The Commentariat -- Aug. 2, 2013
Filibusted Again. Ted Barrett of CNN: "In yet another sign that Congress is headed for a clash in the fall over government spending, Senate Republicans Thursday blocked a transportation and housing bill, arguing it would break budget spending caps. It was a significant defeat for Democrats and a win for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, who persuaded several Republicans who had previously voted to support the higher spending level to change their positions and vote to block the bill." ...
... All I can tell you is he has never worked harder against a member of his own party than he did against me today. -- Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the only Republican who voted for the transportation bill, when asked if Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's fear of his tea party challenger might explain why he pressured Republicans to vote no
P.S. In neon-red Kentucky, even McConnell's Democratic challenger, Alison Lundergan Grimes, is polling even with him. -- Constant Weader ...
... Ramsey Cox of the Hill: "The Senate confirmed President Obama's nominee to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. On an 87-10 vote Wednesday, the Senate approved the nomination of Samantha Power. Nearly 30 GOP senators voted with Democrats to approve her nomination." CW: Power was not one of the seven nominees Senate Republicans agreed to confirm in a deal to avert a rules change that would eliminate the 60-vote threshold for administration appointees. ...
... Jeremy Herb of the Hill: "The Senate confirmed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey to a second two-year term by voice vote on Thursday. The Senate approved Dempsey's nomination as part of a large package of nominations that were approved by voice vote before the Senate kicked off its month-long August recess. The Senate also approved Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman Adm. James Winnefeld and a host of other military nominations." ...
... Jonathan Weisman & Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "Congress appeared at a dead end, unable to pass spending bills at the levels mandated by the across-the-board spending cuts, but unwilling to retreat to higher numbers set by the 2011 Budget Control Act before those cuts went into force." After the Senate bill failed, a [bipartisan??] bloc of eight Senators went to the White House to discuss Plan B (or X or whatever). CW: Worse news: Obama is still talking deficit reduction, & McConnell (who was not in the group of eight) still says the U.S. is about to become Greece.
Hastert Rule, Part 1. Greg Sargent: House "Republicans will obey the Hastert Rule until the end of time." In answer to a question posed in a town-hall meeting, Rep. Paul Ryan gave advocates some hope that immigration reform bills would come to the floor whether or not they had the support of a majority of Republicans; turns out he was lying. CW: Ryan has always been adept at lying directly to constituents' faces on matters he knows to be untrue. ...
... Steve Benen: "It's frustrating, but the fate of immigration reform largely comes down to one person: House Speaker John Boehner. And as of now, he's too weak, cowed, and confused to do much of anything." ...
Hastert Rule, Part 2. If You Thought We Were Cruel Last Week.... Erik Wasson of the Hill: "House Republicans are drafting legislation that would cut $40 billion from the federal food stamp program over 10 years. That's nearly double the $20.5 billion in cuts that were included in the farm bill legislation that failed on the House floor in June. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) ... wants to pass the food stamp bill with only GOP votes. [Emphasis added.] The deeper cuts are meant to attract conservatives who felt the $20.5 reduction was too low." ...
... Tim Egan: "Just now, a cell of several hundred people has been dispatched into the American summer, to picnics, town halls, radio stations, hospitals and Little League playing fields, with a mission to derail the economic recovery and drum up support for sabotaging federal law. They're not terrorists, nor are they agents of a foreign government. This is your United States Congress, the Republican House, on recess for the next five weeks. They even have a master plan, a 31-page kit put together by the House Republican Conference, for every member to follow...." ...
"The Grifter," Act II, Scene 1
Ted Cruz: Republicans should simply vote to fund all of federal government except for Obamacare.
Audience Member: What are the chances of that?
Cruz: The chances of that today are zero.
... Jed Lewison of Daily Kos: "So if Cruz was right when he said there was 'zero chance' of his plan actually working, then why is he pushing it? The most obvious answer is that he thinks it will help position him for 2016.... And why are outside GOP groups like Club for Growth and Heritage Action joining Cruz? Because there's a big portion of the GOP base that has no idea how absurd the defund Obamacare scheme is -- and they are ready, eager, and willing to keep on sending money to people who are willing to mislead them. So, yes, this is sort of a civil war. But at its core, what's really going on is hilarious mix of 2016 ambition and grift."
