Category Archives: national news

national news, political news

What became of a strong House speaker?

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John Boehner seems like a decent enough fellow. I’ve long thought of him as someone whose instincts lead him toward working with Democrats, not against them.

But the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives has this problem: It is that some of his fellow Republicans don’t like working with the other party. There seems to be enough of those types to make governing quite difficult for the once-affable speaker.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/boehner-house-congress-rambunctious-115634.html?hp=c1_3

Boehner today said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that the House is a rambunctious place. It’s full of members with competing ideas on how to get things done. He said “I think” I can lead the House.

Interesting, yes? Well, yes.

The speaker was handed a big defeat this past week when the House defeated his plan to fund the Department of Homeland Security for three weeks. The “rambunctious caucus” of the House, aka the TEA party wing, bolted from his idea, along with a number of Democrats. Some last-minute scrambling enabled the House to approve a DHS funding bill that expires at the end of this week. Then we get to do this all over again.

I’m trying to imagine how past speakers would handle all this rambunctiousness. Would Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas allow it? How about Speaker Tip O’Neill of Massachusetts? Hey, do you think Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia would stand still for this foolishness?

These three gentlemen — two Democrats and a Republican — were among the stronger-willed men to run the House. They all governed with considerable effectiveness. Their secret? My belief is that they all knew how to work with members of the “other party.” They also worked well with presidents of the other party, working overtime to search for common ground.

Speaker Boehner is being whipsawed by his own caucus. It’s not a pretty sight.

By definition, Speaker Boehner is the Man of the Entire House, not just of his or her political party. The partisan roles are filled by the majority leader and the majority whip of the party in charge. The speaker, though, is supposed to look after the interests of all House members.

Boehner has to figure out a way — in a big hurry — to get the rowdy bunch in line.

I have an idea: Pick up the phone, call Newt Gingrich and ask him: “Newt, how in the world can I corral these clowns?”

national news, political news

Perry questions HRC's 'loyalty'

Rick Perry thinks Hillary Clinton’s acceptance of foreign money to the Clinton Foundation — all of which went to earthquake relief in Haiti — gives Americans reason to question her “loyalty.”

To whom? To which country? Well, the former Texas governor — and probable Republican candidate for president in 2016 — isn’t providing any suggestions.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/rick-perry-questions-hillary-clinton-loyalty

Perry was among a thundering herd of potential GOP candidates to rake Hillary Clinton over the coals at the just-concluded Conservative Political Action Conference.

The Clinton Foundation accepted $500,000 from Algeria right after an earthquake devastated Haiti. The foundation has raised tens of millions of dollars to aid the Haitians. The Algerian contribution went directly to relieve the victims of the quake.

Perry, though, wonders if that kind of foreign cash makes her more, um, loyal to the giver of the funds than — hmm — to her own country?

MSNBC.com reported: “The foundation acknowledged they should have alerted officials about the donation from the country.

“’As the Clinton Foundation did with all donations it received for earthquake relief, the entire amount of Algeria’s contribution was distributed as aid in Haiti,’ the statement said. ‘This donation was disclosed publicly on the Clinton Foundation website, however, the State Department should have also been formally informed.’

“But Perry said Americans will question this.

“’I’m really concerned that – not just going forward — but what has been received at the Clinton Foundation over the course of the years and how that affects this individual’s judgment,’ Perry said.”

I’m trying to connect those dots, but I’m trouble here.

Money given for disaster relief and is administered through an independent non-profit foundation somehow is supposed to cast doubt on the judgment of a presidential candidate? That’s how it goes?

As Denzel Washington said in the film “Philadelphia”: Explain that one to me as if I’m a 5-year-old.

 

International news, national news, political news

Foes 'all too willing to test us'

Here’s a tiny part of what former Texas Gov. Rick Perry said before a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

“Here’s the simple truth of our foreign policy: Our allies doubt us and our adversaries are all too willing to test us. No one should be surprised, no one should be surprised that dictators like Assad would cross the president’s red line because he knows the president will not even defend the line that separates our nation from Mexico.” 

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/perry-compares-middle-east-troubles-texas-border

Did you get what he’s inferring here? Perry is possibly going to run for the Republican nomination for president of the United States — again — in 2016. To make the case to GOP voters, he must lambaste the president from the other party.

I understand how it works. Democrats do the same thing to Republican presidents as well, as U.S. Sen. Barack Obama demonstrated when he won the presidency in 2008.

But is this “testing” of U.S. power and prestige limited to just this president?

Let’s see: President Richard Nixon was tested when Arab nations executed an oil embargo in 1973, causing near-panic at gasoline service stations throughout this country. President Ronald Reagan was tested in 1983 when terrorists blew up the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, killing 241 of our young Marines. President George H.W. Bush was tested in Panama when the dictator Manuel Noriega kept looking the other way while drugs were pouring into this country from Panama. President George W. Bush certainly was tested when terrorists flew those hijacked jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11.

Yes, Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were tested too. Carter faced the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979-80  and Clinton had to deal with those warlords in Somalia.

Testing of U.S. presidents has been the norm perhaps since the end of World War II, when this nation emerged from that global conflagration as the world’s pre-eminent military and economic power.

