Can We Just Cancel the Sequester?

Answer:  Yes.  Congress could pass a one sentence law repealing it. Done.  Tada!  We just figured out in seconds, what Congress has yet to figure out, and now as of March 1, the sequester is officially kicking in.  After a half-hearted one hour “summit” today (can you have a one-hour summit? we thinks not…) there is still no decision on what to do about the automatic spending cuts.  Based on one of the more awesome quotes to come from this whole debacle, however, we’re hopeful that our leaders are beginning to see the light.

“This [the sequester] is not going to be an apocalypse…it’s just dumb”

— President Barack Obama

That’s right, the president called the whole thing dumb.  We couldn’t agree more.  more

See, what’s extra frustrating about this whole situation is that this crisis is entirely manufactured; and not just by one side or the other. Both the GOP and Obama are perpetuating this stalemate in their own ways, blaming each other, and avoiding a long term solution.  Obviously, despite GOP claims, the impetus to avoid a sequester is not on Obama alone - he only proposed this strategy to deal with an intransigent GOP whose tomfoolery had resulted in the US’s credit getting downgraded.  Their strategy of not negotiating and instead reminding us that it was ”his idea” is cynical (surprise!) and more than a little cowardly.  Still, though we know that as of now, a majority of Americans will blame the GOP for these unpopular cuts, Obama and the Democrats (those that haven’t signed on to the CPC or Grayson/Takano letters circulating that call to simply repeal the sequester) are a part of the problem too.  They are banking on the fact that Republicans will be blamed for this ineffective and harmful strategy, and, like the GOP, are participating in a game of chicken.  They make dire warnings about what will happen (you mean we’ll have to wait at the airport longer?!?!  AHHHHHH!)  yet seem willing to let the cuts start in order to increase their leverage.  Why participate?  Why not suggest the madness?  THAT would get popular support and increase your leverage.  Blurg.Now that both sides have met to look like they did something, the outlook remains bleak.  It’s frustrating because, though perhaps the sequester is ultimately a bastardized GOP dream, Democrats did not get all of the tax increases they sought.  They took a terrible deal in the fiscal cliff negotiations and now they’re getting it handed to them by the Republicans.  Shouldn’t they have seen this coming? 

Well, We did, and who are we?  Geniuses, that’s who.  Republicans “caved” on a lame tax increase and now they’re done giving revenues.  Duhh.  How many tax increases do you think a Boehner-led Congress is actually going to go along with?  If we’re to glean anything from a post summit quote this morning, it’s that the answer is: none.

“But let’s make it clear that the president got his tax hikes on Jan. 1. This discussion about revenue, in my view, is over. It’s about taking on the spending problem here in Washington”

— Rep. John Boehner

This is why we said their bargaining strategy was poorly conceived.  Duh…

Either way, lets revisit the sequester itself. 

Here’s what we now know: Though it was never intended as an actual solution, the sequester won’t even be a good stand-in for a solution.  We’ve already been warned that it will slow growth and result in job losses, but the Bipartisan Policy Center says that the cuts in the sequester only hold off our national debt reaching 100% of our GDP by two years.  Basically, in 24 months we’re going to have a crippled state and and it will all have been for naught.  Our debt is huge, our economy is slow, and this policy is going to either exacerbate or not address those problems. Check out the chart below.

Now we know that “sequester” is a noun meaning a general cut in federal spending, but it’s also a verb meaning to isolate or hide away. According to us (two geniuses), there are plenty of things we could sequester without having a negative impact on the economy.  If we must sequester something, here is a list of things that would be far better to cut than all that spending:

1. Our rent (it’s too damn high, amiright?)

2. The price of flowers

3. The cost of the colorful pens that make shopping for office supplies so much fun.  Do you know how many colorful pens it takes to make a podcast and write a blog?  It’s sending us to the poorhouse.

4.  The quantity of processed food in the American diet (the brain trust has differing opinions on this.  One of us would wipe out all processed foods permanently (Lila) while one us us realizes that many dishes around the holidays need cream of mushroom soups (Brent).  [Note: only one of us is from the Midwest.  Can you guess which one?]

