The world is finally taking note of Washington's inability to make a deal. [Ed. note: Some of these translations may not be exact.]
Source: webmedia.newseum.org
Source: webmedia.newseum.org
Source: webmedia.newseum.org
Source: webmedia.newseum.org
The agency releases a rather pointed press release reminding everyone that it's not a Hollywood movie.
Image by Courtesy Jonathan Olley/MCT
The CIA does not wish to be confused with Hollywood depictions of the agency, it said in a little-noticed press release on Thursday: "Hollywood Myths vs. The CIA."
When you think about the CIA, does a famous British super spy come to mind? Are images of shootouts and high speed chases running through your head? Do you imagine CIA officers chasing terrorists through the American heartland, as seen on popular TV shows?
While the CIA may have cool spy tools that even James Bond would be proud to use, such as a robot fish that samples water and insect-sized listening devices, the CIA is a lot different than Hollywood portrays it to be. CIA.gov wants to share some of the facts with you.
The release goes on to list the flaws in some Hollywood portrayals of how the CIA works, such as the notion that everyone at the CIA is engaged in espionage, or that the CIA is "above the law."
The timing of the release coincides with the debut of Zero Dark Thirty, the new Kathryn Bigelow film about the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden, told from the perspective of a female CIA agent based on a real-life operative.
Though the CIA was receptive to the film at the beginning, allowing Bigelow and screenwriter Boal several meetings with key players in the bin Laden search, enthusiasm has since waned; acting CIA director Michael Morell has criticized the movie for its controversial interrogation scenes, saying they give the "strong impression that the enhanced interrogation techniques that were part of our former detention and interrogation program were the key to finding Bin Laden. That impression is false."
The film has also led some in Congress to call for an inquiry into whether or not the CIA shared classified information with the filmmakers.
From a DUI to fumbled fiscal cliff talks, there's no time for soul-searching in a leaderless party. “It's a shit show,” says one Republican.
Image by Roger Wollenberg / Getty Images
WASHINGTON — Forget the Republican Party’s need to rebrand itself. Forget party elders' promises that they will start reaching out to minorities. And forget the supposed soul-searching that is meant to sweep over the GOP as it undergoes a serious reexamination of its future.
Right now, Republicans are having trouble even getting out of their own way.
Conservative groups are splintering. The Romney campaign has dissolved into backbiting and billing disputes. A “plan B” to avert the fiscal cliff proved to be a colossal embarrassment. A teetotaling Idaho senator has been charged with drunk driving. But the most striking symptom of the GOP’s horrible moment is the party’s inability to get done what virtually everyone here knows is in its political best interest: A hasty surrender.
It’s difficult to find a Republican operative who is willing to say on the record that going over the fiscal cliff next Tuesday is a good idea. Provoking a crisis is bad politics: Republicans are resigned to taking the blame. And it’s bad for their policy agenda: They will likely be cornered into a broader tax hike than the best deal they could get from President Barack Obama today, and with none of the spending cuts that might now be on the table.
And yet, the dominant emotion among most Republicans here is one of sheer resignation.
“It’s a shit show,” one prominent Republican told BuzzFeed of the GOP’s messaging position. “Tax rates are going to go up on everyone, and we’re going to get the blame.”
President Obama has already snatched back the outlines of a deal he offered House Speaker John Boehner last year, pulling back from considering certain entitlement cuts. If the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire for all taxpayers, Republicans believe Obama will move the goal posts again, and refuse to negotiate on raising the eligibility age for Medicare or chained-CPI — an accounting tool many economists believe is more accurate than current measures of inflation, and would have the effect of slowing the growth of Social Security benefits.
“There’s a group of people waiting for the soul searching to begin until after we take this really shitty vote, whatever it is,” said a top Capitol Hill Republican.
The Republican woes have many roots, but here on Capitol Hill, one of the problems is particularly clear. Without a Republican president — or even a presidential nominee — leadership has fallen to two men who are in no position to actually lead a national party anywhere: Boehner and, to a lesser degree, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
McConnell is a tactical master and one of the best politicians in the country. But he is not equipped to be the party's national face, nor is he the sort to quickly impose a firm grip on the floundering party in order to lead it out of the wilderness.
McConnell has been extremely successful in working with the disparate parts of his conference to maintain discipline — after all, he’s seen Tea Party conservative Jim DeMint and staunch moderate Susan Collins vote in lockstep on dozens of motions and measures over the last four years.