It goes with the territory. It’s part of the president’s job description.

 

national news, political news

House members reaching into Senate affairs

It’s downright fun to watch members of one congressional body suggest the way members of the other congressional body should do their job.

Let’s presume that the upper chamber, the Senate, would prefer that the lower chamber, the House of Representatives, mind its own business.

House conservatives push McConnell to gut filibuster

Then again, they’re all on the same team, yes? They’re all interested in doing what’s right and correct for the country, aren’t they?

Maybe so. Maybe not.

U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, thinks the Senate should change its filibuster rules to strip power from Democrats. He wants Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to invoke the so-called “nuclear option” by not allowing Democrats to filibuster GOP-sponsored bills to death. The issue at hand is the Department of Homeland Security funding measure that’s being kicked to death on the floors of both chambers.

Remember when then-Majority Leader Harry Reid did the same thing when Republicans were in the minority? You’d have thought GOP senators’ heads would explode.

Now the fortunes are reversed. The GOP controls the Senate, along with the House. But among the Republican majority there exists a restive band of malcontents, the TEA party caucus, that wants to shake things up not only in their own body, but in the other one as well.

That’s where Labrador and fellow House TEA party insurgent Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., are seeking this change in Senate rules.

Someone needs to inform both of these young men about the institutional rivalry that exists between these two bodies. Senators represent their entire states and serve for six years. Those House members represent certain congressional districts, which have been gerrymandered — more than likely — to elect people of certain ideological stripes; they’re elected to mere two-year terms.

The Senate considers itself a more deliberative body; the House by nature is more raucous. Senators likely won’t admit to it, but they look down their noses at their House colleagues.

Thus, it is at some peril that Reps. Labrador and Huelskamp seek to tell the folks at the other end of the Capitol Building how to conduct their business.

Tread carefully, fellas.

 

national news, political news

Speaker's future suddenly gets cloudy

It might be that a supposition put forward to me months ago by someone close to House Speaker John Boehner might be panning out.

Boehner might want to throw in the towel on his effort to be the Man of the House. He might just quit and go home.

The speaker got a swift kick in the face yesterday as House Republicans teamed up with Democrats to defeat a short-term funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security. Those TEA party Rs remain angry with President Obama over his immigration-related executive action — which granted temporary delay in deportation of 5 million illegal immigrants — so they want to defund the DHS to stick it in Obama’s ear.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/john-boehner-republicans-homeland-security-funding-115588.html?hp=t1_r

Boehner sought to stave off a DHS shutdown. The measure failed, but then the House and Senate came up with a one-week funding plan. We’ll be back at this at the end of next week.

So … now the chatter has turned to whether Boehner could be tossed out by the raucous Republican rabble-rousers. Twenty-five GOP members voted against Boehner to be speaker when the new Congress convened. Others might join the anti-Boehner parade.

That source I mentioned who had said he thought Boehner might pack it in was speculating about whether the speaker could contain the rebel wing of his party. His thought this past fall was that Boehner would be re-elected as speaker, then he would resign from Congress and do something else — such as become a lobbyist or a K Street consultant.

I shudder at the thought of someone from that TEA party wing — and I’m thinking of East Texan Louie Gohmert, who actually sought the speakership against Boehner — taking control of the House gavel.

Given the wackiness that hasn’t gone away, absolutely nothing at all would surprise me.

Let’s all watch this one play out.

 

national news, political news

Terrorists, union protesters: all the same?

Robert Reich is a former labor secretary during the Clinton administration.

He posted this message on Facebook today in response to a patently absurd statement made at the Conservative Political Action Conference by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Reich wrote this:

“Can it get any lower? Last night, at CPAC’s ‘beauty pageant’ for right-wing presidential hopefuls, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was asked how he would fight ISIS if elected president. Walker referred to his political fights with teachers and labor union members in his home state: ‘If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world.’ I doubt Walker really believes Americans who peacefully protest for a decent wages are analogous to foreign barbarians who saw off peoples’ heads. But to him and the other right wing-nuts of the Republican party, political opponents are enemies rather than fellow citizens, to be ‘taken on’ mercilessly. This is why they can’t (and mustn’t) govern America.”

There you have it.

A governor who has all but declared war on the union movement in his home state equates facing down peaceful protesters in the streets with the monsters who are terrorizing innocent people on the other side of the world.

This is the kind of rhetoric that CPAC has been hearing from its dog-and-pony show of candidates strutting across the stage to fire up their followers.

The serious thinkers of the Republican Party need to be heard above the demagoguery that’s getting all the attention.

I share Reich’s belief that Walker really equates the protesters with terrorists. Then again, why does he spew such garbage? Oh, I almost forgot. He’s appealing to his party’s “base.”

national news

'Delusional wing' of GOP stalls DHS funding

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Disgraceful.

That’s the only word I can think of to describe what’s happened today in the U.S. House of Representatives.

A majority of the House rejected a plan to keep the Department of Homeland Security functioning for the next three weeks.

