John, that is the worst fucking song I ever heard in my life. We open in three weeks’ time, otherwise I’d take that fucking song out of the picture. I’d take it out! Out!
[Romney] did some interesting things there on health care, you know. We got some good ideas from him.
Only one sitting president in the last 82 years has publicly uttered the magical phrase “American exceptionalism” – care to guess who it is? Ronald Reagan, he of the “shining city on a hill?” George W. Bush, who closed his speeches by asking that “God continue to bless” America? Nope. The only president to publicly discuss (and for that matter embrace) “American exceptionalism” is Barack Obama.
I would have been surprised were it otherwise. It’s just how FOXmemes work.
You can support democracy in which the risk of Islamists gaining power and influence is present or you can support secular autocratic regimes that reduce the influence of Islamist groups through repressive means, but you can’t do both.
Early on, I decided to make a used-records store on Telegraph Avenue one of the key settings of my novel in progress. Okay, maybe “early on” is an under-exaggeration. Maybe it would be more accurate to say “the entire novel is just a pretext for spending as much time and money as I possibly can in used record stores.” (A similar rationale doubtless underlies my projected next novel, the epic Tacos Al Pastor.)
John Boehnner, March 2010: When are we going to address the number one issue on the minds of our fellow citizens? When are we going to focus on the economy and getting people back to work?
Speaker John Boehner, Jan 7, 2011: The job-killing health care law was passed over the objections of the American people, and they have continued to speak out against it, loudly and clearly. With this vote, we have begun to make Washington listen and heed the voice of the people. [So we get the “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act”]
Speaker John Boehner, Jan 20, 2011: [The American people] spoke about [abortion] on America Speaking Out. They spoke on this issue loudly and clearly. [So we get the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” which is, no doubt, creating millions of jobs.]
Speaker John Boehner, Jan 26, 2011: …formally endorsed a bill Wednesday to revive and expand the school voucher program for the District of Columbia, calling it “a model for similar programs throughout our country.” [So we get the Scholarships for Opportunity and Results (SOAR) Act, narrowly aimed (like a laser!) specifically and only at spending tax dollars on sending students outside the DC public school system. That ought to get the economy going.]
Here’s John Boehner oh so earnestly confused as to why Obama just doesn’t understand how great America is.
BOEHNER: Well, they — they’ve refused to talk about America exceptionalism. We are different than the rest of the world. Why? Because…
Naturally, the right’s own Jeff Miller (R,FL) had this to say:
“I don’t think we need the president to remind us how great this country is“
Obama: wrong on reminding us of American Exceptionalism repeatedly, wrong on repeatedly reminding us of American Exceptionalism.
In one of the great surprises of the era, meaningful filibuster reform is going nowhere and Ezra Klein reports that:
…this process kicked off because Democrats were furious at Republican abuse of the filibuster. It’s ended with Democrats and Republicans agreeing that the filibuster is here to stay.[…] Both parties are more committed to being able to obstruct than they are to being able to govern. That fundamental preference, as much as any particular rule, is why the Senate is dysfunctional.
Indeed. Under the agreement we do get a few nice things, in that secret holds will apparently go away, there’s a big cut in the total number of appointees that the Senate must approve, and there will be no more of this “read the bill” nonsense.
Anyone that believes that the next time the GOP has the Senate and the Presidency and but also lacks a 61 vote majority, whether or not McConnell himself is still around and running the GOP Senate, that they won’t instantly eliminate the filibuster using a simple majority vote at the start of a new Congress is smoking something. And nary a peep will be made on that day about today’s “agreement.” That would be shrill.
It would do nothing to the august nature of the Senate to require actual debate take place to uphold a filibuster, and furthermore to put the onus of that continuing operation on the minority. Instead, we punish the majority, and often times the vast majority, on whom today rests the need to fight off constant quorum calls and schedule the entire legislative year around various “marination” periods that automatically and interminably ensue any time any actual action starts to happen. It is just incredible that this malignant process, one that arose by chance and error in the first place, was deemed “too good to do away with.”
Incredible, but all too indicative of the era.
The Republican Party is the party of K-N-O-W. We know how to lower the cost of health care. We know how to take care of the uninsurable. We know how to put patients in charge of their health care and have a market-based, patient centered health care system that’s not going to kill jobs like ObamaCare is going to do. And we know how to stimulate the economy. We know how to create jobs in the private sector. We know how to prevent this huge government takeover of health care as well as all of society.
But we are the party of N-O against socialism and that’s what Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama have been proposing is a greater take over of everything in human endeavor in America.
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by mean of zeal,
well-meaning but without understanding.
Lemkin 