Another Day, Another Failure

Do the Tea Party Republicans in Congress who keep blocking legislation truly love their country?

That's not a question I ask lightly. Because the patriotism of liberals like me is routinely questioned by some of the same people who are the subject of this blog post, I'm loath to question the patriotism of others.

And yet I have long wondered about people - like many Tea Partiers who emblazon their organizations with words like "patriot" and "liberty"  - who bluster about what big patriots they are. It seems to me that the more you talk about how much of a patriot you are, or how humble you are, it often turns out that you're not actually all that patriotic or humble.

With that in mind, we turn to news from yesterday that Republican leadership has again failed to pass a bill. But not just any bill, mind you, but a bill containing Republican-friendly language on an issue - immigration - that has long been a source of Republican bluster about "securing our borders":

Democrats blamed Boehner for chasing after conservative votes for the border bill that were never going to materialize, after he initially proposed a more robust $1.5 billion plan that likely would have drawn some Democratic votes. Instead, as conservatives balked at that price tag, GOP leaders shrank the bill in an effort to grow the Republican vote – while losing Democrats.
“The worse the bill, the more votes on the Republican side,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in the closing minutes of the debate.

The pulling of the bill marked an embarrassing failure in the first real test of the new leadership team that takes office Thursday following Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor’s resignation as majority leader.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/07/31/at-11th-hour-house-gop-poised-to-pass-border-bill/

All of this to block passing a bill that doesn't actually solve the humanitarian crisis at the border, but simply allows Republicans to go home to their constituents and say "Well, we did what we could". They couldn't even pass a bill that's all show and no substance.

This Congress' inability to pass anything thanks to the intransigence of the Republican base has, in my opinion, gone from being infuriating to scary. If our elected officials cannot even pass basic legislation what will it mean for this country as a whole? I fear a number of nightmare scenarios: Americans dying on a highway bridge somewhere because of Congress' inability - refusal, even - to address this nation's crumbling infrastructure, or this country's financial solvency called into serious question because of another big fight over raising the debt ceiling.

The usual suspects, of course, will be quick to blame the president. I'm sure Republican politicians are banking on the American people blaming Obama for the lack of action on immigration. To paraphrase a character from the Disney movie A Bug's Life: as the leader, everything is your fault.

The interesting aspect of this story, however, is the fact that it serves to illustrate that the problem is coming not from the Executive Branch or from the Democratic coalition in Congress, but from the Republicans. The base seems so poisoned against Obama, so set in its opposition, that it is forcing the leadership to reject bills that Republicans would normally like.

You would think that if immigration was truly an issue that was consequential to this country's health and survival, as Republicans have claimed, they would be quick to find a solution to the current refugee crisis. Yet once again, we see politics, as well as pure spite towards Obama, get in the way of what's best for the country. This is a pattern that has, unfortunately, continued to repeat itself since Obama was elected the first time, from Mitch McConnell suggesting that ensuring Obama was not reelected was more important than helping his country to Republican attempts to thwart attempts to raise the debt ceiling.

This history is what leads me to seriously question the patriotism of the self-professed super patriots currently in Congress, who speak in such glowing terms about our founding fathers and their values, and yet seem interested in destroying what our founding fathers created all in a Moby Dick-like quest to "get" Obama.

My country may not survive that quest, however, and I find that I love my country more than I love asinine electoral politics. Shame on Republicans for not feeling the same way.

"Leading From Behind"

I finally got around to watching Sunday's Meet The Press. Aside from the usual beltway blather about Obama being "weak" on foreign policy, there was one part of David Gregory's 'roundtable' that stuck out at me: claims that the president "looks weak" economically.

In actuality, the numbers speak for themselves, and they make Obama look pretty damn good. For one thing, the job market is as strong as it's been since before the Great Recession

But in recent months, something has changed. On Thursday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that U.S. employers added 288,000 jobs in June and the unemployment rate fell to 6.1 percent, its lowest level since September 2008, the month Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy sparked a global financial crisis. The U.S. has added 1.4 million jobs so far this year, making it the best half-year since the recession ended. Payrolls are up by 2.5 million over the past year, also the best mark of the recovery.

