I look forward to Senate investigations into the Scopes trial and bills requiring prayer in public schools — and hand guns for all! Let the lunatics rule the asylum. That would guarantee impeachment for Obama, which would likely raise his standing with everyone else and assure another Democratic president in 2016. Bring it on, fools.
A new CBS News/New York Times Battleground Tracker estimate finds the Republicans positioned to take the Senate this year, with a likely 51-49 seat edge if the November election were held right now. The margin of error on that current seat estimate, at plus or minus 2 seats, means Democrats still have a real possibility to keep the chamber and that we head into campaign season with control up for grabs — with a closely-divided Senate surely coming in 2015 in either case.
Conservatives’ gloating over Halbig reveals why the right’s insular, fact-resistant world is so dangerous
The unseemly side to all this celebrating is the fact that these conservatives are, in effect, throwing a party over a judicial ruling that would strip millions of people of their health coverage. “The next time Republicans are wondering why so many people think their party is cruel and uncaring and will gladly crush the lives of ordinary people if it means gaining some momentary partisan advantage, they might think back to this case,” wrote Paul Waldman in the American Prospect.
Conservatives, obviously, wouldn’t see it that way, even though the policy ramifications are clear. In that way, Halbig has offered a stark reminder of just how vast the differences between the two sides in the Obamacare fight are. It’s not just a simple matter of policy disagreement – conservatives and Republicans have constructed a separate and impenetrable reality in which the Affordable Care Act is a catastrophic failure that has not provided a single measurable benefit.
That’s right: By Boehner’s lights, Obama’s abuse of authority involves delaying a requirement – a delay, incidentally, intended to help businesses – of a law that Boehner’s House has voted more than 50 times to repeal. (Never mind that, as Ezra Klein of Vox has pointed out, President George W. Bush unilaterally waived Medicare Part D penalties for low-income and disabled seniors late to enroll – with nary a peep from Boehner.)
Imperial Japan taught its soldiers that death was preferable to surrender. The tea party’s code is similar: Stand firm, regardless of the odds of success or the consequences of failure. I’ve argued before that the struggle between the Republican establishment and the tea party is no longer about ideology — establishment figures have mostly coopted tea party views — but about temperament.
It has become the amiable vs. the angry, the civil vs. the uncivil, a conservatism of the head vs. a conservatism of the spleen. The division now is between those who would govern and those who would sooner burn the whole place to the ground — and in this struggle, McDaniel carries a torch.
As the economy continues its slow recovery, the ranks of the angry are shrinking, but there remains a sizable and outspoken minority that listens to conservative talk radio and embraces martyrdom. It
Americans are evenly divided between those who think DUHbya, the guy who pissed away a fortune in war and tanked the economy — not that it hurt the profits of his friends one bit — or Obama is best/worst for the economy. Get real, people. Something is horribly wrong with the ability of a frightening large number of Americans to think clearly.
In a new Quinnipiac University Poll, 33% named Barack Obama the worst president since World War II. Only 8% named Obama as the best president. How the 12 post-war presidents fared:
“Clearly, if you had the guts to invest during the depths of the crisis, your returns would have looked just spectacular,” he said, noting annualized returns of 21 percent and a total return of 175 percent from March 2009 to the market’s peak.
Browne said it was stressful, of course, including watching the Dow drop 50 percent from its highs, but again the takeaway is pick an “appropriate asset allocation and stick to it.”
When I saw the referenced Albuquerque Journal article, my first thought was “what about the goddamn Koch Brothers (sons of the John Birch Society)?” Perhaps the Journal will write a similar piece on Republican money, in which half a dozen billionaires own every GOP candidate.
the Journal interviewed … went to extraordinary lengths to imply that progressive leaders weren’t playing fair. And then the Journal made a point of saying “Republicans don’t appear to have a similar large web of interacting PACs.”
What a bunch of B.S.
The Journal is just WRONG. In fact, our review of the top spending PACs in New Mexico found that the governor’s Susana PAC raised and spent more money than the top two Democratic leaning PACs combined.
New Mexico is a blue state, with Democrats accounting for 47 percent of all registered voters. Republicans are at 31 percent and independents at 19 percent. Of course, New Mexico has a fair share of Democrats, especially in more conservative parts of the state, who are willing to cross party lines.