What
John Kasich reveals here
is where his head is at. He's asked about voting rights, a subject
one would think
would call forth an American, inclusive response that everyone could
get behind. Instead, he shows us, just as Senate Majority Leader
McConnelll did a few weeks back*, that he's thinking entirely in
narrow, partisan
terms. He wants less voting because if there was more voting, those
extra votes might go to Democrats.
*Asked
about the
Senate perhaps becoming, y'know,
er, productive,
the Majority Leader responded thusly:
As
proof of the Republican Congress’ “incredible” productivity,
McConnell quickly pointed to the Keystone XL pipeline, which was
vetoed by President Obama. The Senate Majority Leader immediately
added, “We put the repeal of Obamacare on his desk. We put defund
Planned Parenthood on his desk*.” Neither became law.
In
other words, McConnell was asked about how inclusive and bipartisan
his Senate was being and he responded by talking about efforts that
were designed to stick it to the President and the Democrats and to
raise the middle finger of Senate Republicans to them. Is
there any hope for the two sides to get along and for both of them
to focus upon the needs of the American people? Sure, but not with
the current mind-set that prevails on that side of the aisle these
days.
So
how's the other Republican-run branch of the US Government,
the House of Representatves, doing? Yeesh!
"I
think I do it better," the House speaker told CNN during an
interview this week, adding that his leadership style is different
than his predecessor, whose resignation last year shocked Washington.
"Not to knock John [Boehner],
but I spend more time with all of our members on a continual basis."
[...]
Republicans
say the speaker’s agenda project — the product of several task
forces and dozens of meetings among rank-and-file House members —
will provide specifics, and perhaps even draft legislation, on key
issues of importance to conservatives, including health care, taxes
and national security.
Ri-i-i-ight!
Well,
Ryan sure makes it sound
as though
the House were a beehive of activity with people accomplishing great
things left and right. How does the reality look? Well, there's the
rather important fact that Ryan couldn't make the
mandated budget deadline of April 15th.
Ryan
should have produced a detailed budget document by that date and that
document is nowhere in sight because of deep disagreements between
those who wish to carry out the agreement that Boehner arranged
before he left the Speaker's office and those who wish to make even
deeper spending cuts than anybody outside the Freedom Caucus has
signed onto.
Boehner
managed to make
the budget deadline every
year he
wa Speaker and
remembe, Ryan used to
be
the Chairman
of the House Budget Committee.
So
much for all that “I
spend more time with all of our members” guff.
What
good does it do to spend more time with members if you can't get your
most basic, fundamental job done? As the saying goes: “You had one
job...”
As
for getting out a health care alternatve to Obamacare, “Why,
that’s something the Republicans have been working on so long that
… exactly no one is still waiting for them to provide a
solution.”
But
hey, we can still provide imaginary solutions to problems that we've
already made rat progress on!
Ryan tells us: “College
and heath care keep getting more expensive. ISIS continues to
spread.” As
far as I know, college
costs continue to rise, but the cost of health care? Politifact
points out that “On
average, premiums have risen by
about 5.8 percent a year since Obama took office, compared to 13.2
percent in the nine years before Obama.” So actually,
there has been a substantial slowdown in the rise of health care
costs. How are we doing on Daesh (ISIS)? Daesh
is not
doing
as
well
as they'd
have
everyone
believe.
Even
in Syria and Iraq, Daesh holds territory only because the states have
collapsed. I remember people would do this with al-Qaeda, saying it
had branches in 64 countries. But for the most part it was 4 guys in
each of those countries. This kind of octopus imagery is taken
advantage of by Daesh to make itself seem important, but we shouldn’t
fall for it.
No,
Daesh does
not have an air force or a navy and just about every target that is
identified as important to Daesh gets bombed (In
January, the
US located ther Treasury building and bombed it, leaving their
soldiers in a tough spot for a while),
so it's
not the succesor to Nazi Germany and will never have the capacity to
become a world power.
So,
not surprisinly, Speaker Ryan, who used to be regarded as a golden
boy wonk who could do no wrong, is
taking some really serious hits to his image.
-------------
Other
items: Back in the old days, people could rely on the magazine
Foreign Affairs because it was rigorously fact-checked. Unfortinatey,
that's
not the case anymore. Their latest piece on global warming is
complete mess. To survive past the year 2100, we don't need to come
up with awesome new inventions, we need to deploy what we have. We need
to be constructing windmills and installing solar panels as quickly
as possible. Of course we should work on both developing new
technology and on improving what we already have, but we're not doomed
because we don't have new tools and inventions. We just need to get cracking
and to speed up deploying the stuff that we already know works.
--------------
Yeah,
120,000 voters were improperly purged from the voting rolls for the
primary on April 17th,
but did the pro-Hillary people cheat
in Brooklyn? That's not at all clear and it's really not clear
that Bernie would have won without the voter purge. Bernie suporters
would be well-advised not to throw around wild accusations.