Does "Kettle of Fish" Apply Here? ("Fine" Obviously Not)
It has been tough for me recently to properly corrale the energy, time, and focus to post here, for a variety of reasons that include the delightful birth of our first grandchild. She reduces me at times to a gibbering fool, and my time is her time.
But I feel compelled tonight to do something in honor of this momentous (and mendacious) stoppage of government, all in the name of yet another damned entitled egomaniacal ideological Ivy-leaguer. I am going to largely stick to the sidelines here.
I could cede my "fish" metaphor to the inimitable Bob Z, namely Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 ("Everybody Must Get Stoned"). It is that sort of craziness we are facing.
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It was my distinct impression that Ted had nothing to learn from anyone else
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In addition to Mazin and Leitch, several fellow classmates who asked that their names not be used described the young Cruz with words like “abrasive,” "intense," “strident,” “crank,” and “arrogant." Four independently offered the word “creepy,” with some pointing to Cruz’s habit of donning a paisley bathrobe and walking to the opposite end of their dorm’s hallway where the female students lived.
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Former Obama speech-writer Jon Favreau (eww, that name sounds French!):
The most terrifying speech I ever wrote for President Obama was one he never gave. On July 30, 2011, I began drafting an address to the nation about what would happen if Congress refused to raise the debt limit within 48 hours, thus denying the United States Treasury the ability to pay our country’s bills for the first time in 235 years.
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Fortunately, the draft speech never left my computer screen. The next day, at the last possible moment, the House of Representatives voted to provide the Treasury with the ability to pay our bills. But their decision to negotiate at the brink, under a dark cloud of uncertainty, still led to real economic damage: the stock market had the worst single day since the 2008 financial crisis, plunging 635 points. Billions in higher borrowing costs were added to the national debt. Economic growth slowed. Job growth slowed. And for the very first time, the United States lost its triple-A credit rating.
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But I feel compelled tonight to do something in honor of this momentous (and mendacious) stoppage of government, all in the name of yet another damned entitled egomaniacal ideological Ivy-leaguer. I am going to largely stick to the sidelines here.
I could cede my "fish" metaphor to the inimitable Bob Z, namely Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 ("Everybody Must Get Stoned"). It is that sort of craziness we are facing.
[clip]
It was my distinct impression that Ted had nothing to learn from anyone else
[clip]
In addition to Mazin and Leitch, several fellow classmates who asked that their names not be used described the young Cruz with words like “abrasive,” "intense," “strident,” “crank,” and “arrogant." Four independently offered the word “creepy,” with some pointing to Cruz’s habit of donning a paisley bathrobe and walking to the opposite end of their dorm’s hallway where the female students lived.
[clip]
Former Obama speech-writer Jon Favreau (eww, that name sounds French!):
The most terrifying speech I ever wrote for President Obama was one he never gave. On July 30, 2011, I began drafting an address to the nation about what would happen if Congress refused to raise the debt limit within 48 hours, thus denying the United States Treasury the ability to pay our country’s bills for the first time in 235 years.
[clip]
Fortunately, the draft speech never left my computer screen. The next day, at the last possible moment, the House of Representatives voted to provide the Treasury with the ability to pay our bills. But their decision to negotiate at the brink, under a dark cloud of uncertainty, still led to real economic damage: the stock market had the worst single day since the 2008 financial crisis, plunging 635 points. Billions in higher borrowing costs were added to the national debt. Economic growth slowed. Job growth slowed. And for the very first time, the United States lost its triple-A credit rating.
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The obvious lesson from this entirely self-inflicted fiasco is never, ever to treat America’s bill-paying authority as a bargaining chip in political negotiations. The president has learned this lesson. House Republicans have not. And so, incredibly—insanely—we find ourselves a few weeks away from the same self-inflicted fiasco just two years later.
Why?
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Republicans are still whining about Dan Pfeiffer’s analogy that compared their list of debt-ceiling demands to someone negotiating with a bomb strapped to their chest. Perhaps they prefer Mitch McConnell’s 2011 declaration that the global economy is a “hostage that’s worth ransoming.” Either way, the Republicans should help us more aptly describe a situation where they demand we accept their ideological agenda in exchange for not wreaking havoc on our lives.
“The president must negotiate!” Really? Because in most negotiations, both sides stand to gain something. In this negotiation, the House Republicans get to pass policies on which Mitt Romney ran and lost, while the president gets to live in a country that isn’t suffering from yet another economic calamity, a country that isn’t seen as the world’s superpower turned deadbeat nation. How wonderful for him. What a shining example of bipartisan cooperation to be celebrated by the Washington media.
What a joke.
