Open Thread
Open Thread for Thursday, August 15, 2013
I love Ezra Klein’s analogy here regarding the new demand that, instead of ransoming the budget (and force a government shutdown), the Republicans should hold hostage the debt ceiling in exchange for the repeal of Obamacare:
Since Boehner can’t just tell House Republicans that their party needs to let go of the whole stop-Obamacare thing until they win a few more elections, what will he tell them?
Apparently, he’s going to tell them to try using the debt ceiling: “Sources tell me the House GOP will probably avoid using a shutdown as leverage and instead use the debt limit and sequester fights as areas for potential legislative trades. Negotiations over increasing the debt limit have frequently been used to wring concessions out of the administration, so there may be movement in that direction: Delay Obamacare in exchange for an increased debt limit.”
Trading a government shutdown for a debt-ceiling breach is like trading the flu for septic shock. And Boehner knows it. Republicans will effectively be going to the White House and saying, “Delay the health-care law or we will single-handedly cause an unprecedented and unnecessary global financial crisis that everyone will clearly and correctly blame on us, destroying our party for years to come.”
It’s not a very persuasive ransom note to send. And Boehner knows it. It’s just something he’s saying to talk his party down from this tree. But come October, when they climb up into that higher, more dangerous, tree, he’s going to have to think of some new crazy promise to entice them down. Then, three months later, that promise will come back to bite him — and the rest of us. And eventually, someone’s going to make a mistake, and Boehner won’t manage to pull his people back from the brink at the last minute.
No, the only way this ends is with Boehner sacrificing his Speakership (or at least forming a coalition speakership with Pelosi with 21 or so sane Republicans). Boehner eventually will have to sacrifice his political career.
Open Thread for Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Rep. Tom Cole (R) of Oklahoma said some months ago that the “only way Republicans will lose the House is to shut down the government or default on the debt.”
Guess what Republicans have spent the entire summer talking about?
Sunday Open Thread [8.11.13]
Hannah Gastonguay, 26, said Saturday that she and her husband “decided to take a leap of faith and see where God led us” when they took their two small children and her father-in-law and set sail from San Diego for the tiny island nation of Kiribati in May.
But just weeks into their journey, the Gastonguays hit a series of storms that damaged their small boat, leaving them adrift for weeks, unable to make progress. They were eventually picked up by a Venezuelan fishing vessel, transferred to a Japanese cargo ship and taken to Chile where they are resting in a hotel in the port city of San Antonio.
Their flights home were arranged by U.S. Embassy officials, Gastonguay said. The U.S. State Department was not immediately available for comment.
Saturday Open Thread [8/10/13]
Yesterday was Starbucks Appreciation Day — but the only people doing the appreciating were gun groups. The Starbucks in Newtown, CT closed early rather than be descended upon by these idiots parading their guns:
Earlier, however, more than two dozen gun rights supporters, some wearing pistols, camouflage or Connecticut Citizens Defense League T-shirts, showed up to show their support. The company said it had no participation in the event. Gun critics also turned out to voice their opposition.
Long after the store shut down around 4:30, people on both sides of the gun divide stayed outside in the heavy rain, the gun supporters standing on the left, many smoking cigarettes, and the gun opponents to the right, holding lighted candles.
“Little do these ignorant people know that we come in here every day for coffee, carrying our weapons,” said Tom Catalina, 64, of Newtown. “Starbucks has always been open about their support of the Second Amendment and our right to carry, whether open or concealed. Guns make people safer.”
The Open Thread for Friday, August 9, 2013
Byron York is right: “In 2012, he won 11 primaries and caucuses, making him the solid second-place finisher in a party that has a long history of nominating the candidate who finished second the last time around. (See Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney.) And yet now, no one — no one — is suggesting Santorum will be the frontrunner in 2016, should he choose to run. As far as the political handicapping goes, Santorum’s 2012 victories don’t seem to count for much.”
You know the reason why? Because even they know that Santorum is insane.
As Jason noted in a posted last night, there is now polling evidence that senior citizens have turned against the GOP by such margins that former Speaker Pelosi could soon be future Speaker PelosiL
—In 2010, seniors voted for Republicans by a 21 point margin (38 percent to 59 percent). Among seniors likely to vote in 2014, the Republican candidate leads by just 5 points (41 percent to 46 percent.)
—When Republicans took control of the House of Representatives at the beginning of 2011, 43 percent of seniors gave the Republican Party a favorable rating. Last month, just 28 percent of seniors rated the GOP favorably. This is not an equal-opportunity rejection of parties or government — over the same period, the Democratic Party’s favorable rating among seniors has increased 3 points, from 37 percent favorable to 40 percent favorable.
Booman notes that Republicans in several states have done a great job at gerrymandering the House districts to such an extent that even though the Democrats won the majority of the popular votes for Congress in 2012, the GOP maintained their House majority by 20+ seats. And that fact is not going to change in 2020, assuming that the demographic groups vote in the same way as they did in 2010 and 2012.
If these numbers are real, a lot of supposedly safe seats are not really safe. DCCC Chairman Steve Israel needs to get busy recruiting candidates, because it looks like a strong well-funded candidate can compete much better than we thought in a lot of House districts.
The Open Thread for Thursday, August 8, 2013
You have to love Rick Perry. The Dallas Morning News traveled with the Texas Governor for a speech to a group of conservative bloggers. Said Perry: “There are many other states that embrace those conservative values, the approach we’ve taken over the years. I’m in one today — Florida.”
