Agreement Groups in the US Senate

So here's a interesting visualization of voting groups in the Senate over the last 15 years. Red is Republicans, blue is Democrats.

Note that in the 110th Congress (2007-2009) there were 10 Republican senators who were actually classified as Democrats in this chart based on their votes - along with a much smaller group of GOP-voting Democratic Senators.

Most of whom are either moderates or closer to the Democrats than to their own party. Charles Hagel was critic of the Bush Administration which he described as "the lowest in capacity, in capability, in policy, in consensus - almost every area" of any presidency in the last forty years. George Voinovich has been known to oppose lowering taxes and frequently joined the Democrats on tax issues. John Warner is a moderate Republican and has centrist stances on many issues, to the point that he once faced opposition of other members of his own party when he decided to run for re-election.

Plus you had the Maine sisters and John McCain.

But of course it's the Republicans who are extremists that never cross the aisle to work with the opposition. </sarc>

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:45 PM | Comments (605)
Post contains 1321 words, total size 14 kb.

This isn't America.

There are certain risks that come with freedom. As someone said on Twitter the other day, Patrick Henry didn't say "Give me security, or give me death"; he said "Give me liberty, or give me death." That one reason why, for example, TSA airport body rubdowns and nude-o-scope scans are wrong.

Keep in mind all this starts with Obama. Obama could pick up the phone tomorrow and put an end to it. But it's what he wants.

As Charles Krauthammer said on Special Report this evening, drones are instruments of war. They're not to be used in the United States. There should be an outright ban on them.

Video of the Special Report segment below. more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 04:47 PM | Comments (266)
Post contains 140 words, total size 1 kb.

From the twitter feed of the newswoman at CBS who broke it:
@cbsjancrawford:
"War on Women? Romney now edges Obama among women, 46-44%, in new CBS/NYT poll."

So much time wasted on the false narrative, the fail is mighty tasty.

Posted by: CAC at 02:57 PM | Comments (314)
Post contains 62 words, total size 1 kb.

You'll get no new content and like it.

Posted by: DrewM at 01:04 PM | Comments (459)
Post contains 12 words, total size 1 kb.

Subtle it ain't.

Team Romney is pointing out that Obama himself laid off lots of workers when he took over GM. In fact, Obama's "Car Czar" says the Obama ad is unfair.

Asked to defend the new two-minute ads featuring a steel worker who lost his job on Morning Joe, Rattner replied: "I think the ad is unfair. ... I do think to pick out an example of someone who lost their job unfortunately, this is part of capitalism. This is part of life. And I don't think there is anything Bain Capital did that they need to be embarrassed about."

The Romney camp has to be ready for this. So far they've mostly relied on the "Obama did it too" when he closed GM dealerships. Personally, I don't think that's the strongest defense since Obama will come back and say, "Maybe but I didn't get rich off the misery of others".

Yes, this whole thing is weak sauce if you're a committed partisan but if you're an out of work voter in Ohio, Pennsylvania or anywhere really, you aren't interested in lectures about the necessity and beauty of "creative destruction".

What I'd like to see Romney do is stop talking about creating Staples or The Sports Authority and talk about something that created franchises. That would enable them to put an everyman/small business owner face on his work.

One challenge Mitt has is he's framed his time as Bain as being about job creation, which leads to this kind of counter-attack. The reality is Romney was about wealth creation. The two are connected but not the same. It's understandable from a political perspective why he went with this frame but it means having to effectively deal with the "heartless" image that goes along with being in finance. It's not fatal but it can't be ignored either.

I know conservatives don't like dealing in emotional appeals but they work. Again, not on the committed but on swing voters....the people the Bain attack is aimed at. We can't be too good to play the heart-string game when we can.

Hopefully Team Mitt has something lined up and ready to roll out soon.

UPDATE: And now Romney is out with his own ad touting a steel company Bain invested in that's thriving. Nice. Very nice. more...

Posted by: DrewM at 11:01 AM | Comments (319)
Post contains 425 words, total size 3 kb.

No one has a picture. They call him Voldemort. His name is Bruno Iksil. Some say he's arrogant. He recently boasted he could walk on water. You know, like Jesus. Others, perhaps circling the wagons, say he's a quiet, unassuming guy. A nice bloke.

