Politics

Cockburn had thought he'd seen it all. But now he learns that DC has reached a new low in the annals of Swamp incompetence. Democratic staffers in Representative Ayanna Pressley's office can't figure out how to turn their phones back on after setting them to go straight to voicemail for over a year and a half. Every Capitol Hill rat would agree that the worse job in a congressional office is answering the phones. From dusk to dawn, deranged boomers light them up, demanding Representative Joe Blow do something about their loud neighbors, or fix their TV, or help them pay their rent. Many of these callers don't even live in the lawmaker's district or state. It's an exhausting task usually reserved for the lowest of the low — interns.

The culture war’s irregular verbs Irregular verbs abound in US politics. When it comes to social and cultural disagreements, the conjugation goes something like this: I am standing up for my principles, you are waging an irresponsible culture war. “We don’t have time to be wasting on these phony, trumped-up culture wars,” said Barack Obama at a Terry McAuliffe campaign event in Virginia last weekend. “This fake outrage that right-wing media pedals to juice their ratings, and the fact that he’s willing to go along with it instead of talking about serious problems that actually affect serious people? That’s a shame. That’s not what this election’s about. That’s not what you need, Virginia.

Ex-governor of New York Andrew Cuomo has been named on a criminal complaint for “forcible touching the sexual or intimate parts for the purpose of degrading or abusing another person.” How the mighty fall. This time last year Cuomo was riding high on popularity nationwide as the go-to pandemic politician. There were whispers of him replacing Joe Biden on the ticket for president. All the major news networks fawned over him and helped him win an Emmy award for his “effective use of television during the pandemic.”  Cuomo and his giant ego later remarked that the Emmy board members forgot to mention his “sense of humor, charisma, good looks or charm.

Cowboy State Daily reports that Liz Cheney’s House campaign has so far hauled in $5 million in donations this year, some millions more than in Cheney’s previous run to keep her seat in 2020. According to CSD, 6 percent of itemized individual donations were made by people listing Wyoming addresses, compared with nearly 27 percent in the previous cycle. Since Wyomingites have so far contributed nearly $177,000 so far this year to Cheney, as compared with $134,850 at the same point in the campaign as a year ago, it seems that either past Republican donors in the state are giving more, or that anti-Trump Democrats are contributing this time round, or both.

Has Warren had the last laugh? She’s got a plan for that! Nevertheless, she persisted! Pick your cringey Elizabeth Warren tagline. The last-ditch inclusion of something resembling a wealth tax in the Democrats’ Build Back Better reconciliation package has some claiming that the Massachusetts law professor-turned-senator who made a similar proposal the centerpiece of her 2020 presidential bid is having the last laugh. Adam Jentleson, a former top congressional aide and Warren campaign alum, told the Washington Post that people are gravitating towards the proposal because “it is extremely good.” A more honest explanation would be that Democrats are desperate to find something — anything —  they can agree on.

The long-serving New York Times opinion writer Nick Kristof apparently now wants to be governor of Oregon. The 62-year-old media superstar seems to be a rather changeable sort of chap. It might almost seem he’s one of the many New York-area residents to have had their identities stolen. Perhaps it was an old platinum credit card, carelessly tossed in a Midtown trash can, which allowed the criminals to strike, or perhaps the purchase over the phone of a first-class air ticket to one of the exotic locales his business frequently takes him. Whatever it was, it’s difficult to reconcile the superbly cerebral, crusading double Pulitzer Prize-winner and regular CNN contributor with the self-styled ‘Oregon farmboy’ with his finger firmly on the Beaver State’s troubled pulse.