The Not-So-Fast And Superfluous

We're beginning this week warning you that the headlines and stories will be coming fast and furious this week - but likely the least important headline will be that of the partisan witch hunt surrounding the Justice Department, Attorney General Eric Holder, and the ridiculously named 'Fast and Furious' program.

Part of why the media will be flooded with news this week has nothing to do with the serious topics we'll be discussing. The fact is, since Independence Day falls in the middle of next week, nearly everyone who can afford to is trying to sneak in a five day weekend, one way or the other. For both politicians and the media, that means there really won't be much going on during the first week of July.

That means everything is getting packed into this week - so hang onto your backsides.

To start with, there are a large number of major decisions coming from our questionably just Supreme Court. The Court's decision on Arizona's SB1070 is due this week was released this morning and it will certainly have national ramifications. No matter what the Court decides, it's also nearly certain that Mr. Romney will have to try and defend his empty positions on immigration for the second week in a row.

The fate of health care insurance will also be decided - temporarily - by the Court this week. Make no mistake; no one, on any side, will be happy with the result, as polls have already confirmed. Further, legal scholars have overwhelmingly agreed that if the Supreme Court follows its own legal precedent, the Affordable Care Act - including the individual mandate - will be upheld. These same scholars also fully expect that at least some of the law will be rejected by the Court - meaning the Court's decision will likely be more political, and less just.

No matter what the Court decides, the American people have made it clear, they DO like most of the provisions of the ACA. They just don't like them all grouped into the package known as "ObamaCare", thanks to the propaganda of the right wing.

There's more news this week than just what the Supreme Court is doing, however.

Politics in the Middle East are changing rapidly right now, especially on the heels of the presidential election results being released in Egypt. What's more, the civil war in Syria appears to be widening, as Syrian government forces shot down a Turkish fighter jet in international airspace. Turkey also has seen recent terrorist attacks from Kurds in Iraq - so the Turks retaliated by targeting Iraqi Kurdish sites with their jet fighters.

Meanwhile, the economy around the world is still fragile for most people, even while corporations are making their biggest profits ever. Wildfires are lighting up all over the Western United States, and the richest corporatists appear ready to buy the election for their Republican stooges. Student loan rates are also set to explode like a time bomb, and millions of Americans still need more and better jobs.

So what is our Congress doing to try and fix some of these disasters?

For its part, the Democratic-led Senate has been surprisingly busy passing some legislation, including bi-partisan efforts like the Farm Bill, which passed last Friday, 64-35.

The Republican-led House, however, has had the world's worst collective case of cranial-rectal inversion. Republican Darrell Issa has been on a partisan witch hunt of Attorney General Eric Holder in a desperate attempt to try and find ANYTHING he can use to impeach President Obama.

However, as Issa admitted to Fox over the weekend, there is no evidence of White House involvement in "Fast and Furious."

That's why President Obama's bold move to use 'Executive Privilege" on some parts of the DOJ's investigation of Fast & Furious isn't evidence of a cover-up by the White House. It's evidence of our nation's chief executive blowing past a GOP-controlled House of Representatives that have their heads up their backsides. Mr. Obama continues moving forward, doing his job, as he attempts to deal with some of the massive problems facing America - like immigration - without the help of Congress.

There's a hell of a lot going on in the world right now. That Republicans in the House are wasting time on this superfluous political stunt displays for everyone exactly where their priorities are. That would be right where Republican leader Mitch McConnell said they would be, all along - to take President Obama down at all costs.

Friday Funday: Effing Freedom

It's Friday, and we're returning to our regular habit of focusing on lighter subjects, and those that may just make you laugh. That's important to us, especially because we fully expect next week to be filled with more of the superfluous political attack on Attorney General Eric Holder, and a pile of rulings from a Supreme Court that's only partially about justice.

So... how about those nuns in busses?

Right now, Catholic bishops and Catholic nuns in busses, are crossing the country - and each other - in the debate about the Affordable Care Act. Just the mental image of busses filled with bishops, following around busses filled with nuns, hollering at the nuns, gives us at least a little bit of a chuckle.

In case you missed it, the bishops are traveling around in busses, insisting that Americans - not just Catholic Americans, but all Americans - campaign AGAINST the Affordable Care Act. The bishops specifically despise the provisions that say all health insurance companies must offer the OPTION to cover birth control in all their policies. As we've discussed previously, the ACA's changes don't include mandatory birth control, nor do they mandate free birth control - both often fictions that right-wing propaganda outlets continue to screech, long after those fictions have been proven false.

To put it bluntly, the bishops want to have the government take away the responsibility and right that Americans now have for their own reproductive health care.

