Tag Archives: Congress

national news

CR = crappy governance

Continuing resolutions keep bailing our Congress out of fiscal calamity.

Congress diddles and farts around trying to call the bluff of the folks on the other side of the aisle. They dicker over how much to spend and the rest of us hold our breath waiting to see if they can find common ground before the government runs out of money and closes down.

The CR is a crappy way to run a government. It’s got to stop!

The U.S. Senate agreed in a bipartisan vote to accept a Republican budget proposal. Ten Senate Democrats joined their GOP colleagues in agreeing to keep the doors open or another six months.

Then they’ll cue the music for the next budget dance in late summer.

And we’ll go through the same nonsense all over again.

Republicans usually have been the government shutdown culprits. They have screeched the loudest about budget issues and threatened to shut ‘er down if they didn’t get their way. This time, Democrats played that stupid game, resisting the Donald Trump-Elon Musk gambit for wiping out thousands of jobs in an effort to make government “more efficient.”

This so-called budgeting nightmare isn’t more efficient. It is a travesty that subjects everyone to unneeded heartburn and anxiety over whether the government will remain a force for good in people’s lives

Frankly, I hope Democrats can find a way to head off the disaster that awaits if the Trump-Musk tandem gets its way. They should operate from a position of fiscal responsibility, which to my way of thinking means they need to keep our government fully functional.

The ongoing string of CRs isn’t a solution.

national news

Stop the Musk train wreck!

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Elon Musk must be stopped cold, ending the charade he is leading as some sort of federal budgetary guru advising Donald J. Trump on what to cut from the government.

The man is out of fu**ing control! Period!

Musk is a zillionaire who is spawning movements across the country to remind our gutless wonders in Congress that Americans did not elect this foreign-born high-tech mogul to the nation’s highest office. Americans elected Trump to a second term. Trump has willfully handed the reins of budgetary power to Musk, who once shared that duty with Vivek Ramaswamy, who has mysteriously disappeared.

Musk now is on his own, pitching budget slashes that would leave millions of Americans helpless against forces they cannot fight without the federal government.

I never thought I would say this, but here goes: I am beginning to wish Trump would jerk this clown into place, reminding him that he hasn’t been elected to anything. Trump needs to remind Elon Musk that he — Trump! — is the elected politician who’s in charge and that Musk needs to play second fiddle to the man who holds the title of president of the United States of America.

Pundits already have projected a tenuous relationship between Trump and Musk. Some of them have predicted that Musk won’t last a year as head of that thing called the Department of Government Efficiency. Now it’s called DOGE.

DOGE doesn’t have any constitutional authority to act as its daddy, Elon Musk, is trying to do. Budgetary responsibility rests with Congress, which disposes of ideas that the president proposes.

Elon Musk is a pretender who needs to be stopped!

national news

Cast of clowns nearly finished

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It looks as though Donald J. Trump’s cast of clowns and kooks assembled for the executive branch of the federal government is about complete.

All that’s left, apparently, is for the FBI director-designate, Kash Patel, to squeak through his committee hearing and then he’ll be confirmed likely by a party-line vote in the Senate.

Oh … my. Spare me the anguish.

Trump has picked an array of goofballs, kooks, outright numbskulls to lead agencies that are supposed to carry out the bidding of Congress.

Except that Congress has been compromised beyond immediate repair by the gutless wonders who comprise the Republican majority in both legislative chambers. I keep waiting for someone, anyone, among the GOP majority to stand up to Trump, to tell him the unvarnished truth … which is that he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing!

He imposes tariffs on major international trading partners, then backs off. He issues orders to furloughs to tens of thousands of federal employees, then backs off of that order, too. He fires inspectors general and orders probes into anyone who worked on the probe into the Jan. 6 insurrection that he incited.

The confirmation hearings related to Patel, DNI-designate Tulsi Gabbard, health secretary RFK Jr. were too painful to watch.

Courage is MIA in the Senate and in the House. The slim majorities in both chambers just cannot summon a modicum of courage to stand up to Trump, to tell him the truth. Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said that speaking truth to Trump is the only way to prevent him (hopefully) from bullying you.

The cast of clowns with whom he has surrounded himself is now set to take over the executive branch … more or less. Trump still has his unelected sidekick, Elon Musk, issuing directives about how the government should spend our money.

Good ever-lovin’ grief, man.

Uncategorized

Dems keep government open … thank goodness!

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What in the name of good governance is happening here, with Congress once again dodging a government shutdown bullet.

The House, facing a Friday deadline to provide money to keep the government open, approved a three-month funding extension. It sent the measure to the Senate, which then piddled around for a few hours before approving the measure, sending it to President Biden’s desk for his signature.