But while his quiet demeanor is well suited for the Senate and Kentucky politics, he does not have the sort of personality that can rally his colleagues.
As for Boehner, since the election he’s seen his standing within the party and conservative circles crumble. Conservative news outlets are openly discussing ousting him, accusing him of ideological crimes against his party and in some cases openly mocking him and questioning his honesty.
At the same time, his conference — which has always been a rambunctious bunch on a good day — has made it clear they are not afraid of him and are unwilling to follow him into battle.
Boehner’s leadership style — which shuns the use of earmarks and places a premium on his and his lieutenants’ ability to use their personal relationships to guide their conference — has long been an open question within Washington. But while there’s zero chance of Boehner being ousted as Speaker, even loyal Republicans acknowledge he’s weak.
“The leadership is weak, but I say that with a caveat. Nobody is going to overthrow Boehner,” a veteran operative said.
The Location Privacy Protection Act would protect consumers from apps that share their location with third parties without their consent. Here's why the bill's passage in 2013 is a good idea.
Source: cultofmac.cultofmaccom.netdna-cdn.com
This spring, an iPhone app called "Girls Around Me" attracted media scrutiny (and sharp critique) for providing substantial private information about women to the app's users — using Foursquare to find them and Facebook to dig for details — without obtaining these women's consent. Foursquare subsequently found the app in violation of their privacy policy and revoked Girls Around Me's API access. Apple followed suit and removed the app from the iTunes store.
That's how just one particularly egregious stalking app was caught and cut off. But the problem isn't that there are a handful of intentionally, willfully stalkerish apps available for download and purchase. The other major cause for concern comes from the fact that popular apps we use on our devices share our locations without making us fully aware of that fact: While things have improved since then, a 2010 study by the Wall Street Journal found that 47 of the 101 examined apps transmitted users' phone locations to third parties in some way without obtaining users' permission first.
The Location Privacy Protection Act of 2012 (also known as the "Stalking Apps Bill") was, on the basis of these and related privacy concerns, first introduced to Congress in 2011 by Senator Al Franken (DFL, Minnesota). Earlier this month, the bill cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee with bipartisan support.
Senator Franken introducing the Location Privacy Protection Act in 2011.
The bill would criminalize stalking apps: apps designed exclusively to collect and share private information, many of which market themselves as such. It would also require phone companies to obtain users' permission before collecting and sharing location data with third parties and/or other companies — a practice that is currently legal, despite being somewhat at odds with the 2012 Supreme Court case United States vs. Jones, which ruled that the government must obtain a warrant before tracking someone using GPS.
Senator Franken points to this and other contradictions in the bill itself:
Markets plunge.
Image by Charles Dharapak / AP
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will not be making a new offer to congressional leaders to avert the fiscal cliff at a meeting at the White House Friday afternoon.
"In today’s meeting, the president is not making a new offer; he is going to lay out — as he did on Friday — what is clear can pass with a majority in both the House and Senate and what a majority of American people support," a source familiar with the meeting told BuzzFeed — news that sent stocks sharply down when it hit the wires Friday afternoon. "He will ask them what they are willing to support to prevent us from going over the cliff, and if they don’t have a counter proposal that can pass the House and the Senate, he will ask to allow for an up or down vote."
Reports from Capitol Hill on Thursday and Friday indicated that lawmakers were closing in on a new agreement, though the source said Obama will not be initiating with an offer. It is not yet clear whether other meeting participants will present a proposal to avert the fiscal cliff.
Administration officials believe that Obama's proposal would pass Congress if provided an up-or-down vote, something Speaker of the House John Boehner has to date refused to do unless a majority of his caucus is on board. In addition to Boehner, Obama is meeting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Vice President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner are also in attendance.
If lawmakers don't act by the end of the year, taxes will rise on nearly all Americans, unemployment insurance will expire for nearly 2 million people, and painful automatic spending cuts will kick in.
Source: d3j5vwomefv46c.cloudfront.net / via: @JoshuaGreen
Urges Senate leaders to strike a deal. Hill leaders indicate sequester, debt ceiling likely to be excluded from final agreement.
