Thomson
@Emerald: the Monmouth poll was limited to Dems who voted in recent uncontested primaries and is suspect. Don’t know about Loras, other than that they speak for the trees.
Davis X. Machina
@dogwood:
There’s no mass audience, perhaps, but not no audience, outside of the Fox News bubble, where selling Obama as a crook or a sleaze is possible.
Bobby Thomson
@Hal: no, high crimes and misdemeanors means whatever 2/3 of the Senate thinks it means.
NonyNony
@Turner Hedenkoff:
2% of respondents said they were “very liberal”. 6% “somewhat liberal”.
If those aren’t just people mashing buttons on their phone I don’t know how to take it.
Shakezula
What an incredibly stupid question. Why is that question even on there?
Also, the link doth be borked.
dogwood
@Bobby Thomson:
I think I’ll wait until Ann Seltzer’s polling outfit weighs in before I believe much about these other polls.
Bobby Thomson
@NonyNony: how so? Seems the others take votes that would have gone to Carson.
RSA
@dmsilev:
In the wingnuttosphere you can find arguments that Hillary can still and should be impeached for her actions as Secretary of State.
Roger Moore
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
I beg to differ. It would be a lot more extreme than impeaching Clinton or what they’ve done to Obama, and a fair bit more extreme than impeaching Hillary the day she’s sworn in. The Republicans still feel the need to have some kind of pretext for their actions, because that’s what gives the media the excuse to treat them as being part of the normal political process. Monica gave them a pretext for impeaching Clinton, various squabbles have given them a pretext to obstruct everything Obama has done, and presumably Benghazi would give them a pretext for impeaching Hillary. But there’s no plausible pretext for disqualifying the elections of most of the Democrats in Congress, especially if they want to seat the Republicans who were elected from the same states.
Mandalay
Yet another excellent use of drones:
RaflW
@Hal:
No.
Because people are a combination of dumb and tuned out, and get nearly zero useful information from the press. So they think impeachment is just a political Mulligan.
Davis X. Machina
@Roger Moore:
Those were a different kind of Republican.
Revolutionaries aren’t usually too interested in precedent or pretext. They’re interested in power.
srv
When will liberals accept any responsibility for electing such divisive candidates?
Complain all you want about Republicans, but it takes two to play these games.
RaflW
@Amir Khalid:
Triple equivocation! Well done, sir.
Brachiator
@dogwood:
The Republicans have continuously flirted with the idea that Obama’s presidenting while black is an impeachable offense. They keep claiming that he exceeds his authority and thus acts illegally and in an unconstitutional way when he tries to get around their obstructionism.
Depending on how nuts the new House leadership might be, some Republican may try to go all the way with an impeachment charge.
Roger Moore
@Turner Hedenkoff:
PPP asks enough of that kind of question that I’ve started calling them Public Policy Trolling when they do. This is the same firm that asked people to compare the popularity of Congress to venereal diseases.
Pee Cee
@dmsilev:
Probably about the same. South Carolina *used* to be the “crazier” Carolina. Now, not so much – especially if you leave the safety of the Triangle.
Woodrowfan
no, it doesn’t. all it take is one side determined to hate the other. Or did black people deserve the hate whites directed at them??
(I apologize if my sarcasm meter is broken)
Davis X. Machina
@RSA: Impeachment-and-conviction for a cabinet secretary or such would carry with it ineligibility for any further employment in a position of profit or trust. Like, say, president.
Article 1, section 3, clause 7
Peale
@dmsilev: She has unpaid parking fines from [email protected]nominus: How about that “Rents too high” party guy? National Rent Control…
Mandalay
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
You had a really interesting thought experiment going there until you overplayed your hand at the end.
Bobby Thomson
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Kasich would be less popular than chlamydia if anyone knew who he was. He’s trying to get noticed. Sticking up a gas station might also work.
Wednesday’s debate should be entertaining. The desperate never weres will be swinging for the fences, Bush will get snippy with Trump, Trump will get snippy with Carson, the press will fluff the shit out of Rubio and his canned answers, and Fiorina will set new records for lying.
jayjaybear
A Wild Troll appears!
Wild Troll uses Jedi Mind Trick.
It’s super-ineffective!
Bobby Thomson
@Amir Khalid: you can be removed for anything if the votes are there.
Germy Shoemangler
Autumn is a second
Spring
Where every leaf is a flower.
– Albert Camus
Jeffro
@srv:
OMG, I love this…thanks for the laugh!
srv does have a point though (just not the one he thinks he does): the only way to turn the tide at this point, with people as far gone as today’s GOP, is to mock them relentlessly until they’re too embarrassed to open their mouths or put yet another dumb Tea Party bumper sticker on their cars.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Somebody finally called Ben Carson crazy
He also went after the tithe-tax, and used the word “crazy” about ten times
Frankensteinbeck
I expect impeachment proceedings if Hillary is elected. I was open to the possibility, but did not expect impeachment proceedings against Obama. The bigotries are different. Related to what @Mnemosyne (iPhone) says above, misogynists view women as automatically vulnerable, and are eager to attack them. Racists assume black men are scary and stupid. So, the GOP constantly attempted to outsmart Obama, or thought they could do anything he could do without effort. ‘Affirmative action president.’ Obama kept handing them their asses. They will attack Hillary relentlessly, and like the Benghazi hearing, will be confused that they’re the ones who end up being humiliated. Given a dynamic like that, I think they’ll carry through an attempt to impeach Hillary.
