I look forward to posting future articles written by jerseyhoya.

34 Republicans voted against the rule on TPA, and 8 Dems had to vote for it to save the bill. Utterly pathetic. Vote against the bill on passage if you want but ffs support your party on the rule. These idiots are so dumb. Ranting against Obamatrade, what they're calling trade promotion authority in the Drudge/Breitbart portions of the internet, a power every president has had in some way or another for decades until now.

Gotta do what's best for the team consequences be damned.

You're a part of a team, and sometimes you have to support it. You support the rule and let leadership put its bills on the floor, especially when it has the overwhelming support of your caucus. If you oppose the bill, oppose it on passage. These members get significant benefits in influencing legislation and sitting on important committees from being in the majority party. On votes regarding organization and rules, you support the party and don't act like some grandstanding twat trying to win plaudits from Mark Levin and Matt Drudge. In the not so distant past these people would be disciplined by ripping them off the committees they want to be on or threatening pulling funding in the reelect, but with the defanging of parties in BCRA and rise of third party groups that doesn't seem to work anymore. Makes it really difficult to pass anything remotely controversial.

Seantor Mark Kirk (R- IL) discussing Lindsey Graham's Southern Gentleman status:

“I’ve been joking with Lindsey,” Kirk said, according to audio from the Huffington Post. “Did you see that? He’s going to have a rotating first lady. He’s a bro with no ho.”

Kirk on the efficacy of driving through various neighborhoods:

want to make sure we have elected people constantly looking at helping the African-American community. With this state and all of its resources, we could sponsor a whole new class of potential innovators like George Washington Carver and eventually have a class of African-American billionaires. That would really adjust income differentials and make the diversity and outcome of the state much better so that the black community is not the one we drive faster through.

i like the idea that having a few black billionaires would fix inequality.

Yes, having a dozen black billionaires would make up for the millions of black thousandaires.

What impeccable logic.

jerseyhoya wrote:You're a part of a team, and sometimes you have to support it.

perhaps you can elaborate how this plays out in the context of the Kochs maneuvering to effectively hijack the RNC

the galling thing is that this is how a Kirk actually thinks. That is, he imagines that, in emitting such things, that he has "thought" at some point before or doing so.

drsmooth wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:You're a part of a team, and sometimes you have to support it.

perhaps you can elaborate how this plays out in the context of the Kochs maneuvering to effectively hijack the RNC

Campaign finance reform gutted the parties ability to raise unlimited soft money, which was relied on heavily for party building activities like registering voters and mobilizing GOTV drives. Immediately and predictably third party groups stepped into the void, though it started more on the left because the RNC with an incumbent president in the White House, was still piling up enough $25k checks that they didn't really need outside help yet. In 2004, America Coming Together backed by Soros, Peter Lewis, and the SEIU poured $80 mil into voter contact/registration/mobilization. I think the Democrats had an easier time with the idea of outside groups being hugely integrated into this side of campaigning because unions have always been important to GOTV for Dems. On our side, rich people write checks and the party is supposed to take care of it, but the big checks went to outside groups instead of to the party as might have happened previously. The outside groups that popped up stayed focused more on TV ads than voter registration/mobilization, leaving that to the party, which was fighting with one arm tied behind its back and increasingly doing a bad job at it compared to the Dems/Obama campaign/outside liberal groups. In 2012, it became abundantly clear that the party was miles behind the Dems on this stuff. The RNC has ramped up its own efforts on IDing voters and the other digital big data things, but the Kochs and their network of donors have also turned their attention to it. They think they can do a better job than the RNC, and they might not be wrong. It would be better for them to come to some sort of an accommodation where the tasks get split up rather than fighting with each other in public. It would be even better if we just let people give money to the parties, which are organizations which can be held democratically accountable by voters and serve a vital role in any functioning democracy, rather than shunting it off to less transparent corners with third party actors doing party tasks.

I think you guys are misunderstanding JH's position. Party discipline is a good thing--it helps do stuff. And note--you can make your vote on the rule, so stuff gets to the floor, and then vote against it, and thus register your opposition.

