The New Republic: Opinion: Brian Beutler: 2015 Congress Will Shake Up America’s Boring Politics: How Will a Party That Doesn’t Believe in Government Govern

Guess Who’s Running Congress

This post was originally posted at The New Democrat on Blogger

The New Republic: Opinion: Brian Beutler: 2015 Congress Will Shake Up America’s Boring Politics

Here is sort of what the lighter more positive side of a united Republican Congress at least for Democrats, but perhaps bad for the rest of the country.

A party that now doesn’t believe in government will somehow have to govern, at least at the legislative level. That means finding ways to fund things they don’t believe in. Because the President is still a Democrat, at least until Congressional Republicans finds a way to impeach and convict President Obama. And they’ll have to work together to make anything law really. Senate Republicans will have to work with Senate Democrats at least to pass just about anything that doesn’t have to do with the budget and appropriations. Unless Harry Reid and Senate Democrats take the cynical route and say, “you know what, go ahead and pass that, we won’t stop you, we’ll just use it against you and your vulnerable members in the election.”

America will truly get to see how divided and childish the Republican Party has become. With House Speaker John Boehner and new Senate Leader Mitch McConnell playing my too dads with their Tea Party anti-government children who hate school so much and just want to stay home and play video games and eat cookies. And mess around on their smart phones. While debating among themselves, especially in the Senate about whether they should vote on nominations to government agencies that they believe shouldn’t exist in the first place, or voting to eliminate those agencies all together.

Democrats at least in Congress will get the next two-years off and be able to plan their path back to power. With House and Senate Republicans giving them boatloads of material everyday and commercials to use against them in swing districts and swing states. And I’m thinking especially in Democratic leaning states like Illinois and Pennsylvania where Senator Mark Kirk and Senator Pat Toomey who both have been in Congress for a while, will have a choice to make. Figure out how to govern and make government work with a Democratic President and risk a Tea Party primary challenge. Or go with the Tea Party and put their reelection in jeopardy against a mainstream Democrat.

The good news for Democrats, is that now they get the ten-percent or so Congressional approval rating off of their backs and put it squarely on the shoulders of the Republican Party. With a divided Congress they couldn’t do that, because they were in the Congressional Leadership controlling the Senate. Now they are essentially along for the ride with 188 or so seats in the House in the next Congress and 45-46 seats in the Senate in the next Congress. With Congressional Republicans having clear majorities and responsibility to figure out how to govern. And to figure out how to govern with members who don’t believe in government. At least when it comes to the economy. Good luck GOP!
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The White House: Weekly Address- President Barack Obama: ‘Celebrating Father’s Day Weekend’

Source:The White House– President Barack H. Obama (Democrat, Illinois) 44th President of the United States.

“President Obama discusses Father’s Day and notes that nothing substitutes for the love and support of the presence of a parent in a child’s life.”

Source: The White House

How to talk about the most important man in my life, which is the challenge of this post. How to communicate about the man who gave us life and has served as the most important male role model if. Not most important role model at least in my life. That’s why we have Father’s Day in America, to celebrate the men who gave us life and allowed for our country to keep on growing and moved us forward. Who raised us and made sure we had everything that we need growing up to be successful in life. So we go to a good school and are doing what we can to do the best job that we can as students, so we can be successful in life. Who work so we always have a place to live and enough food to eat.

Our father’s are always there to support us when we need them and are there in our most important moments in our lives. Just not as we are growing up, but as adults as well and the guy we can count on when we need advice and someone to turn to. That’s what father’s are for and why they are so important and why people who grew up with their fathers and had good father’s, tend to turn out better in life, then people who didn’t have a responsible father, or never met their father, or lost their father early on in life. And what my father means to me.

So that’s how I look at Father’s Day and what dad means to me. The guy, the rock I can go to when I need advice about something that I can’t get from anywhere else. Or can’t get better advice from anywhere else. Who I know will support me, whose always worked very hard in life professionally. But also as a father so his kids always have what they need to be successful and to live well.

And when I talk about dad, I tend to use words like Big Daddy and Teddy Bear for a couple of reasons. One because of his physical stature. A big tall man over 6’0 and two hundred pounds. Where I clearly get my size if you were to see both of my parents. But also his personality and when he hugs you, it’s like getting a hug from a big Teddy Bear with the warmth and strength that comes from his hugs. But personally that’s how he is as well. A very loving man who wants the best for all of his kids. Myself and my two brothers who also has a tough love approach to life. That he’s the nicest guy in the world, as long as you are doing what you are supposed to be doing.

But Dad is no one’s puppet, or punching bag and can also get on you and will when you are not doing what you should be doing. Or could be doing things better. We have Mother’s Day and Father’s Day even though some other countries might see them as corny. But we have these days to celebrate the two most important role models in our lives. Who without, we would never had existed. The two people who tend to be the most important people in our lives.

Father’s Day, is about celebrating the most important man in our lives the man who gave us life who raised us. From the day we were born and has been there everyday since support us and that’s what dad means to me. So happy Father’s Day, Big Daddy!

