Support NeoGAF

[WayneMorse]

http://www.slate.com/articles/podca...rviews_sen_bernie_sanders_for_weigelcast.html

Bernie Sanders did an interview with David Weigel.

 

[Diablos]

Fairly big news considering the source, I suppose:

www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/27/cathy-mcmorris-rodgers_n_5222163.html

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the number four ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, says the Affordable Care Act likely won't be repealed.

In an interview with The Spokesman-Review published Friday, McMorris Rodgers said President Barack Obama's signature health care law is probably here to stay, so Republicans should focus on other issues.

“We need to look at reforming the exchanges,” the Republican conference chairwoman said.

You need to look at leaving the law alone...

Reforming them like how? Grandfathering existing plans and nuking the subsidies for new ones moving forward? That's my guess. If they can't repeal it they'll just make it as ineffective as possible and say "we told you so". Revisionist history legislation, ladies and gentlemen. It's right around the corner.

Obamacare jokes are getting really old. Especially the website. This law is doing a lot of good and it is getting overshadowed by people repeating the same fucking jokes from last year that aren't even relevant most of the time anymore. It's just sad. We finally have, despite it not being what most Democrats really want (socialized medicine), universal health care in the US. That is huge. And yet all we do is joke about things that have been addressed and are no longer a problem. All the late night hosts and pundits need to get some new material, it's almost summer for fuck's sake.

 

[The Librarian]

http://www.redstate.com/2014/04/28/lied-us/

 

[Tamanon]

I must've missed Boehner coming out for open borders, lol.

 

[Diablos]

http://www.redstate.com/2014/04/28/lied-us/

 

[thepotatoman]

People are against internet regulation with 51% opposing and 18% support. I guess people don't want net neutrality after all...

Seriously though, I don't think people understand what regulation is, other than that it's just a blanket bad word. I guess it'd help if we got more people to know what net neutrality even is.

 

[kehs]

People are against internet regulation with 51% opposing and 18% support. I guess people don't want net neutrality after all...

Seriously though, I don't think people understand what regulation is, other than that it's just a blanket bad word. I guess it'd help if we got more people to know what net neutrality even is.

That boogeyman argument is so frustrating.

=/

Don't like the wording of the survey question though:

3* Should the Federal Communications Commission regulate the Internet like it does radio and television?

 

[NYCmetsfan]

Like clockwork we got another "Paul Ryan Cares about Poor/Black people" article by McKay Coppins

Not really a knock at him but looking at his articles its quite obvious he just repeats what his republican subjects want him to repeate, he even already did the same story a few months ago: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/paul-ryan-finds-god

But the article is a joke.

Ryan’s visit to Emmanuel Missionary is his 12th such venture into the world of urban poverty since last year. Over the past 14 months, the former running mate to Mitt Romney has toured the country, praying with heroin addicts in San Antonio, and hanging out with former gangbangers in Milwaukee. Like any savvy politician, he began this chapter of his career with a happy ending pre-written: On April 30 he will chair a House Budget Committee hearing loftily titled “A Progress Report on the War on Poverty: Lessons from the Frontlines,” and sometime this summer he plans to release a package of conservative anti-poverty proposals that will be trumpeted as the culmination of his work with the poor. His admirers will no doubt use the occasion to celebrate him as a forward-thinking Republican visionary. He will make the rounds on the Sunday morning talk shows. Political reporters will write stories about his rising stock in the 2016 campaign.

LOL

But for all the partisan fanfare that awaits, Ryan does not exude the confidence of a man who has it all figured out. His immersion into a world that few in the D.C. political class dare to visit has left him humbled and a bit unnerved — uniquely aware of the scale of his project, and not entirely certain of the way forward.

Does the Progressive Caucus not exists? Does the CBC not exist?

This is Ryan’s trademark Midwestern modesty on full display, the same characteristic that requires him to express aw-shucks puzzlement at the strong feelings his politics inspire. “I don’t see why people give such a flip about me,” he says. “I’m just a guy in Congress!” But he is also a deeply polarizing figure in Washington and beyond, a fact that has largely filtered the responses to his newfound passion for the poor into two categories: swoons and sneers. The reality is that Ryan, like most politicians, operates in the reality somewhere in between House of Cards and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and his political transformation — from right-wing warrior-wonk crusading against the welfare state, to bleeding-heart conservative consumed with a mission to the poor — is one of the most peculiar, and potentially consequential, stories in politics today.