It helps that their base, and not just the crazies, sincerely believe that criminal charges are working through the system against HIllary. It has been a constant conservative story.
EDIT – @NonyNony:
Some major changes will happen in the next few months. Damned if I know what they will be, or who will win. One thing I am sure of is, Carson will not win. As long as they think of him as a sidekick validating their racist beliefs, conservatives love Carson. The moment they think he might actually become their boss, they will hate him, and his support will disappear. I call it the ‘Clint Eastwood’ effect, where a man known for treating minorities well when they were subservient to him ends up arguing with an empty chair when a black man becomes president.
Bobby Thomson
@dogwood: she did. Clinton leads by single digits.
trollhattan
@Woodrowfan:
Nope, your meter was functioning correctly resting on the null point. This one’s very suspicious of anything to the right of John Birch.
Woodrowfan
@Frankensteinbeck: interesting point. I’d expected some effort to impeach President Obama after the 2014 midterms. To your point add the righties’ frustration at losing yet ANOTHER presidential election. That’d be the 6th of the past 7 elections they lost the popular votes.
dogwood
@Brachiator:
i don’t see much interest in impeaching Obama right now outside of the freedom caucus. They’ve moved on to Hillary Clinton and Planned Parenthood as public enemies 1 and 2. Going after them gives them some political advantage. Impeaching Obama would definitely unify and rile up the democrats who seem to be much less enthused than they were in 08 or even in ’12.
trollhattan
@Germy Shoemangler:
Updated for the new bestest part of fall.
burnspbesq
@Hal:
Well, no. Nobody really knows what “high crimes and misdemeanors” are. If you ask three Con Law professors what they think the Framers meant, you’ll probably get at least four different answers.
Basically, “high crimes and misdemeanors” are whatever a majority of the House and two thirds of the Senate think they are at any given point in time.
Roger Moore
@Davis X. Machina:
I think the crazies have enough residual sanity to recognize that it would work out badly for them. Plausible pretext is necessary from a PR standpoint. Refusing to seat a meaningful number of Democrats with obviously flimsy, trumped-up excuses is far enough beyond anything they’ve done before that the media would stop covering for them, and that would be enough that they’d face serious, rioters in the streets level backlash.
Germy Shoemangler
@Woodrowfan:
He’s just playing with everybody. He loves to go on and on about “you liberals” but he’s not a real wingnut; it’s performance art.
Here’s how I know: A few threads back he let his halloween mask slip a bit and reported the passing of Gregory Isaacs.
No true wingnut would know who Isaacs was, or if he knew, wouldn’t care that he’d died.
RaflW
@Brachiator: They just use that “exceeded authority” crap for fundraising letters and the occasional House hearing. They don’t actually want to set any precedent for limiting presidential power, since they assume they’ll manage to win the office back some day and will want maximal power.
burnspbesq
@rikyrah:
Then, WADR, might it not be a good idea to not draw conclusions until you do?
trollhattan
[Clears throat] Pay not one shred of attention to the attention-whores batting the impeachment shuttlecock around the room. It means nothing because they have nothing and never will. The same numskulls were claiming Obama would be impeached right after beginning his second term. How did that work out for them?
RaflW
@Woodrowfan: There is no need to apologize to srv. Ever.
Germy Shoemangler
@trollhattan: There is a specific circle of hell where the inventor of the leaf blower resides.
Anoniminous
@burnspbesq:
So need to prove treason AND littering?
NonyNony
@Bobby Thomson:
What I mean is – I always thought that Trump’s lead was an artifact of the fact there were so many candidates in the race and that if a few of them dropped out, It would become apparent that Trump’s support was basically at his ceiling.
But at least in NC that doesn’t look to be the case – if it gets down to a two person race with Trump and someone else then Trump wins as long as that someone else isn’t Carson. At least if the election were held “right now” – all of that is going to change in the next few months.
But the big loser here is looking to be Jeb. He needs to make a big play to reduce his unfavorables. And it looks like the pundits marking Rubio as the actual establishment candidate most likely to win it are correct – he certainly is the only one who has actual election experience even getting close to Trump in NC.
Roger Moore
@Anoniminous:
Nope. The actual words are “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors”, so treason (or bribery) would be enough on its own.
Davis X. Machina
@trollhattan: Numbskulls like Jonathan Bernstein? I can stand that kind of company…
Davis X. Machina
@Roger Moore: Rioters in the streets aren’t turning out. If you didn’t see them in December of 2000, you’re not going to see them, ever.
dogwood
I have no problem voting for Hillary, but I’m still a bit skeptical about her campaign organization. A group of my friends and I have donated thousands of dollars to the party and various campaigns, yet none of us have heard a peep from Hillary. My email is inundated with stuff from Bernie, PP, DNC. etc. I’ve never given a dime to Russ Feingold, but he’s got my number. There’s a problem here. I suppose after she wins the nomination, the President will give her his email lists, but she should have found me and my friends long ago.
rikyrah
Obama Wins on Budget Deal as John Boehner Cleans Out the Barn
OCT. 27, 2015
WASHINGTON — The budget agreement struck late Monday between the White House and Congress hands President Obama a major victory, vindicating his hard line this year against spending limits that he argued were a drag on the economy and also buying himself freedom for the final 14 months of his term from the fiscal dysfunction that has plagued his presidency.