The fact is, no matter what the bishops want, 98% of American women - including Catholics - have used birth control at some time. The large dose of irony involved in the bishops' chief complaint - that their rights are being infringed because they're not being allowed to use the government to infringe upon the rights of others - is one that makes us chuckle deeply. It's almost as though we're watching busses filled with Don Quixotes heading for the proverbial windmills.

Meanwhile, the nuns are also criss-crossing the country, using secularly proven facts - not their bibles - to promote their viewpoints. The nuns are pointing out that the budget and policy plans pushed by Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, and the rest of the Republican Party, will actually create MORE poor Americans, worse social conditions - and probably more unwanted children.

As we've heard from media colleagues in the upper midwest , one group is certainly receiving warmer welcomes in many towns, especially from women.

For the bishops, their bus trip likely didn't get any better with the latest ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Court ruled on Thursday against sanctioning two major television networks - Fox and ABC - regarding the FCC's ban on vulgar words and nudity. Multiple TV and radio hosts immediately joked that they could now begin saying any of the legendary "Seven Words You Can't Say" on air, made famous by comedian George Carlin.

In truth, the Court's ruling doesn't lift the current ban on indecency in broadcast media. It was clear, however, by reading the Justices' opinions, that the Court may be looking at reconsidering the original 1978 "Pacifica" ruling, due to the changes in cable and the internet since 1978.

All of this may result in some cursing and swearing by those same wrinkled old, bitter bishops, trapped on their busses, traveling across the country - slowly.

Sometimes, our job on Fridays is tough, looking at the world and trying to find something to laugh at.

Occasionally though, we look around, see some crazy old men screaming hypocrisy at clouds, and our job becomes incredibly easy.

Maybe today it was simply divine intervention.

RomneyBot

For those of us who work in media and communications that also focus on politics, there's a hazard of the business we often find our colleagues in. The hazard is a myopic focus, and a nearly robotic reaction to get stuck, topically, inside the minutia of statehouses and "The Beltway" in Washington, DC.

For many reasons - not the least of which is that our staff is spread out across half the country - we usually don't fiind ourselves falling into that particular media morass. We're proud that we can take almost any subject and make it exciting.

[Of course, it helps massively to have one of the best editorial cartoonists in the nation - but we're a bit a biased that way.]

The one topic even we've struggled to make exciting, however, is Mitt Romney.

Journalist McKay Coppins is just the latest member of the media to publically note: news about Mitt Romney is bad for the media business. Most online media outlets dislike Romney stories because they drive down traffic significantly. Print media sources we know say top editors are aware that pictures of Romney on the front page drive down readership too. Our colleagues in televison say they've noticed the same problem - and we know intimately it's the same in radio.

It's not that there isn't plenty of controversy surrounding Romney. As we've noted previously, Romney seemes to have a habitual problem with being on all sides of every issue.

The problem is, Mitt Romney has always been on all sides of every issue. That's nothing new. Going back to his first campaign against Ted Kennedy, Romney was accused of just that problem. Mitt's flip-flopping nature hasn't changed, nearly twenty years later. There are even whole websites devoted to "Multiple Choice Mitt."

It's not just that Mitt Romney doesn't seem to have any firmly held beliefs, though. It's that he's a plain, white man, who is a very cautious politician, in some ways. That could be in part due to the gaffe his father, George Romney, made that ended the elder Romney's national political career.

As Garance Franke-Ruta, senior politics editor at TheAtlantic.com, noted: "Romney is a very cautious politician who benefits from operating under the radar and having the focus of the contest be on Obama," she said. "It's Mittness Protection, general election style. The more boring he is, the more attention — which in today's media means negative attention — focuses on Obama."

This is the same tactic - "Mittness Protection", as many in the media have called it - that Mr. Romney used throughout the GOP primaires for President too.

Added to that serial blandness is a very obvious tendency of Mr. Romney to pander to whatever group he happens to be in front of - especially if it's for money. While he refuses to give specifics to the media at large, when people pay thousands of dollars for a moment with Mitt, he tends to tell them whatever he thinks will open their wallets. The media had often assumed this over the last two decades - but earlier this year, thanks to hungry reporter Garrett Haake, that assumption was confirmed.

Finally, you can bank on the fact that most of America is aware of all of Mr. Romney's boring tendancies - and that they've already made up their minds on how they feel about Mr. Romney.

So what do you call someone who is one of the two major candiates for Preisdent, who actively attempts to appear as inoffending and mechanical as possible, while being willing to take the positions of whomever is funding his latest political campaign?

We call him RomneyBot.