
It's probably not going to succeed and I imagine there would be serious copyright issues. But still, cool.
As a good liberal political junkie I watched the summit today and saw Democrats staying within the bounds of reality in discussing the various ideas on the table and I saw the Republicans making things up. The president was in command of the facts, competently defended the Democratic position and successfully batted back many of the GOPs misrepresentations. The Republicans were effective in repeating their usual talking points and non-sequitors.
a young Reid had to cope with a pair of hard-drinking parents and a father who beat his mother until Reid was 14. The beatings stopped when Reid and his brother pinned their father down and demanded he stop.The political context is that Harry Reid said that bad economic conditions are more likely to result in men beating their wives. This resulted in a bunch of of Republicans making disgusting jokes about how Reid might lose his job and beat his wife after November's elections. People who work on domestic violence have generally stood behind Reid's remarks.
What does bother me about the mainstreaming of pole dancing -- particularly elevating it to the apotheosis of sportsmanship and nationalistic pride -- is that it doesn't come with a greater acceptance of or respect for actual sex work. In fact, if anything it does the opposite, merely redrawing the virgin-whore line: Some girls do it for money (for shame!), some do it for flirty fun (or, maybe one day, gold medals). It's just another symptom of our cultural schizophrenia when it comes to sex.A tangential observation: Despite all the porn on the internet, there are many awesome and unusual kinds of sex that we can't see, and that a more sexually liberated culture would probably make available for public viewing. Like, sex between people who are ice dancing or hang gliding. Or sex in amazing places that are hard to get to, like the peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro. I'm guessing that among the people capable of doing these things, a few are exhibitionistic enough that they'd want people to see them make love doing the thing they love. If extreme ironing can catch on, extreme sex should too, because sex is more awesome than ironing.
In 1994, Democrats had to wring some members to vote for the Clinton budget -- which reduced the deficit by reducing spending and raising taxes on upper-income households and was therefore unpopular. For the 218th vote, they got Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, a freshman Representative from a GOP-leaning district who had declared herself against the budget. Republicans -- who, naturally, were describing the Clinton budget as a radical left-wing big government power grab -- sang "Bye-bye Marjorie" on the House floor. (Mezvinsky did lose her seat, which she would have anyway, but she gained hero status and her son wound up marrying Chelsea Clinton. Vulnerable Dems with Sasha and Malia-aged sons who might like to be an Obama in-law might bear this in mind.)
1) GA Code 16-10-2 (bribery)There's a bit more to these statutes, but my untrained eye can't see anything that cuts against this basic point. People who understand this stuff better can look it up here.
16-10-2.
(a) A person commits the offense of bribery when:
(1) He or she gives or offers to give to any person acting for or on behalf of the state or any political subdivision thereof, or of any agency of either, any benefit, reward, or consideration to which he or she is not entitled with the purpose of influencing him or her in the performance of any act related to the functions of his or her office or employment.
2) GA Code 21-5-70 (Lobbyist expenditures)
(1) ‘Expenditure’:
(A) Means a purchase, payment, distribution, loan, advance, deposit, or conveyance of money or anything of value made for the purpose of influencing the actions of any public officer or public employee;
(B) Includes any other form of payment when such can be reasonably construed as designed to encourage or influence a public officer;
It is rare that a political figure can literally re-chart the course of his political party. But in coming out for an immediate troop withdrawal, Murtha gave his Democratic colleagues the cover they needed to express their own reservations about the war. Those who worked closely with the congressman at the time -- both on and off the Hill -- credit him with elevating Iraq on the Democratic platform and in turn putting the party in a position to benefit from the wave of anti-war sentiment that swept the 2006 elections.You've got to remember how crazy things were back then, and what Murtha and all the medals on his big chest were up against. Take this Washington Post article from as late as December 2005, titled "Democrats fear backlash at polls for antiwar remarks" where Emanuel and Hoyer are doing the bad things that make me love Nancy Pelosi:
Murtha and Pelosi were right, most other Democratic leaders and leading foreign policy experts in their party were wrong, Democrats won a tremendous victory in 2006 to retake both the House and the Senate, and as a result the official DC media view of the Iraq War moved closer to recognizing it as a catastrophe. Everybody who ran for the Democratic nomination after that came out against the Iraq War. A guy who opposed the Iraq War from the beginning won the nomination, became President, and is withdrawing troops from Iraq as we speak. December was the first month in which no US troops died in combat in Iraq.These sources said the two leaders have expressed worry that Pelosi is playing into Bush's hands by suggesting Democrats are the party of a quick pullout -- an unpopular position in many of the most competitive House races.