Call me a fuddy-duddy, but I am one American patriot who is sick and tired of this brinkmanship orchestrated in large part by the MAGA wing of a once-great Republican Party.

Donald Trump and his first buddy, Elon Musk, torpedoed a measure worked out by both parties, contending they need to suspend the debt ceiling requirement. Then Republicans cobbled together a new version, only to watch it go down in flames.

Both sides got together a second time and approved a measure that ignores the Trump-Musk demand on the debt ceiling; it passed overwhelmingly. Then it went to the Senate, where Democrats maintain nominal control of the upper chamber. Senators approved it early today.

It will get Biden’s signature likely before the sun comes up over North Texas.

These are called “continuing resolutions.” They are a patchwork of measures. They solve no problems. They deal with no long-term solutions. They give us zero confidence they can ever solve the governance issues that need a resolution.

I’ve been yapping and yammering about good government lately. I’ll keep bringing it up until Republicans, dominated by the MAGA goons in Congress — and very soon by the guy in the White House — learn how to actually govern.

economic news, national news

Musk poses grave danger

Elon Musk is emerging as the most dangerous man in America, thanks to the weird kinship he has formed with the next president of the United States.

Musk, as we all know, is the world’s richest man. He has filled Donald Trump’s vacuous noggin with notions that he can fix what’s wrong the federal government. He — along with right-wing blowhard Vivek Ramaswamy — leads a government reform project, or some such thing, that seeks to cut trillions of dollars from the government coffers.

Americans have elected Musk to no political office. He has no political standing other than his strange relationship with Trump. Musk has emerged as a sort of de facto co-president, if you dare swallow that bit of information in one bite.

The guy frightens the hell out of me. He ought to scare the bejabbers out of anyone who has this sort of love affair with good government. That should be all Americans who prefer that the president and Congress go back to what the late Sen. John McCain would call “regular order.”

There is not a damn thing that is “regular” about the way the next POTUS and Congress are getting ready to take the reins of power.

Trump figures to rely on the machinations of Musk — and, of course, Ramaswamy — as he proposes spending cuts.

This dude Musk, though, is one scary son of a … well, you know.

national news

Trump, Congress: miles apart

Never in my wildest imagination, not ever, could I have thought that an incoming president would be so far removed from the Congress with whom he is supposed to govern as Donald J. Trump and the legislative body that takes office in less than a month.

Consider all the venom that has been spewed — by Democrats as well as from the Republican president — in the campaign that brought us a second Donald Trump term in the White House.

How do they get past the hatred? How do they set aside the anger expressed outwardly toward the other side?

Trump, quite naturally, has decided to ratchet the hatred up beyond all reason by saying that every individual who served on the Jan. 6 House committee should be tossed into jail. The criminal charge? He has none. They should be jailed, Trump said, merely because they opposed the way he flouted the Constitution by instigating the mob assault on the government on Jan. 6, 2021.

Oh, he fabricated a lie about the committee destroying evidence. Baloney! The committee did nothing of the sort.

It is that backdrop against which Trump will take office on Jan. 20. Congress will be seated earlier in the month. Presumably the House will choose its speaker, although that once again seems dicey, given the GOP’s paper-thin majority that might shrink to zero before Congress takes its seat.

All campaigns produce winners and losers. It used to be that losers would dust themselves off, reflect a bit on what went wrong, then got back to the work of governing. Democrats are still in shock over losing to a man so deeply flawed. Trump, meanwhile, is embarking on the revenge he promised he would seek.

Good government is gone. I am going to hope for its eventual return.

Uncategorized

What is MTG trying to do?

No need to answer the question I have posed in the headline … I believe I know what she is up to.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is trying to make as much noise as possible, to disrupt the legislative flow in the People’s House and to prevent Congress from actually governing, which the Constitution allows it to do as a co-equal partner in the federal government.

MTG is a two-term congresswoman from Georgia who has managed to elbow her way to Americans’ attention simply because she is a certifiable nut job. I am left to wonder: How in the world did she get elected in the first place and then re-elected two years later?

She is calling for a motion to vacate the speakership held by fellow Republican Mike Johnson. Greene isn’t likely to succeed in the motion. It’s not that I really give a damn about Johnson. He is a MAGA cultist, just like Greene. His “sin” is that he has shown a desire to work with Democrats to actually legislate.

MTG will keep yammering, bellowing and carrying on. She will continue to obstruct in that bellicose manner she employs.

She also will continue to garner attention from folks like me who wonder: How does the House fulfill its constitutional duty to govern when it contains wackos like this?

national news

Shut the hell up, MTG!

A follower of High Plains Blogger has posited an interesting theory on how we might rid ourselves of the nonsensical blather that flies out of the mouths of inexperienced members of Congress.

