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

a victory in Politico

Yeah PA Dems swept the three open seats on the state Supreme Court, and flipped it. I guess this is good news for the next round of redistricting in 2021; they are the tie-breaking vote on an always deadlocked bi-partisan legislative redistricting commission.

Kevin Drum--

I don't want to go all Pollyanna on you, but the basic result of yesterday's elections is that conservatives won big in the South, while liberals did OK everywhere else. Losing Kentucky was a kick in the gut, but I can't work up a lot of surprise when Democrats lose ground below the Mason-Dixon line. It's unfortunate, but it's hardly big news.

Obama To Reject Keystone XL Pipeline In 11:45 ET Statement

I know people were arguing that the oil was gonna get moved anyway, regardless of the pipeline, but that NYT article makes it sound like as long as oil stays below $65/barrell (it's currently at $50) then the oil will stay in the ground

because the cost of moving it by rail would result in a net loss

Environmentalists though are not happy with the released Pacific Trade deal

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obamas-far-reaching-trade-deal-would-lower-tariffs-on-meat-cars-and-drugs/2015/11/05/8e720580-83dc-11e5-9afb-0c971f713d0c_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-more-top-stories_no-name:homepage/story&wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_daily202

The Sierra Club blasted the environmental chapter, calling it ‘rife with polluter giveaways that would undermine decades of environmental progress, threaten our climate and fail to adequately protect wildlife because big polluters helped write the deal.’”

“I know that past trade agreements haven’t always lived up to the hype. That’s what makes this trade agreement so different, and so important,” Obama wrote in a blog post.

haha gtfo. hopefully congress can still kill this

Im concerned that all the smoke signals of opposition to TPP are just from the people who can get away with voting against it because the votes will always be there for corporate welfare

Pierce:

​Shortly after the president spoke, I got a call from my friend Randy Thompson, whose lovely farm in Humphrey, Nebraska, was targeted by TransCanada as part of the death-funnel's route, and who worked harder than anyone against the pipeline simply because he was fed up with being pushed around.

"It's unbelievable that we were able to do this," Thompson said. "It's like watching the biggest bully on the school grounds getting his nose bloodied. It's very gratifying."

So was the Keystone announcement timed to take the sting out of the TPP unveiling?

Of course it was.

remarkabaly hopeful that for every celebration i'm seeing of kxl's defeat, there's a reminder that the battle against tpp is still ongoing

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/10/us/politics/appeals-court-deals-blow-to-obamas-immigration-plans.html?mabReward=CTM&moduleDetail=recommendations-2&action=click&contentCollection=Sunday%20Book%20Review®ion=Footer&module=WhatsNext&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&src=recg&pgtype=article

Conservative 5th Circuit in a 2 to 1 decision written by a Reagan appointed judge...Ugh

Louisiana governor's race ad

Democrat John Bel Edwards going on the air over the weekend with the most provocative attack ad of the year. A female narrator notes that Edwards served as an Army Ranger in the 82nd Airborne Division before noting that Vitter missed a 2001 House vote honoring 28 slain soldiers at roughly the same time that he took a call on his cell phone from the D.C. Madam. “David Vitter chose prostitutes over patriots,” a female narrator says. “Now the choice is yours.”

Tough choice, tbf.

Vitter's response ad:

Vitter is up today with a television ad that shows him sitting with his wife and kids around a kitchen table.
“Fifteen years ago, I failed my family but found forgiveness and love,” the senior senator says to camera. “I learned that our falls aren’t what define us, but rather how we get up, accept responsibility and earn redemption. Now Louisiana has fallen on hard times … And as your governor, I’ll get up every day to fight for you.”

And as your governor, I’ll get it up every day to fight for you.”

For years conservative Louisianans have ignored Vitter's hypocrisy because he voted in Congress the way they want, I am curious what the difference is now:

With the runoff just 11 days away, public polls put the Republican senator down anywhere from 11 points to 20 points. Early voting has already started

I bet he might still win.

I saw that immigration ruling headline and my first guess was 'oh fifth circuit eh' and I was rite

Can the Justice department peel away Anthony Kennedy from the conservatives at the Supreme Court and win?

bump this thread any time someone who has been imprisoned by the US for >5 yrs is found innocent by an actual judge

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/us/04gitmo.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

― youngdel griffith (k3vin k.), Sunday, July 4, 2010 2:40 PM

charlie savage is a great reporter too

― youngdel griffith (k3vin k.), Sunday, July 4, 2010 2:40 PM

Greenwald interview with Savage on his new book Power Wars, examining Obama's presidency in civil liberties and war powers terms.

... in early summer of 2009... there was this difficult case of these Chinese Muslims called Uyghurs at Guantanamo who everyone agreed had been brought there by mistake. And a judge had ordered them freed, and the US government did not think it had legal authority to keep holding them because they weren’t Al-Qaeda – they weren’t our enemies – but there was no place to send them.

We couldn’t send them back to China because they’d be tortured or killed, and China was using its diplomatic pressure to prevent other countries from taking them in. So they decided that they would bring a couple of them – the ones who spoke English the best, and so forth, to the United States, and release them under monitoring, in a Uyghur ethnic community here where I live, in Northern Virginia.

And when the local Congressman, Frank Wolf, found out about that, he sort of went to war, and went down to the floor of Congress and started talking about releasing dangerous terrorists in your backyard, and the Republicans kind of picked up on that theme. And of course the nuance of who these guys really were never really comes through when these things get demagogued like that.

