Our column's subtitle this week is a silent homage to guitarist Alvin Lee of the band Ten Years After, who sadly died this past week. Anyone who has seen the movie Woodstock knows of Lee's incredible talent on the electric guitar, and we just wanted to begin by noting that Alvin Lee is "Goin' Home" for the last time. Requiescat In Pace.

Transitioning from Alvin Lee's death to current political news is tough to do, but not impossible. We offer up a "six-degrees-from" sort of segue, to do so: Alvin Lee was the lead in Ten Years After. Former Republican Senator Norm Coleman (the guy Al Franken beat out) was also a former roadie for Ten Years After. During Franken's campaign, I wrote an article titled "When Hippies Go Bad," doing my part to expose the hypocrisy of Norm Coleman. This week it was revealed that Louisiana is paying tax dollars for history books which use all sorts of derogatory names for hippies (and warn they listened to rock bands which worshipped Satan). Mike Huckabee, when running for president, opined: "If you think that Medicare is expensive now, wait until 10,000 aging hippies a day find out they can get free drugs. Then, it's really going to get expensive in a hurry." And with that, we're back to the budget, Medicare, and Paul Ryan. Voilà!

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That title is, obviously, a bit of a misnomer, since Rand Paul didn't just have a "moment" yesterday on the Senate floor -- he had a whole bunch of them. Thirteen hours' worth, in fact. Senator Paul has a tool at his disposal that his father Ron never had, and yesterday he took that tool out of its box for the first time. Paul has been in the Senate for over two years now, but yesterday was the first time he staged a "talking filibuster."

I find Paul's filibuster fascinating for a number of reasons. First and foremost is the political theater aspect. There simply is no better theatrical stunt in Washington than the Senate's filibuster. Or, as we have to identify the old-school nature these days, a "talking" filibuster, since most cloture motions are now invisible and almost automatic.

Harry Reid missed a great opportunity a few months ago to force all filibusters to return to their roots -- complete with non-stop speechifyin' on the Senate floor. Reid did not support a movement to force all filibusterers to stand and deliver for hours on end. If he had, we would be seeing this spectacle on a weekly (if not daily) basis, which might awaken the public to how much Republicans are using what is supposed to be a rare tactical maneuver. There were actually two filibusters yesterday, one for a judicial nominee who has been waiting for an "up or down vote" since 2010. Only one of them made the news.

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Second Honeymoon Ending

Before we begin, we have a caveat for our data this month. The data for this column series comes from RealClearPolitics.com, specifically their page of rolling daily "poll of polls" averages of President Obama's job approval ratings from major pollsters. On this page is a handy chart of all polling all the way back to Obama's first days in office, with every day's numbers visible, if you roll the mouse over the chart.

For some reason, their chart has developed a problem in the past few weeks. It refuses to update beyond February 24. Data for February 25-28 is not available at this time, so this month's analysis will be somewhat incomplete (14.3 percent incomplete, for those of you who love precision). I've tried the page on multiple computers and multiple platforms, but the chart's problem exists in all of them, so I strongly suspect it isn't a problem with my browser (although I could be wrong about that, I'll admit).

In any case, all of these numbers will be updated as soon as data becomes available for the missing four days. Oh, and one more thing -- there's a "housecleaning" note at the end of the column, above the raw data section. Next month we'll be sweeping out all of the first-term raw data to reduce the clutter at the end of these columns, and placing it all on a static page for those still interested.

But enough program notes, let's get on with checking out how Obama did last month. As expected, his "second honeymoon" in the polls is starting to fade. The election is long over, the inauguration is fading from memory, and now the real legislative struggles of Obama's second term have begun. Here is this month's chart:

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

February, 2013

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OK, so I played hooky today. Instead of writing a column, I went and did something fun with my wife. But I thought I'd at least share with you folks what I was doing.

Here is a bit of my wife's arm, right next to the 2012 World Series Champions trophy, won by the San Francisco Giants:

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I'm going to admit right up front here that I swiped the concept for my title from Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s novel Mother Night. Blue Fairy Godmother budget cuts, to define my homage, are those that can only be seen and believed in magically, and offer further magical protection from any political harm. So it goes.

