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September 28, 2015 06:42 AM UTC

Monday Open Thread

  • 34 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them…well, I have others.”

–Groucho Marx

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34 thoughts on “Monday Open Thread”

    1. Only Lurch knows how much further to the right they will lurch*. Fasten you seat belts, voters.

      David Brooks, always eager to mingle Republican Craziness with DC-approved BothSiderSpeak®, said Republican voters don't care for reality: 

      [I]t's not quite clear that reality matters to the electorate right now. There are some people who are great campaigners and some people that are good in reality, and so far the good in reality people aren't doing so good in the polls.

      Right now there are 2 electorates: 1 Crazy, 1 Common-sense. Brooks knows which is which, but somehow gets to say this stuff lie all the time while collecting money from NPR, the NY Times, NBC, et al. for each his fictions.

      * — Since 1994, when Newt Gingrich led his party tribe from 40 years of wandering in the desert of the minority to the promised land of House majority, Republicans have become more stridently anti-government and anti-Washington. They have also, when in the majority, become less interested in trying to find policy solutions across party lines. Their desire to act like a parliamentary majority, maintaining rigid discipline and working only internally, became known as the “Hastert Rule” under Gingrich’s successor.

      Perfect party discipline continued when Republicans, in the minority, faced Barack Obama in his first two years—unity that translated into reflexive opposition to everything Obama wanted to do. It was part of a broader strategy to delegitimize Obama and Democrats; to cultivate anger and unhappiness as Gingrich had done in 1994 in the midterm elections in 2010; and to seize back majority status, undo the Obama program, and cut government dramatically.

    2. The Dark Truth Of John Boehner's Resignation

      As Jonathan Chait, Greg Sargent and others note, the forced resignation of John Boehner is another step in the above line of this undemocratic behavior, and not some gossipy, intra-mural Republican politics.  

      What we have here is one of two major political parties increasingly disengaging from the democratic process.  Did you know that President Obama is an illegitimate President because he is not a "natural born citizen"?  Or that he won election by promising "free stuff" to minorities? That minorities and illegal aliens are engaged in massive voter fraud? Or, that popular elections of U.S. Senators should be taken away?  That some "Boehner Rule" or "Hastert Rule" exists which neuters any Democratic House votes?  Or that is OK for Republicans to filibuster every proposed law while in the minority, but the filibuster should be repealed now that Republicans have a Senate majority? Or that the Electoral College should be reformed to provide proportional votes only in "Blue States"?  . . . or, that policy outcomes should not be determined by elections but instead by holding hostage the federal government or the "full faith and credit" of the U.S.?

      Most importantly, did you realize that all of the above are necessary to enact the majority will of the people?  Because – believe it or not – that is what the Republicans believe.

      The conclusion of Congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein has been widely quoted, but not sufficiently absorbed:  

      One of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

  3. Reminder to all – and especially our esteemed Sen. Michael Bennet – BOTH SIDES DON'T DO IT:

    Welcome to the real America, Frank Bruni. Where have you been all this time?

    One of our two major political parties is hostage to an extreme subgroup that won’t brook compromise, values theatrical protests over actual governing and is adolescent in its ideological vanity.

    … Republicans … have become the party of brinkmanship, the party of imminent credit defaults, the party of threatened shutdowns, the party that won’t pass a proper transportation bill, the party that is suddenly demonizing the Export-Import Bank, the party of “no,” the party of ire, the party that casts even someone as unquestionably conservative as John Boehner in the role of apostate, simply because he knows the difference between fights that can be won and those that can’t, between standing on principle and shooting yourself in the foot.

    Bravo, Frank — although I'm not sure this makes up for the many, many times Bruni told us that toxic partisanship is a two-way street in America and Both Sides Do It.

    Saying "both sides do it" is a provable lie and is either the desire of a lazy journalist or the excuse of a tepid politician to get out of doing the hard work of telling the truth, refudiating the puke stream of lies that comes from Republican mouths, and promoting good policies that ignore the Republican puke stream. 

    1. Exactly. Which is why it's such a shame that Obama spent his entire first term pushing the extremists on both sides mantra, constantly dissing and pissing off his own  party in congress, initially in chage of both houses, while  clinging damn near mindlessly to a futile charm offensive in  futile effort to win over even a few of the party of the truly intractable, sworn quite openly to opposing everything Obama asked for, not just despite but especially if  dong so would cause public misery confident that such a policy would make him a one termer.

    2. Alert from the Grammar Police — Zap — great post, but not sure you realize you used Sarah Palin's "refudiate", instead of perhaps "refute" or "repudiate".  Just wanted to nip this in the bud if it was unintentional.

  4. Why are Republicans the Only Climate-Science-Denying Party in the World?

    Of all the major conservative parties in the democratic world, the Republican Party stands alone in its denial of the legitimacy of climate science. Indeed, the Republican Party stands alone in its conviction that no national or international response to climate change is needed. To the extent that the party is divided on the issue, the gap separates candidates who openly dismiss climate science as a hoax, and those who, shying away from the political risks of blatant ignorance, instead couch their stance in the alleged impossibility of international action.