If you don't like Koch Brothers and others driving policy, then you should support more, not less party strength. It's weak parties that allow interest groups to do their mischief.

Here's the thing--you can advocate for systemic reforms of one kind or another, but that advocacy should never be based on who's ahead right now. If you like the fact that the Dems can keep stuff from reaching the floor with the filibuster today, but you didn't like it two years ago, then you're confused.

Me, personally, I think the whole Senate is pointless, and would like to get rid of it, or have its status reduced to something like the House of Lords. Also, I dislike the electoral college, even though it currently does favor the Democrats.

jerseyhoya wrote:You're a part of a team, and sometimes you have to support it. You support the rule and let leadership put its bills on the floor, especially when it has the overwhelming support of your caucus. If you oppose the bill, oppose it on passage. These members get significant benefits in influencing legislation and sitting on important committees from being in the majority party. On votes regarding organization and rules, you support the party and don't act like some grandstanding twat trying to win plaudits from Mark Levin and Matt Drudge. In the not so distant past these people would be disciplined by ripping them off the committees they want to be on or threatening pulling funding in the reelect, but with the defanging of parties in BCRA and rise of third party groups that doesn't seem to work anymore. Makes it really difficult to pass anything remotely controversial.

I know this is all true, but I think it's all a gross way to run a democracy. The "team" aspect of politics is what most people are frustrated with and why nothing ever gets done. The fact that you continually post about politics in this manner is really disgusting to me and I'll continue to point it out. I'm glad some republicans had the guts to stand up to their party on a cause they cared about and belittling them for it is dumb.

jerseyhoya wrote: It would be better for them to come to some sort of an accommodation where the tasks get split up rather than fighting with each other in public.

Better for who?

I for one am thoroughly enjoying the party of moneygrubbers digging its feeble talons into the throats of external professional moneygrubbers who theoretically share interests with the party moneygrubbers but are presently intent on gouging their eyes out for all to see.

Who needs communists? Give them enough slack, & these lords of capital may well hang one another, with a side of bloody entrails

TenuredVulture wrote:I think you guys are misunderstanding JH's position

His position, when you get down to cases, is he wishes these idiots would get a quiet room already, because it's bad for business when they reveal how venal and selfish and doesn't-play-well-with-others they are to the whole world, and even a few potential voters. Too bad.

Detroit Free Press lays the smackdown on Rick Snyder and the new 'religioius freedom' law he signed that pertains specifically to child adoption. Basically, any adoption agency can deny any couple or person for any reason they want as long as they cite religious reasons. This includes, of course, gay people, but also divorcees,Jews, Muslims, Christians, whoever. Plus, there's another wrinkle they really didn't think of:

Republican state Sen. Rick Jones, R-Grand Ledge, told the Free Press that because faith-based agencies handle most of the children Michigan places with foster families or adoptive parents each year — pocketing more than half the $19.9 million that the state spent last year to support adoption and foster care services — lawmakers have little choice.

"If they close their doors," he said, "I don't know what we'll do with all the children. This is a real threat."

Jones is not absolutely wrong.

The truth is that Michigan's approach to dealing with the 13,000 children in its care is at real risk of collapsing if the Supreme Court invalidates all state-sponsored discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Right now, about 50% of the state's adoption work is performed by religious agencies who, in the likely coming legal reality, won't be able to or won't want to receive taxpayer money because they discriminate.

Faced with the loss of that kind of capacity, lawmakers and the governor should be panicked — and seeking some alternative way to ensure the state's 13,000 in-custody children continue to see adoption opportunities.

good job!

North Carolina tries to keep pace with Michigan:

Government officials in North Carolina can refuse to perform same-sex marriages by citing religious objections under a law enacted on Thursday by the Republican-led legislature, which voted to override the governor's veto.

The law protects the jobs of magistrates and other officials who refuse to perform marriages of gay couples by citing a “sincerely held religious objection.”

