This is where I do the circles by my ear and wink. Oy. Via.
Oh, c’mon. Done nothing? How can anyone in their right mind say that? They’ve done everything in their legislative powers to protect us. Just take a partial look at what they’ve accomplished:
This list could go on for days, but that would be wasteful and the 112th “do nothing” Congress should never be accused of that.
Feel free to add to this list, as I’m sure I must have missed something in the bevy of activity these paid, elected officials have been doing.
Let’s be grateful for their (lack of) meaningful efforts. Without them, who knows how good we’d have it.
For the past 25 years, David Garber has been serving as the show runner and or writer on some of television’s biggest hits… Saved By The Bell, Power Rangers, 227, Bill Cosby Show and many other network series. His writing and producing have also netted David two very prestigious awards:the PRISM AWARD and the TV CRITICS AWARD – TV SPECIAL OF THE YEAR. Currently he’s authoring a short story series called “A Few Minutes With…”
It makes perfect sense to feel that the government is doing too much if you also don’t think it should be promoting “values”, kinda like the Rachel promo on small government. Make it smaller, run it better.
The survey, released Wednesday, indicates that there have been major changes on attitudes toward the government.
“The biggest: The number of Americans who say that the government should promote traditional values has fallen to an all-time low, a finding that might benefit many Democrats,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.
According to the survey, just four in 10 registered voters believe the government should promote traditional values, down from 53% in 2010 and 57% in 2008.
(snip)
But the poll also indicates the belief that the government is doing too much is also near historically high levels.
Six in 10 say the government is doing too much that should be left to individuals and businesses. That finding could favor Republicans.
John Dean speaks the truth, just as this Republican did, as you’ll see below:
Welcome to another edition of “Republicans Eating Their Own” courtesy of The Hill:
Freshman Republican Rep. Richard Hanna (N.Y.) compared the parties in Congress to sports teams only interested in “winning,” and this week credited Democrats in Congress with having “less anger” than Republicans toward the other side.
“If all people do is go down there and join a team, and the team is invested in winning and you have something that looks very similar to the shirts and the skins, there’s not a lot of value there,” he told The Syracuse Post-Standard editorial board on Monday, according to the paper. He called his Democratic friends “much more congenial” than Republican ones.
He then went on to warn that House Republicans are becoming “incapable of governing” by habitually deferring to “extremes.”
This is reminiscent of the book It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With The New Politics of Extremism and subsequent TV appearances by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein:
Their principal conclusion is unequivocal: Today’s Republicans in Congress behave like a parliamentary party in a British-style parliament, a winner-take-all system. But a parliamentary party — “ideologically polarized, internally unified, vehemently oppositional” — doesn’t work in a “separation-of-powers system that makes it extremely difficult for majorities to work their will.” [...]
[I]t has become “an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition . . . all but declaring war on the government.”
John Boehner has been deferring for some time now, because he (and others) is more concerned about being booted out of office by those who favor tea party extremists than about the health and welfare of the American people. Politics matter more than we do. His job matters more than we do. Power and profits take precedence. So do scare tactics.
In this case, Hannah was referring to Michele Bachmann’s McCarthyesque warnings and allegations about the Muslim Brotherhood who she claims are magically infiltrating and influencing the State Department, even though they can’t seem to do the same to their own government.
“We render ourselves incapable of governing when all we do is take severe sides,” he said. “I have to say that I’m frustrated by how much we — I mean the Republican Party — are willing to give deferential treatment to our extremes in this moment in history.”
As John Dean said, poor Richard Hannah is sure to suffer the consequences for speaking the truth. Honesty may be the best policy, but it’s not often the best politics. And that’s a shame.
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