Fairy Tales & Hot Air

As we've noted often over the years, if someone has a good tale to tell, we'll be some of the first people to pull up a chair and perk up our ears. We've also mentioned many times how we'd like to see more real compromise in our government, especially when it comes to the idea of taxes and budgets.

There's an interesting story working its way through the national media right now, that encompasses both of those things.

In case you missed the tale, Grover Norquist, the anti-tax lobbyist who has held a growing number of Republican legislators hostage over the last few years, is supposedly being laughed into irrelevance by Republicans eager to strike a tax and budget deal with Democrats before the end of the year. Norquist continues to blow hot air at the media about his own importance, while prominent Republicans keep saying they'll finally stand up to big, bad Grover.

The problem with this tale is that its key points are mostly hot air - and it almost completely misses the most important point of the 2012 elections.

The fact is, other than a few prominent Republicans making loud noises in front of journalists, few GOP Congressmembers appear to actually be willing make any serious compromises in the tax and budget discussions that have been quietly going on since the election.

There's no doubt - there has been a massive show put on by Republicans that they are done bowing and genuflecting to every whim of the unelected lobbyist Norquist. Many pundits and political sources have been cheered to hear Republicans publicly admit what The Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky put so clearly yesterday, that "The party that lost the election — lost the presidency, lost Senate seats, and yes, held on to the House, but lost seats there, too — doesn’t get to dictate terms" of any tax and budget deal.

As Tomasky also notes, it's only been a fairy tale though. Sure - ANY appearance of compromise by Republicans is a welcome change from the GOP's usual story of "My way or the highway." That's the problem - the extremism of those like Norquist has made even the fiction of compromise seem like a fairy tale come to life.

The fact is, as both House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader McConnell have made clear, the only kind of compromise this group of Congressional Republicans is willing to accept is the same old non-compromise - where everyone else is simply supposed to do what they say.

This tale may still have a happy ending, though.

For one thing, both Boehner and McConnell may be significantly more willing to change their tunes after the first of the year, when the newly elected Congressmembers are sworn in, and Republicans are at an even larger disadvantage.

The other point - the one most of our colleagues seem to have missed - is that Grover Norquist's days as the big bad anti-tax wolf may be over anyway.

If there's one thing the surviving Tea Party Republicans have made clear - especially off the record to some of our contacts in DC - is that no one is going to tell them what they can and cannot do. They may hate taxes - but no one is going to force them to do anything they don't choose to do themselves. Not their own political party's leadership, not their political donors, and surely not some unelected lobbyist with the name of a Muppet.

Though we're certainly glad to see a blowhard like Mr. Norquist is becoming irrelevant, that doesn't mean compromise is automatically coming back to Washington, DC.

If you believe it is, we've got a few more fairy tales we'd like to sell you.

Spoiling The Grinch's Christmas

As we noted on Monday, there are a whole lot of topics that deserve more attention than the non-scandal of Benghazi.

From the dishonesty some in Congress keep displaying about the 'fiscal cliff', to the Republican Party's civil war - including the battle for continued relevance by Grover Norquist -  to the continued attacks on and implementation of Obamacare, to the crafty and questionable decisions being made by the Supreme Court, nearly every direction we turned seemed to be haunted by negativity.

So, we did what many Americans were doing yesterday, and took a break to see what holiday deals were online and what holiday stories we might find. In retrospect, that may have been an even worse idea.

From stampedes by stupid 'Black Friday' shoppers, to shootings over parking spaces, to worries of holiday debt, our staff members felt like the Grinch himself had come to visit our computer screens - especially when articles like "5 tips to steer clear of debt in holiday shopping" or "Debt-free for the holidays: 6 steps to less stress" kept appearing.

The solution, of course, was to step back from our attempt to help a friend find Bert & Ernie dolls for a little tyke, and remember some key economic points about the holiday season.

As consumer credit giant Equifax pointed out early this month, total U.S. consumer debt actually fell in the third quarter, even as American consumers remained cautiously optimistic. In fact, as we've noted recently, the U.S. economic recovery appears to be picking up steam. As the recovery is gaining strength, the biggest share of debt for Americans - mortgage debt - has continued to shrink.

That isn't the case with non-mortgage debt, though - hence all the warnings.