And the White House totally retreated, immediately. And the reason they retreated was the political voices in the White House didn’t want to cause ruffles with Congress. They were trying to pass healthcare reform, and so forth. And they just didn’t want to fight the fight. And so they pulled back from that plan. And that taught Congress that they could be rolled on these issues. And that’s when Congress first imposes restrictions on Obama’s ability to transfer detainees that later get tightened significantly. And he signs them without complaint. That’s the first moment when I think really the turbulence hits. And they sort of display that they lose their nerve.

https://theintercept.com/2015/11/10/42692/

SAVAGE: The first thing Senator Obama does when he clinches the nomination, and his opponent is no longer Hillary Clinton but it’s going to be Mitt Romney, he votes in favor of the FISA Amendments Act which legalizes the warrantless surveillance program and immunizes the telecoms, even though he had said…

GREENWALD: Unambiguously, that he would filibuster that.

SAVAGE: Yes. And I tell the story of that, and some of the behind the scenes-y stuff about that, in a subsection chapter called “Foreshadowing.” So he’s not president yet, but already there we see the shift to “This stuff is okay as long as it has legal authority. It’s not inherently wrong.” And in retrospect, seeing how that played out in many other ways, I think that moment was of singular importance.

The first thing Senator Obama does when he clinches the nomination, and his opponent is no longer Hillary Clinton but it’s going to be Mitt Romney

Obama, always playing the long game

I wrote about Savage earlier this week. If you guys haven't read Takeover, please do.

ten points off for "behind the scenes-y stuff" though

v good Keyes, i didn't catch that

https://twitter.com/CallyGingrich/status/664576323004813312

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/business/trans-pacific-partnership-trade-deal-is-reached.html

Its full 30-chapter text will not be available for perhaps a month, but labor unions, environmentalists and liberal activists are poised to argue that the agreement favors big business over workers and environmental protection. Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the Pacific trade accord as “a bad deal,” injecting conservative populism into the debate and emboldening some congressional Republicans who fear for local interests like sugar and rice, and many conservatives who oppose Mr. Obama at every turn.

― curmudgeon, Monday, 5 October 2015 21:29 (1 month ago)

The whole TPPA text's out; some initial takes (from a NZ perspective) at http://pantograph-punch.com/post/ten-or-so-TPPA-deep-cuts ... investor-state dispute settlements, oh boy.

This will be fun...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-13/house-republican-hard-liners-drafting-contract-with-america-ii-

Members of the House Freedom Caucus are preparing a "Contract With America II" that would call for House votes in the first 100 days of 2016 on replacing Obamacare, overhauling entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, and repealing the estate tax.

An early draft of the plan obtained by Bloomberg News also calls for legislation to slash government regulations by 20 percent, cut corporate tax rates and expand offshore oil drilling. Efforts are still under way to finalize contents of the "contract," which lawmakers say they hope will become the basis of House Republicans’ 2016 agenda

just delete every 5th word of every regulatory document

i love how the freedom caucus view themselves as the True Conservatives, willing to fight against everyone including the GOP establishment, but when it comes to putting forward an agenda they list the same exact policies that the entire GOP has been supporting for a decade+

but they REALLY support it

more show votes on repealing Obamacare! it's what the country really needs.

delete every fifth letter, imho - if i've learned anything from image macros shared on facebook, your brain can fill in the rest!

yeah isn't that the whole point? like they call the regular republicans RINOs because in their view, they say they support all this unsustainable impossible legsislative bullshit just to get elected, but don't (frequently enough) press for hopeless self-defeating psycho showdowns.

but anyway don't these "contract" things work better if they're, like, something the congressional delegation is agreed upon, and running on? so that they then can claim a mandate, however dubious the claim might be? this looks more like some kind of norquist-pledge type stunt that's more about identifying republican congresspersons who aren't willing to "sign the contract," so they can then be more thoroughly called out as RINOs, in those media channels that already see them as RINOs anyway. nice that they're not even waiting for paul ryan to attempt some kind of leadership platform before putting this together.

well they're not passing bills, gotta do something

and the sun rises

http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/260220-republican-calls-for-increased-surveillance-in-muslim-neighborhoods

Rep Peter King, same as always.

Was also reading about how one of Paul Ryan's outside advisors on foreign policy for a number of years now, is Elliot Abrams, who was convicted of a misdemeanor for withholding evidence during the Iran-Contra scandal.

King is a moderate! He doesn't want to round em up and put em in camps.

are you really defending professional asshole Peter King

I believe that was snark. As in he doesn't wish to actively exterminate them.

ah of course

Texas governator:

Greg Abbott
‏@GregAbbott_TX
BREAKING: Texas will not accept any Syrian refugees & I demand the U.S. act similarly. Security comes first.

http://gov.texas.gov/files/press-office/SyrianRefugees_BarackObama11162015.pdf

Can we force TX to secede?

i still think Pete King is trying to SEO himself and that's why he keeps coming out with more and more outrageous things to say. he's got to be monetizing this in some direct way.

The "defense industry" is doing nicely today

https://theintercept.com/2015/11/16/stock-prices-of-weapons-manufacturers-soaring-since-paris-attack/

I guess there was a memo that got sent out:

The Republican governors -- in Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Massachusetts, and Texas -- say their top concern must be the safety of state residents, and they say there's a chance the refugees include people with terrorist ties.

their top concern must be the safety of state residents,

except when it comes to drugs and health care

er, i mean drugs, health care, and guns

since when could governors make demands