Congress Goes Home Early While the World Burns
by lizard
America is back, bombing Iraq, and now Syria. America is bombing ISIS, and also a quick add-on, the Khorasan Group. C’mon, America, just dust off the nukes, you know, those nukes Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient, wants to spend billions of our tax dollars to modernize.
Last week Congress voted to arm the exhaustively vetted moderate Syrian rebels, then skipped out of town to hit the campaign trail, because that’s really all these pathetic creatures can manage to do. From July to November, Congress put in a vigorous 8 days. From the link:
One vote on war and Congress is apparently all tuckered out.
House leaders announced Thursday that they were cutting their already abbreviated fall session short and sending lawmakers back home – and onto the campaign trail – more than a week early.
The decision came one day after the House approved both President Obama’s request to arm Syrian rebels and a bill that prevents a government shutdown at the end of the month. The House had initially been scheduled to remain in Washington on Friday and during the first week of October, but Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told members they could leave on Thursday afternoon and wouldn’t be called back until after the November congressional elections.
The Senate is expected to pass both measures on Thursday and leave for the campaign trail by the evening.
Party leaders often shorten the floor schedule ahead of elections to give their members more time to campaign, but this year’s session is brief even under those standards. Including the five-week summer recess, Congress will have been in session for a total of about eight days between the end of July and the middle of November.
I mean, Jesus, how can we put up with this shit?
On Sunday, there were also some nice people who would like to avoid societal suicide, and they came out for a march—400,000 of them. Despite the fact it was mainly a toothless PR stunt, it was still impressive to see the Sunday tv network circle-jerk sessions blackball the event:
The People’s Climate March on Sunday was perhaps the largest climate change protest in history. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of New York City. Celebrities and high-profile politicians were among the marchers. The protest was a huge topic on social media.
All in all, it was a perfect opportunity for some of America’s biggest news organizations to cover the topic of climate change, something that usually gets either ignored or badly handled. For Sunday talk show hosts, there was even a nice political hook, since the march was pegged to a UN summit that President Obama will be attending.
Well, so much for that idea. It seems climate change remains one potentially world-shattering issue that just can’t get any respect on television. No Sunday morning show except MSNBC’s “Up” so much as mentioned climate change, or the march, save for one stray reference on “This Week” by The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel. She pointed out that the march was actually gathering right outside the ABC studios in Lincoln Center where the show is taped.
Congress doing nothing is not new, neither is corporate tv news giving the cold shoulder to climate change as the world burns and floods and storms.
Sad. It didn’t have to be this way.
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4&20 blackbirds 
September 24, 2014 at 7:30 am
The 60’s just called.
They want their commies back.
“Yes, capitalism itself is the problem. The primary message of the People’s Climate Rally was this: Climate change is caused by capitalism, and merely attempting to reform capitalism will not stop global warming; it is impossible to work within the existing system if we want to save the planet. We must replace it with a new social and economic system entirely.”-PJ Media.
September 24, 2014 at 9:45 am
I don’t why I’m going to say this to you, but replacing laissez faire capitalism doesn’t mean reverting to communism. There’s a wide variety of other market solutions that can be adapted or matured to take its place.
Actually, the natural order of things will take over once laissez faire capitalism fails to keep the populace subdued. We can either direct the transition, or resort to anarchy. Which is it?
September 24, 2014 at 1:59 pm
Why don’t we kill all the smart rich people send the resisters off to gulags and confiscate private property like Stalin?
That’ll work.
Or kick everybody body out of the cities and into the rice fields like Pol Pot?
September 24, 2014 at 2:48 pm
Here’s another area where you come up short: History of Cambodia and the rise of Pol Pot. The US dropped an incredible tonnage of bombs and bomblets on little Cambodia. It destroyed that society, killing 100,000, driving two million people form theri homes. Pissed off Cambodians in their anguish reached for the meansest son of a bitch they could find to run the country. This was Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Someone like him can only come into power under exceptional circumstances, provided courtesy of the US.
After Pol Pot came to power, the US suported him, secretly channeling arms to him via Chinese connections. When North Vietnam invaded Camboida in 1979 to depose Pol Pot, the US vigorously objected at the UN.
So you have an image of mean old Pol Pot in your head, a caricature, nothing more, and have not background on teh circumstances under which he came to power.
Otherwise, you know, good comment there Swede.
September 24, 2014 at 6:49 pm
Why stop there Mark. We fought Germany in WW1 causing Hitler to risen to power.
I’m sure you can trace every atrocity back to us.