"What I want Democrats to be discussing is what the president's policies have led to," Emanuel said. He added that once discussion turns to a formal timeline for troop withdrawals, "the how and when gets buried" and many voters take away only an impression that Democrats favor retreat.
Pelosi last week endorsed a plan by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) to withdraw all U.S. troops in Iraq within six months, putting her at odds with most other Democratic leaders and leading foreign policy experts in her party.
"I introduced myself as a fella who was defeated in 1994, the last time we didn't pass meaningful health-care reform," Inslee recalls saying. "I said it was a painful event, and I didn't want them to go through that pain." In politics, he told his colleagues, assuming the "fetal position" can be the most dangerous thing to do.On the 'Obama to do his bipartisan summit thing' news, I bought the 'health care reform passes' contract on Intrade at a little under 34. The June 30 deadline on it concerns me a bit, because I don't know exactly how the calendar works here. Certainly I wouldn't have expected things to drag on as long as they have already. I don't have a specific guess at what our chances of victory are here, but I'm pretty sure they're above 50%. Barack is committed and moving, we only need 50 in the Senate, we've climbed much bigger mountains already, the reconciliation bill will be sweet, the post-MA panic is fading, and we've got Nancy. I think we're going to win this, and I'll take my winnings and crank out some Pelosi t-shirts.
Cosmo: Posit: People think a bank might be financially shaky.Only this time, instead of some anarchist mobster accountant, the mania seems to be driven by the investor class for ... well, why exactly? Do we know something about PIIGS finances today that we didn't know three months ago?
Martin Bishop: Consequence: People start to withdraw their money.
Cosmo: Result: Pretty soon it is financially shaky.
Martin Bishop: Conclusion: You can make banks fail.
Cosmo: Bzzt. I've already done that. Maybe you've heard about a few? Think bigger.
Martin Bishop: Stock market?
Cosmo: Yes.
Martin Bishop: Currency market?
Cosmo: Yes.
Martin Bishop: Commodities market?
Cosmo: Yes.
Martin Bishop: Small countries?
The liberal Senate majority, determined not to be blocked by endless argument over legislation in a period of economic crisis, last week approved a compromise that achieved the first new limitation on debate since 1959.
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;Lindsay Graham illustrates the amount of bipartisanship he really expects on climate change. |
"Realistically, the cap-and-trade bills in the House and the Senate are going nowhere," Graham said. "They're not business-friendly enough, and they don't lead to meaningful energy independence."
"It's the 'kick the can down the road' approach," said Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. "It's putting off to another Congress what really needs to be done comprehensively. I don't think you'll ever have energy independence the way I want until you start dealing with carbon pollution and pricing carbon. The two are interconnected."
And the question I’ve continued to have about the idea is what happens if (when?) it turns out that Congress actually loves subsidizing dirty energy production even more than it loves posturing about the deficit. Does Obama turn around and insist on offsetting cuts in education? Or do they really fight for these specific ideas?There's a third option: Obama doesn't fight for the spending freeze, but instead shakes his finger impotently at those fiscally irresponsible ruffians in Congress as they do what they want.
We had this enormous opportunity, but the way the rules work in the United States Senate, you’ve got to have 60 votes for everything. After the special election in Massachusetts, we now only have 59. We are calling on our Republican colleagues to get behind a serious health reform bill, one that actually provides not only the insurance reforms for people who do have health insurance but also the coverage for folks who don’t. My hope is, is that they accept that invitation and that they work with us together over the next several weeks to get it done.
The more Democrats do to reduce the deficit, the easier they make it politically for Republicans to retake power, and the easier they make it fiscally for Republicans to wreck the budget when they do. So, why try?
As he notes, the Democratic health care plans that passed the House and Senate all reduced the deficit, according to the CBO. But this hasn't helped them at all. In fact, polls show that the vast majority of Americans think they increase the deficit.
This is the kind of problem that would be solved by having independent figures who care about deficit reduction step up and point out that the Democratic health care plans cut the deficit. It's kind of thing that activists who care about an issue regularly do. If you think that something needs to be done about climate change, you'll support Democrats, hate on James Inhofe, but also reserve some nice words for a green Republican like Charlie Crist, as Brad Plumer does. Because Brad Plumer cares about climate change.
This is a thing that centrist pundits who talk a lot about deficit reduction would be in excellent position to do. But it's not the kind of thing they actually do, since the point of being a centrist pundit who talks about deficit reduction isn't actually to lower the deficit. It's just to present yourself to others and yourself as a Very Serious Person who cares about the things sober-minded Americans care about and judiciously avoids the evils of partisanship. And you can't keep doing that if you're going to go over and advocate for a party that's trying to do what you want. Even if that's what you need to do to reward people who do the right thing on your professed issue, win public support for their proposals, and keep them in power.