Netanyahu Directly Challenges Official U.S. Policy

Under the leadership of President Obama, the official United States position is to attempt to negotiate an agreement with Iran to stop their development of nuclear weapons. We are currently engaged in those negotiations in concert with the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council (Russia, China, United Kingdom, and France) plus Germany.

Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu recently said this at his weekly Cabinet Meeting:

We will do everything and will take any action to foil this bad and dangerous agreement.

As the elected leader of Israel, it is his right to take that position. But it puts him at direct odds with official U.S. policy and members of the Security Council. In the above statement, he is being perfectly clear about that - regardless of the outcome of the negotiations.

It is in light of that position that we should view, not just the recent Republican invitation for Netanyahu to address the members of Congress, but this statement from Sen. John Cornyn.

Senate Republicans on Thursday moved to officially welcome Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the U.S. ahead of his planned speech to Congress next month, the latest development in a saga that has roiled politics in both countries.

Almost all GOP senators were listed as co-sponsors of a resolution by Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas) saying the Senate “eagerly awaits the address of Prime Minister Netanyahu before a joint session of the United States Congress” and reaffirms the U.S. commitment to standby Israel in “times of uncertainty.”

“During this time of such great instability and danger in the Middle East, the United States should be unequivocal about our commitment to one of our closest and most important allies,” Mr. Cornyn said in a statement.

When the Prime Minister of Israel publicly promises to do anything he can to foil the official policy of the United States, it is our duty to be equivocal in support for him. Republicans are approaching a very dangerous line on this one.

WSJ Says Republican Congress is Failing (updated)

This WSJ editorial is definitely NOT good news for Majority Leader Mitch McConnell:

Republicans in Congress are off to a less than flying start after a month in power, dividing their own conference more than Democrats. Take the response to President Obama ’s immigration order, which seems headed for failure if not a more spectacular crack-up...

If Homeland Security funding lapses on Feb. 27, the agency will be pushed into a partial shutdown even as the terrorist threat is at the forefront of public attention with the Charlie Hebdo and Islamic State murders. Imagine if the Transportation Security Administration, a unit of DHS, fails to intercept an Islamic State agent en route to Detroit.

So Republicans are facing what is likely to be another embarrassing political retreat and more intra-party recriminations. The GOP’s restrictionist wing will blame the leadership for a failure they share responsibility for, and the rest of America will wonder anew about the gang that couldn’t shoot straight...

It’s not too soon to say that the fate of the GOP majority is on the line...This is no way to run a Congressional majority, and the only winners of GOP dysfunction will be Mr. Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton.

Ouch! That one left a mark.

And right on cue, the "restrictionist wing" does exactly as predicted. Exhibit A: Sen. Ted Cruz.

Sen. Ted Cruz blamed Republican leaders Tuesday for his party's failing strategy to overturn President Barack Obama's immigration actions, arguing that if they had listened to him and more forcefully confronted Obama they would be succeeding.

Speaking to a few reporters in the Capitol outside a Senate GOP lunch meeting, the Texas Republican said party leaders gave "away virtually all of our leverage" by funding most of the government through September, and didn't adopt his plan to grind nearly all nominations to a halt unless Obama surrendered.

Cruz said he warned all along that that was "a strategy designed to lose."

"My objections were overruled," he said. "Leadership proceeded nonetheless down this path and now it's incumbent on leadership to explain what their path is to what they stated the end goal would be."

As I've been saying all along, Sen. McConnell is now experiencing what Speaker Boehner has been facing for four years...the fact that Republicans are serially divided amongst themselves. And when it comes to their "restrictionist wing" (what I have been calling the lunatic caucus), leadership will never be extreme enough to assuage them.

Senator McConnell is not going to let the February deadline pass and allow DHS to shut down. It sounds like he still hasn't outlined a plan to avoid that. But whatever it turns out to be, he (like Boehner so often has done) will have to rely on what President Obama called a "common sense caucus" facilitated by a compromise with Democrats.

That will only further outrage the lunatic caucus - who will ramp up their challenges during the next round. Rinse and Repeat.

Now that the WSJ has weighed in on this failure, we will all patiently  await Ron Fournier's endless columns asking, "What If McConnell Can't Lead?"

UPDATE: Apparently Republicans are willing to sink even deeper into failure with McConnell and Boehner actually engaging in finger-pointing.

"I think it'd be pretty safe to say we're stuck, because of Democratic obstruction on the Senate side," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told reporters Tuesday. "I think it's clear we can't go forward in the Senate. And so the next move, obviously, is up to the House."

Translation: The ball is back in the House's court.

That's not sitting well with Speaker John Boehner. The Ohio Republican is standing by the House-passed DHS funding bill and his office responded to McConnell by saying Tuesday there's "little point" in further House action until there's movement in the Senate.

If that's what Republicans are calling leadership at this point, they're in even worse trouble that I thought.

You're Blowing It McConnell...Big Time!

