Age ain't nothing but a number

He signed into law the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package, the $1 trillion (or so) bipartisan infrastructure bill, and the 2022 climate-and-health spending bill.

He got an albeit modest gun-safety law on the books...one that expanded background checks (if not universally), made it easier to prosecute illegal gun trafficking, and provided federal money for red-flag laws. (Still, a modest gun-safety law is better than no gun-safety legislation if you've been tired of all the mass shootings going on here in the US...let alone years of inaction at the top.)

And he ended the Afghanistan War...America's longest-running military conflict.

The CHIPS Act (hiking stateside production of semiconductors), the passage of a long-awaited postal-reform bill, much-needed military aid for Ukraine, and the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act all happened under his watch. So did executive orders to forgive student loans and to pardon folks who were busted for possession of marijuana.

He's nominated federal judges at a breakneck pace...breakneck according to historical standards. Plus, he nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson to this country's Supreme Court...and made some more history in the process.

COVID has claimed 400 American lives a day since this past April...far below previous rates of 2,000-3,000 dead per day. The United States has rejoined the Paris Agreement and has done away with that (fill in your favorite expletive) Muslim travel ban.

Speaking of travel...the Environmental Protection Agency has established new, higher fuel-efficiency standards for 2023-2026 vehicles. Service members have now been given a much-needed pay increase. We've now got legislation addressing acts of violence against Asian Americans partly by expanding access to the reporting of hate crimes and expediting the review of COVID-related hate crimes. And at long last, Juneteenth is a federal holiday...and at long last, lynching is a federal hate crime.

All if this under the watch of a man who turned 80 years old on 11-20-2022.

Still, some of his fellow Democrats are asking him not to go after a second term of office in 2024. (They want somebody younger to be the Donkeys' standardbearer.) The way I see it, though: Even with a lot more stuff needing to be done to get the US beyond the shadow of where it was on 1-6-2021, I'd love to see Joe Biden run for a second term in the White House.

How about you?

Who says House Democrats haven't done anything since retaking the House?

One of the biggest claims to come out of this rapidly-concluding 2019 is that, since becoming the majority party in the US House eleven months ago, the Democrats haven't done a cotton-picking thing.

Don't believe it.

For even one millisecond.

Besides turning Donald Trump into just the third chief executive to get impeached, the Nancy Pelosi-led House of Representatives has passed the following bills:

*HR 1 (the For the People Act of 2019)
*HR 5 (the Equality Act)
*HR 7 (the Paycheck Fairness Act)
*HR 8 (calling for background checks on gun sales)
*HR 9 (the Climate Action Now Act)
*HJ Resolution 37 and SJ Resolution 7 (both directing the removal of Uncle Sam's forces from unauthorized fighting in Yemen)
*House Congressional Resolution 24 (calling for the Mueller Report to be made public)
*House Resolution 183 (condemning anti-Semitism and condemning anti-Muslim intolerance and bigotry against non-Caucasian people)
*HR 259 (the Medicare Extenders Act of 2019)
*HR 271 (to condemn Trump's efforts to take health care away from rank-and-file Americans)
*HR 375 (amending the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 to reaffirm the Interior Department's green light to take land into trust for indigenous tribes)
*HR 986 (Protecting Americans with Preexisting Conditions Act of 2019)
*HR 987 (designed to strengthen health care and lower prescription drug costs)
*HR 1500 (Consumers First Act)
*HR 1585 (the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2019)
*HR 1644 (made to save the Internet)
*HR 1994 (SECURE Act/Gold Star Family Tax Relief Act)
*HR 2480 (Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act)
*HR 2513 (Corporate Transparency Act)
*HR 2722 (the Securing America's Federal Elections Act)
*HR 4617 [the SHIELD Act...drafted to make sure what happened (namely, Russian interference) in the 2016 election doesn't take place again]
*On 12-19-2019, the House passed the USMCA agreement (the replacement for NAFTA), 385-41.

That's just the tip of the iceberg.

By 11-15-2019, the House had passed almost 400 bills (resolutions excluded)...but when you add this country's Senate to the equation, you find that in total, Congress had, by said date, passed just 70 bills.
 
