Repeating actions or ideas isn't always a bad idea, especially when you miss something the first time.
For example, the Dream Defender protestors that have occupied the Florida governor's offices for most of the last month kept up their repeated demands for the Florida Legislature to officially revisit the 'Stand Your Ground' laws this fall. After being beaten over the head for nearly a month with the same basic request, the Republican-led Florida House decided to bow to common sense on Friday, agreeing to officially revisit the law this fall.
If all Republican legislators would show that kind of good sense, chaos wouldn't be looming over Capitol Hill this fall. Sadly, common sense doesn't seem to be common at all among Republicans on the Hill. Even in the face of opposition from their own party, some GOP extremists in Congress like Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Marco Rubio, and Sen. Mike Lee continue to insist they'll shut down the Federal government in October unless they get everything they want.
That same kind of smashingly stupid repetition by House Republicans was on full display at the end of last week. For the FORTIETH time, Republicans in the House voted to repeal Obamacare, just before Congress members from both parties ran out of town for a five week recess, leaving massive amounts of work left undone.
As Rachel Weiner pointed out last week, those 40 votes in the House against Obamacare - or the 28 similar votes in the Senate - won't stop the Affordable Care Act from going into effect. That fortieth repeal vote didn't help the economy either - help that Friday's positive but disappointing jobs report showed our economy could really use.
As Steve Benen reported, most of the numbers in Friday's jobs report weren't bad - but they weren't great either. The July jobs report continued to make clear that Americans are still fighting the economic drag from unnecessary sequestration, while also fighting worries that the GOP Congress will blow up the debt ceiling and shut down the government when October comes.
If that scenario of Republicans threatening government shutdown while holding the debt ceiling hostage seems familiar to you, it should. It's a repeat of a similar situation Congressional Democrats and President Obama faced in 2011, as Greg Sargent pointed out late Friday afternoon.
Greg also hammered on an idea similar to one we've discussed before. If Democrats and President Obama can stand up to the extremists in the GOP, while splitting off enough sensible Republicans to vote with the Democrats on issues like jobs and infrastructure, Congress may yet be able to break this repetitive cycle of stupidity.
We wouldn't necessarily count on that repetition ending anytime soon, though.
As Ezra Klein noted on Friday, the GOP is fully engaged on a pyrrhic kamikaze mission to try to stop Obamacare, on all levels, and at all costs. As they did with that fortieth vote on Friday, GOP ideologues on the Hill are making it clear: They'd rather bash their own skulls in multiple times than admit defeat even once on the issue of universal health care insurance.
At least in that regard, Republicans in DC are doing a bang-up job.
Monday, August 5, 2013
Friday, August 2, 2013
Facts, Flim-Flam, Fans, & Fun
As we noted last Friday, the August recess for the staff and members of the U.S. House and Senate begins today - which means at least traffic will be better for us in DC over the weekend. In Nebraska, we're getting ready for Husker Fan Day today, and the start of Husker Football practice on Monday, while in our South Florida office, it's just a weekend off - which is a reason to celebrate anyway.
Before DC becomes as empty and shallow as some of its politicians already are, we wanted to give credit for some great work in the media this week, as well as call out at least one sad example of chicanery.
The award for the slimiest and most unexpected slant-job from a major media organization this week has to go to the Associated Press. Whoever wrote their so-called "Fact Check" on President Obama's comments about jobs and the Keystone pipeline either must be getting a nice subsidy from one of the right-wing billionaires, or they must have had experience as an advance man for a two-bit traveling carnival.
The President's entire reason for mentioning the permanent jobs that Keystone won't generate is because it won't actually generate many permanent jobs, as confirmed both by Cornell University and the State Department! Not only does the AP piece confirm the President indeed told the truth about the permanent jobs numbers. It crams that key bit of information into the last graph of the piece, as though a copy editor might have said to the writer responsible for that dreck"Add this before publishing - or else."
Thankfully, there are a few other people in the media who deserve the kind of praise the writer of this week's AP smear job can only dream of receiving.
Greg Sargent at The Plum Line blog at The Washington Post has been superb lately, about many topics, including the continuing crack-up of the GOP, and Republican's quixotic quest to kill Obamacare. If you haven't read his work lately, or the work of Jonathan Bernstein and Jamelle Bouie, who also sometimes publish at The Plum Line, we highly recommend you click over and check them out.