My take on Sen. Mitch McConnell has always been that he is not so interested in issues/policies as he is in the power game of politics. That approach was never on display more clearly than when he said that his number one goal was to ensure that Obama was a one-term president - in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression.

Given that, I will credit McConnell with being a master strategist. No matter how much I abhorred his total obstruction tactics, they were a fairly effective power play. That's why it's been so fascinating to watch him fail so miserably lately.

As I wrote at the beginning of this Republican-controlled Congress, McConnell's initial strategy was to paint President Obama as the new obstructionist by forcing him to veto legislation that would otherwise undo his agenda.  But that is getting all gummed up by either the Democrats in the Senate standing strong or the lunatic caucus in his party making compromise impossible. The Majority Leader finds himself between a rock and a hard place and can't seem to get much of anything to the President's desk.

So instead of being able to label President Obama as the obstructionist, McConnell is now having to resort to using that one on the Democrats in Congress.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) accused Democrats Wednesday of knee-jerk obstructionist tactics, flipping a script that Democrats used many times in recent years.

McConnell criticized Democrats for filibustering a motion to debate a House-passed bill funding the Department of Homeland Security that contained language blocking President Obama’s executive actions on immigration.

Aside from the irony of that coming from the great wielder of obstructionism, it seems that McConnell has forgotten what is at the heart of the strategy he invented. Here's former Republican Congressional staffer Mike Lofgren's explanation.

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people...

There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters' confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that "government is no good," further leading them to think, "a plague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in a school yard."

Those "low-information voters" don't tend to know which party is pursuing which legislative tactic, but they sure do know which party holds the presidency. And they've likely heard about the "shellacking" the President's party took in the 2014 midterms that gave control of Congress to the Republicans.

So the spectacle voters are witnessing right now is a Democratic President who is busy getting things done while Congress is gridlocked and McConnell whines that Democrats in the Senate won't let him get anything done.

In other words, you're blowing in McConnell...big time!

McConnell vs Cruz

While a lot of pundits are caught up in assessing the race for the 2016 Republican nomination, I am much more interested in the current battle of McConnell vs Cruz.

As I mentioned last week, Senator Cruz is turning up the heat on Majority Leader McConnell over the confirmation of Loretta Lynch as our next Attorney General.

Today we learn that McConnell threw a bit of a humorous punch back at Cruz.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) made a few wise cracks over the weekend, including a joke drawing on Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-TX) previous statement that he would throw himself in front of a train "to stop anything short of" Obamacare's complete repeal.

"That idea has some merit to it," McConnell joked Saturday at an Alfalfa Club dinner, according to The New York Times.

At the same time, Senator McConnell is crying some bitter tears.

“What I would also remind everybody and mentioned to our House friends at our joint retreat: How would you like to have to get 261 votes on almost everything you do?” McConnell said in a phone interview. “I hope that some day we will have a supermajority in the Senate, but for 100 years we haven’t, and there are some obvious limitations.”

I suppose I could go with, "I feel your pain, Mitch." But the truth is that I'm feeling a huge dose of schadenfreude that his own tactics are coming back to bite him in the ass.

Senator McConnell's Headaches

I suppose that Mitch McConnell actually wanted to be the Senate's Majority Leader. But as he's finding out pretty regularly lately - the job comes with a lot of headaches.

In the first days of this new Congress, it seemed obvious that McConnell's new strategy would be to paint President Obama as the obstructionist by sending him bills that he had already promised to veto. So far - that veto pen hasn't been called on. And its looking more and more like the extra ink the White House might have ordered to keep up won't be needed anytime soon. That's not because of Democratic obstruction. It's entirely due to the fact that Republicans can't get their act together on actual governing.

We've seen how Boehner and McConnell have been scrambling to get their members lined up to pass a DHS funding bill by the end of February (the deadline they self-imposed). But another HUGE headache is coming McConnell's way.

It's clear from the hearings on the nomination of Loretta Lynch to be the next Attorney General that she will ultimately be confirmed by the Senate. And while Senator Sessions has announced that he will not vote for her (which is not a big surprise), Senator Ted Cruz sounds like he's planning to up the ante by putting the heat on Senator McConnell.

Sen. Ted Cruz called attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch’s immigration views “dangerous” Wednesday and questioned whether Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., should even have the chamber consider her nomination.

“That is the decision the majority leader is going to have to make. I believe we should use every constitutional tool available to stop the president’s unconstitutional executive action. That’s what Republicans, Republican candidates all over the country said over and over again last year,” the Texas Republican said in a brief interview with CQ Roll Call as the daylong Judiciary Committee hearing on Lynch’s nomination neared conclusion.

Due to Senate procedural rules, it is possible for Cruz to hold up a vote on Lynch if that's what he choses to do. However, the above statement seems more designed to make McConnell look weak. It remains to be seen whether Cruz will take it the next step. Since ideologues don't tend to concerns themselves with the petty business of outcomes, I doubt it will concern Cruz that any delay on the Lynch confirmation simply means that Eric Holder holds the position longer.

