The Rs will have so much corp money in 2012 to muddy the waters and bury the Ds, this vote will never show up in ads that count.

Which Republican is an announced candidate?

Most will prolly run for reelection. It’s early for house & senate candidates to announce.

Oh, I thought maybe a prezdenthial candidate.

Anybody think Gawd might be punishing Texas for delivering us unto Bush; or sticking us with Tom Delay; or …whatever?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42620104/ns/weather/

That looks pretty scary.

This is why I kept saying that Obama was working too hard and giving away too much in the budget fight, just to save Republicans from the teabaggers and themselves. They insist on going over a cliff, any cliff? Let them!

Na, or Florida would have gone up in smoke early in Jeb’s first term, and we are still here.

It’s clear Obama wants to “fix” SS so they will have their own:
Democratic candidate “X” voted to privatize Social Security and slash benefits.

I am sure the Republicans feel they will cancel out.
They acutely fear their base and need to keep the Tea Baggers happy so they will not be primaried.

The problem with that theory is that this Ryan plan is such a central part of the Great Budget Armageddon that these people have been trumpeting that this vote isn’t something they’re going to be able to bury.

If they thought of this vote for the Ryan plan as something they will have to bury by next election under a mound of TV ads, why create that problem for themselves? It’s a purely symbolic vote. The plan won’t pass the Senate or be signed by the president, so it’s not as if they have to take this tough vote in order to get a program in action that will generate good results by next election. They wouldn’t have taken this vote unless they believed that this is a killer issue for them.

Could they repent of that idea that this issue helps them in time to bury this vote before the next election? After billing this as Armageddon, that the fate of the nation, our very continued existence, depends on cutting the deficit? After so loudly trumpeting their victory in 2010 as a clear mandate from the people to cut the deficit?

When are they going to get a chance to change their minds and their public position on the deficit, when they have so arranged matters that between the annual appropriations and raising the debt ceiling, this issue stays front burner? Oh, I guess the issue could might become moot rapidly enough to allow repositioning before the election, in one way. The Ds could just completely capitulate. Obama and Biden could just resign and let Boehner become president. But why would the Ds do that? Even if they did, after the Rs attained this total victory, they would then have to actually end Medicare. Great, they sure wouldn’t be the part that wants to end Medicare any more. They would be the party that actually ended Medicare.

Campaign cash is nice. Unlimited air time is nice, no doubt about it. But it’s not magic. It’s nice for trumpeting your message. It’s nice for framing events so that your message looks like its the real, central answer for our times. But if your message is that you’re the folks who want to end Medicare to save us from that Budget Armageddon, if that’s the brand you’ve got to sell, no amount of framing can obscure what you’re so proud of, what defines you, that you want to end Medicare to win the Budget Armageddon.

Messaging can only work its magic to the extent that there’s no content at stake, and the messaging simply provides fake content to gloss over the lack of real content that both sides usually conspire to maintain in elections. It’s going to do them nothing but harm because they were dumb enough to walk away from that conspiracy of null content. Confident in the popularity of their ideology, they decided to make the next election an ideological election. It’s not going to be about Morning in America or Willie Horton, it’s going to be about ending Medicare.

Air time is essential to winnning an election over Morning in America. It’s poison in an election over ending Medicare — if you’re the side that wants to end Medicare.

Republicans are counting on the Kochroach propaganda machine to pull their chestnuts out of the fire. And the vapid Villagers to catapult the propaganda because, doncha know, those nice Koch brothers donated all those buildings with their names on them.

Some say The Village is stuck on stupid. It’s out there, Cokie….

Jim Sensenbrenner, my Republic Rep here in Wisconsin voted for it. He’s got the money of River Hills and the racists in the northern reaches of his district behind him. It’s a district split between those that will benefit from the tax cuts for the rich, on the one hand, and fear of brown people, on the other. He won’t suffer from this vote, unless those that would vote for him are punished.

It’s not hard to punish these people that would vote for politicians like Jim Sensenbrenner. It takes a little courage to stand up and tell them to their faces that they’re assholes. But just a little.

Jim Sensenbrenner, and the people on the north shore of Milwaukee that vote for him, deserve to suffer. Considering the coddled little lives they live, it won’t take much.

You make good points. And I agree that it is completely nutty for Rs to bring such a vote.

However, several factors influence my thinking.

Foremost is that, as cynical as I’ve tried to make myself in the last few years, I find I’m not cynical enough. So even though your points make sense, I think that in ways rational thinking people cannot now comprehend, it will not be an issue.

