Tina Dupuy: Benghazi is a cynical attempt to gain traction with a nontroversy. The more Congress spends time investigating the less time they have to spend being ineffective at negotiating with the President.
Pendejo Politics: When You’re Stupid, You’re Stupid
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Rudy Acuña: What can you expect of an educational system where, according to a 2012 Gallup Poll, 46 percent, of Americans believe in creationism?
Memo to President Obama: Expand Social Security, Don’t Cut It
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Steven Hill: The White House says its 2014 budget will propose cuts to the retirement program. Not only is that unnecessary, the U.S. could and should expand it.
Teaparty.org: Stuck in 2008, Still Demented
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Julie Driscoll: Although it’s not really necessary to “know the enemy” (since our enemies have already outed themselves as idiots and numbskulls hugging their guns and building underground bunkers), it’s on sites like teaparty.org where true radical right-wingers are born, bottle-fed, nurtured and set free to wreak havoc.
Obama’s Still Shopping for a Grand Bargain
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Shamus Cooke: At the end of the day a so-called progressive Democrat is still a Democrat, and the Democratic Party has re-made its image to reflect the interests of its new big donors from Wall Street, who now feel as comfortable buying Democrats as they do purchasing a Republican politician.
Sequester: Holding the American People Hostage
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Walter Brasch: The Congressional Budget Office says the sequester could cut more than 750,000 federal jobs. Republicans like that idea, especially since most federal employees are also members of unions. But, those jobs include public health officials, social service workers, teachers, air traffic controllers, and others in critical jobs.
Obama Must Lead
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Brent Budowsky: There was no excuse for the president to shout from the rooftops about the dangers of sequester while not doing a thing to prevent it. Americans need jobs, not spin, and leaders, not photo ops.
GOP Too Nuts for Obama’s Debt Ceiling Gambit
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Robert Reich: So it must be that he’s counting on public pressure — especially from the GOP’s patrons on Wall Street and big business — to force Republicans into submission.
How to Beat Republican Fanatics: Call Their Bluff, Go Over Cliff
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Robert Reich: The fanatics in the GOP have to be held accountable or they’ll continue to hold the nation hostage to their extremism. Even if it takes until the 2014 midterms to loosen their hold, the cost is worth it.
The Republican Party and the Holy Grail
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Robert Illes: Now, the day after their mighty and sweeping fail, these once fearsome and forever disgusting sociopaths elicited no fear. The junk yard dog has lost his teeth.
Who’s Been Naughty, Who’s Been Nice?
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Tina Dupuy: John McCain makes my naughty list because he spearheaded a nontroversy campaign to preemptively take down the highly qualified Ambassador Susan Rice for Secretary of State.
Republican “Bubble” — Yet to Pop
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Joseph Palermo: The rubbish that House Speaker John Boehner and other congressional Republicans keep dishing out about the federal budget shows the multimedia “bubble” that envelops the GOP and its mouthpieces is pretty durable.
In Denial on Heath Reform
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Karen Finney: Despite clear legislative, judicial and electoral defeats, Boehner outlined how “tactics of our repeal efforts will have to change,” with a new battle plan seeking to include “ObamaCare” into the negotiations on the “fiscal cliff.”
Fiscal Cliff Hoax: A Mel Brooks Routine
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Richard “RJ” Eskow: This phony crisis is a lot like this scene in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, where Cleavon Little as The Sheriff pretends to take himself hostage to escape an angry crowd.
The President We Now Need
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Walter Moss: Given the continuing Republican control of the House of Representatives and the leading role of John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and Paul Ryan, how does the president move the country forward? By principled compromise and exercising abundant political craftsmanship!
New Mandate, New ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Math
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Richard “RJ” Escow: The voters have asked President Obama and his fellow Democrats not to “shirk a fight” over economic issues. We look forward to seeing the democratic process unfold as a much-needed fight against economic injustice is played out in the public arena.
Romneyomics Trickles Down
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Karen Finney: Between now and Election Day, every Democratic candidate up and down the ballot should call on his or her Republican opponents to defend the GOP plan to increase taxes on middle-class Americans,
Punish Bachmann
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Karen Finney: Bachmann should be removed from the House Intelligence Committee, as the others who signed should be removed from their committees; all illustrated a willingness to abuse their positions and access in a manner that jeopardizes America’s security.
Despite ACA, John Roberts Is No Earl Warren
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Charley James: Justice John Roberts has refused to corral his equally conservative Associate Justices from selling their integrity to right-wing political groups and causes.
Dems’ War FOR Women
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Brent Budowsky: Word on the street is Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Democrats will launch a major battle supporting pay equity for the women of America that could be a defining moment in the 2012 campaign.
The Republican Anti “Anybody But Us” Attacks
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Jim Rhodes: The Republicans claim they are for small government; but new legislation, not only in Washington but states controlled by Republicans, is obsessively concerned with what women can do with their reproductive systems.
Right-Wing Supreme Court Judges Join GOP War on Women
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Brent Budowsky: If the Supreme Court throws out the healthcare law as unconstitutional it will foment a powerful political backlash and escalate the judicial front in the war against women.
It’s Still the Economy, Stupid
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Berry Craig: If the GOP justices gang up to turn thumbs down on the Affordable Care Act, it might even boost the president by firing up the Democratic faithful and convincing more than a few independents that the Supreme Court really is a lapdog for Congressional Republicans and not a watchdog for the Constitution.
Trim the Fringe and There’s No GOP Left
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Berry Craig: The Republican food fight for the presidential nomination has proved “moderate” is as dirty a word as “liberal” in the tea party-tilting GOP.
Health Care: Affordability Is Accessibility
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Tina Dupuy: If it’s out of your price range – it’s out of your grasp. It doesn’t matter if the pill is offered over-the-counter or in vending machines – if you can’t afford it – you can’t have it.
Top 10 Most Read: The Coming Revolt
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This week, Fordham professor Mark Naison’s article “The Coming Revolt: When Will the Sleeping Giant Awake?” took top honors as the week’s most read piece.
The Gas Wars
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Robert Reich: Nothing drives voter sentiment like the price of gas – now averaging $3.56 a gallon, up 30 cents from the start of the year. It’s already hit $4 in some places. The last time gas topped $4 was 2008.
Conservatives and Cars
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Steve Hochstadt: Karl Rove and John Boehner agree on this: We hate Obama. Obama helped Detroit. A union is involved. The revival of American cars is a Democratic success story. So take your Detroit jobs and shove ‘em.
Despise Congress? We Are The 95%!
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Tina Dupuy: Yes, 5 percent of Americans think Congress is doing a good job. Which means 5 percent of those polled didn’t understand the question.
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Limbaugh Growing Impotent?
Peter Dreier: Limbaugh’s gross comments about a female college student who voiced support for Obama’s birth-control insurance compromise have forced some old Republican allies to distance themselves, raising questions about Limbaugh losing his potency.