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....formerly known as the United States Capitol.
Not a lot to report from our own lives today. I finished a project of the "big ugly" variety with time to spare, decided not to take on a client who just went on and on and on about the case (and uttered the epithet sure to turn me off your side- I HAVE PICTURES!- and Eleanor merely hopped over short buildings with a running start on her day off instead of leaping tall ones in a single bound like she usually does on her days off.
So instead I'll cast the ol' net nationally and repost a question from the immortal Charlie Pierce. I've been a fan of his from everything from Wait Wait to Stephanie Miller to Rude Pundit, mostly following him on his own ineffectively-paywalled Esquire page. Today's tweet sums up his thinking in alignment with mine:
The lead reply to that was, Only several? Because I'm definitely past fingers and quickly running out of toes trying to count them all.
Some would say it's always been this way, and for much of our nation's history, it was. It took a revolution and a civil war, followed by a century of de facto status quo where the loser of the latter acted like it actually won, before we finally made some progress in my lifetime. My six-plus decades include any number of prior rodeos, and I don't recall the riders or horses being as crazed as they are now.
In my most formative years, a Texas Senator, thrust into the Presidency, accomplished a ton of progressive legislation and was rewarded with a landslide vote returning him to office. His opponents were mostly fellow Southerners from his own party. Then Nixon squeaked in, did more in his first four years for progressive causes and SCOTUS appointments than Clinton or Obama would later do in eight, got rewarded with a landslide victory of his own, and promptly pissed it away in a fit of paranoia. His Congressional supporters were few and lukewarm; I remember one Jersey Republican named Charles Sandman being his leading voice of defense, until the final tapes came out and even he deserted Dick.
Carter was too bogged down with shit beyond his control to have to face any real opposition, but despite a relatively close loss to Reagan (compared to Mondale's, anyway), the Democrats on both sides of the Dome largely worked with him. Tip O'Neill was the model of loyal opposition, which the extremes of both sides hated but a working body of lawmakers joined with to, you know, make laws.
By the 90s, the current sewer was starting to be laid. Newt Gingrich personified the politics of hatred and of making compromise into a dirty word, even though he couldn't take Clinton down at the ballot box or at an impeachment trial. His rhetoric from back then seems almost quaint. Dubya was another outlier, in that 9/11 gave him a pity card that allowed him to govern out of a false sense of unity. But once they brought in the Black guy, the worst started to surface.
Even so, it took a few years, and a crazed successor to Obama, to really lower the bar for elected office. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz were among the first, but the crops of the past two elections, including Hawley and Tuberville on that side, have brought it to a total Senate of Stink. Throw in the House side with the Q-Anon nuts, the Hitler worshiping nut(s), the teenager-chasing nut(s), and Louie Gohmert who's just totally nuts, and you wonder how that building doesn't get an insurrection mounted in it every business day.
There's no politeness, dignity or sense of working together. These are people who voted against awarding a Congressional honor to a Capitol police officer (fittingly named Goodman) who risked his life on January 6th, because the resolution used the I-word to brand the insurrectionist's armed supporters. There's the one now being investigated for sex trafficking who was the only one on the floor of the House to vote against an anti-sex-trafficking bill. They're never wrong, they never apologize and they always double and quadruple down whenever the inconvenient facts get in their way.
I'd hoped that the denouement of Donald would have given them a rear-view mirror to look back in and watch getting smaller. But insurrectionists are always closer than they appear, and Mar-a-Lago has turned into an armed camp of sedition that all the potential 2024 players make pilgrimage to.
It sucks.
Not a lot to report from our own lives today. I finished a project of the "big ugly" variety with time to spare, decided not to take on a client who just went on and on and on about the case (and uttered the epithet sure to turn me off your side- I HAVE PICTURES!- and Eleanor merely hopped over short buildings with a running start on her day off instead of leaping tall ones in a single bound like she usually does on her days off.
So instead I'll cast the ol' net nationally and repost a question from the immortal Charlie Pierce. I've been a fan of his from everything from Wait Wait to Stephanie Miller to Rude Pundit, mostly following him on his own ineffectively-paywalled Esquire page. Today's tweet sums up his thinking in alignment with mine:
The lead reply to that was, Only several? Because I'm definitely past fingers and quickly running out of toes trying to count them all.
Some would say it's always been this way, and for much of our nation's history, it was. It took a revolution and a civil war, followed by a century of de facto status quo where the loser of the latter acted like it actually won, before we finally made some progress in my lifetime. My six-plus decades include any number of prior rodeos, and I don't recall the riders or horses being as crazed as they are now.
In my most formative years, a Texas Senator, thrust into the Presidency, accomplished a ton of progressive legislation and was rewarded with a landslide vote returning him to office. His opponents were mostly fellow Southerners from his own party. Then Nixon squeaked in, did more in his first four years for progressive causes and SCOTUS appointments than Clinton or Obama would later do in eight, got rewarded with a landslide victory of his own, and promptly pissed it away in a fit of paranoia. His Congressional supporters were few and lukewarm; I remember one Jersey Republican named Charles Sandman being his leading voice of defense, until the final tapes came out and even he deserted Dick.
Carter was too bogged down with shit beyond his control to have to face any real opposition, but despite a relatively close loss to Reagan (compared to Mondale's, anyway), the Democrats on both sides of the Dome largely worked with him. Tip O'Neill was the model of loyal opposition, which the extremes of both sides hated but a working body of lawmakers joined with to, you know, make laws.
By the 90s, the current sewer was starting to be laid. Newt Gingrich personified the politics of hatred and of making compromise into a dirty word, even though he couldn't take Clinton down at the ballot box or at an impeachment trial. His rhetoric from back then seems almost quaint. Dubya was another outlier, in that 9/11 gave him a pity card that allowed him to govern out of a false sense of unity. But once they brought in the Black guy, the worst started to surface.
Even so, it took a few years, and a crazed successor to Obama, to really lower the bar for elected office. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz were among the first, but the crops of the past two elections, including Hawley and Tuberville on that side, have brought it to a total Senate of Stink. Throw in the House side with the Q-Anon nuts, the Hitler worshiping nut(s), the teenager-chasing nut(s), and Louie Gohmert who's just totally nuts, and you wonder how that building doesn't get an insurrection mounted in it every business day.
There's no politeness, dignity or sense of working together. These are people who voted against awarding a Congressional honor to a Capitol police officer (fittingly named Goodman) who risked his life on January 6th, because the resolution used the I-word to brand the insurrectionist's armed supporters. There's the one now being investigated for sex trafficking who was the only one on the floor of the House to vote against an anti-sex-trafficking bill. They're never wrong, they never apologize and they always double and quadruple down whenever the inconvenient facts get in their way.
I'd hoped that the denouement of Donald would have given them a rear-view mirror to look back in and watch getting smaller. But insurrectionists are always closer than they appear, and Mar-a-Lago has turned into an armed camp of sedition that all the potential 2024 players make pilgrimage to.
It sucks.