Most of the bills still stalled in the Mitch McConnell-run chamber are common-sense ones. What's more, legislation such as background checks, 'Net neutrality, and a reauthorized Violence Against Women Act has gathered proven bipartisan support.

McConnell's Senate thinks nothing of confirming 150 of Trump's nominees to the federal judiciary.

It's all because Senate Republicans are unwilling to take the tough votes Pelosi's House has made...and laid out there for the upper chamber to take up.

And...yes...USMCA now awaits a Senate vote, too.

Much of the information you're reading came from Ella Nilsen's 11-29-2019 article on https://vox.com, "House Democrats have passed nearly 400 bills. Trump and Republicans are ignoring them." 

We'll see what happens with these bills in the months to come as vanloads of Senate Republicans (including Moscow Mitch himself)

fight to save their hides as they come up for reelection.
 
 

 

A simple-but-drastic solution

Well, it finally happened.

After two long years and eight long months, the United States House of Representatives has initiated an impeachment inquiry.

The last straw?

That former host of TV's The Apprentice decided that withholding $400 million in US funds, supposedly earmarked for Ukraine's defense, to get dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden would be a great idea.

This is, by no means, the only impeachable offense committed by a man who kept NBC happy from 2004 to 2015. Heck, the site https://rootsaction.org lists 23 impeachable actions as of 8-8-2019...the eve of the 45th anniversary of Richard Nixon's resignation from the White House, for crying out loud.

Take just Donald Trump's violation of domestic emoluments, for example.

His lease of Washington's Old Post Office Building alone would be enough to get him kicked out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue...and, according to the General Services Administration, that lease is a no-no.

Speaking of Washington...at least somebody on Capitol Hill is paying some sort of attention to this country's Constitution. Somebody on Capitol Hill still cares about preserving the Constitution...and not just its Second Amendment.

It's the Democrats who control this country's House.

And it's the Democrats in the Senate.

And don't forget Congress' three independents...US Sens. Bernie Sanders (VT) and Angus King (ME) as well as US Rep. Justin Amash (MI).

This past February, House Democrats passed a bill calling for background checks on future purchasers of guns. It was one of 49 bills passed in the four months since the Donkeys regained control of the House.

The only reason we don't have background checks right now, lower prescription drug prices yet, or an infrastructure deal in place is the same reason the Equality Act and the Green New Deal aren't law yet:

Senate Republicans won't bring these bills to a vote in the upper chamber. 

They're the same Senate Republicans currently fighting tooth and nail to defend their 73-year-old meal ticket...the one who used to end every telecast of his with: "You're fired!"

The way I see it, the only way to get these bills up to the Senate and get these bills to become law is simple.

And drastic.

Some people are going to have to do it kicking and screaming...but it's got to be done if America's going to remain a constitutional republic and not the police state Mitch McConnell, Steve King, Trump, and Co. crave so much.

Here it is:

We've got to stop putting Republicans in office...and we've got to stop reelecting incumbent Elephants. 

Think about it. 

We're Much the Better for It

It happened fifty years ago tonight.

A man who spent his first 26 years in Washington (beginning in 1937) sticking up for Jim Crow had a change of heart...and stuck his neck out for America.

Not his own political legacy. Not his Democratic Party.

Lyndon Baines Johnson stuck his neck out for his country when, on 7-2-1964, he signed into law the first really meaningful civil rights legislation in this country's history. 

It happened thirteen months after Johnson's predecessor and old boss (that's right- John Fitzgerald Kennedy) made the initial pitch to get this bill put together and put before Congress. And to even make that pitch required Kennedy to show his own change of heart.

On 1-20-1961, JFK gave one of the most famous and most memorable inaugural addresses in American annals. In it, the youngest chief executive ever elected called for the United States to spread democracy all over the globe. 

Too bad he didn't call for the spread of democracy throughout these fifty states. 

Yeah, I know...if Kennedy had mentioned just one domestic issue during his inaugural speech (including That One), those Southern Democrats in the Senate [like Georgia's Richard Russell, South Carolina's Strom Thurmond (that's right- Thurmond was still a Donkey back then), and the Mississippi duo of John Stennis and James Eastland] would've torn the new president to pieces. 

