[ Posted Monday, March 9th, 2009 – 16:46 UTC ]
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has a very powerful tool at his disposal, but (true to form) he's not even admitting it exists, much less threatening to use it. The tool is called "reconciliation" and means (as I have written about previously) that budget bills which go through a certain committee process cannot be filibustered when they reach the Senate. Democrats would only need 50 votes (and Joe Biden's tiebreaker, if they couldn't get 51) to pass budget bills. Senate Republicans would be denied using their favorite obstructionist tactic, the cloture vote (the modern equivalent of the filibuster). Which may be the only way to pass President Obama's budget without significant parts of it being removed by balky Republicans.
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[ Posted Friday, March 6th, 2009 – 18:08 UTC ]
The Democratic National Committee is running a contest for a slogan (10 words or less) to plaster on a billboard in Rush Limbaugh's hometown. The winner will also receive a T-shirt with their winning slogan on it. Submit your suggestions over at the DNC's site.
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[ Posted Thursday, March 5th, 2009 – 17:27 UTC ]
For all the terminology of the political world, all the divisions and divisions-within-divisions, there is no term which defies definition quite the way populism does. When we speak of conservatives or liberals or progressives or even libertarians, we pretty much all agree what the label means, and who it covers. Hyphenation and neologisms abound to adequately describe individual factions of the major groups; such as social conservatives versus fiscal conservatives, or neo-conservatives versus paleo-conservatives. But there's no disagreement with the general scope of what "conservative" means. The concept of populism doesn't have this generally-agreed-upon consensus among the public, however. Even historians define the term differently amongst themselves. And this is just within America's politics -- populism can mean even more diverse movements when talking about the rest of the world.
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[ Posted Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 – 17:31 UTC ]
A funny thing happened in Washington yesterday, and not many people noticed -- bipartisanship broke out in the Senate. While the chattering classes (and most Republicans) were fixated on whether Rush Limbaugh was the Republican Party's leader, the conservative movement's leader, or just leading them into the wilderness for 40 years (one can but hope); the Senate was taking care of some legislative business. In a bipartisan fashion. Almost one-fourth of Senate Republicans voted to move last year's budget along -- voting with President Obama and with the Democrats, and voting against the man who not so long ago was actually the leader of the Republican Party: John McCain.
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[ Posted Monday, March 2nd, 2009 – 17:32 UTC ]
Today is apparently Dr. Seuss Day. Who knew? In the spirit of this not-so-solemn occasion, I considered writing today's entire column in Seuss-ian language.
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[ Posted Friday, February 27th, 2009 – 18:47 UTC ]
Barack Obama is moving Congress so fast, we're approaching warp speed. Consider the fact that neither presidents Reagan nor Clinton got their (much smaller) stimulus packages passed for over six months -- and Obama got his passed in mere weeks. And with Clinton and Reagan, that was a major party of their presidential legacy, whereas with Obama it is just the first item on a very long list of enormous changes to be made. Soon.
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[ Posted Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 – 15:44 UTC ]
The "Great Communicator," for our younger readers who were not exposed to him, was what the media eventually decided to call President Ronald Reagan. The title of this article, for our unhipper readers (excuse me, for "the suave-ically-challenged"), is an homage to Frank Zappa's boxed set of albums entitled Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar. You see, while Frank Zappa was a consummate musician as a guitarist and bandleader, his eclectic (to say the least) lyrical style, not to mention his singing ability, turned a lot of people off. So he released a three-album all-instrumental boxed set just for such semi-fans, with disks titled: "Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar," "Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar Some More," and "Return of the Son Of Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar." If Zappa couldn't have fun with the lyrics, he certainly wasn't going to forego having some fun with the album and song names (best track name: "Variations on the Carlos Santana Secret Chord Progression").
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[ Posted Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 – 23:07 UTC ]
The Republican Party is at a real fork in the road. It is rare, in politics, to be able to see with absolute clarity such dividing points while they are happening, I should point out. Usually these things are analyzed after the fact, when conclusions can be drawn with certainty. But the GOP is now at such a point, and it faces two choices: absolute purity, or some shade or another of pragmatism ("the road less traveled," as it were, for Republicans these days).
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[ Posted Monday, February 23rd, 2009 – 17:23 UTC ]
Is President Barack Obama going to actually follow through on a vague promise he made on the campaign trail -- to fix the inherent unfairness of Warren Buffett paying a smaller percentage of his income in taxes than his secretary does? Call it the Buffett Conundrum: multimillionaires (and even some multibillionaires) pay less than half the tax rate as the employees who work for them (who make far less in income). But now, Obama has leaked his first budget outline, and it appears he is serious about attempting to fix this tax policy travesty.
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[ Posted Friday, February 20th, 2009 – 18:38 UTC ]
We'll get to Rick Santelli, his CNBC rant, and the White House's reaction in a bit, I promise. But I've got to start with a rant of my own, over what just happened with California's budget. Feel free to skip to the next section if you'd like, but the issue could have national implications.
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