I have been accused from time to time, of being over the top when it comes to taking out my anger at the spoiled children who inhabit the halls of the US Congress. They do reprehensible things every day and yet I am not allowed to call for their march to the wall.
“Think about it: We have a sequester looming, one that could wreak havoc at the Pentagon; a coming series of budget confrontations that create real challenges in the management of the Defense Department; and an ongoing war.
And a little group of willful men and women, including those who have been the loudest critics of the sequester, are keeping the next head of the department from getting into office and beginning the hard job of managing the turbulence ahead.
That’s only the first on a list of irresponsible acts.
Until they actually feel real fear, deep down in their hearts fear, for their positions-we will still have to deal with this nonsense year in and year out. I despair deep in my heart of their being any positive improvement in the Congress of the United States. These men behave irresponsibly on important issues and they get away with it. Its only about insignificant things that they get run out of town on a rail-like who they sleep with. But when they do political things that threaten real damage to the country, like the sequester, NO ONE seems to be able to hold them to account.
Sometimes I wish the President had the power to dismiss Congress and call for new elections-as they do in a Parliamentary system. Something has to be done-its only February and we have had two graphic demonstrations of how a minority subverts the will of the majority. What is it going to take to get them to behave responsibly?
Another anti-constitution rant.
advise and consent.
Hagel is a boob but I guess he's your boob so that's ok.
Advise and Consent means actually voting on the nominee-NOT filibustering him. The filibuster is not a part of the Constitution. Anywhere.
This is why guys like Graham and the the crazy Senator from Texas need to be lit on fire.
1. Term Limits
2. Bi-partisan/Judicial Redistricting Panels for each state
3. Reversal of Citizens United decision – get Big Money/PACS out of the election process.
Redraw districts to be competitive rather than gerrymandering them or repeal the 17th amendment so states appoint the senate members.
Just read in the Post that the Senate is not in session so why not do what the dictator does and just appoint the boob as a recess appointment? Our kind of democracy with checks and balances rules!
@ Old H-2 Guy: We all ready have term limits for every person in the Senate and the House, they are called elections! If a guy is screwing up, then it is upon those whom he supposedly represents to throw him out. No need for limiting their term, it is built into the system. Now if the elections are fair and the gerrymandering is done away with, maybe more qualified people will actually get into the offices. That is what needs to be done more than term limits.
Congress reminds me of that show "Downton Abbey." Where the peerage that runs the abbey is pretty much broke, and the only way they can keep up apperances is to marry off people in the family to wealth in order to bleed them dry of their money. All the while the servants of the abbey go on doing what they do, because they don't know any better. The patriarch of the family does not want to change, or to the point will be willing to change, as long as the changes are minute, and the people who work in the abbey and surrounding don't realize that they are indeed changing their ways since it would disrupt the nice system they have, where the people get all from the peers everything for free (they live in the abbey for free) and the peers will be benign and take care of eveyone, provided that they use someone eles' money. Much like what we have in Congress today. A good series to watch.
Curtis,
You really need to cut down on the meds-or at the least read the actual Constitution (as amended). Recess appointments are perfectly legal and Obama is not unique in using them. Every President in recent history has made recess appointments. Which gets to another good point. Obama is not some power mad dictator-in fact he has essentially governed from the center. The difference between him and other Presidents however, is the quality of the Congress he has had to deal with. His opposition has a bunch of genuine loons who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground and don't care about the country-just fucking him over.
That is why something has to be done to get their attention. Maybe stringing Paul Ryan up from a lamppost on Constitution Avenue for starters?
Would you agree that Pelosi, Clyburn, Hoyer and Becerra are loons that should be hung up on Constitution AVenue as well?
"The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of thier of their wishes. in the spirit of the gift i take it"
FDR
We have voted the rascals in with the vain hope that they would govern not in the narrow intrests of some but for the good of the whole. We are sadly disappointed.