Source: Five Thirty Eight

The Wall Street Journal added:

U.S. employers added 288,000 jobs in June, far more than economists had forecast and a sign of strength in the labor market. Job growth in April and May was sharply revised upward as well. The gains mark the fifth consecutive month that nonfarm payrolls grew by more than 200,000, a streak unmatched since the late 1990s.

Source: Wall Street Journal

"Sure, sure," some may retort, "But what about the stock market?". Well, actually, the Dow recently reached a high of 17,000.

Terrance Odean, a finance professor at the University of California at Berkeley, is expecting the Dow reaching 17,000 will spur more buying.

“I expect that the biggest effect of hitting 17,000 is that the event gets news coverage and, in the process, reminds (or informs) investors that the market has been going up,” Odean told MarketWatch in an email. “While this could prompt some people to sell, I’d expect it to trigger more buying than selling.”

 Source: Market Watch

"That said, investors should be feeling good about Dow 17,000," Scott Wren, a senior equity strategist with Wells Fargo Advisors, wrote in a note to investors. "The stock market has more than recovered from levels seen during the financial crisis more than five years ago. Slow and steady can win the race; and it has."
The Dow has climbed more than 10,500 points since its Great Recession low of 6,547.05 on March 9, 2009.

Source: Seattle Times

As for the storied deficit, it has shrunk - not grown - on Obama's watch:

The federal budget outlook will continue to improve this year, with the deficit projected to shrink to $514 billion — the lowest level since President Barack Obama took office.
Rebounding tax receipts and slower spending will help narrow the budget shortfall for the third consecutive year, the Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday. The deficit will continue to fall next year, to $478 billion, before beginning to climb again in 2016, as costs related to aging baby boomers mount.

Source: Politico

(All emphasis mine)

Not bad for a president so many derisively accuse of being a "Socialist". But don't wait for the so-called "liberal press" to report much on these good numbers - they're so worried about appearing "biased" in the eyes of noted centrists like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity that they skew coverage to the right in a ham-handed attempt to "balance" the news.

A lie by omission, of course, is still a lie. As long as this good news doesn't receive proper coverage, however, it gets passed on until it becomes gospel to under-informed voters. So much for the media doing its job...

Son, You're Gonna Drive Me To Drinkin'

Am I a 'nattering nabob of negativism'?

One of my friends on Facebook has, in so many words, accused me of it in the past. I will be the first to admit that I sometimes tend to focus on the negative - people and policy that piss me off - instead of the good things happening, though I also blog to inform as many as possible about some of the underhanded bullshit that you never hear about on Nightly News.

But it's also true that one of my biggest criticisms of Bob Gorrell - the editorial cartoonist who has appeared in multiple posts here - is that he's a relentlessly negative, naysaying critic of the president who ignores or glosses over Obama's accomplishments (which are many).

To make up for any Gorrell-like negativism that I may display, I'd like to post some editorial cartoons that actually make me happy:

This is excellent. Despite all the claims from some that things were so much better back in the "good ole days", the so-called "Reagan revolution" of the '80s and the "Republican revolution" of 1994 has been busily rolling back policies from the past that were more progressive than what passes for "progressive" today.

During the Eisenhower era, the tax rate percentage for the wealthiest Americans was in the nineties:

Today we hear that an increase of a few percentile points to the one-percenters' tax rate is akin to "Socialism", though the country managed to survive - and thrive - thanks to progressive policy.

The people are willfully dense of our nation's history and the helpful policies that some in Washington have been dismantling in the name of "small government".


Along the same lines, here's another excellent Ruben Bolling creation:

The arguments from those who think that the poor are just "lazy" or need to work harder to improve their station - which tellingly, never come from those who are themselves poor - are incredibly simplistic. My generation has been told time and time again that if we do well in school, go to college and graduate, we will find ourselves a well-paying job that sustains us.

The unfortunate reality is that even with a two-year degree from an accredited community college, few employers - especially in "STEM" professions - won't give you the time of day.

So the solution is to just get your Bachelors degree, right?

Well, you still have to get your foot into the door before you can get a great job - degree or not. So you search and search and search, but nobody will hire you for "lack of experience".

Of course, you can't get relevant work experience without actually working!

My point is this: the poor need more than platitudes about "bootstraps" and how they're lazy moochers for needing assistance. As an aunt of mine used to say, "it takes a sight to live", and it's hard to make it in a world where there are already two strikes against you because you're poor and can't buy or influence your way to success (like the rich).