You were the VP and chair an important committee, the shtick is old

To the second bold that's not the reality, and its not consequential. Their policies are the same. They've done this song and dance before, you keep falling for it.

Ryan is doing something rather unprecedented for a Republican: He is spending unchoreographed time with actual poor people. He is exposing himself to the complexities of low-income life that don’t fit in the 30-second spot, the outlay spreadsheet, or the stump speech applause line. He is traveling well outside his comfort zone — and it has been uncomfortable.

Wow, real life poor people!!!!! Imagine that he spends time with his constituents!
Its sad this is unprecedented.

But a month later, Ryan still chafes at the assertions that he is a bigot. While he is accustomed to being labeled a granny-killer for his proposal to overhaul Social Security, this was the first time in his career he had been stamped with the scarlet-letter “R.”
“I thought I had been called every name in the book until now,” he says, smiling morbidly. “I know who I am and I know who I’m not. And Barbara does too. She does.” He adds, “If we’re going to get to fixing this problem, we need to allow a good conversation to happen without, you know, throwing baseless charges at people.”

Baseless?

“Dog whistle… I’d never even heard the phrase before, to be honest with you,” he says. The admission isn’t meant as a dodge, or an excuse. He hails from a state where “diversity” means white people swapping genealogical trivia about their Polish and Norwegian ancestry — his hometown of Janesville, Wis., is 91.7% Caucasian, according to the 2010 census — and he is coming to terms with the fact that he is not equipped with the vocabulary of a liberal arts professor. The fallout from his gaffe has been a “learning experience,” he says, one that he predicts conservatives will have to go through many more times if they are serious about building inroads to the urban poor.

Bullshit.

And they're not serious about building inroads to the urban poor, their polices would change if they were

“We have to be cognizant of how people hear things,” he says. “For instance, when I think of ‘inner city,’ I think of everyone. I don’t just think of one race. It doesn’t even occur to me that it could come across as a racial statement, but that’s not the case, apparently… What I learned is that there’s a whole language and history that people are very sensitive to, understandably so. We just have to better understand. You know, we’ll be a little clumsy, but it’s with the right intentions behind it.”

Missing the point, its not if its what he thinks. It's what his base thinks.

It would be easy to use stuff like this to ridicule him for his tone-deafness, his white-guyness, his sheltered cluelessness. But Ryan, by his own admission, is receiving his sensitivity training in real time. He has charged headfirst into the war on poverty without a helmet; zealously and clumsily fighting for a segment of the American public that his party hasn’t reached since the Depression-era shantytowns that lined the Hudson River were named after Herbert Hoover. It is frequently awkward and occasionally embarrassing, but it is also better than staying on the sidelines.

Jesus McKay, Ryans been in politics and in the House of Representatives since he was 29 years old. Drop the naive characterization.

Chait is just the most prolific soldier in an army of liberal political writers whose wonkery came into vogue at the same time Ryan’s profile began to rise in Washington. The congressman’s budget, which called for dramatically restructuring entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicaid in order to reach a balanced budget, made him a natural villain in their writing, and over the years they have relentlessly prosecuted him with critiques that range from petty and hysterical, to serious and substantive.

Nice euphemism

“We need to try to get those Fortune 500 companies to lower their expectations on background checks to hire these guys,” Travis says, as his peers nod in agreement. Ryan is nodding too, suddenly energized by a tangible problem that public policy might be able to address. “You ask any one of these cats out on the street, do you want to work? They don’t want to work ‘cause they’re gonna be making $7 an hour on pump four.”

Ryan is still transfixed by the problem of getting jobs for ex-cons when his rental SUV pulls out of the church parking lot after the meeting. “There’s a lot to that,” he says from the passenger seat. “But the key is that you have to have a validator. Some trusted person who can say to the employer, ‘No, no, this dude, this guy is really good.’”

