life is a thrill

Your bailout money and what happened to it.

In Tancredo’s view, the Tea Party movement would never have been sparked under a McCain administration because Republican Party leaders and activists would have been muffled from criticizing their president. Meanwhile, McCain would be cutting deals with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

If the Arizona senator had won, Tancredo said, “Sarah Palin would not be free to tell it like it is.”

If McCain had won, “There would be no Republican in Ted Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts.”

Tancredo, best known for his hard-line stance against illegal immigration, also said the theoretical McCain administration would have already held a bill signing ceremony outside the White House with Rep. Luis Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat who previously worked with McCain on an unsuccessful overhaul of U.S. immigration laws that would have provided a path to citizenship for some of the illegal immigrants residing in the U.S.

“We would not be here” if McCain had won, he said. “What happened to us in that last election was really a revolution.”

Tancredo also heaped criticism on Obama, calling him “a committed socialist ideologue” and warned against the “cult of multiculturalism” in America.

I agree with some of the Tea Partiers main arguments: that fiscal conservatism is the proper path, that government regulation has greatly exceeded its proper scope, and that states should be freer to govern without interference from the federal government.

But these principles are difficult to get behind when racist douchebags like Tom Tancredo and incoherent ninnies like Sarah Palin are leading the charge.

Further, my understanding is that the true tea-baggers fully embrace the social conservatism espoused by Republicans. My opinion is that any movement aimed at restricting the scope of government should at least be neutral on divisive issues like gay marriage and abortion. With so many independents out there, many of whom are essentially social liberals and fiscal conservatives, it's too bad no mainstream movement has credibly emerged to challenge the sad two-party hegemony.

Slate takes a look at the most terrifying political ad ever.

I have a simple three-step test to indicate whether a country is "governable":

1. Is it having, about to have, or living in the aftermath of, a coup?
2. Has the civil war killed at least 1% of the population?
3. If an alien landed and demanded to be taken to see a representative of your government, would you be unable to comply with this request?
   

If your answer to any of these questions is "yes", then you may be living in a country that is ungovernable, and should consult the World Bank, or an arms dealer, if the symptoms do not resolve within a week.

Otherwise, you are living in a functional nation-state.  You may not like what the government does (or doesn't do), but it is governable, and indeed, is being governed right this very minute!

I'm as tired of the GOP's crap-tactics as anyone, and not necessarily because I'm a huge fan of Obama's proposed reforms. Still, I agree with McArdle. A little gridlock (or a lot) doesn't make the country ungovernable.

Stephen Colbert tried to run a corporate-sponsored campaign for the Presidency in 2008, only to be foiled by election laws.  In teh wake of the Citizens United ruling, he’d like to try again, Politico reports.  But if he plans to run another “hail to the cheese Stephen Colbert Nacho Cheese Doritos 2008 presidential campaign” he’s in for a bit of a surprise.  While Frito-Lay could air ads in support of Colbert’s candidacy, it still can’t fund his campaign directly or coordinate its expenditures with the Colbert campaign, nor can Colbert promote a real candidacy on his show, as that would entail direct financial support from Comedy Central’s corporate owner, Viacom.  So much for leaving the other candidates in the dust, the “nacho cheese dust.”

Nice, concise reminder that Citizens United didn't remove all campaign spending limits for corporations. Just those restrictions directly related to media purchases (i.e., the form of participation that looks MOST like pure speech).

 

Sen. Orrin Hatch

Washington » Sen. Orrin Hatch threatened an all-out political "war" and promised a new high in partisan tensions if Democrats employ a rarely used Senate rule to win approval of their health reform bill.

His provocative statements came a day after President Barack Obama made a plea for bipartisanship and cooperation in his State of the Union address.

It was a plea that Hatch, a Utah Republican who sits on both of the Senate's health committees, said he simply didn't believe.

"They haven't acted in good faith on this, nor do I expect that they will," he said in an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune . "I expect them to go to reconciliation."

Reconciliation is a procedure that would allow Democrats to bypass a potential filibuster and pass a bill with a simple majority vote. The rule was created to allow Congress to pass budgets in extreme circumstances and is rarely ever used. Under normal rules it takes 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, but Democrats now control 59 seats after the unexpected Republican victory in the special election in left-leaning Massachusetts last week.

Hatch said Thursday that using reconciliation would be "one of the worst grabs for power in the history of the country" that would permanently impact relations between the two parties.

"It is going to be outright war and it should be, because it would be such an abuse of the reconciliation rules," Hatch said. "If they abuse those rules it is going to lead to even more heated animosities between not just the two parties, but even between individual senators."

Short of getting access to a Spinal Tap modification, and taking this shit to 11, I'm not sure Republicans can go much further against the wall. They already use the filibuster against everything. They already put a hold against every nomination.

So what else are they going to do? Torture?

That being said, I totally agree reconciliation should not be used. Instead, Dems should use this opportunity to get rid of the filibuster.

Also, the term "free market capitalism" is mostly used by people who are not economists. When I hear that term, I tend to think that I am talking to someone who is prone to believing in conspiracy theories.

Ouch. But so true.

[I]s it not breathtaking for one appointed Justice, on his own, to decide that he does not like the balance that elected legislators decided on many decades ago, and that many waves of his judicial predecessors have declined to tamper with?

Although I've already said I'm neither troubled or surprised by the Citizens United decision yesterday, Roberts's claims of judicial minimalism are ringing awfully hollow today.

That's not surprising either. "Judicial Activism", whatever that means, is practiced by many on both sides. It's also avoided by many on both sides. Roberts is like all judges, in that he practices restraint or revolution as it suits his fancy.