The deal is the policy equivalent of keeping the lights on — hardly the stuff of a bold fiscal legacy for the president — but it achieves the main objective of his 2016 budget: to break free of the spending shackles he agreed to when he signed the Budget Control Act of 2011.
For this fiscal year alone, the deal would add $50 billion in spending, divided equally between defense and domestic programs, as well as $16 billion for emergency war spending, half for the military, half for the State Department. Together, that represents an increase of $66 billion in the spending limits for 2016, not far off the $70 billion increase Mr. Obama requested in his budget.
From the moment he introduced his budget on Feb. 2, Mr. Obama held firm on his insistence on breaking through the punishing across-the-board cuts known as sequestration in the Budget Control Act to provide equal increases to domestic and military spending. He promised to veto any spending bill that adhered to the statutory spending caps, made good on that threat this month by vetoing a popular defense policy bill, enlisted the support of congressional Democrats with whom his White House had sometimes sparred on budget matters and capitalized on Republican divisions to get his way.
Senate Democrats created an impenetrable wall for Republicans determined to stick to the caps, filibustering the spending bills that reached the Senate floor and threatening to block the ones that did not.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/28/us/politics/obama-boehner-budget-deal.html?_r=2
Germy Shoemangler
Question for everyone here:
Who would you like to see on the ticket with HRC?
Julian Castro? Sherrod Brown? Trey Gowdy?
rikyrah
well, isn’t this special?
…………………..
Koch Brothers to Appear on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’
he conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch will sit down for an interview with MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski to air next week, bringing their campaign to soften their image to a cable news network known for its more liberal-leaning political slant.
The taped interview, which will air next Tuesday on “Morning Joe” (6-9 a.m.), will take place at the brothers’ childhood home in Wichita, Kan. The conversation will focus on the role of money in politics, the network said in a news release.
The appearance continues an effort by the Koch brothers to alter the public perception of them, advanced by many Democrats, as a secretive force behind many of the Republican Party’s most conservative positions.
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/10/27/koch-brothers-to-appear-on-msnbcs-morning-joe/
srv
@Germy Shoemangler: Liberal and clue is an oxymoron.
John Cole’s favorite musician of all time is George Clinton. If you liberals think he only found the mothership after his break from truth, you’re just ignorant.
rikyrah
Resa Sunshine* @nomad_innewyork
Second Student Arrested at Spring Valley HS Speaks Out http://on.wltx.com/1N3Ka18 via @WLTX
11:09 PM – 26 Oct 2015
benw
How do you feel about the apathy and ignorance of the American people?
Don’t know ——- 50%
Don’t care ——– 50%
Germy Shoemangler
@srv: excellent! Just the reply I expected. I admire your work and your stamina. That Isaacs thing was a minor error. I don’t think anyone here noticed.
Carry on!
Amir Khalid
@Germy Shoemangler:
Maybe not Gowdy elebenty-one. I have a hunch that he and Hillary might not get along so well.
Bobby Thomson
@NonyNony: got it. Yes, the “Trump ceiling” was always an attempt to force the 2012 narrative onto Trump. Never bought it. It’s more an excuse for dismissing Trump’s chances out of hand.
maya
Will GQ have an apparel selection of trendy robes that John Roberts might possibly wear to the Pre-Impeachment Ball, the Impeachment proceedings and the Impeachment judgement pronouncement?
Are frilly collars and cuffs in or out?
Cervantes
@Kryptik:
Pre-emptive impeachment. It’s not just for breakfast any more.
? Martin
@rikyrah:
First thing observed by my very white children at the dinner table last night – would never have happened to them. I think it’s a mistake by lawmakers, etc. to assume that young people view these incidents the way that their parents do. We’re a bit jaded from seeing this privately for decades so that when it’s public on TV, it’s somehow less of an outrage than it ought to be. But to my kids, it’s unbearable. The GOP defense of gay and racial discrimination will brand them permanently with this generation. I’m not sure how they can recover from what young people see as a complete moral failing.
trollhattan
@Germy Shoemangler:
Methinks Castro gets the nod. More of a prediction than an endorsement, as I think of the VP pick as a tactical one to help get votes. You know, the opposite of picking Sarah Palin.
maya
@rikyrah:
Like, which one mater liked best?
Germy Shoemangler
@rikyrah:
How much do you wanna bet Koch will be seated next to his fireplace?
The last interview I saw him do, he sat in what looked like a highly-refined hunting lodge, all wood panel and folksy art on the walls, and the fireplace glowing warmly.
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
God help us. Can we order up a meteor for the occasion?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
sounds like we’ll have another show trial for 2016
SFAW
@Germy Shoemangler:
In no particular order:
Saul Alinksy
Barack Obama
Michelle Obama
efgoldman
Jomo Kenyatta
Eddie Quinn
Paul Levy
Lou Gerstner Jr.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Amir Khalid:
Doesn’t say you can’t, either.
Congressional Republicans could very well draft articles of impeachment based on her tenure as SoS, or her tenure as a Senator from NY, or on the mummified corpse of the Whitewater investigation, or on her behavior in private practice.
