2015 American Politics Thread: The 114th Congress Is in the House!

what the hammer? what the chain?

news is no news

Maybe the two escaped prisoners are also carrying the 1.6 billion euros that Greece owes

To paraphrase an old, true saying: if you owe your banker a million euros you can't repay, you have a problem; if you owe your banker a billion euros you can't repay, your banker has a problem.

goddamnit I just got this email from the clinton campaign: "More like Chillary Clinton, amirite?" it is emlazoned on a beer cozy. I don't know if I can vote for her if she keeps sending out this shit.

when i think of chill people, which is something i do all the time, i always think of hillary clinton. man she is so chill

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/246676-fannie-freddie-execs-get-34m-pay-raises?wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1

The leaders of the government-controlled housing agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac got hefty pay raises on Wednesday, according to new disclosure reports. Fannie Mae CEO Timothy Mayopoulos and Freddie Mac CEO Donald Layton will each earn target compensation of $4 million, according to disclosures filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Lawmakers had previously capped the controversial government sponsored entities’ executive pay at $600,000.”

One would hope members of both parties in Congress would see the bad optics on this. The link says someone is proposing a bill to limit their salaries. But I guess many dream of the gravy train themselves so they may not eager to limit this (plus that nonsense about attracting talented people is only possible if exorbitatn salaries are offered).

curmudgeon! You used "optics" in a sentence!

The market dictates their wage they could work somewhere else blah blah

I like that people want to get paid the same rate as another job they don't have

x-post--Sorry man, I've been corrupted or that use of the term is just everywhere now

throwing you under the bus now fyi

IA over 'optics' and 'lens' on this board

if you view my argument through the prism of my optics metaphor

you will never prise 'prism' from me

how can we incentivize that

you know who has a tremendous instagram is chuck grassley

https://instagram.com/p/4zQnLXF-Ej/

the excitement, how does he contain it

grassley goes so hard u wear hairnet + hardhat in the training room

The GOP-controlled Senate is on track this year to confirm the fewest judges since 1969, a dramatic escalation of the long-running partisan feud over the ideological makeup of federal courts.

The standoff, if it continues through the 2016 elections as expected, could diminish the stamp that President Barack Obama leaves on the judiciary — a less conspicuous but critical part of his legacy. Practically, the makeup of lower-level courts could directly affect a number of Obama’s policies expected to face legal challenges from conservatives.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/payback-gop-blocks-obama-judge-picks-judiciary-119743.html#ixzz3f8eSpyA3

Meanwhile here's the truly frightening candidate: http://www.jsonline.com/news/scott-walker-calls-for-open-records-overhaul-to-be-completely-removed-or-changed-b99532073z1-311638151.html

Important piece of this story: http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/walker-office-operating-as-if-proposed-open-records-exemptions-are-law-b99532581z1-311737471.html

its like attorney client privilege minus the attorneys and the clients

http://www.kirkbangstad.com/

This dude is trying to take out Sean Duffy. He also sang in the Glee Club the year after I graduated. I hope he wins.

heh, Nancy needlin Boehner:

Democrats responded by reintroducing a resolution that would have mandated the removal of Mississippi’s state flag from display on U.S. Capitol grounds, because it displays the Confederate “Battle Flag.” That resolution, offered by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was tabled on a mostly partisan vote that referred it to a committee.

Those Democratic moves left Boehner angry over what he saw as the rejection of his attempt to defuse the issue. “The Speaker offered a thoughtful and responsible way to address this issue and Pelosi responded with a cheap political stunt,” Kevin Smith, Boehner’s spokesman, said.

Surprising story on McConnell's liberal civil rights record:

But Mr. McConnell’s interest in race issues was inspired by his upbringing in Kentucky by parents who opposed segregation. It was fermented on the campus of the University of Louisville, where he encouraged students to march with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It was reinforced by his internship in the office of Senator John Sherman Cooper, a Kentucky Republican who helped break the Southern-led filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

It also surfaced during his first term in the Senate, when Mr. McConnell’s vote helped Congress override President Ronald Reagan’s veto of a measure imposing sanctions on South Africa during apartheid, and has persisted through his years in the United States Capitol, most recently last month, when Mr. McConnell stood before reporters and said that a statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, should be removed from Kentucky’s Capitol.

“This whole business of America moving past its original sin,” Mr. McConnell said in an interview, “has been over a big period during which I have lived.”

huh I had no idea

A huge story and win for Democrats: Florida Supreme Court orders redrawing of congressional districts.

Destroyed records. Shadowy projects with names like “Sputnik” and “Frankenstein.” And a college student whose identity was stolen to provide cover for political operatives.

Welcome to Florida, where the tentacles of gerrymandering are as tightly coiled around the statehouse as an invasive Burmese python.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2015_07/culture_war_video056589.php

The rightwing just never stop with their attempts at entrapment videos

a previously unknown antichoice group called the Center for Medical Progress

fwiw this "group" is one guy ("investigative journalist") who created a website to give his clinic harassment a veneer of legitimacy

literally no "medical" anything involved in "the center for medical progress"

ohhh THIS is what the conservative douchebag singer I went to college with was ranting about on Facebook yesterday when he called surrogacy under any circumstances an abomination and human slavery (it took a while but it eventually got to "I'm mad people are selling fetus parts")

I heard about this last night without any context and the first thing I thought of was that it was some James O'Keefe type shit. No surprise to discover that's exactly what it is.

what is O'Keefe up to these days anyway

I'm sure we'll hear from him soon.

Meanwhile Chuck Schumer continues his dance of the seven veils for the Dems' anti-treaty wing.

http://prospect.org/article/how-american-south-drives-low-wage-economy

Just as in the 1850s (with the Dred Scott decision and the Fugitive Slave Act), the Southern labor system (with low pay and no unions) is wending its way north.

By
Harold Meyerson

JE in SF:
http://ww4.hdnux.com/photos/37/56/65/8318279/15/920x920.jpg

sorry wrong thread

thank god obama finally lowered the flags for the shooting victims so I don't need to see my idiot family complaining about anymore.

We probably keep that flag lowered 24/7

i've heard more about fucking flags in the past month than I have in my entire life

should make ISIS dildo flag the new flag of the nation

Why the presidency matters.

Plus Congress too

Now, with a push from President Obama, and perhaps even more significantly a nod from Speaker John A. Boehner, Congress seems poised to revise four decades of federal policy that greatly expanded the number of Americans — to roughly 750 per 100,000 — now incarcerated, by far the highest of any Western nation.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee who has long resisted changes to federal sentencing laws, said he expected to have a bipartisan bill ready before the August recess.

“It will be a bill that can have broad conservative support,” said Mr. Grassley, who as recently as this year praised the virtues of mandatory minimums on the Senate floor.

!

Just ain't the money in building prisons there usta be.

I hope those presidential appointments somehow overcome Waterworld, Alfred.

They probably won't — imo that's not a good enough reason to throw up your hands and say
http://www.big-t-shirts.com/ProdImages/big/who-gives-a-shit.jpg_1244.jpg

I was told immigration reform was all but assured too, but some unreasonable dickheads ruined everything

it's not ME who doesn't give a shit.

solitary posts that effortlessly sum up morbz' ilx persona