Woodson encourages the congressman’s enthusiasm. “This is an area of public policy where we can have an impact,” he says. “Because it’s true across the country. There are insurance and risk factors but there must be solutions somewhere.”

Does anyone think he's actually gonna take up a real policy proposal here?

Woodson nods, and supplies an example. “There are issues that are very pedestrian but very important,” he tells Ryan. “Like, helping people like this keep more of the money that they earn. For instance, my daughter lives in Costa Rica. It costs me practically nothing to call her. It costs me a dollar a minute to call to federal prison.”

Woodson waits for a response, but none comes, so he reiterates the point. “These families pay a dollar a minute, Paul.”

“Just to call into prison?”

“Yeah!” Woodson says. “I mean, there’s a huge rip-off of people in prison, families of people in prison. I have to give my credit card to a company and they come and tell me, ‘You have $100 on your account, you have talked for X number of minutes, this is what’s left on your card.’ And it’s about a dollar a minute. I’m telling you, it’s crazy!”
“Geez,” Ryan mutters.

For a moment, it seems as though this will mark the end of the conversation, but Woodson keeps pressing. “So, that is something, Paul, that we really need to look into. It would reach thousands and thousands of families around this country.”

As it turns out, the Federal Communications Commission last year actually banned price-gouging by private companies that provide telephone service for inmates, though prison reformers remain concerned that the same shady practices could be applied to email access and video chat services. But Ryan isn’t aware of that now, and while he clearly wants to move on, Woodson seems intent on pushing him just a little bit harder, making him just a little bit more uncomfortable.

“I mean, this is the kind of issue that politicians just don’t pay attention to,” Woodson says.

“Or even know about,” Ryan adds.

Wonder why? Looks like you don't even care.

Ryan’s broad vision for curing American poverty is one that conservatives have been championing for the last half-century, more or less. He imagines a diverse network of local churches, charities, and service organizations doing much of the work the federal government took on in the 20th century. Rather than supplying jobless Americans with a never-ending stream of unemployment checks, for example, Ryan thinks the federal government should funnell resources toward community-based work programs like Pastor Webster’s.

So the same thing you've been proposing since forever. So much for new ideas.

Still, Ryan admits he hasn’t quite figured out how to paint a compelling picture of his vision for the public. George H.W. Bush memorably likened local volunteer organizations and charities to “a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.” Ryan, by contrast, has been working on a metaphor that involves pollination, but he hasn’t quite nailed it down. In the meantime, he has fallen back on the familiar vocabulary of politics past, describing his vision as “civil society.” But he adds, “We need to find a better term. Nobody knows what that means.” Meanwhile, one of his favorite lines — “We need to make redemption cool again” — seems stale and sort of confusing. Has redemption become uncool?

Yup the problem is branding.

At one point in our discussion, I ask him about a pair of Supreme Court cases that seek to settle how the Obamacare contraceptive mandate should apply to religious nonprofits like the Little Sisters of the Poor, and private companies owned by religious individuals, like Hobby Lobby. The debate has become a classic culture war battle, with the right framing it as an assault on religious values, and the left crying “war on women.” Ryan is sympathetic to social conservatives’ arguments, but he sees the issue primarily as another dire example of civil society’s unraveling — an attempt by the state to crowd out certain charities and private employers from the public square.

“That’s a big deal to me,” he says. “What I think is happening is an assault on the First Amendment in this case, which will dramatically shrink civil society. It’s all interconnected.”

What is he going on about?

Ryan is a good soldier, and so he declines to take the bait and bash the nominee who made him a national name. But there’s no question Ryan’s recent efforts have been at least partly defined in opposition to the way Romney carried the Republican banner in 2012. Indeed, in the past year Ryan’s work has helped inspire a number of GOP all-stars, including Sens. Marco Rubio, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul, to start talking about how a conservative agenda might serve the nation’s poor. At least in rhetoric, the party has come a long way since, “I’m not concerned about the very poor.”

Ryan says he wishes their campaign had spent more time appealing to low-income voters, but that the problem started well before the last election.

Maybe you could have said something back then?

