Category: Congress

Good Riddance

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Representative Jane Harman (CA-36) is retiring to run the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC.

My guess is that she realized, after Marcy Winograd lost in the primary with 41.2% of the vote, that with a Republican Congress, and the attendant loss of power (and pork for her district), she would be toast in either the primary or the general election.

So, less than a month into her new term, she’s bailing for a cushy job working in Washington, DC, and saddling the taxpayers with the cost of running another (2 if there is a run off) elections.

Stay classy, Blue Dog.

Some Good News

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Representative Gabrielle Giffords is recovering remarkably quickly from her head wound:

Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has recovered enough from a bullet to the brain to ask for toast with breakfast.

Few details are available, but Pia Carusone, Giffords’ chief of staff, confirmed that the congresswoman made the verbal request on Monday when hospital workers at TIRR Memorial Hermann brought her a meal.

“Yes, that’s accurate,” Carusone said in an e-mail.

This is really remarkable progress.

Kucinich (D-OH) Demands to Visit Private Bradley Manning

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Good for him. He is is clearly using his position as a Representative to shine light on what is clearly an attempt to torture the alleged Wikileaks source into fingering Julian Assange:

Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich has asked the Defense Secretary Robert Gates for a visit with an Army private suspected of giving classified material to WikiLeaks.

Kucinich, a Democrat who is a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a letter Friday to Gates asking for a visit with Pfc. Bradley Manning.

Manning is being held in a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va.

Kucinich says he is concerned about reports of Manning’s treatment while in custody. Manning’s lawyer has filed a complaint with the Quantico commander about the conditions Manning is being held under.

I’m not a particularly big fan of the distinguished gentleman from Ohio, but he’s right here.

The worst thing about this is that it is only his name on this letter.

Where are the other 434 people who have sworn to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution” in Congress?

How Obama Loses to Sarah Palin in 2012

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If there was a Republican who was unelectable in 1967, it was Richard “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore” Nixon.

Following his surprise loss to Pat Brown in 1962, he signed off with a level of nastiness that seemed to be the final nail in his political career.

But 2 years later, he was president of the United States.

He was President because Lyndon Baines Johnson, and his Vice President, and designated heir, Hubert Humphrey, were unable to recognize reality with regard to the Vietnam war, at least publicly, because they felt the need to appear hawkish to take away the perennial Republican talking point that Democrats were “soft” on defense.

Well, we are seeing it yet again with Obama, who is poised to let Afghanistan define his presidency.

It’s actually worse than Vietnam, because Afghanistan has never been a viable nation state, but rather is a void on the map where neither the Russians nor the British were able to maintain power in their “Great Game” for that part of the world, and we are in there supporting one side.

Additionally, we have the fact that, as mind boggling as it sounds, the regime that we are supporting is even more corrupt and ineffective than any that we ever supported in South Vietnam, and that we also have religious overtones in this conflict that were largely lacking in the ‘Nam.

And now we have one of Obama’s biggest supporters in the Senate, John Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is saying that we need to get out now:

One of the Obama administration’s key allies in Congress, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.), is breaking with the president on Afghanistan and saying the strategy in the war needs to be revised. The development, coming from someone who was once a strong backer of Obama’s decision to increase troops in Afghanistan, could deal a significant blow to support for the administration.

“What I don’t want is to be party to a policy that continues simply because it is there and in place,” said Kerry in an interview with the Boston Globe about his evolving views on the war. “That would be like Vietnam. And that is what I am determined to try to prevent.”

Kerry, according to the Globe, is calling for “a more limited focus and fewer American troops than the 155,000 that are in place now.” In the coming months, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be holding a series of oversight hearings on the Obama administration’s strategy.

Kerry is a creature of the Senate, and so is mild in his disapprobation of the current policy, particularly since he shares a political party with Obama, but this is very clear. He is saying that we need to get the hell out now.

He’s right too.  Afghanistan is not called the “Graveyard of Empires” for nothing.

I do not expect that Obama will take this advice to heart though:  He is too concerned with political calculation, where he thinks that being hawkish will take away a Republican talking point (sound familiar?), and is simply unwilling to override the desires of careerist generals in the Pentagon, for whom the war is a path to advancement.

Scientists National Enquirer Reporters Discover a Mythical Creature

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The creature in question is a straight Republican, one John Boehner, who seems to spend a lot of his time f%$#ing staffers and lobbyists, as well as f%$#ing the country:

New Speaker of the House JOHN BOEHNER is embroiled in a bombshell sex scandal – involving at least two different women, The ENQUIRER has learned!

