At this moment there seems to be no good plausible outcomes, just a plethora of “least worse” ones.

Funny, that’s the way it’s seemed to me for some time now…

The Rs failed to elect Romney, the Senate failed to set rules to govern effectively (including advice & consent) to what objective?

The underlying politics here appears to be:

Ensure Obama has a dreadful legacy. First no effective governance because of unfilled positions, including an inadequate justice system, second to demonstrate that having a black president is bad, third to demonstrate the Ds can do nothing good for employment, and fourth to elect a Republican in 2016.

Is this all politics and deliberate? For example: the rejection of Susan Rice as Secretary of State, so opening up a senate seat opportunity for the Rs?

As a question: As I understand the law, legally no response is considered assent. If the Senate does not respond to appointment request by the President, can the Senate’s lack of action be considered assent to the appointment?

No.

And I’m curious as to why you think no response is considered consent (you said assent, assume you meant consent). If I write you a letter saying I am going to assume you consent to me taking your car unless you respond saying otherwise, and you throw the letter in the garbage after reading it, are you saying I wouldn’t be committing theft if I showed up and took your car?

A more interesting question is whether the Senate is failing to fulfill its constitutional obligation to advise and consent to appointments, I’m not really aware of any cases or scholarship on this issue though.

I favor the cuts to the war department as the least harmful; especially as the cuts seem to be primarily to contractors.

Unfortunately, I expect the primary result will be the greatest harm to the greatest number of the “little people” a/k/a “citizens” rather than the “big people” a/k/a “corps.”

You’re certainly right about one thing, your headline is not “clever”. Is the highlight of your career going to be your coverage of Obama’s HCR?

Root for the economy to collapse and sequestration to be abandoned for a stimulus much like the Green New Deal that Stein and the Green party proposed. Austerity is still a stupid idea proposed by stupid people.

Other loaded questions to ponder:

Which major body organ should progressives opt to sacrifice?

What poison should progressives root to take?

What wars should progressives get behind escalating?

Or — wild thought here — maybe liberals shouldn’t actually cheer for any outcome when all the options are conservative.

There is the recess appointment.

The problems is that

“Republicans are adamant about no new taxes”

but Democrats are adamant about… what? nothing? I can see that your next post is about Obama being adamant about cutting SS and Medicare, and despite Gene Sperling’s remarks about Medicaid being “safe” Obama also wants to make it easier for states to cut Medicaid.

So progressives are left rooting in the wind, while Republicans and Obama remain adamant about wealth transfer and austerity.

Obama mentioned Simpson-Bowles again today, which proves that vampires never seem to die, they just suck away.

There is no Republican vs. Democrat issue; it is only rich vs. poor and people in the middle will determine who wins. So root for the poor over the rich or you will be poor as well unless of course you numbers come up in the powerball. :)

Although, as currently interpreted, that only applies to vacancies that first “happen” during the Recess, right? So I don’t think it really applies to a total refusal by the senate to grant or withhold consent to appointments to fulfill vacancies that happen while the Senate is in session.

I was rooting for a complete impass at the new year = end of Bush tax cuts. Fine with me. I do not believe that would cost me $2000.00/An. I sure didn’t get that kind of bump back when they went into effect. I never felt a damned bit better off, and anybody who was already doin’ OK put the money in the bank. Of course Bush never billed it as stimulus (oh, maybe some trickle-down BS), he just said, “Hell, let’s just give away all this Clinton surplus.”

No I feel the same about sequestration: Just let the chips fall where they may.

Karenjj2@#5: Exactly. Cut a billion or two from Boeing’s contracts and Renton, WA goes from prosperous burb to blighted slum. Pow! Current Member of Congress gets diselected at earliest opportunity, everybody else learns lesson. Down and down we go, round and round we go, gonna augur this sucker right into the ground. But pluto will escape with bags of money

I was just framing my comment to correspond with the framing of the question in the post, but I agree completely with your description of the actual 2 sides in this fight.

Oh. That’s new huh? Dubya did it didn’t he, just did it, and got away with it.

What does the “current interpretation” mean anyway?

We should be rooting that no one makes a law against saying “I told you so” because that is what we will be saying once austerity has plunged us into depression.

anybody who was already doin’ OK put the money in the bank.

Which is probably the best way to stimulate the economy. But not very progressive.

marym @ 10: damn fine question! what are dems adamant about?

Is the current interpretation of the fillibuster that nothing can ever move thru the Senate without a supermajority? Would seem so.

Here’s a detailed (although overly biased imo) recap of the Court’s logic.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/03/1184046/-When-originalist-hacks-attack-Sentelle-s-partisan-rewrite-of-the-recess-appointment-power

Definitely do not agree with the author’s tone or conclusions, but it does a pretty good job of describing (and a mediocre job of engaging) the court’s ruling.

My mom always said, “Some days chicken, some days feathers.”

Supermajority or strategic decision by R’s not to filibuster. So we’ll get things like Hagel with <60 votes, but the CPFB and NLRB are shut down indefinitely.

Yogi Berra said it best, “This is too much of a coincidence to BE a coincidence.”

Agreed. People like Boeing, Raytheon, GD, etc will simply layoff workers. Then they will pay big bonuses to the execs and CEO for reducing the workforce. None of the 1% will miss a paycheck. Many of the 99% will be out of work.