“I think that by the time it got around to 2012, it was a little too late,” he says. “It wasn’t, ‘Oh gosh, four months to go, let’s get this right now!’ It’s not a box-checker at the end of a campaign. It’s a consistent and continual thing. It just atrophied in our party. And I was part of that atrophy. I focused on budgets and economics, macroeconomic policy, because that was sort of the crisis in front of us.”

“I think we all, as a party, just fell away from that.”

So I'll pretend to care, but when push comes to shove there are more important things. Like lowering taxes.

Also this image? Really?

 

[NYCmetsfan]

People are against internet regulation with 51% opposing and 18% support. I guess people don't want net neutrality after all...

Seriously though, I don't think people understand what regulation is, other than that it's just a blanket bad word. I guess it'd help if we got more people to know what net neutrality even is.

Stupid framing. Ask them "should the government ensure that private corporations cannot limit access to the internet"? Answers will change

 

[The Technomancer]

He imagines a diverse network of local churches, charities, and service organizations doing much of the work the federal government took on in the 20th century

How on earth does the party of big business not understand the advantages of "buying in bulk"?

 

[speculawyer]

http://www.redstate.com/2014/04/28/lied-us/

Really? You lied to everyone. Death panels, people won't sign up, cost over-runs, etc. You were dead wrong on so much and you STILL can't admit it.

 

[sc0la]

How on earth does the party of big business not understand the advantages of "buying in bulk"?

They completely understand it. You think the goal of such a policy is to help more people?

It's solely to demolish the welfare state, reduce taxes, then if you choose to help people you only help the "good ones" that you want to through highly targeted giving to the charity or religion of your choice. You likely won't be feeding many "urban drug addicts" if you give to the Mormon church.

 

[Aaron Strife]

I think the GOP is seeing the same thing as everyone else (well, except PD). Obamacare repeal is no longer a winner. Hell it wasn't a winner in 2012 before most people were even benefiting from the law, but there was reason to believe that it would serve them better in a midterm election and gum up their base, especially after the initial rollout was somewhat disastrous. But now they want to "reform" the law. "Reform" being a vague, nice-sounding word politicians like to use to avoid rustling any jimmies by proposing specific policy, but I digress. That's as close to surrender as they could have gotten. They're trying to stem the damage before campaigning begins in earnest, too bad all of their incumbents are on record saying they want to take healthcare away directly from ~15 million people.

PPACA is going to be a defining element in the 2014 elections, and not the way the GOP wants.

 

[empty vessel]

They completely understand it. You think the goal of such a policy is to help more people?

It's solely to demolish the welfare state, reduce taxes, then if you choose to help people you only help the "good ones" that you want to through highly targeted giving to the charity or religion of your choice. You likely won't be feeding many "urban drug addicts" if you give to the Mormon church.

Right, it's ultimately about reducing the bargaining power of labor. A "diverse network of local churches, charities, and service organizations" will be less effective at empowering working people than robust government programs. More desperate poor people = lower wages = higher share of revenue going to profits = higher share of power going to owners of capital.

 

[thezerofire]

http://www.redstate.com/2014/04/28/lied-us/

I guess voting to repeal 50 something times isn't really fully fighting it?

 

[FLEABttn]

They completely understand it. You think the goal of such a policy is to help more people?

It's solely to demolish the welfare state, reduce taxes, then if you choose to help people you only help the "good ones" that you want to through highly targeted giving to the charity or religion of your choice. You likely won't be feeding many "urban drug addicts" if you give to the Mormon church.

Right, it's ultimately about reducing the bargaining power of labor. A "diverse network of local churches, charities, and service organizations" will be less effective at empowering working people than robust government programs. More desperate poor people = lower wages = higher share of revenue going to profits = higher share of power going to owners of capital.

Good chance for proselytizing as well.

 

[Jack Remington]

It's admirable that Ryan is making an earnest attempt to understand how far-reaching and systemic poverty is in this country, and to put faces to the people living in it.

I'd like to see him move away from the "makers vs takers" rhetoric that's characterized his ideology for so long. Hopefully these experiences can help with that.

It would also be really great if this opened the door to some kind of compromise on public work programs. It sounds like what he's proposing is essentially a public work and job training program, only he would run it entirely through small businesses, nonprofits, and religious organizations. That in itself isn't a terrible idea, but I think it's pretty foolish to believe that this approach could realistically fix poverty in America.

