7 thoughts on “Thursday Open Thread”

1. New open thread costs nothing………what a deal!

   My newest political hero is looking like that radical lefty Elizabeth Warren.

   The last couple of days have been a provocative view of the near term future of American politics. There are 4 major teams on the scene at the same time, coming from 4 different corners of the field, and they all have some amount of political juice. How they end up interacting and competing with each other will be the driving political story for quite a while into the future.

   On the Republican side, there is the increasingly conservative — but apparently never extreme enough — establishment wing of the party led by Boehner and McConnell and the big business lobby, and there is the tea party anti-establishment wing. The establishment guys, pretty much all guys, have the upper hand for now but clearly got a little surprised by the strength of the anti-Boehner rebellion in the Speaker election. Knowing the strength of the tea party gang in primary election fights, they are a force to be reckoned with for the foreseeable future — as evidenced by the fact that the Republican Party's establishment has moved so far to the right on most issues in the last five years. The establishment team certainly has embraced the Ayn Rand worldview so popular with the tea partiers, as evidenced by how on day one, they passed a rule that will probably result in cutting benefits and stealing from the disabled.

   The biggest policy difference between the two wings of the Republicans is that the establishment wing invariably does whatever the big business lobby want them to do, even if it violates small government and free market principles — note how the Wall Street provision snuck into December's budget bill that caused all the trouble allows more bailouts of the biggest banks' riskiest bets — which isn't exactly Adam Smith's ideal of free market economics. Tea party types have been railing against these kinds of Wall Street bank bailouts since the last round of them in 2008. The biggest political difference is that the establishment will go along with the company line when push comes to shove, while the tea party still doesn't mind blowing up Congress to get what they want.

   The two wings of the Democratic Party are similarly the insiders and the populists. The difference between these two corners of the party was of course, also on display in the blow-up over the budget bill with that nasty Wall St bailout. However, there are more ugly policy fights coming soon with the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal/abomination being at the top of the list, and the Antonio Weiss nomination fight also in the queue.

   The philosophical and message differences between the two wings of the party were also on stark display today at the AFL-CIO's Raising Wages Summit.

   Warren is a U.S. Senator and works right along side our very own Mikey Bennet. What a coincidence! Bennet made it quite clear during his last term that he'd have nothing to do with subversives like Warren. Mark Udall, Bennet's guinea pig, felt the need, way too late as it was, to have her voice on his side. As one of the least successful DSCC chairs in recent history, Bennet surely knew that was coming.

   And if Bennet's political radar is still operational, it should tell him quite clearly what is coming these next 2 years. Needless to say he'd wet the bed at the thought of showing up at a Union sponsored Wage Summit. I'm also quite sure he's having more nightmares than dreams as he approaches what will be his political moment of truth: what kind of Democrat will he be in the runup to his next job interview with Coloradans?

   We'll know by his actions which side of the Democratic Party he is on. 

   Log in to Reply

2. 

   Log in to Reply

3. Gazette disables comments on their NAACP fire bomb story. I think they're wise to do this – the comments would most likely be a hate filled puke forum for all the guys (yes) who've been told that the NAACP and its goals are their enemy. And who tells them that every day?

   Log in to Reply

4. To: Honorable Michael Bennet

   CC: Honorable Mark Udall (retired)

   Subject: Another 2014 election post-mortem

   THOM HARTMANN: The agenda of the Republican party is very simple and straight forward. It's more money for the rich. Less benefits for the poor. "Less government" or "smaller government" is merely a catchphrase that means no social safety net. The Republican mantra is to hell with unemployment benefits.

    I don't understand why the Democrats didn't run on this last November, two months ago — the Republicans have been holding hostage for 14 months now an extension of long-term unemployment benefits.

   That to me is one hell of a big deal.

   But the media refuses to talk about it. I know that Bernie Sanders, Peter DeFazio, Keith Ellison, there's a number of good members of Congress who have spoken out and spoken out loudly about how the Republicans were holding unemployment benefits hostage. It never gets reported in the media.

   We have a corporate media that serves corporate interests. Period. It's very simple. And the right wing message is that media's… that's their song.

   Those corporate interests are well-represented by both sides of the aisle and this is one of the few times where the complaint that "both sides do it" is true.

    

   Log in to Reply

5. Politfacts call mitch mcconnell a liar  http://www.politicususa.com/2015/01/08/false-mitch-mcconnell-claims-economy-improved-expectation-gop-congress.html

   Log in to Reply

   1. This falls under the "tell a big enough lie…" category.

      Log in to Reply

6. A while back I couldn't get ColPols to load but had no trouble with other sites. Just wondering if anyone else had a problem.  Still can't access My Comments , BTW.

   Log in to Reply