Granted, the Senate is unlikely to convict based on any of those (especially since the Republicans don’t currently hold a 2/3 majority, and FSM willing won’t after next year).
Of course, with the possible exception of the Freedumb Caucus, House Republicans know that impeachment hearings won’t result in Clinton being removed from office (should she win). What they will do is effectively neuter the Executive. Basically, a bloodless coup d’etat.
This is why Congressional elections matter so much more than the Presidential election. If you want Hillary in the big chair, then you also want at least 60 Democrats in the Senate, and a Democratic House if you can get it. Otherwise, Hills won’t be able to get anything done. She won’t be able to appoint anyone to the Supreme Court, or to her own Cabinet.
Everyone canvassing for Hillary also needs to canvas for the local Democratic House and Senate candidates.
Congress is supposed to run the show; the President’s there to make sure the work gets done, but Congress is the branch that writes the laws and controls the money. That’s where the GOTV focus really needs to be.
NonyNony
@Germy Shoemangler: Not Sherrod Brown. And I know I repeat myself about this and folks are probably getting tired of it, but:
a) Kasich is our governor. If Brown moves to Clinton’s VP, Kasich appoints his replacement in the Senate. That Senator will sit there until 2018. We have no law on the books forcing Kasich to pick a Democrat to appoint, so he won’t and will appoint a Republican. Losing a Senate seat we should hold for 2 more years is a bad move.
b) Brown is a great Senator. I think he has a shot at being one of the lions of the Senate and could stay there a long, long time. Taking him out to be VP is a waste of his talents. And, frankly, I’m not certain he’d make a good President.
c) Brown seems to like writing legislation. FFS how many Senators out there seem to actually like doing their jobs instead of tolerate it because the pay is good and they intend to run for President some day? We need more Senators like Brown in the Senate, not fewer.
I could go on, but anyone but Brown for VP is my motto. (Well, almost anybody – what I said there goes as much for Al Franken and probably Elizabeth Warren as it does for Brown. But “Anybody but Brown, Franken, Warren and other sitting Senators in similar situations” just isn’t a very pithy motto.)
Bobby Thomson
@SFAW: zombie Patrice Lumumba.
Cacti
Sherrod Brown has formally endorsed Clinton.
Not a huge surprise, but I had Brown and Warren as the two maybe Senate endorsements for Sanders.
ETA: Looks like I’m late to the party on this one. :-)
daverave
@trollhattan:
The Curse of Sacramento, City of Trees
SFAW
@Bobby Thomson:
Wrong country. But I like the way you think.
Tenar Darell
@BGinCHI: Oh yeah, that privilege shit is a toxic high. Can’t hardly get away from it, and addictive as hell.
trollhattan
@daverave:
A-yup! What drove me absolutely bonkers this summer was the mow-blow-go guys showed up even after folks let their lawns die and would blow the dead stuff into clouds of crap that drifted through the neighborhood. What the hell is the point of that? (Not to mention the joy of cycling through their efforts.)
dogwood
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
Hear Hear!
goblue72
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Oh, FFS.
dubo
Until today I didn’t realize the GOP is STILL trying to attack and impeach people over the not-actually-targeting-of-conservatives by the IRS. Jesus Wept.
trollhattan
O/T Some days, presidentin’ can be fun.
So jealous here, Mister President. Can’t imagine what stunts my kid would have tried if she had the chance to crash the event.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@goblue72: apparently that was just a committee vote, but I have a hard team imagining either Boehner or Ryan putting the brakes on it. This may be the price we’re paying for not having the gov’t shut down and the world economy collapse
Fred Fnord
Talk about burying the lede:
daverave
@trollhattan:
I reserve my disgust for neighbors that hire their mow-blow guys that can only show up weekends just so they can save a few bucks per month. Then the homeowners take off for their weekend activities while their “gardeners” are subjecting us to their dust, noise and pollution. There is one guy that blows three of my nearby neighbors every Saturday starting at 9AM for the last 15 years. Two hours minimum to start my weekend on a bad note. This will be what finally drives me away from here. It is insane.
dogwood
@NonyNony:
Vice Presidential picks aren’t that important. The media plays them up, but the data shows they have little effect. Obsessing about vp picks is part of the obsession with the presidency as the only branch that really matters. People who propose taking good Senators out of commission and moving them to the Naval Observatory when we are already in trouble at the legislative level, are engaging in fanciful political romanticism.
goblue72
@daverave: I’d shoot the leaf blower if I had to deal with that. (the equipment, not the guy)
Brachiator
@dogwood:
Fair point. But Obama has turned out to be a surprisingly effective “lame duck,” while Boehner is gone and the GOP is in disarray. Desperate politicians do stupid shit.
I’m sure that Bill Kristol or some other idiot is whispering in GOP ears, “impeach Obama. And Hillary is gonna lose. We’ve got a one-two punch here.”
But yeah, impeaching Obama would be a high crime of stupidity on the part of the GOP.
J.D. Rhoades
I’ve been hearing “Hillary’s going to jail over this!” since 1992. Ain’t happened yet, and I’m thinking it ain’t gonna.
Shakezula
@dogwood: Until they are. Just ask Sen. McCain.
goblue72
@trollhattan: I swear, hiring Latino leaf blowers to show up every weekend to make useless piles of leaves is some form of late 20th century petite bourgeoisie form of conspicuous consumption.