We had churches and charities before government social welfare programs came into existence, and they didn't prevent poverty then. And sure enough, programs like Social Security and food stamps actually do a pretty good job at improving living standards in the country.

 

[East Lake]

I think this is the moment we will look back on when the Randian energy transferred from the white man to the black man.

 

[Jack Remington]

The fact that his budget guts social programs in order to increase military spending is also pretty indicative of his priorities.

I could see across the board cuts if people were really convinced that deficits were a serious threat, but actually increasing the military budget while cutting everything else is pretty abhorrent.

 

[Crisco]

Totally missed the WH's indefinite delay of the Keystone XL pipeline. I think this finally means its dead. No sense in firing up conservatives and then approving it anyway after the election. It's not getting built, at least not in the next 2 years. Has Obama ever given a speech as President solely on climate change? Announcing the rejection of the pipeline would be a very good way to underline the US's commitment to a post-oil energy policy.

 

[Oblivion]

I swear, being a Republican politician is the easiest thing in the world. You don't even have to change your positions, all you need to do is pretend you care about some subset of the population and apparently that's good enough for vigilant journalists like McCay Koppins.

 

[Averon]

Why is Ryan and the GOP even paying lip service (as poorly as that is) to poverty? Are they they trying to head off Democrats using income inequality as an issue in the future?

 

[speculawyer]

I think the GOP is seeing the same thing as everyone else (well, except PD). Obamacare repeal is no longer a winner. Hell it wasn't a winner in 2012 before most people were even benefiting from the law, but there was reason to believe that it would serve them better in a midterm election and gum up their base, especially after the initial rollout was somewhat disastrous. But now they want to "reform" the law. "Reform" being a vague, nice-sounding word politicians like to use to avoid rustling any jimmies by proposing specific policy, but I digress. That's as close to surrender as they could have gotten. They're trying to stem the damage before campaigning begins in earnest, too bad all of their incumbents are on record saying they want to take healthcare away directly from ~15 million people.

PPACA is going to be a defining element in the 2014 elections, and not the way the GOP wants.

They might stick with 'repeal' for the 2014 election cycle as it still works with their red-meat base and the old farts that think it takes away from their medicare who always show up to vote.

But the strategy may be short-term returns for longer-term disaster. By 2016, there will be many millions more on some type of Obamacare plan (whether it be kids under 26, medicaid, people that bought on the exchange, no-pre-existing conditions gainers, etc.). And the larger voter public will come out during a Presidential year election. They will have to capitulate before then or get destroyed.

 

[Oblivion]

Why is Ryan and the GOP even paying lip service (as poorly as that is) to poverty? Are they they trying to head off Democrats using income inequality as an issue in the future?

Pretty much.

 

[speculawyer]

Totally missed the WH's indefinite delay of the Keystone XL pipeline. I think this finally means its dead. No sense in firing up conservatives and then approving it anyway after the election. It's not getting built, at least not in the next 2 years. Has Obama ever given a speech as President solely on climate change? Announcing the rejection of the pipeline would be a very good way to underline the US's commitment to a post-oil energy policy.

I can't figure out what the ultimate end will be. I kinda assumed it would have been approved by now. I guess they've just gone with a delay, delay, delay strategy . . . but I still don't know the ultimate decision. And I've heard 'insider' reports saying they'll approve it and 'insider' reports saying they'll reject it.

Yes, Obama has given pure climate change speeches. And his chief science guy, John Holdren, is very much aware of climate change issues. Although the hardcore environmentalists aren't happy, I think the administration has done a decide job of doing climate change things with the limited power they have due to the public not caring about the issue and the Congress blocking everything since 2010.

 

[Crisco]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/04/28/republicans-dont-just-hit-democrats-with-obamacare-ads-theyll-also-hit-each-other/

While the full context of Sasse's remarks paint a clearer picture of the spirit of his words, the ad is a reminder that Republicans must be very careful how they speak about Obamacare in public setting, lest they fall victim to an attack from a fellow Republican at some point.
We saw this play out in the Georgia Senate race this year when Rep. Paul Broun (R) went after Rep. Jack Kington (R) with a web ad hitting him for saying it's not "the responsible thing to do" for Republicans to let Obamacare fail without trying to fix it.