** Fareed Zakaria, in the Washington Post, on the root of all of Washington's ills: lobbyists. "The permanent government of the United States is no longer defined by party or a branch but by a profession comfortably encamped around the federal coffers.... The result is bad legislation." Zakaria draws a parallel with the fall of the Roman Empire when senators institutionalized corruption; hardly original, but apt. ...
... CW Note: I thought I might like a painting of the fall of Rome to illustrate Zakaria's column. So I Googled images for the "fall of Rome," & I found quite a few. Most of the pictures were used to illustrate sentiments like this one from someone named Paul Benedict, who describes himself as a libertarian: "... the fall of Athens and of the Roman Republic can be linked to evidence of rampant, institutionalized homosexuality." And so on & so forth. What's particularly discouraging is that Benedict (& writers at the other sites I visited) are articulate essayists.
NEW. Annie Lowrey of the New York Times: "Mr. Obama is now in the process of interviewing three candidates for the position at the helm of the central bank: [Lawrence] Summers; Janet L. Yellen, the vice chairwoman at the Federal Reserve, who had generally been considered the front-runner for the job; and a dark horse for the post, Donald L. Kohn, a former Fed vice chairman." Meanwhile, Summers' fans -- many of whom work in the White House -- are busily buffing his image, just as the President did in a closed-door meeting with Democrats this week. CW: I don't think our "Summers Sucks" tee-shirts are gonna work.
** Paul Krugman: "Janet Yellen, the vice chairwoman of the Fed's Board of Governors, is ... the best-qualified person in America to take over when Ben Bernanke steps down as chairman. Yet there are not one but two sexist campaigns under way against Ms. Yellen. One is a whisper campaign whose sexism is implicit, while the other involves raw misogyny.... Both campaigns have another problem, too: They're based on bad economic analysis."
Obama 2.0. AP: "Barack Obama has chosen [John Koskinen,] a retired corporate and government official with experience managing numerous organizations in crisis, to take over the Internal Revenue Service, which is under fire for screening of political groups." CW: The story doesn't say so, but the IRS post requires Senate confirmation. ...
... CW: now, in our educational series "The Hackery Chronicles," contrast the AP's lede with Politico's characterization, by Lauren French: "Obama said Thursday he plans to nominate Koskinen for a job that's never glamorous but has become all the more daunting after the IRS revealed in May that it subjected tea party groups to inappropriate scrutiny when they applied for a tax exemption. The pressure is only growing as Congress pummels the IRS over its role in enforcing Obamacare." (Emphasis added.)
... This is the second graf of the Politico story, & it contains at least two misleading statements, one suggesting that the IRS scrutiny was limited to right-wing groups & the other that "Congress" -- not "Congressional Republicans" -- were "pummeling" the IRS. In addition, it isn't clear that the scrutiny was "inappropriate" -- that's a controversial charge, not a fact. And there's no hint that the IRS "revelation" was a Darrell Issa Production, not the product of a spontaneous IRS audit. French goes on to write, "Fallout from the tea party targeting practice consumed the White House in the early months of the summer and though the administration has more recently dismissed the debacle — Obama lamented 'phony' scandals -- Republicans won't let go." Not a hint, mind you, as to the substantive reasons Obama dismissed the Tea Pity Party "targeting" as a "phony" scandal.
Andrew Miga of the AP: " The Postal Service takes pictures of every piece of mail processed in the United States -- 160 billion last year -- and keeps them on hand for up to a month. In an interview with The Associated Press, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said the photos of the exterior of mail pieces are used primarily for the sorting process, but they are available for law enforcement, if requested. The photos have been used 'a couple of times' by to trace letters in criminal cases, Donahoe told the AP on Thursday, most recently involving ricin-laced letters sent to President Barack Obama and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. 'We don't snoop on customers,' said Donahoe, adding that there's no big database of the images because they are kept on nearly 200 machines at processing facilities across the country. Each machine retains only the images of the mail it processes."
Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian: "President Obama told key members of Congress on Thursday that he was 'open to suggestions' for reforming the National Security Agency surveillance programs that have embroiled his administration in controversy. Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who is among the Senate's leading critics of the NSA's bulk phone records collection, said he left a meeting at the White House confident that 'constructive' changes to the programs would soon take shape." ...