Nice blokes don't boast about walking on water.

At any rate, The London Whale is no longer allowed to trade.

JPMorgan credit derivatives trader Bruno Iksil -- who became the so-called "London Whale" back in April for his massive positions -- has been stripped of his trading responsibilities following the disastrous $2 billion trading loss related to derivatives in the bank's chief investment office in London, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The newspaper also reports that Iksil is likely to leave the bank, but his fate isn't entirely clear at this point.

Several others at JP Morgan Chase's London-based Chief Investment Office have been forced out as well. The problem with all this is, as I understand it, Iksil wasn't acting as a rogue trader. Everything was done in the open, as JP Morgan's chief executive, Jamie Dimon, says.

I know next to nothing about high finance, so I'm not in a position to try to identify a bad guy and point a finger like, say, Shepard Smith does all the time (argumentum ad ignoramus). I can point out that some feel nothing untoward or unusual happened--that losses are part of the business cycle. Kevin Williamson at NRO makes this point and argues for restraint.

The odd thing about this is that it is now considered somehow scandalous when a business loses money. ItÂ’s a scandal when banks make profits, and itÂ’s a scandal when they make losses. The only thing financial firms do that Democrats do not object to is write checks to Barack Obama. (Nearly a million bundled by Jon Corzine of MF Global? Yep.)

But losses are part of business. Even big losses. Failure, bankruptcy — all part of the normal life cycle.

J. P. Morgan, like any large and complex firm, attempts to mitigate, or “hedge,” certain kinds of risks. This is a normal business practice — but J. P. Morgan did not turn out to be very good at it, at least in this instance. That also is not that unusual: If 2008–09 showed us anything, it is that financial firms are not as good at managing risk as they had supposed. (Which is why stronger leverage limits seem to me the simplest useful regulatory reform.)

Since I have no way of putting all the pieces together, this is going to be a London Whale News Dump. Here is the set up. more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 10:08 AM | Comments (137)
Post contains 637 words, total size 6 kb.

I've got some personal work I have to do today. Not really day off. Neither was the whole weekend.

But I'll be away from the computer.

Posted by: Ace at 07:50 AM | Comments (280)
Post contains 30 words, total size 1 kb.

We Ask America, a Republican-leaning firm (the one rumored late last week) finds Walker in his strongest perfomance yet, leading Democratic challenger Tom Barrett 52% to 43%. He only narrowly carries the Independent vote, but near-perfect support amongst Republicans and a projected Republican-favored Likely Voter turnout model (evidenced by Tuesday's primary showings) push him way beyond the margin of error. Calls were automated on Mother's Day, so that does skew this but a data point is a data point.

Daily Kos' PPP poll of Wisconsin is scheduled for release tomorrow, and I do expect Barrett to be doing better than in the previous poll but Walker to still be ahead in it, barring a D+anything LV sample. Even in that case, this skews the average greatly in favor of the governor.

Follow hashtag#AOSHQDD or me on twitter for the latest polls and projections from the Ace of Spades HQ Decision Desk.

Posted by: CAC at 05:26 AM | Comments (193)
Post contains 163 words, total size 1 kb.

Gabe's taking a well-deserved vacation this week, so I'll be working the early shift here at the HQ in his absence.

My favorite obscure news item of the weekend has to be the Obamacare Mother's Day card.

more...

Posted by: andy at 03:00 AM | Comments (296)
Post contains 74 words, total size 1 kb.

I'm back my pretties! 

Newsweek (and Obama) Jumps The Rainbow

Okay at this point it's well known that Newsweek columnist Andrew Sullivan is a single-issue writer/kook - everything revolves around gay marriage. And he will rearrange entire worldviews, logic systems, and even his own memories to always make it so that support for gay marriage is the 'conservative' choice.

But how did this crap ever get past the editors to make it to the cover of a major 'serious' news magazine? The very fact that Newsweek would let a crank like Andrew Sullivan write a front-page story for them shows how far the overvalued-at-$1 magazine has fallen.

Sad.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:30 PM | Comments (538)
Post contains 807 words, total size 11 kb.