Maurice – You make a valid point regarding term limits/elections – but as long as the seemingly first priority of Congresscritters is to get re-elected, the pressure is on to create "safe" districts – and hence build seniority. If the Democrats succeed in regaining the House next time, Nancy Pelosi is waiting in the wings to become Speaker again. There is nothing I can do as a voter in my Congressional District to dislodge her, and keep her from exerting disproportionate influence.
Your Downton Abbey analogy is great!
No I would not agree that those reps need to be hung up on Constitution Avenue-because they just simply need to be voted out of office. The problem with Ryan is the manifest cruelty he defends-and the fact that there are so many selfish pigs who agree with him. Paul Ryan represents a philosophy that is at its core-superbly evil. The man is a bonafide liar, who wraps his lies up in a deceptive blanket of half truths.
“Not that the Republican Party hasn’t had its share of glib liars before. Mike Huckabee became so beloved so fast because his experience as a pastor had turned him into a master spinner of bullshit, a man who had learned to mimic the cadences of empathy and kindness so well that even some liberals mistake him for a man of compassion who simply has strange religious beliefs. But even Huckabee had his tells. They were especially visible to those of us who’ve had more exposure to the disingenuous folkways of Southern Baptists who praise Jesus in the daylight while keeping the darkest corners of the porn internet fiscally solvent at night. Those of us who picked up quickly the importance of not getting yourself stuck in a direct conversation with evangelical men who imagine themselves community leaders, lest you feel the need for a shower afterwards. We swiftly see the spark of hatred behind Huckabee’s jovial demeanor, one that flared to the surface repeatedly during his speech, particularly when he was thinking about the nerve of Barack Obama sitting in the Oval Office just because he won the election. Huckabee knows this about himself, which is why he sprinkles his speeches with faux self-deprecating humor; he hopes these jokes will make you forget the way the anger flares up in him, revealing periodically that no, he is not in this because he’s a man of sincere religious faith so much as a man of sincere fury that he had to live in an era where the white man’s right to rule everyone around him is being genuinely questioned.
But Paul Ryan? He isn’t crippled by any of that. Paul Ryan told lies like a man untroubled by passion. Like Huckabee, he’s a man who’s devoid of empathy and compassion, but he’s also scrubbed himself of anger. It may even be that he didn’t tell more lies than Huckabee, though I suppose he had to, as every word out of both their mouths was rooted in lies, and Ryan spoke longer than Huckabee. He’s not a robot like Mitt Romney is accused of being, either. His entire personality seems to be boiled down to the single character trait of “glib”. As if scientists found a way to distill a frat boy’s gives-no-fucks demeanor and create an entire human being out of it. He tells lies smoothly and without a single bump, because he’s been freed from the usual concerns that ordinary people have: what others think of you, if you’re a moral person, having concerns outside of winning. None of that appears to touch him.”
Skippy, no doubt you read that the court disagrees with you and found that obama's recess appointments violated the constitution since the senate was technically in session. Ruling from the center?
The ruling is at odds with almost a century of tradition to the opposite. Three Republican-appointed judges rejected a century or more of common presidential practice and gave an unprecedented interpretation of the scope of recess appointments. They said that unless vacancies occurred during the one period they defined — ignoring how Congress defines its own recesses — they could not be filled by recess appointments.
If the decision holds, it would, among other things, call into question every 5-4 decision made by the Supreme Court during the two years that Justice William J. Brennan Jr. served on a recess appointment, not to mention the decisions promulgated by the other federal judges who also have served on the same basis along with all decisions made by the National Labor Relations Board and other regulatory bodies with recess appointees.
That is clearly judicial overreach.
Somebody overreached. Who are the final arbiters of judicial overreach? It aint the president.
Last I understood, the Senate was allowed to filibuster any nominee for any reason. If they have the votes to stop it, the Democrats need to be a votin'. Otherwise, this can continue until the cows come home or the President nominates someone who would be more acceptable to the minority.
I also seem to recall that somebody named Harry Reid wanted to keep the 60 vote rule back when the Republican's held the Senate. Now HE wants to change the rules? Oh, the hits they keep on a commin'….