Boehner Is Weak

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John Boehner will probably go down as one of the weakest Speaker of the House in history.  He has absolutely no control of his caucus.  Altho... the most you can be sure of when trying to organize crazy people is that if you put sticks in their hands they'll trash the place. So Boehner, who can't save himself, expects to be saved by President Obama.  Republican Leadership is an oxymoron. 

This isn’t 2010, President Obama’s no means no

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President Obama won't give in to Republican ransom demands over tax cuts for the wealthy—even if that means going over the so-called fiscal cliff on Jan. 1, 2013. This has got to have John Boehner perplexed. To his right Boehner will have teaparty caucus screaming for an economic Kamikaze dive into austerity oblivion, to his other right he'll have the GOP's big defense contractor money screaming for him to raise the white flag. It should get interesting if this holds.

Monday Open Thread

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Hillary Clinton for President, 2016:
All kinds of circumstances could intervene between now and 2016 to derail her—politics, health, family matters, a renewed Clinton fatigue—but Hillary’s numbers are enormous, her ambition equal to her capacities, and she was in high political gear.
Nancy Pelosi for Speaker, 2014:
"If Speaker Boehner refuses to schedule this widely-supported [Middle Class Tax Cut] bill for a vote, Democrats will introduce a discharge petition to automatically bring to the floor the Senate-passed middle class tax cuts," Pelosi said in a statement.

More of John Carney’s vaporous nothing makes it into print

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I think that it is a strange choice for John Carney to set himself up as the Democrat with no ideas. It hurt him in his primary against Markell, and now he seems determined to repeat his mistake. I mean, we can assume he'll be facing a Democrat in a primary election at some point, and he will want to have some kind of Democratic brand identity when that roles around, right? And yet, Carney wastes ink in this weekends News Journal telling us that 1) Returns day is awesome 2) People want bipartisanship 3) The debt is the worst thing ever, and 4) He is proud of addressing the debt "crisis" by having voted for a commission report so flawed and lacking that never made it out of committee. Genius! ...

Here We Go Again

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Florida has a problem.
On Friday night, gun collector Michael David Dunn pulled his sedan up next to the SUV in which the unarmed 17-year-old Jordan Davis sat with his three friends at a Jacksonville, Florida, gas station. Dunn, 45, allegedly asked them to turn down their loud music. According to the Orlando Sentinel, that provoked an argument with Jordan and his friends: Jordan and Dunn exchanged words, and Dunn pulled a gun and shot eight or nine times, striking Jordan twice, [Jacksonville sheriff's Lt. Rob] Schoonover said. Jordan was sitting in the back seat. No one else was hurt. Jordan died that night in his friend’s arms. Jordan’s father, Ron, later called Dunn a “coward” for shooting at the teens.
Guess what law Dunn is citing? You guessed it - Stand Your Ground. Here is another case where the shooter initiated the confrontation and now says he feared for his life. If he viewed the teenagers as dangerous why would he confront them? That's a serious question.

President Obama asks directly for your help, says Republicans are holding middle-class tax cuts “hostage”

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In a blunt speech just delivered in Hatfield PA, President Obama directly asked for Americans to put pressure on congress, and called the Republicans out for taking the middle-class tax cuts hostage. From Daily Kos live blog of the event:
9:16 AM PT: Obama says he's counting on Americans to put pressure on Congress to extend the middle-class tax cuts. "I need you to remind members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, to not get bogged down in partisan bickering. [...] I want you to call, send an email, to post on their Facebook wall." And he mentions the #My2k hashtag on Twitter. 9:20 AM PT: "I'm going to need folks like you, here in Hatfield and in Pennsylvania and across the country, to get this done." 9:18 AM PT: Here's the hostage line: "It's not acceptable to me and I don't think it's acceptable to you for just a handful of Republicans in Congress to hold middle-class tax cuts hostage simply because they don't want tax rates on upper income folks to go up. Alright? That doesn't make sense." Applause.

Republicans Can’t Govern

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Republicans are all about big, brave (and vague) talk on the campaign trail, but once they get into office and have to govern they become whiny babies. President Obama has put a plan on the table. Unsurprisingly, Republicans don't like it. So, what do Republicans do? Counter with a different plan? Nope - because that would actually require doing work and putting their big, bad and vague campaign talk into written word. What they're asking for is President Obama to negotiate with himself, and that ain't happening.
Perhaps the key lesson the White House took from the last couple of years is this: Don’t negotiate with yourself. If Republicans want to cut Medicare, let them propose the cuts. If they want to raise revenue through tax reform, let them identify the deductions. If they want deeper cuts in discretionary spending, let them settle on a number. And, above all, if they don’t like the White House’s preferred policies, let them propose their own. That way, if the White House eventually does give in and agree to some of their demands, Republicans will feel like they got one over on the president. A compromise isn’t measured by what you offer, it’s measured by what the other side feels they made you concede. The GOP is right: This isn’t a serious proposal. But it’s not evidence that Obama isn’t serious. He’s very serious about not negotiating with himself, and his opening bid proves it. Now that they’ve leaked his initial offer, the next question is obvious: What’s their offer?