Capitol Hill insiders and political bloggers have been buzzing about an upcoming New York Times probe – detailing an alleged affair that the 61-year-old married father of two had with pretty Washington lobbyist LISBETH LYONS.

And an ENQUIRER investigation has uncovered a bedroom encounter that Boehner – second in line of succession to the presidency – allegedly had with LEIGH LaMORA, a 46-year-old former press secretary to ex-Colorado Congressman JOEL HEFLEY.

The Ohio native, a congressman for 20 years, and his wife Deborah, 62, have been married for 37 years.

It should be noted that Ms. Lyons has lobbied for industries that have shipped jobs from Boehner’s own district overseas.

So while he was f%$#ing her, he was also f%$#ing his constituents.

I know what you are saying, but the Enquirer nailed John Edwards about his nailing Rielle Hunter, so they do have some cred on this, particularly since people have alluded to Boehner’s wandering ………… Eye ………*

*I bet that you thought that I was going to use a crude term for a body part that is pronounced the way his name is spelled. While the thought did cross my mind, so the the phrase, “fish in a barrel.” It would be like Dick Cheney when he shoots a bunch of birds (or a lawyer) released right in front of him.

Bitch

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Evan Bayh, after saying that he would not run for reelection, because it’s all gotten too partisan, has joined a K-Street lobbying firm.

Just so you know, he didn’t leave because he did not like the partisan atmosphere, it’s because he wanted to be President, and realized that the whole party saw him as a smarmy corporatist opportunist.

Well, at least I’m not disappointed by this.

Reagan Appointed Judge Rules Entire Healthcare Law Unconstitutional

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It was such a good idea for some moron to leave out a severability clause from the bill, huh?

A second federal judge ruled on Monday that it was unconstitutional for Congress to enact a health care law that required Americans to obtain commercial insurance, evening the score at 2 to 2 in the lower courts as conflicting opinions begin their path to the Supreme Court.

But unlike a Virginia judge in December, Judge Roger Vinson of Federal District Court in Pensacola, Fla., concluded that the insurance requirement was so “inextricably bound” to other provisions of the Affordable Care Act that its unconstitutionality required the invalidation of the entire law.

“The act, like a defectively designed watch, needs to be redesigned and reconstructed by the watchmaker,” Judge Vinson wrote.

The judge declined to immediately enjoin, or suspend, the law pending appeals, a process that could last two years. But he wrote that the federal government should adhere to his declaratory judgment as the functional equivalent of an injunction. That left confusion about how the ruling might be interpreted in the 26 states that are parties to the legal challenge.

And here is the money quote, which has since been removed from the online article:

The Florida plaintiffs ensured they would draw a Republican-appointed judge by filing the lawsuit in Pensacola.

I believe that the operative phrase here is, “Forum shopping for an activist judge.”

It’s all going to be down to Anthony Kennedy, because the other 4 reactionaries on the court are hyper-politicized assholes who have already made their mind based on partisan considerations.

Live Blogging the SOTU

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Final notes:

  • Listening to his platitudes and the fact that offers an open hand to the right wingers who want him to fail, and the back of hand to the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, I just don’t enjoy listening to him.
  • He made a call for the expansion of the H2b and L1 visas:  Others come here from abroad to study in our colleges and universities. But as soon as they obtain advanced degrees, we send them back home to compete against us.”
    • The problem is that this has the effect of lowering wages in technical fields, which sends more mathematicians, physicists, and engineers to careers in finance , where they are more valued (or better paid, it’s the same thing, just ask an economist).  
    • I take it personally, because as an engineer, I have a target on my back from these programs.
  • Oh, God the pundits on MSNBC are yammering on about the F%$#ing seating arrangements, again, I’m taking his advice and turning off the damn TV.

10:10 pm: More Allen brothers roofing stories. *rolleyes*

10:08 pm: A shout out for the “end” of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”, and then draws a parallel about how colleges are not nice to the ROTC. Not necessary, but he needed to call out those “East Coast Liberal Elites.”

10:06 pm: “This July, we will begin to bring our troops home.” Good, but I expect it to be a token withdrawal, probably less than 3 battalions.