“Look at me! I’m successful enough to employ time-share undocumented man-servants that I pay below minimum wage under the table!”
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@? Martin:
The situation probably would not have gotten to that point with a white student, but your kids should know that they are absolutely *not* immune to being manhandled like that just because they’re white. And gender ain’t a protection, either.
The girl whose case went to the Supreme Court because they strip-searched her to look for contraband Advil was white. No one is immune.
Walker
@dogwood:
I and several people in my department were contacted by her campaign about recruiting students to work on her IT/data science team. She is building an IT/data science team like Obama had, not inheriting her own. Whether or not it turns out as good as Obama’s remains to be seen.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
ah well, finally saw video of Kasich’s alleged blow-up/melt-down/whatever. He had all the stage presence of a middle school vice principal who has had it! with talking during assembly, and is about to start writing down names for detention!…People! or should I say Children! because that’s how you’re acting!
Maybe he annoyed Trump enough to give the next debate something to become viral.
Roger Moore
@SFAW:
Zombie Karl Marx
mclaren
One big advantage of a Hillary Clinton presidency is that she has been the target of these vicious sadistic smears for 23 years, and she knows the score. Hillary will not waste time trying to play nice. She will take a meat hook to these motherfuckers.
I look forward to seeing that. A president who stands up and calls the Republicans the crazed vipers they are would prove refreshing, and if the president keeps hammering away at the Rethugs, it will be very hard for the press to avoid reporting it. Statements like “The Republicans are lying and the Republican party is trying to destroy America by returning us to the Confederacy” will eventually start to make a dent in the mythical “both sides do it” bullshit the press has gotten wrapped up in.
Objections that “the right wing talk radio hosts will go berserk” and “Fox News will scream for her impeachment” are meaningless, since Fox News and right wing talk radio is already doing that to Obama, and Obama has for the most part refused to fight back and refused to come out swinging and hammer the Republicans hard (I get it, because if he does Obama will get smeared as “an angry negro”).
Hillary cannot be smeared as “an angry negro” if she calls the gang of lunatic sociopaths misnamed the Republican Party a clique of crazies trying to wreck America.
A Hillary Clinton presidency would prove refreshing. Finally, we can take the gloves off and call the monsters what they are: torturers who want to burn brown babies in third world countries and starve poor children at home in America in order to buy more billion-dollar yachts and private islands for U.S. corporate thieves.
dogwood
@Walker:
That’s fine, but she still has some problems if people like me aren’t on the campaign’s radar. We’re hiding in plain sight, and every other politician and group has found us.
goblue72
@Walker: She certainly learns from her mistakes. She’s a plodder. She’ll never have the intuitive ability to see beyond the horizon that Obama had as a campaigner, but if what we get is a plodder President who beats the opposition by working hard and doing all her homework, I’ll be ok with that.
I’d rather have a revolution of the working class a la Bernie, but if that’s not forthcoming, I can deal with a wall to keep the barbarians and mouth breathers at bay.
goblue72
@srv: Reading your comments is like watching a kid with Down’s syndrome masterbate. I feel horrible watching and laughing, but I just can’t help myself.
mclaren
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
No, utterly wrong.
Hillary can appoint anyone she chooses via recess appointments.
Hillary can enact a wide range of legislation by executive order, by signing statements, and by sequestering and redistributing funds.
Study the hijinks of FDR, whose supreme court packing and lend-lease agreement bypassed a recalcitrant congress and bulldozed through the New Deal over massive objections.
mclaren
@goblue72:
Don’t make fun of the differently abled. They can’t help it, and it’s not polite. Just ignore them.
Cervantes
@goblue72:
A despicable comment.
Roger Moore
@Shakezula:
I’m reminded of the wisdom of Branch Rickey talking to Ralph Kiner, who said “We finished in last place with you; we can finish in last place without you.” McCain was going to lose to Obama no matter who he picked as his VP candidate. I would have preferred that he choose to lose with class and dignity, but pinning his loss on Sarah Palin is grossly unfair.
goblue72
@mclaren: I know, I know. The inner Masshole in me just gets loose sometimes.
mclaren
@goblue72:
Understatement of the year.
Back in 1994, Hillary Clinton had the political instincts and campaign skills of a dead gopher. Today, she’s a stellar campaigner and a thoroughly polished politician. She distinguished herself well among a group of professional pols at the first presidential debate.
Hillary has become excellent at something which, 20 years ago, she had no skill at whatsoever. That’s impressive. Combined with her wonkish inclinations, she would make a superb counter to the gross incompetence and sociopathy of the Republicans. (That is, if Hillary’s policies were better. We can always hope she’ll change course if he gets elected instead of Sanders because the times, they are a-changin’, and the old Clintonian 1990s triangulation bullshit isn’t gonna cut it in the age of rampant inequality and fanatical Republican obstructionism.)
Tommy
@Roger Moore: Wow a Branch Rickey reference. Kudos to you.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@dogwood: I maxed out to Obama in 2012, came close in ’08, and have given to (I’d guess) a few dozen House and Senate seats around the country. I’ve gotten a few Clinton solicitations, by email and a few dead-tree mailings that go right in the recycling bin. Nothing from Sanders or O’Malley.
