Which brings us to our most misleading headline of the year: the handful of headlines floating around talking about how "President Obama cuts vacation short returns to Washington to work on Fiscal cliff deal"
And see heres the thing, those headline are doubly misleading. First I dont really think you can say Obama was "on vacation". While its true he talks his family to Hawaii every year for the Holidays, I should point out that this year, he left the same day as the senate, who like him also ALL went to Hawaii this year. But not for a vacation. All of them, including Obama, VP Biden and a ton of former senators, were in Hawaii for the funeral and memorial of Senator Dan Inouye, the Hawaiian senator who died the other week. Obama even delivered one of the eulogies. And now of course Obama is set to return to DC tomorrow along with the Senate.
Now look I admit I am sure Obama spent Christmas Day in Hawaii with his family, just as I'm sure Mitch McConnell spend it with his family in Kentucky, or Harry Reid with his in Nevada, both having flow out of Hawaii Tuesday night, like every other Senate member, before they all return to DC tonight or tomorrow. But really the question is, is one and a 1/2 days with your family (and a handful of hours other days when not all the massive amounts of memorial services) really a vacation in the first place?
I say no. I say thats more like "Obama gets a few hours free to see family on Christmas", its not a vacation.
And that brings us to the other misleading part of the headline: the idea that Obama is coming back to Washington to work on the Fiscal Cliff Deal. Because again he's not. I mean after all who would he work with?
Obama cant pass a Fiscal Cliff deal by fiat, and Article 1 Section 7 of the US Constitution says "All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills."
So to put that in plan English, all tax bills (which the Fiscal Cliff agreement is) MUST by law start in the House.
And as you may have noticed I have mentioned the senate a bunch of times, but I havnt mentioned the House yet.....thats because we dont know where they are.
See after their Plan B bill exploded in their face, the House adjured (or tried to) until....well actually we dont know until when.
At some point today the House is supposed to hold a conference call of leadership, to decide when or even IF the house is going to return to consider legislation.
Now I should point out that in theory the House is in fact in session. See the Constitution also makes it illegal for one house to adjourn without the consent of the other, and the Senate never actually passed the House Adjournment (as they were already in Hawaii, with House approval, for Sen Inoyue's funeral).
So legally the House has never Adjourned, in stead they are holding called a pro forma session, which is basically one poor bastard shows up, gavels in the House (starting the session), and Gavels it out and then goes home (until the next day). Monday's House session for example lasted from 12:00:32 PM until 12:03:36 P.M....a whole 3 minutes and 4 seconds (most of which went into the opening prayer and the pledge of Allegiance. And presumably they will do the same thing today.
And tomorrow as well. See the one thing the House HAS decided on is that no matter what they decide on the conference call today, they WILL NOT be returning to work tomorrow.
And given the usual House pattern of not working friday's or weekends, I doubt they will be back before Monday....which since the year ends Tuesday, basically means they arnt gonna be able to do a damn thing.
Which also means there is no reason for Obama to cut his non vacation short, since there is no possible way he can get a Fiscal Cliff deal. So clearly he cant be working on one.....he's got no one to work with.
What it does mean though is that he can play up the optics of being in Washington (because somehow in the internet age Americans are still stupid enough to think geographic location matters) and claiming he's working on Cliff deal.....or at least willing to, something the GOP wont look like they are doing.
Which means really he's hoping the optics will give him a better deal after we go off the cliff. And that is all he's doing (and the senate is doing) no matter how somber and serious the completely inccorect headlines are.
We are going off the cliff, and all this is at the moment is a totally transparent political ploy, that the media, mainstream and otherwise has bought into hook line as sinker as they always do with transparent political games.
In otherwords its the media trying to create a story so they have something to do until news actually starts happening again after January 1st (like every year).
Which also means there is no reason for Obama to cut his non vacation short, since there is no possible way he can get a Fiscal Cliff deal. So clearly he cant be working on one.....he's got no one to work with.
What it does mean though is that he can play up the optics of being in Washington (because somehow in the internet age Americans are still stupid enough to think geographic location matters) and claiming he's working on Cliff deal.....or at least willing to, something the GOP wont look like they are doing.
Which means really he's hoping the optics will give him a better deal after we go off the cliff. And that is all he's doing (and the senate is doing) no matter how somber and serious the completely inccorect headlines are.
We are going off the cliff, and all this is at the moment is a totally transparent political ploy, that the media, mainstream and otherwise has bought into hook line as sinker as they always do with transparent political games.
In otherwords its the media trying to create a story so they have something to do until news actually starts happening again after January 1st (like every year).
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