progressive involvement

Sen. Barbara Boxer yesterday

 

Nude Kansas Congressman lifts Wall Street

Kansas Congressman Kevin Yoder has made the national news twice.  First, he went skinny-dipping in the Sea of Galilee two years ago, and second, he's the one who slipped Wall Street bailout language into the recent government spending bill.

Yoder took (Citicorp executives') language and rolled it into an amendment to a spending bill in a House subcommittee meeting. It got swept into the year-end spending package because it "was within the scope of negotiations" on it, according to an Appropriations Committee aide.

Said one commenter:  "Didn't Kansas recently reelect every member of the GOP that bankrupted their state, and turned them into a national laughingstock?"

Why, yes.  Yes they did.  They re-elected Sam Brownback as governor, and Virginia-resident, Pat Roberts, as senator.  Those two hotly-contested races may have enabled Cong. Yoder to slip under peoples' radar, however unlikely it may seem that people could forget about a skinny-dipping congressman from KC

It's been done

When Kathleen Sebelius appeared yesterday before the House Republicans, Cong. Joe Barton said, “Dorothy at some point in the movie turns to her little dog, Toto, and says, ‘Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.’ Well, Madam Secretary, while you’re from Kansas, we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Barton meant this lame cliche as a display of his incisive humor and wit.  Does Barton know that that line has been repeated over and over in popular culture for over 70 years now?   

I wouldn't have been surprised if Secretary Sebelius had said, "Congratulations, Cong. Barton, you are the 1000th person to use that hackneyed and unoriginal expression with me, in the past 5 years alone!"  

Works now

I went to healthcare.gov this morning and browsed around.  I know HHS has had problems with this website, but it worked just fine this morning.  

In fact, it seems pretty well laid out.  If you're a business you go one direction, if an individual you go another.  Simple enough.  For individuals, the next most important thing is what state you live in.  For Colorado, you are directed off the government site to the state site.

If you're in a state that doesn't participate in ACA, and has done everything it can to undermine it, like Texas, for example, you stay on the government website and then must open an account.  I would imagine that this is where the sand got in the gears.

Cruz crests as tea party favorite

Ted Cruz was the big winner in the government shutdown/debt ceiling debacle.  By posing as the nation's foremost opponent of Obamacare, to the point of suicidal mission, he has managed to separate himself from the pack by finding a way to be seen as the most conservative out of a slew of very conservative potential candidates.  This is quite extraordinary, and an exceptional display of political skill on the part of Cruz.

He was never very serious about his scheme to "defund Obamacare."  His alleged "strategy" was a chimera from the start and reminiscent of this classic cartoon which once appeared in the New Yorker.  The scheme is quite elaborate, but it depends on a miracle at the critical juncture.

Cruz's strategy to "defund Obamacare" was based on putting pressure on the Senate Democrats to do it.  The GOP House would be stalwart.  The Senate Republicans would be stalwart also, he supposed, but that would not be a majority.  In order to get a majority in the Senate, Senate Democrats would have to cave.

That's when the miracle would happen.  Cruz supposed that, because Obamacare was so massively unpopular, that public opinion would storm over the Senate Democrats and cause them to flip.

There are several flaws in that alleged "strategy," the most notable being that Obamacare is not that unpopular.  True, the polls are roughly 60-40 against Obamacare, but about one-fourth to one-third of the people who say they oppose it do so because they wanted single payer all along.  They fault Obamacare for not being liberal enough.  

Put another way, support for Obamacare, or a more liberal alternative, is about 60-40, which is a considerable majority, and which further means there is no massive groundswell of opposition that could shake the Senate Democrats. 

Ted Cruz knew all this, of course.  He went ahead anyway because the surest route to the heart of the GOP base is ideological fidelity combined with crusader-like zeal.  It worked like a charm.  One recent poll showed that Cruz was now the choice of 74% of tea party Republicans.  That's the base.  

His strategy never stood a chance, but that doesn't matter too much to Cruz since he accomplished so much by pursuing it.  In one swoop, he has assured himself of adequate financing for the 2016 campaign of which he is now the frontrunner.  

Romanoff slams government shut-down at Aurora event

Andrew Romanoff, candidate for the 6th congressional district seat currently held by Mike Coffman, slammed the government shutdown at an event at the Stampede dance hall.  

The 6th congressional district is the top-targeted seat of the Democratic House Campaign Committee.  It's hard enough to see a path to the Democrats attaining a House majority in 2014, and one may not exist without winning the Colorado 6th.

Shutdown unpopular; public blames GOP

A new CBS News poll shows an overwhelming 72% of the American public opposed to the government shutdown.  By a 44-35 margin, they place most of the blame on the House Republicans.  Meanwhile, though Republicans as a whole narrowly oppose the shutdown, 49-48, a clear majority--57%--of tea party Republicans support it.

 

Clueless and cluelesser

"I just did CNN and I just go over and over again 'We're willing to compromise. We're willing to negotiate.' I think... I don't think they poll tested we won't negotiate. I think it's awful for [Democrats] to say that over and over again," Paul said.

"Yeah, I do too and I, and I just came back from that two hour meeting with them and that, and that was basically the same view privately as it was publicly," McConnell agreed.

Paul added, "I think if we keep saying, 'We wanted to defund it. We fought for that and that we're willing to compromise on this', I think they can't, we're gonna, I think... well, I know we don't want to be here, but we're gonna win this, I think."

Candid remarks by Sen Rand Paul and Sen. Mitch McConnell in front of a hot mic

They've been pulling stunts like this ever since the beginning of the country

The south has been insisting on its own way ever since the Constitution of the United States was written, including while it was being written.  

They're at it again.  The tea party caucus, overwhelmingly white and southern, refuses to recognize and is actively subverting a law that provides universal health insurance coverage.  

The first President to propose a national health care plan was a Republican, Teddy Roosevelt.  The Democratic Party has supported universal coverage since Harry Truman.

President Obama ran for president on universal health care.  The Affordable Care Act was passed by both houses of Congress, declared constitutional by the Supreme Court, and the President who proposed it was re-elected by five million votes.  In a constitutional republic, this is supposed to count.

But no, the southerners don't like it.  Joan Walsh slices and dices southern GOP history to remind us of the racial bias that has animated the GOP since at least 1964.  She remembers Lee Atwater in particular.  He's the one who famously said:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “N–ger, n–ger, n–ger.” By 1968 you can’t say “n–ger” — that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites … “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N–ger, n–ger.”

"Defund Obamacare" is the new "states' rights".  What could be worse than a black president passing a law that, in many minds, helps black people?  

In fact, government itself is synonymous in some peoples' minds with helping black people, and is probably the main reason a certain constituency thinks government is the root of all evil.  (Actually, money is.  I just checked.  1 Tim 6:10)

When I was growing up in a rural Kansas environment back in the late 1950's and early 1960's, people liked and generally trusted the government.  We were farmers, and a certain natural grousing about the government comes with the territory, but, overall, even we farmers thought the government was doing a good job.

"I'm from the federal government and I'm hear to help you."  That's the sarcastic punch-line of a supposed joke that I first heard in 1974, told by then Congressman Robert J. Dole.  

What had happened between 1964, when my conservative civics teacher was singing the benefits of the New Deal, and 1974, when Cong. Dole thought it politically wise to unleash an anti-government zinger?  The civil rights movement, when government (finally) came down on the side of black people.  For some, the government has been the enemy ever since. 

 

 

Why the recovery is slow