Yesterday, President Obama made 4 recess appointments. He appointed 3 people to the Board of Labor Relations and 1 to the newly formed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB appointment is the most contentious.
The new head, Richard Cordray, received an appointment even though the chamber was technically only in session every few days. Technically seems to be the big IF. The senate technically did not recess over the holiday, so there was no precedent for what President Obama did.
When Republicans took control of the House, going into pro forma sessions became the norm since neither chamber can recess for longer than three days without the consent of the other.
But now that Obama has decided that pro forma sessions don’t matter much, Republicans warn there is no stopping presidents from undermining the Senate’s traditional advise-and-consent role.
Senators who live close by in Maryland and Virginia are usually the ones who come in and gavel a session into formal existence and then close the session. The pro forma sessions only last minutes.
We shall see if the Obama maneuver works. The objection apparently wasn’t over Richard Cordray but rather the agency he is now the head of. I simply do not understand why anyone would be against consumer protection. People get scammed all the time and there is very little out there to protect the consumer. I welcome someone out there looking out for the little guy in a world that allows him to be continually screwed by banks, loan sharks, payday loan outfits, student loans, etc.
Why are conservatives against the average Joe getting protection from those who prey on others? We haven’t heard the end of this one.
Conservative website mogul Andrew Breitbart has quit the advisory board for GOProud, saying he has a “zero tolerance” policy for outing people.
Trouble started when GOProud’s Jimmy LaSalvia and Chris Barron reacted to an antigay Rick Perry television ad by angrily taking to Twitter, attacking pollster Tony Fabrizio.
“I’ve just about had it with faggots who line their pockets with checks from antigay homophobes while throwing the rest of us under the bus,” LaSalvia wrote.
GOProud issued a statement defending itself from the ensuing backlash, but that apparently only contributed to Breitbart’s disappointment.
“I have a zero tolerance attitude toward the intentional infliction of vocational and family harm by divulging the details of an individual’s sexual orientation as a weapon of political destruction,” Breitbart wrote on one of his websites, BigGovernment.com. Breitbart said he’d long ago told LaSalvia and Barron about his opinion on outing, which Breitbart said contributed to his “evolution from the political left to the right.”
President Barack Obama said Thursday it was just common sense to keep girls under the age of 17 from being able to buy a morning-after contraceptive pill off a drugstore shelf. Citing his own two daughters, Obama said: “I think most parents would probably feel the same way.”
Plenty of pediatric leaders and women’s advocacy groups did not, as reaction flowed in to the administration’s decision to prevent the over-the-counter sale of the anti-pregnancy drug to sexually active girls of younger ages.
Critics said politics had trumped science, again.
Yes, pretty much. President Obama, when he took office, pledged a commitment to scientific integrity. President Obama has said that he had nothing to do with the decision but does support Sebelius.
For those of you who don’t know Greg Reynolds, he and his wife frequently appear before the BOCS to attempt to make things right, especially for those who are least able to defend themselves. He has gone to bat for the elderly, kids and immigrants, just to name a few groups of folks. He was particularly vocal about getting the transportation to the senior centers back up and running. He bids us all not to leave our religion at the door of the Supervisors Chambers.
A correspondence from Greg Reynolds:
The Holly Acres Mobile Home Park story continues to unfold.
In the latest development in the Holly Acres Mobile Home Park the homeowners went to get the permits to proceed with the repairs to their damaged homes but the County denied the permits immediately after (and even though) the Board of Zoning Appeals had overturned the Zoning Administrator’s order preventing the repair and replacement of their damaged mobile homes.
It would be very helpful if you can attend the Board of Supervisors meeting this Tuesday, 11/29/2011 at 2 PM, to ask the Board members to help restore Holly Acres.
These 70 affordable homes do not seem to be a priority for the Board of County Supervisors but they are very important to the families that need permanent affordable housing.
Mark “Smokin’ Man” Block accused the Rick Perry campaign of leaking the sexual harassment story to Politico. He also blames Politico for using anonymous sources. He says both the campaign and Politico owe Herman Cain and his family an apology.
It seems to me that the story is old. There are 2 women who filed sexual harassment charges. Period.
A third woman has stepped forward who did not file charges but who felt like she was uncomfortable. Now any woman coming forward at this late date is just setting herself up for misery. She will be hounded by the press and some campaign will attempt to paint her as tramp of the century.
There is a lot of back-tracking and spin going on. I don’t believe the story is important. The handling of the problem is what is going to make or break Herman Cain. Yesterday it appeared he was on edge.
Ann Coulter herself has said the race card is being played. Herman Cain has been quoted as saying that this is coming up now because of the fact that he is black. Cain is no different than any other candidate who is out there and leading in the polls. If anyone sniffs out a weakness, the oppositional research will be all over it. Harry Truman needs to have a private word with Herman Cain: If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.
