[ Posted Thursday, January 17th, 2019 – 18:18 UTC ]
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took the time this week to pen an opinion piece in the Washington Post warning of the dire consequences that would happen if the Democratic House's first bill (H.R. 1, or the "For The People Act") ever became law. He calls it the "Democrat [sic] Politician Protection Act." However, he really fails to explain why anything in the act (other than changes to the Federal Elections Commission) would specifically help Democrats at the expense of Republicans. Instead, his article reads as nothing short of free-floating angst over the changes Democrats are proposing.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Wednesday, January 16th, 2019 – 18:30 UTC ]
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is trolling President Donald Trump. She just sent him a letter (which she then immediately released to the public, for maximum impact) suggesting that the upcoming State Of The Union speech be either: postponed until the government is open once again, given from the Oval Office on television, or just written down by the White House and sent over to Congress. This is obviously designed to do nothing short of getting under the president's skin, but at the same time it is indeed a real threat, since Pelosi actually does have the power to deny Trump the chance to give his annual speech. Officially, the speaker invites the president and then somewhat later (often mere days before the speech) the House and Senate pass an official invitation which schedules the event. Pelosi has already informally invited Trump to speak on January 29th, but Congress has not yet officially acted. If Pelosi doesn't allow a floor vote, then the official invitation will never happen and the speech will essentially be cancelled. Such is the power of having the majority in the House.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Tuesday, January 15th, 2019 – 18:01 UTC ]
Which brings me to a related subject. Because while King's remarks were pretty blatantly racist, he certainly isn't alone in denigrating people who don't happen to look like him. In fact, the leader of his party does so all the time, and President Donald Trump rarely gets any kind of pushback from those in his party for doing so. So why the double standard?
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Monday, January 14th, 2019 – 18:26 UTC ]
Today seems to be another day for speculating about the upcoming Democratic presidential primary race, and (more specifically) answering the question: "What do Democratic voters want to see in a 2020 presidential nominee?" Since there is no real news today on the government shutdown front, I thought I'd join in this speculation. My apologies to those who are in the "It's just too damn early to even think about" camp, in advance. If you're one of those, I'd suggest just skipping today's article altogether.
The easiest and best answer to the question, of course, is: "Someone who can beat Donald Trump." That is going to be the overwhelming and deeply-held consensus among Democratic voters this time around. Trump is seen as such a titanic disaster among the Democratic base that they'll be willing to forgive a lot if they feel their candidate has the best chance of defeating Trump, in other words.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, January 11th, 2019 – 19:27 UTC ]
If our president is going crazy over a non-existent "emergency" at our southern border, could it be called "borderline insanity"? We're just asking....
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Thursday, January 10th, 2019 – 17:55 UTC ]
I thought we could all use a break from all the manufactured Trump Shutdown follies today, so instead I am finally giving in and writing the inevitable first (of many) columns on the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race. I've largely restrained myself from doing so up until now, even though I could have started in right after the midterm elections last year. But now a few Democrats are more-officially sticking their toe in the 2020 water, so it seemed like a good time to provide an initial overview.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Wednesday, January 9th, 2019 – 16:51 UTC ]
President Donald Trump held a meeting today with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. It was as pointless as the last few meetings between the three, from all accounts. Reportedly, after Pelosi made her case for opening the government but only extending the budget for the Department of Homeland Security for another month -- to give both sides time to have the border wall fight without penalizing all the federal workers -- Trump asked her point-blank whether she would agree to his wall money in 30 days or not. She said "No," and Trump got up and walked out of the meeting. Which is why the word "pointless" is hard to avoid.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Tuesday, January 8th, 2019 – 20:44 UTC ]
President Trump just got done delivering the first primetime Oval Office speech of his presidency, which was followed by a rebuttal from Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. The entire experience was an odd one, mostly for the brevity of both speeches, which were planned to be eight minutes each (I did not time them, but they both seemed to fall in that ballpark). So my snap reactions will likewise be abbreviated, meaning this column won't be anywhere near as long as the ones I write after State Of The Union speeches (for instance).
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Monday, January 7th, 2019 – 17:59 UTC ]
There's a saying among government workers that requires a wee bit of bowdlerization for the first paragraph of a family column: "The eagle poops on Fridays." In other words, government paychecks appear at the end of the week. This week, the eagle is metaphorically constipated, and no such "poop" will be forthcoming to hundreds of thousands of government workers. For many of them, this will be the first missed paycheck, while others have already gone a pay period without being paid. The government shutdown is about to get a lot less theoretical and a lot more worrisome for millions, when you take into account their families and the local businesses they support.
Read Complete Article »
[ Posted Friday, January 4th, 2019 – 19:30 UTC ]
Nancy Pelosi can now correctly be called Speaker of the House Pelosi once again. It's been eight years since that has been true, most of which the Republicans spent proving their own slogan: "Government doesn't work -- elect us and we'll prove it!" The speakerships of both John Boehner and Paul Ryan never really accomplished all that much, other than one massive tax cut for billionaires and Wall Street. Almost the entire time the GOP was in control, their entire legislative agenda was halted in its tracks not by Democrats, but by their own intransigent Tea Party members. With all of that as prologue, Nancy Pelosi won't have to do much to outperform the two intervening House speakers.
Read Complete Article »