Image by Jonathan Ernst / Reuters
WASHINGTON — In a meeting at the White House on Friday, President Barack Obama and congressional leaders determined that they would likely not reach a deal by the end of the year to address the debt ceiling and the automatic spending scheduled to go into effect, according to a Republican source.
"[House Speaker John] Boehner said we would not turn off the sequester without commensurate spending cuts to replace it," the source said. "By the end of the discussion, it was clear that the sequester is not likely to be addressed in any immediate agreement."
"Similarly, based on the scale of a potential agreement, it is not expected the debt limit will be a component," the source added.
Even so, Obama said in a statement in the White House briefing room later Friday that he is "modestly optimistic" a deal of some magnitude can still be reached to avert at least part of the fiscal cliff before the end of the year. The focus of the negotiations currently appears to be on tax reform.
But major sticking points remain there as well, according to a source familiar with the meeting, including the income threshold at which tax rates will increase: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell remains skeptical that he could persuade his conference to support raising taxes on any income below $400,000, if that.
In addition, Republicans maintain that the estate tax should be kept at 35 percent while Democrats hope to increase it to 45 percent.
The president has delegated the task of hashing out these disagreements to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and McConnell, and indicated that he will sign whatever compromise package they come up with.
"At President Obama’s request, I am readying a bill for a vote by Monday that will prevent a tax hike on middle-class families making up to $250,000, and that will include the additional, critical provisions outlined by President Obama," Reid elaborated in a statement. "In the next twenty-four hours, I look forward to hearing any good-faith proposals Sen. McConnell has for altering this bill.”
But, at the same time, the president detailed a back-up plan: An "up or down" vote in the Senate on the president's plan to extend tax cuts from income up to $250,000, but that would not necessarily address the rash of spending cuts set to take effect.
"That's the bare minimum that we should be able to get done," Obama told reporters.
The president delivered his statement roughly one hour after he concluded a 65-minute-long meeting with congressional leaders in the Oval Office, which he called "good and constructive." Present at that gathering, according to a White House official, were Boehner, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Reid, McConnell, Vice President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
During the meeting, "the group agreed that the next step should be the Senate taking bipartisan action," an aide to Boehner said later.
"The leaders spent the majority of the meeting discussing potential options and components for a plan that could pass both chambers of Congress," the aide said in a prepared statement. "The speaker told the president that if the Senate amends the House-passed legislation and sends back a plan, the House will consider it — either by accepting or amending."
In a separate statement, an aide to McConnell confirmed that "the president and Congressional leaders today agreed that the Senate must now act."
"This will require a bipartisan approach. Members of the Senate will continue to work toward producing a bipartisan package in a timely manner to protect American taxpayers and jobs from a massive tax hike in January."
Following the meeting, McConnell and Reid returned to the Senate and huddled with some members of their respective conferences during a vote. Reid appeared to spend most of his time talking quietly with his liberal wing, while McConnell spent considerable time speaking with fellow Kentuckian Sen. Rand Paul.
After the vote, Reid and McConnell informed their colleagues that they would work on the details of a deal over the next 24 hours and would present that framework to their members Sunday afternoon once the chamber returns to work.
If successful in the Senate, the Reid-McConnell bill would likely be taken up by the House after the new year and before the 112th Congress ends on Wednesday — a narrow window that could allow the measure to be scored as a tax cut, even for the nation's wealthiest.
But Boehner would still face a critical challenge from conservative members of his conference in passing such a compromise — although in recent days he has hinted he could take up a fiscal cliff deal even if the majority of his conference does not support it.
John Stanton contributed reporting.
“We finally feel equal and happy to live in Maine,” Steven Bridges told the Bangor Daily News after marrying Michael Snell. Same-sex couples can now marry in Maine.
Via: @alexsteed
Via: @TVTEDDY
Image by Kurt Graser / Knack Factory
Via: @dfarmer14
Once a third-rail issue for moderate Democrats, opposition to the NRA is suddenly en vogue.
Image by Charlie Riedel / AP
WASHINGTON — Sen. Claire McCaskill sent out a fundraising pitch to Democratic supporters Saturday, touting her fight with the NRA over gun violence and asking for donations to help pay down her campaign’s debt.
In the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings earlier this month, McCaskill hammered the NRA, demanding the organization ”come out of hiding” and engage in the debate over gun violence.
