Matt Cartwright wasn't in Congress when the Affordable Care Act passed. People taken in by conservative lies-- or who are freaked out about the incompetent roll out of the website-- can't really blame Cartwright the way they're trying to blame other Democrats in Congress. Cartwright could have laid low and let the battle rage on around him.
Fred Upton's Monkey CourtOn Wednesday, the House voted 292-122 to gut a significant portion of the Dodd-Frank Consumer Protection law. Irresponsible banksters addicted to risky gambling will once again be able to take those risks knowing that if they get into trouble, the taxpayers will be forced to pick up the tab.
Santa Clarita Assemblyman Scott Wilk is the kind of commonsense, mainstream Republican from the old days-- not hopeless... and still worth reasoning with. Today he's the co-chair of elections for the Assembly GOP Caucus and he's worried that some of his sleazy colleagues, particularly the ones in Washington, are spoiling his party's brand even more than it has already been. He was optimistic about holding three Republican seats against strong Democratic attacks next year.
The GOP shutdown may indeed be dead-- at least for now-- and Obamacare is still being birthed but that GOP shutdown cost the taxpayers something like $24 billion, killed a million jobs, raised unemployment, reduced the GDP, left us without food safety inspectors or even nuclear regulatory inspectors and put our government on a very economically precarious and dan
Far right Republican Congressman Gary Miller (CA) was basically redistricted out of office... except he managed to win a very blue district because of a quirk in California's new election law that found him running against a fellow Republican in the general, all the Democrats having eliminated each other in a crowded open primary. Obama had won what is now CA-31 (Colton Loma Linda, San Bernardino, Redlands, Rancho Cucamonga) with 122,691 votes (57%) against McCain's 89,376 (41%) in 2008. Last year Obama scored another 57-41% victory in the district, taking 118,043.
DCCC faves McIntyre & Matheson both voted to shut down the governmentI'm sure you already know that on Friday, Boehner surrendered to the Tea Party nihilists and the deranged Ted Cruz faction of his party and passed a bill that would shut down the government unless the Senate and Obama agree to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
On Thursday Justin Amash (R-MI) told a crowd of libertarians at the Liberty Political Action Conference that Senators John McCain (R-AZ), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) "are on the extreme fringes of American society in terms of their views on war.” Amash is correct about McCain and Graham but this week he voted to slash $40 billio
Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican consultant in California politics since the Nixon era, told the NY Times that “Until we solve our Latino problem, we’re not going to be a viable state party, and it’s hard to understand how that’s possible without fixing immigration.” The Times explains what everyone in California is already well-aware of:
House Armed Services Committee Chairman and founder/chairman of the congressional Drone Caucus Buck McKeon is always boosting wars on behalf of the arms manufacturers who are fianncing his career and his family's wealth. (They have a lobbying firm working with war industries.) His hatred and disrespect for President Obama, on the other hand, sometimes gets him in a muddle.