... Mark Landler of the New York Times: "President Obama is even less likely to go through with a visit to Moscow this fall after Russia's decision on Thursday to grant Edward J. Snowden temporary asylum. For Mr. Obama, though, the Snowden affair is only one of myriad reasons to beg off the scheduled meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin.... The decline in the American-Russian relationship has been remarkably swift since Mr. Putin's return to the presidency last year." ...
... Alec Luhn, et al., of the Guardian: "The White House expressed anger and dismay on Thursday after Russia granted temporary asylum to the American whistleblower Edward Snowden and allowed him to leave the Moscow airport where he had been holed up for over a month.... [White House press secretary Jay Carney said,] 'As we know he's been in Russia now for many weeks. There is a huge risk associated with ... removing that information from secure areas. You shouldn't do it, you can't do it, it's wrong.'" ...
... Alissa de Carbonnel of Reuters: "U.S. fugitive Edward Snowden will publish no more leaks but instead look to build a life in Russia where he has been granted a year-long asylum, his lawyer said on Thursday. Anatoly Kucherena, a Russian lawyer who is assisting Snowden, said the 30-year-old has found shelter in a private home of American expatriates after leaving Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport.... A pledge not to publish more information that could harm the United States was the condition under which Russian President Vladimir Putin said the American could receive safe harbor." ...
... Julia Joffe of the New Republic has more on this new chapter in young Lord Snowden's adventuresome life: "Edward Snowden is already getting job offers and calls from Russian girls, says his laywer." Also, ironically, the government has almost certainly bugged the place he's living, wherever that maybe (maybe with U.S. spies), & Russian spooks are likely to stop by from time to time when he's not home. ....
... A Cautionary Tale. CW: Had I run these links earlier today, the caution would have been, "Don't Google 'backpacks' & 'pressure cookers' in the same time frame if you don't want a 6-person terrorist task force dropping by to grill you. Because, um, Ed Snowden was right." Or, as the Michele Catalano, the author of the original story wrote,
This is where we are at. Where you have no expectation of privacy. Where trying to learn how to cook some lentils could possibly land you on a watch list. Where you have to watch every little thing you do because someone else is watching every little thing you do. All I know is if I'm going to buy a pressure cooker in the near future, I'm not doing it online. I'm scared. And not of the right things. ...
Artwork by EastburyIllustration.com... BUT now it turns out the caution is, "Your employer is monitoring your every keystroke." Alexia Tsotsis of Tech Crunch: "Turns out the visit was prompted by the searches, but not in the way most speculation asserted -- by a law enforcement-initiated, NSA-enabled dragnet of the couple's web history. It turns out either Catalano or her husband were conducting these searches from a work computer. And that employer ... called the police on their former employee." ...
... CW: it was the husband of their son, & he's no longer working at the company. And that "terrorist task force" turned out to be the Suffolk County police. That employers monitor their employees' activities is not news, and it's (mostly) legal. ...
... "How a Paranoic Blogger Made Everyone Scared to Google Pressure Cookers." Adrian Chen of Gawker: "... the speed at which Catalano's post spread* shows the resonance of any surveillance stories, post-Edward Snowden. The scope of the NSA's revelations must have led journalists and Twitter-ers to ignore the fact that Catalano's story seemed fishy from the beginning."
... * For instance, the Guardian republished Catalano's post in its entirety. And as Chen's post illustrates with multiple examples, her claims engendered an instant "internet privacy shit-storm." ...
... Digby's take: "... it looks as though the 'Insider Threat' program is working quite well even in the private sector. Even if Big Brother isn't personally watching you, your employer is doing it on his behalf." ...
... CW: IMHO, the employer was wrong to snoop on the employee, but once s/he had done so, s/he was right to notify the cops if s/he had a real concern & wasn't just acting out of spite. AND, BTW, the nosy neighbor (or employer) is still more effective at highlighting suspicious activity than is the NSA -- unless you assume that the NSA is just smarter than the Suffolk police & "reasoned" -- via some algorithm -- that the husband/son wasn't a terrorist.
Benghazi! Jake Tapper of CNN: "Sources now tell CNN dozens of people working for the CIA were on the ground [the night four Americans were killed in Benghazi, Libya], and that the agency is going to great lengths to make sure whatever it was doing, remains a secret. CNN has learned the CIA is involved in what one source calls an unprecedented attempt to keep the spy agency's Benghazi secrets from ever leaking out.... The lack of information and pressure to silence CIA operatives is disturbing to U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf [R], whose district includes CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.... Speculation on Capitol Hill has included the possibility the U.S. agencies operating in Benghazi were secretly helping to move surface-to-air missiles out of Libya, through Turkey, and into the hands of Syrian rebels." ...
... Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog: "The right ... is now cackling in triumph.... But wait -- wasn't the scandal of Benghazi supposed to be that Obama, who hates America and wants our enemies to win, allowed the consulate to go undefended, then covered up what happened because he was running for reelection claiming to have Al Qaeda on the run...? Doesn't this kinda blow that narrative completely out of the water?"
Ben Protess & Susanne Craig of the New York Times: "A federal jury found the [former Goldman Sachs] trader, Fabrice Tourre, liable on six counts of civil securities fraud after a three-week trial in Lower Manhattan. The case had given both sides -- the government and Mr. Tourre -- a chance to repair their reputations. For the Securities and Exchange Commission, a regulator dogged by its failure to thwart the crisis, the case offered a shot at redemption following one courtroom disappointment after another, including two similar mortgage-related cases that crumbled last year."
Amy Chozick & Michael Grynbaum of the New York Times on how the Clintons try to protect Huma Abedin, the wife of Anthony Weiner.
News Ledes
Washington Post: "A suspected al-Qaeda threat prompted the United States to issue a rare worldwide travel alert Friday, just a day after it announced that it would shutter 21 U.S. embassies across the Muslim world this weekend. U.S. officials said the threat was tied to al-Qaeda's Yemeni affiliate, which previously has been linked to plots to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner and cargo flights. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told ABC News that ... an exact target was not known, 'but the intent seems clear. The intent is to attack Western, not just U.S., interests.'"
Reuters: "U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in Pakistan Egypt's army had been 'restoring democracy' when it toppled [President Mohamed] Mursi. 'The military was asked to intervene by millions and millions of people, all of whom were afraid of a descendance into chaos, into violence,' he told Pakistan's GEO TV. 'And the military did not take over, to the best of our judgment so - so far.'"
Reuters: "A supreme court ruling upholding a tax fraud conviction against former center-right leader Silvio Berlusconi has left the fate of Italy's fragile ruling coalition in the balance, although his supporters said the government would not be brought down."
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The gulf between what NSA officials say & what Ed Snowden claims is deeper than the deepest ocean, wider than the sea.
Stephen Stromberg of the WashPo wrote in a post last night, "... the NSA has to document a 'reasonable, articulable suspicion' that a phone number is linked to a worthwhile foreign intelligence target before entering the database to gather information on the contacts connected to it.... Only 22 NSA agents have the authority to open the database." I'm going to assume that Ed Snowden was not one of the 22 "super-analysts." In addition, NSA deputy director John Inglis claimed in Congressional testimony earlier this week "that NSA agents last year used 300 suspect numbers to begin queries of the database, and they ultimately passed 500 numbers to the FBI for further investigation based on their querying." So that's 500 out of millions of phone numbers.
On the other side, Glenn Greenwald revealed two days ago that "A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden." The Power Point training documents that he provided surely lend credence to that claim. You don't write up a training manual for 22 top-level people, and if you did, you sure wouldn't give a copy to a kid in Hawaii. It's true that this particular training aid is way outdated -- it goes back to the days of the Bush administration so I'd assume it had been superseded more than once.
Snowden has claimed he had the "authority" (and here I think he meant he had the "ability") to access anybody's e-mails, phone records, etc., including the President's. In any event, it sure appears to me that thousands, or at least hundreds, of analysts are sifting & winnowing our billions of communications and can read them if they feel like it, whether "authorized" to do so or not.
The NSA is denying the veracity of Greenwald's report: "NSA officials, lawmakers, and the White House were quick to throw cold water on the leaked document and the Guardian report. 'Allegations of widespread, unchecked analyst access to NSA collection data are simply not true.' the NSA said in statement Thursday. 'Access to XKeyscore, as well as all of NSA's analytic tools, is limited to only those personnel who require access for their assigned tasks.'” Really? How many "personnel ... require access"? Twenty-two? Come on.