In her Saturday pitch to her email list, McCaskill argues that “I've always been willing to take on the big guys when it's the right thing to do -- like my recent call on the NRA to come to the table to help prevent further gun violence or my fight to end taxpayer-funded subsidies for Big Oil.”
McCaskill’s willingness to aggressively attack the NRA is particularly noteworthy given the fact that Democrats from the South and Midwest have long been loathe to cross swords with the powerful gun lobby.
The future Israeli Prime Minster and MIT graduate — using the Anglicized version of his name “Ben Nitay” — argued on the local Boston TV debate show The Advocate , that “the US should oppose the creation of a Palestinian state for several reasons.”
Source: youtube.com
Taking Saturday off while Senate leaders negotiate. Congress will be back in session Sunday.
Source: pbs.twimg.com
Source: yfrog.com
Seriously.
Members of Congress will join other federal workers in seeing a modest increase in their pay next year thanks to an executive order signed by President Obama Thursday.
Congressmen and senators who make $174,000 a year will see an extra $900 in their annual pay packages before taxes next year. That's an increase of 0.5 percent that will take place after March 27.
Vice President Joe Biden will also see an increase in his pay.
The executive order increasing the pay of members of Congress comes while the White House and Congress push to reach a deal on the so-called fiscal cliff before taxes and deep spending cuts take place on January 1.
The phrase isn't new. Here's how it traveled from speculation about a western movie in 1966 to become shorthand for Washington's current budget crisis.
In a 1966 Film Daily article discussing where MacKenna's Gold would be filmed — the United States or Spain — the term "fiscal cliff" first appeared in print, and it had nothing to do with the United States budget.
"To runaway or not to runaway," read the article. "That was the question yesterday as writer-producer Carl Foreman presented Hollywood with a fiscal cliff-hanger awaiting [a] final decision next week on whether Foreman's projected $5,000,000 Western epic, 'Mackenna's Gold,' shall be filmed in the United States or in Spain."
Via: books.google.com
Richard Spong, a writer for Editorial Research Reports, the periodical now known as CQ Researcher, wrote a piece headlined "The Fiscal Cliff-Hanger" on June 26, 1967. The article, discussing funds to be appropriated by Congress at the close of the fiscal year, appeared in the Ohio daily, the Youngstown Vindicator. Whether Spong or the Vindicator penned the fateful headline remains unknown.
Via: news.google.com
Printed on May 13, 1975 in the Milwaukee Sentinel, the term was used in the way readers are meant to understand it today — to describe an impending financial crisis, in this case, in New York City.
Via: news.google.com
In an effort to fight President George W. Bush's tax cut package, the Democrat from North Dakota took to the Senate floor to tell colleagues he couldn't "think of anything more irresponsible than enacting this plan," Conrad said on March 13, 2003. "If Congress were to actually adopt the plan before us, it would plunge the country off a fiscal cliff and threaten the education of our children, the financial security of our seniors, the stability of our economy, and the ultimate strength of our nation."
Two months later, on July 15, Sen. Conrad was featured in a piece on the "CBS Evening News with Dan Rather" about the deficit. "The fact is, he's taking us right over the cliff, right over the fiscal cliff," said Conrad of President Bush.
The line would stick. Conrad — then a ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, which he would go on to chair — would use the "fiscal cliff" term on the Senate Floor in September, arguing that Bush's economic policies were "taking this country right over the fiscal cliff."
And in February of 2004, Conrad warned then-director of the Office of Management and Budget, Joshua Bolten, that "the overall budget is increasing, spending is increasing, and we've got record deficits now," said the Senator. "It doesn't add up. If we're honest, we know it doesn't add up. It doesn't come close to adding up, and he's got us heading to the fiscal cliff."
“Were the President still in the Illinois State Legislature, he would support this measure that would treat all Illinois couples equally,” White House spokesman Shin Inouye told the Chicago Sun-Times .
Image by Jonathan Ernst / Reuters
In a rare move, President Obama issued a statement to the Illinois General Assembly urging it to legalize marriage equality in his home state.
White House spokesman Shin Inouye told the Chicago Sun-Times on Saturday:
"While the president does not weigh in on every measure being considered by state legislatures, he believes in treating everyone fairly and equally, with dignity and respect."
"As he has said, his personal view is that it's wrong to prevent couples who are in loving, committed relationships, and want to marry, from doing so. Were the President still in the Illinois State Legislature, he would support this measure that would treat all Illinois couples equally."
