As of this morning, the Congressional Deficit Super Committee is neither super nor really a committee, since they managed to agree on exactly no things. Congress and the deficit remain real. Meanwhile, the group of six Republicans and six Democrats cannot even settle on why they failed to reach an agreement, although both sides concur in principle: it was them. “We made a reasonable offer and got nothing in return. We got naked in the room. Republicans are standing there in overcoats, hats and gloves and are toasty warm,” said one Democrat on the panel. “We showed some leg. The Democrats want us to get completely naked,” explained a Republican aide. As usual when two parties can’t bring themselves to take their clothes off at the same time, somebody else is going to get fucked.
Category Archives: Politics versus Government
Arizona senate impeaches redistricting committee
Arizona governor Jan Brewer: what Grandma would look like if she had more time to spend on her appearance because she couldn't sleep at night.
At the request of Governor Jan Brewer, the Arizona senate has voted to impeach the head of the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission. Brewer and senate Republicans allege that the committee—charged with redrawing Arizona’s eight electoral districts—has proposed maps that are politically biased. “I will not sit idly by while Arizona’s Congressional and legislative boundaries are drawn in a fashion that is anything but constitutional and proper,” Brewer told reporters. That is absolutely true, since Brewer was not sitting by when the senate moved to impeach. She was out of town promoting her memoir, so Secretary of State Ken Bennett had to call the Arizona senate into session on her behalf. I don’t mean to bias your interpretation, but Brewer’s memoir is titled Scorpions for Breakfast: My Fight Against Special Interests, Liberal Media and Cynical Politicos to Secure America’s Border.
Another Occupy Wall Street
In Soviet Oakland, cloud of tear gas drifts through you.
As Occupy Wall Street approaches its seventh week, the demonstration in Zuccotti Park seems most significant as a testament to how well kids these days can run a protest. They’ve constructed an irrigation system, for Pete’s sake. Regardless of politics, anyone who has managed hippies must acknowledge OWS in Zuccotti Park as a breathtaking achievement in preventing people from freaking out. Less so in Oakland, where police turned tear gas on OWS protestors outside Frank Ogawa Plaza and cracked an Iraq war veteran’s skull. Scott Olsen is in critical condition with a wound on his forehead that looks like the rim of a tear gas canister, and people are pissed. It turns out that a demonstration of the will of the people is a different thing when dozens of guys with plastic shields show up to make it stop. And as USA Today somewhat gleefully notes, municipal authorities across the country are getting sick of this disobedience crap. So now comes the question of what OWS is going to do.
Mike Lofgren describes a terrifying hypothetical GOP
The crazy one, the governor's son and they guy who made a million dollars doing it
Both Micky and Smick sent me this this article by former GOP staffer Mike Lofgren, in which he argues that “the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe.” Before we address that contention, let’s take a moment to agree that Micky and Smicky would have made a great racist comic strip during the 1920s. Micky is small and Smicky is big, and the one where they steal a coconut and can’t figure out how to open it is classic. Anyway, surely it is not true that the Republican Party has consciously decided to damage the functioning of Congress, as Lofgren alleges. I mean, right?
President: dick?
Yesterday, President Obama announced that he would address a joint session of Congress regarding jobs and the economy on September 7—the same night, it turns out, as a Republican presidential debate. Exactly how it turned out is a matter of conjecture. Press secretary Jay Carney insisted that the date was not chosen to conflict with the debate, noting that there were going to be 20 of those things and that “one debate of many was no reason not to have a speech when we wanted to have it.” Still, I bet they have a big calendar in the White House, and Obama’s move seemed like a deliberate provocation. Fortunately for everyone, he was provoking John Boehner, which is like trying to get a fish to gasp. “As the majority leader announced more than a month ago, the House will not be in session until Wednesday, Sept. 7, with votes at 6:30 that evening,” Boehner wrote, asking the President to move the speech to September 8. Guess which date they compromised on!