Second, O lets the Rs set the agenda and then latches onto the issue a baby step behind. So by 2012, both Ds & Rs could be well on the way to dismantling Medicare, Medicaid, SS. Then the Rs would come off scott free. There’s been a lot of pre-planning in exactly that regard that we’ve observed.

If the Obama fix is in, Rethugs will survive the sliming that would result from this vote. Obama’s hand-picked The Catfood Commission, Obama sez: Social Security and Medicare “need to be on the (CUTTING) table”.

If Obama (and the Democrats) do the ratfucking (Obama wants to so badly), the Rethugs (and their Media Arm – the entire MSM which they own) will successfully pin it all on Obama and the D’s. In spite of this Teabagger Appeasing vote.

Overton Window, Reagan Idolatry, Tax Cuts, Complicit Democrat Party, Media Hyperventilating over Debt and Spending 24/7.

All roads lead to Obama and the Democrats (being the ones) to Ratfuck the Middle Class.

Better said than I did.

Second, O lets the Rs set the agenda and then latches onto the issue a baby step behind. So by 2012, both Ds & Rs could be well on the way to dismantling Medicare, Medicaid, SS. Then the Rs would come off scott free. There’s been a lot of pre-planning in exactly that regard that we’ve observed

This is reality gold.

I have a very bad feeling about this. The entire series of events seems to has been set up to make changes in Medicare and social security that even a majority of Republicans would have found unacceptable three years ago seem like a triumph.

Just wait. “Obama saved us from the evil Ryan bill. Another 3 years of work are much better than privatizing social security. (He may even raise the cap a little to get us dancing in the streets.) And a modest increase in out of pocket medical expenses for seniors already sounds reasonable to sensible people.”

Why should Republicans pay attention to polls? If Dems get elected, they’ll just piss everyone off again and the Republicans will be back in control 2 or 4 years later. It’s a revolving door system with 2 political parties.

Pat Buchanan on the Mclaughlin group thought Obama not Ryan won the debate. Mclaughlin still thinks that when the American people learn about the true size of the debt that will change.
I think when Mclaughlin anf his group finally gets a clue they will realize what the American people already know.
Ryan’s budget hurts regular people gives tax cuts to the rich and worse of all does nothing about the debt.
No budget not Ryan’s not Obama’s does crap about the debt unless you end both wars the debt keeps growing.
The majority of Americans want the war over.

They GOP needs to act now while the economy is crap you can’t shock doctrine if the economy is improving.
Another 2 years if the economy is not improving well even the GOP knows they can’t create disaster forever not with out risking rebellions like the Arab states have.

Things are bad for the GOP if Pat won’t carry water for the Corporate GOP. Ryan is the Corporate GOP’s poster boy full media press to create a new GOP super star young good hair he was meant to get women and young voters on the GOP side.
He was meant to sell the Corporate GOP’s plans. If Pat won’t back him then he failed to big for even Pat to feel he could cheerlead. I’ve seen Pat cheerlead GOP ideas that smelled like dead rats. I think Pat has seen internal GOP polling of the GOP base and I would love to see those polls:).

If the Corporate GOP can’t make any ideas the voters like attacking Unions, Budget cuts have both fallen flat then the GOP’s only ideas this election that can get any voter or press play will be the Fundy wing of the GOP’s ideas.
The Secret Muslim, Birther nut ideas that scare off moderate voters.
If budget cuts won’t sell then Ron Paul’s ideas fall flat with voters. Pass the Popcorn:)

For basically the entire Republican party, to go, in less than a year, from the very successful political position of being the greater defenders of Medicare, to voting to privatize the program as a way to dramatically slashing benefits, is such a toxic mix of pure cynicism combined with outright political stupidity, I hardly can believe it just happened.

Does no one in Washington read polls anymore?

George Bush double down the debt philosophy it finally seems that the GOP can’t stay at the table with an unlimited supply of chips and keep betting big hoping that their luck turns around with the next hand.
The voters have with the polling changed the game its not poker its a team sport and everyone but the corporations and fundies are joining any team but theirs:)

I might also mention that many states who managed to elect Ds, got Obots. NY gov Cuomo is just such a scuzzy animule, prolly to the right of fatChristie in NJ. So 2012 vote will be even more of a joke than votes have become in this century.

ThersSatday up on LN. Altas Shrugged. Me too. WTF cares about Atlas.

Its spring winter just happened the ground should be wet evaporation is slower in the cold if dry conditions are causing fires now wait till summer and things should get worse.

Does no one in Washington read polls anymore?