This is pretty great stuff, Republicans are playing a game of one-upmanship with anti-Obamacare rhetoric against a backdrop of an increasingly pro-ACA public. It's absolutely going to backfire on them eventually. Some "retired" grandma is going to ask why they want to make her go back to working at Wal-mart so she can afford health insurance.

 

[rocketknight]

Has anybody come across the racial breakdown of the Michigan's 2006 Prop 2 anti-affirmative action referendum votes? I'd really love to see it. All of the conservative pundits are crowing that "the people have spoken" when I'm pretty sure that "the white people have spoken" would be more accurate.

 

[Jack Remington]

Why is Ryan and the GOP even paying lip service (as poorly as that is) to poverty? Are they they trying to head off Democrats using income inequality as an issue in the future?

I think Ryan actually does give a fuck, but he's firmly, firmly committed to the idea that government spending can't do anything to help the problem (and actually makes it worse).

 

[Tamanon]

FYI, HBO put up John Oliver's show on Youtube for the first episode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tCmriZSxxk&feature=player_embedded

Pretty good stuff, talk about the India elections, and a good NSA interview.

 

[Oblivion]

I think Ryan actually does give a fuck, but he's firmly, firmly committed to the idea that government spending can't do anything to help the problem (and actually makes it worse).

Hahaha, no not at all.

During the election, Chris Hayes revealed a video of Ryan on the House floor back in 2001 or 2002 where the douche was actually arguing FOR increased spending (as well as lowering taxes, to be fair) to help get us out of the recession from the dot com bubble bursting. The guy made a good an argument as any Keynesian ever did.

Ryan doesn't actually believe his shitty Ayn Rand policies will actually work, he just simply likes them.

 

[Aaron Strife]

Charlie Cook moved NY-11 to Lean D after Grimm said he's not resigning.

Dem pickups in CA-31 and NY-11 negate the GOP pickups in UT-4 and NC-7; back to needing 17 for the majority.

 

[Metaphoreus]

Has anybody come across the racial breakdown of the Michigan's 2006 Prop 2 anti-affirmative action referendum votes? I'd really love to see it. All of the conservative pundits are crowing that "the people have spoken" when I'm pretty sure that "the white people have spoken" would be more accurate.

There was an amicus brief filed in Schuette that touches on this:

Of those Michigan voters who said they had participated in the election, 65.2 percent of whites, but only 13.8 percent of blacks, reported that they had voted for Proposal 2. The gap between white and black support for Proposal 2 was thus 51.4 percentage points. This difference far outstrips the difference between other pairs of groups that had differing views towards Proposal 2, including men and women, Catholics and Protestants, and those with relatively little formal education and those with relatively extensive formal education. No other social factor comes close to race in dividing the Michigan electorate over Proposal 2.

 

[speculawyer]

Bad news for Kay Hagan. No, really . . .

In North Carolina, the problem for Democrats is younger voters, as Nate Cohn reports at the Times' new blog The Upshot. When incumbent Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan won in 2008, she did so by winning 71 percent of the vote from 25-and-under voters who comprised 10 percent of the electorate. She won handily, but that strong support from young voters puts her reelection at risk. Young people tend to vote less frequently in midterms; in 2010, the last midterm, only 4 percent of the electorate in North Carolina was 25-and-under. But the split for Hagan in 2008 leads Cohn to conclude that the problem "is twice as damaging to Democrats in North Carolina than it is nationally."

http://news.yahoo.com/democrats-tro...where-else-thanks-demographics-165200020.html

Bad title for the article . . . it is not the demographics, it is the lazy Dem voters.

 

[Oblivion]

It's interesting because it sounds like he really genuinely is interested in understanding poverty and in talking about how to fix it.

Why are we giving this tool the benefit of the doubt?

 

[NYCmetsfan]

It's interesting because it sounds like he really genuinely is interested in understanding poverty and in talking about how to fix it. But given his Randian predilections, I'm not convinced we'll see any result from this but "churches need to do better, and we need to cut welfare so people are motivated to get jobs." Business as usual, in other words.