Our acquaintance Lisa Desjardan at CNN also had an incredible piece that confirmed something we'd been meaning to research ourselves. Thankfully, it's not just our imagination: Part of why Congress is getting less done than they ever have before is because Congress is in DC working far fewer hours and days than they used to.
We also have to give big kudos to Michael Jantze, one of our favorite cartoonists, who is attempting something few have ever even tried before. He's reviving his much-loved, nationally syndicated, daily cartoon strip 'The Norm' through social media and crowd sourced funding. His efforts appear to be paying off well, as his campaign will be bringing "The Norm back to full daily status, which we're incredibly pleased to see. [Also - Full disclosure: Multiple staff members have donated to Jantze's project. Happily.]
No matter what you're doing this weekend, or where you're at, we hope you remember: As important as politics is to us and to most of you, our readers, there's a lot more to life than just Democrats and Republicans, elections and laws.
For example, Husker football...
Before DC becomes as empty and shallow as some of its politicians already are, we wanted to give credit for some great work in the media this week, as well as call out at least one sad example of chicanery.
The award for the slimiest and most unexpected slant-job from a major media organization this week has to go to the Associated Press. Whoever wrote their so-called "Fact Check" on President Obama's comments about jobs and the Keystone pipeline either must be getting a nice subsidy from one of the right-wing billionaires, or they must have had experience as an advance man for a two-bit traveling carnival.
The President's entire reason for mentioning the permanent jobs that Keystone won't generate is because it won't actually generate many permanent jobs, as confirmed both by Cornell University and the State Department! Not only does the AP piece confirm the President indeed told the truth about the permanent jobs numbers. It crams that key bit of information into the last graph of the piece, as though a copy editor might have said to the writer responsible for that dreck"Add this before publishing - or else."
Thankfully, there are a few other people in the media who deserve the kind of praise the writer of this week's AP smear job can only dream of receiving.
Greg Sargent at The Plum Line blog at The Washington Post has been superb lately, about many topics, including the continuing crack-up of the GOP, and Republican's quixotic quest to kill Obamacare. If you haven't read his work lately, or the work of Jonathan Bernstein and Jamelle Bouie, who also sometimes publish at The Plum Line, we highly recommend you click over and check them out.
Our acquaintance Lisa Desjardan at CNN also had an incredible piece that confirmed something we'd been meaning to research ourselves. Thankfully, it's not just our imagination: Part of why Congress is getting less done than they ever have before is because Congress is in DC working far fewer hours and days than they used to.
We also have to give big kudos to Michael Jantze, one of our favorite cartoonists, who is attempting something few have ever even tried before. He's reviving his much-loved, nationally syndicated, daily cartoon strip 'The Norm' through social media and crowd sourced funding. His efforts appear to be paying off well, as his campaign will be bringing "The Norm back to full daily status, which we're incredibly pleased to see. [Also - Full disclosure: Multiple staff members have donated to Jantze's project. Happily.]
No matter what you're doing this weekend, or where you're at, we hope you remember: As important as politics is to us and to most of you, our readers, there's a lot more to life than just Democrats and Republicans, elections and laws.
For example, Husker football...
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Can't Hold Back The Tide
As we swim through hundreds of stories daily, some days are more difficult than others to keep our heads above the metaphorical waterline. From Major League Baseball's possible lifetime ban of Alex Rodriguez, to George Zimmerman being stopped in Texas for speeding (with a gun in his car, of course), to the latest NSA hearing, and the continually less civil intra-party GOP war, Wednesday's pool of stories kept us from getting as much accomplished as we would have liked.
Thankfully though, a few things did get done in Washington, DC yesterday.
For once, the House did something shocking, by actually doing something. The lower chamber voted overwhelmingly to pass a bipartisan deal to keep student loan interest rates low, in the short term, while raising the rates later on. Frankly, we think some House members were willing to say yes to almost anything, just so they could get out of chambers and get their free Jamba Juice smoothies. Still - if that's what it takes to get Congress to actually do something, we know a certain PR person in DC that we're fairly sure would be willing to give out free smoothies every day.