Maybe at the Inaugural Ball.  

It took lots of events- before and after JFK got in at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue- before he could understand that a country whose name supposedly means freedom and wants to expand it all over the planet ought to ensure freedom for all its citizens.  

That understanding was probably one of the reasons Lee Harvey Oswald ended the presidency of a man born in Brookline, MA 1,036 days after that term of office began.  

And so, from the time LBJ raised his right hand, he decided to make the passage of the Civil Rights Act a top priority. 

The man from near Stonewall, TX was going to finish JFK's unfinished business.  

To do all that, Johnson had to pull out all the tricks that served him in good stead as the Senate Democratic leader (LBJ was minority leader from 1953-1955, then majority leader from 1955-1961). He knew what the US senators he left behind when he joined Kennedy's administration wanted...and he knew how to appeal to that.

Yes, it got coarse...but Johnson got it done.

And when it was all over, 27 of the 34 Senate Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act. Meanwhile, 46 of the 66 Democrats then in this country's Senate went all in.  

With the Voting Rights Act passing in 1965 and the Fair Housing Act getting signed into law three years later, America began to open up...at long last.

And that even with so many Democrats who didn't want the new legislation to get on the books switching over to the GOP.

Thurmond was one of the defectors...and he helped shape the current Republican tone. (That's right...that angry, blustery, obstructionist tone that keeps making headlines.)

What today's Republicans- the ones the 1948 Dixiecrat presidential nominee left behind when he passed away in 2003- don't accept and don't understand is this:

A nation works best when ALL its citizens get to have their say...whether it's at a polling place during an election or someplace else where people can get their opinions noticed. 

I'm glad the Civil Rights Act of 1964 got the ball rolling.

Thoughts? You Bet I've Got 'Em!

Last year, I set foot in the state of Texas for the first time in my life (the occasion was our family's first reunion in nine years). To get to America's Lone Star State, I traveled in a plane for the first time in ten years.

The reunion took place on Labor Day weekend in the Dallas/Fort Worth/Arlington area. And in between the hassles of getting in and out of both Omaha's Eppley Airfield and one of the world's biggest airports (Dallas-Fort Worth International), I did have a good time.

*Well, this week, the Metroplex opened up a new amusement park (see the pictures above). 

I've got to be honest with you: If I get a chance to go back to North Texas, and I want to go to an amusement park (and I mean a REAL amusement park), it's going to be Six Flags. (Correct me if Six Flags over Texas changed its name in recent years.)   

*Speaking of plane travel...I understand that, for the first time since enacting it earlier this year, Congress decided to back off a taste on upholding its sequester.

Today, after the Senate took action, the House voted to get many of the air traffic controllers off the furlough the sequester brought on.

The whole point was to help out all those frequent fliers and all those business travelers.  

It's fine that today's Republican-led House wants to put a stop to (or at least a crimp in) all those flight delays and cancellations. Restoring jobs to those air traffic controllers is great.

It's too bad those same US representatives don't have the guts to restore the money that keeps programs like Head Start and Meals on Wheels available to all who NEED those programs.  

*And speaking of guts...I'm still incensed at the 46 US senators who showed they wouldn't stand up to the National Rifle Association.

Some (if not all) of those 46 cowards (that's right, cowards) got on TV, radio, and/or this here World Wide Web to explain just why they wouldn't stand for background checks- the measures that would've made sure buying a gun here in America is no longer as easy as buying a carton of cigarettes. 

No telling how many of those chickenhearts (oops, I mean senators) told reporters "It wasn't an easy vote."

No telling how many of them cited the Second Amendment.

I mean, background checks were the very least of the demands gun-control advocates have wanted all this time. We keep hearing that nine out of every ten Americans who answer opinion polls have come out in favor of those background checks. 

Both of Nebraska's US senators (that's right, Republicans Mike Johanns and Deb Fischer) played chicken on background checks.

If you don't want as little as to put a background check between someone and his or her wanting to buy a "shootin' arn," then you're in favor of keeping the gun violence going. It's as simple as that.