What all of this means is that Majority Leader McConnell is learning a bit about what things have been like for Speaker Boehner these last four years. It will be interesting to watch whether or not he is more adept than Boehner at managing the lunatic wing of the Republican Party.

2016 Republican Presidential Brackets

Charlie Cook has done a pretty good job of breaking down the 2016 Republican presidential contest into four brackets. Its helpful because the field is so crowded right now that it's hard to sort out - especially if you only think in terms of establishment vs non-establishment. I'd place a couple of candidates differently, but otherwise (just for fun), here's how I see it playing out.

1. Establishment candidates - obviously this one is a battle of Jeb Bush vs Mitt Romney. Since voters in this category aren't going to be concerned about the whole "political dynasty" thing, my money would be on Bush.

2. Governor/Former Governor candidates - I suspect that the voters this group appeals to are those who are skeptical of the whole dynasty question, but aren't ready to go full-on tea party. Scott Walker wins this bracket.

3. Tea Party candidates - no questions here, Ted Cruz wins this one - hands down.

4. Social/Cultural/Religious candidates - this one is also pretty easy to call. Its Mike Huckabee's bracket.

One place I part with Cook is that he puts Rand Paul in the Tea Party group to compete with the likes of Ted Cruz. I know it messes up the symmetry of a bracket analogy, but I'd but Paul in a 5th bracket and make him the winner of the Libertarian candidates (of course, because he's the only one).

What my picks give us is a contest between Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Rand Paul. With the amount of money Bush and Romney will be able to tap into - they will likely continue to compete as other candidates drop out. But the battle between the two of them could provide an opening for someone from the other brackets to break through. I suspect that's why Scott Walker got so much attention coming out of Rep. Steve King's clown show.

To be honest, this is all just fun and games right now. If history is any guide, we could forget about all this and simply assume that the nominee will be Jeb Bush. But I suspect that this contest is going to be a bit more unpredictable than that.

Jeb Bush to Run as GOP's Version of Obama

While everyone is having fun poking at the lunatic wing of the Republican Party gathered in Iowa this weekend, I was struck by what Jeb Bush said at his first public address since throwing his hat into the ring for 2016. After reading about bits and pieces of his speech, I decided to watch the whole thing on cspan.

In the part I found most interesting, Bush said that there was a lack of leadership in Washington these days. Here is the solution he offered:

Two people can disagree and they can disagree vehemently. But if they see in each other an honest broker motivated by good intentions and sincere beliefs, they can find accommodation.

He also said he would offer the "adult conversations" that are lacking in our politics today.

That got me thinking immediately about what President Obama had just said three days before Bush gave this speech.

Understand, a better politics isn’t one where Democrats abandon their agenda or Republicans simply embrace mine. A better politics is one where we appeal to each other’s basic decency instead of our basest fears. A better politics is one where we debate without demonizing each other; where we talk issues and values, and principles and facts, rather than “gotcha” moments, or trivial gaffes, or fake controversies that have nothing to do with people’s daily lives.

Of course these two men agree on almost nothing else (although Bush did talk bluntly about the need for immigration reform and investments in infrastructure). But it did strike me that - if they are both sincere in what they said - it would be fascinating to watch them actually engage in one of those "adult conversations." Too bad that is never going to happen. It would be one way to hold them accountable for these statements.

I have several thoughts about this as an overall message for a Jeb Bush campaign.

1. The rumor has always been that when it comes to the Bush brothers, Jeb is the smart one. In the question-and-answer period following the speech, he talked about being an introvert - which means that he at least has the capacity for self-reflection. What I saw demonstrated in this speech is that he has the capacity to put together a thoughtful, smart campaign that would connect with a lot of voters in a general election.
2. Jeb's challenge is going to be to get past the primaries and win the nomination. Not only will he have to deal with the Bush dynasty issues (which he does pretty well in this speech), but even uttering the word "accommodation" will be red meat to the lunatic caucus of his party. They have zero interest in having "adult conversations" with the opposition.
3. While folks like me might appreciate the sentiments quoted above, it sounds hollow when his walk doesn't match his talk. Throughout the course of the speech and interview, Jeb took a few subtle swipes at President Obama and completely mischaracterized his approach to foreign policy. As I said in #1, Jeb is smart. Those were not simple misunderstandings. They were intentional. I didn't see much by way of "good intentions" displayed in this speech. 
4. Finally, I'm old enough to remember when George W. Bush ran as a "compassionate conservative" and rejected an interventionist foreign policy. As we know now, that all turned out to be nothing but campaign rhetoric. That's another reason to be skeptical until Jeb demonstrates that he walks his talk.

I don't want any of this to suggest that I might be a supporter of Jeb Bush. I disagree almost totally with his policies. But - at least in rhetoric - he's making a big departure from the status quo of the GOP these days. 