5. The Tea Party.  Sequester them away far away.  Space potentially.

Feel free to add your own suggestions below the depressing chart!

So seriously people, can we end the insanity and just decide to not have automatic spending cuts?  The answer is a simple yes.  And if they want to include an amendment to cut our rent and send the Tea Party into space while they’re at it, we certainly won’t stand in their way.

State of the Union Unscrambled

My fellow Americans, I’d like to thank you for toughing out the excessive number of reruns on television tonight by watching this speech.  As you may have heard, the state of the union is “stronger.”  What this means is that it’s not un-strong, and is steadily working it’s way towards a level of strength that is greater than it’s current, embarrassingly weak level.

Tonight I’ll be covering some of the ideas I’ve tossed around in the last few weeks, but in less detail and primarily through the use of soaring metaphors.   I’ll do my best to inspire you with insipid fanfare and unnecessary standing ovations, but it won’t be easy.  Our patience will be tested again and again by an opposition party that does not want to applaud as frequently as we do.  They will grumpily avoid eye contact with you, the American people, as they refuse to clap for ideas as simple as “providing decent educational opportunities” and “having the right to vote.”  

Tonight I stand before you ready to declare my full-throated support for a slew of ideas that shouldn’t be controversial but are.  Ideas like raising the minimum wage, allowing law-abiding undocumented workers a chance to one day get the green card we automatically offer any old Cuban citizen that floats up in a raft, and no longer paying for war in the Middle East in a roundabout attempt to lower prices at the pump.  Ideas like getting reeeeaaaallllly close to trying to offering universal health care and believing in the basic facts of science.  I know these are challenging concepts, but I’m committed to working through your idiocy because I have no other choice.  Frustratingly, my belief in everybodys’ right to vote even extends to people like you.

This speech will also be efficiently designed to mask some of my more controversial ideas.  I’ll use climate science as a lead-in to discussing my support for natural gas drilling, or “fracking” as the anti-flammable-water lobby calls it.  I’ll give you the impression that, in supporting this so-called clean energy, you are giving a great gift to the environment.  A gift that I will not mention (for your own good!) includes harmful chemicals seeping into your drinking water. Instead of focusing on that downer, I will focus on being heralded as a hero for my brave belief in the basic facts of science and nobody will be any the wiser.  My corporate friends will tip their hats to me but you won’t see that because they are shadowy and only meet with me behind closed doors.

Once I’ve covered these unpopular issues, I’ll make sure to distract you again with something moving.  I’ll stock the audience with as many examples of the triumph of the human spirit as possible, ensuring that not a single American will turn off their television set without feeling awed by our nation’s seemingly impossible greatness.  We are, after all, a nation that brings water and crackers to an 102 year-old would-be voter as she patiently waits in line for six hours; a line she is only standing in because of the color of her skin.  A nation that honors a bereaved mother by letting her sit next to the first lady instead of passing the gun control legislation that might have saved her daughter’s life.  A nation that sits a heroic policeman next to a complete stranger who has evidently not been warned that she will be on camera.  We don’t take the easy way out or search for easy answers, and that’s what makes us great.

All of this, of course, will seem magical when compared to what follows - a “response” speech by the opposition party that is never not bungled.  They will ask a rising star in the party to speak, only to embarrass them with a public access-style set-up and false assurances that they are prepared.  You will wonder how this person could have ever been elected to office considering their glaring inability to act natural while giving a speech.  Thus, the opposition party will destroy the presidential hopes of their one charismatic member/token minority, and we will all feel smug for it.

America, the tone of our voice will be significantly more important than any words we say tonight, but if we can get at least one Twitter hashtag out into the world, we’ll know we’ve done our jobs.  Good night and [something religious here].

The Filibuster: a Debacle and a Half

“[Requiring a supermajority] would mean the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. It would be no longer the majority that would rule; the power would be transferred to the minority.”

— James Madison, Federalist Papers No. 58

Anybody who listens to our podcast knows that nothing gets our goat quite like the silent filibuster.  This is one of the most infuriating, manipulative, and cynical practices of our modern Senate, and when we say “modern,” we mean “conveniently since the very time the nation elected one President Obama and the GOP settled on a strategy of obstruction.”  A period of American history that we will call “The Stupid Ages.”  