Traditionally, the pattern is one that Americans have repeated many times. As the economy begins to recover, people feel like their own personal economy is better than it is - so instead of taking care of the mess they're still sitting in the middle of, they begin to spend again, beyond their means. As Annie Lowery pointed out in the New York Times recently, this time may be different, when it comes to U.S. consumer debt. Truthfully, there isn't enough economic data yet for economists - or journalists - to make any definitive claims about what our U.S. consumer debt levels reflect about the ongoing recovery.

With that in mind, we don't plan to play grinches ourselves this holiday season, so we'll only say this much: holidays aren't about the dollar value of the gifts. They're about the value of the thought you put into the gift. That may mean spending more time than money, or finding unusual methods of shopping - for example, searching E-bay with a pack of your friends to find old Bert & Ernie dolls at fair prices. The gift itself won't really be the dolls, but the time spent hunting as a group, which will bring you all closer together, even though you're separated by hundreds of miles.

What's even better about a gift of your time to a friend is that unlike going into severe debt, there won't be any strings attached.

We hope the holidays are good for the U.S. economy - and early signs say that's likely to be the case this year. That said, we also hope you stay smart, so the holidays are also good for your personal economy, in January, Februrary, and beyond.

Leftovers And Cleanup

The first day back from vacation is always one of the hardest.

Don't get us wrong - it was good to have a chance to get away from the rapid pace of our usual work schedules, and enjoy some time giving thanks for our family, friends, and other blessings. We kept an eye out on the news while we enjoyed our holiday break, including the tenuous cease-fire between the Palestinians and Israelis, and the public defense of her previous remarks by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice.

That last topic, sadly, is what the chattering TV politicos were still beating each other up about on the talking heads shows on Sunday. Like the dumbest, most annoying members of your family and friends, sent out on a Thanksgiving Day 'snipe hunt' to give everyone else a break, most of the babbling Sunday boob tubers took another swing at the non-existent Rice/Benghazi scandal and mostly ended up looking like fools.

While some Republicans seem now to be backing away from their partisan hype surrounding Ambassador Rice, it seems that not every Republican got their party's memo to back down. A good example of that was Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's weaselly comments on CNN - and her well-deserved smackdown by Rep. Barney Frank. We'd be willing to bet our family holiday recipes that many of the more lazy, ignorant, members of the right-wing media, still turgid with the excesses of their own Thanksgiving feasts, will be jumping on the same bandwagon today as Sen. Hutchison did on Sunday.

Frankly, we're tired of this leftover non-controversy. So, like a pile of Thanksgiving dishes still soaking in the sink, we're going to clean up this topic once more - briefly - and hopefully not have to discuss it again.

As Ambassador Rice noted in her brief statement late last Wednesday afternoon, her early account of the Benghazi attack to the Sunday talking heads shows on September 16, 2012 was based on the initial intelligence community assessments. Those assessments were preliminary, as confirmed by CBS News nearly two weeks ago, when they obtained a copy of the talking points given to Ambassador Rice.

Any thought that there was some kind of cover-up, as Congressional Republicans like Sen. Hutchison continue to allege, has also been debunked, not only by the detailed timeline of the incident, but by public admissions from officials involved with preparing the talking points, and apparently by the testimony of former CIA Director Petraeus in the closed door Congressional hearings on Nov. 16.

All of this may make you wonder: why are some Republicans continuing to flail about with their bogus talking points on this issue, as they try - and fail - to insinuate some kind of scandal in the Obama White House?

As Paul Waldman pointed out nearly two weeks ago, the right-wing extremists in Congress have a form of ODS - Obama Derangement Syndrome - that Waldman called "Scandal Envy." In short, Republicans tried and failed multiple times during President Obama's first term to gin up a scandal, as they did with President Clinton. Each time they've tried, they've had to slink away empty-handed, like buffoons returning from a snipe hunt. As Waldman notes, "…they're going to keep trying to gin up a scandal, even if there's no there there."

If only to further prove our point, many Republicans - chief among them Senators McCain and Graham - are already pulling back on their criticism of the Ambassador, returning empty-handed after admitting to themselves their quest was futile. Sen. McCain has now even admitted he may be open to confirming Ambassador Rice, should the President choose to nominate her.

Hopefully, the retreat of Congressional Republicans along with brief recaps like ours will clean this topic up for everyone with a shred of sanity, once and for all. There are far more important things to be discussing and problems to solve during this 'Lame Duck' session of Congress.