Given that it has been Republicans who eschew discussion and compromise, if Jeb actually meant what he said, he'd be calling them to account - which is exactly what needs to happen for Washington to make the kinds of changes he is suggesting he supports. THAT would be real leadership!

McConnell's New Strategy: Paint President Obama as the Obstructionist

Let's start with a short walk down memory lane.

Back in 2008, the Republican Party was in trouble. As a result of the Bush/Cheney administration, the country's economy was in free-fall and we were entangled in two wars in the Middle East that seemed to be accomplishing nothing more than to kill thousands of people and empty out the coffers of the U.S. treasury.

Beyond that, there was no real leader of the Party for folks to rally round. Sarah Palin might have been that figure for the truly delusional on the right. But even the McCain campaign that chose her as a running mate was done with her antics.

Into that vacuum stepped Senator Mitch McConnell. He'll never be the "face of the Republican Party." But he is a master political strategist. And as Michael Grunwald told us, he and Rep. Eric Cantor developed a strategy the Republicans in Congress would use in response to a popular in-coming president as well as a Senate and House controlled by Democrats.

...the Republican plot to obstruct President Obama before he even took office, including secret meetings led by House GOP whip Eric Cantor (in December 2008) and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (in early January 2009) in which they laid out their daring (though cynical and political) no-honeymoon strategy of all-out resistance to a popular President-elect during an economic emergency. “If he was for it,” former Ohio Senator George Voinovich explained, “we had to be against it.”

Now, here we are six years later with a Republican-controlled House and Senate. The master strategist needs to come up with a new game. Since the party of no government doesn't have to worry about actually passing any legislation, the plan is to try to make President Obama look like the obstructionist. Here's how Sen. McConnell talked about that yesterday.

“We’ll be voting on things I know he’s not going to like,” McConnell said during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“And I hope we can put them on his desk,” he said.

McConnell went on to say that, first up will be a vote on approving the Keystone Pipeline. Never mind that the Nebraska Supreme Court is about to rule on whether or not to let that project pass through their state. It's all about setting President Obama up to use his veto pen. After that - McConnell suggests that they'll pass legislation gutting Obamacare. They know exactly how the President will respond to that.

Of course Sen. McConnell mouths all the right platitudes.

McConnell stated he’s “not opposed” to working in a bipartisan fashion with the Obama administration. Americans want the “dysfunction” to stop, he said. “When the American people elect divided government, they’re not saying they don’t want anything done. What they are saying is they want things in the political center, things that both sides can agree on.”

But if he really meant that he would do as President Obama has done - talk about starting with things where there is the possibility of finding common ground, like trade deals, tax reform and rebuilding our infrastructure. Instead, Sen. McConnell just put it right out there - they'll be working to pass "thinks I know he's not going to like," counting on the President to veto them, and then claiming that he's the obstructionist.

To be honest, you have to give McConnell credit for being an expert at playing these kinds of games. If he would use them to actually try to get something done for the American people, he could go down in history as one of the great Senators. But for anyone who is actually paying attention, these moves are all about positioning for power - not about getting anything done.

As long as Sen. McConnell is only interested in playing games, President Obama will rely on his "pen and phone" strategy to actually move the ball down the field during this fourth quarter.

The story that makes last year's roll-out of healthcare.gov look like a model of success

Here's the story from New Jersey:

Gov. Chris Christie's administration has pulled the plug on a seven-year-old $118.3 million contract for what had been billed as a “comprehensive and cutting-edge” computer system to make Medicaid, food stamps and other social welfare programs easier to manage, including some that have been hobbled by backlogs, NJ Advance Media has learned.

The state Department of Human Services’ contract with Hewlett Packard to produce the Consolidated Assistance Support System, better known as CASS, “has been terminated, and an analysis is in progress to determine next steps,” department spokeswoman Nicole Brossoie confirmed.

It reminded me that something similar happened in Indiana several years ago.

Indiana has ended its troubled $1.3 billion deal with IBM to provide welfare services to the state's neediest families.

For months, 13 Investigates has shown you how the largest contract in state history has failed to deliver...

Daniels said IBM was fired for failing to live up to its $1.3 billion deal with the state despite months of warnings to fix the broken system.

But the truth is, its happening all over the country.

In recent years, computer errors have disrupted a wide range of government-run programs across the country, including Medicaid, unemployment benefits and child support payments...

Such errors happen for many reasons, experts say. States are short-staffed and lack technology experts. They rush out new computer systems before the systems are ready. They fail to oversee IT contractors.

The glitches often take months or even years to fix because technology for poor people is not considered a high priority, according to David Super, a Georgetown University law professor who studies government technology projects.

After hiring dozens of engineers and programmers from tech industry giants like Google and Oracle, the federal government largely fixed problems with the health-care website in about two months. But many states have taken much longer to fix computer errors with welfare programs. Colorado’s troubled system for food stamps and Medicaid has been plagued by glitches and delays for the past decade.

