in two days, he has happened across... another acorn of truth!
Now, after a long economic winter, green shoots are everywhere: The stock market is booming, housing prices are rebounding and mortgage providers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, long demonized by Republicans, are returning profits to the Treasury. Job growth has accelerated and consumer confidence has reached its highest level in almost six years. Health-care cost increases are slowing, Medicare’s prospects are improving — in part because of President Obama’s health-care reforms — and gasoline prices are forecast to decline. Long-term fiscal problems remain, but the federal deficit is shrinking, putting off Washington’s debt-ceiling standoff until late fall .
Yet House Republicans have shelved a serious legislative agenda this year in favor of 24/7 investigations. On Tuesday morning alone, they held two hearings probing alleged wrongdoing in the Obama administration. [snip]
A good indication of House Republicans’ mind-set came last week, when Rep. John Boehner’s spokesman wrote on the House speaker’s official blog that a speech by Obama on student loans was an attempt “to change the subject from its growing list of scandals.” It’s telling that the GOP leadership would view a student loan event as a distraction from scandals but wouldn’t see the obsession with scandals as a distraction from pocketbook issues.Milbank goes on to offer his take on how this is starting to look like the Clinton era revisited, when the Rethugs' obsession was chasing Bill Clinton's penis all over town. When a Beltway kool kid has such moments of clarity, as shown in his recent columns, we have to wonder if the Rethuglican game is up. Dana, no more "But Obama's not being nice," or "If only the Democrats could meet the Republicans half way," or (need we say it?) "Both sides are at fault"?? Wow. We wonder how long this epiphany will hold in this precinct of the easily distracted media, or if it will become the new conventional wisdom. It's still pleasant to hope that perhaps, just maybe, this is a harbinger of a change in the attitudes of the Beltway media, who hold such sway over the nature of the conversation in Washington, DC.