It's true that it's not the rich people's fault that you're poor, but sometimes, it's not the poor person's fault either. The sooner we realize that, helping people and lifting them out of poverty instead of blaming them for our economic troubles, the sooner we'll actually live up to the ideal of being the "Christian nation" we claim to be.

Many thanks to Ruben Bolling for his consistently good cartoons!

Those Who Live In Glass Houses...

House Republicans recently took time out of their busy, busy schedules to ban funding to renovate the White House bowling alley. The planned renovation, which had already been scrapped, was characterized by Representative Pat Meehan (R-Pa.) as "a want, not a need".

Good work in solving problems that don't actually exist, House Republicans.

There is, however, a bigger dynamic at work here: for all their worry about "wants" and "not...need[s]", Republicans sure seem eager to spend taxpayer money on a frivolous lawsuit against the president.

The irony was not lost on Democrats:

Democrats on the House Rules Committee said that voters had a right to know at least a projection of how many taxpayer dollars would be spent on a lawsuit they dubbed a “political stunt.”

“The American people have endured enough waste from this House Majority and we are demanding an estimate so that Members of Congress and the American public will know the true cost of the House’s petty partisan lawsuit against the president,” Rep. Louise Slaughter (N.Y.), the top Democrat at House Rules Committee, said on Thursday.

Source: http://thehill.com/policy/finance/212615-house-dems-demand-cost-of-obama-lawsuit

It's a fair question. The self-appointed party of "fiscal responsibility" sure seems willing to waste taxpayer money on a lawsuit regarding Obama's delayed implementation of a part of the Affordable Care Act that Boehner doesn't want Obama to implement.

Another example of "penny wise, pound foolish".

Next time Republicans pontificate about "wants vs needs", perhaps they would do well to remember the old adage about those who live in glass houses. This frivolous lawsuit, after all, is "a want, not a need" that is an enormous waste of time and taxpayer money.

Michael Ramirez Is A Vile Human Being

It's not often that I call out editorial cartoonists for their often disgusting opinions. Every once in a while, however, there comes a political cartoon that's so despicable that it deserves to be singled out because the author is a shitstain on humanity's bottom.

Today, this dubious honor goes to Michael Ramirez, editorial cartoonist for Investor Business Daily and professional shithead, for this abomination:

This is, of course, a response to today's yesterday's news that an errant Israeli missile had killed four Arab children who had been playing on a beach.

Now, I admit that I don't follow Israel-Hamas politics that closely. I don't really have a dog in this fight, except that I suspect that Israel is not always the squeaky-clean, put-upon state that some in this country make it out to be.

Regardless of your politics, in what world is it acceptable to say that having a problem with Israel merits the deaths of children - who, I should add, have nothing to do with your conflict?

Two Pulitzer prizes, ladies and gentlemen. This shithead who celebrates the death of innocents as "payback" has earned two Pulitzers for his cartooning.

Why Women Take Birth Control Medicine

A lot of controversy has been swirling around the use of birth control since the Supreme Court's terrible Burwell v Hobby Lobby inc. ruling a few weeks back. In response, Buzzfeed released an excellent article asking twenty-two of their female contributors why they use birth control meds.

You can read the article here. My favorite, of course, is this one:

 

A female friend of mine, who made me aware of the article's existence (shout out to my good friend Kristi B.!), pointed out that it's unfortunate that women have to justify - to lawmakers, their employers, etc - their use of birth control meds lest they are assumed to be sluts. I had assumed that we settled the birth control debate fifty years ago, but that's just another testament to the extremism among many of those on the right.

"Obamacare" Is Working

"Obamacare" continues to succeed, and of course, we continue to not hear about from most of our supposedly "liberal[ly] bias[ed]" news media:

The growth of federal spending on health care will continue to decline as a proportion of the overall economy in the coming decades, in part because of cost controls mandated by President Obama’s health care law, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday.

 

The budget office said in its annual 25-year forecast that federal spending on major health care programs would amount to 8 percent of gross domestic product by 2039, one-tenth of a percentage point lower than its previous projection.

