Why The Senate STILL Isn’t Able To Get Anything Done Even After The ‘Nuclear Option’
In 2013, the Senate adopted two of the most significant changes to its rules in nearly 40 years. The first significantly reduced the amount of time senators in the minority can delay a confirmation vote before it can move forward. The second effectively reduced the amount of votes required to confirm nearly all presidential nominees from 60 to 51 votes. Senators in the minority now have fewer opportunities to frustrate Senate confirmations than at any point in the Senate’s recent history.
At yet judicial confirmations remain at a standstill. Just one judge has been confirmed so far in 2014, and this judge was a holdover from the November 2013 fight that led to Democrats invoking the so-called “nuclear option.” Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) began the process necessary to confirm four judges on Wednesday night, but this process will still take days to complete and will only confirm a small fraction of the 32 judicial nominees awaiting votes. Even after the transformative changes last year brought to the Senate’s rules, the Senate still isn’t working. Routine confirmations are not moving forward.
Anyone who thought the nuclear option would derail Mitch McConnell’s ability to throw sand into the gears of the Senate gravely underestimated the Senator from Kentucky’s ability and willingness to obstruct. McConnell is the same Senator who pledged on Inauguration Day 2009 to obstruct President Obama at every opportunity to avoid handing him anything resembling a victory. By all indications, he’s done his part brilliantly.
There’s a very simple lesson to be taken from this: as long as Republicans continue to value playing political games at the expense of doing the job they were elected to do, America will continue to suffer. Ergo, as long as Americans continue to elect Republicans, they will continue to “enjoy” a low, bargain-basement standard of leadership
Fox News contributor Todd Starnes freaks out over new Facebook gender options
The staff at Fox News have not taken well to the announcement by Facebook that it is expanding by dozens the number of gender options for users. The Equality Matters blog reported that commentator Todd Starnes wrote in an anti-trans rant on his Facebook wall Friday that users might as well “identify as a pine cone” as being transgender, so why not include that option as well?
“In the beginning God made man and woman — but Facebook decided to improve on the original models,” Starnes wrote, as if Facebook invented transgenderism this week.
He continued, “You can still be male and female — but you can also be gender neutral or inter-sex or transgender” and lamented that “Facebook says it wants their one billion members to feel comfortable being their true authentic self.”
Sometimes intolerance and ignorance can really be rather humorous. The only response I can muster is to laugh at Starnes for being the ludicrous, ill-informed bigot he is. Why he has so much invested in how someone self-identifies on Facebook makes me wonder what he’s really afraid of. That it’s really none of his business should be self-evident. His standards and prejudices are his and his alone, and, like anyone else on Facebook, he’s free to self-identify as he chooses…if only Facebook had a “bigoted, homophobic loon” option.
Someday I might come to understand why people like Starnes feel their standards should be imposed on everyone…but I doubt it.
Scott Walker: Marijuana Should Be Illegal Because People Don’t Smoke It At Weddings
Marijuana should remain illegal because “[m]ost folks with marijuana wouldn’t be sitting around a wedding reception smoking marijuana,” according to Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI).
The comment about marijuana at weddings was Walker’s attempt to distinguish marijuana from alcohol, he claimed that “[i]f I’m at a wedding reception here and somebody has a drink or two, most people wouldn’t say they’re wasted.”
In fairness to Walker, his comments to reporters on Tuesday explaining why he opposes legalizing marijuana did not focus exclusively on whether people smoke pot at weddings. The Wisconsin governor claimed that he spoke to sheriffs who told him that “when they talked about heroin and meth and other issues that they were still very concerned that (marijuana) was a gateway drug” — i.e. that people who smoke marijuana become more likely to use harder drugs.
It’s good to know that people charged with making policy make those decisions based on facts and evidence…or it would be if that was actually happening. Though the concept of a “gateway drug” is considered by many professionals to be an old wive’s tale, it’s been exploited by those whose idea of sound policy is to appealing to the fears and prejudices of those who don’t know better.
Sometimes, stupid really is as stupid does, but no one’s going to be praising Scott Walker for being an intellectual giant.
Bob Jones University Has Way Of Shutting That Year-Long Sex Abuse Study Down
Nothing looks the least bit suspicious about this, right? Back in January 2013, fundamentalist Pod-People incubator Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, hired an independent third-party consulting group to investigate claims of long-running sexual abuse at the school, as well as ineffective administration responses to reports of abuse. They were to prepare a report, and make recommendations on how BJU should respond to cases of sexual abuse. And then, after almost a year, and just a couple months before the group was supposed to issue its report, BJU fired the investigators with no explanation, citing only vague “concerns” about how the group was conducting its investigation. But they will definitely be praying for any students who may have been abused. If any. No need to dig into it too much, because ultimately God knows the truth and will take care of things in His own time.
Sometimes the truth can be an uncomfortable thing. When you ask someone to determine the truth, and what it looks like they’ll learn is…well, inconvenient…it can make for some very tight-collar moments. Bob Jones University is about as uber-Jesus-y as an institution of higher learning gets; if the administration had to admit that some very un-Christ-like activities are taking place in their domain…well, how to explain that to the good, God-fearing White Christians who write the big checks, eh?
Besides, if God hadn’t intended for women to be used for the sexual gratification of men, he would have given them a penis, knowhutimean??
“Independent investigation” isn’t supposed to mean “independently arriving at a conclusion those paying for the investigation can live with.” The truth is supposed to set you free…unless you’re the ones benefiting from exploiting women under your purview. Hey, what else are women for…right??