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And, under the headline "Bogus 'He Said-She Said' Reporting Led to the Shutdown," Josh Holland at Salon offers this, a properly critical reminder that we actually have as I would characterize it virtually no true journalism in the recognized mainstream media these days (there's more at link at this journalistic failure):
It’s almost certain that we’ll see the government shut down on Tuesday. The last time that happened, in 1996, it cost $2.1 billion in today’s dollars. Breaching the debt limit would be far, far worse – nobody knows how bad, exactly, but everyone agrees that it would be really bad. Therisk of finding out has never been greater. This showdown is by far the most dangerous of a series of fiscal “crises” that have been contrived during the Obama presidency.
Beltway reporters who see their professed neutrality as a higher ground bear an enormous amount of responsibility for encouraging this perversion of democratic governance. With a few notable exceptions, the media have framed what Jonathan Chait called “a kind of quasi-impeachment” in typical he said-she said fashion, obscuring the fact that the basic norms that govern Congress have been thrown out the window by a small cabal of tea party-endorsed legislators from overwhelmingly Republican districts. The media treat unprecedented legislative extortion as typical partisan negotiations, and in doing so they normalize it.
But it’s not normal. Republicans are demanding that Democrats unwind their signature achievement – a piece of legislation that took 18 months to pass, survived a Supreme Court challenge and a presidential election – in exchange for a stopgap budget resolution. On Saturday, they tacked on a provision that would limit access to contraceptives.
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A negotiation is between two parties that want different things and come to some compromise. Nobody should want a shutdown or a default and passing budgets and paying the federal government’s debts aren’t Democratic priorities. Rather, what we are seeing now is a “negotiation” in which Republicans are demanding a lot and offering absolutely nothing in return. MSNBC’s Steve Benen offered a handy chart to make this point clear:
The reason all of this is important is simple: A faction within one of our parties has rejected the basic structure of our democratic system – the separation of powers. The only thing that will break the fever that grips them – the only thing that can break the fever – is intense public backlash, and not just from Democratic partisans, but also from the majority of Republicans who don’t identify with the tea party movement and oppose these antics. By muddying the waters of what’s really going on here with their perpetual false equivalence, the Beltway media is making that reckoning unlikely to occur.
It's an astonishing moment. Not that we have lacked for them in the last, say, 13 years, ehh?.
[clip]
And, under the headline "Bogus 'He Said-She Said' Reporting Led to the Shutdown," Josh Holland at Salon offers this, a properly critical reminder that we actually have as I would characterize it virtually no true journalism in the recognized mainstream media these days (there's more at link at this journalistic failure):
It’s almost certain that we’ll see the government shut down on Tuesday. The last time that happened, in 1996, it cost $2.1 billion in today’s dollars. Breaching the debt limit would be far, far worse – nobody knows how bad, exactly, but everyone agrees that it would be really bad. Therisk of finding out has never been greater. This showdown is by far the most dangerous of a series of fiscal “crises” that have been contrived during the Obama presidency.
Beltway reporters who see their professed neutrality as a higher ground bear an enormous amount of responsibility for encouraging this perversion of democratic governance. With a few notable exceptions, the media have framed what Jonathan Chait called “a kind of quasi-impeachment” in typical he said-she said fashion, obscuring the fact that the basic norms that govern Congress have been thrown out the window by a small cabal of tea party-endorsed legislators from overwhelmingly Republican districts. The media treat unprecedented legislative extortion as typical partisan negotiations, and in doing so they normalize it.
But it’s not normal. Republicans are demanding that Democrats unwind their signature achievement – a piece of legislation that took 18 months to pass, survived a Supreme Court challenge and a presidential election – in exchange for a stopgap budget resolution. On Saturday, they tacked on a provision that would limit access to contraceptives.
[clip]
A negotiation is between two parties that want different things and come to some compromise. Nobody should want a shutdown or a default and passing budgets and paying the federal government’s debts aren’t Democratic priorities. Rather, what we are seeing now is a “negotiation” in which Republicans are demanding a lot and offering absolutely nothing in return. MSNBC’s Steve Benen offered a handy chart to make this point clear:
The reason all of this is important is simple: A faction within one of our parties has rejected the basic structure of our democratic system – the separation of powers. The only thing that will break the fever that grips them – the only thing that can break the fever – is intense public backlash, and not just from Democratic partisans, but also from the majority of Republicans who don’t identify with the tea party movement and oppose these antics. By muddying the waters of what’s really going on here with their perpetual false equivalence, the Beltway media is making that reckoning unlikely to occur.
It's an astonishing moment. Not that we have lacked for them in the last, say, 13 years, ehh?.
posted by Sir Gumbo at 12:07 AM
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