 

With the latest revision, the budget office has now reduced its 10-year estimate for spending by Medicare, Medicaid and other health programs by $1.23 trillion starting in 2010, the year the health care law took effect. By 2039, the savings would amount to $250 billion a year today, or about 1.5 percent of the economy.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/business/budget-office-revises-estimate-of-federal-spending-on-health-care.html?_r=0

It should be noted that this is a forecast - we can't know the state of the 2029 economy in 2014. However, the health reform that critics excoriated as "out-of-control spending" is set to make dreaded gubmint programs work more efficiently - not less.

In other words: Obama was right!

No Time For Impeachment

Republicans have a new excuse for why they haven't yet pursued impeachment of the president: they're just too damn busy!

Rep. Randy Weber (R-TX) was somewhat more sympathetic to the idea but even he opposed initiating impeachment proceedings “right now,” arguing that the House is too busy to get to it.

 

“The president deserves to be impeached. Plain and simple,” he said. “But … we have so much on our plate that it’s not practical.”

Source: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/house-conservatives-oppose-impeachment

Got that? They're not opposed to impeachment because the idea is dumber than shit...it's just that the Congress that has made past "do nothing" Congresses look good in comparison simply has "too much on [its] plate".

Steve Benen of Maddow Blog helpfully created a graph that compared the amount of legislation passed by Congress:

That tiny bar at the far right end of the graph (how appropriate) represents the number of bills passed by the current Congress. And although it's true that quantity does not necessarily indicate quality, most of the legislation passed has not been substantive:

Out of the 126 laws passed by the 113th Congress so far, only 99 are considered substantive and not related to ceremonial recognitions.
By contrast, 144 laws had been enacted at this same point in the last Congress, and 105 of those were non-ceremonial.

Source: http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/212041-a-do-nothing-congress#ixzz37eImVkDF

So the same Congress that has had difficulty in keeping the lights on suddenly finds itself too busy to impeach the president (for reasons known only to the crazies)? Perhaps we should be grateful for small favors, but I'm not holding my breath in anticipation of this newfound busyness to amount to anything.

Muslims in the US

I was planning to (finally) update this blog with the Daily Caller's hilariously inept attempt to smear Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey (more on this soon - check back) or other news pieces. However, I found a blog entry that was so damn good that I couldn't pass up posting it here. It's a long read, but well worth the time.

Believe it or not, Muslim support for the Republican Party did not waver in the face of its gradual Christianization. On the contrary, Muslims saw common ground with Christians on most social issues. While the topic of abortion is not nearly as cut-and-dried for Muslims as it is for many Christians, the Muslim community certainly agreed with the goal of limiting them as much as possible – and more to the point, in limiting unwanted pregnancies in the first place by stigmatizing casual sexual encounters. Muslims shared with their Christian neighbors their belief in the sanctity of the nuclear family, and their belief that a household headed by a married mother and father was the best household in which to raise children.

By 2000, the Muslim community in America was several decades old, and had started to mature as a political entity. Muslim organizations almost unanimously endorsed George W. Bush. I voted for Bush that year. I would have voted for Bob Dole in 1996 if I weren’t so busy with medical school that I forgot to vote; I would have voted for Bush Sr. in 1992 if I weren’t still 17 years old.

In the 2000 election, approximately 70% of Muslims in America voted for Bush; among non-African-American Muslims, the ratio was over 80%.

Four years later, Bush’s share of the vote among Muslims was 4%.

What happened? Well, a lot.

The GOP and Me

The most shameful legacy of the 9/11 years is not torture, not Gitmo, not Abu Ghraib or even the Patriot Act. It's the irrational fear and hatred that the attacks have caused some in this country to harbor towards Muslim Americans: casting suspicion on Muslim Americans who want to build a mosque in their neighborhood, placing innocents on the 'do not fly' list, searching the private records or Muslims who were born and raised in this country but committed no crime - just happened to have a name that sounded "Arab".

9/11 should have been a chance for this country to show the world that we were better than those who attacked us. We don't allow the terrorists the privilege of seeing that their goal - to frighten us into submission - has worked.

But that's exactly what we did. The Patriot Act, torture, even the war in Iraq - those were not signs of strength, but the desperate acts of a people who were so scared that they were willing to go back on some of their most cherished beliefs for an illusion of security.

In that sense, Osama and his terrorist allies won the moment we allowed fear - and not rationality - rule the day.

Khattala

Obama just isn't fitting into Republicans' carefully-cultivated narratives about Democrats, and it must drive them completely bonkers.