10:02 pm:  Talking defense now, “Thanks to our heroic troops and civilians, fewer Afghans are under the control of the insurgency. … In Pakistan, al Qaeda’s leadership is under more pressure than at any point since 2001. Their leaders and operatives are being removed from the battlefield. Their safe-havens are shrinking. ”  More light at the end of the tunnel crap, though. We are losing.

9:57 pm: A shout out to Muslim Americans, this is good, but how about stopping the FBI from infiltrating mosques with informers on the basis of their religion?

9:56 pm: That whole salmon regulation study story is another Republican meme he is reinforcement.

9:55 pm: That last bit about “Current retirees, the disabled, etc.” is a statement that he wants to means test Social Security to “strengthen” it.

9:53 pm: “To put us on solid ground, we should also find a bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security for future generations. And we must do it without putting at risk current retirees, the most vulnerable, or people with disabilities; without slashing benefits for future generations; and without subjecting Americans’ guaranteed retirement income to the whims of the stock market.”  So he won’t call for Social Security tonight, but he’s calling for Social Security cuts tomorrow, because the Republicans want to kill Social Security, and if your goal is bipartisanship, then they will demand poison pills.

9:51 pm: He just capitulating on malpractice suits, again, giving in before negotiations start, even though “tort reform” has been repeatedly shown not to save money.

9:47 pm:  He’s talking about the fixing the $600 1099 requirement.  Probably a good thing, but will cost money, and he is talking about the deficit.  And for Pete’s sake, he’s talking about how in the middle of a recession he wants to freeze domestic spending for the next 5 years.

9:45 pm: More endorsements of the crappy trade deals, and he buys into the myth of all the extraneous regulations that don’t protect us from Salmonella or from the banks.  Feh.

9:41 pm: He’s calling for tax reform, with a simplification and reduction of loopholes and lower the max rate.  He says “It can be done”, but it won’t.  It’s tax cuts for the wealthy all over again.  Obama will cave when push comes to shove.

9:39 pm:  Atrios will be happy at his shoutout for high speed rail.

9:36 pm:  He’s giving a shout out to the DREAM act and immigration reform.  I don’t see it happening.  The Teabagger infused Republican Party has written off Hispanics for the next election cycle.

9:33 pm:  Yep, it’s bad teachers.  Not pervasive poverty, and a society that sucks brains out of useful pursuits and puts them into finance.  But our country needs teachers, so while Obama is attacking the teacher’s unions, wages, benefits, and job security, he wants people to become teachers.

9:32 pm: He’s now touting his open mouth kiss to the for-profit education profiteers, AKA the “Race to the top.”

9:30 pm: He’s saying that success is a function of hard work.  Not this generation.  American social mobility and entrepreneurship has fallen behind the rest of the industrialized world.  It’s now who your parents are, and addressing inequalities to fix this.

9:28 pm:  His invocation of “innovations” is a buy into corporatism.  He’s also invoking education, as well as telling people to turn off the TV.  I’m really tempted to turn him off.

9:27 pm:  He’s talking about killing the tax breaks and subsidies for big oil.  It would be nice.  It’s a no brainer, which means that the Republicans won’t let it come to a vote in the House, and filibuster it in the Senate.

9:26 pm:  The Allen brothers going from shingles to photovoltaics is his “Joe the Plumber” this speech.

9:22 pm:  Wants to make America the “Best place in the world to do business”.  We’ve been sucking corporate dick for 35 years, and it’s f%$#ed the average American.  I don’t care how many iPhones we get.

9:19 pm: OMFG!  He’s saying that the lost jobs are just productivity improvement, but the Internet economy will fix everything!

9:16 pm: Some breast beating about the stock market, where and he’d touting the tax cuts, big surprise.

9:12 pm:  He leads with a reference to Giffords.  How could he not?

9:11 pm:  He’s started.  BTW, what the hell is up with Boehner’s pink/purple tie?

9:10 pm: The pundits are going on, and on about seating, etc.  BTW, Chief Justice John Roberts felt compelled to show up, even though he did not want to, because the rest of the right wing justices refused to, and if only the 4 honest justices showed, it would look bad.

9:08 pm:  Oh for f%$#’s sake, he is touting “clean coal” in the speech, as well as nuclear.  The first is a fraud, the 2nd has been a disaster, because they cannot get financing, because of the record of delays and cost overruns.  I’ll stop reading now.

9:06 pm:  He is in and shaking hands. Still reading speech.

9:04 pm: I really hope that it plays better than it reads. But it is demoralizing to anyone who is the least bit liberal.  He touts caving on tax cuts for the rich. Lame invocation of Sputnik.