Governor Pat McCrory, also a Republican, had said the officials who swore to defend the Constitution and perform their duties of office should not be exempt from upholding their oath.
The state House of Representatives overrode his veto by reaching the three-fifths majority in a 69-41 vote. The state Senate overrode the veto earlier this month.

While gay marriage was targeted in a wave of conservative legislation in U.S. statehouses this year, North Carolina is among the few states to pass a measure. Utah approved a similar opt-out law earlier this year.

great job!

SK790 wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:You're a part of a team, and sometimes you have to support it. You support the rule and let leadership put its bills on the floor, especially when it has the overwhelming support of your caucus. If you oppose the bill, oppose it on passage. These members get significant benefits in influencing legislation and sitting on important committees from being in the majority party. On votes regarding organization and rules, you support the party and don't act like some grandstanding twat trying to win plaudits from Mark Levin and Matt Drudge. In the not so distant past these people would be disciplined by ripping them off the committees they want to be on or threatening pulling funding in the reelect, but with the defanging of parties in BCRA and rise of third party groups that doesn't seem to work anymore. Makes it really difficult to pass anything remotely controversial.

I know this is all true, but I think it's all a gross way to run a democracy. The "team" aspect of politics is what most people are frustrated with and why nothing ever gets done. The fact that you continually post about politics in this manner is really disgusting to me and I'll continue to point it out. I'm glad some republicans had the guts to stand up to their party on a cause they cared about and belittling them for it is dumb.

I don't know why I bother, but one more swing through this. The team aspect of politics is vital to anything getting done. It strikes me as deeply weird to believe that it is why nothing gets done. If you had 435 individuals doing what they think is best in the House and 100 doing the same in the Senate, nothing would ever be accomplished. You need structure, order, leadership, rules in order to herd people into groups to achieve anything. When people buck the system, it is useful to have disciplinary options to keep them in line, and these have been eroded over the past decade or so. Parties are also extremely helpful and important when it comes to allowing voters to make informed voting decisions and impose a degree of democratic accountability on elected officials without following every twist and turn attentively.

If you think this is disgusting, I am curious what your proposed alternative is. European parties have much stronger discipline than American ones do. They have much greater centralized control over candidate selection, and the incentives when you are in the majority to support the government are often existential. What magic bullet are we missing here?

Finally in regards to the specific issue, belittling people who are deliberately obfuscating the difference between trade promotion authority and the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, suggesting this is "Obamatrade" because we have to pass the bill to find out what is in it, when trade promotion authority is not some newfangled thing is richly deserved. These people are idiots either because they believe this garbage, or they want to appeal to people who believe this crap. The idiocy on this specific issue is more plentiful on the other side, but they're Democrats so they're supposed to be wrong.

drsmooth wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:I think you guys are misunderstanding JH's position

His position, when you get down to cases, is he wishes these idiots would get a quiet room already, because it's bad for business when they reveal how venal and selfish and doesn't-play-well-with-others they are to the whole world, and even a few potential voters. Too bad.

My position is this is something the party should do, but for reasons stemming from an inane, googoo law that tried to defang parties, it is something that the party may not be best suited to do. And that is not so good on a couple of different levels.

Given the laws in place, I would rather the party and the third party people come to an agreement of sorts where they can work in a similar direction or split up tasks so resources aren't wasted. This is not because a single voter would ever possibly give a fucking shit about who has the best voter database in Republican/conservative circles, but because fighting about it publicly and alienating each other rather than working toward a solution that helps the right catch up to the Democrats on this stuff is not going to accomplish anything good.