September 24, 2014 at 7:56 pm
I gave you cause and effect. You’ve absorbed nothing, of course, and have nothing in your mind resonating on the massive bombing campaign by the US in Camboida. It did not register. I know how that works. My mother, my first wife were like that, blank starers.
September 24, 2014 at 2:36 pm
Regrettably late Solzhenitsyn and his fellow captives had the answer.
““And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”-AS.
September 24, 2014 at 2:52 pm
I know you think you got all you need from Solzhenitsyn, but have you ever otherwise read Russian history from the Russian point of view, Swede? Why, for instance, do they credit themselves for winning the Great War, and not the allies?
September 24, 2014 at 4:16 pm
You also should realize that regardless of the merits of Solzhenitsyn’s work, he was only treated so well over here because he spoke evil of the enemy.
September 24, 2014 at 7:18 pm
CIA set up the gulags.
September 24, 2014 at 7:53 pm
It’s not that you”re stupid, but rather that you take such pride in it.
September 24, 2014 at 8:00 pm
Fire doesn’t melt steel.
September 24, 2014 at 10:14 pm
Light cannot penetrate lead.
September 24, 2014 at 10:03 am
“Comrade, what do you want to do?” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZlsKvOkHIY Selfies for climate justice.
September 24, 2014 at 11:42 am
selfies for the tea party:
September 24, 2014 at 12:22 pm
September 24, 2014 at 1:14 pm
I tend to agree with this sign.
September 24, 2014 at 2:53 pm
Huh? You have made your life from profiting from capitalism, you are hooked on capitalistic products such as your I devices, live in a home built by capitalism, and consume food produced/sold by capitalistic businesses such as Whole Foods. So, just how are you fighting for a socialist future when you are quite comfortable living out your days from the fruits of capitalism?
September 24, 2014 at 11:48 pm
What about the making of iDevices in China speaks of capitalism?
September 25, 2014 at 9:17 am
Everything. Apple looked to produce the phone in a low cost high production environment with 100’s of thousands of workers, and corner the Chinese market to the detriment of its competitors. “Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China”
September 25, 2014 at 9:56 am
What does it say about laissez-faire capitalism that Apple has to exploit China’s socialist market system in order to turn a profit and become the world’s most “valuable” corporation?
C’mon, Craig, think about that one. You can do better than regurgitating market-speak. Is it really that capitalism’s shining glory is the exploitation of non-capitalistic market systems and their peoples?
What are you going to say when China’s socialist market system and Russia’s mixed state and socialist market economies begin to prey on laissez-faire capitalism? Oh, wait… they already are, and we’re reigniting the cold war to fight it!
September 25, 2014 at 10:29 am
You should study up on Steve Jobs reply to Obama when asked why he didn’t produce Apple I products in the US.
September 25, 2014 at 10:03 pm
Study up on Jobs? Obviously you know nothing about me…
September 26, 2014 at 1:05 am
And instead of regurgitating Michelle Bachman’s prattle, go read the NY Times article about Apple and China.
September 26, 2014 at 9:21 am
I did read the NYT Apple article. I was hoping you did as well.
September 26, 2014 at 11:20 am
So then you agree, that there are a multitude of reasons why Apple off-shores production. Notably that China highly subsidizes it’s high tech manufacturing industry and resource extraction/preparation, employee education, relocation, medical and housing expenses.
All of that upholds my statement that “What does it say about laissez-faire capitalism that Apple has to exploit China’s socialist market system in order to turn a profit and become the world’s most “valuable” corporation?”.
So, what’s your point? Other than you are a Michelle Bachman acolyte? And don’t bother going the simpleton route — I’ve been a professional Apple analyst/consultant for decades. I detect your B.S. a mile away.
September 26, 2014 at 12:32 pm
JC, try and have a good day. Your use of Cowgirl-esque gratuitous insults does noting to advance a discussion. I stand by comment to Mark. Apple is a capitalistic corporation. Your addition of laissez-faire is not relevant to understanding that.
September 24, 2014 at 4:19 pm
I don’t see “capitalism” around me, but rather, socialism, more aimed at the wealthy and the large corporations than regular people, but still benefiting regular people to a large degree. I am a Social Security recipient. Love that program! Soon I’ll be on Medicare and free of the insurance cartel. Love that program!
People in Europe living under socialism have devices, live in homes, eat food. I did not know “capitalism” made those things. I thought people did.
September 26, 2014 at 9:28 am
As to the ‘People’s March’ it seems to not have been taken seriously at the UN. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/09/24/the_air_comes_out_of_the_climate_change_talks_124087.html#ixzz3EQ9IgDkJ
September 26, 2014 at 1:18 pm
Loc Ness Socialism.