You see, as a Democrat, Obama is supposed to be "weak" on national security issues - a namby-pamby, politically correct appeaser whose foreign policy can't match up to the patriotic machinations of his Republican betters.

Unfortunately, it was on Obama's watch that Osama bin-Laden was finally brought to justice, after seven years of Bush's smirking jokes about finding WMDs under a podium at the White House correspondent's dinner and "I'm just not that concerned about bin Laden". And it is now on Obama's watch that one of the masterminds behind Benghazi, Ahmed Abu Khattala, has been captured by American forces.

This comes, as you may know, after almost two years of Republicans hounding the president at every turn over made up scandalmongering involving the Benghazi terrorist attack. The most common line has been to criticize Obama for not finding the perpetrators of the attack fast enough to suit the GOP:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), for example, released separate statements on the two attacks. In his Benghazi statement, he says it's unacceptable that those responsible haven't been found.
"It is disgraceful that one year later, even though a number of the terrorists who participated in this attack have been identified, not a single one has been brought to justice," Boehner said.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/09/11/on-sept-11-anniversary-republicans-hit-obama-on-benghazi/

Now that Obama has completely proven Republicans wrong about their perceptions of Democratic foreign policy, however, the GOP can't seem to get its story straight on Khattala:

According to multiple sources on the ground, including some with direct knowledge of the operations to identify and hunt the Benghazi suspects, intelligence that could have been acted upon at times has been ignored or put on hold. Further, they say, the recent capture of Ahmed Abu Khattala -- now on a ship bound for the U.S., expected to arrive this weekend -- was an easy one.
"He was low-hanging fruit," one source told Fox News. "We could have picked him up months and months ago and there was no change, or urgency to do this now."

 Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/06/27/sources-us-letting-benghazi-suspects-off-hook-recent-arrest-small-potatoes/

…Mr. Abu Khattala likely was little more than a patsy. Yes, he was captured on video-surveillance footage at the scene of the burning diplomatic compound, but my sources say he was just part of a large “pickup team” of local jihadis that the attack’s real organizers successfully manipulated.

Source:  http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/2/timmerman-finding-a-patsy-in-benghazi/?page=1

Let's see if I have this straight: before Khattala was in US custody, he was a terrorist mastermind whose capture was of the utmost importance to our national security, and it was an outrage that the president had not yet nabbed him.

Now that Khattala is in custody - captured by a Democratic president, to boot - he is suddenly "small potatoes" - a "patsy" whose apprehension gains us nothing.

Would we be hearing these same type of dismissive reports from Fox News if a Republican president had apprehended Khattala? It's doubtful.

The real issue here is not whether Khattala is truly "small potatoes", as Fox is so desperate for us to believe. Instead, the issue is that in the wake of its major national security disasters (Iraq, failure to find Osama, etc), Republicans are left with little alternative than to just discredit president Obama's successes.

Strange behavior indeed from people who claim to be such patriots.

Penny Wise, Pound Foolish Part Deux

I said a few days that when it comes to governing, Republicans are "penny wise and pound foolish, meaning that preconceived ideas (often set in concrete) about government being "inherently wasteful" often become self-fulfilling prophecies when the GOP gains power.

There are plenty of examples of this conscious and unconscious sabotage of government. One came today in the form of a news story about the numbers of staffers in Congress:

A quick refresher: In 1995, after winning a majority in the House for the first time in forty years, one of the first things the new Republican House leadership did was gut Congress’s workforce. They cut the “professional staff” (the lawyers, economists, and investigators who work for committees rather than individual members) by a third. They reduced the “legislative support staff” (the auditors, analysts, and subject-matter experts at the Government Accountability Office [GAO], the Congressional Research Service [CRS], and so on) by a third, too, and killed off the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) entirely. And they fundamentally dismantled the old committee structure, centralizing power in the House speaker’s office and discouraging members and their staff from performing their own policy research. (The Republicans who took over the Senate in 1995 were less draconian, cutting committee staff by about 16 percent and leaving the committee system largely in place.) Today, the GAO and the CRS, which serve both House and Senate, are each operating at about 80 percent of their 1979 capacity. While Senate committee staffs have rebounded somewhat under Democratic control, every single House standing committee had fewer staffers in 2009 than in 1994. Since 2011, with a Tea Party-radicalized GOP back in control of the House, Congress has cut its budget by a whopping 20 percent, a far higher ratio than any other federal agency, leading, predictably, to staff layoffs, hiring and salary freezes, and drooping morale.

