Timothy Egan, former liberally biased New York Times reporter who now pens left-wing column rants for both the Times in print and online, posted his "wish list of better tomorrows [1]" for 2013 on Thursday, but they sounded like the same old left-wing ranting Egan has been doing since he stopped reporting for the paper around 2006.
The view from one Washington, with its self-inflicted and phony political crises, offers no hope. Let’s start 2013 by stating the obvious and repeat until fixed: the Republican House of Representatives is beyond broken, stuffed with politicians who lack the ability to divide up juice boxes in a kindergarten. Three-fourths of Americans think they are harming the rest of us. “Dereliction of duty” was Gov. Chris Christie’s apt phrase, referring to the failure to vote on promised aid for hurricane relief.
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A new Congress, sworn in Thursday, will be less crazy than the old one by only a few degrees of wacko. Gone, at least, are a deadbeat dad and a longtime politician who said his official statements were not intended to be factual. Let the new gang resolve to live by a political version of the Hippocratic oath, and do no (further) harm. O.K., that’s never going to happen, not as long as we send people to Washington from gerrymandered districts of voters who share the same biases.
I’ll try again: the only job of Congress is to govern. That may be impossible, given that the House hooligans have planted fresh land mines designed to blow us all up in a few months. (See debt ceiling, the explosive of choice.) The fault is entirely with a knot of Tea Party extremists who will never consider a fresh idea and a House Speaker whose notion of compromise is to tell his Democratic counterpart in the Senate to commit an unprintable act. For John Boehner, his profane shout-out to Harry Reid passed for a New Year’s toast.
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Of late, we have doubters of Hillary’s Clinton’s blood clot and concussion, led by the deplorable former “diplomat” John Bolton, who speaks to fellow conspiracy theorists via Fox. In suggesting that the secretary of state was faking an illness to avoid testifying about Benghazi, Libya, Bolton moved onto Trump Island. Can he be forced to stick with facts when he opens his mouth? No, but he can be shamed. Or better yet, ignored.