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

So the original indictment said : Each of the two charges carries a penalty of as much as five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, the prosecutor’s office said. Mr. Hastert is to appear at an arraignment at a future date, the prosecutors said.

The plea deal might allow him to avoid jail and keep his misdeeds secret.

pissed about O's "revised" Afghanistan withdrawal plan, cue Morbz' "I told you so"

@ggreenwald
1st question on today's press call w/WH on Obama's new Afghanistan War policy: "How will President's statement impact Dem chances in 2016?"

Glenn Greenwald Retweeted
‏@BarackObama 12 Oct 2012
FACT: Romney and Ryan don't have a plan for our troops in Afghanistan. The President has a clear plan to end the war in 2014. #DetailsMatter

I don't know why leaving troops in Aghanistan means the war isn't over. There are still troops in lots of countries. Often they remain because, like in Afghanistan, there are continuing threats to the govt in power. Obv the US troops in Afghanistan are in a hotter conflict than in S Korea or Germany but that's because the Taliban are still trying to retake the country. If anything I think it's good that he's leaving troops there - shows he learnt from his mistakes in Iraq.

hey, it's the guvmint in power

https://www.marionettes-puppets.com/images/P/3_marionettes-ru029.jpg

shows he learnt from his mistakes in Iraq.

iirc, the US gov definitely wanted to keep some troops in Iraq, but the al Maliki gov refused. so how does this become Obama's mistake?

iirc al Maliki gov just refused to grant US troops total immunity from prosecution from future war crimes committed while they were in the country. Obama decided it was better to just remove them all than deal w/ that headache. Instead he got a different headache.

https://twitter.com/barackobama/status/260415484674068481

@BarackObama 22 Oct 2012
FACT: President Obama kept his promise to end the war in Iraq. Romney called the decision to bring our troops home “tragic.”

lol these clowns:

In an interview with WIBX 950 in New York on Wednesday, moderate Republican Rep. Richard Hanna said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy was speaking the truth when he said this month that the committee had successfully injured Clinton.

“Sometimes the biggest sin you can commit in D.C. is to tell the truth,” Hanna told the upstate New York radio station. “This may not be politically correct, but I think that there was a big part of this investigation that was designed to go after people and an individual, Hillary Clinton.”

love the whole game of trying to pretend like this was not completely obvious

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/5e20fcd92aee49e699149aef93595e49/apnewsbreak-us-spec-ops-knew-afghan-site-was-hospital

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/10/15/top-party-official-accuses-democratic-national-chairwoman-of-lying-questions-her-leadership/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_daily202&_r=0

Wouldn't it be great if she had to quit that position? But probably won't happen

lol Reid doing some classic knife-twisting here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/harry-reid-paul-ryan-house-speaker_5626879de4b02f6a900e20a4?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592&ref=yfp

only in this bizarro world could a statement of "we'll be able to work with him" be misconstrued as FIRE BAD

Harriet Miers again

A group of conservative House Republicans on Tuesday unveiled a proposal to raise the debt limit through March 2017 that also calls for mandatory spending cuts.

The Republican Study Committee's "Terms of Credit Act" would raise the debt ceiling by roughly $1.5 trillion -- to a total of $19.6 trillion -- through March 2017.

But the committee is setting a steep price for the debt limit increase. The bill would require congressional committees to produce legislation within 90 days that would cut more than $3.8 trillion in mandatory funding over the next decade. Mandatory funding covers programs like Medicare, Social Security and food stamps.

They also have a condition to impose on their colleagues in the Senate: the measure would eliminate the filibuster for an initial procedural vote on spending bills any time after Oct. 1. The legislation would also freeze all regulations until July 1, 2017, several months into the next presidential administration.

The bill would require congressional committees to produce legislation within 90 days that would cut more than $3.8 trillion in mandatory funding over the next decade

hmmmm sounds like a real legislative winner, good luck with that guys

2011 obama/biden might be into that

I like how they think the House can pass laws that apply to Senate rules, really adorable

no joke

all Harry Reid has to say is, "I support these freezes on regulations" and the GOP will drop them.

haha yeah Harry Reid should just say he supports whatever ludicrous shit the Freedom Caucus comes up with

Paul Ryan babbling about solutions, children, and propositions.

