Going Down Swinging, Wildly

Even though much of the political media will be hyperventilating every day this week, and for the foreseeable future - or at least until both the Continuing Resolution and debt ceiling issues are settled - we honestly don't think there's that much to freak about, yet. As we noted last Friday, the Washington Post's Greg Sargent pretty much laid out the roadmap for how the CR will move around Capitol Hill this week, and so far, he's been right.

Even before the week began, it was obvious that the efforts of the arrogant, self-absorbed, Ivy League tea party Republican Sen. Ted Cruz would fail. As expected, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid began using the Senate rules on Monday to clean the CR, and send it back to the House.

Not surprisingly, neither the rules or reality stopped Cruz from wildly swinging around his ludicrous and increasingly desperate ideas to "defund Obamacare", as he did in his Monday op-ed at Real Clear Politics. Those unrealistic ideas, however, only served to give his fellow Republicans a splitting political headache that succeeded in calling even more attention to the ongoing civil war within the Republican Party.

All this wild flailing by Congressional Republicans wouldn't be nearly so bad if they were simply willing to admit publicly what other well-known members of their party like former Sen. Judd Gregg or writer Josh Barro already have: That the Obamacare "defunders" are playing Russian roulette with their own party, and Republicans still don't have a real, passable alternative to Obamacare, three-and-a-half years after President Obama and Democrats passed their plan into law.

For their part, the American people are overwhelmingly not interested in defunding Obamacare, as a CNBC poll on Monday stated - and Greg Sargent confirmed through a stack of other polls. Only the radical extremist tea party types on the far right still want to shut down the government - an action that wouldn't stop the further implementation of Obamacare even if they were successful. In fact, as Annie Lowrey pointed out Monday afternoon, a federal government shutdown wouldn't affect mandatory spending - including Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and unemployment insurance, among other government priorities.

There are a few noticeable items that would stop, though.

Unlike when the Republicans shut down the government in the mid-1990s, the military appropriations bill has yet to pass this time - so all members of the military will stop receiving paychecks immediately, if the government shuts down. They'll still be required to work - they just won't get their pay right away.

For Americans living in DC itself, the stench of a shutdown could get bad real quick, as garbage collection would also immediately shut down in our nation's capitol.

Still, as bad as a temporary government shutdown might seem, the looming battle over the debt ceiling is far more worrisome for us, and for anyone who truly understands the situation in Washington. That includes President Obama, who has made it abundantly clear that he will not be held hostage by Congressional Republicans this time over their responsibility to pay the debts Congress has already accrued - which is what the debt ceiling is.

If Republicans continue waving around suicidal actions over the debt ceiling like they'e doing now over the potential government shutdown, we'll be very worried then. For now, we continue watching fools like Sen. Cruz going down, swinging wildly, only politically injuring his own party members.

The New Normal

This weekend, while the Emmys rolled, and football teams did too, the news rolled on too, both in America and around the world. Not surprisingly, much of the depth of that news was missed by the major television news organizations, as is too often the case these days.

Sure, the TV news channels all covered the impending federal government shutdown that Congressional Republicans will be solely responsible for, should it occur. Many of them also covered the horrible terrorist attack at a retail shopping mall in Kenya - the kind of terrorist attack many Americans still fear here.  However, other than a wholly biased pro-gun segment on NBC's Meet The Press with the NRA's Wayne LaPierre, one of the most important events of last week was only really touched on in cliches on most TV "news" this weekend.

President Obama on Sunday, at the Memorial Service for the twelve Americans murdered at the Navy Yard in Washington, DC a week ago today, had to once again do both his job and the job our American news media should have been doing this weekend.

As the President addressed the memorial service, he asked them, and the nation, to not let these kinds of shootings become the new normal. He also addressed our collective reactions too - most notably, legislators who spout promises to do something, then effectively dump dead legislation as a weak memorial to the recently murdered.