I am more concerned over Cain’s knowledge base than I am his woman problem. Many a good president has had women problems–including those we don’t know about.
During Herman Cain’s tenure as the head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s, at least two female employees complained to colleagues and senior association officials about inappropriate behavior by Cain, ultimately leaving their jobs at the trade group, multiple sources confirm to POLITICO.
The women complained of sexually suggestive behavior by Cain that made them angry and uncomfortable, the sources said, and they signed agreements with the restaurant group that gave them financial payouts to leave the association. The agreements also included language that bars the women from talking about their departures.
We have no opinion at this point because there are too many missing facts. However, that is certainly not going to stop the speculation.
What I do find offensive is to blame it on Cain being a conservative politician. There were enough bad boys out there the past couple of years to give John Edwards a good run for his money.
Speaking of John Edwards, he keeps getting in deeper and deeper. He is now in criminal court. However, some idiot reporter claimed some old rich woman backed him. Bunny Melon is hardly ‘some old rich woman.’ Are reporters just getting dumber or is it my imagination?
Back to Herman Cain–any speculation here? Please don’t say its because he is conservative….that is such an excuse.
There has been an on-going discussion on this blog about political parties, who belongs to which, and what our respective obligations are to a political party. It is safe to say that there are a fair number of Republicans on here. Some people are tea party Republicans, some folks are fiscal conservative Reagan-type Republicans, and some are generic Republicans.
There don’t seem to be card-carrying Democrats here but there are quite a few people who tend to be democratic supporters and voters. I was once an informal Republican and later became a card-carrying Democrat. Occasionally there were people chosen locally, state, or on the national evel who were just bad actors. I ran in to some folks I simply couldn’t vote for. So what do you do? I am an Independent now and have been for probably 20 years. I have no party localities.
Steve feels it is a matter of principle to vote for a Republican, since he is also an officer in the City organization. Is there a point where you shouldn’t just vote for party and should follow your conscience? What earmarks should we look for? It almost seems like we could end up electing the next Hitler if we don’t have some mental stops in place.
Geez, if Pat Robertson says the GOP is too extreme, you need to worry. Isn’t this the dude who said Katrina was caused by gay people? If Pat get it, so should everyone else. If Pat “liberals are akin to Nazis’ Robertson thinks you are too extreme, maybe he is on to something. Perhaps he has had an ephiphany.
Let’s focus. Who is the candidate who is going to come through here and do a big whup-ass on Obama? Just tell us the candidate. We will prepare. Thanks for the warning, Pat. Will the next warning be delivered by a horde of locusts?
Jon Stewart tells us that the soul of America has been awakened by Eric Cantor’s battle cry. Americans are being pitted against Americans. Who are we up against? University professors who can flunk you for beng too openly conservative at Fictional U! Go fighting figments of your paranoid imagination!
There is a long list of enemies. Can you list them? You might have to listen more than once. I did.
There is a little math involved and even a Venn diagram.
It appears that John Edwards will be indicted per the green light from DOJ. At issue is his use of campaign money to finance his pay-off to his mistress, Rielle Hunter. According to Huffington Post, much of the pay-off money came from a 99 year old heiress, Bunny Mellon. The Daily Beast reports:
You’d assume Rachel Lowe Lambert Lloyd Mellon—who, just shy of 100 years old, is probably the last surviving member of the old-money aristocracy that once lorded it over America—would be mortified by her involvement in a tabloid-ready sex scandal.
The heavy metal evangelist Bradlee Dean, whose opening prayer Friday at the Minnesota House of Representatives has sparked a firestorm, does not much like Islam, a religion he believes is at war with the United States.
Dean has long believed that President Obama is a Muslim, and he often insists that Obama has declared America a Muslim nation. So it wasn’t terribly surprising when he snuck a slur against the president into his prayer. The Minnesota House of Representatives, he acknowledged, is a nondenominational chamber, which he takes to mean that all kinds of Christians are welcome. “[I]t’s not about the Baptists and it’s not about the Catholics alone or the Lutherans or the Wesleyans, or the Presbyterians the evangelicals or any other denomination,” he said. The only head of the denomination—i.e., of the government —“is Jesus, as every president up until 2008 has acknowledged.”
Rep. Terry Morrow was so angry he shook. He responded:
“Mr. Speaker, I do trust and I do hope that every member of this chamber understands the gravity and the severity of the offense that had been given to many people within this chamber and out,” he said. “It has been my understanding that part of the justification, part of the explanation for starting our sessions with a prayer was that those prayers would never exclude, never marginalize a Minnesotan on the basis of their faith, on the basis of their beliefs, on the basis of who they are, and those expectations have been crushed today.”