I don’t remember ever giving to anyone in AZ, and don’t live there, but I get email from the state party and a couple of candidates almost every day. Also, PA and ME, though I think I did give money to Sestak once, and not-Susan Collins (Pingree?). And lots and lots of “sign this petition/James, this cannot stand!/Help my friend X” from big name Senators, Leahy, Durbin, Boxer, Brown.
Note to candidates: I don’t want to sign anyone’s birthday card, and something about the “Help my mom/dad” emails is just off-putting.
goblue72
@Roger Moore: Besides which, if he hadn’t, we’d have been robbed of the sheer comedy of her candidacy. And the world would be without Tina Fey’s greatest performance.
mclaren
@Cervantes:
Yes, the spelling was atrocious. I’m sure he meant “masturbate.” That would clear it up and make it a stellar comment.
But spellcheck can’t fix everything, after all…
goblue72
@mclaren: Its crude but I really don’t give a squat.
Tommy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Sanders has not sent me any fundraising offers and I give to campaigns across the nation. Maybe not as much as you but I would assume somehow he ought to be able to find me.
dmsilev
@mclaren:
I was rather gratified to hear her answer at the last debate describing the GOP as the enemy that she was proudest to have made.
mclaren
@dogwood:
Yes, VP picks used to be a method of solidfying coalitions at brokered conventions. But America hasn’t had a brokered convention since 1956, when the Democrats picked Adlai Stevenson.
Brokered conventions are a thing of the past, and consequently VP picks now serve only to shore up minor support in weak regions of the country — a minimal effect compared to the 2000s-era data-driven polling and big data driven voter turnout ground campaigns.
mclaren
@dmsilev:
And did you hear the applause she got from the Democratic audience? The ruckus shut down questions for more than a minute.
And did you see the look of horror on the media weasels’ faces?
jl
Well, news says that to make up for their humiliating defeat on the budget deal, GOP House extreme reactionaries, the Freedom Caca will try to impeach the director of the IRS. Maybe they will impeach their way through a wide swath of federal officials to practice for Day One of HRC, or any Democratic president.
Looks like GOP Congressional behavior for any Democratic president, especially, HRC will be Bill Clinton III on steroids and Obama II on bad meth. I hope they self destruct before they blow up the whole country with blind madness and rage.
Edit: one comforting thing about the theory that their behavior towards Obama was 100 racism is that meant it would end someday. Looks like it won’t ever end, they will always find an excuse, and they have to be kicked out of the House in order to stop the madness. But how will that happen before gerrymandering problem is solved?
Woodrowfan
I am never sure if SRV isn’t just some odd performance art.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
As far as amounts go, it’s not that much. The Obama donations were an exception. I usually give 25 here and there, fifty if it’s somebody I really like (Duckworth, Brown) but always online, so I’m sure my name and email are on a lot of those lists that are apparently like gold to political campaigns.
Tommy
@dmsilev: I am not a huge fan of Hillary but I don’t dislike her. And in this political climate I like her more because she knows what it is to be attacked 24/7 by the Republicans and she will stand up to them. That is a huge plus for me.
glory b
@nominus: Julian Castro.
Clinton/Castro 2016!!!
SFAW
@goblue72:
A bullshit excuse for a bullshit comment
Peale
@mclaren: Yeah. This whole “Hillary” (and Bernie, too!) won’t be able to get anything done is non-sense.
It gives off the defeatist stink.
Citizen Alan
@Davis X. Machina:
It was a profoundly disturbing moment in law school to realize that any President who commands the total support of 34 or more Senators is potentially a dictator.
Davis X. Machina
@mclaren: Lend-lease was legislation, and passed Congress.
mclaren
@jl:
Correctamundo.
This is why it’s unnecessary to nominate a Democrat who is “moderate” or who will “bring both parties together” or who can “reach across the aisle.”
The only reaching across the aisle Hillary or Bernie will need to do is with a chainsaw. It will be all-out war, and the Republican fanatics will lose if the Democratic president stands up to them and beats the bullies down like the cowardly little bitch-ass punks they are.
jl
@dmsilev: I wasn’t gratified to hear HRC say that. But OTOH, it is true, and the it is the GOP what decided to be her enemy.
I resent the media’s implication that simply because there is a lot of truth in what HRC said, that it means that it is HRC who holds all the malice. But what do you expect from worthless corporate hacks? They are incapable of discussing different angles to what anyone says, they just use it for their BS narratives, even if it turns a statement with a lot of truth into it, into a lie and a smear about a Democrat, and especially where HRC is concerned.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@jl: O’Malley was on the Hayes show last night, an appearance that went along way toward clearing up my own confusion at his failure to launch, including some tongue-clucking about HRC calling the Republicans (while chuckling) her enemies.
mclaren
@Davis X. Machina:
Lend-lease was FDR’s baby. He incited it, he proposed the idea, he worked closely with Democratic congressional leaders to push it through.
I agree that Lend-Lease offers a poor example of what a president can do without congressional support, but it does offer an excellent instance of what a president can do to push an agenda against divided public opinion and a congress with uncertain attitudes toward a new proposal.
Tommy
@jl: I know the audience here skews older. So we were adults during the 90s. The way Hillary and Bill were attacked was savage. An entire industry grew out of it.
mclaren
@SFAW:
Au contraire: a bullshit response from you about a superb comment. Do yourself a favor and grow a pair.