"I fear there's a creeping resignation that this is somehow the new normal," President Obama said at the memorial service on Sunday. Events like the mass shooting last week, "ought to obsess us, it ought to lead to some sort of transformation." Indeed, the President even asked the question no member of the news seems to have had the courage to ask.

"The question is do we care enough," to actually DO something, the President asked.

As we've noted on these pages previously, it isn't as though most Americans don't want the kind of sensible, moderate gun safety reforms President Obama has called for again and again. As a poll by noted conservative and past NRA supporter Frank Luntz confirmed last year, nearly ninety percent of non-NRA gun owners, and seventy-four percent of NRA member gun owners do support requiring comprehensive background checks on ALL gun sales.

In fact, as recently recalled Colorado state senator Angela Giron pointed out in the Washington Post over the weekend, the kind of background checks most Americans want were implemented earlier this year in Colorado - and have already denied 28 criminals in her own state who might otherwise have purchased a gun.

Nationwide, however, our gun safety laws are still too open and incomplete.

As the details behind last week's Navy Yard shooter showed, that incomplete system partially worked to stop the Navy Yard shooter from getting an assault rifle. Our mental health care system also partially treated him. 'Partially' was obviously not good enough, though - something we've always said 'partially' never will be.

Nearly a year ago, in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shootings, we outlined five major components of gun violence, and noted that America must do better on all of them. For each of those components to work, they must interact with one another efficaciously - and each must also work thoroughly on its own.

While the President is correct, that we must do something, we also must make sure what we do in the service of gun safety is done completely, properly, and fully - in spite of those Congress members who are perpetually beholden to the gun manufacturer's lobby.

If we simply throw up more ineffectual gun laws, the new normal won't be just that we should still expect more mass shooting deaths in America. It will be that we'll have accepted half-assing everything in America is okay.

It's not.

Time For A Little Dancing

Our staff members have rarely been more excited about having a couple days away from the ridiculousness of the political world than we do this weekend - a feeling we bet you've had about your job, at least once or twice in your life.

It's not as though we're worried something unusual is going to happen in Congress over the weekend. House Republicans are already following the script that Greg Sargent forecast they would on Wednesday. The Hill's Alexander Bolton also confirmed on Thursday afternoon that the plan Greg described appears to be falling into place.

As of this morning, that plan looks like this. The House will likely vote today to send the Senate a Continuing Resolution with several pieces of legislation attached that neither Senate Democrats or President Obama would ever allow to pass, including language on the Keystone XL pipeline and the defunding of Obamacare.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will then use a procedural move to strip that tea party extremist language from the bill, in a way that will let Senate Republicans vote against Obamacare, while still losing the final vote to Senate Democrats anyway. Then the Senate will pass a clean Continuing Resolution, and it will go back to the House - where John Boehner and the Republicans will finally have to act responsibly, and choose either to fund the government, or be dragged off the long end of a metaphorical short pier by the tea party nuts.

As Molly Ivins used to say, you got to dance with them what brung you.

Some of our staff may indeed be dancing or at least walking down the streets of Marceline, Missouri for our favorite mid-September event, the Disney Hometown Toonfest. As one of the Toonfest's oldest sponsors, we're proud that once again the we can help promote this great event. If you're anywhere in the Midwest this weekend, we highly recommend you plot the course into your GPS, take the scenic drive, and join us.

As always, there will be the aforementioned parade, along with contests and events for both adults and kids, and a cartooning gallery with work from some of the nation's best cartoonists. This year's all-star panel of cartoonists includes Sandra Bell-Lundy of Between Friends, Steve Kelly and Jeff Parker of Dustin, and animator Stephen Silver - and those are just the official cartoonists on the docket. We're well aware that several other highly talented cartoonists from around the nation will be there too, enjoying both the camaraderie and the Toonfest events.

No matter where you're at this weekend, if you get some time away from your work, spend it with the people you love, doing things you love. Don't get dragged around doing things that frustrate you.

The people that love you, after all, are the ones who've helped you get to where you are today - and as we noted already, you should dance with the ones that brung ya.

Get your dancin' shoes on. The weekend is here.