Slate Magazine: David Weigel: ‘Filibuster Reform Kicks Open the Coffin and Returns From the Dead’

Source:Slate Magazine– Richard Cordray is President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Source:FRS FreeState

“So far, it seems like only Greg Sargent and HuffPost are noticing: Democrats are talking about filibuster reform again. The latest progress report comes in this story from Ryan Grim and Jennifer Bendery, who find Democratic senators newly frustrated by their failure to pass bills or confirm nominees, especially CFPB head Richard Cordray.

Reid indicated Tuesday that he would bring Cordray’s nomination to a vote in July, and a Senate Democratic aide said that vote will come at a time when Reid is ready to launch into a broader fight over all of Obama’s stalled nominees. The “plan is to wait until immigration is complete before engaging in total all-out nom[ination] fight,” said the aide.

What kind of fight are we talking about? It starts with Democrats claiming to hold 51 votes to end the filibuster on executive branch nominees, because Republicans are being unreasonable. Republicans have tried to blunt the attack by proving that, hey, they’re letting people through and you’re not noticing.

“This President is being treated exceptionally fairly,” said Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, on the floor this week. “The President has recently submitted a few new nominations. I know I have been reminding him that we can’t do anything about vacancies without him first sending up nominees. But again, even with the recent nominations, 58 of 82 nominations still have no nominee.”

Basically, Republicans need to lower the temperature and portray Democrats as unreasonable liars. “More executive branch appointments, confirmations, by and large – it’s been handled in a very bipartisan way,” said Mitch McConnell yesterday in his brief weekly on-camera press conference. This is one reason you saw so much harrumphing when Sen. Ted Cruz bragged to Texas conservatives that “squishes” sold him out on his filibuster of the motion to proceed to debate on guns. That fed into the public impression that Republicans were obstructionists – and, well, they are, for lots of good reasons, but it’s tough to sell when something popular is being obstructed.

So Republicans hype the nominees they let through, ask why Obama isn’t sending more nominees, and (as Daniel Foster pointed out in National Review) nominating conservatives for mandatory seats on bipartisan panels, whenever possible. They also express shock that Democrats would change the rules, or think about it.
“The majority leader said earlier this year that he would not change the rules in any extraordinary way, the nuclear option, in this Congress,” said McConnell on Tuesday. “I take him at his word. The assumption is that will not be done.”

From Slate Magazine

“Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) clearly explains how the republican minority was abusing senate rules at historic levels, leaving the democrats no choice but to change those rules and lower the number of votes needed from 60 to 51 to overcome obstructionist filibusters of presidential nominees.”

Source:TDC– U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Democrat, Nevada)

From TDC

To be completely fair and to put everything out there and I do agree with probably everything that Majority Leader Harry Reid said in his speech, but Senate Democrats led first by Tom Daschle in 2003-04 and later Harry Reid when he was Senate Minority Leader from 2005-06, did the exact same thing that Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell are doing now, that Republicans are in the minority. They’re blocking nominees simply because they don’t like them, or are worried that Democrats will get a partisan advantage in the Federal court system. Which is exactly what Senate Democrats first led by Tom Daschle and later Harry Reid, did to then President George W. Bush, when Democrats were in the minority in the mid 2000s.

I think the only solution here is really clear and I also agree with Leader Reid on this as well. There should be no more filibusters on any executive or judicial nominee, that clears the committee with a majority vote. And in exchange, the minority party led by the Minority Leader can offer amendments to all the nominees that they disapprove of. Amendments like before this nominee is approve, the Senate needs answers to these questions or have these documents turned over first. But those amendments would just need majority approval as well. But at the end of the day, if the President and the Senate has a majority vote for the nominees, they should be approved.

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Slate Magazine: ‘Romney Boys Can’t Contain Their Obama Debate Anger’

Source:Slate Magazine– meet the Romney Family.

Source:The Daily Press

“The exchanges weren’t the only things getting heated at Tuesday night’s presidential debate. Two of Mitt Romney’s sons got a little hot under the collar watching their dad spar with the president.

Asked on a radio how he felt when Obama called his dad a liar, Romney’s eldest son Tagg said he wanted to “rush down to the stage and take a swing at him.” Tagg also took issue with the president’s campaign trying “to do everything they can to turn my dad into someone he’s not,” which seems like a tall order considering Romney himself has a habit of shifting where he stands.

The Romney sons’ aggression didn’t stop there: Tagg’s brother, Josh, was seen giving the president a death stare during the debate, and that spawned a mini-meme. Menacing maybe, but hardly enough for the Secret Service to get involved.”

From Slate Magazine

Not the most loving and respectful men of the presidency. The Romney Boys, they seem more like thugs working for their father. They seem to want to do what their father other than in the first presidential debate what their father couldn’t do, which is to beat up President Obama, or at least beat him somewhere.

