Yes, Madison anticipated government shutdowns. It was designed that way. What he didn’t anticipate, or at least hoped against, was political parties. He thought that the branches would value their prerogatives more. I’ve heard some ignorami in the past talk about “checks and balances” and “balance of power” as referring to parties. No.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
The Wall Of Silence At The IRS
Can it be broken with a lawsuit?
NOM doesn’t know who committed this crime. But it has discovered that some IRS officials who’d have access to the returns — like a senior manager for tax-exempt organizations — were photographed at an HRC Christmas party just a few months before the returns showed up on HRC’s Web site.
Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) head of the House Ways and Means Committee has been quietly conducting an investigation of the illegal disclosure of NOM’s private donor information, with a final report due early next year. And Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) just announced the House Government Oversight Committee will investigate as well.
But there’s no guarantee either probe will get to the bottom of the affair, and NOM — and the American people — deserve answers.
“The fact the IRS is stonewalling so hard suggest the wrongdoing goes high up,” says Eastman. “All we want to know is who committed this crime and see justice done for all federal taxpayers. For the IRS to use disclosure to shield people it wants to shield, instead of protecting taxpayers, is an outrageous and unbelievably dangerous thing; the government can use the IRS to punish any speech it doesn’t like.”
Some things go deeper than right or left; the use of the IRS to punish political enemies ought to be one of them.
As I said, it’s almost like they have a will to power. If this were happening under a Republican president, all of the alphabetic news organizations would be asking every night what it takes to get a president impeached.
[Update a few minutes later]
How federal workers became Barack Obama’s private army:
Seventy-four years later, the civil-service system has been exposed as a failure – at least in this administration. Instead of an independent workforce of professionals who implement federal regulation in an even-handed and competent manner, we have returned to the era of partisan retribution and politically-motivated malevolence.
Time to reform it again.
ObamaCare’s Broken Promises
…pile up:
To recap, then: Before, during, and after passage, Americans were promised that Obamacare was going to lower premiums for “everyone” (the goal of merely maintaining premiums being too modest); it was not going to interfere with anybody’s health care or health insurance if they already had it; and it was not going change anybody’s patient-doctor relationship. The message was unmistakable: All the government wanted to do was extend health insurance to people who didn’t have it. This wouldn’t affect you. No need to worry. Period. Move along.
In addition to the totally partisan nature of this thing, one of the other many things that distinguishes it from previous entitlements is the many grandiose lies that were told about it to sell it, going back to the president’s first campaign.
The Soul-Mate Myth
Dr. Helen has some thoughts.
I’m pretty sure that XKCD has pointed out the mathematical improbability of having a single “soul mate.” As Glenn says, they’re made, not found.
Shutdown Theater Follies
The Dems are starting to look pretty bad.
[Update a while later]
Here’s a good idea (from that link):
Wanna get to Harry Reid? Call all those hotels and casinos in Las Vegas and tell them you won’t play until Harry backs down. Tell the books you won’t bet on sporting events, especially NFL games. They can get to Harry far more quickly and effectively than anybody else. Boycott Vegas.
The problem is that there is no single target, except maybe the Chamber of Commerce.
The ObamaCare Financial Unraveling
It was both entirely predictable, and predicted.
Speaking of which, Bruce Webster has some interesting thoughts on the thermocline of truth.
Obama’s Refusal To Negotiate
That’s what’s unprecedented:
Obama would like the public to think he can’t negotiate and that to do so would be unheard of. But in this, as in so many other things, he’s lying. What is actually going on here is that, in the past, presidents who have had to deal with divided government (as Obama is; the House is in Republican hands) have always known that in such a situation they must negotiate. Whichever party they have been affiliated with, and whether you think they were good presidents or bad ones, they have kept faith with the basic gentleman’s/woman’s agreement on which our government has always run, and that is that if the other side was duly elected to be in control of another branch of government, that group has some legitimate power and must be negotiated with.
Obama is different. He had the brilliant idea that, although Republicans are in control of the House right now, they have no power unless they agree with him, and it is okay for him to defy them because it will have no repercussions on either him or his party (which is largely aligned with him). Therefore he can Just Say No to whatever Republican demands might be, and blame them for the failure to come to any sort of agreement. And the reason he is able to get away with this is a simple one: he knows the media will not call him on it, but will instead support him and amplify his message.
It’s a toxic combination, and that’s what’s “unprecedented”—at least in this country.
He’s a pretty toxic president.
Obama’s Overheated Talk
Maybe the “fever” metaphor is more accurate than he realizes:
…if America’s body politic continues to run a fever, that means it is still suffering from the underlying illness. And if the Republicans are fevered–or are the fever–then it follows that Obama and the Democrats are the infectious agent.
When you think about it this way, the metaphor makes perfect sense. The body politic heated up during 2009 and 2010, as Obama overcame its resistance and advanced his agenda. The 2010 election was a massive immune response, which seemed to have restored a measure of health.
By 2012, when both Obama and House Republicans were re-elected, the fever seemed to have broken on its own. Instead, as we now know, the Internal Revenue Service administered an anti-inflammatory treatment that merely masked the symptoms of the underlying infection.
Taking a longer view, one could see America’s current condition as a chronic one, which has gradually grown worse over decades. “Chronic infections become chronic in the first place due to an insufficient initial immune response,” Durant notes. If a virulent strain of the bug has now produced an acute fever, it may be a sign that the country has some vigor left.
Ultimately, the only cure will be to wipe out the nasty virus that continues to infect the body politic from the White House.
The Real Sexual Double Standard
“The media cares about the dignity of women on the left, not the right. Which means they don’t really care about female dignity at all.”
Nope.
Park Shutdown Theater
It continues to look awful. I’m sure that this is contributing to the president’s declining approval. It certainly should be.
[Update a few minutes later]
Added a link.