HOW THE STUPID AGES BEGAN:

You may be asking how this age of the Senate become so “”stupid” to begin with.  It’s a fair question.  

It began with a dream, a dream laid out by a bitter GOP that dug it’s own grave by electing an unpopular, incompetent, vacation-factory to be President for eight years.  A dream that each and every GOP Senator would share a simple, unifying agenda - one that would focus on preventing Senate votes from taking place instead of advancing legislation to benefit their constituents.

Well, kudos to you, GOP.  The Senate had a rule build right in that you could harness to this effect and you did not hesitate!  You always were good with blackmail.

Once considered a desperate option used primarily by fringe Senators to delay votes, the operating assumption of the Senate is now that a filibuster will occur for every vote, and Reid’s task has become scrounging up 60 votes to override these potential filibusters before they happen.  Ironically, zero of these filibusters (all of the “silent” variety) have actually been carried out because none of them are being threatened by flesh-and-blood people, they all being threatened by implication.  Reid has never called the GOP’s bluff and no GOP Senator has ever had to take to the Senate floor for 18 hours to express their disapproval of something patently good.  It’s simple: because there is no accountability, there is no way to stop this scourge.  The only semi-filibuster we’ve seen was carried out by Socialist Vermont Senator/American Hero Bernie Sanders, and while it was glorious, it wasn’t officially a filibuster because he wasn’t holding up legislation.

Lets look at some depressing facts.  In the 1960s, no single Senate term had more than seven votes on cloture (motions to end a filibuster).  Today, in the “Stupid Ages,”, we regularly go over 100 per term.  Republicans have used the silent filibuster over 370 times during Harry Reid’s tenure.  By comparison, Lyndon Johnson was Senate Majority Leader for the same length of time during the Cold War and only had to deal with one single Republican filibuster.  During the Cold War, guys!

What’s especially interesting about all the controversy over the filibuster is that the rules surrounding the practice haven’t changed significantly since the 1800s - the silent filibuster went uninvented for hundreds of years because…people used to be nicer?  After all, this is all happening in the Senate, i.e. the American equivalent of the House of Lords.  It’s a body designed to give rich landowners an extra special say in how we govern and, as a result, has always been very big on respect and formality.  The major responsibility of any Senator is to look like a picture of civility in an effort to show how superior white men are.  (And to complement each other at every turn.  Seriously, if they would all stop complimenting each other at hearings they would be able to get so much more done.  Or at least be able to silently filibuster way more bills than normal.)

Anyway, somehow, the idea that anybody could theoretically carry out a filibuster at any time, which has ALWAYS BEEN THE RULE OF THE SENATE, became much scarier when 44% of the Senate decided that they had no agenda other than to make threats.  And that, friends, is where we find ourselves now.

THE STUPIDER AGES:

So we know things are a mess, but things have now gotten straight up silly since Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell decided to actively non-address the excess filibuster problem. Flagrantly ignoring a bill being proposed by Senators Merkley, Udall and Harkin that would end the silent filibuster, Reid and McConnell decided to make a deal that does the least it can possibly do to seem like new legislation.  It will:

- Shorten the debate following a cloture vote but leave the ability to filibuster that cloture vote essentially intact.

- Require Senators to actually be on the floor in order to threaten a filibuster.  (Baby steps?)

- Allow the minority (Read: Republicans) to offer two amendments on every bill. (!!!)

- Shorten the confirmation time for judicial nominees.

- Require that the time allocated for debate actually be spent on debate and not general waiting around.

If reading of the above list leaves you thinking, ‘So wait, they can still just threaten to filibuster anything at any time without having to do it?  How will that possibly change anything?’ Well, we direct you to the wise words of Senator Tom Harkin, who said to President Obama:

‘Look, if you get reelected, if we don’t do something significant about filibuster reform, you might as well take a four-year vacation.”  

His take on the new bill? “This (deal) is not significant.“  Of course the day after Reid and McConnell announced this terrible deal, Tom Harkin announced his retirement.  Coincidence?  Doubtful.