9:02 pm: Huh.  The speech was leaked on the net a couple of hours ago to the National Journal.  Reading now.

9:01 pm:  Show up already.  I hate listening to the pundits.

8:59 pm:  The pundits, who have advance copies of the speech, say that Barack Obama will call for lower tax rates.  F%$#ing typical.  Sucking up to the rich at the expense of the tax payer, because Obama needs his billion dollars for the 2012 campaign.

8:58 pm:  Turning on MSNBC.  I miss Keith.

Republicans Are So F%$#ing Classy

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Wouldn’t you know it, “Jesse Kelly, the ex-Marine Tea Partyer who challenged Gabrielle Giffords,” is looking into the possibility of gearing up for a special election:

Kelly, if you don’t already know, has been taking heat since Giffords’ shooting for sponsoring a campaign event last year in which supporters joined him in shooting a “fully automatic M-16.” “Get on target for November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office,” the event’s announcement read.

It’s true that the M-16 event had no direct connection with Giffords’ shooting, and claims that it indirectly helped create a “climate” conducive to the shooting are dubious at best. Still, to many people, Kelly is now best known as the guy who encouraged supporters to shoot M-16s in the name of defeating a member of Congress who was, several months later, nearly shot to death. Politically, the association is toxic, and Kelly faces a formidable — maybe impossible — task in repairing the damage.

Thus, stories about him quietly looking into whether there might soon be a special election for Giffords’ seat are particularly damaging for him. Sure, the inquiry his campaign apparently made wasn’t actually that unreasonable. There were, after all, reports earlier this week that Arizona state law requires that Giffords’ seat be declared vacant if she’s incapacitated for more than 90 days. All Kelly may have done is make a discreet inquiry about whether this is true. (It isn’t; only the House itself can declare a seat vacant.) But, especially in the wake of the M-16 controversy, it looks terrible for Kelly to be seen making political calculations right now.

Actually, it doesn’t look terrible.

It’s par for the course for the ‘Phants.  It took them about 12 hours to politicize 911, after all.

Don’t Let the Door Hit Your Ass on the Way Out, Joey

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Joe Lieberman makes his retirement official:

Referring to Mr. Lieberman’s plan to forgo re-election, Bill Curry, a prominent Democrat who served with Mr. Lieberman in the State Senate, said, “It’s the first thing he’s done in 10 years to make Connecticut Democrats completely happy.”

I don’t really have much to add to this, except for the fact that Ezra Klein has clearly been assimilated by the Beltway Borg™, and has become yet another thought free spewer of conventional DC wisdom, since he is wondering if Joe Lieberman is some sort of Democratic Hero:

That [Obama’s disgraceful lobbying on behalf of Lieberman to keep his seat and seniority] kept Lieberman in the fold, and after Arlen Specter switched parties and Al Franken won his election, gave Democrats the 60 votes they needed to break a Republican filibuster against health-care reform. Lieberman’s behavior during the debate was often erratic and seemingly unprincipled. Among other things, he skipped the meetings where Democrats were trying to work out a compromise on the public option, and then he killed the Medicare buy-in proposal they’d developed — despite endorsing that exact proposal months before. In doing so, he doomed a great piece of policy, and by doing it at the last minute, endangered the rest of the bill, too. But the reality is that the legislation simply wouldn’t have passed without his vote. And after extracting his pound of flesh, he voted “aye.”

This ignores the fact that the Democrats really had 60 votes for only a few weeks, because Ted Kennedy was busy dying, and the displays of narcissism, petulance, self importance, and wounded pride that made Lieberman determined to inflict as much damage as possible while keeping his committee chairmanship.

If Lieberman could have found a way to vote “No”, and keep his position, he would have, because he was all about petty vengeance.

All I Want for Christmas*…

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Is for the rumors to be true, and for that ratf%$# Joe Lieberman not to seek reelection in 2012 to be true:

Amid growing speculation that he will not seek re-election in 2012, U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman’s office said Tuesday afternoon that the Democrat-turned-independent will announce his intentions in Stamford Wednesday.

“You can bet the farm” that Lieberman won’t seek a fifth term in 2012, said a Democratic insider who is close to the 22-year Senate veteran. But neither Lieberman nor his Senate office would confirm that.

Please, oh please let this be true.

*OK, I don’t do Christmas, I am a Jew, and I have no intention of having my circumcision reversed. It’s a metaphor, dammit!

