This seems like a pretty good summation of how I feel about the Republican Party and their role in our political system.
It works on so many levels that it would almost be a crime to list just a few.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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It’s too bad the kid didn’t shoot that MFer!
Sorry……………………
Meanwhile, because they were too busy on the Floor to check the loos for discarded and loaded guns, Resolution Passed Today Would Allow Bosses to Fire Women for Taking Birth Control or Having an Abortion.
It’s just a resolution for DC. Because the Council of the District of Columbia had the audacity to pass Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Amendment Act (RHNDA). The House GOP no likee and Congress has the power to overturn DC local laws when they no likee.
(How would a boss learn of female employees’ reproductive health care decisions? I’m sure that those with such interests would find a way. Congressional staffers beware; your forced birther bosses will be checking.)
By self-insuring its employees and letting a commercial health insurance company only manage the company’s funds. A little loophole in the original HIPAA. I doubt if it has been closed.
Good point about Congressional staff. When the grandstanders start meddling with the live of their own staffs, how long until the more highly paid emulate the Senate cafeteria workers?
Congressional power depends on the number of people willing to say “Yes, boss.” What happens when that disappears and it is only the lonely loon left babbling?
Noted that but as I don’t know how prevalent employer self funding health care is in DC, don’t know if it would be a major information source for employers.
Self-insuring and letting Blue Cross (for instance) manage the funds is very common. Many employees won’t even know it is self-insured. I know my employer does this and it is not well known.
Congressional staffers should have been warned when Vitter and his friends tried to put them all on PPACA policies without subsidies. If they didn’t revolt then they are really hopeless.
Wayne LaPierre asks, “What’s the problem?”
McConnell’s security detail left on in a stall earlier in the week.
Makes me think of the “imperial gift of three feet of silk” that Chinese emperors used to send to officials with whom they were disappointed (或赐三尺帛/huòsì sān chí bó, and if you think it took me less than an hour to find this and work it out you are wrong), so they could avoid public disgrace by using an elegant golden rope. I would be contented if Boehner would just retire to repent in a monastery.
“…the Republican Party and their role in our political system.”
…a role that they can only play, and that they do only play, because of their constituents.
You are, once again, confusing the storyteller with the audience. Suppose the storyteller to have a sudden, paralyzing access of conscience, to throw down his book with revulsion and stalk off the stage: the audience is still there, their taste and their patience unimproved. How long before another storyteller steps up to replace him?
The worst mistake that the Republican Party could possibly make — and frequently do — would be to assume that they speak for more than 50% of the country.
The worst mistake that the Democratic Party could possibly make — and frequently do — is to assume that the Republican Party speaks for less than 50% of the country.
The Founders of this nation (if nation it be) made certain assumptions, which were criticized at the time for being excessively sweeping, for being insufficiently grounded in the political theory and practice of the time, for being just plain rash.
Down to the end of the 20th Century, it was a pleasant pastime to read some of those criticisms, to consider them on their merits, to build chains of counterfactuals upon them, and generally to pretend to have had a seat at the tables at which they were formulated and discussed. Did no good, did no harm.
In the 21st Century, it has become clear that the creeping infantilization of the body politic has reached a point where the founders’ assumptions are, in Wolfgang Pauli’s phrase, “not even wrong”: they have been invalidated at so deep a level that not only are they inapplicable to the situation as found, but it no longer even matters how they might be interpreted or how they came to be what they were. This is the true End of History: it is no longer useful as a guide, it is neither predictive nor explanatory.