THE GLORY THAT IS A REAL FILIBUSTER:

None of this is to say that we at Brain Trust Live are anti-filibuster in the broad sense.  As activists and general troublemakers, we’re actually quite pro-filibuster in a rabid sports-fan-style way.  Still, before Mr. Obama became president, the polite thing to do when you wanted to filibuster was to actually show up to the Senate Floor in a “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington” style blaze of glory.  

See, Senators are entitled to speak for as long as they like once they have the mic, and those with bladders of steel (who aren’t concerned with potential kidney failure) have done some impressive time on the stand.  

Strom Thurmond still holds the record for the longest individual filibuster, going on for over 24 hours in his opposition to the Civil Rights Bill of 1957.  He’s a man who governed from a wheelchair into his 90s and is mostly remembered for hating Civil Rights THAT MUCH.  Jesse Helms also cast a shadow over the rest of his political career over a short lived filibuster of A NATIONAL HOLIDAY COMMEMORATING MLK.  Yeah, that happened.  

But the joy of the filibuster is in what actually gets said for hours and hours on the floor.  In 1935, Senator Huey Long recited various recipes for fried oysters and Roquefort salad dressing for hours.  Senator Alfonse D’Amato even shared his vocal stylings by singing “South of the Border” to filibuster a bill that would move a typewriter plant from his home state to Mexico.  Hopefully (for the sake of everybody in attendance) his singing was better than fellow Republican Mitt Romney’s.  

Recipes for Roquefort salad dressing and presumably terrible Republican singing?  These are just a few of the things that make America great.  Why are we robbing ourselves of all of this glory?

American people: your ball.  

The 2012 Election Opus: Meet The Candidates

Does it seem like the 2012 race went on FOREVER?   It sure felt that way to us, and we loved pretty much every second of it - so much, in fact, that we can’t seem to let it go.  Now that the post-election glow is gone and it’s back to business as usual in Washington (not getting anything done), we think it’s as good a time as any to look back on all of the best (read: most ridiculous) moments of the campaign.  Though we do call ourselves the Brain Trust (because, um, we’re geniuses), we couldn’t possibly remember everything that happened along the way.  There will be people, places and things that get left out, and we’ll probably be excessively focused on small moments that only we cared about.  But really, isn’t Newt Gingrich’s obsession with zoo’s or Marcus Bachmann’s general unlikeliness as a person way more entertaining than the details of Mitt Romney’s tax plan? (Did anyone ever get those details btw?)

So, without further adieu, here is PART ONE of THE 2012 ELECTION OPUS: Meet the Candidates

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MITTENS ROMNEY:

The 2012 Republican primary field was special.  Reeeeeeal special.  What began as a battle between several factions of the Tea Party movement, one teen-libertarian idol, and one man who believed in climate science, descended into a two-man dogfight between a rich plutocrat and a Catholic wannabe-Evangelical who was one chromosome short of reality.  As was to be expected, though each candidate enjoyed a week in the lead, the richest, least qualified, and most vanilla man won out.  Meet Mittens Romney.

Mittens, a.k.a. the childhood crush of one vampire-slaying Eliza Dushku, was an enigma from the get-go.  Known (actually) for being a private equity bigshot and (barely) as the moderate ex-governor of Massachusetts that passed the model for Obamacare, he never did get “unzipped” the way his wife Ann promised he’d be.  (Also, gross.)  The man in question, after all, is somebody who cannot, at present, sit naturally or comfortably on a stool; puns about being stiff and wooden are not just obvious, they’re embarrassingly on-the-nose.  Still, the little personality we did glean through the power of investigative journalism was telling.  For example, Mittens was a class-A bully, forcibly cutting his gay classmates’ hair and dressing up like a police officer to pull his friends over.  Har har, isn’t high school hilarious?  Isn’t life hilarious?  Aren’t people without car elevators hilarious?  Totally.

Zippered Romney, in a turn that surprised rich white men everywhere, ended up being a terrible presidential campaigner who was most famous for hating 47% of Americans and not knowing how to describe lemonade.  Still, we like to think he did a little something for America.  After all, his poorly coordinated messaging and latent racist symbolism handed a victory to Democrats despite the terrible economy.  His campaign was so appallingin fact, that it was almost as though the whole thing was by design, though apparently nobody had told him.  He, after all, was as shocked as anyone by his loss.  And THIS, friends, is why you should do your math homework. 