Roger Moore
@mclaren:
As a practical matter, she can’t. In National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, the Supreme Court greatly restricted the President’s power to make recess appointments. As long as Congress continues to hold pro-forma sessions every three days, they aren’t officially at recess, and the President can’t make recess appointments. You can bet that a Republican Congress would do just that and for exactly that reason. The only way she’d be able to get her appointments through with a Republican Senate is by compromising and appointing people acceptable to them. Hopefully, though, we’ll get a Democratic Senate, and nobody will be foolish enough to reinstate the filibuster for appointments.
mclaren
@Davis X. Machina:
Yes, but (giggle) suppose Hillary picks Bill as her Vice Presidential candidate?
So if the Repubs successfully impeach Hillary, they get…Bill Clinton again…?
Hahahahahaha!
Fuck me, that would be excellent.
mclaren
@Roger Moore:
Thanks for that info. I was not aware of the latest evil wrought by the Roberts-Scalia-Alito Grand Inquisition misnamed the Supreme Court.
schrodinger's cat
KLo’s Crazy Corner is having a meltdown over the budget deal. Time to drink Wingnut Tears!
raven
Roger Moore
@mclaren:
Won’t work. The 12th Amendment says that any candidate for VP must also be qualified as a candidate for President. Since Bill has already served two full terms as president, he’s not qualified to run again, which means he can’t run as VP, either.
Bill Arnold
@mclaren:
She would need to work around a recent Supreme Court ruling, NRLB vs Noel Canning (wikipedia, fwiw.).
Similarly, anything else that she tried, that was effective, would be subject to right-wingnut activist lawsuits that might find their way to the supreme court. (Not saying she shouldn’t try, just that if she does there is likely to be some pushback from the courts, and some backsliding.)
mclaren
@Roger Moore:
Well, dang.
Okay, then Hillary should nominate Noam Chomsky as her VP.
See if the Repubs dare impeach her then.
boatboy_srq
@Hal: Presidenting while Female seems sufficient.
/snaek
LeonS
@srv: Yeah, we should only let other Republicans vote for the Democratic nominee. I guess we are about to get really shamed as we select yet another “divisive” candidate, while the Republicans select a nice, sensible, middle of the road candidate.
Why do we even bother with the whole election business at all if one side is going to pick people that are not what the other side wants?
mclaren
@Bill Arnold:
Sorry, no, this is just more learned helplessness of the “poor weak president is an impotent helpless piece of clay in the hands of all-powerful congress” variety.
Bullshit.
The president of the united states has vast powers, if s/he chooses to use them. The key? Get things done, then worry about the lawsuits later. Once a policy is implemented, all the lawsuits in the world can’t undo it. Reagan knew this, unfortunately, and as a result he did all sorts of illegal things that drastically changed public policy (like staffing the EPA with coal industry lobbyists until the EPA had to be sued to follow congressional legislation, or like making the NLRB into an anti-labor-relations board that had to be sued to make it follow the law). The lawsuits succeeded but accomplished nothing because by the time they wound their way through the courts, the policies had already been implemented.
Hillary can do the same. Telling me she can’t is just another scam to justify giving up, a skill which Democrats seem to have mastered to perfection. “Everything is impossible, nothing can be done” remains the siren song of the Democratic realpolitik contingent, who assured us in 2005 that “America is not yet ready for a black president.”
mclaren
@Emerald:
Since previous polls have had Hillary 15 points up on Bernie, I’m not sure how the Hillbots will spin this as “good news.” But whatever.
SFAW
@mclaren:
Please feel free to bite me. I need to “grow a pair” for bullshit like “Reading your comments is like watching a kid with Down’s syndrome masterbate. I feel horrible watching and laughing, but I just can’t help myself” ? You have some fucked-up ideas over what “growing a pair” means, and what a “superb comment” is.
Stick to political comments, you’re out of your (intellectual) league with this other stuff.
Tommy
@mclaren: I am interested, very interested to see people vote and not just polls. I am a Bernie guy but I think when people actually go to the polls Hillary will win by a large margin.
SFAW
@mclaren:
That would be pretty funny. Of course, she could split the difference and run with Bernie as VP.
chopper
@mclaren:
isn’t 41 greater than 15?
zzyzx
This is a non-story. The day after Bush (sr) got elected, I was talking about how he should be impeached. It’s just the frustration of people who aren’t winning elections who like to fantasize about that.
raven
@mclaren: Those four pipers he let them have were vital to the war effort.
workworkwork
@nominus: I always figured that Dan Quayle and Dick Cheney were ‘assassination insurance.”
The Lodger
@mclaren: Not to mention the kid with Down’s syndrome. Shouldn’t make fun of him either.
Bill Arnold
@mclaren:
I actually agree with this (added a parenthetical to that effect a minute after writing the comment), am just saying that when the supreme court is involved the president will lose sometimes, and may have to backtrack.
Roger Moore
@Bill Arnold:
It’s still a lot better to be forced to backtrack once in a while than to never get started.
Bill Arnold
@Roger Moore:
I’m mainly wondering how the left could slow down the uptake of right-wing activist lawsuits by the US Supreme Court. Any lawyers care to comment on possible workable tactics?
Danack
@NonyNony: “Jeb is not going to be the nominee
unless some major change happens in the next few months.”Fixed that for you.