One of those afternoons when watching C-Span proves rewarding. TAA, the job retraining bit that often gets stuck onto trade deals, goes down after Pelosi and the Dems vote against it heavily when it's usually the side of trade bills Dems back and Republicans oppose. The bill, now different than the Senate bill, seemed momentarily dead. Then the House passed trade promotion authority anyway 219-211. It's not clear what happens next. Boehner is asking for a revote on TAA, I think. Since 219 are on the record in favor of TPA without the job retraining bit, which is usually included as a sweetener to attract Dem support for trade bills, I guess the idea is they might as well back it now with the threat that maybe the Senate takes up the House bill. Or that Republicans opposed to it but in favor of trade promotion should back it to get the whole package through. More time for Obama to work on his crew and another chance for Ryan et al. to work on the Republican caucus, I guess. The people on Twitter and C-Span both don't seem to know what's going on.

jerseyhoya wrote:

SK790 wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:You're a part of a team, and sometimes you have to support it. You support the rule and let leadership put its bills on the floor, especially when it has the overwhelming support of your caucus. If you oppose the bill, oppose it on passage. These members get significant benefits in influencing legislation and sitting on important committees from being in the majority party. On votes regarding organization and rules, you support the party and don't act like some grandstanding twat trying to win plaudits from Mark Levin and Matt Drudge. In the not so distant past these people would be disciplined by ripping them off the committees they want to be on or threatening pulling funding in the reelect, but with the defanging of parties in BCRA and rise of third party groups that doesn't seem to work anymore. Makes it really difficult to pass anything remotely controversial.

I know this is all true, but I think it's all a gross way to run a democracy. The "team" aspect of politics is what most people are frustrated with and why nothing ever gets done. The fact that you continually post about politics in this manner is really disgusting to me and I'll continue to point it out. I'm glad some republicans had the guts to stand up to their party on a cause they cared about and belittling them for it is dumb.

I don't know why I bother, but one more swing through this. The team aspect of politics is vital to anything getting done. It strikes me as deeply weird to believe that it is why nothing gets done. If you had 435 individuals doing what they think is best in the House and 100 doing the same in the Senate, nothing would ever be accomplished. You need structure, order, leadership, rules in order to herd people into groups to achieve anything. When people buck the system, it is useful to have disciplinary options to keep them in line, and these have been eroded over the past decade or so. Parties are also extremely helpful and important when it comes to allowing voters to make informed voting decisions and impose a degree of democratic accountability on elected officials without following every twist and turn attentively.

If you think this is disgusting, I am curious what your proposed alternative is. European parties have much stronger discipline than American ones do. They have much greater centralized control over candidate selection, and the incentives when you are in the majority to support the government are often existential. What magic bullet are we missing here?

Finally in regards to the specific issue, belittling people who are deliberately obfuscating the difference between trade promotion authority and the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, suggesting this is "Obamatrade" because we have to pass the bill to find out what is in it, when trade promotion authority is not some newfangled thing is richly deserved. These people are idiots either because they believe this garbage, or they want to appeal to people who believe this crap. The idiocy on this specific issue is more plentiful on the other side, but they're Democrats so they're supposed to be wrong.

I don't see how less would get done? You'd have more people willing to cross party lines and vote how they want without having to worry about the repercussions. Yeah, parties are helpful in bringing a group of like-minded individuals together to help pass legislation, but there's a problem when you only have two options, as there are more than 2 different types of people. If members of the House and Senate always voted along party lines(or roughly so), your basically only voting for 2 different opinions on ALL the issues. What you're suggesting allows no wiggle room, and reduces the voice of the average people. Maybe if we actually had more parties in this country you're system of voting along party lines most of the time would be good, but we simply don't.

I don't have a solution or a degree in political science, but that doesn't mean I can't think that voting along party lines to support the party even when you disagree is backwards as fuck and a pretty dumb way of going about a democratic system.

Imagine if there were 435 options on a multiple choice test, and in order to pass the law, a majority needs to select the same option. This is what would happen if everyone was acting independently in the House, and this is what jerseyhoya is describing. As a libertarian who believes that most of what Congress does is neutral or harmful, I don't have a huge problem with fewer bills being passed. But I, like most people, would prefer a situation where bills with large support can get passed and funded.

It's kind of funny that jerseyhoya is lamenting that Congress can't get any bills passed, and he's getting pushback from liberals who were complaining last year that Congress was not getting bills passed.