It’s a recurring theme of Get Real but only because Republicans keep doing things that prove the point. The Pity Party seems absolutely bent on self-destruction by following all the old rules for the old game that they can’t stop playing.
 
Take John Boehner, leader of the House Republican minority. Sunday George Stephanopoulos had him on to talk about the Republican alternatives to Barack Obama’s proposals including on global warming:
…the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we …

It nearly cost John McCain the Republican nomination and it keeps the otherwise feckless Lou Dobbs employed. So what’s Barack Obama doing digging up immigration reform? It’s not as crazy as it first seems.
Sure Obama already has a pretty full plate — the economy, the banking system, health care, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc — and  immigration is hardly an easy lift. In fact immigration is a bit like gun control and to a lesser degree abortion rights. These are all issues that galvanize opponents far more effectively than they do …

 
Saturday the normally guns-ablaze Wall Street Journal editorial page called for patience in dealing with the pirate hostage situation off the coast of Somalia. Turns out they were right. To a point.
 
By sundown Sunday cargo ship captain Richard Phillips had been held for four days by four pirates on a small boat adrift in the Indian Ocean about 20 miles off Somalia. With each passing day calls for a military solution increased, first in the blogosphere and then in some of the mainstream media. And a military solution is what …

Face it. The most natural American gut reaction to the news about Somali pirates holding an American ship captain hostage is, blow them the f*ck up! And that’s pretty much what the always-level-headed editors at the New York Post advocated on Saturday.
We would urge Washington to bring the melodrama to an immediate end — irrespective of the consequences to the hostage. Failing to do so would paint the Navy — and America — as impotent, making US-flagged vessels even more tempting targets for Somali cutthroats.
In other words, Nuke ‘em!!!!! Oddly, …

There a few things more certain in life than this: Hyper-partisans (left and right) will twist everything and anything to fit their worldview. Today’s case in point comes courtesy of Red State and a contributor who speculates that the Somali pirates who have attacked and apparently captured an American-flagged cargo vessel did so because they know Barack Obama is a wuss.
While the author is correct no U.S. flagged vessel has been successfully attacked by pirates to this point it’s worth noting how few American-flagged vessels there are any more. The …

 
Nope. No way. Not gonna vote for it. Not gonna support it. Not gonna do it. Republicans are not gonna play ball with any Democratic bill, initiative, thought, proposal. House Dems could propose a resolution that “America is great” and Republicans would all vote “No” instead proposing a resolution stating “America is the greatest.”
 
That’s how Washington is working these days and it’s driving even some Republicans to warn the party is becoming the House of No to it’s own detriment.
Newt Gingrich told a group of Missouri college students that Republicans …

 
So the first special election of the new year has come and gone and like so many elections nowadays, it’s too close to call. With all the regular votes counted across 10 upstate New York counties Democrat Scott Murphy leads Republican Jim Tedisco by 59 votes out of the almost 145 thousand cast. We should have a winner, with any luck, in a few weeks…or months.
In the meantime there are a few things we now know that we could only guess at before the voters spoke:

In claiming that this would …

What happens this coming Tuesday in towns like Claverack and Surprise and Truthville is going to set insider Washington abuzz. That’s when voters in those and a few hundred other towns and villages in the 20th Congressional district of New York decide whether a Republican or Democrat replaces Kirsten Gillibrand as their Congressperson.
Special elections always give Beltway insiders something to talk about outside the proper campaign season and this one is especially rich, coming just 10 weeks (really!) after Barack Obama took office with sky-high public approval ratings. Everybody is …

Monday we asked a question: Would those who blamed Wall Street’s big drop over the last two months on the new man in the White House give Barack Obama credit if the markets soared on news of the Administration’s bank rescue plan? Turns out in the case of the New York Post, of course not.
The Post is often vilified by liberals and applauded by conservatives for what it does print and does say but rarely does anyone notice about what’s missing. Today is a perfect case in point. While virtually …

For what it’s worth here are a few of my random thoughts and favorite stories on this chilly Monday:
It’s almost doomsday! With the MTA being forced to vote on it’s doomsday budget loaded with big fare hikes and bigger service cuts the responsibility for this rests squarely on the shoulders of Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith who has perfected the art (long-practiced in Albany) of fiddling while Rome burns. He has had an astonishingly inept three months leading the Senate.
While Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Governor David Paterson long ago …