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We're going to do something today we haven't done for a while here -- take a cartoon break! Our resident cartoonist, C.W. Cunningham, has surfaced once again and sent in the following for you to enjoy.
-- Chris Weigant
About the Cartoonist | Reprint Policy
It's "Budget Season" once again in Washington, and since it's going to be a particularly contentious and complex one this year, it's worth taking a moment at the beginning to provide an overview of the entire process which is about to play out over the next two or three months. There are, at this point, three main budget battles to be fought. One of these isn't strictly a budget battle, but will likely devolve into one, hence its inclusion in the list. Two of these have hard and fast calendar deadlines. All three of them are going to be major political battles, and it's unclear what the outcome of any of them is going to be at this point.
Let's look at these three items, in the order they're going to be fought on Capitol Hill, and then we'll take a look at some of the political constraints on each side of this fight.
The stunning news today of Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak stepping down has all but eclipsed the other political news of the week. Who would have thought, a month ago, that a government that had oppressed its own people for over three decades would fall simply because a bunch of people marched in the streets and refused to give up?
American politicians are still trying to figure out how they should react. Although shocking to some, this is entirely normal. The people of Egypt have spoken, and before it happened, nobody could have foreseen how fast or how effective it was going to be. The demonstrations surprised the Egyptian government as well as the American government. The main lesson to be learned here is that sometimes, in our new cyberspace world, events move faster than analysis can hope to. That's one of the strengths of such "people power" movements -- their inherent unpredictability.
Of course, democracy is unpredictable as well. If Mubarak's exit truly does usher in an era of true democracy in Egypt, then the fact of the matter is that nobody knows what it will mean for the future. Nobody can predict who will win a free and fair election, what the Egyptian government will look like after one, or what it will mean for the region, the United States, Israel, or the rest of the world. But that is the nature of democracy.
Hoo boy.
What fun is a scandal if you don't even have time to make fun of it?
No, wait, let me start over....
Representative Chris Lee just set the Washington speed record for scandals, clocking in just under an astonishing three-and-a-half hours, from start to finish. This stunning display of the warp-speed nature of living in the 21st century will likely become the gold standard speed record of Washington scandals for some time to come. Or maybe not... maybe we'll enter into a cycle of ever-quicker scandals erupting and concluding with blinding speed.
The Chris Lee scandal unfolded fast. Really fast. It unfolded so fast, comedians didn't even have time to write jokes about it. It happened so fast, liberals didn't even get a single gleeful day of poking fun at the New York Republican. It happened so fast that nobody even had time to turn it into a "-gate" word! That's really fast indeed. The closest I've come across is the "Craigslist Congressman," which is amusing but not really on a world-class level, when it comes to slapping a cute label on a scandal.
Speaker of the House John Boehner seems not to be able to count votes very well. Or, to be more charitable, perhaps he's just working through his opening day jitters. But it certainly seems that he is indeed making a few rookie vote-counting mistakes as he learns his new job.
Consider his handling of a bill to renew three provisions of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001, more commonly known as "the Patriot Act." Three parts of this law are going to expire if Congress doesn't renew them by February 28. A bill to do just that was introduced in the House, under "fast track" rules which are normally used for bills which aren't all that contentious. The reason why contentious bills aren't usually fast-tracked is that they require a two-thirds majority vote to pass -- a mighty high bar indeed. Boehner, apparently assuming he had the votes, brought the Patriot Act renewal up under the fast-track rules -- which then failed to gain the required majority by seven votes. The Washington Post called this an "embarassing setback" for House Republicans.
Christina Aguilera is -- quite rightly -- getting a lot of grief these days, because she flubbed a line while singing the National Anthem at the start of last weekend's Super Bowl. But while her mangled version of the lyrics was pretty cringe-inducing, to me what was completely indefensible was her mangling of the tune itself. Because this is one song which really shouldn't be open to "interpretation" -- at least not during such a prominent event.
