DemocratsForProgress

DemocratsForProgress's Journal

September 30, 2013

Stormy Monday, 9/30/13

Jeff Rosenzweig: Stormy Monday, 9/30/13

With immigration reform, gun control, jobs, the economy and a host of other priorities ignored, mishandled or otherwise botched by the worst Congress of the modern era (and maybe ever), it’s time for Congressional Republicans to make an utter mess of government itself. This week the fools on the Hill try to beat the clock on a continuing resolution on spending, and may God help the United States of America.

Will the government still be fully operational at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday? Not if House Republicans and their fellow travelers in the Senate get their way. With the House GOP determined to make a continuing resolution contingent on the demise or delay of Obamacare, and the Senate’s Democratic majority determined to resist the effort, the eleventh-hour negotiations look suspiciously similar to the negotiations gone before, which you might remember have led precisely nowhere.

Even if, by some unanticipated miracle, a continuing resolution amenable to both chambers can be cobbled together, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew reckons that the nation will bash its head on the debt ceiling no later than October 17, another unnecessary fiscal crisis tailor-made for Republican foot-stomping intransigence and pre-adolescent brinkmanship. The President summed all this up the other day, neatly:

“No Congress before this one has ever, ever, in history been irresponsible enough to threaten default, to threaten an economic shutdown, to suggest America not pay its bills, just to try to blackmail a president into giving them some concessions on issues that have nothing to do with a budget.”

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2013/09/29/stormy-monday-93013/

September 25, 2013

Walter Rhett: The Cruz Prototype

Unlike movies or television, print close-ups should have context. The intellectual appeal of print is the ease with which it shows connections and reasons missing in a visual world, because print can find and express a hidden interior, and show how it is shared and developed.

Immediately, it’s easy to realize Ted Cruz is a national prototype that fits Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Allen West. The prototype loves to play dare, shames anyone who doesn’t adopt their ideological and self-righteous line, and except as space fantasies, the prototype has no plan for progress. Its working models are extortioners and exhorters. They are empty of compassion and confuse fantasy and ideas. They are media masters. They lie easily. They feign outrage.

They think they are gods.

They are not statesmen.

It is their marginality that makes possible the outsized impact of their singular acts.

We look at their views on issues like healthcare, but that is the wrong place to find their passion, which is a repeated faith in a self-directed belief in the importance of their own ideas. Cruz doesn’t care about healthcare, is no expert on the legislation. Cruz is having himself a grand time at the expense of the nation...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2013/09/25/the-cruz-prototype/

September 23, 2013

Take Five (Jerks in Progress edition)

Jeff Rosenzweig: Take Five (Jerks in Progress edition)

ONE: Death Becomes Them

Via The Hill, I recently discovered political scientist Eric Ostermeier’s fascinating curio cabinet of a blog, Smart Politics, published by the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Among other topics, Dr. Ostermeier has recently scrutinized websites for House campaigns (nine incumbent House members did not have an active campaign website as of August 18), traced the historical arc of African-Americans elected to Congress (25 states have yet to elect their first black Representative, and nearly half of the African-Americans ever elected to the House were from a mere five states), tallied living former Senators (167, a whopping eight of them from Minnesota), and surveyed Spanish language content on official House websites (the sites of 36 Congressfolks, 31 of them Democrats, feature some).

Dr. Ostermeier is now three installments into a series focusing on “unusual deaths that have befallen members of Congress.” Given current Congressional approval ratings, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that “Unusual Exits” is among the year’s most popular political writing; if it isn’t, it should be. The newest installment looks at drowning, which has claimed 13 members of the Senate and House since 1808, although only two were in office at the time of their deaths. This follows on part 1, which looked at Congressional deaths “on or by railroads” (death toll 23), and part 2, which examined deaths by “accidental gunshots” (body count 6).

It’s lucky for House Republicans that blatant, bare-assed hypocrisy isn’t fatal. Take Colorado’s Mike Coffman, Cory Gardner, Doug Lamborn and Scott Tipton, who were quick to add their signatures to an emergency funding request by their state delegation following Colorado’s calamitous flooding. Back in July, the quartet endorsed a similar petition for a federal major disaster declaration after a rash of wildfires. What’s wrong with that? Nothing at all, except that the same four Representatives voted against disaster relief money for areas affected by Hurricane Sandy. For added context, ThinkProgress helpfully notes that they’re all climate change denialists.

TWO: Squeaker of the House

John Boehner, crime boss of these and other Republicans in the People’s House, just vomited up some hypocrisy of his own with a web commercial that asks the musical question: “Why is the Obama Administration willing to negotiate with Putin on Syria… but not with Congress to address Washington’s spending problem?”

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2013/09/23/take-five-jerks-in-progress-edition/

September 23, 2013

Stormy Monday, 9/23/13

Jeff Rosenzweig: Stormy Monday, 9/23/13

The most compelling evidence yet for the non-existence of God was revealed earlier this month by Roll Call, which announced that Darrell Issa is now the richest member of Congress. Flush with his undeserved success, Issa flew to Libya yesterday, breaking an Oversight and Government Reform Committee rule he himself instituted that mandates all committee-sanctioned foreign junkets be bipartisan. While Issa frantically searches under every couch cushion in Benghazi for a smoking gun that will destroy the Obama Presidency, it sure would be a fine time to revoke his passport.