This comes ahead of decision of the measure which could be taken up this week in Springfield. BuzzFeed's Chris Geidner explained the debate currently taking shape in the state:
[A]dvocates are looking to push a bill in the first month of 2013. "Public sentiment is moving fast on this," state Sen. Heather Steans told the Chicago Tribune. “It’s just a wave now. It’s moving very quickly."
Anticipating the fight, the "Coalition to Protect Children and Marriage" was unveiled by opponents of the bill Dec. 18, and it includes the Illinois Family Institute, Eagle Forum of Illinois, Abstinence and Marriage Partnership, Illinois Citizens for Life PAC, Lake County Right to Life, Concerned Christian Americans, and Family-Pac.
The state already has civil unions, and two ongoing lawsuits, brought by Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union, challenge whether the differential treatment is constitutional under the Illinois Constitution.
[UPDATE: For more on Saturday's move, see BuzzFeed's Chris Geidner on how this is "another step" for Obama in the marriage equality debate.]
Weighing in for the first time to support a state legislative effort that would let gay couples to marry, Obama goes further than ever on the issue. Still unresolved: Whether Obama thinks the U.S. Constitution requires marriage equality.
Image by Pool photo by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Abaca Press/MCT
WASHINGTON — President Obama went a step further on Saturday in his public views on same-sex couples' marriage rights than he has done in the past, with a spokesman stating that Obama supports the planned Illinois legislative measure to allow same-sex couples there to marry.
The move is the first time Obama has endorsed a legislative effort to allow same-sex couples to marry. More than that, it is a break from Obama's past statements about state legislative efforts, in which he as recently as October described as a "conversation" — but declined to state his preferred outcome.
In October, in an MTV interview, Obama said, "[H]istorically, marriages have been defined at the state level. There's a conversation going on. New York has moved forward with one set of ideas. There are some other states that are still having that debate."
He did not, however, explicitly state his view on how states should resolve that debate.
When New York was considering its marriage equality bill in 2011 — which was before Obama had announced his personal support for marriage equality — Obama had talked in a similar way about that state's consideration of the issue.
"[R]ight now I understand there's a little debate going on here in New York -- about whether to join five other states and D.C. in allowing civil marriage for gay couples. ... New York is doing exactly what democracies are supposed to do. There's a debate; there's deliberation about what it means here in New York to treat people fairly in the eyes of the law," Obama told attendees at an LGBT-focused campaign fundraiser.
Now, as several state legislatures prepare to consider measures to allow same-sex couples equal marriage rights, Obama has taken the first state that will do so — his home state of Illinois — and announced which side of that "little debate" he would be on if he had a vote there.
"While the president does not weigh in on every measure being considered by state legislatures, he believes in treating everyone fairly and equally, with dignity and respect. As he has said, his personal view is that it's wrong to prevent couples who are in loving, committed relationships, and want to marry, from doing so. Were the President still in the Illinois State Legislature, he would support this measure that would treat all Illinois couples equally," White House spokesman Shin Inouye told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Since May, when he first announced his personal support for marriage, Obama has spoken several times about that support, including endorsing the marriage equality referendum efforts in Washington and Maryland and the voter-backed marriage equality initiative in Maine.
The Maine initiative vote was the first vote for marriage equality initiated by its supporters, and Obama's endorsement, thus, was the furthest position he had taken in support of efforts to advance marriage equality at the state level before Saturday.
With the Illinois statement, Obama has gone a step further than that — taking a position not only on how measures already certain to appear on a ballot should be resolved but on how lawmakers should act on a proposed legislative act.
Although the move is being applauded by LGBT advocates, it also is likely to draw attention to a further step advocates already have been asking Obama to take.
Still unclear is whether Obama believes the U.S. Constitution requires that states resolve the debate as Obama, it appears, would prefer they do so. That is one of the questions raised by the challenge to California's Proposition 8 that is being heard by the Supreme Court in the coming months. (Although the Obama administration is supporting challenges to the constitutionality of the federal Definition of Marriage Act, arguing the law is unconstitutional, the administration has not weighed in on whether it views Proposition 8 as unconstitutional.) The lead lawyer for the same-sex couples challenging Proposition 8, Ted Olson, has said he "certainly hope[s]" the Obama administration weighs in on the case through the filing of an amicus curiae, or friend of the court, brief.