On top of that, Jane Mayer of the New Yorker wrote a piece some time back where she revealed that NSA employees &/or contractors were having fun listening in to & snickering about the sexy calls between soldiers serving overseas & their significant others stateside. Surely these juvenile snoopers weren't the 22 big-shot authorities, either.
So which is it? Based on the evidence, I can't see where the NSA claim of limited access to private communications has any credibility. Can anyone offer an explanation that makes these apparently conflicting claims jibe? If the answer is, "We tell the analysts not to access private data without getting authorization," that's like saying, "We set hungry toddlers at a table piled with cookies & tell them not to eat any cookies till we say they can have one or two."
Marie
On July 29th, the NYT Editorial Board took an excellent position on Summers vs. Yellen. (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/opinion/choosing-the-next-fed-leader.html )
And while there's been a seemingly subsequent Obama show of support for Summers, which has outraged many progressives (myself included). But, when you come across a comment such as this that appeared below that very NYTimes article—makes you wonder how progressive are progressives!
( Start of the comment from one Abin Sur): "I am a Liberal who has stood for the rights of women my entire life. But I don't think this is a women's job. And the reason is that to inspire confidence there is a certain degree of virility required. It has nothing to do with an economic philosophy, or qualifications, or experience, I just think the markets would be more comfortable with a man..."
Goes to show, some haven't "...come a long way, baby!"
Of course, I have my own baggage...(know it isn't nice to judge others by their physical appearance )...but most everyone has no problem deriding Mitch McConnell's turtle-like appearance—hence my observation of Summers' physiognomy is: iguana!
Can't make the conflicting claims jibe because they don't. The explanation? Someone is lying and my money is on the NSA and its minions. In fact, I would bet the ranch on it.
Why?
Because I can think of only one partial exception to the general rule of technological progress: if we have figured out how to do it we will, especially if we can attach significant profit ($$$=power) to it. Consider the extraordinary momentum behind our use of fossils fuels for everything from our transportation to producing our clothes, our containers and all the food and drink we can fit in them. Climate change? Health concerns? Both brushed aside by the fossil fuel juggernaut with nary a thought for the consequences. And "security," a happy marriage of the military mind set and Silicon Valley, has become a very big business, indeed.
The only exception to the rule I can think of is the hit and miss control we have exerted over our use of nuclear energy, and that because of another rule: if we really frightened by what a technology can do to us, we take some notice of it. As Condi Rice well knew, mere mention of mushroom clouds gets our attention, but I'm not sure what the mushroom cloud of the current spy on everything regime would look like.
The essential problem of the current spying regime is its invisibility. Is it a threat to our privacy? Absolutely, but I'm not sure how much most people care. Except for isolated multi-billion dollar building in remote Utah, the electronic sweeps to which we are all subject are pretty much invisible, out of sight and hence out of mind. At Safeway (so far) at least you have to give them your card before all your dark dietary secrets are recorded on a mainframe in Oakland.
From time to time, I mention the Great Collective toward which we are surely heading. One of the consequences of living so closely together (physically or linked electronically) is the death of secrets, as Andrew Weiner has good reason to know. The question is do we care enough--are we frightened enough by the consequences?-- to do something about it.
I'm not sure, in fact I see little evidence that we do.
The Fall of Empire and those awful gays.
Marie links to an article written by a far-right conservative alarmist who sees gays in his Cheerios and likens teachers, in another piece, to Robespierre's head-lopping zealots let loose during the Reign of Terror.
As in so many, many cases of right-wing re-engineering of the past to fit conservative ideological goals, cherry picking is the order of the day. Historical documents, personages, and events are pulled apart and jammed back together in ways that would have appalled even Dr. Frankenstein. Instead of wading through the muck of revisionist (and fictional) tinkering, let's ask an expert.
According to Edward Gibbon, author of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a number of factors (besides, of course, the non-existent gay agenda) contributed to Rome's deterioration. A couple of weeks ago, Barbarossa and I had a back and forth about the weakening of the Roman army, after the fall of the Republic, due to nepotism. The dramatic proliferation of sinecures, especially within the ranks of the landed gentry, also hastenend the dissolution of Roman life and most certainly curtailed the effectiveness of public offices. But the two things sited by Gibbon as the most prevalent sources of decline both serve as vital components of modern American conservatism: a yen for privatization and....(drum roll) religion.