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RICK “Don’t Google Me” SANTORUM:

Never has a candidate for president been so obsessed with dirty gay sex, which makes it fitting that he’ll more than likely be remembered for the stunt pulled by Dan Savage that ruined his presence on Google for the better part of the campaign.  This is a classy operation here, so we’ll let you do the research on this for yourself.  

In totally not-shocking fashion, Rick Santorum won the Iowa caucus (like we told you he would), adding his name to the esteemed list of winners like Mike Huckabee.  From there, Santorum used his folksy hatred of non-white straight married people to solidify the support of mouth-breathing evangelicals across the land (read: south).  

Santorum’s sweater vest tour of America led to some pretty good gems.   Besides running a campaign based entirely on making sure no one ever has access to health care, he also dealt with the important issues facing America, like outlawing teleprompters, outlawing porn, and outlawing males using pink bowling balls.   When it finally became clear that Rick’s sugar daddy Foster “put an aspirin between your legs” Friess couldn’t purchase the election, Rick did what all good candidates are supposed to do and wholeheartedly endorsed Mitt Romney for President by sending out an email to his supporters at 3am.  

Look for the Rick Santorum show on Fox News coming in 2013!

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RON PAUL:

You know how a lot of musicians tour by bus and those buses travel on roads and those roads are paid for by tax dollars?  

This was something we thought about a lot as the celebrity endorsements rolled in for Ron Paul.  His fan club, after all, included Kelly Clarkson, Michelle Branch, Prodigy, and Joe Perry – all road-touring musicians.  The very people for whom the presence of paved roads in counties far and wide is a professional necessity.  Those people.

Ron Paul, a Congressman from Texas, was one of the holdovers from the 2008 primary pool, though he’s never had an actual shot at winning the election because he’s a libertarian who doesn’t like to spend money on wars and is against the Patriot Act.  Despite his many other ultra-conservative views, he draws out a dedicated base of stoned college students every cycle because he’s in favor of deregulating marijuana (presumably this is where his musician support comes from as well) and runs a spirited campaign that never, ever, EVER gives up.  This year, after making sneaky plays for delegates in several states during the primaries and succeeding, Paulites got frozen out at the Republican convention and, in a very “Democratic party circa 1968” move, waged a protest inside the hall.   Awesometimes!

On a more serious note, there was speculation that Paul was wearing eyebrow wigs at the primary debates.  When you really get down to it, that’s probably all you need to take away from his candidacy. 

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NEWT GINGRICH: 

You know what’s hard?  Running for President.  It’s super time-consuming and people are always asking you questions and being ultra needy and you never get any time to yourself.  That’s why it’s so important to remember to take a vacation now and again…like, perhaps, a few weeks after declaring your candidacy.  You know, to clear your head and get some of your Tiffany’s shopping done.  Sage advice from a true American butterball…

Meet Newt: election 2012’s laziest campaigner.  Newt’s rise to frontrunnerdom was short-lived, but it was late enough in the game to nab him primary wins in South Carolina and Georgia, making him seem like a borderline legitimate person for a day or two before reality set in.  As Sheldon Adelson’s personal pet project, Newt enjoyed access to the type of funding that no person running a front for a zoo tour of Americashould, but reality got the better of him as his staff’s exorbitant salaries and voters’ lack of interest pushed his campaign into the red.  After taking a vacation, going shopping, hitting eight zoos, and suffering one penguin bite, he still was not getting enough of the zoo-animal vote to win the presidency, so Gingrich suspended his campaign for good and presumably went off to pick up the pieces at his beloved-but-bankrupt Gingrich Productions.  Sheldon Adelson, his one-man financier, moved on to (debatably) greener pastures and ended up losing an impressive $54M in his quest to get the American embassy in Israel moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Lest we undersell him, there was something that Newt’s campaign excelled at.  He got a nod from the Washington Times for “Worst Campaign in history” status.  Achievements! 