Lindsey Graham says odds of deal are “exceedingly good,” but hints at another debt ceiling fight.
WASHINGTON — South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham conceded defeat in the fiscal cliff negotiations Sunday morning, saying "hats off to the president."
In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," Graham complimented President Barack Obama for sticking to his guns in talks with congressional Republicans.
"He stood his ground. He's going to get tax rate increases," Graham said. "It will be a political victory for the president."
"The president won. The president campaigned on raising rates and he's going to get a rate increase," he added.
But Graham hinted that Republicans will now put up a tougher fight on raising the debt ceiling in the coming weeks, saying potential agreements to avert the fiscal cliff do little to deal with the nation's debt crisis.
"I hope we'll have the courage of our convictions when it comes to raise the debt ceiling to fight for what we believe as Republicans," he said.
Obama has said he will not negotiate over the borrowing limit.
Also talked about the fiscal cliff, Chuck Hagel, and gun control on “Meet The Press” Sunday morning.
The goal: “Win the Twitter war on the climate cliff versus the fiscal cliff,” says Johnson. It hasn't quite caught on.
Image by Querido Galdo / Upworthy
As members of Congress scramble to avert the “fiscal cliff,” environmental activists are using the moment of legislative deadlock to highlight what they hold up as a more urgent crisis — the “climate cliff.”
A campaign launched this month by the climate accountability organization, Forecast the Facts, contrasts what the group calls a “manufactured crisis” — to reach a budgetary deal before the first of the year, when automatic tax hikes and spending cuts are scheduled to go into place — with the “very real crisis of climate change."
“The fiscal cliff is being talked about with these fake claims of responsibility to future generations,” said Brad Johnson, the Forecast the Facts campaign manager behind the climate cliff initiative. “So they’re using language that would actually make sense if they were talking about climate change.”
“If we actually had leaders who cared about future generations in the way that they say they do, then climate change would have been addressed already,” Johnson told BuzzFeed.
The campaign, launched on Dec. 15, aimed to increase awareness and "win the Twitter war on the climate cliff versus the fiscal cliff,” Johnson said.
The climate cliff language — pushed out on Twitter by Forecast the Facts and other members of the climate and progressive communities — could not, of course, compete with the unceasing attention paid the budget showdown in Washington.
In the month of December, "climate cliff" was only tweeted about 4,300 times, compared to the more than one million tweets dedicated to the fiscal cliff, according to the Twitter analytics site, Topsy.
But the climate campaign did receive nearly 15,000 signatures — exceeding a goal of 10,000 — on a petition urging Congress make the climate cliff a “starting point for discussions on the present fiscal debate.”
Former Vice President Al Gore has also argued that climate legislation — specifically a carbon tax — would be a way to solve “the fiscal cliff and the climate cliff at the same time,” he told the Guardian this month. “By including the carbon tax in the solution to the fiscal cliff we can back away from the climate cliff.”
Rep. Ed Markey — a staunch climate advocate in the House who is now the Democratic frontrunner to fill John Kerry’s Senate seat next year — was one of the only members of Congress to talk climate during the fiscal cliff negotiations.
“If our country goes over the fiscal cliff, we will be able to climb back up,” said Markey on Dec. 4, at a climate briefing on Capitol Hill. “But if our planet goes over the climate cliff, we will plunge into an abyss of impacts that we cannot reverse.”
“There are people who are talking about climate change in the context of the fiscal cliff,” said Johnson. “Because once you confront climate change, you realize the 30-year fiscal debt is indistinguishable form the 30-year climate debt.”
One environmentalist's attempt to spread the word about the "climate cliff."
Image by Matt Bors / Daily Kos
Private talks, public chaos. This may be the worst Congress of the modern era, but they do know how to drag a fight out as long as humanly possible.
Image by J. Scott Applewhite / AP
WASHINGTON — The total chaos on Capitol Hill Sunday appeared at times to hint at private talks between key Senate leaders — but most of the Senate and the press milled around unaware of any progress, and at times convinced that the country will plunge off the "fiscal cliff" early Tuesday morning and into a crisis of spending cuts, tax increases, and an expected stock market crash.
“It’s all up in the air,” Sen. John Cornyn told reporters Sunday night following a two hour long closed door meeting of Republicans in the Capitol.
