[ Posted Thursday, October 10th, 2013 – 16:06 UTC ]
Today we start in June and bring the timeline of Republican obstructionism on the budget negotiations they are now loudly demanding right up to the present. Both of these articles are provided as a public service, in the hopes that the mainstream media won't continue to completely ignore what happened previously during 2013, when discussing the current situation in Washington.
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[ Posted Wednesday, October 9th, 2013 – 17:56 UTC ]
So, as a public service, I'd like to trace the history of the Republican Party when it comes to budget negotiations. In a nutshell, if you don't have time to read all the clips below, the Republican Party has been howling for years that Congress should follow the "regular order" when it comes to passing budgets. This regular order is: House passes budget. Senate passes budget. Conference committee hashes out compromise budget. House and Senate pass compromise budget. President signs budget.
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[ Posted Friday, October 4th, 2013 – 17:57 UTC ]
Well, I have to admit -- I never thought John Boehner was stupid enough to shut the government down over Obamacare. Shows what I know, right? Sigh.
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[ Posted Friday, September 27th, 2013 – 18:10 UTC ]
No, the big point missed in the midst of Senator Ted Cruz's talkfest was the moral of the story he read. By now, most people have heard that Cruz read, in its entirety, the classic Dr. Seuss children's book Green Eggs And Ham -- tucking his own kids into bed, long-distance, via C-SPAN. Cruz then doubled down on his point-missing by comparing Obamacare to the story's green eggs and ham. Cruz really has no excuse for this monumentally idiotic mistake, since (as mentioned) he read the whole story from the Senate floor.
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[ Posted Wednesday, September 18th, 2013 – 16:07 UTC ]
The politico-media empire which writes the rules of the Washington "What Serious People Are Saying" game have apparently decided that the government shutdown is now melodramatically going to happen. Cue ominous organ music blast (dum Dum DUM!). The key word in that opening sentence is "melodramatically," because our government can now be seen as nothing more than a continuing soap opera. Call it "As The Boehner Turns," or perhaps more appropriately "The Boehner And The Restless."
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[ Posted Friday, September 13th, 2013 – 16:30 UTC ]
Reading Putin's piece took me back to the halcyon days of the Cold War, but it seems most other people commenting on it either have shorter memories or are just too young to remember what I'm talking about.
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[ Posted Tuesday, September 10th, 2013 – 18:59 UTC ]
The speech Obama just gave was a balancing act in several respects. I heard post-speech analysis by David Brooks on PBS, and he came up with an excellent way to put the problem Obama faced -- a "Goldilocks moment." How much of an airstrike would be "too much" and how much would be "too little," in other words. The other big balancing act was between calling for military action and pursuing the diplomatic solution.
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[ Posted Monday, September 9th, 2013 – 16:36 UTC ]
Instead of a competition in the arena of press relations, however, a possible solution to the Syrian crisis appeared (almost mirage-like) on the horizon. Details are scant as of this writing, but Syria seems to be looking favorably towards a Russian proposal that they turn over all of their chemical weapons stores to international monitors who would then destroy them -- putting all chemical weapons completely out of reach of both sides in the conflict forevermore.
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[ Posted Friday, September 6th, 2013 – 16:32 UTC ]
Due to the fact that Congress is still on vacation and also due to the fact that it has largely been a one-subject week in the political world, we are going to pre-empt our regular talking points for a discussion of where the country seems to be on the question of attacking Syria. But first, let's wrap up the week and hand out our awards, as usual.
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[ Posted Wednesday, September 4th, 2013 – 15:11 UTC ]
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee just voted to approve a resolution to attack Syria on a vote of 10-7, with one member merely voting "present." But the breakdown of the voting reveals that this was in no way a party-line vote. Which, of course, complicates the issue for a media much more comfortable with a "horse race" mentality towards all politics ("Dems are up! GOP down! Film at eleven!"). For once, some complexities have emerged which confound the knee-jerk pigeonholing so regularly practiced by news producers. But maybe that's all to the good. Maybe, in fact, that's why President Obama went to Congress in the first place.
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