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From the monthly archives: January 2010
I’ve watched the full tape now of Obama’s masterful performance at the GOP House retreat yesterday.
The thing that struck me about a lot of the questioning was that Republicans were just about as defensive as they could be about their obstructionism.
Marsha Blackburn literally said this: “Thank you for acknowledging that we have ideas. Because we do have ideas, we have plans!“
It’s was just so funny to watch this get brought up again and again. It was like watching a kid repeatedly tell mommy “Yes I did brush my teeth! Geez!”
You want people to think you have ideas? Stop obstructing, get off your my-way-or-the-highway soapbox and start trying to engage.
Oh yeah, across-the-board tax cuts don’t count as ideas. Try again.
Methinks they protest too much.
Just got back from a sleep evaluation and I officially have the sleep apnea. I hope the machine they gave me will give me back some of the memory and energy I once had.
I haven’t gotten to watch this yet but it is apparently getting some serious attention today (the vid takes a bit to load):
Update: Republicans are now whining that televising the meeting was a bad idea because Obama did really well. Hahahahahahahahaha…
Tom Cole — former head of the NRCC, congressman from Oklahoma — said, “He scored many points. He did really well.” Barack Obama, for an hour and a half, was able to refute every single Republican talking point used against him on the major issues of the day. In essence, it was almost like a debate where he was front and center for the majority of it. … One Republican said to me, off the record, behind closed doors: “It was a mistake that we allowed the cameras to roll like that. We should not have done that.”Or, as aspiring Villager Marc Ambinder puts it:
Debating a law professor is kind of foolish — the Republican House Caucus has managed to turn Obama’s weakness — his penchant for nuance — into a strength. Plenty of Republicans asked good and probing questions, but Mike Pence, among others, found their arguments simply demolished by the president.
I just love Daniel Larison:
Is the GOP in a worse position than a year ago? On the surface, no, it isn’t. Once we get past the surface, however, the same stagnant, intellectually bankrupt, unimaginative party that brought our country to its current predicament is still there and has not changed in any meaningful way in the last three years. Why would it? The party’s leaders have no clue, its pundits are reveling in the luxury of opposition, and its rank-and-file has been whipped into such a state of agitation over their own impotence that they cannot see that they are led by people who will ignore and abuse them the moment they are no longer needed to win elections. It may seem that the GOP has derailed the majority’s agenda, but in reality it is the GOP that went off the rails long ago and has yet to begin to recover.
It’s about bloody time:
It looks like a marijuana legalization initiative will be on the ballot in California this fall. Today the backers of the Regulate, Control, and Tax Cannabis Act turned in nearly 700,000 signatures; they need just 434,000 to qualify the measure for the ballot. The Los Angeles Times notes that “a Field Poll taken last April found that 56% of voters in the state and 60% in Los Angeles County want to make pot legal and tax it.” It also suggests that “if passed, the initiative would put the state in conflict with federal law,” which is not strictly speaking true. As Drug Policy Alliance attorney Tamar Todd noted in response to a Los Angeles Times editorial that made a similar claim a couple weeks ago, California is under no obligation to replicate federal drug prohibitions. Under the Supreme Court’s expansive reading of the Commerce Clause, the federal government would have the authority to prosecute people for growing, distributing, and possessing marijuana even if the drug were no longer banned by state law. But it would not have the resources to do so consistently.Fun Game Suggestion: If you want to find out if someone is a real libertarian or just a temporary faker, ask him/her about legalizing pot. Their answer will expose a faker in two seconds flat. h/t Sully
This only makes sense if you realize that Republicans in Congress have absolutely no principles to speak of (besides of course trying to crush and destroy):
In his State of the Union address last night, President Obama urged the Senate to adopt pay-as-you-go rules (PAYGO), which essentially stipulate that all spending increases will be offset by either cuts elsewhere or tax increases. “When the vote comes tomorrow, the Senate should restore the pay-as-you-go law that was a big reason for why we had record surpluses in the 1990s,” Obama said.Today, the Senate followed through, and considering all of the deficit fearmongering that has been going on in Congress, you’d think that it would have passed by a fairly wide margin. But no. Instead, the rules passed on a party line vote of 60-40.
And the blanket Republican opposition is particularly interesting considering that some Senate Republicans used to support PAYGO, even when it was opposed by their own party. For instance, in 2004, three current Senate Republicans — Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) — joined 47 Democrats in adopting PAYGO, against the majority Republicans’ wishes (although the rule was ultimately scuttled when Congress failed to pass a budget). The next year, the same three senators were joined by Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) in a failed attempt to implement the rule.
What could be a more “conservative” proposal than forcing lawmakers to pay for the legislation they write? Sigh.
THE GRAPEVINE