A few doors down the hall, Democrats were holding their own discussions and depending on which rank and file members one of the dozens of reporters loitering outside talked to, you could get a dramatically different story.
When Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim asked West Virginia Democrat Sen. Jay Rockefeller if a deal was possible, the veteran lawmaker said simply, "No."
“There I think is still a path forward,” Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte told Buzzfeed.
Lawmakers couldn’t even agree on what the major issues were. Democrats insisted that a Republican proposal to use a less generous cost of living adjustment for Social Security and Medicare — known as "chained CPI" — had ground the talks to a halt. But Republicans insisted that not only was it not a deal breaker, but that they had quickly and voluntarily taken it off the table in the interest of a short-term deal.
The confusion got so bad Sunday not even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his office could get on the same page: following the meeting with his caucus, Reid told reporters he had made a counter offer to Senate Minority Mitch McConnell. Reid’s office immediately tried to pull that back.
When the news hit the twitter feeds of dozens of reporters, the Democratic leader's office first said he had not, in fact said that. His spokesman quickly pivoted to the only-slightly-less-puzzling argument that Reid was being “rhetorical” when he said he had made a proposal he had not, in fact, made.
That’s not to say substantive talks weren’t also underway. McConnell talked with Vice President Joe Biden throughout the day, and lawmakers hinted that Biden may have made counter-offers of his own. And the normally combative Reid was unusually conciliatory all day, a sure sign that work on a deal was still going on.
The relative confusion amongst rank-and file-members over where the negotiations stand was likely also a good sign for the prospects of some sort of deal being reached: McConnell and Reid generally play these sorts of negotiations close to the vest so long as they are making progress and only start throwing bombs once the process has broken down.
The question, of course, is when a deal will be cut. The 112th Congress’ track record is mostly one of dysfunction, partisanship and gridlock. But one thing they have demonstrated an aptitude for is finding a way to muddle through crises of their own making just moments before the stroke of midnight.
As New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer told reporters Sunday: “Listen, these things always happen at the end."
She had been scheduled to return to work this week.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addresses a news conference in Brussels in this December 5, 2012 file photo.
Image by Francois Lenoir / Reuters
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been hospitalized due a blood clot resulting from her fall and concussion earlier this month, the Associated Press reported late Sunday.
Citing Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines, the AP reports that Clinton is being treated with anti-coagulants at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, where she will be monitored for at least the next 48 hours.
Clinton, who is expected to leave her position next year and is widely viewed as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, should she seek it, had been scheduled to return to work this week.
But Clinton's health has been a mystery since before the State Department announced on December 15 this that Clinton was hospitalized following a concussion caused by a fall resultant from dehydration from a stomach virus.
After news of her fall broke on Saturday the 15th, the Washington D.C. political website Politico reported that its reporters had inquired
the preceding Thursday about her health, only have her spokesman downplay the incident. The spokesman, Philippe Reines "said Saturday she was not and never had been hospitalized. Reines did not respond to questions about why Clinton’s fainting was not disclosed sooner," Politico reported at the time.
This Saturday, a conservative blogger, Gateway Pundit, repeated a Dominican news report that the Clintons had been celebrating in the Dominican Republic, and received a furious email from Reines:
Here are the facts: The Clintons are not in the Dominican Republic. The Clintons are not going to the Dominican Republic. I realize that you are linking to and possibly relying on a DomincanToday.com posting, and rest assured we have contacted them as well to point out their deceitful reporting. I’m hoping that you have now been apprised of the facts, and that what you are presenting to your readers is entirely inaccurate and based on nothing even remotely true, we sincerely hope you will do the right thing and take all necessary steps to correct this falsehood. We likely disagree on just about everything, but surely we can agree that posting a lie is far different than posting an opinion.
News of Clinton's blood clot broke Sunday evening.
In 1998 Clinton was diagnosed with a blood clot behind her right knee, she told the New York Daily News in 2007. Clinton was rushed to Bethesda Naval Hospital.
"That was scary because you have to treat it immediately - you don't want to take the risk that it will break lose and travel to your brain, or your heart or your lungs," she recalled. That was the most significant health scare I've ever had."
President Barack Obama nominated Sen. John Kerry to replace Clinton as Secretary of State nine days ago.
The Secretary of State was hospitalized Sunday night with a blood clot.
Via: @RichardGrenell
Via: nypost.com
Via: newsbusters.org
Via: mediamatters.org