    1. Two words:  campaign, finance

      Our fucked up system of never-ending campaigns everlasting, coupled with our equally fucked up system of legally encouraged and supported outright, boldfaced bribery. 

      1. Big Banks Call For 'Strong' Climate Deal

        Still, no matter what the country's major banks say, it's not clear whether they'll persuade many Republican lawmakers to get on board with addressing climate change — especially if those lawmakers are facing primary challenges from tea-party types and already feel insecure about holding on to their seats. It's also far from certain whether the business community can do much to change the anti-climate-action views of conservative lawmakers who have won congressional seats in recent years.

    2. What passes for 'intellect' in today's Republican party. Never mind that the solar industry was developed here, then run offshore by Reagan.  Ditto for advanced biofuels.  Never mind that we can generate wind-power today for a fraction of the real cost of coal. Never mind that energy-intensive industries should be here…in the United States…benefitting from the cost-savings of these technologies, while employing hundreds of thousands of Americans.  

      On second thought…just 'never mind'. 

            1. Maybe, if it turns out the Arctic isn't going to be the industry "gold mine" they thought it was going to be, they'll rescind their orders for their puppet party to continue to deny a human role in climate change? They thought all that arctic melting was going to be great for them, making drilling so much cheaper, easier and more accessible.  Very profitable for them short term even if it was going to be hell on their descendents.  If it's not going to be so great for them right now after all, maybe they'll spare a thought for the grankids?  indecision

                  1. National grid parity on the horizon; futurist Ray Kurzweil saying we're just eight 'doublings' away from 100% solar (16 years).  Musk predicting his electric cars will have a 600-mile range by 2017 and Xcel buying wind energy below 3 cents/kwh.  

                    Remember, just more than a decade ago when Xcel, the Colorado Rural Electric Association and Intermountain Rural Electric funded their 'No on 37' campaign, telling us it would cost us $3 billion dollars and crash our economy if we dared to mandate 10% renewable energy into our state grid? The horror: how would we ever keep our beer cold and our showers hot if we dared to move away from coal-fired power (which is costing the US economy $500 billion annually right now). Or the ridiculous 'War on Rural Colorado' campaign funded by Tri-State, the rural electrics and some fake front for Kochs, 'Keep Energy Affordable'. 

                    These clowns have been right about nothing while trying to claw their way back to the 18th-century.  

    1. That's got to be photoshopped. Trump is a self-confessed germophobe. I can't imagine he would put his hand on the shoulder of one of those guys what with his fear of microbes.

  7. Question for FU: in theory, Cruz could be elected Speaker of the House.  Could he simultaneously hold that position and his US Senate seat? (all while running for President?)

    1. That's true. Traditionally the Speaker has been a member of the House but he or she is not required to be a House member to be elected. I remember back in late '98 and early '99 when the GOP was in crisis mode over what to do about the double losses of Newt Gingrich and Bob Livingston couple with Larry Flynt's threat to out more GOP hypocrites in the family values arena.

      There was a semi-serious suggestion that the GOP House members offer the speakership to former Senator Bob Dole. Alas they did not go that route and instead elected a man who is now facing trial as an accused pedophile.

      The constitution prohibits someone from serving in the legislative and executive branches of the government at the same time. I haven’t heard of anyone trying to sit in both houses of the legislative branch simultaneously. My guess is that the answer is “no” but if anyone had the audacity to try it, Rafael would be the one to do it.

  8. In the race to destroy the GOP from within, my money's still on Trump, but Cruz is definitely an eager contender:

    Cruz hears no voices but his own, and it has ever been thus. A college classmate has been quoted as saying, "it was my distinct impression that Ted had nothing to learn from anyone else… Four years of college education altered nothing." His rise to prominence on the national stage personifies the degree to which our politics is gripped by a political distemper, drowning our capacity to seize the future in a tsunami of nihilism and fury. For our own sake as well as their party's, his colleagues need to seal off his path to power, inflicting on Cruz the public ostracism which befell McCarthy, sent skulking to the political margins with Joseph Welch's famed admonition still ringing in his ears.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-north-patterson/ted-cruz-the-lone-strange_b_8204776.html

     

        1. The Pentagon has been planning and gaming for the geopolitical upheavals that will be caused by climate change for many years now. In fact it's accepted that mass migration of Syrians to the cities from their farm lands due to climate change, forcing them to leave their agricultural lands to concentrate in urban areas looking for work has been a major contributor to every aspect of the mess in Syria including the growth of extremism, civil war and today's refugee crisis. Climate change upheaval is already here.

          1. The irony that it was the Bush SCOTUS that determined CO2 a pollutant and the DOD Quadrennial Review under Bush that first identified climate change as a 'threat multiplier'….

            1. They have the same selective amnesia now about everything Bush era, after a brief romace with distancing themselves from Bush years ago, as they do about  St. Reagan who wouldn't have even made it  as far as the kiddy table for the recent candidates debates in 2015. Although Reagan's killer tree remarks would pass muster with today's GOP on climate change issues.

              PS. Misspelled words aren't being red lined for me here anymore. Bummer as I’m a type-o machine.

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