There were also some meetings between Congressional Democrats and the President, and Speaker Boehner and House Republicans on Wednesday - and both get-togethers dealt partially with Obamacare.
Even with rising levels of Democratic frustration and serious opposition to President Obama trying to stuff Larry Summers in as new chief of the Fed, we'd much rather be dealing with the Democratic side of the DC divide than being part of the metaphorical drainplug that is the Republican Party right now.
As Greg Sargent noted on Wednesday, Speaker Boehner insisted in his meeting that House Republicans' plan to shut down the government in order to stop Obamacare will work. Privately, however, it's obvious that Boehner does not want to shut down the government over Obamacare - and neither do some key allies of Boehner in the Senate.
One such ally, Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, even commissioned a report from the Congressional Research Service about government shutdowns and Obamacare. As Rachel Weiner of the Washington Post reported and Wonkblog's Sarah Kliff confirmed, the CRS made it clear: Even if Republicans shut down the government, certain agencies tasked with implementing Obamacare will still keep floating along.
That may not be the case for either Speaker Boehner or the GOP.
As Steve Benen pointed out, Boehner can't even seem to understand polls that say how much he's disliked right now. That isn't surprising in light of a new poll from Pew Research which confirmed that Republican voters can't even decide what direction they want their party to go, or who they want to lead. The only thing Republicans seem to agree on is that they're mad.
Frankly, we don't disagree with them on that, though we're almost certain their definition of mad and ours aren't quite the same thing in this case.
After all, when it's obvious to any sane observer that a specific political party has permanently lost the policy battle on a specific issue like universal health care insurance, why would that party's leader keep pretending to fight for that lost cause? That's especially true if the people surrounding that leader will crucify the leader if they find out about the betrayal.
Trying to stop progress from flowing forward is like trying to stop the ocean from flowing through a seawall - and we're very glad we're not the ones stuck in the metaphorical drainhole.
Thankfully though, a few things did get done in Washington, DC yesterday.
For once, the House did something shocking, by actually doing something. The lower chamber voted overwhelmingly to pass a bipartisan deal to keep student loan interest rates low, in the short term, while raising the rates later on. Frankly, we think some House members were willing to say yes to almost anything, just so they could get out of chambers and get their free Jamba Juice smoothies. Still - if that's what it takes to get Congress to actually do something, we know a certain PR person in DC that we're fairly sure would be willing to give out free smoothies every day.
There were also some meetings between Congressional Democrats and the President, and Speaker Boehner and House Republicans on Wednesday - and both get-togethers dealt partially with Obamacare.
Even with rising levels of Democratic frustration and serious opposition to President Obama trying to stuff Larry Summers in as new chief of the Fed, we'd much rather be dealing with the Democratic side of the DC divide than being part of the metaphorical drainplug that is the Republican Party right now.
As Greg Sargent noted on Wednesday, Speaker Boehner insisted in his meeting that House Republicans' plan to shut down the government in order to stop Obamacare will work. Privately, however, it's obvious that Boehner does not want to shut down the government over Obamacare - and neither do some key allies of Boehner in the Senate.
One such ally, Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, even commissioned a report from the Congressional Research Service about government shutdowns and Obamacare. As Rachel Weiner of the Washington Post reported and Wonkblog's Sarah Kliff confirmed, the CRS made it clear: Even if Republicans shut down the government, certain agencies tasked with implementing Obamacare will still keep floating along.
That may not be the case for either Speaker Boehner or the GOP.
As Steve Benen pointed out, Boehner can't even seem to understand polls that say how much he's disliked right now. That isn't surprising in light of a new poll from Pew Research which confirmed that Republican voters can't even decide what direction they want their party to go, or who they want to lead. The only thing Republicans seem to agree on is that they're mad.
Frankly, we don't disagree with them on that, though we're almost certain their definition of mad and ours aren't quite the same thing in this case.
After all, when it's obvious to any sane observer that a specific political party has permanently lost the policy battle on a specific issue like universal health care insurance, why would that party's leader keep pretending to fight for that lost cause? That's especially true if the people surrounding that leader will crucify the leader if they find out about the betrayal.
Trying to stop progress from flowing forward is like trying to stop the ocean from flowing through a seawall - and we're very glad we're not the ones stuck in the metaphorical drainhole.
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