“We’re in Louisiana,” someone shouted.
The Open Thread for Wednesday, August 7, 2013
The National Journal says the GOP is worried the gender gap could grow because of incidents like this:
“When the House Judiciary Committee passed a late-term abortion ban in June, Republican leaders scrambled to find a female, media-savvy legislator to bring the legislation to the floor. Their biggest problem: Not a single Republican woman was represented among the committee’s 23 Republican members. They eventually settled on Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who isn’t on the Judiciary Committee.”
“The episode underscored a growing problem that is worrying Republicans: Women are badly underrepresented within their party in the Congress. Only eight percent of House Republicans are women, and there are only four female Republican senators. Of the long list of potential 2016 GOP presidential contenders, there’s not a single woman.”
Well, women tend to get turned off by Republican policies and attitudes towards women, and then there is the picture on the left. Come inside and find out what it is,
Tuesday Open Thread [8.6.2013]
The School District of Philadelphia is reviewing their options in suing some Wall Street banks for illegally manipulating an index that underlies the derivatives that the District invested in and lost money on. The Philadelphia City Paper is reporting:
The School District took out swaps with Wachovia (purchased by Wells Fargo in 2008), Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. But a lawsuit could name more banks as defendants. Philadelphia’s lawsuit names banks that were direct counterparties and also those that are accused of rigging Libor, including Citi, JPMorgan, RBC, Bank of America, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, RBS and UBS.
The Open Thread for Monday, August 5, 2013
A new poll shows that Governor Chris Christie is the only Republican candidate that has any chance against Hillary Clinton.
NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–Monmouth University: Fmr. Sec. of State Hillary Clinton (D) 43, Gov. Chris Christie (R) 39; Clinton 47, Fmr. Gov. Jeb Bush (R) 37; Clinton 47, Sen. Marco Rubio (R) 36; Clinton 48, Sen. Ted Cruz 32.
Cruz, in my opinion, is the most likely nominee. Cruz is hawkish like Christie, a bully like Christie, but 100% conservative and beloved by the teabaggers, which Christie is not. Electoral statistician Harry J. Enten at The Guardian, however, thinks Jeb Bush would be a strong 2016 presidential contender. He is wrong.
The Open Thread for Sunday, August 4, 2013
Dana Milbank: “Republicans need to make up their minds: Is President Obama a socialist or a corporate stooge?”
Shockingly, I’d say he is closer to the latter than the former.
The Open Thread for Saturday, August 3, 2013
GOP Chairman Charlie Lamont du Pont Copeland is already at work drumming up some non-scandal.
Last week, Markell’s office said his campaign donated about $28,000 to charity after learning they could’ve been illegal contributions from D.C. accountants.
Copeland contends that under Delaware law, a candidate has to return those contributions within seven days of knowing they were illegal. But Election Commissioner Elaine Manlove says that only applies if the donations are proven to be illegal.
“My reading is that the governor acted with an abundance of caution because he could not substantiate the contributions he received were illegal contributions and it didn’t make me think that I should take any further action,” said Manlove. “But now that it’s been brought to my attention again, I can investigate further.” Manlove says she’ll follow up with the Attorney General’s office to determine the next step in the process. Copeland sent letters to Manlove and Attorney General Beau Biden Thursday asking for a more thorough investigation.
I will bet my house that if Markell had not returned the donations, Copeland would have been attacking him for not returning the donations.
The Open Thread for Friday, August 2, 2013
Republican governance, a contradiction in terms, or an oxymoron, reached a fever pitch this week as the GOP tried to wrap up the legislative calendar and pass some necessary appropriation bills before going on vacation. Of course they failed…
Jonathan Chait: “Yesterday, the House of Representatives pulled a bill from the floor for lack of votes — the sort of scrambling chaos that occurs routinely in the chamber where John Boehner presides like a trembling child monarch. But this defeat was different. The bill concerned the funding of housing and transportation programs, though its failure represented more than just a programmatic setback, or even a setback for the Republican economic strategy writ large, but the potential ruin of its entire posture toward Obama. Since taking control of the House two and a half years ago, Republicans have fomented a series of crises that seemed to have no end in sight, explicitly refusing to negotiate with Obama and implicitly denying his legitimacy as president. The crumbling of that wall is far from certain, but yesterday a wide crack opened up.”
Andrew Sullivan: “Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the current GOP’s refusal to do anything but propose to slash spending is that “propose” is all they really want to do. They cannot actually stomach the actual cuts their abstract ideology demands. And so what happened yesterday, when the House leadership suddenly yanked a bill slashing transportation and housing spending, is of a piece with the growing incoherence on the right.”
So now the House GOP has revealed to all that not only will they refuse to pass any Democratic budget or spending bill from the Senate, but they also cannot pass any Republican budget or spending bill of their own.
Wednesday Open Thread [7.31.13]
The folks over at Wired Magazine took a look at who in Congress voted for and against clipping the wings of the NSA and found that those who voted NO to uphold, received double the amount of campaign money from the defense and aerospace industry than those who voted YES. To remind you, John Carney voted NO to keep the spying operation in your business — and received $9000. Not alot (Buck McKeon holds the record with $526K and he also voted NO), but it is a good reminder of where the interests lie.
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