No, why should they? They take their orders from the banksters and the globalists. Both D’s and R’s are destroying our economy by design in a Washington Generals/Harlem Globetrotters styled kabuki.

How long is it going to take for people to recognize that the left right paradigm is the Royal Scam?

As I recall the Blue Dogs got hit the worse last election. We need to primary them with all the Union anger in Wisconsin, Ohio etc this will be fun:)

Here’s the real question: how are the hapless Democrats going to set themselves up to get the blame for this?

They never fail.

Blue Dogs lost last election the Tea Party is polling south of the GOP now I believe anti Union bills and Ryan’s budget are making the Baggers even less popular.
My big worry is the GOP is moving so far right they might make Obama look good. But Obama has no coat tails so we can take down his blue dogs.
Remember how hurt we were when Obama betrayed us imagine if the Tea Baggers don’t get a budget win and the GOP caves to avoid a government shutdown.
If that happens baggers stay home on election day.
If the Government shuts down our side gets pissed off and show up on election day but after Obama and the Blue Dogs betrayed us well if even 2% of lefties don’t vote for Blue dogs who are mostly in close purple districts then the Blue dogs lose more seats:)
I see it as win/ win except we might get Obama for a second term.

Another 2 years if the economy is not improving well even the GOP knows they can’t create disaster forever not with out risking rebellions like the Arab states have.

I think you’re correct, TCU, up to a point. I agree with some of the commenters here who suggest that a) Obama and the Dems are doing a fine job of taking credit for inflicting on us the Republicans’ biggest policy wet dreams; b) that only helps to enforce the Lee Atwater Principle, which states that racist right-wing voters will swallow anything as long as it puts more pain on the n******s (and all their other objects of loathing); and c) as long as Obama and the Dems continue carrying right wing heavy water, the GOP need not measure its behavior.

Unless the majority of the ostensible Democratic base suddenly grows a collective spine and votes Green, we can count on the self-immolation to continue. The longer it goes and the worse things get, the closer we will get to an uprising. What will likely happen is not a revolt against the GOP, though. The GOP base will take their violent anger out on the same targets their representatives have been whipping for decades.

*edited in moderation*

people that actually vote republican are already idiots that don’t read news, so they’ll keep voting for the same dicks

The country is going to spend the summer seething in rage from gas hitting $5 before it goes to $3. Food will spike and the government will say there is ‘no inflation’ and there will be no SS COLAS.
This number juggling from the Fed and Govt will throw more gas on the fire.
This isn’t a vacuum.
The UI numbers spiked to 420,000.
Another 500,000 99ers are going to fall off this month.
Just because MSM isn’t doing stories on how truly fucked it is out there and the douches on CNBC or fox biz are touting enormous corporate profits. Profits, because they have no labor expense. This is a ‘consumer’ driven society and there is only so much consumer for the kleptocrats to consume. We are approaching a tipping point, both macro and internal.
Pathetically, these crackers, and this is mostly from the south, are the result of dumbing down from reagan, will vote this country into the dumper.
The big trouble is, when you look at the electoral map, the flyover numbers don’t look good, these idiot rust belt governors, may continue the malfeasance the congress is up to but this is a center/stupid country and I still won’t bet the farm on the sheeple making the right choice.

Here’s a little light reading…
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/did-fed-its-stealthy-synthetic-bet-keep-yields-low-become-next-aig#new
It’s pretty heavy, it is an ugly world out there, and this thing i$ global.

In the run up to the president’s speech, I shared your concern that the fix was in, that some major concessions on the social safety net were in the works. But I can’t explain why Obama, in the speech, stuck the shiv into Ryan and his plan, if he has decided that the Rs can’t be stopped short of a major overhaul of the safety net, and/or he never really disagreed with the idea of such an overhaul. He passed up an excellent chance to begin killing off the New Deal by not at least going along quietly with the Ryan approach, and instead he turned on the attackers.

There is certainly no guarantee that sticking the shiv into the Ryan plan will work, will kill it and tend to cost the Rs votes for trying to kill Medicare. But I can’t see how calling the Ryan plan out for what it is, clearly and forthrightly, a plan to kill Medicare, is anything but a blow to the prospects of killing Medicare anytime soon. Sure, it’s frustrating that he even takes the idea that we are in some sort of deficit crisis seriously enough to make a speech about it. That reinforces their talking points, so it might make one think he is in cahoots with them. But in the content of his speech, however bad the fact that there is a speech, he’s turned their thrust back around at them by actually offering a plan that really reduces the deficit, by getting rid of the Bush tax cuts, and categorically refusing deeper such cuts paid for by ending Medicare. “11-dimensional chess” is a phrase generally used as a scoffing point, but this seems to be an actual case, and one that just might work.