The names of companies associated with these failures read like a "who's-who" of corporate giants...Hewlett Packard, IBM, Xerox. But rather than fix the systems, the story seems to be that problems persist, contracts are eventually cancelled, and then the back-and-forth law suits begin to fly. Meanwhile, those depending on these programs suffer.

There are a lot of lessons we need to learn from all this. I doubt that we'll be able to avoid the reality that government will continue to partner with businesses when it comes to the use of technology. But the conservative mantra that private corporations are more effective than government in managing these kinds of programs is exposed as a lie.

Finally, when everyone's hair was on fire over the problems with the roll-out of healthcare.gov, it might have been nice for the media to provide some context for the challenges the tech field has faced in producing systems that actually work. In the end, it looks like Obamacare is a model of success.

News from the insurgency

A few days ago it crossed my mind to think about what the 2015 State of the Union speech will be like. Given the results of the recent midterms and the way the GOP rhetoric has been ramped up in response to President Obama's action on immigration, it occurred to me that the disrespectful "You lie!" from Rep. Joe Wilson during the 2009 SOTU speech might be child's play.

But honestly, I never even contemplated this possibility.

“Yes, there’s a risk to overreacting, but there’s a risk to underreacting as well,” said Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review. “And I fear that’s the way the congressional leadership is leaning.”

Mr. Lowry suggested one way Congress could react. “If I were John Boehner,” he said, referring to the House speaker, “I’d say to the president: ‘Send us your State of the Union in writing. You’re not welcome in our chamber.’”

Apparently, this is becoming "a thing" within the tea party confederate insurgency. What better way to cast the President of the United States as illegitimate than to deny him the opportunity that has been accorded to all modern presidents to address Congress at this historic event?

I keep going back and forth with myself saying, "the GOP leadership will squash that idea." And then wondering, "will they?" Worse yet, "can they?"

On tape: Republicans dodge the question

For the last couple of days I've been focusing on the big gaping hole in the Republican position on immigration - the one question that needs to be asked and answered: "what do you propose to do with the 11 million undocumented workers who are currently in the country?" Yesterday I pointed out how the post-policy punditry has avoided holding Republicans accountable - making a bipartisan solution impossible.

Imagine my surprise when the one pundit who came through on that one is none other than Mark Halperin (we'll just leave that one alone for now). If you want to know how badly Republicans are trying to avoid answering that question, just watch Rep. Tim Huelskamp squirm while Halperin pushes him on it.


Lay this one alongside the right wing hysteria on Gruber's comments about the Democrats "deceiving" the American public about health care reform. Who's doing the deceiving now?

No matter how hard they try to dodge the question, there are three issues that need to be addressed when it comes to immigration:

1. Border security
2. Reforming our current system of legal immigration
3. Doing something about the 11 million (or whatever number) of undocumented workers currently here

Any policy that avoids answering ALL THREE of those questions is incomplete and does not address the problem. Until Republicans are prepared to do that, President Obama is left with having to do so on his own.

The question Republicans must answer...

"What would you do about this?"


You can read more about Diane Guerrero's story here. She doesn't say how long her parents lived in the U.S. before they were deported, but we know that they came here from Columbia before she was born and were deported when she was 14 years old. They fled from chaos and did everything they could once they got here to legalize their status. But instead, they were eventually deported and she was left on her own to grow up without them.

In a rare moment of honesty, even Newt Gingrich said that doing this to families is not right.

"I don't see how the party that says it's the party of the family is going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families that have been here a quarter of a century," said Gingrich.

While our pundit class simply sees all this as a power play between Republicans and Democrats, its important to keep in mind that it is the lives of children/young people like Diane that are at stake.

If Republicans don't like what President Obama proposes to do to stop this kind of thing from happening, then the least we should expect from them before they shut down the entire government is to tell us what they would do differently for people like Diane. And no, building a double-wide fence along our border with Mexico isn't going to do it for families that are already here.

The only thing that is keeping Republicans from having to answer this question is a news media that is consumed with the Washington D.C. game rather than the lives of people who are affected by what goes on there. Whether the village idiots like it or not, what happens to young people like Diane is FAR more important than the games they play.

President Obama knows this. He's acknowledged that the game isn't his forte. He simply wants to make sure than no more young people come home to an empty house because their parents have been deported. If Republicans don't like his answer to that, they need to come up with one of their own or STFU!

Oh, this is rich! Conservative pundit accuses President Obama of extortion

OK...so this one from Rich Lowry broke my irony meter this morning.

In a fit of postelection modesty, President Barack Obama is offering not to take executive action to amnesty millions of illegal immigrants — provided Republicans do his bidding on immigration.

It is extortion as conciliation. New Jersey governor Chris Christie often invites comparisons to The Sopranos, but it is President Obama who is making a tactic taken out of the HBO mob drama his major postelection initiative. His bipartisan outreach now ends with a pointed “Or else . . . ”

This offer Republicans can’t refuse includes the stipulation that the president will revoke his executive action in the event they pass legislation to his liking. How generous of him. 