This individual writes: ” … perhaps it’s time for us to have some actual criteria other than residency and age in order to run for a seat in Congress (or the presidency). Perhaps some relevant education and experience would be nice? And I am all for making them take a lie detector test before taking their oath of office!”

Fascinating, yes? Well, I think so. I will add this caveat, though, to what this reader believes we should do: We already are able to judge candidates’ educational and professional backgrounds before decided for whom to vote.

The person under discussion happens to be one of the MAGA queens of Congress, Margorie Taylor-Greene of Georgia. She is running for just her third term in Congress. She was elected in 2020 and re-elected in 2022. Third time’s a charm perhaps to get her booted out of Congress?

The voters in her rural northeast Georgia district seem to know enough about her to give her a pass on the idiocy that keeps pouring forth from her pie hole.

She wants to boot Speaker Mike Johnson out of his office. Why? Beats me, other than he works with Democrats on occasion to prevent a government shutdown. That’s the “sin” he reportedly commits; he’s not loyal enough to the MAGA movement.

Greene is a politician in search of a stage, any stage to provide her a forum to be seen and heard far beyond her congressional district. She hasn’t authored a single piece of significant legislation. She makes herself known by her antics during presidential speeches to Congress and her behavior at committee hearings.

Of course, and this really goes without saying, a lie detector test never will occur. There must be something in the Constitution that prohibits that kind of restriction on pols running for Congress.

But, boy howdy, it is a tempting thought nevertheless.

military news, national news, political news

GOP channels Democrats

Yep, it’s true. What passes today for a once-great political party is channeling the backbiting, backstabbing, in-your-face accusations of another great political party.

The Republican Party today is mirroring, more or less, the shenanigans of Democrats in the 1960s and 1970s. There is a big difference, though, in the context of these struggles.

In the 1960s, Democrats were at war with themselves over the conduct of an actual war, in Vietnam. Today’s Republicans are at war over something far less grim, but equally significant. They are feuding over how to govern this great country.

You had Hawks vs. Doves in the 1960s. The Hawks in Congress supported our involvement in the Vietnam War; the Doves wanted us to get out of there sooner rather than later. It was policy, man, that drove that internecine fight.

The policy this time is driving by those on the far right, the MAGA crowd, is throwing obstacles in front of mainstream Republicans who cling to the notion that they need to work with Democrats to enact meaningful public policy. The MAGA crowd — led by The Former Guy — obstruct efforts at, say, immigration and border security reform. They tie border security to funding the Ukraine war against the Russian invaders. They also tie the border to our continuing aid to Israel, which has declared war on Hamas over the terrorists’ hideous attack on Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023.

What’s TFG doing about it? He’s cheering on the MAGA followers, encouraging them to stop our government from doing its job.

Just as Republicans were virtually unified in their efforts in the ’60s and ’70s to wage war in Vietnam, Democrats today lock arms and don’t lift a finger to stop the battle that’s underway across the great political divide.

Wow! I think I’ll continue to hold on with both hands.

Joe Biden, national news

Good government gone … not forgotten

Do you remember when government at all levels — from Capitol Hill, to state capitols, county courthouses and city halls — worked for the people who pay their bills?

It wasn’t necessarily a government run by liberals. There once was a conservative movement that railed against government, but whose adherents didn’t stand in the way of government seeking common ground.

Those days are gone. I hope, though, that good government as I recall it isn’t extinct, like the dodo bird and the woolly mammoth.

I long for its return.

Even during the Ronald Reagan era, government could rise to the occasion. The 40th president declared at his first inaugural that “government is the problem” and the cause for the nation’s ills in the early 1980s. President Reagan, though, found a way to work with his old nemesis/drinking buddy Speaker Tip O’Neill to find a way into the light.

We have an entirely different climate today in D.C. Those damn MAGA morons have taken obstructionism to a new level, almost turning it into an art form. The progressive caucus on the other side also has dug in deeply, seeking unaffordable government actions, such as Medicare for All and forgiving every former college student’s debt.

For the purposes of this blog, though, I am going to aim my rhetorical fire at the MAGA cultists.

Because of the MAGA crowd’s ignorance, the U.S. House this year required 15 ballots to elect a speaker … and then only after he conceded so much to the MAGA morons that he made himself vulnerable to the ouster vote that booted him out of office.

This Congress has proved to be among the least productive legislative sessions in history. Why? Because the MAGA crowd insists on seeking something on which to impeach President Biden.

This isn’t good government in any possible form.

Just maybe there will be enough Americans who are as fed up as I am to dropkick the MAGA crowd to the sh***er. I don’t have a problem, per se, with conservatives as long as they understand the value of outreach on occasion to the other side of the aisle.

President Reagan understood it clearly. If only he were around today to lecture the MAGA morons on how to govern while standing firm on their principles.