Year: 2015

National Journal:

House progressives may have just had their tea-party moment. They went toe-to-toe Friday with their own president, the business community, and moderates of all stripes—and they won big. In overwhelming numbers, Democrats torpedoed a bill that would have moved President Obama closer to the landmark trade deal he's been seeking. And they did so hours after he visited Capitol Hill to make a personal appeal to their caucus. "It's more than 2-to-1," said a giddy Rep. Alan Grayson, watching the vote. "That's incredible. Nobody expected that." The trade drama was only the latest skirmish in a broader intraparty war, with organized labor and economic populists such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren on one side, and a dwindling corps of business- and Wall Street-friendly Democrats on the other. Increasingly, the political momentum and passion within the party is moving toward the first group.

They don't get that they've won. Guns are America. America is guns. "Bang, bang!... Ye haw, motherfuckers!!" That you can't take your gun to a zoo, amusement park, or state house is a little thing. Let it go.

A judge on Friday granted the St. Louis Zoo a restraining order against a gun rights activist planning a march at the zoo on Saturday, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Jeffry Smith, who organized an open carry march in downtown St. Louis last year, said he planned on carrying firearms into the zoo on Saturday in order to protest the zoo's policy banning weapons.

Booman on why there are so many GOP presidential candidates:

The most obvious is that the Bush/Cheney years were such an unmitigated fiasco that they left a black hole in their wake from which no leadership could emerge. Anyone with any experience was discredited. The more of an expert you wanted to be on the economy or foreign policy, the more of a dunce you looked like to all sentient human beings. In any case, there was no heir apparent and McCain and Romney fell flat on their faces. What we got instead of leadership was a collective primal cry of pain and blame shifting that manifested itself in the modern Know-Nothing Tea Party Movement and Mitch McConnell’s strategy of maximal nihilistic opposition. But this only explains the reason that no one could emerge with any credibility. That the Republican Establishment is back with another Bush tells you just how empty the legitimate well of talent had become.

His nascent campaign for Governor may hinge on how he votes on Fast Track and the Trans Pacific Partnership, and counting on an anti-Gordon sentiment will not be enough to overcome going against the Unions and the American worker. From the New York Times:

“With a final House showdown coming on Friday on President Obama’s push for accelerated power to pursue a sweeping trade agreement, the vote brokering has begun — and it is all tilting to the right. The legislative changes clearly show the fate of the president’s expanded trade-negotiating power rests with Republicans, not Democrats, even more so because Republicans have blocked provisions favored by pro-trade Democrats.”

This is your cover, Mr. Carney. The Republicans added non germane right wing toxic pill amendments, so you had to vote no. That is what you tell your business cronies. And there is hope since Carney was not among the 8 traitorous Democrats who kept the bill alive yesterday in a rule vote.

"President Obama has run an amazingly scandal-free administration, not only he himself, but the people around him. He’s chosen people who have been pretty scandal-free," conservative New York Times opinion writer David Brooks said last week on PBS' NewsHour.

“Republicans in Congress are worried the Supreme Court will hand them a major headache this month if it rules against the federal health insurance exchanges in more than 30 states, ending subsidies for millions of people,” The Hill reports. And we are going to make them own it. It's their lawsuit. They have wanted to kill Obamacare from the beginning. They are responsible. They will get the blame.