As an aside, if you had trouble reading that first sentence like I did, its because conservatives have fallen so in love with the word "amnesty" that they've started using it as a verb as well as a noun.

But my bigger point is to notice that all of the sudden someone like Lowry thinks extortion in politics is a bad thing. This comes from the side of the isle that threatened to blow up the entire global economy by failing to raise the debt ceiling if President Obama didn't cave to their demands on the budget. Anyone else remember those days? Been there...collected the cartoons :-)

Of course, its important to point out that President Obama isn't threatening to blow up anything. He's been saying for months now that if the House fails to pass the bipartisan immigration reform bill from the Senate, he would move on his own to protect families who have lived here for years from being separated due to draconian deportation policies. In other words, nothing gets blown up but the obstructionist's egos. 

So I invite you to have a few laughs at Rich Lowry's expense this morning. I sure did.

When Dubya responded to Congresstional legislation prohibiting torture with: "Meh..."

Just imagine with me for a moment what it would be like if our media had an institutional memory that could recall events that happened less than a decade ago. If that were the case, we might be reminded - in the midst of all this furor over potential presidential overreach on the part of Barack Obama - of something like this from July 2006.

A panel of legal scholars and lawyers assembled by the American Bar Association is sharply criticizing the use of "signing statements" by President Bush that assert his right to ignore or not enforce laws passed by Congress.

In a report to be issued today, the ABA task force said that Bush has lodged more challenges to provisions of laws than all previous presidents combined.

The panel members described the development as a serious threat to the Constitution's system of checks and balances, and they urged Congress to pass legislation permitting court review of such statements.

"The president is indicating that he will not either enforce part or the entirety of congressional bills," said ABA president Michael S. Greco, a Massachusetts attorney.

The most egregious of these happened when Congress passed a bill banning cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment (i.e., torture) of prisoners at U.S. detention centers. President Bush issued a signing statement basically saying, "Meh...I'll ignore that one when I want to." And of course we all know now that he DID ignore it. Those signing statements were part and parcel of Dick Cheney's commitment to the establishment of an "imperial presidency."

Perhaps the Republican's current obsession with what powers Barack Obama does/doesn't have as President means that they're ready to repudiate this notion. Or maybe they've come to recognize that their chances of winning a presidency in the near future are abysmal - so why not feign outrage at this one? Or - more likely - they'll just harp on President Obama and hope the media maintains its aversion to short-term memory when they want to re-establish a for-real imperial presidency.

When Congress overstepped its constitutional authority

Congressional Republicans are promising to go to battle with President Obama over his upcoming executive action on immigration. They claim he is overstepping his constitutional authority as president. We're hearing things like perhaps they'll sue him, or try to impeach him, or perhaps shut down the government in response.

What didn't capture as many headlines was the time President Obama said that Congress had overstepped their constitutional authority. What...you don't remember that happening?

When signing the National Defense Authorization Act in 2013, President Obama included statement that outlined the various ways provisions in that bill impeded his constitutional authority as Commander-in-Chief. That included things like limiting his ability to transfer Gitmo detainees to another country and disrupting his ability to implement provisions of the START Treaty with Russia on nuclear weapons.

The President didn't decide to sue Congress or shut down the government over this. He simply noted it and then went on doing his job to the best of his ability.

Just sayin'...

Republicans think voters are stupid

Jonathan Gruber sure stirred up a lot of talk lately. He suggested that voters are stupid and that the passage of Obamacare lacked transparency. I'll leave that last part to Brian Beutler to dismantle.

The essence of what Gruber said about voters is that the Democrats crafted the ACA in a way that hides its revenue (a "tax") by calling it a mandate for everyone to buy health insurance. In other words, they counted on voters being too stupid to not recognize that they amount to the same thing.

But that is actually a tactic that the "no new taxes" Republicans invented. I don't know about you - but this idea of calling new revenue "fees" instead of "taxes" is something local Republicans have been doing around here for years. For example, here's Tim Pawlenty making the case for why he should be the next GOP presidential nominee.

At every level, governments are facing big deficits as the weak economy diminishes tax revenues at the very same time that the bill is coming due on decades of irresponsible spending increases, entitlement promises and pension promises. As I proved in Minnesota, these problems can be solved without tax increases.

Ummm...just one problem, Tim. You must have forgotten about that $400 million in revenue from a cigarette tax fee you used to resolve your own budget crisis. Of course that was combined with a 2.5% tax fee on alcohol and 6.2% tax fee on rental cars. Pawlenty pretends he didn't raise taxes because a fee is obviously very different. In other words, he thinks voters are too stupid to recognize that the exact same amount is missing from your wallet - no matter what you call it.