The same article pretty much was posted back in december by the same author. Have you seen movement?

There is nothing earnest about this.

 

[AndyD]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/04/28/republicans-dont-just-hit-democrats-with-obamacare-ads-theyll-also-hit-each-other/



This is pretty great stuff, Republicans are playing a game of one-upmanship with anti-Obamacare rhetoric against a backdrop of an increasingly pro-ACA public. It's absolutely going to backfire on them eventually. Some "retired" grandma is going to ask why they want to make her go back to working at Wal-mart so she can afford health insurance.

NPR had something like that on this morning. In Florida I think, a rep or senator was asked about repeal without offering any alternative. And he acknowledged that it was a significant problem, to speak of repeal but offer nothing concrete as an alternative to the millions who now have insurance due to ACA. He chalked it up to the various interested conservative groups having different priorities, so no unified alternative was ever agreed upon to be presented.

 

[speculawyer]

It's interesting because it sounds like he really genuinely is interested in understanding poverty and in talking about how to fix it. But given his Randian predilections, I'm not convinced we'll see any result from this but "churches need to do better, and we need to cut welfare so people are motivated to get jobs." Business as usual, in other words.

I worry that will be the outcome.

But perhaps he can come up with some different ideas. Perhaps some ideas on how to prevent jobs moving to other countries or even ways to bring some of those jobs back.

Perhaps some realization that doing some public works projects could build useful things that could help the economy (roads, bridges, the grid, etc.), stimulate the economy (suppliers, tool-makers, designers, lunch places, etc.), and provide people who otherwise might end up on welfare programs with jobs.

But . . . yeah, I fear he'll just come to the same old conclusions . . . that are not working.

But jeez . . . they constantly complain about people not working . . . well . . . CREATE SOME JOBS!

 

[Aaron Strife]

Bad news for Kay Hagan. No, really . . .


http://news.yahoo.com/democrats-tro...where-else-thanks-demographics-165200020.html

Bad title for the article . . . it is not the demographics, it is the lazy Dem voters.

Well hopefully OFA will be able to crank up its voter turnout machine for 2014. IIRC they didn't try very hard in 2010 because Obama didn't really care about the midterm election results.

 

[thepotatoman]

Like clockwork we got another "Paul Ryan Cares about Poor/Black people" article by McKay Coppins

It's amazing how the republican party is so bad at this that simply doing some photo ops with poor people sets you apart from the rest of the pack, but you're right that if policies aren't going to change it's not going to change anything.

The charity argument is pretty easily debunked with simple statistics, studies, and economic logic, and the dog whistle government plantation argument is debunked by just linking to Bundy's racist decoded argument of the same thing.

The only argument that they have that people might latch onto is just pretending like free market is not an economic concept, but a philosophical one, where the free market is moral and anything that goes against the free market, like redistribution, is immoral because it impedes on the rich man's freedom. Likewise, anything that goes with the free market is moral, such as a rich man using his economic power to repress a poor person looking for work. That's why you see way more republicans acting like they are the victims and that poor people are the devil. It's the only reason they or anyone else even believes in this Randianism themselves.

Paul Ryan is wasting his time if he thinks he's going to get anyone to believe in Randian theories using different reasonings.

 

[WayneMorse]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/04/24/this-is-a-very-good-positive-political-ad/

Could Merkley's seat be put into play? I know he probably has a lead now but a combination of the massive fuck up with the Oregon exchanges and the poor turnout from Democratic voters could really hurt him in the general election.

 

[Hobbestetrician]

Why are we giving this tool the benefit of the doubt?

Don't worry, I am not.

 

[Jack Remington]

Yeah, I'd really like to see how the economy was doing if Obama's proposed $447 billion jobs bill in 2011 had been passed.

A lot of Republican criticism of Obama is centered around his "failed economic record." But really, the issue has been that Obama and the Republican House have fundamentally irreconcilable differences on how to create jobs.

Republican ideas for job creation are centered almost entirely around tax cuts and deregulation. I think there's a lot to be said for cutting red tape for small businesses, but a lot of that needs to be done at state and local levels anyway. In addition to tax cuts, there's this asinine notion that if we just drastically shrink the federal government (get the government the hell out of the way!), and repeal Obamacare, the economy will just start booming.

