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I've always been astounded at the near-complete lack of historical memory regularly exhibited by both Washington politicians and the "journalists" who purport to cover them. Nothing I've seen in the past few weeks has caused me to change this opinion, either, as the fight over raising the federal debt ceiling has played itself out.
Since the year is now exactly half over, I took the opportunity yesterday to tally up how much vacation time Congress has taken this year, so far. The answer is pretty shocking -- the House has taken 46 out of a possible 125 non-holiday weekdays off, and the Senate (not to be outdone) has gone on vacation for 49 days out of those 125. To put this another way, out of 26 weeks Congress could have worked, the House took over nine weeks off on vacation, and the Senate took almost ten weeks to play rather than work. Something for everyone to ponder as we all enjoy our measly three-day vacation this weekend!
Well, it's certainly been an eventful couple of weeks, hasn't it?
We're back on our regular weekly schedule here after returning home from our second trip this month (this one to Netroots Nation), after which I can firmly conclude that flying, these days, sucks. Big time. Sigh.
Sometimes special elections are harbingers of things to come. And sometimes they are not. The tricky part is that nobody can tell the difference until long afterwards. Which certainly doesn't stop rampant speculation in the meantime. Last night, a Democrat pulled off a surprising upset in New York's 26th congressional district, in an election that was forced due to the resignation of a House member who got caught trolling the internet (with shirtless pictures, no less) for extramarital fun and games. What this signifies for the 2012 election is anyone's guess, at this point.
With all this frantic jumping in and out of the race, I thought it was time to take another look at the Republican field to see how it is shaping up. At this point, there are only a few holdouts left on the sidelines, as most of the bigwigs (and some decidedly "smallwigs") have made their intentions known.
A word here about timing is necessary, I think. While the blog post is quite obviously meant as a semi-joke, wouldn't this have been more fun in, say, mid-October -- a few weeks before Hallowe'en? Instead of this week, with the "End of Days" prophesied for midafternoon this Saturday? I'm just saying....
It's rare for me to have a moment of pity for someone like Newt Gingrich, but I have to admit I'm feeling a little sorry for the guy this week. But before we delve into Newt's campaign problems in greater detail, it seems to me that most pundits are missing a big underlying new reality in the Republican Party. The focus has all been on Newt himself, what he said, and the subsequent ire directed at him by prominent Righties. But after the dust settles on the incident itself, people are going to notice the bigger fact this fracas has illuminated: Republicans are doubling down on Paul Ryan's budget rather than backing away from it, to the point where it has now become the acid test for Republicans in 2012. Which should be good news for Democrats.
So we're now down to a "Gang of Five," I guess.
I don't care how ironic that sounds to some, it's true. Osama Bin Laden declared war on America, waged that war for years (and killed Americans in doing so), then hid for many more years, and was finally hunted down and killed like an animal. Mission accomplished.
For reasons which surpasseth all understanding (at least to myself), I was actually up very early this morning, before the dawn as a matter of fact. This was due to a scheduled television appearance which, unfortunately, did not occur (for technical reasons). Since I was up, though, I caught the tail end of the British royal wedding, which (for us Pacific Coast Time folks) happened in the middle of the night. Surprisingly enough, I have a few things to point out about the event.