We all now live in a post-sequester world. We're all waiting for the axe to fall. Meanwhile, in Washington, Republicans in Congress are openly admitting that their main job is just too tough for them to do. They are publicly stating their own incompetence. In fact, they are unconstitutionally begging the president to do their job for them.

Things have gotten so strange and fantastical, I found myself in rare and open agreement with Senator John McCain yesterday. McCain was reacting to the newest Republican plan, which is to give the president what they call "flexibility" in spreading around the sequester cuts, so they somehow won't hurt as much. When the host of Face The Nation, Bob Schieffer, asked McCain whether "people on the extreme ends of your party" are "holding the rest of you hostage here," McCain answered [emphasis added]:

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This is what happens when Hollywood causes metaphysical universes to collide. That's the way I see it, at any rate. The news that J. J. Abrams will now be directing movies in both the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises has, quite obviously, sent ripples across the multidimensional continuum which are only now beginning to be perceived.

Case in point: President Barack Obama today, admitting he is incapable of "Jedi mind-melds" with recalcitrant Republicans in Congress. As any science fiction fan worth his or her salt can tell you (at great length, and with appropriate quotations, accents, and gestures), it's either a Vulcan mind-meld, or a Jedi mind trick. Spock never said: "These are not the droids you're looking for," and Luke Skywalker never tried a mind-meld with Jabba the Hut, to put this another way.

Personally, I blame Abrams. No one man should have all that power, as Kanye might say.

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Has John Boehner scrapped the Hastert Rule for good? And I do mean "for good" -- in both senses of the term.

The news today is that the House of Representatives passed the Senate version of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), and has now sent the bill to President Obama for his signature. Thus ends a year and a half of battles in the House over the legislation, which used to be routinely renewed on a fairly non-partisan basis. This, of course, is good news, for all the obvious reasons. But I'm wondering if it isn't even bigger and better news of a more fundamental nature in the way John Boehner runs his House.

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President Obama seems to be playing a long game in the budget negotiations, as evidenced by the press blitz over the past few weeks. So far, the White House has been very effective in setting the direction of the conversation taking place over the budget. By doing so, they have laid the groundwork for a much more realistic conversation on the federal budget which is long overdue -- the specifics of what to cut. This gets into territory the Republicans have been shying away from for a very long time, for very good reason. Because when you get down to the details of what, exactly, to cut from the federal budget, the questions get a lot tougher than easily-tossed-off campaign rhetoric. To put this another way: Obama is opening a conversation with the American people into what our federal priorities should be. That's what has been missing from the political debate for a long time. So far, Obama seems to be dominating this argument.

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[Program Note: This column came up in the comments to one of the other sequester columns I've been running, and I thought it was a good time to haul it out again. This was originally run right before Thanksgiving, a year and a half ago. I remember the bumpersticker (referenced at the end) from way back, and just took the idea and ran with it. It's not all that dated, except for the bit about the raffle -- it'd have to be someone other than David Petraeus, these days. Anyway, enjoy.]

Originally published November 23, 2011

Excuse me... excuse me ladies and gentleman... [sound of microphone squeaking with feedback, then several thumps, until sound clears]... Hello, can I have everyone's attention for a moment? Thank you.

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Every once in a while I get an idea that is so crazy it just might work. What with all the sequester talk in Washington, it occurred to me that the Obama administration has a better option for pressuring Congress than they may have thus considered. Instead of making life hard for Americans everywhere with the across-the-board cuts (in the hopes that enough citizens will complain to the elected representatives), why not get rid of the middleman, and just make life hard for those in Congress? Announce that the very first budget cuts to be implemented will be sequestering the living heck out of National Airport.

Announce that National will only have the benefit of one air traffic controller at any single time. Further announce that the T.S.A. will only have one security checker for each security gate at a time -- so be sure to get there early! Really twist the knife and announce that parking lot security will be drastically cut back -- starting with the "members only" Congressional parking lot.

Announce that such cuts will take place next week. Further announce that in two weeks, similar (but not quite as drastic) cuts will be made to Dulles airport in Virginia and Baltimore/Washington airport in Maryland. Any and all other federal budget furloughs or cutbacks will follow these as the flagship cuts which will be made after the sequester happens.

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