case in point:
Congressional Budget Incompetence Can't Compete with Spankgate, Girthergate, Shitgazi
Congressional Budget Incompetence Can't Compete with Spankgate, Girthergate, Shitgazi
Since Shitgazi hit the fan, so much new has happened. In no particular order, we've dealt with "Girthergate," in which the president's detractors claim that Donald Trump is actually much, much fatter than he already plainly appears to be. No way, say the girthers, that the former beauty-pageant tycoon and serial fat-shamer is a svelte 239 pounds as his doctor claims! We've met Stormy Daniels, a porn star who has publicly denied reports that she had a sexual relationship with the married Trump starting in 2006; she also denies that she was paid $130,000 in hush money to keep quiet. The Wall Street Journal, in a compelling display of old-style investigative journalism, says she and Trump are lying and its reporters have followed a payoff trail through a complicated financial setup involving Delaware-based shell companies. A sub-scandal in this story has also gotten a lot of ink: "Stormy Daniels Once Claimed She Spanked Donald Trump With a Forbes Magazine." If that isn't enough for you to swear off print for good and go all-digital, there remains the hotly debated question of whether the particular issue featured a cover story on Trump himself or his daughter Ivanka, about whom he has said some weird shit. Trump also released the winners of his "fake news" awards, too, which he defined mostly as any news account hostile to him and his agenda.
If this was a Marx Brothers movie, this would be all good, dirty fun. But we're dealing with situations a tad more serious. Over the past week, both houses of Congress, in a rare but depressing show of bipartisanship, overwhelmingly approved renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which effectively allows the government to spy not simply on foreign agents but on U.S. citizens. As Scott Shackford explains, "This bill doesn't just renew Section 702 for six years; it also codifies permission for the FBI to access and use data secretly collected from Americans for a host of domestic federal crimes that have nothing to do with protecting America from foreign threats." While the legislation awaits Donald Trump's signature into law, dissenting members of Congress have called for publishing a classified four-page memo that they say "reveals alleged United States government surveillance abuses [that are]...'shocking,' 'troubling' and 'alarming,' with one congressman likening the details to KGB activity in Russia." In a Senate that has been incapable of passing an actual budget in forever, a bipartisan group of senators led by Democrat Ron Wyden and Republican Rand Paul were shut down when they tried to filibuster FISA renewal. FISAgate just can't compete with Spankgate, it seems.
we need to stop wallowing in the mire of everyday stupidity and fix our gaze on important things such as passing a federal budget, ending effectively warrantless surveillance on Americans, and hammering out immigration laws that reflect the best hopes of our country and not our darkest fears.