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/234175-house-bill-fails

The Senate had approved a bill to fund the agency until September. Senators had agreed to strip out provisions aimed at stopping President Obama’s executive order on illegal immigrations, which House and Senate TEA party members detest passionately.

So House, given a chance to keep DHS operating — and protecting our borders against the bad guys — went along with what Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., called the “delusional wing” of the GOP. It stopped the funding measure.

This is no way to run a government. It’s no way to take the reins of power, which Republicans did when they took command of the Senate in January. The GOP now controls both legislative chambers and this is the result they’ve produced on the first big showdown of the new congressional session.

House Speaker John Boehner has lost control of the body he’s supposed to lead.

The House of Representatives, early in this new era, has disgraced itself.

 

national news, political news

Preposterous plan saves DHS, for now

Roger Daltrey sang it loudly at the end of The Who classic, “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!”

Republicans had vowed to govern better than Democrats did when they took over both congressional chambers at the beginning of the year. That vow is in jeopardy.

Why? The House of Representatives, which the GOP has controlled since 2011, is going to fund the Department of Homeland Security — but only until March 19. Then the House and Senate will have deal once again with imminent closure because of Republican anger over an executive action taken by President Obama to deal with illegal immigration.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/harry-reid-nancy-pelosi-shutdown-homeland-security-115538.html?hp=lc1_4

Congress appears ready to avoid a shutdown at the end of today. The GOP-run Senate wants to approve a funding measure that doesn’t include a provision to strip the executive order of its authority. The GOP-run House, though, isn’t ready to swill that Kool-Aid.

What a terrible way to run the government. A Band-Aid here and there. Then we return to the same crisis mode that sends everyone’s blood pressure through the ceiling.

Obama sought to delay deportation of 5 million illegal immigrants. Congress didn’t like that the president acted alone, even though his predecessors have done so on the same issue over the years.

Republicans are so intent on stopping the deportation order that they’re threatening to de-fund the very agency, the Department of Homeland Security, that is charged with protecting the nation against bad guys trying to sneak into the country.

What kind of governance is that?

The new boss is no better than the old boss.

Ridiculous.

 

national news

Look at global picture, Sen. Inhofe

It was just a matter of time before someone would do this.

U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., brought a snowball to the Senate floor Thursday to prove, by golly, that climate change is a hoax.

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/234026-sen-inhofe-throws-snowball-to-disprove-climate-change

Inhofe chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and he also is one of the Senate’s leading deniers on climate change/global warming. He just will not tolerate the notion that climate change might be caused by carbon emissions thrown into the air by manmade sources — you know, coal-fired power plants, oil refineries, petrochemical plants, deforestation, motor vehicle exhaust … those kinds of things.

So he pulled a snowball out of a bag and noted how “unseasonable” the temperature is outside the Senate chamber, meaning it’s really cold out there.

I just want to remind the senator that conditions outdoors at any particular time doesn’t prove a single thing about this issue. He knows that, of course, but he refuses to look at the big picture when it might go against whatever point he seeks to make.

My friends on the right keep insisting that climate change is a concoction brewed by leftist influences out to destroy American industry. Scientific data, though, suggest that the planet’s climate is changing. It’s getting warmer. The only debating point left is over whether it’s manmade or part of some ecological cycle that Earth experiences every few million years.

Whatever, Chairman Inhofe should cease playing silly snowball games.

Yes, it’s cold in the Texas Tundra, too, Sen. Inhofe. It’s snowing as I write these words. The temperature is in the low teens.

Is it prudent to use current weather conditions to pass judgment on what science has been tracking over many years? It’s wiser to look at the really big picture.

 

 

national news, political news

Ex-Gov. Palin is wrong — again — on Obama

Sarah Palin has cast this remarkable spell over the nation’s political conservative movement.

With so many qualified public officials able to stand and deliver cogent messages, the nation’s Republican Party — particularly its far right wing — is transfixed by the former half-term Alaska governor who simply doesn’t know of which she speaks.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/sarah-palin-president-obama-radical-islam-isil-cpac-115565.html?hp=c2_3_b3

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Palin stood before the attendees and actually inferred that President Obama is ignoring the threat posed by the Islamic State terrorists.

What in the world is she thinking?

“Wake up, Mr. President,” Palin said on Thursday at CPAC’s gathering. “While Christians bow our heads and pray for you, radical Islamists want to cut off your head.”

Wake up? She wants the president to wake up? Hasn’t she been paying attention?

I know the answer. She hasn’t. She’s been busy listening to the sound of her own voice while ignoring more important voices within her party and certainly ignoring the spoken words and deeds of the incumbent president who’s been fighting the terrorists every day.

Palin parrots the GOP talking points about Obama allegedly not taking the Islamist terrorist threat seriously. Why? Because he’s instructed his administration to avoid using the words “Islamist terrorist.” There you have it. If you don’t say the right words, you’re not actually fighting the bad guys.

What an utter crock of moose dookey!

I had hoped to remain silent about the former governor. I cannot let stand her ridiculous assertions whenever she utters them. Palin did so again today at the CPAC meeting.

Having gotten this little tantrum out of my system, I’ll take another from break monitoring Palin’s rhetorical nonsense.