When it comes to Obamacare, it was VERY clear from the start that those without health insurance were going to be mandated to buy it. But there was one big difference...the revenue would go to private insurers - not government. Even so, everyone knew that regardless of what you called it or where the money went, a requirement to buy insurance would mean money out of your wallet. If someone suggests that they were "lied to" because it was called a "mandate" instead of a "tax," perhaps they are stupid.

Chris Matthews proves himself to be a political idiot (updated)

Just take a look at this nonsense from the supposedly "liberal" MSNBC.


First of all, he says that President Obama isn't going to do anything to stop businesses from illegal hiring. Ummm, Chris - perhaps you didn't notice.

"ICE will focus its resources within the worksite enforcement program on the criminal prosecution of employers who knowingly hire illegal workers in order to target the root cause of illegal immigration," Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano said in April 2009.

The change was dramatic: the number of I-9 audits soared from 503 in 2008 to more than 8,000 in 2009.

Then he talks about the "two ships passing in the night:" those who want to stop illegal immigration and those who want to give current undocumented workers a pathway to citizenship. What he failed to mention is that President Obama and Democrats compromised with Republicans and included both heightened border security AND a pathway to citizenship in the bill that passed the Senate.

Over and over again, President Obama has promised that if the House wouldn't take up that compromise, he would do what he can on the issue of deportations - the one area he feels he has legal authority to act alone. That still doesn't provide a pathway to citizenship, but it will provide some relief to otherwise law abiding immigrants who live in fear of deportation.

If Matthews actually understood what "Hardball" means, he would recognize that this was a hardball tactic employed by the President: either pass the compromise or I'll do something you REALLY won't like. Republicans in the House remained intransigent. So now President Obama is going to follow through on his promise to act alone. Several times in his news conference yesterday the President said that all Republicans would have to do to nullify his action would be to pass some version of a compromise on immigration reform.

But now Matthews is railing at the President for failing to compromise. YIKES...what an idiot!!!

UPDATE: Matthews also seems to be ignorant of this reality:

More than 60 percent of Americans back a pathway to citizenship for immigrants living here illegally — winning support from majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents, according to a sweeping new poll to be released Tuesday.

When it comes to undocumented immigrants, 62 percent of Americans believe they should be allowed to gain citizenship if they meet certain requirements, while 17 percent would support green cards but not citizenship for them. Meanwhile, 19 percent think the undocumented immigrants should be deported.

Split down by party, 70 percent of Democrats, 61 percent of political independents and 51 percent of Republicans said they supported a pathway to citizenship with requirements, according to the survey. The poll did not define what those specific conditions are, but requirements can include background checks and payments of fines and back taxes.

Its possible that the 19% who want the undocumented to be deported were over-represented in the 1/3 of eligible voters who went to the polls on Tuesday. But that's one of the reasons why President Obama said this yesterday:

So, to everyone who voted, I want you to know that I hear you. To the two-thirds of voters who chose not to participate in the process yesterday, I hear you, too.

President Obama: Please proceed, Senator McConnell (updated w/ video)

If you didn't get to watch President Obama's press conference this afternoon, I encourage you to do so.


He made a point of saying that he looks forward to hearing from McConnell and Boehner on what their agenda for Congress will be. And that he's willing to work on those areas where they can agree.

While some will undoubtably view this as pre-capitulation, its actually an amazing power play as well as a reprisal of conciliatory rhetoric as a ruthless strategy.

One way to deal with that kind of bad-faith opposition is to draw the person in, treat them as if they were operating in good faith, and draw them into a conversation about how they actually would solve the problem. If they have nothing, it shows. And that's not a tactic of bipartisan Washington idealists -- it's a hard-nosed tactic of community organizers, who are acutely aware of power and conflict.

Over the last 6 years, Minority Leader McConnell has been able to embrace a "post-policy" approach focused on total obstruction.  Now that Republicans control both chambers of Congress, President Obama is basically saying "puts your cards on the table and let's see what you've got."

After last night's election results, both National Review Online and Rush Limbaugh are counseling McConnell to keep up the obstruction. Jonathan Chait pretty much nailed what McConnell will see as his most effective strategy going forward:

McConnell’s next play is perfectly clear. His interest lies in creating two more years of ugliness and gridlock. He does not want spectacular, high-profile failures that command public attention — no shutdowns, no impeachment. Instead, he wants tedious, enervating stalemate. McConnell needs to drain away any possibility of hope and excitement from government, so that the disengaged Democratic voters remain disengaged in 2016.

So if you were President Obama, how would you chose to counter that? The truth is, no matter what you do, you're not going to get liberal policies enacted with Republicans in control of both chambers. If you simply yell and scream about obstruction, you look like a weak ineffective victim.

Today the President simply called on McConnell to "put up or shut up." That's his best way of undermining McConnell when/if the gridlock continues. In other words, its the best power play he has now - given what the midterm electorate did yesterday.