Not a Witch, Is a Crook

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Everyone’s favorite witchcraft denying loony toon Senate candidate, Christine O’Donnell, is being investigated for diverting campaign funds for her personal use, specifically, though not limited to, having her campaign pay the rent on her town house.

The interesting thing here is that her misdeeds, which will likely result in nothing more than fines, were unnecessary, because federal campaigns are allowed to pay their candidates up to an amount equal to the wages of the office that they are running for.

That innovation was given us by Maryland’s own nut job, Alan Keyes.

All You Need to Understand About Republicans

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It should be noted that Paul Ryan, the soon to be head of the House Budget Committee, is requiring his staff to read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

While I’ve not read this book, I did her (mercifully shorter) treatise on her philosophy The Virtue of Selfishness in high school, and Kung Fu monkey has the final word on Rand and her Randroid followers:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

Indeed, and he will be drafting our budgets. <Facepalm>

H/t Paul Krugman.

If Our Savior is Jon Stewart, We Are Screwed

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The New York Times describes how Jon Stewart pretty much single handedly saved the Zagoda from a Republican filibuster:

Did the bill pledging federal funds for the health care of 9/11 responders become law in the waning hours of the 111th Congress only because a comedian took it up as a personal cause?

And does that make that comedian, Jon Stewart — despite all his protestations that what he does has nothing to do with journalism — the modern-day equivalent of Edward R. Murrow?

Simply put, the policy here, medical care for 911 first responders, and the politics here, blocking medical care for 911 first responders would be seen unequivocally evil by the bulk of the American electorate, but somehow or other, the Democrats could not be bothered to hammer the Republicans with this, because, I guess, little Barry Obama doesn’t want Republicans to think that he’s mean.

This is something that Bill Clinton would have hammered every single day.

I do understand that it’s tough to get the attention of the press on this, what with, as Stewart observes, “it’s not every day that Beatles songs come to iTunes,” but this is absolutely pathetic.

F136 Alternate Engine Included in Stopgap Spending Measure

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So the alternate engine for the JSF is funded through March.

Some people see this as meaningless pork, but I remember the issues with Pratt and Whitney as the soul source supplier for F-15s and F-16s in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and it was ugly, so I am inclined to support the engine as a 2nd best alternative, with the first best alternative to be cancellation of the JSF.

A Sign of Sanity from Senate Democrats

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All of the returning Democratic Senators, and all of the retiring ones except for Christopher Dodd, have signed a letter asking for filibuster reform:

All Democratic senators returning next year have signed a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., urging him to consider action to change long-sacrosanct filibuster rules.

The letter, delivered this week, expresses general frustration with what Democrats consider unprecedented obstruction and asks Reid to take steps to end those abuses. While it does not urge a specific solution, Democrats said it demonstrates increased backing in the majority for a proposal, championed by Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., and others, weaken the minority’s ability to tie the Senate calendar into parliamentary knots.

This change can only come about if a fairly obscure change is made to the Senate rules first: The Senate currently describes itself as a continuing body, meaning that any changes in the rules at the start of a new Congress require a ⅔ majority.

If the President of the Senate, Vice President Biden, were to rule that the Senate Wasn’t a continuing body, then that could be approved by a simple majority vote, as could the filibuster rule changes.

I would not something else interesting about the various proposals, it looks like Reid will accept a proposal to have committee chairs elected by secret ballot, as opposed to the current regime, where there is only a vote if another Senator publicly objects.

Hopefully, the old guard in the Senate won’t block these changes.

Good News on the Legislative Front Today

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The repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was signed into law, the Senate passed the START arms control treaty, and a new food safety bill that gives the FDA the power to order recalls passed the house and is heading to the President’s desk.

I still don’t see any gazillion dimensional chess here, but it’s a good day.

BTW, since the bill gives the military fairly broad discretion in how the ban is phased in, I would take even money that separations from the military will be continuing into 2012, because Obama won’t push the military on this.

Some Good News (And a Hearty F%$# You to NPR)

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The Congress has finally passed a bill allowing for low power community radio, the Local Community Radio Act, which will allow for expended low power, sub 100 watt, radio stations.

Until the late 1970s, legally licensed low power non commercial radio was a fairly common thing, but then NPR successfully lobbied the FCC to terminate those licenses to eliminate the competition and to open up airwaves for their expansion.

Hopefully, this will allow for a far greater diversity in radio.