Assume The Worst

David Pakman (from back in May)

For this discussion, "infrastructure" is the stuff that facilitates commerce - roads and bridges and other lines of communication - the stuff we use to move stuff around.

But also, it's the stuff that helps people find work, get to where the work is, and do the work. 

Things like childcare and elder care and broadband and renewable power and public transit and the variety of people development items (schools, VoTech training, grants and financing etc) - all of it helps people find a job, (or make their own job), go to the job, and do the job.

It's easy to think we have a Republican party that just can't extricate itself from a fantasy 1950s mindset, and refuses to stop lying to its voters about everything.

But I don't think that's it - not all of it anyway. It's not like the "party of business" suddenly doesn't know anything about economics - they do know - so what exactly is their game?

We don't do ourselves any favors by insisting they're all stupid. We're better off assuming they have a plan and that they're executing on it.

Today's Tweet

Obama Triumphs As House Republicans Fail To Override Obamacare Repeal Veto https://t.co/moZX5iN25R So now they'll get going on jobs. right?

— margaret stuart md (@marstu67) February 3, 2016

Waiting

Pay What You Owe

So here we go again.  We're still in a position of having to borrow money from ourselves to pay the bills, and we'll have to raise the debt limit (again) in the next coupla months, and of course that means the Repubs are making noise (again) about "getting some concessions" from the president in exchange for their support.

OK - as if we weren't all just sick o' this shit - here it is (again):  The House of Representatives decides how much money we're going to spend on what things.  It's right there in Article 1 of the US Constitution - look it up.  The Prez and the Senate and your dead Aunt Tilley can submit budget requests until Michele Bachmann grows a brain, but nobody spends one brass farthing if John Boehner and his merry band of Sludge Divers don't agree to it ahead of time.

So Boehner says it's OK to spend the money; Obama spends the money; and then Boehner says whoa, you spent too much money - we'll have to punish you for spending the money we told you it was OK to spend, so instead of paying for all the shit we told you to buy, we're going to shut down the whole government until you agree to keep us from telling you to spend all that money next time, which will cause our credit rating to drop, which will cost us even more money - and it's all your fault.

How in the blue-eyed-buck-naked-fuck does this make sense to anybody?

Can You Say, "Flop Sweats"?

I knew you could.  How about, "not ready for prime time"?



A bad case of Performance Jitters almost always sneaks up on you at the worst possible time, and while it can happen to anybody, there's usually some kind of underlying reason for it (duh).  The big one of course, is that you're not feeling quite as well prepared as you'd like to be.  And there's always that little guy's voice in the back of your mind telling you to shut up and get outa there 'cuz you suck at this and nobody likes you. (I hate that little guy)

So anyway, Rubio does get a coupla points for trying to "do it live" instead of putting together a bunch of pre-recorded junk and just guessing at what the Prez was gonna say.  But I think the real problem is that he's not convinced of a good bunch of what he was saying, and when you haven't fully rationalized those internal conflicts, then your body language is going to betray you almost every time.

A Big Bump For Obama

09-10-09
From CNN this AM:
http://http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/09/10/cnn-obama-got-double-digit-post-speech-bump/

It was most interesting to watch the Repubs hafta sit there and take the beating as Obama called 'em out on some of the ridiculous nonsense they've been trying to use to scuttle reform.