I have to agree with you that their noise machine seems capable of pulling off some stunning coups, persuading people of things you wouldn’t think you could get people to believe. But I wonder if there are really examples quite like this proposed job for their noise machine of making the end of Medicare just fade to black in people’s memories. Something like getting so many people to a belief in birtherism is pretty flashy, because it is so audaciously stupid a belief. But are beliefs about your healthcare, your pocketbook, really just as vulnerable to even the best reality-distortion fields as a belief that turns on obscure events that happened to obscure people in HI decades ago? Birtherism is more a badge of tribal identity anyway. It’s not as if they got people to believe something this ridiculous by any subtle arts of mind-control. The people who believe are the True Believers of the Right, who know that any Democrat is ipso facto illegitimate, and it’s just a mattter of what particular crime you hang on him that proves the illegitimacy. Amazing they got so many to believe, but it would be more amazing if the belief could be sold to any but their dead-enders, could be pumped to a higher number of believers, if they could get enough people to believe to carry an election

Medicare can’t be dismantled quietly now. It and its place in budget concerns, will continue to be an ongoing controversy, something the Rs will have to continue to play up as a big deal, a veritable Armageddon, either that or become obvious flip-floppers and quitters. That’s the main aftereffect of Obama calling the Ryan plan a plan to end Medicare. Dismantling it quietly over the next two years would have required the president’s silence at least, that he acquiesce to the necessity. But he didn’t acquiesce, when he so easily could have, he didn’t allow the dismantling to proceed with minimal controversy, with the bipartisan credential of Obama’s approval, and with no delay that would have pushed the time when this will be an active issue too close to the next election.

The dismantlers didn’t get their silence, they didn’t get their seal of bipartisan approval, they didn’t get the whole thing done more than a year before the next election, and I think that will cripple the dismantling. Obama done that.

*** Citizen Alert ***** Citizen Alert ***** Citizen Alert ******

‘Reports are surfacing that Scott Walker is now preparing his next assault on the democratic political process in the State of Wisconsin.

Following the lead of Michigan GOP Governor Rick Snyder, Walker is said to be preparing a plan that would allow him to force local governments to submit to a financial stress test with an eye towards permitting the governor to take over municipalities that fail to meet with Walker’s approval.

According to the reports, should a locality’s financial position come up short, the Walker legislation would empower the governor to insert a financial manager of his choosing into local government with the ability to cancel union contracts, push aside duly elected local government officials and school board members and take control of Wisconsin cities and towns whenever he sees fit to do so.

Such a law would additionally give Walker unchallenged power to end municipal services of which he disapproves, including safety net assistance to those in need…………….’

http://blogs.forbes.com/rickungar/2011/04/16/gov-scott-walker-reportedly-planning-financial-martial-law-in-wisconsin/

Great article, but WHERE ARE THE FUCKING JOBS? There is a lot of confusion, ignorance and general stupidity in the land right now. The people that bring you the “news” like The Washington Post, The New York Times, Fox News, ABC, NBC, and CBS prefer it that way. It’s good for business. The national media, Democrats and Republican­s are not alone in there corruption­. The United States Supreme Court is corrupt with its Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision that facilitate­s the corporate takeover of America.

The Democratic Party and the Republican Party will spend as much as $8 BILLION on federal elections in 2012. Ninety percent of this money goes to multi-nati­onal corporatio­ns (broadcast­ers). The multi-nati­onals funnel part of the money back, with their demands, into the hands of politician­s in the form of campaign contributi­ons.

Until we end the incestuous relationsh­ip between big business and the federal government­, nothing will change, the people’s voice will not be heard and the country will continue to decline. Ou­r only hope for national salvation lies in a little known and discarded act in Congress. The Fair Elections Now Act. Strictly voluntary. Matching funds. $100.00 maximum donation. Discount rates for TV political advertisin­g.

Major politicans need some testicular fortitude and begin running on the Fair Elections Now Act.

I suspect that the Republicans will get off Scott free on this vote. It fact, they’ll brag about it and voters will continue to vote for them. Why? Becaue the GOP has turned this country into a selfish bunch of whiners. So as long as they think the plan affects someone else and not their Medicare, they’ll be all for it.

Seriously, can anyone tell me that the tea party crowd aren’t among the most selfish and short-sighted people that we’ve ever seen? And this is our voting public in the US.