I also think that long before he decided to run for president, Barack Obama diagnosed what he thought was our biggest problem. No matter how daunting the challenges, what has kept us from tackling them has been our inability to do this:

Our goal should be to stick to our guns on those core values that make this country great, show a spirit of flexibility and sustained attention that can achieve those goals, and try to create the sort of serious, adult, consensus around our problems that can admit Democrats, Republicans and Independents of good will.

Until we can get there, we won't be able to move forward on much of anything else.

So...please proceed, Senator McConnell :-)

Calling out Krathammer's lies and hypocrisy

While the rest of media punditry is almost entirely focused on "optics," Charles Krauthammer makes a bold move by suggesting that the midterm elections are all about competence. But he has zero to say about the lack of competence being shown by Republicans. This is all about throwing bombs at President Obama.

Of course he mentions things like the "disaster of the Obamacare rollout" (yeah, fixed that one) and the non-scandal "scandal" at the VA. But this is what I found amazing.

Beyond mere incompetence is government intrusiveness and corruption, as in the overreach of national security surveillance and IRS targeting of politically disfavored advocacy groups.

We'll leave the whole thing about the IRS alone for now because I'm pretty gobsmacked that Krauthammer has the gall to complain about national security surveillance overreach. Not only did Bush, Jr. conduct surveillance on people in America - until 2006 he did it sans warrants. And Krauthammer defended him for doing so. Just another example of how "its only a problem when Obama does it (with warrants)."

But then here's the money quote:

Most voters don’t care about the details of Ukraine, the factions in Libya or the precise battle lines of the Islamic State. But they do have a palpable sense of American weakness.

This was brought home most profoundly by the videotaped beheadings of James Foley and Steven Sotloff. It wasn’t just the savagery that affected so many Americans but the contempt shown by these savages for America — its power, its resolve. 

So I suppose that "most voters" (read: Krauthammer) had a "palpable sense of American weakness" when terrorists bombed a U.S. military base in Lebanon on President Reagan's watch and that 9/11 demonstrated al Qaeda's contempt for America's lack of power and resolve during George Bush's presidency.

No?

I can only see two reasons why Krauthammer thinks he can get away with this kind of idiocy:

1. He thinks Americans are too dumb to remember recent history, or
2. He thinks Americans will accept a whole different measure of accountability for the black President (i.e., anything bad that happens in the world is his fault).

Or perhaps its a good helping of both. Either way, lets call Krauthammer out for his lies and hypocrisy. Competence...my ass. This one is all propaganda.

When a media pundit nails it!

Since I've focused a lot on how the media fails these days, I think its also important to point out when they get it right. Recently Justin Sink did just that with an article titled: The shiny object election.

The short-attention span generation has birthed the shiny-object election.

The theme of the 2014 midterms — to whatever extent one is discernable — has been an explosion of one crisis after another, each of which demands an enormous amount of media attention before fading for the next one.

The result is that - with an assist from the media - Republicans have managed to fear-monger every challenge that's come along...resulting in a mindset amongst the public that amounts to "this country is going to hell in a hand basket." Sink also correctly articulates the Obama administration's response to this shiny object syndrome:

“We should be focused on the problems because we have a government and leadership in this country that’s focused on solving them,” press secretary Josh Earnest said.

But Earnest did note that previous crises — like the flood of unaccompanied minors across the southern border that dominated attention earlier this summer — were examples of where the administration had worked hard to solve a problem, only to see attention divert elsewhere.

“The president and his administration at the direction of the president comes in and, through a lot of hard work, puts in place a solution. But by the time that solution is put in place, everybody has sort of moved on to something else,” Earnest said.

As we've seen recently, by the time this administration had solved the problems with healthcare.gov,  the freak-out about unaccompanied minors crossing the borders began. And before anyone noticed how that problem had been solved, we were on to ISIS!!!! But by the time President Obama had convinced Iraq to form a more inclusive government that cut off support for ISIS in that country and rallied our friends as well as foes to fight them, the great freak-out about Ebola had begun.

You simply have to think about how many stories in the media you've read/heard about how this administration solved those problems (almost none) to realize how shiny object syndrome works. All the attention is focused on the "crisis" and none on the solution.

Of course the Republicans love this shiny object syndrome because it puts all the focus on President Obama and none on their embrace of post-policy politics. But Sink is right...the Democrats have mostly reacted to the shiny object rather than being pro-active in talking about policy and solutions.

Strategists and experts say the result has been bad news for Democrats, who have had a tougher time underscoring their preferred campaign messages on their party’s support for women and the middle class.

Instead, each shiny object captivating a media that craves the hottest story has helped Republicans making the elections for the House and Senate all about President Obama...

Vulnerable Democrats are put in the unenviable position of either backing the president or lobbing criticism at their party’s leader.

I certainly understand that the Republicans are going to play whatever hand they have - that is to be expected. The real fault here lies in the media's obsession with ratings and link bait. Crisis fear-mongering apparently sells. Solutions don't.