A government shutdown on October 1 remains a distinct possibility following last Friday’s passage by the House of a continuing resolution that would fund government operations through mid-December, but also defund Obamacare. Despite Ted Cruz huffing and puffing about a filibuster, the Senate will no doubt remove the provisions related to the Affordable Care Act and punt the bill back to the House, probably this week. What happens after that is anyone’s guess, but assuming the worst seems an increasingly safe bet.

The House resolution includes a “death gratuity” payable to the widow of Senator Frank Lautenberg in the sum of $174,000, a common though not automatic Congressional perk. If the gratuity makes it into a bicamerally-approved version of the resolution, I expect Mrs. Lautenberg will probably steer the money to some worthy cause or another. She certainly doesn’t need it; her late husband’s net worth has been estimated at $57 million.

Having botched the continuing resolution, the House might also hork up a debt ceiling bill this week, according to reptilian Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Cantor is on record as saying it will include a provision to “delay” the implementation of Obamacare for one year, and another to ensure completion of the Keystone XL pipeline. Plus a bunch more provisions to do other bad things...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2013/09/23/stormy-monday-92313/

September 18, 2013

Walter Rhett: Wordkill

Writing is easiest for me when it’s story-telling; when all of the elements of sentence structure, unity, coherence, tone, therapy, insight, and creative channels are balanced and stirred in like a good perlo or gumbo—a one-pot dish that bring its own satisfaction and holds its character and taste over time.

For others, it seems, writing is an easy path and aid to lying and mischief. When writing or using language, they are unaccountable to craft or subject (or self!). The gifts of sounding ideas to the eye, of recalling, describing and interpreting actions is used to cast a net of darkness. I call it the looking glass syndrome—writing which is only a mirror of images planted by the observing eye—that ignore what the eye really observed.

Is the yawing child sleep deprived or happily satiated? Is a government that will defund the nation’s entire organized healthcare system one that is providing for the common good or one pushing an ideological agenda—blind to human costs off the balance sheet? Why would any writer use their gifts to lie, mislead, and arrange words that, if followed, would bring death? Words that to the intimacy of a reader’s eye, bring in blame, bring what bullets bring; and murder by word.

After this week’s Navy Yard murders, and Newtown, and the Boston Marathon bombings, be reminded there are many ways to kill. The crack of the gun puts us on edge; we hear it in our deep invisible space. But on its heels is another weapon, the word—written and spoken...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2013/09/18/wordkill/

September 16, 2013

Stormy Monday, 9/16/13

Jeff Rosenzweig: Stormy Monday, 9/16/13

Now that Congressional Republicans have slunk back from their extended and entirely undeserved late summer holidays, they have a lot of catching up to do in their continuing efforts to make pretty much everything worse for everybody except the wealthy, and eventually even for them. Look for a bill to be introduced this week that would double the $20 billion in SNAP cuts over 10 years previously endorsed by the House Agriculture Committee and reintroduce work requirements for eligibility in an economy where the official jobless rate is still north of 7.5%. Look for renewed efforts to kill federal nutrition programs. Look for a measure to erode federal standards and increase timber harvesting in national forests. Look for more blather about a spending resolution, and a possible government shutdown. Listen for exploding irony meters across DC on Wednesday when the Joint Economic Committee convenes a hearing titled, “The Economic Costs of Debt-Ceiling Brinkmanship.”

Sybrina Fulton, mother of murder victim Trayvon Martin, will testify Tuesday at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights on “stand your ground” laws. Senators will offer condolences to Ms. Fulton, listen politely to her remarks, ask a few questions, make sympathetic noises, then head for the nearest Capitol Hill steakhouse to try and forget, over Wagyu medallions and merlot, just how heartrending their jobs can be sometimes.

Lest newer and even more egregiously contrived pseudo-scandals fail to hobble the Obama Administration, this week the House GOP also revisits – wait for it – Benghazigate, with exciting new hearings by the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The former is designed to ferret out previously unidentified State Department scapegoats, while the theme of the latter is “unanswered questions,” although really the only unanswered question still remaining is how much longer Boehner’s Complainers can keep up this obsessive/compulsive inquisition.

Speaking of scandals, you might have noticed that this column didn’t appear last week. I was busy buying duct tape and plastic sheeting in advance of a world war triggered by Barack W. Obama and John Kerry, his bumbling rube of a Secretary of State. Miraculously, after their bellicose mishandling of the Syrian crisis exposed the United States as a bloodthirsty rogue state and international pariah, that nice Mr. Putin came along and insisted on a diplomatic solution, thereby pulling Obama’s incompetent ass out of the deep fryer. Thank God we have the internet to keep us all informed, huh?