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RICK PERRY:

Governor Rick Perry of Texas was the candidate who entered the race to save the day after realizing that no one in America liked any of the other 72 candidates that were already running.  Announcing his candidacy on the same day as Michele Bachmann’s Ames Straw Poll triumph (yep, that happened), many people saw Rick Perry as the man who could shake up the race.  Remember how everyone just KNEW that Fred Thompson would come into the 2008 race and just out-conservative everyone and stroll into the White House, but then he didn’t like to campaign and was sort of dumb?  Similar story here.   Perry did enjoy some time at the top of the field immediately after announcing his candidacy, but like the other candidates who led the race, after people got to hear him speak, it was over.

Rick Perry won’t be remembered for much, but the one thing he WILL be remembered for is one of the better moments of the 2012 campaign.  Do you remember what it was?  If you can’t remember, just wait 53 secondsand maybe it’ll come to you.  If it doesn’t, well,  “oops” for you.  

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MICHELE BACHMANN:

Where to even begin?  Our obsession with Michele began long before she ever decided to run for president.  From making out with her pal George W. Bush to literally hiding in the bushes to spy on a gay rights march, Michele Bachmann had all the makings of a candidate of choice for everyone who wanted an absurd candidate with exactly zero chance of becoming president.

Michele, like every other Republican that ran (and some that didn’t) led the race for awhile, even scoring a pretty impressive win in the Ames straw poll.  Unfortunately, that’s about as far off the ground as her campaign got.  

In our minds, Michele Bachmann will ultimately be remembered for 2 things:

• Making things up at every turn.  Michele made up so much crap in the debates, the AP fact-checkers had a fact-checking quota for Bachmann (we’re serious).  They just had to quit at a certain point because it came too taxing on their staff to check everything she made up.  One of her most exciting gaffes, however, was a non-intentional fact invention.  In Waterloo, Iowa she made reference to being in John Wayne’s hometown.  Sadly, the only John Wayne that’s from Waterloo is John Wayne Gacy, a serial killer.  Did we mention Michele Bachmann’s hometown is also Waterloo, Iowa?  We think that pretty much sums it up.

• Her gay husband Marcus, who runs a gay reparative therapy clinic.  We know that we should respect Marcus’s sexuality.  If he says he’s straight he’s straight right?  Well, one half of the Brain Trust is gay, and the other half grew up in Chelsea, New York.  If there’s one thing we’re experts on besides politics, it’s knowing who is and is not gay.  Marcus Bachmann is gay.  Deal with it.

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HERMAN CAIN:

It’s lucky that running America is exactly like running a business.  It is, right?  Early on in the primary season enough Americans were thinking this to elevate Herman Cain, the former CEO of a Godfather’s Pizza (ick!) and current haver of no other experience, to frontrunner status for a week.  Then, of course, everybody realized that his much-publicized 9-9-9 tax plan looked like the devil’s number if you turned it upside down and he admitted that he didn’t know who the president of “Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan” was, so his moment of glory began to wane.

Predictably, Herman Cain then got caught an infidelity scandal and dropped out of the race soon after amidst speculation that he should have never been “in” to begin with. 

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FILLING OUT THE CLOWN CAR:

As we began writing this, we had to go back and remind ourselves who all ran for the Republican nomination this year.  There were so many.  SO MANY.   

John Huntsman: Former Governor of Utah and Mitt Romney’s magic underwear-wearing partner in crime

Lost Because: Believed in Evolution and trusted climate scientists

Gary Johnson: Former Governor of New Mexico and non-believer in roads

Lost Because: Not a warmonger

Tim Pawlenty: Former Governor of Minnesota, former mullet-haver

Lost Because: World’s most boring human

Thadeus McCotter: Former Congressman from Michigan, wannabe Hollywood screenwriter

Lost Because: If you can’t even remember to get enough signatures to get yourself on the ballot to run as the incumbent in your own congressional district, you are disqualified from becoming president.  Also, who the hell is Thadeus McCotter?

Other people we’re not convinced are even real: Buddy Roehmer(completely unknown to Republicans but the only candidate to make an appearance on the Rachel Maddow Show!) and Fred Carger

Stay tuned for our primary and presidential debate highlights, coming tomorrow!