I mean Mitt, clearly wins the first debate and is still clearly trailing the President in the Electoral College, despite now being neck-in-neck with the President in the popular vote. Mitt, doesn’t look like a winner right now, but someone whose trying to find any place where he can win. So he’s not the Mike Dukakis of the GOP. Someone who badly loses a presidential election that he should have won.

It’s hard to hear negative facts about your father especially in a political campaign. Especially when those facts are about one’s lack of experience, knowledge, judgement, honesty, and even credibility. The Romney Sons, might know who Dad is, but the problem is their Dad won’t let the rest of the country know. Because he keeps turning into someone else depending on what office he’s running for, what year he’s running and the people he feels he needs to have supporting him.

Mitt is Moderate Mitt in Massachusetts, he’s Religious Conservative Mitt in 2007 when he’s going for the Christian-Right in Iowa and South Carolina. And now he’s the businessman with results, even though as Governor of Massachusetts, he had a weak jobs record. And laid off a lot of people as a businessman.

Who is Mitt Romney and what do you believe in? Would be my question to him if I ever interviewed him. But I would be carrying a whole notepad of paper, or perhaps my laptop waiting for ten different answers to the same questions. As he’s telling us every different position he has on the same issue. And doing that for each issue.

Americans are funny this way in that we like our presidential candidates to tell us who they are and what they believe with some consistency before we decide who we’re going to vote for, not after. I guess we’re just stubborn that way and don’t have much faith in coin flipping when it comes to choosing our political leaders. But we’re into finger flipping when it comes to political leaders that we don’t like. As Mitt knows all too well right now.

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Slate Magazine: Mitt Romney- ‘Binders Full of Women Meme to Take Over The World’

Source:Slate Magazine– does Mitt Romney have binders full of Hillary Clinton?

Source:The Daily Press

“The most substantive moments of last night’s presidential debate may have been President Obama and Mitt Romney’s heated exchanges over Libya and energy policy. But the Internet has its own favorite: Romney’s pronouncement that he was given “binders full of women” to fill jobs in his cabinet when he was governor of Massachusetts. That came in response to a question about the glass ceiling and gender bias in pay.

Before the debate even ended, a meme had sprouted on social media. Within minutes, a Tumblr account appeared, with crowd-sourced parody images that included Hillary Clinton, an ’80s teen idol, and Beyoncé. By this morning, the Facebook community “Binders Full of Women” had more than 250,000 members.

In a debate full of curious phrasing, why did Romney’s binders comment stand out? Slate’s Amanda Marcotte wrote that the inelegant phrase resonated because it underlined Romney’s “utter unwillingness to address the true causes of inequality.”

From Slate Magazine

Is Mitt Romney capable of getting through an appearance, debate or otherwise, without making a gaffe? Or maybe these so-called gaffes aren’t gaffes and he actually believes in this, let’s say garbage and it just slipped out. Does Mitt even at this point where he’s clearly trailing in big Republican states like Florida, Virginia and Ohio (where he needs to win at least two of those states in order to win the presidency) even want to be president? Or is he writing a new book, perhaps political manual on how not to run for president if you want to win. The title of the book actually being: “Mitt Romney’s: How Not to Run For President.” Maybe he’s hoping he can get Congress even with a Democratic Senate in it, to repeal the 19th Amendment that guarantees all American women the right to vote. And with that he wouldn’t have to bother campaigning for female voters.

I imagine when it comes to life in general and in business, Mitt Romney is a tall, handsome, young-looking (for a Baby Boomer) intelligent, good man. But when it comes to politics, he must have slept in when God was handing out political brains. I haven’t seen a national politician this weak when it comes to appealing to average voters since George H.W. Bush in 1992. When he didn’t know the price of milk and his own Vice President miss spells potato. And this is probably because President Bush hadn’t been to a grocery store and bought his own groceries in over twenty-years at that point.

If I’m a woman (and no I’m not looking for a sex change) am I supposed to feel good about Mitt Romney’s “binders full of women”? Or should I take that as a guy who probably watches too much Cinemax late at night, because he can’t sleep, because from all the coffee he drinks on the campaign trail?

As a presidential candidate, Mitt Romney is a gunslinger who always has his gun pointed at his feet and forgets turn the safety off. I don’t know how the man walks around anymore having shot off so many of his own toes. He barely beats a man who wants to take America back to 1955 in a national time machine where women weren’t supposed to work and perhaps even vote. Where gays were locked in prison cells and mental institutions, as well as closets. That being Rick Santorum of course and is now running against a President who struggles to hit fifty-percent when it comes to his own popularity. With high unemployment and weak economic growth.

Mitt finds himself trailing in several big Republican states that he has to win, to a President who struggles to get to 50% approval. I mean is Mitt Romney really all the Republican Party has to offer for president? And is this the best they have?

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