The lyrics-scrambling was bad enough. Instead of singing:
Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thru the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
Aguilera sang:
Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thru the perilous fight,
What so proudly we watched at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whoops. That sound you just heard was Francis Scott Key, turning over in his grave. The question that immediately pops to mind is, of course: Has any bright editor out there already used the headline: "Star-Mangled Banner"? Inquiring minds want to know. Heh.
Corporate America is on our minds today, because President Obama just gave a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. With the future decidedly uncertain, Obama made overtures to the corporate community, and also called on them to be responsible and help build the middle class of this country, by insuring that all boats are lifted by the tide, and not get (as he put it) "left behind, stuck in the mud." This wasn't the only time in the speech he got Kennedyesque, also calling on the corporate titans to: "Ask yourselves what you can do to hire more American workers, what you can do to support the American economy and invest in this nation."
President Obama also included a lot of warm outreach to the private industry, including the "winning the future" laundry list from his State Of The Union speech (education, innovation, investment). He reached a hand out on the subject of his health reform law, regulatory reform, and revamping the tax code. He also called on the business community to put the hundreds of billions in cash they've got sitting around to some good use in the future, instead of letting it sit in the bank.
While there was indeed some domestic American political news happening last week, we're going to take a pass on focusing on any of it today. Instead, the news this week was dominated by foreign policy and events largely beyond America's borders. So, instead of dishing up our usual "Friday Talking Points" snarkiness here (did you hear Sarah Palin's trademarking her own name? Bristol, too!), and instead of providing useful soundbites for Democrats to use (unemployment dropped 0.8 points in two months!) and celebrating victories over Republican idiocy (such as shaming them out of changing the federal definition of rape to exclude non-incest statutory rape in an abortion amendment), we're going to do something different here today. We can wait until next week to begin highlighting Republican hypocrisy on budget-cutting, and all the rest of it. Because while Egypt's future is being worked out both in Cairo and in Washington, somehow it just doesn't seem appropriate to be handing out "most impressive" and "most disappointing" partisan awards this week. Instead of such pettiness, for the first time we're going to radically change our weekly approach here, and instead talk about bipartisanship of a very specific kind.
It can be summed up as: at times, politics is supposed to end "at the water's edge." This idea was originally put forth by Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan at the dawn of the Cold War. What Vandenberg actually said:
Egypt, it seems, is failing to follow a convenient storyline for the American journalists to follow.
When the American television media woke up and realized something was going on in Egypt (approximately two or three days after it all started, and long after Al Jazeera was covering it wall-to-wall, it bears mentioning), their first thought was to be the first network to get an anchor to Cairo. Brian Williams apparently won this race, much to the consternation (one assumes) of his competitors.
This silly race happens whenever a truly big story breaks elsewhere in the world where Americans might actually care what is happening, and where four-star hotels exist. Note the qualifications -- stories which happen which are virtually the same as what is going on now in Egypt are routinely ignored by the big network anchors, when they happen in some godforsaken place that not one in a thousand Americans could locate on the world map. Even when such stories do happen, it seems the big anchors are only willing to cover it when there's a convenient posh hotel nearby in which to barricade themselves should the going get rough (and then, one assumes, complain about the slow response of room service).
Obama's best month ever
Obama poll-watchers have been waiting to see a "bump" upward in public opinion job approval ratings pretty much ever since he took office. In two years, there really hasn't been one. Until now.
In January, President Obama's approval rating went significantly higher, while his disapproval rating continued a trend of dropping with a big spike downward. What both of these meant, taken together, is that Obama is once again "above water" in the polls, with his approval rating beating his disapproval rating. This hasn't happened since last June. But, in reality, Obama has pretty much erased his past entire year's slow slide in poll numbers -- in a single month. Obviously, he didn't hit an all-time high in absolute numbers, but still, when taken month-to-month, January, 2011 was Obama's best month of his entire presidency. Not only did he finally get his bump -- but it was a truly significant bump.
Let's take a look at the chart:
[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]