Fight for fiscal responsibility (in Republican-speak):

1. Allow Medicare to negotiate for the best deal on drugs (let the free market work!)
2. Apply a financial transaction tax to all investment purchases and sales (it’s a user fee, not a tax)
3. Treat corporations as people and apply the AMT to them. (Equality rules.)
4. Stop, find and tax all offshore accounts. (Real patriots believe and bank in America.)
5. Any corporation that is headquartered offshore or banks offshore loses all governmental contracts, special deductions, exemptions, exclusions, credits, capital gains, and loopholes and any other assistance. (They’re foreigners after all.)
6. Increase the minimum wage which increases payroll and income taxes, too. (You don’t need welfare if people earn a decent wage.)
7.Reinstate the inheritance and estate taxes. (People need to rely on their own hard work.)

NObody n Washington working or caring about us in the 99%. That will have to change eventually. We got a president who convinced a majority of the people that HE was the one. And, that didn’t work out.

How do you even spell proletariat???

OUTSTANDING!!!

Thnaks.

I agree with Gov. Dean: go over the cliff. We should have let all the tax cuts expire and let sequestration take place. Then, when the public was ready to fire up the torches and sharpen the pitchforks, Congress could have gone back and patched it up at least somewhat according to popular opinion. Yeah, it would have hurt and screwed up the economy for a while but it probably would have been over within 18 – 24 months. Now, it’ll be death by a thousand cuts and be worse than ever before. You know damn well they’re going to gut the big 3 and and scale back to silver plated toilets at the Pentagon as opposed to gold.

helena @ 26

second to “OUTSTANDING!” @ 28

Well done. I would add bump the cap on SS to about 500k and call income income. No more capitol gains or interest income. Income is income. tax it as such.

Thnaks?(!) How do I keep doin’ that?

@HelenaHandbasket@#26: Outstandinig! Similar to my list except:
1. Check.
2. Check.
3. Hell with the “Corporations are People” idea, back to the seven year charter and tax the shit out of ‘em ’til their time is expired.
4. Yep. But I don’t care if they hate America, if they do business here they pay taxes on what they earn here. No way out, Period!
5. Wait a minute, I’m with you up to the foreigner’s afterall part. I don’t care where they come from, just what they do here.
6. Check.
7. Check, but: Aren’t inheritance & estate taxes the same thing (maybe the states that use it call it something different, so I’m askin’). And BTW, “People need to rely on their own hard work” Now wait just a damned minute: Hell that puts me in the breadline. My folks coughed up about all they could beg, borrow or steal to get me thru college; that was before borrowing to pay for college was a thing. But even Mitt said, “You could borrow the money from your parents.” Estate taxes never were intended to put everybody back on an even footing, just to take a whack at some of those huge bank accounts once in a while.
8. Stop corporate welfare.

Might as well root for the Cubs. :)

Oops just got two more for my list. Thanks (God I had to correct it again!)

Yes! Root for everyone to be reduced to their level.

I have no problem with letting the sequester cuts go forward as planned. It is the only way we will ever see cuts at the defense department.

When their contractor patrons start to scream, the republicans will be more flexible.

The immediate effort must be to make the dem’s hold the line on Medicare and SS.

Now that’s just mean. :)

Sorry Cubs fans but nothing has changed in Wash. so the lobbyist set will win as far as I can see and no amount of petitions or phone calling will stop the austerity from being implemented. Looks like many people here know what we should do once the second great depression hits. That’s when all the current BS artists in D.C. will be open for suggestions.

Add:

Tax all income is the same manner, wage, portfolio, passive and capital gains.

Depreciation must be spent as maintenance, disallow it as a write off against income.

Disallow depletion allowances.

The Campaign for America’s Future is trying to show Congress that there is popular demand to repeal the sequester. They cite the fact that the deficit is already shrinking and will likely go away on its own unless the economy crashes.

FYI if interested:
http://action.ourfuture.org/p/dia/action/public/index.sjs?action_KEY=189

Sequestration for “defense” (really war) spending is a good thing. Anything that reduces our capability to start a war at this point would be of benefit to all people and all other forms of life as well.

I fully agree Mr. Walker, there are no available good alternatives to the reality at hand.

We. Are. Fucked.

But this is all inevitably doomed to collapse at some point as all empires do when they over extend themselves abroad and fail to meet the needs of the masses on home soil.

Well now that was totally unnecessary and not accurate.

Tell me it was a random jerk off response to FDL in general and you won’t be back.

Sadly it’s plain to see that the people in the middle have already been neutered in this game of class war.

They have no influences, politically.

They COULD strike jobs and do mass boycotts, but the military is trained to intervene in this case and impose national martial law and place the dissidents into camps.

So, really, there ARE no alternatives other than for the system to collapse of its own greed and volition as all empires finally do.

Or mama nature intervenes.

I don’t see we the people amassing in numbers to revolt, and we’d lose anyways.

Late to the party but if sequestration and further austerity is the rule of the day then the elites will just blame the economy’s faltering on the increase on taxes to the rich. They will not see that Austerity is the problem but higher taxes and round and round we go with lots of voters having no clue.