Digging The Advice From Mom

With Mother's Day coming up this weekend, there's a few things on our mind - not the least of which is that we need to make sure the gifts and flowers for our mothers get to their proper places.

Of course, we also want to wish all mothers everywhere a happy Mothers Day. Even if you aren't a mother, you had a mom or a mother figure growing up - so we hope you honor and thank that individual. If she's like most moms, she probably put up with far more shenanigans from you than you remember.

If your mom was anything like our mothers, she also likely gave you some good advice. One note of council that "strangely" every member of our staff received from their mom was the old saw about holes. "If you find yourself in a hole," they'd tell us, "quit digging."

We're not sure what happened with the mothers of many of the current Republican members of Congress, but apparently, they either didn't share the same wisdom our mothers all imparted, or their children never listened to them. Frankly, we're inclined to think it's the latter - especially as it pertains to this ridiculous Benghazi baloney.

There shouldn't be any question why we haven't devoted serious column inches to that foolish hearing on Capitol Hill this week, especially if you've looked at the aggregated links on this topic in our expanded daily editions.

As we've written more than once this week, there are no new stunning, game-changing facts to have come out of this week's pointless digging exercise by Republicans. That hasn't kept Republicans in Congress from digging though - hence our concern for their mothers' advice.

The fact is, all this empty digging by Republicans about Benghazi is, as Eugene Robinson so adroitly puts it, "…to sully [Hillary] Clinton’s record as secretary of state in case she runs for president in 2016."

Of course, as Eugene's co-worker at The Washington Post, Stephen Stromberg also points out, that well of alleged undiscovered facts about the Benghazi attack is pretty dry. The former Secretary of State, former U.S. Senator, and former First Lady is one of the most investigated people alive, yet she continues to enjoy the popular approval of roughly two-thirds of the nation. This is after almost twenty years of hate and attacks by those on the far right.

The fact is, Republicans in Congress need to take the motherly advice now - about both Ms. Clinton and Benghazi - that they've been ignoring for years: When you're in a hole, stop digging.

Sure, there are other gems of motherly advice we wish those same obtuse Republican members of Congress (and a few Democrats too) would have picked up over the years: Learn to share. Learn to compromise. Watch what you say. Treat others as you wish to be treated. Don't put your thing there, you don't know where that's been. Put that other thing back, it doesn't belong to you.

Even if they didn't pay attention to any of that advice, if they'd at least learn to stop digging when there isn't any point, that would be nice.

Or, if they're going to dig, the least they could do is dig with a real purpose. For example, maybe they could plant some flowers for their mothers instead.

A Real Education

For several years now - even before she was elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts - Elizabeth Warren has been one of our favorite policy wonks,  for a whole host of reasons.

As the children and grandchildren of a few our friends graduate college this month, Sen. Warren and a few others on Capitol Hill are looking to help them - and us - with a huge and growing problem nobody wants left on their doorstep.

While the economy continues improving, and college grads are faring surprisingly well in the job market - as they did even through the great recession - the facts are still fairly brutal. As Brad Plumer of Wonkblog pointed out recently, if your child didn't get a post-secondary education, the economy isn't getting any better.

Even for hundreds of thousands of recent college graduates, the promise that a higher education would lead to higher wages and a better life has proven to be false, a version of the American social contract that our nation has broken, leaving thousands of people - if not millions - with piles of college debt and no way to pay it back.

So it was with great excitement Wednesday, that we watched Senator Elizabeth Warren present her first official bill, an idea that might allow more Americans to finish college without those piles of debt, while repairing the credibility of America's social contract.

Senator Warren is not alone. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and even The Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also appear to be ready to give some of the banks behind the student loan squeeze a real education in ethical financial practices.

The CFPB - the government organization Sen. Warren helped to start - also issued a group of proposals Wednesday, designed to help the millions of Americans being buried by private student loan debt. In short, the CFPB loan plans would force the private banks and institutions that lend money to students to be more flexible with their repayment plans. Further, the CFPB's new proposals also push the banks and bank regulators towards new industry reforms.

That's where Sen. Warren's bill comes into play. Warren, proposing her bill on the floor of the Senate, made herself clear, stating that students who get government subsidized student loans should get the same extremely low discount rate banks get from the Federal Reserve. That's currently around 0.75%, instead of the approximately 7% rate students and grads are hit with now.

The Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has also begun attacking the problem, with its recent decision in April. The Court's decision effectively forces back the draconian standard passed in 1976, when student loans were disallowed from being discharged under the bankruptcy code. In short, the court seems to have found their initial restriction to be ridiculous, which may finally open back up the ability - under limited circumstances - for graduates to be able to get rid of their outstanding student debt through bankruptcy.

The combination of the three actions, if enacted and used in other bankruptcy cases, might actually force Wall Street and other banks to stop preying on college graduates and start treating them like the adults they are.

All of which will likely get those same young people out of their parent's houses and onto their own path forward in life significantly faster.

Chickenhawk Distractions

On a day when Wall Street will still be swooning over record highs, some Republicans will be attempting to gloat over a special election in South Carolina, and the long neglected issue of sexual assault in the U.S. military has finally received a small bit of attention, what you won't likely hear enough about today is the real issue Americans need to pay attention to in the Middle East - Syria.

We're well aware of what the right-wing extremists will be screaming about today, including those in Congress who will be holding yet another pointless hearing on Capitol Hill. For all the pearl-clutching and empty threats the right-wing nuts have thrown at President Obama, the facts behind the Benghazi, Libya incident of 2012 still don't rise to the level of a cover-up - and have less to do with Obama in 2013 than they do Hillary Clinton in 2016.

The truly important focus point in the Middle East right now - the one where both neo-con chickenhawks and liberal interventionists are squawking at President Obama that he should jump into another war - is already beginning to to be aimed towards a resolution in Moscow.

In case you missed it, Secretary of State John Kerry landed in Moscow Monday. By Tuesday, Kerry and Russia's current Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, had already announced a diplomatic conference in the coming weeks to push the warring factions in Syria into peace.

Few Americans seem to understand Russia's position in the Middle East is very similar to the U.S. position, politically. That hasn't changed much, even with the end of the Cold War, and the changes inside the Kremlin. While the U.S. held up dictators like Mubarak in Egypt for 30 years, the Russians have propped up the Assad family in Syria for just as long.

The difference now, however, is that the biggest political players in the region are no longer just Russia and the U.S.

Hezbollah has made significant political gains in the region over the last few years, thanks in large part to Iran. Militant Islamic groups like Al Qaeda have also gained power in the region over the past few years, as has Israel, the dominant power in the area at the moment.

All of this adds up to a political conflict that isn't simply a proxy war between two groups of old intelligence members - a group of old Russians and a group of old Americans, many of whom are still fighting the Cold War. Instead, helping settle the Syrian conflict has become a multi-team challenge, with plenty of extra wild cards in the deck.

There are plenty of reasons for President Obama to be both cautious and skeptical of involving the U.S in Syria, not the least of which is the still ongoing military mess in Afghanistan.

Some of the best reasons though, were outlined by the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson, who asked all the armchair chickenhawk generals the questions they've tried hardest to avoid.

Most importantly, Robinson asks, "Have we learned nothing at all," from the last decade-plus of war?

It seems that President Obama may have learned a least a few of those lessons, even if the chickenhawks urging him to go to war haven't learned a thing.