"Does the Senate Majority Leader give a blessed assurance? Not hardly."
A favorite hymn of many church going folks is the old stalwart, Blessed Assurance. This article is not about that hymn. It is about a different kind of assurance. The kind which has the Left all up in arms right now. The dreaded government shutdown is over, put to bed by a negotiation brokered by a nonpartisan group of Senators. And the lynch pin of the agreement was nothing more than an "assurance" by Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader. An assurance that in the next 17 days of the once again extended CR, the Senate would address the issue of DACA.
There is so much to say about this issue, I hardly know where to start. So I will start from the beginning. The dreaded CR - Continuing Resolution. The stop gap measure we all love to hate, and yet are addicted to it like crack cocaine. During the campaign in 2016, just about everyone running for office vowed that the CR is going the way of the dinosaur. That in the past it was used as a stop gap, due mostly to lousy planning. Elect me however, and I PROMISE NEVER to let that beast control us again! Well it is January going into February, and we are still operating off of last year's extended budget.
Dare I say this? As most of us know, Government moves at the speed of a stuck glacier. Or worse. Now that the "deal" to open the government has allowed 17 days for everyone on Capitol Hill to get their poop in a group, it is almost laughable. If I were a betting man, I would over in Vegas betting the house that come 17 days from now, the next tranche of a CR will be signed into law.
Why can't our government operate like a business or even a household? Where every year a budget is established, and at least there is an effort to stick by it? Why does the government act like a bunch of bumbling idiots when it comes to signing a budget into law on time every year? Ready? We all know the answer, but I will say it anyhow. Way, way, way too much time off with way, way, way too much work to do on the plate. Mix in all the parlor games which are played in the Senate and you have the perfect recipe for many annual CR events.
I saved the best for last. The blessed assurance everyone received from the Senate Majority Leader. The "trust me" move. Here is the only problem. Those who know and have worked with McConnell know him to be very slippery. Not just on the Democrat side - on both sides. So when the Senate Leader told the minions that "we will address it", what exactly does that mean? And by the way - the cornerstone issues to DACA are still there. The wall, chain migration, and the lotto system.
Now I am going to be like Johnny Carson was when he put on his carnac hat. In 17 days, we will NOT have another government shut down. We WILL however, have another continuation on the CR. The Democrats will feel like jilted lovers, as Mitch will not deliver on a DACA "deal". To make the next CR work, the President, not Mitch, will have to be the promise maker.
Does the Senate Majority Leader give a blessed assurance? Not hardly. I put Mitch's promises right up there with "under ObamaCare, we will all pay $2,500 less for health insurance". And that is bad.
45 makes cartoonish demands that everyone knows are impractical, who has absolutely no guiding principles or knowledge of policy, and who changes his views on a whim.
ReplyDeleteSo to expect guidance on DACA issues from him to McConnell is ridiculous. Nothing will be done by Feb 8 due to lack of WH input.
45 is somehow ignorant of what’s expected of the no longer leader of the free world and is a giant ego-baby with the nuclear launch codes who simply doesn’t care enough to learn.
And now we send him and his minion cabinet off to Davos, to once again embarrass himself and the US in front of world leaders who know the issues and are able to articulate them and discuss them while the dotard in chief looks on, wondering where his next cheeseburger is coming from.
I'm trapped in an intellectual prison from which there is no escape.
ReplyDeleteThe modern American experience has been reduced to a few grim lines: 45 says something crazy; I freak out.
A leak comes out; I obsess over it.
Someone gets fired; the deck chairs on the sinking ship of state get rearranged a little.
45 says something crazy again.
Rinse, outrage, repeat.
Cycling through the Twitter opinions about the 45's latest brain belch has become an irresistibly shallow national ritual.
It's clearly a monster distraction from something.
But what, exactly?
Watching this schizoid administration try to rule in spite of itself has been like watching the world's worst comedian die onstage, only not for 15 minutes, but for a year, and counting.
With each new stupid thing he says and does, 45's approval rating finds a new floor.
But it also always creeps back up in between scandals, and ultimately is propped up even further by the electorate's more intense hatred of other actors.
The Grand Old Coalition is broken.
Conservative intellectuals have gone from faux-praising the ordinary Joe to arguing that too much democracy is a bad thing when dumb people are involved.
And the family-values set has been stuck with an oversexed thrice-married pig as president.
And I am stuck in Twitter prison.