Tuesday Night News Roundup
Do you remember that song by a group called The Sylvers? Boogie Fever?It was a perfectly forgettable song from the mid-1970s. It also proved that disco was clearly not going to last. 🙂 It seems to me that Washington has developed sequester fever. In every newspaper you pick up there’s a large story on the sequester and what it means to you and me. Every political blog has taken a stance on the sequester. Congress has until Friday to come up with some solution or we will all face the sequester consequences. In my mind, we’ve come to a clash of ideologies. We’ve come to an impasse. We’ve come to the exact same type of deal that we had back in 1994 when the Republicans decided it was a great idea to shut down the government. That didn’t work out very well for the Republicans. As a matter of fact, that didn’t work out so well for the country. Democrats are powerless to stop it. All I know is that we need jobs. We need to put people back to work. Polls show that Americans aren’t really interested in cutting anything.
Former Surgeon General C Everett Koop has died.
So, help me understand, what was all the bluster over Senator Chuck Hagel? As I recall, he was nominated by President Barack Obama to be Secretary of Defense. The Republicans jumped up and down, held their breath, turned blue and then said okay. Chuck Hagel passed a basically party-line vote earlier today.
Speaking of Republicans flailing around for no particularly good reason, what about the Violence Against Women Act? Remember some House Republicans had “serious reservations” and therefore drafted their own Republican version of the Violence Against Women Act. I really don’t understand. It looks like the legislation is slated to pass over the next several days. The Republican form of the bill is predicted to fail, spectacularly.
Today is the first anniversary of the shooting of Trayvon Martin. I wish I could tell you I had some great insight, some nugget of information that is new and exciting. I don’t. It is a year later and I find the whole ordeal to be sad and depressing. I have written extensively about Trayvon – here, here, here and here. This prompted a week-long discussion about race – here, here and here.
In the Republican version of déjà vu all over again, a Michigan State Senator has publicly stated that he’s not sure if President Obama was born in the United States. He was just wondering why the press didn’t push that issue any further. I have no comment.
A Texas man admits that he shot his girlfriend while they were playing a game of “Quick Draw.” Remember, guns don’t kill people.
A sophomore at UNC Chapel Hill is having a complaint filed against her because she accused another student of rape. He and his friends are stating that they feel intimidated. Every now and then, I feel the world is getting crazier and crazier.
The absolute best story that I’ve read in the last couple of days has to do with the paranoid delusion that some far-right conservatives have. They have this theory that President Barack Obama is developing a Black Army designed to wipe out the White race. Please take off your tin helmet. It isn’t helping.