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2013/09/15/stormy-monday-91613/

September 11, 2013

Walter Rhett: Proclaim 9/11 As a Day For Truth

If you are a politician, lying, whether deliberate, inadvertent, accidental, unintentionally, for effect or on purpose should be punishable as treason, with a minimum sentence of 50 years, spent translating Chinese press releases. Lies affect more than facts; lies affect the sequence of actions that politics follows, the causes and courses that the nation pursues, and the way resistance is formed. Important but often overlooked, lies create distraction and massive waste.

Not that anybody believes the lie, but lying gives others the power and approval to lie. That’s its political magic: lying enables itself, whether we believe or not! When it comes to lies, Democrats focus on belief; Republicans focus on its social power. Refuting a lie doesn’t diminish its power; lying appeals to a false freedom that flaunts the rules.

Today, 9/11, a day that should be honored by a reverence for truth and its associated virtues of sacrifice and love, will be a signature day for lies held under the breath of those who recall the national grief.

Today, no Republicans will come forth to admit that he or she has attacked women by trying to weaken rape laws, falsely creating new definitions of rape, or denying women the option of abortion in the case of rape. They will not admit that their pseudo-science was an assault in itself. They will not acknowledge trying to exclude Native American women from the protections of the Violence Against Women Act in a false issue of sovereignty that granted white men impunity to rape Indian women on reservations—native land...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2013/09/11/proclaim-911-as-a-day-for-truth/

September 6, 2013

Take Five (Way Stranger than Fiction edition)

Jeff Rosenzweig: Take Five (Way Stranger than Fiction edition)

If those present at the March on Washington imagined anything about the national conversation on race half a century hence, they might well have assumed it would at least be an adult conversation, because of course they had no way of knowing that the Republicans of the new millennium would so decisively abandon any pretense of maturity, emotional or intellectual.

The GOP Dog-Whistle Philharmonic haughtily eschewed the high-profile 50th-anniversary celebrations of the March, opting instead to stage a series of energetic but stridently off-key recitals by its few minority soloists, like Bobby Jindal and Ted Cruz.

In an op-ed supposedly penned to commemorate Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech, Jindal, stunningly, used the occasion to criticize – wait for it – minorities:

Jindal accused minorities of placing “far too much emphasis on our ‘separateness,’ our heritage, ethnic background, skin color, etc. We live in the age of hyphenated Americans…

“Here’s an idea: How about just ‘Americans?’ That has a nice ring to it, if you ask me. Placing undue emphasis on our ‘separateness’ is a step backward. Bring back the melting pot,” the governor opined.

Jindal underscored that waste of electrons with an appearance on Meet the Press last week that included a jaw-dropping rationalization for the tidal wave of bigotry to which the nation’s first not-entirely-white President has been subjected...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2013/09/06/take-five-way-stranger-than-fiction-edition/

September 4, 2013

Walter Rhett: Conflict Violence: The President's Stand On Syria And His Nobel Speech

Because I stand firmly against conflict violence, I support the President’s plan for missile strikes against Syria.

Even before the hands fly to ask why, the fingers pointing tick off the bewildering absurdity of opposing violence by supporting military intervention!

Next, they point to the absolute foolishness of supporting any war or war event for any reason. They wag and say we have no business there. They point to a long short list of all the bad things that can happen as outcomes—escalation of the conflict, within and outside of borders, breaches of international relations, harmful economic exchanges, increased threats across the world, the blood-smeared bodies pointing to America not as a moral protector but as a bully, acting on its own whim, ignoring—and inflaming—the world’s outrage.

Before that contorted outrage is a mask of stoic indifference. A moral blindness hides behinds that outrage, a moral position that can only be challenged and met by military actions...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2013/09/04/conflict-violence-obama-syria-and-the-nobel-speech/

September 2, 2013

Stormy Monday, 9/2/13

Jeff Rosenzweig: Stormy Monday, 9/2/13

Handily enough, September is National Preparedness Month, so let’s brace ourselves. Whatever happens – and any number of things could – it could be just all kinds of ugly.

On Saturday, the President committed to seeking Congressional approval for military strikes against the Syrian regime. The same day, Speaker Boehner and the rest of the House “leadership” issued a joint statement resisting calls to reconvene before the scheduled end of their recess, claiming that waiting until September 9 to convene gives President Obama “time to make his case to Congress and the American people.”

Not incidentally, it also provides time for Boehner’s caucus to sit on their entitled asses for a few more precious late-summer days, squeeze in a few last rounds of being influence-peddled over pulled pork and/or Peruvian flake, and strategize how they’re going to defund Obamacare, shut down the government over another manufactured debt ceiling crisis, and cement the reputation of the 113th Congress as the worst and least productive in modern times, all while somehow finding time to turn their minds to this whole – ugh! – Syria thing the White House keeps talking about, whatever the hell that’s all about. Hooray for National Preparedness Month.

Pending Congress doing much of anything, Syria’s state-run newspaper, Al-Thawra, crowed in a front-page editorial Sunday about recourse to Congressional approval being “the start of the historic American retreat,” even as the USS Nimitz and its strike group headed for the Red Sea and five US destroyers armed with 200 cruise missiles patrolled the eastern Mediterranean...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2013/09/02/stormy-monday-9213/

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