Someone needs to form the Too Funky caucus

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal-eye/wp/2015/10/20/whats-in-store-for-federal-pay-and-benefits-if-ryan-becomes-speaker-a-likely-hit/

Nothing new in that article regarding Ryan's plans, but maybe it will remind inside the beltway types whom he really is (not likely, but I can dream, and they are probably happy to blame federal government workers )

Grover Norquist talks to Michael Grunewald:

MG: I’m giving you an opportunity to declare victory here. Because it seems like as a percentage of the economy, historically, taxes are pretty low today.

GN: Lower than they have been. Not as low as they should be.

MG: The fiscal cliff deal in 2013 did raise taxes on everyone making more than $450,000 a year, and you were actually OK with that.

GN: That was a phenomenal victory. All the Bush tax cuts were going to expire on January 1. All Obama had to do was twiddle his thumbs and go for a walk, and taxes were going to increase by $5 trillion over a decade. He would have gotten the largest tax increase in the history of western civilization. Not only didn’t he do that, he allowed 85 percent of the Bush tax cuts to be made permanent, for 99 percent of the country.

MG: But taxes went up, and you were OK with it. A lot of people expected you to take the maximalist position, that you can’t vote for anything that allows taxes to go up.

GN: The pledge has been a powerful tool because it’s written down, it doesn’t move, it’s simple. It’s one line: You can’t vote for net tax increases. It’s a binary thing: Fred either voted to raise taxes from the status quo or he didn’t. It’s a guardrail. When the law says a tax cut has lapsed, I can’t say that the failure to renew it is a tax increase, even if I want it renewed. Yes, voters might think that, but the pledge is the pledge. If I changed the pledge to fit the circumstances, Harry Reid would be right when he says, 'Oh, Republicans just do whatever is Grover’s thought of the day.'

MG: My one quibble is that you make it sound like Republicans snookered Obama into cutting taxes for most Americans. I think he was happy to cut taxes for all but the very wealthy. Even Democrats are coming around to the Grover way!

http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/10/grover-norquist-tax-interview-000288

The entire GOP platform is boiled down to simple one line pieces of bullshit

and the Dems have absorbed it.

where is the story about Grover Norquist sleeping with a giant Mr. Peanut next to his bed

I was going to pretend that sentence didn't have "next to his bed" on it but I think the attendant nightmares will be too strong

Norquist: The starkest contrast between the parties today is not the divisive issues. There are pro-life Democrats and pro-choice Republicans. There are a few Democrats who won’t steal your guns.

...In 1774, Americans were paying 1 percent or 2 percent income taxes. The Brits thought about raising it a bit and the guns came out. The Civil War, aside from slavery, was partly about taxes. In the 1830s, South Carolina called out its militia over the tariff. People brought the guns out, so they rolled back the tariff.

when people like norquist talk about guns in this way it's creepy as fuck

hen people like norquist talk about guns taxes in this way it's creepy as fuck

LOL @ "Americans" and 1774

good to see partisan political crap can extend back before the country was even born.

lol at "income taxes" and 1774. also bizarre single-issue revisionist takes on the civil war are the fucking worst. "sure sure we all THINK slavery was important... but what they don't tell you in school is that it was really the whiskey excise!"

Shot heard around the world was a whiskey shot for the tax preparers

if it ain't in this book, it didn't happen

http://civilwarmemory.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451bedb69e2010535baf85f970c-pi

H.W. Crockofshit

Well, when you've got the Vatican on your side...

wait wait. why didn't my teacher tell me holidays in the sugar plantation slave state of cuba could have been ours for the taking? i feel so lied to.

lol: http://www.firepaulryan.com/

Rep. Paul Ryan is a "smart" but that doesn't mean he is qualified or conservative enough to lead the people's House

sponsors list is grim/lol

Alan Keyes! keepin it real

I wonder if Alan Keyes sees Ben Carson and is like "shit, that guy is eatin my lunch!"

He's a smart!

How a smart?
https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia-cache-ak0.pinimg.com%2F736x%2Fa8%2Fc4%2F1e%2Fa8c41ed362284c90d8f643215604c307.jpg&f=1

sorry lol hueg