Source: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/junejulyaugust_2014/features/the_big_lobotomy050642.php?page=all

Again, this is penny wise and pound foolish. In the short run, the elimination of these staffers may indeed save taxpayer money. But what's the effect in the long run on Congress when it lacks the staff to properly research and draft legislation that could be beneficial to the country?

Tellingly, while professional staff in Congress has been slashed during Republican years, other areas have expanded:

Since Republicans took control of the U.S. House in January 2011, Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has led a cost-cutting effort that has trimmed staff for House committees by nearly 20%, saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. But the number of committee staff responsible for press and communications work has increased by nearly 15% over the same period, according to House spending records.
In the first three months of 2010, with Democrats still in control of the chamber, the primary committees of the House reported employing 1,570 staff members, 74 of whom had "press" or "communications" or related terms in their job titles. Over the same period this year, the same committees reported 1,277 total employees, a 19% cut, 85 of whom had communications-related job titles.
Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said the numbers are "completely unsurprising. We promised responsible oversight of the Obama administration, and effective oversight requires communicating with the American people."

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/07/01/house-staff-cuts-communications-press/11425389/

This says a lot about the current state of the GOP. Staffers involved in doing actual work, like research for pending legislation, are out the door. The big focus now is "messaging" - telling the American people what they want to hear without actually acting on it.

As a result, Congress will be hobbled as it tries to solve the many problems currently facing the country. That's OK though, right? All the better for Republicans looking to prove their point about government's wastefulness and uselessness.

"They Say It Is A Capital Offense"

(With apologies to Bob Marley)

Ever since Boehner announced his intention to sue president Obama over "executive overreach", the pending lawsuit has become the talk of the town in Washington, DC. The news set off a feeding frenzy of speculation and criticism towards Boehner for wasting everyone's time with such a frivolous lawsuit.

For his part, Obama and company are reportedly thrilled about the lawsuit, eager to use it to make clear distinctions between a do-nothing Congress and a president who is being sued for trying to do his job:

[H]ere is something that shouldn’t be ignored: The White House LOVES the lawsuit. For one thing, it gives meaning to the White House’s various executive actions. Earlier this year during the State of the Union, many of us proclaimed [the president and his team are] simply playing “small ball.” But given this lawsuit, Republicans certainly don’t see them being small.

 

In addition, the lawsuit only emphasizes the contrast that one branch of government is doing SOMETHING while the other branch is doing NOTHING. Bottom line: The White House sees a political opportunity here – an opportunity that Republicans might not have seen coming.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/why-immigration-reform-died-congress-n145276

But now we can set aside some of the speculation, as the National Republican Senatorial Committee has finally come up with the bullshit charges they've decided to include in their lawsuit:

1) The time President Obama waived Obamacare for Unions, but not for you.

 

2) The time The Obama Administration spied on journalists and wouldn’t say why.

 

3) The time President Obama decided to attend the Senate Democrats retreat but not campaign with any of them.

 

4) The time President Obama restricted journalists from taking video and photos of him. Instead forcing them to use media provided by the White House.

 

5) The time President Obama delayed the KeystoneXL pipeline for more than 5 years, costing tens of thousands of jobs.

 

6) The time President Obama told you, you could keep your health plan even though he knew you couldn’t.

Source: http://www.nrsc.org/blog/6-times-the-president-did-whatever-he-wanted

This is it? These are the "high crimes and misdemeanors" that Republicans find egregious enough that they're suing the president - whining about the Keystone XL pipeline and attending a retreat for Senate Democrats?

In a previous blog post, I expressed a lot of anger over this obvious election year stunt. Today I can't help but shake my head over how pathetic this has become.

There have been many scandals of various sizes over this nation's two hundred twenty-odd year history: credit mobilier, tea pot dome, Watergate, Iran-Contra....

Now in 2014, Republicans are seriously arguing that Obama attending a retreat for Senate Democrats and then not campaigning with them is an example of an "imperial presidency" that must be shut down with a lawsuit.

Let's hope that Democrats add to their numbers in Congress this November so that there are actually adults working in Congress.