There's no real evidence for this. The best you can really do is point to Hong Kong, and there's also the ridiculous and oft-repeated line that "China has lifted more people out of poverty than any country in history by embracing the power of free markets," which is pretty silly because China is very, very not free, and besides that Democrats aren't anti free market at all.

So due to this ideology and possibly due to the fact that many of them despise Obama with a religious fervor, you have the House majority outright refuse to take any action on job creation that involves the government spending money, which goes against the advice of just about every economist who isn't a dyed-in-the-wool libertarian. Then they have the gall to say that Obama has a failed economic record, as though he even has a record to begin with outside of the stimulus.


On top of that, they've actively worked against the economy on multiple occasions with their debt-ceiling idiocy and the shutdown.

 

[theprodigy]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/04/24/this-is-a-very-good-positive-political-ad/

Could Merkley's seat be put into play? I know he probably has a lead now but a combination of the massive fuck up with the Oregon exchanges and the poor turnout from Democratic voters could really hurt him in the general election.

you're putting Diablos to shame right now, there's no way Merkley will lose his seat

 

[WayneMorse]

you're putting Diablos to shame right now, there's no way Merkley will lose his seat

He wont lose his seat of course but John Oliver's segment on the Oregon exchanges last night made me wonder whether or not he could face a more competitive race against a well funded opponent.

 

[Crisco]

NPR had something like that on this morning. In Florida I think, a rep or senator was asked about repeal without offering any alternative. And he acknowledged that it was a significant problem, to speak of repeal but offer nothing concrete as an alternative to the millions who now have insurance due to ACA. He chalked it up to the various interested conservative groups having different priorities, so no unified alternative was ever agreed upon to be presented.

In other words "it's too hard". That's the problem with these people, especially the ones who came in with the 2010 Tea Party wave and the gerrymandered district trolls. They aren't legislators, they have no idea how to write laws. Even if they wanted to replace Obamacare with equivalent reforms, they wouldn't know where to begin. Every single law ever written was pulled in different directions by various interest groups, that's how Congress works. Whining about that is almost pathetic but it's probably the truth. They only talk about repeal because that's literally all they know how to do.

 

[Wilsongt]

Ouch. So much for conservatives' attempts to make a counter Cliven Bundy for the Democrats in the form of Donald Sterling. He's a registered Republican.

 

[NYCmetsfan]

The only argument that they have that people might latch onto is just pretending like free market is not an economic concept, but a philosophical one, where the free market is moral and anything that goes against the free market, like redistribution, is immoral because it impedes on the rich man's freedom. Likewise, anything that goes with the free market is moral, such as a rich man using his economic power to repress a poor person looking for work. That's why you see way more republicans acting like they are the victims and that poor people are the devil. It's the only reason they or anyone else even believes in this Randianism themselves..

This is a key part that I think helps explain things. Its also why empiricism has no effect on many. It simply is the moral and right thing.

I hate the false equivalency but one sometimes runs across it with the more militant marxist and collectivists who will turn away from any evidence that central planning doesn't work

 

[Wilsongt]

Wait, really? How was that even supposed to work? The Bundy thing didn't get coverage because "ZOMG a conservative turns out to be racist" (let's be real, that's a dog-bites-man story), but because he was getting backing from prominent Republicans all over the place. It backfired on them spectacularly, and now they want to cry about the biased lamestream media? Give me a fucking break.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...ing-to-explain-his-history-of-discrimination/

His money giving is all over the place, but he is not the true Democrat that the right was hoping he was and instead is more ambiguous, instead of Cliven Bundy who is a red blooded 'Murican.

 

[WayneMorse]

Yeah as the article states the Justice Department has gone hard against Sterling in the past over discriminatory housing practices, I don't know why he would give money to generally more liberal Senators like Leahy and Bradley, or support Gray Davis.

 

[KingK]

http://www.slate.com/articles/podca...rviews_sen_bernie_sanders_for_weigelcast.html

Bernie Sanders did an interview with David Weigel.

I don't think I've ever disagreed with Bernie Sanders on anything. I hope he runs in the primary.