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[RedKing]

Okay, Aqizzar has put the venerable US Election megathread out to pasture. But the US continues to have politics. Lots and lots of politics.
And they continue to be worthy of rants/flames/screaming/sniping civil discussion. So I'm cowboy-ing up and starting the new thread.

As thread OP and de facto moderator of the thread, couple of ground rules:

1. No name calling. It's one thing to call an idea stupid. It's altogether a different thing to call a poster stupid. This will not be tolerated.
2. Sources, sources, sources. Veteran posters around here will mostly enforce this themselves, but it bears mentioning: If you come and make some random-ass claim, you better have something to support it, or you will get laughed out of town.
3. Everyone is welcome. This includes non-Americans, conservatives, liberals, radicals, Nazis, etc. as long as people behave themselves. Somebody's political ideas may be anathema to your very existence, but that's insufficient grounds for wanting them ostracized out of the thread.
4. Please limit meta-discussion. This is a thread for American politics, not the philosophy of politics itself. Likewise, while economics is part of politics, we really don't need to waste 20 pages trying to reinvent capitalism.

The management reserves the right to enact additional rules if the need arises.

Thread will continue until the 2016 primary season (and may continue even then, to keep regular politics from getting in the way of electoral politics) or until it dies under the weight of its own bloated, festering mass. Which will probably be sooner.

[FearfulJesuit]

Y'might want to note if you're planning to have a time limit on this- say, New Year's Day, 2015, when the presidential speculation really starts to heat up.

Ahh, nothing like that tried and true politics flowing through my veins again. There's a reason they call them political junkies. Now I've got a thread I can check every five minutes!

[RedKing]

And to start the thread off right, let's review:

1. US narrowly avoided the "fiscal cliff". Technically, it fell off the cliff, spun around and grabbed some legislative roots and hauled itself back up onto the ground, panting and scared shitless.

2. Now it's facing the Pit of Despair the annual debt ceiling showdown. Last year at this time, the Tea Party caucus held a gun to the US's head by threatening to allow a default. The compromise solution was....the fiscal cliff.

Now it's that time again, and having learned their lesson, the Tea Party caucus is....okay, they didn't actually learn anything and are threatening to default again.

3. This is only after the idea of minting a platinum coin worth $1 trillion dollars and using it to pay our debt to ourselves failed. The fact that the idea got serious discussion for a while should tell you how fucked up and out of ideas we are.

4. Also, Obama is nixing the construction of a Death Star. Typical anti-military liberal pansy. Mitt Romney would have built TWO Death Stars!

[FearfulJesuit]

Wasn't the original debt showdown one and a half years ago- August 2011, if I recall correctly?

Also, seriously? Wait, what does this entail, exactly? We didn't go over the fiscal cliff by stringing together a preliminary half-assed deal at the last minute, and now they're going to refuse to let that deal go through, thus making us default?

[RedKing]

Ahh, you are correct (actually the debate was mostly during the summer of 2011). For some reason I thought it was early 2012.

EDIT: Oh, and the current crop of Republicans are also threatening a government shutdown, just to show they're serious. Because that turned out so well for them last time.

[Scoops Novel]

Join me in the apocalypse. I smell a coffee shop on Tuesday.

[darkrider2]

I used to think they were just being obstructionists to try to demean Obama's presidency and maybe win the election, now I think they're just doing it for... I don't know really, what's the upside to this strategy?

[FearfulJesuit]

I think it's spite more than anything. They hate Obama.

And you can, at least theoretically, carry over the "Obama didn't get anything done" line to 2016, as "Democrats didn't get anything done." The problem is, between now and then, Obamacare's going to kick in. It'll kick in right before the midterms, actually. And once people see how much of a landmark piece of legislation it was...

...Even with the gerrymandering, I wouldn't be surprised if the Republicans lose the House next election, especially if they keep carrying on like they've been doing.

[miauw62]

I don't see how somebody could hate Obama. I mean, there's pictures and videos of him doing awesome stuff like firing a marshmellow cannon and wielding a lightsaber.

Can you imagine Romney doing that? I can't.

[MonkeyHead]

PTF - gotta keep up with the crazy shit you lot over the pond keep inventing.

[RedKing]

Well there is a shrewd calculus to all this. Debt reduction/deficit reduction is something that needs to be addressed. But since the solutions to it involve tax hikes and/or cuts in services, it's unpopular to take action on it. When action is taken, people blame the party in power. And since most Americans' understanding of government is pretty limited, the President = the party in power. Thus, the opposition party is free to be a deficit hawk because the backlash will hopefully fall on the other guy.

It's the reason that Republicans became such staunch, principled guardian of the treasury once a Democrat was in office, but back in 2002 when confronted with opposition to massive tax cuts and the prospect of a major war Dick Cheney was able to proclaim that "deficits don't matter" and nobody on that side of the room batted an eyelash.

I guarantee you, if a Republican wins in 2016, the Tea Party will be shunted off into a closet somewhere and you won't hear a single complaint about running deficits again. While the Democrats will begin grousing about every dollar spent on the military (which they're mostly mum on right now).

[darkrider2]

I don't see how somebody could hate Obama. I mean, there's pictures and videos of him doing awesome stuff like firing a marshmellow cannon and wielding a lightsaber.

Can you imagine Romney doing that? I can't.

Yeah but Biden is way cooler in my mind. 

[FearfulJesuit]

Isn't most of the debt ceiling nonsense falling on the Republicans' heads, though?

[Darvi]

Isn't most of the debt ceiling nonsense falling on the Republicans' heads, though?

Nobody said that it was a well tough-out plan.

[RedKing]

Isn't most of the debt ceiling nonsense falling on the Republicans' heads, though?

In the blogosphere and pundit circles? Probably.
In popular opinion? It's falling on "Congress" in a generic sense (about a 14% approval rating, despite the overwhelming majority of incumbents having been recently voted back into office).

I think in general, there's just a mood that our government is utterly dysfunctional and broken, but most people can't see a way to fix it. Plus, they like "their" Congresscritter, which is part of the problem. A dysfunctional Congress may just be evidence of a dysfunctional nation.