By Ariana Pekary, producer
The closer we get to December 31st and the so-called fiscal cliff, the more this is starting to look like the final scene of the film, Thelma and Louise. Both Democrats and Republicans are refusing to compromise. And that’s not the only exciting plot twist this week.
Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times helps unravel some of these stories. He says we’ll see this go through the Christmas holiday, likely into January. If somehow the deadlines are extended until the next congress takes control, that could tip the balance to the President’s favor, since it will be a more Democratic-leaning branch.
This week the Jack Kemp foundation hosted a dinner at which Senator Marco Rubio and Congressman Paul Ryan spoke. Rubio used the term “middle class” 35 times in his speech. Not exactly a diversion for him. However, Paul Ryan has taken a very different approach from Mitt Romney’s post-election sour grapes.
What may be my favorite article of the week (or the year), the Wall Street Journal published an interview this week with Sheldon Adelson. He called himself a social liberal. Yep: he’s pro-choice, pro-stem cell research, pro-immigration, and (ready for this?): pro-socialized healthcare. That’s kind of a must-read from the man who gave nearly $150 million dollars to republican candidates this year.
This week a 2011 interview with General Petraeus was made public, thanks to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post. It was an off the record interview in which it became clear that Roger Ailes, the President of FOX News, encouraged him to run for President. While that got a lot of play in the news cycle, that didn’t astonish us as much as Petraeus’s complaints about Fox being biased against his war in Afghanistan – more so than The New York Times. If you haven’t heard the raw audio yet, it’s worth taking the time.
For the few not familiar with the final scene of Thelma and Louise, this is for you. And I’ll let everyone else decide which one represents the Dems, which one represents the Republicans.
PLEEEEZZZZZ…. The TEA party began as a support group for Ron Paul and has ABSOLUTELY NO CONNECTION to the far right, reactionaries or even mainstream conservatism and draws far more from libertarian and anarchist ideologies. It is the Republicans who are the far right fascists and it is the Democrats who are the far left fascists. What people mean today when they refer to the right wing conservative TEA party is the sort of detritus and debris which attached itself to the anarcho-libertarian snowball response to the encroachment and insinuation of compassionate totalitarianism into mainstream political actions and legislation. imbeciles such as the knee kicking lawyer for the IRS – MIchelle Bachman and corporatists like the the Koch brothers co-opted the movement and jumped in front of the parade. Never again did another legitimate voice of the TEA party get a hearing in the media.