*On something just a little bit lighter...after some details have come out this week, I'm not as excited about the upcoming College Football Playoff system as I would've liked to be.

And it's all because it'll be run by the same people who cooked up the BCS nonsense: The commissioners of the now five wealthiest Division 1-A football-playing conferences (Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12, Pacific-12, and Southeastern). 

I'd have preferred to see the NCAA take it over...but we keep hearing that there's no longer any real leadership in that governing body.

Got the feeling that the commissioners will rely on the USA Today and Harris Interactive polls (and maybe the Associated Press poll will be a deciding factor here, too, a la the past).  

And if that's going to be the case...instead of each league's champion qualifying for the playoffs, get ready for things to get to the point where all four of the playoff clubs will be from the SEC.  

One more, and I'm going to wrap it up: 

*Lots and lots of sports reporters and sports talk-show hosts have been worried about this year's NFL draft; the consensus feeling is that the 2013 selection process just doesn't have the glamor that last year's did.

It's time for the media people to calm down. 

More 2013 NFL draftees are going to turn out to have great playing careers than any of us might think. (Yeah...I know: How often do you get a situation in which an Andrew Luck, a Robert Griffin III, and a Russell Wilson come out of college at the end of the same academic year?)

Far as I'm concerned, all this media fear about this year's National Football League draft manifested itself in (1) a USA Today article about the biggest busts in the draft's history and (2)  an ESPN report looking back on the 1983 NFL draft...the one that produced Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterbacks John Elway and Dan Marino.

Don't feel disappointed that the Kansas City Chiefs went with offensive lineman Eric Fisher as their top draft pick- the NFL's first choice here in 2013.

And don't automatically label Geno Smith a failure.  

Let's just see what happens.

One thing that's happening is: My time is up. 

Thanks for reading "Boston's Blog!"

Haven't We Had ENOUGH by Now?

Like the overwhelming majority of Americans right now, I've got last Friday's massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT on my mind.

It's the first time ever that kindergarten children lost their lives at the hands of a mass murderer in an American place of learning.

This time, along with six adults, twenty children- many six years old, the others seven- were killed.

It's been 37 years since the first time a school shooting taking place here in the United States (it happened in Alaska in 1975) grabbed headlines.

And yes, back then, we were discussing whether or not America's gun-control laws ought to be strengthened.  

Since 1975, busloads- planeloads- of people here in this country have been killed by mass murderers...especially at this country's schoolyards and shopping malls.

And every time it happens, we keep asking: "Why?"

We KNOW the reason it keeps taking place.  

It's that we sure love those guns here in America. (I mean, the love of guns WAS a founding principle. We didn't break off from England by just talking it out.)  

Speaking of England...in 1996, a 43-year-old man invaded an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, and picked off sixteen kindergartners and their teacher. Then he pulled the trigger one more time and bumped himself off.

In time, the British government conducted an investigation...and the inquiry led to laws that ended legal private ownership of handguns in Rob Pattinson's native country.

America's lawmakers don't have the guts to come up with anything close to that kind of a law. 

What's more, way too many of the people in Washington are TOO DOGGONE CHICKEN to discuss any of this with the National Rifle Association...much less stand up to the NRA itself.

Well, I'm glad to find out US Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) wants to have that talk with NRA officials. (And Manchin admits he's a gun lover.)

It's long been time for lawmakers to have that long, long overdue talk with the gun lobby. And while this country's senators and representatives are at it, they need to also invite officials from the nation's big media companies. (After all, the Adam Lanzas, Allen Muhammads, Jared Loughners, and Robert Hawkinses couldn't enact their sprees if they didn't, at one time or another, see examples on TV or at some neighborhood movieplex.)

And invite rank-and-file citizens, too, by all means...because the experience in each community- urban, suburban, rural- is different in one way or another.  

Let's strengthen the gun laws we've already got. Let's make it harder for people to get them. (After all, state after state just got through pushing legislation making it harder to vote- even if that legislation basically backfired!)

You mean to tell me we can't find a place of common ground here in America when it comes to gun control?