Outsourcing, especially the use of Roman era mercenaries like Blackwater, so much admired and employed by Bush and Cheney, for jobs previously handled by the military, aided the slippage by relying on for-profit groups that had no especial love for or allegiance to the state.
And the spread of Christianity, according to Gibbon (and he makes some powerful arguments for this), increased the decline in civic virtue by demanding that adherents forgo this life for the glories of the next. In other words, religion superseded engagement with the state allowing the civic superstructure to fall into disrepair and finally collapse. How many times have we heard present day preachers demand that congregants display their love for god and their disdain for the secular by openly flouting the rule of law. This, in Gibbon's eyes was a death blow for Rome.
Sexual dissolution, debauchery, and libertinism certainly accompanied the fall, but that would include plenty of heterosexual hippity-hopping as well, and in any event would have been tangential to, not a primary cause of decline.
So, sorry. Gay agenda not responsible for Fall of Rome. At least not in the real world. If someone is looking for actual culprits contributing to modern American decline, they could do far worse than turn a weather eye towards the conservative agenda.
They have a lot to answer for.
A modified version of my Krugman comment sent to the Times last night but I see not yet posted this AM:
Gravitas is an interesting word to use to describe the quality Ms. Yellen supposedly lacks. One wonders, if it is not a direct reference to her gender, to what the word so used by her critics might refer.
Does it mean she doesn't weigh enough to be taken seriously? If so, do her critics have a specific weight minimum in mind to qualify for the Fed chair? That thought brings to mind the World Wrestling Federation whose participants, no matter how loaded with steroids, would never qualify as Sumo wrestlers, wresting's genuine Big Time. Are her male critics saying we're really looking for a Sumo economist here and Ms. Yellen should be economizing in the bantam class; she's just too lightweight to wrestle with the big boys.
Such thoughts come to mind because in this enlightened age we know it can't really be about gender. Gender is certainly not an issue for most of the Right, who obviously think about women a lot--almost all the time, in fact-- and support them by giving them direction everywhere they can. And certainly not for the few Good Ol' Boys remaining in the middle, who like women, too; you can tell when they call the nearest handy woman 'hon." I fear to speculate about what Andrew Weiner, David Vitter or Mr. Spitzer might think about the whole woman thing.
And anyone sensitive to language would have to say if gender were really an issue with these folks, Yellen's critics wouldn't hesitate to support a candidate for the Fed Chair who at some time of her life could actually become "gravid," something no man, regardless of his politics, could ever accomplish.
Or maybe that just makes some of them really jealous, and jealousy explains a lot.
Mitch McConnell kills another bill. Why? Because he can and because bug-eyed teabaggers will call him a traitor if he actually does something.
He aches to be more like Ted Cruz who wants to shut down the government (the apogee of doing nothing, or rather, nothing doing) because he thinks that a government that can't govern is the sine qua non of modern conservatism, and it will get his name in the papers and improve his chances of continuing doing nothing.
Lyin' Ryan is still up to his old tricks of lying through his teeth so he doesn't have to do anything either, but he doesn't want anyone knowing that he does nothing.
And John Boehner is on an extended vacation in the South of Asshole and hasn't been seen since Eric Cantor told him that if he tried any grand bargaining he would never see those tiny barnacles he uses for balls, ever again. (How does he stay so tanned with his head up his ass all the time?)
From the Inactions Speak Louder Than Teabagger Droolings Department, the news is that it's pretty clear none of these charlatans has any idea what to do. They have no ideas but negation, no morals, no ethics. Elected leaders who have no interest in leading. No interest in anything but their own future. They are in Washington, supposedly, to do the people's business but all they really care about is themselves. Getting re-elected to continue to do nothing.
The Modern GOP: Nihilism, nonpareil.
Akhilleus, I think you've answered your own question about Boehner's brownish patina. As Jonathan Swift might have suggested, there could be a scatological explanation...and we do live in Swiftian times.
And all this time when people said Boehner appeared to be
shitfaced, I thought it meant that he probably drinks too much!
Ken,
Easy on the Swift stuff. Wingers might adapt his Modest Proposal and decide to eat the poor. Oh wait. They're already doing that.
Forrest,
All that stumbling, mumbling, red-eyed Boehner bullshit likely results from a lack of oxygen and the toxic atmospheric conditions inside the anal cavity of a Speaker who has no balls and othing to say.