You can also see this post at FRS FreeState, on WordPress.

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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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The Onion: ‘Week in Review’

Source:The Onion– Also in what’s not in the news: the Republican Party endorsed President Barack H. Obama for reelection as President of the United States.

Source:The Daily Press

“Straight and gay service members are looking forward to asking and telling, scientists believe the recent heat wave may have been caused by a massive star at the center of the Solar System, and Bristol Palin reveals that her mother has had 15 abortions. It’s the week of August 8th, 2011.”

From The Onion

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney announced today that he will clone himself again, to make himself look like a woman. Along with undergoing plastic surgery to make that happen, to better reconnect with female voters. But canceled those plans, after being told by Christian-Conservatives that they wouldn’t vote for a woman for President. The ironic part of this, that a lot of those voters are women as well.

In a press release from the Romney Campaign, they announced that already managing four clones, Conservative Mitt, Liberal Mitt, Moderate Mitt and Neoconservative Mitt, would be too much to handle. To go along with a Female Mitt.

Also in the news: Vice President Joe Biden announced that Mitt Romney was more qualified to be President of the United States, then himself. But in the next sentenced announced that Mitt would make a worst President than George W. Bush. Apparently Vice President Biden forgot to take his medication. His wife Jill Biden announced that her husband is back home in bed now. And will only be allowed to leave the house, with tape wrapped around his mouth, to prevent him from speaking.

That’s your week in what didn’t happen. For more information on what’s not going on in the world, I suggest you become a die hard viewers of Fox News or reader of The Onion to find out how the world doesn’t work.

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President Barack Obama: Mitt Romney- ‘I Stand by What I Said Whatever it Was’

Source:President Barack Obama– Governor Mitt Romney (Republican, Massachusetts) the multiple choice presidential nominee.

Source:The Daily Press

“Mitt Romney in February:

“I’m not sure which is worse; him listening to Reverend Wright or him saying that we must be a less Christian nation”

Does he stand by his comment?

“I’m actually going to –I haven’t, I’m not familiar precisely with exactly what I said, but I stand by what I said, whatever it was.”

What else does he stand by?

“Don’t try and stop the foreclosure process let it run it’s course and hit the bottom.”

“Let Detroit go bankrupt.”

“I will repeal Obamacare and I’ll kill it dead on it’s first day.”

Reporter:
“Governor Romney, if you don’t deport them, how do you send them home?”

Mitt Romney:
“Well the answer is self-deportation”

“Planned Parenthood, we’re going to get rid of that.”

“Corporations are people my friend.”

“I was a severely conservative Republican governor.”

“I’m not familiar precisely with exactly what I said, but I stand by what I said, whatever it was.”

Mitt Romney: “I stand by what I said, whatever it was.”

From President Barack Obama

This is the number one problem that Mitt Romney has going for him, that he’s a multiple personality presidential candidate. That if his real name was Flip Flopper, no one who knows who he is or has some idea who he is, would have no problem believing that. The line: “I stand behind what I said, whatever it was”, could be Mitt Romney’s campaign slogan. Standing behind something you said and not even knowing what you said.

That would be like saying something in a bar when you were drunk and you can’t even remember anything from that night. And you said a bunch of things and someone who was at the bar, holds you to that statement and you tell them: “Well, I stand behind that. Even though I have no memory of actually saying that.”

President Obama has a problem, but I guess it’s a good problem, which Mitt Romney does he run against and he’ll see more than one in this presidential campaign. But for President Obama, does he run against Liberal Mitt from 1994, Moderate Mitt from 2002, Religious-Conservative Mitt from 2007-08, Neoconservative Mitt from this years Republican primaries, or whatever Mitt decides to run for President in the general election.

President Obama, could say: “I kinda like the Mitt from 2002-04, the successful businessman, big believer in economic freedom. Liberal and tolerant on social issues.” Which is how Northeastern Republicans tend to be, but he could also use that Mitt against whatever Mitt we see in 2012. And he could tell Mitt: “You know, I kinda like that guy from 1994 and 2002, whatever happened to that guy?”

Independent voters would like the Massachusetts Mitt as well. And Mitt if he answered the question honestly, which is about as likely as Pat Robertson coming out for same-sex marriage, would say: “Oh, that Mitt is still there, I just keep him hidden, when I’m around the Tea Party who hate that Mitt and see him as an Un-American Socialist.”

Imagine that a successful businessman whose a Socialist, that’s today’s Republican Party for you. Please someone bring back Barry Goldwater and Ron Reagan. Those guys seem completely reasonable to today’s GOP.

I’ve said this for over a year now, the best thing that President Obama has going for him, is his competition or lack of it. With enemies like this, who needs friends, they would be the best members all of them, of the Obama Reelection Committee. Working for the President behind the backs of the GOP. Like Democratic espionage agents, screwing the GOP. And Mitt Romney is the leader of this pack.

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