What’s going on with TPP?

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

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Well, it sure looks like nothing’s going to move on this, but it ain’t dead yet.

WASHINGTON — House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has no plans to negotiate with House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) after her caucus torpedoed a trade deal backed by President Barack Obama and Boehner, a GOP leadership aide told The Huffington Post on Monday.

Without talks between Boehner and Pelosi, it’s difficult to see how Obama’s trade agenda can be revived.

The Senate has already passed a trade measure that includes a provision to put future trade deals on a fast track — known as trade promotion authority, or TPA — through Congress, and also has set aside funds — trade adjustment assistance, or TAA — for workers dislocated by those same deals.

The House needed to pass both provisions for the overall measure to make it to the president’s desk. Republicans were unwilling to vote to support the money for workers, but Democrats realized if they, too, rejected the support for workers, the entire package would go down.

On Thursday night, Pelosi and Boehner, who’d been hammering out details of the two packages for days, met on the House floor to swap notes. Pelosi asked Boehner how many votes he could deliver for the funding for dislocated workers. He guessed roughly 100.

“How about 150?” she said, according to sources in both parties.

Just before Friday’s vote, Pelosi went to the House floor and stunned her colleagues by saying she would be voting no — and then her caucus largely voted with her to sink the bill. While her decision swayed some members, it was clear that most had already made up their minds to oppose the measure. Pelosi said afterward that passage of a “robust” highway bill may ease the path to finding the votes needed, but she and Boehner have not been engaged in negotiations, and won’t anytime soon.
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Meet the new, old Hillary

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

Maybe I need to go back and listen again to HRC’s speech Saturday, because Rebecca Traister (not known for being soft on Clinton) sees a lot more there than I did. (With some historical background for the young folks!)

It’s not all that’s gutsy about Clinton’s latest roll-out, which she marked on Saturday with a lengthy, policy heavy speech. There’s also the fact that a mainstream Democrat is trying to become the first woman president by invoking Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Her speech, billed as her Campaign Kickoff, replaced recent Democratic simpering about Ronald Reagan and “reaching across the aisle” with jabs at trickle-down economics and a chilly invitation to cooperate with “willing partners;” that was refreshing. But even more surprising was hearing decades of centrist posturing give way to a citation of Roosevelt’s call for “Equality of opportunity … jobs for those who can work … Security for those who need it … The ending of special privilege for the few … The preservation of civil liberties for all … a wider and constantly rising standard of living.”

“That still sounds good to me!” bellowed Clinton, in her sturdy way.

And while Clinton’s delivery, like Clinton herself, was more dogged than flowery, even her language on Saturday showed leftward shifts toward sanity. Banished were the anodyne residents of “Main Street”; instead, Hillary spoke of “poor people” and “the wealthiest” and “income inequality,” mentioning the “middle class” only as a dying historical possibility in need of “a better deal.”

These are strong words, and certainly some new words, coming from a candidate with a long history of playing people-pleasing, power-appeasing, over-careful politics.

But this Hillary seems less afraid. In fact she seems downright determined to run straight into the blades of her own perceived weaknesses. On Saturday, she addressed her advancing age with a one-liner about how she “may not be the youngest candidate in this race, but … will be the youngest woman President in the history of the United States,” as well as with a feminizing crack about hair-dye and a senescent reference to the Beatles. In the campaign video released the day before the speech, she referred to her maddening tenacity and personal drive—the things that had half of her party hollering for her head in 2008—by laughing, “I think by now people know: I don’t quit.” She was also startlingly eager to remind people of that time she helped steer health care reform into a congressional iceberg during her husband’s administration, noting, “We worked really hard; we weren’t successful. I was really disappointed.”

Most striking is Clinton’s willingness to showcase an older iteration of her professional persona: the one that was so unpalatable when she debuted it nationally, 25 years ago.
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I did it

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

https://youtu.be/9W6RFwNbIrs

I spent the past four days working on an entry for a prize in literary fiction. I don’t expect to win, I did it mainly to jumpstart my way past a major bout of writers block and get me excited about my novel again.

And you know, it worked.

It really helps when you have a good friend who’s also an editor to point out what you needed to fix. The deadline was midnight last night, and I finally got it ready to submit at 10:30. I was a little anxious about hitting that button, but I took a deep breath and did it.

I are a writer!