At least I can’t see how he can possibly get there unless somehow both Rubio and Cruz are persuaded to drop out of the race, and as both of them have been planning to stay in the race as long as possible – that’s unlikely to happen
I did some playing around with numbers for the current polling numbers and estimated (aka guessed wildly) how many people who say they are planning to vote for each candidate because:
* They want to reject the establishment GOP party
* They have chosen a candidate that aligns with their religious views.
* All other reasons, including picking someone who might win in the general.
The spreadsheet is here, totals don’t add to 100% presumably due to “don’t know”s in the realclearpolitics results.
The short version is that the three groups are at something like:
* Anti-Establishment vote is at 43%
* The religious driven vote is at 22%
* Every other reason at 27%
Lets imagine that all the other candidates that can be considered ‘establishment’ figures drop out, and Rubio and Bush share the extra 10% between them, putting them on 14% and 12% each. From there, how can either of them acquire any more support?
Bush can’t attract any voters that value sticking it to the establishment, or those who want a properly religious candidate. Rubio might be able to pickup a few, as he’s not as closely aligned to the GOP establishment, and the religious voters seem to like him a little more than Bush. But he’s still going to find it hard to get to 20%, let alone to a high enough number to make Bush drop out.
On the other side…..we have Cruz.
Despite being a senator, he has established his commitment to sticking it to the establishment and so can pick up a lot of those votes. And while he’s definitely not the religious voters preferred (or second or third) choice, he’s still going to find it a lot easier to attract religious voters than either Bush or Rubio will.
And that’s if it’s a free-for-all those supporters. Cruz has deliberately been keeping friendly with both Trump and Carson, most of which is done simply by not attacking them:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/19/ted-cruz-s-secret-trump-strategy.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/26/us-usa-election-republicans-idUSKCN0RQ0SN20150926
If Carson gets knocked out by Trump, Bush or Rubio attacking him, he’s likely to indicate to his supporters that they should support Cruz. And when Trump gets bored (i.e. his support starts dropping) then again, he’s likely to point his followers over to Cruz.
So, yeah. Either Trump and Carson stay in and keep their support high, or those two drop out of the race and their support switches to Cruz, just in time for the first half of the primaries.
Obviously, predicting the future is a stupid thing to do, but it seems to be there is no path for Jeb to get the nomination with either the current dynamics, or the dynamics that are most likely to occur over the next few months.
Roger Moore
@Bill Arnold:
There’s no way of stopping them from filing lawsuits. The best hope is to get a liberal majority on the Supreme Court so they know they’ll lose their lawsuits.
RaflW
@rikyrah:
Harry Reid rarely gets the credit he deserves. Unfortunately I’m expecting profiles in gutlessness from Schumer next term.
different-church-lady
That poll question is the equivalent of saying, “Hey, for this next question we invite you to totally get your freak flag flying and just be nuts as you want to be.”
Thirty years ago it would read like something out of The Onion. Today a legit polling outfit thinks it’s just fine to churn the scum right to the surface.
Cervantes
@Roger Moore:
Not exactly a settled question.
Deeni
@rikyrah:
I began following this in horror last night and other sites’ post threads made my blood turn to ice. Such pure evil. Glad to find this place.
Bitter Scribe
I dunno…this looks to me like a simple expression of hostility to Clinton.
If any of the GOP clowns got elected and you asked me if I wanted them impeached, I’d say “hell yes.” But that doesn’t mean I would expect it or see it as a realistic possibility.
Peale
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: So he was going to run as both an outsider and the guy who can work with the Republicans?
Peale
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: So he was going to run as both an outsider and the guy who can work with the Republicans?
PIGL
@dogwood: or on Naked Capitalism.
PIGL
@Frankensteinbeck: I wonder what would be the response of the Russians and the Chinese, the effective parts of Europe, Brazil, Turkey Iran or India at such conclusive evidence that the United States of America was no longer functioning as a nationstate?
J R in WV
@Gimlet:
And then, in the hall, he could have beaten her without being videoed.
Right?
PIGL
@Roger Moore: I see absolutely no evidence in many many decades that supports your position. Rioters in the streets would simply be pepper sprayedif they were lucky but much more likely machine gunned down. The press would call them Terrorists, The Republicans will use it to retrospectively justify their actions.
PIGL
@Woodrowfan: what could be odder than masturbating while pretending to be someone with Down’s syndrome?
J R in WV
@Germy Shoemangler:
They are actually useful for building fire-breaks in the kind of under-story forest fires we get around here. You can create a fire break in the heavy leafy surface of the forest floor and save your house.
Or to push leaves off a flat roof – which I need to do soon, without a power tool… I usually use a big push broom.
But in lawn care, they suck. Use a rake, people. Silent and effective. Not much more effort, either.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@srv:
My respect for the man just went up.
J R in WV
@PIGL:
Several of the nations/regions you mention have elected strong leaders who were/are female. So Hillary won’t upset them.
The antics of legislative nutcases, on the other hand, shouldn’t do more than amuse them, until they manage to have a serious negative effect upon the nation’s executive branch, which is where the rubber meets the road.
SFAW
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):
No love for Bootsy? (Just kidding, I realize it’s not an either/or situation.)
ETA: My visits here have been sporadic, so I haven’t seen updates — how’s Mrs. Cisco doing? Well, I hope, or at least better.