By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
Weather is the lodestone of country life. I managed to split my attention this week, keeping one eye on politics while taking advantage of the uncommon (and red-flagged) warm spell that has kept fall freeze at bay. Every week it’s threatened, every weekend a new run of moderate temps has been projected. I harvested the last of my (fussed over) lettuce babies the day after Thanksgiving when day-time temps plummeted, noting with amazement that they had given the growing season in southern Missouri a genuine nose tweak. This coming week, once again, freeze threatens, so I plan to continue yard work into the weekend and hope to get the back porch buttoned up before the ice and snow arrives.
With my attention elsewhere then, I culled the high points of the political week, regularly running into the house to check headlines at Huffy and talking points on CNN. Things remained static most of the week. The Egyptians continued to show Americans how to protest, the President continued to insist his mandate for taxing the wealthy prevail, and the Pubs remained as intractable as the Confederate states they mostly represent. So I kept on task, and late each evening, as do Americans everywhere, I got my ‘faux news’ in-depth reporting with John Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
The Baggers continued to throw monkey wrenches, making the possibility of John Boehner bringing their surly behinds to the table for some pre-cliff bargaining ever more distant; not that he’s anxious to do any such thing, if he can find a way around it. So far, stonewall’s all he’s got. Progressives should take some satisfaction in the fact that the offer of $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue increase proposed earlier in the year has vanished, replaced by a 3-1 offer. They might, like me, feel a little stab of vindication when Boehner complains about what he considers a “my way or the highway” attitude, given that Dems never received even that courtesy from Dubby’s old buddy, Tom DeLay, and his lock-stepped House of Representatives, who simply pretended that Republicans were the favored only-children in Washington D.C., while all Dems were the equivalent of Cinderella.