You are absolutely right. There are more than enough Traditional Republican House members who could defect to a Coalition Governing Caucus that would elect Pelosi as Speaker and then provide enough benefits to those who defected to make it worth their while. I assume that some quiet discussions precisely to that effect are going on right now.
Oh trust me @CliffHendroval, Iâm fully aware.
On the morning of the last mid-term election, when my then 19 year old son informed me he wasnât even registered to vote, âbecause it doesnât matterâ, I sat in stunned silence, unable to look up from my breakfast, as a red hot rage burned up my neck and the back of my ears, for fear of what I might say or do.
Of course he is college student working part time at Walmart, not even coming close to paying his own way.
So I guess in a way it doesnât matter to him.
The guy who is picking up the tab was eating his breakfast, before going off to cast a ballot, and then to work and putting in another stressful, grueling day at work.
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âMore likelyâ than what? It seems to me that you can look at the conduct/statements of any of the people who have expressed an interest in the speakership and see that governing is the last thing that any of these people would seek to accomplish. You could put the recent history of any of the Republican favorites into that sentence and conclude that their recent performance also makes a governing crisis more likely.
What we are seeing now was set in stone in 2010 with the election of tea party members, JB sold his soul to the devil and now they are trying to collect what is owed.
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He obviously is an alumni of the Sarah Palin School of Speaking and Vocabulary, so what could go wrong?
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Thatâs their game plan.
Bitch, whine, belly ache, blame the dems. Govern, not so much!
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I was a poll worker in 2010. Iâm positive we had more people over 80 voting than we did people under 30.
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I never thought Iâd find myself missing John Boner, but damn, at least he had his shit together. I suspect Kevin McCarthy couldnât find his ass with both hands. And Chaffetz is a moronic, combative, unlovable putz that makes McCarthy look like a genius.
I live in Southeast Los Angeles County. It probably 50% Hispanic, 15% Asian and 35% White.
And the white population SKUâs older.
So when I take my youngest to the community center to go swimming or whatever, it is like 80% Hispanic and Asian (East Asian mostly Filipino and Chinese) and then the rest whites and a few blacks. And half the whites are married to an Asian or Latino. I am one of those, happily married to a Latina.
But when we went to vote early that election morning, my wife was the only non-white, there were about a dozen white people all over 50, and probably much older, standing in line, waiting for the polls to open.
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your post is logical, to-the-point, & directly on target: amazing that too many feel their vote doesnât matter. Then they wonder why our govt is so fragmented, how the loonies took over the asylum & why canât they get the roads paved or the dams inspected or the bridges kept in repair?
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You have it down exactly right. NowâŚsuggested solution?
At least they did not have a photo of the Daniel Webster from the mid 1800âsâŚ
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Tempest in the TeaPottyâŚ
Of course a governing crisis is highly likely if McCarthy is elected. He has already proven how inept and just plain stupid he is when he opens his mouth.
I think I see Speaker Boehnerâs thought process here.
âOk guys. Big votes coming. We have to get organized.â
âGLAHHHHG! SHUTDOWN! BLEEEBLE! OBAMA!â
âYes, look. We can still be against Obama on everything. But shutting down the government has always worked against us. Letâs try coming up with a plan.â
âGLAHHHHG! SHUTDOWN! BLEEEBLE! OBAMA!â
âFuck it. You asshats are on your own.â
Nov. 5 deadline to raise the debt limit followed by a Dec. 11 deadline to fund the government through the 2016 fiscal year.
Time to dust off those articles about what happens if the U.S. doesnât raise the debt limit.
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From where I sit, thatâs a feature rather than a bug, Steve. If those a$$e$ vote Libertarian or stay home, the Dem wins. As you note, the bat-shit crazies are the deciding demographic, but that demographic isnât large enough to elect its own in general election.
Of course, if one were a sitting Republican congresscritter who cared more about the perqs of the office than about being a good legislator, that would be a big bug.
Yipes! My zombie number (âŚ70% ⌠almonds ⌠traded⌠CaliforniaâŚ). I told it to a Blue Diamond exec back in the early '90s, as âabout 70% of the almonds traded internationally are from California.â It reappears annually, right on schedule as the harvest is coming in, usually in the annual Sacramento Bee almond-harvest story, with a bunch of other words whre the ellipses are, always changing the meaning, but without obscuring the underlying truth.
Dunno now, maybe acreage has increase enough since then, but when I knew all the almond numbers better than anybody else, the split was something more like 55% exports 45% domestic. My advice (consulting economist to a Federally-enforced cartel: the Almond Board of California, the OPEC of nuts!) was to hold almonds off the international markets, like by subsidizing almond butter, to drive up the price, specifically in marzipan-addicted Germany. Or dump them in India, which was Blue Diamondâs preference. Good free-marketers that most aaaamund growers are, they have tended to go for the self-defeating free for all, with increases in both acreage and exports, and consequent reductions in average dollar returns per acre. And I went from nuts to volts (I am better known, under another handle, as an energy economist with views that some find as nutty as good granola).
Agbiz is just like other bigbiz: they are part and parcel of the financial community. Indeed, several of the largest enterprises in almonds, Paramount Farms and Deseret Farms (âBringâem Younger,â Founder) are best understood as elements in large hedge-fund style portfolios, with substantial reliance on money markets and other modern asset-management financial instruments and systems.
The oil boys even more. All of them have large trading operations, which have large and variable credit requirements, which are met above all in the money markets.
A couple of days of kabuki government shutdown doesnât bother them. Messing with the money markets through flirtation with a default absolutely terrifies them. A spike in overnight rates even for a couple of days goes straight to their bottom lines.
This is why McClintock was ordered out of the Freedom Caucus (he may be even more dependent on AgBiz money than âLittleâ Kevin, because of the cost of TV advertising in the Sacramento market, and the restlessness of his working-class dupe constituencies in Greater Roseville; his districtâs republicanism has been underwritten by San Joaquin Valley water interests, eg Paramount, since the boondoggle of the Auburn Dam first emerged).
The Kochs may not care about the financial costs of a default. First, they may just be so rich that a few days wonât hurt them, or they have some exotic hedge set up (what I would do if I were playing Dr, Evil), or they may be heavily enough in crude that they donât have interest-rate-sensitive trading operations. I have not found myself into the Koch brain, and am not trying.
The fat that the âleadershipâ candidate that the money Republicans offer (whose interests you state succinctly) is the Big Little Man of Bakersfield (plays small in a big-person game) is certainly revealing.
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âWhat are these âmore moderate Republicansâ of whom you speak?â
I think he meant pliant Republicans, or âclosely attuned to Big Money.â Peter King (R-1%, with Staten Island cops providing the votes) comes to mind under the latter category, Little Kevin and his unpopular Carpetbagging neighbor McClintock are of the former class. LaMalfa isnât dependent on donor money (he is a rich subsidy farmer in his own right and the Redding/Oroville/Chico teevee markets are cheap) but is temperamentally likely to do what he is told, and go with his caucus majority, which is in the King/Boner.Liâl Kevin camp.
The more likely âdealâ outcome is that after a couple of days of horrible financial crisis, the Democrats will agree to a better budget than had been on offer and will vote Present, allowing the seating of a really really weak Speaker. His caucus majority will then force the Teaters to break caucus unity on the budget. And then the bloodletting will spread to the Senate.
Nihilist is the word I use. Anaarchist has already been taken, by smarter and better people (as well as by left-nihilists).
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