WASHINGTON — Sen. Tom Coburn played a more active role than previously known in the negotiations between ex-Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) and his former aide, Doug Hampton. The extent of the Oklahoma Republican’s involvement is made clear in a report released Thursday by the Senate Ethics Committee that accuses the former senator of serious criminal violations.
Senator Ensign resigned in disgrace, under a great deal of pressure. People were led to believe that it was to save the Hamptons from having to testify before the Senate Ethics Committee and to avoid embarrassment. Now it seems that there is another reason–
Senator Tom Colburn knew much more about his friend’s infidelity and pay off to the Hamptons. According to HuffPost:
Coburn, a friend of Ensign’s who confronted him about the adultery, became involved as an intermediary in negotiations between Ensign and Doug Hampton. The former aide sought money from Ensign in spring 2009. Coburn negotiated the payment to Doug Hampton down from $8 million to about $2.8 million, according to the report.
Well shiver me timbers….Sarah Palin has announced she is not afraid of Jon Stewart. Then why doesn’t she accept his invitation? Plenty of Republicans have appeared on the daily show and were treated respectfully–guests like Tim Pawlenty, Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich, Tea Party leader Dick Armey and even longtime punching bags like former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former RNC chair Michael Steele — all have appeared and have engaged in lively discussion and debate. Rumsfeld even tweeted: “Just wrapped up one of the most thoughtful interviews of book tour with @thedailyshow”). Stewart typically is a gracious host.
The Lock and Load Rhetoric of American Politics Isn’t Just a Metaphor
I’m not saying that putting a bullseye[sic] * on Arizona Democrat Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ congressional race – as Sarah Palin did – was an explicit or intentional invitation to violence. Nor am I saying that the “Get on Target for Victory” events held by the guy Giffords beat – “Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly” – was the reason her assassin went after her. This tragedy is still unfolding, and the questions of motive and incitement will be argued about for a long time to come.
But I am saying that the “lock and load”/”take up your arms”rhetoric of American politics isn’t just an overheated metaphor. For years, the language of sports has dominated political journalism, and discourse about hardball and the horserace and the rest of the macho athletic lexicon has been a factor in the trivialization of our public sphere. This has helped dumb down democracy, making a serious national discussion about anything important too wonky for words.
The “second amendment solution,” though, does something worse than make politics a branch of entertainment. It makes it a blood sport. I know politics ain’t beanbag. But words have consequences, rhetoric shapes reality, and much as we like to believe that we are creatures of reason, there is something about our species’ limbic system and lizard brainstems that makes us susceptible to irrational fantasies.
If you’re worried that violent video games may make kids prone to bad behavior; if you think that misogynic and homophobic rap lyrics are dangerous to society; if you believe that a nipple in a Superbowl halftime show is a threat to our moral fabric – then surely you should also fear that the way public and media figures have framed political participation with shooting gallery imagery is just as potentially lethal.
I believe Marty Kaplan just said it all. You don’t have to go to a national level to feel the sting of exactly what he was talking about. And it doesn’t all have to do with fire arms metaphors. The entire bullying tones of politics is felt. Private citizens are made fun of just for expressing their opinions. We all know what I am talking about.
I don’t believe any one thing triggered Jarod to go on a rampage. I will leave that to the experts. He was obviously psychotic. However, the vitriolic attacks I have heard for the past 48 hours on Sheriff Dupnik have been shocking. I have heard major unnamed networks call for his removal and he has been castigated as though he spat on the pearly gates. What happened to those ideas of Americana like free speech and democratically elected officers? Dupnik lives in the region and knows a lot more about the pulse and tone of his area than any of us.
* the graphic on the map targetting Rep. Giffords was a rifle scope, not a bull’s eye.
Sarah Palin also hunts American icons. Now Palin is after JFK. Why is she targetting all the American icons? Let’s see: Reagan, Daddy and Mrs. Bush, W. Bush, and now none other than JFK. What has he done?
Back in the summer we ran a post celebrating the 50th anniversary of JFK’s speech to the ministers of Houston on the importance of the wall of separation between church and state. That speech was considered to be one of Kennedy’s most important. To this day, he is the only Roman Catholic to be elected President of the United States.
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend has addressed Palin’s erroneous thinking in an opinion piece in the Washington Post Saturday:
In her new book, “America by Heart,” Palin objects to my uncle’s famous 1960 speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, in which he challenged the ministers – and the country – to judge him, a Catholic presidential candidate, by his views rather than his faith. “Contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for president,” Kennedy said. “I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president who happens also to be a Catholic.”
