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" Nothing like getting off the plane at LAX, wandering into a cafe, looking up at the TV, and seeing live CNN video with the crawl, &amp;quot;POLICE: SHOTS FIRED AT LAX.&amp;quot; Perhaps this will be another teachable moment. Anyway, it seems that we are treated to another exercise in Politics As Told To Cindy Adams from the duo that brought us Game Change, a book in which classy political operatives got to slander Elizabeth Edwards anonymously after she was dead because...journalism! In this one, we learn that Bill Daley, who proved his complete worthlessness as a political strategist through his bungling on behalf of the Gore side during the extended Florida unpleasantness of 2000, proving it again by bruiting the notion of dropping Joe Biden from the national ticket, and then talking to the authors about it. I&amp;#039;m sure the book is chockfull of nuggets like that. I look forward to reading it and finding out all the cool stuff I missed because I was talking to people whose lives are materially affected by the results of the Great Game Of Twister that so entrances the authors. However, I&amp;#039;m beginning to think that one of their perennial subtexts may well be right -- politics may be just a matter of who can do what to win the morning, or the week, or the year. Right now, the entire Republican party -- and not just its Tea Party wing -- is demonstrating quite clearly that no Democratic president ever is going to be allowed to govern as a Democrat as long as the Republican party exists on a national level. Period. Refusing to give Mel Watt a vote to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency is the very beau ideal of Republican obstructionism -- it&amp;#039;s a minor office and the candidate is an African American. You can&amp;#039;t get more Republican than that. Oh, yes, and the opposition is led by cowards and liars. Conservative groups have lined up to oppose Watt&amp;#039;s nomination because of his call for more federal involvement in the home mortgage industry. &amp;quot;He is a good man up for the wrong job,&amp;quot; Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said. Said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.): &amp;quot;America needs someone with technical expertise and experience to run Fannie and Freddie&amp;#039;s conservator and ensure that we don&amp;#039;t repeat the same mistakes that led to the last financial crisis. And taxpayers need someone who will protect against future bailouts. This is the second FHFA nominee that President Obama has sent who did not meet those standards.&amp;quot; The previous nominee was former North Carolina banking commissioner Joseph Smith, who withdrew his nomination in 2011. Yeah, that Mitch McConnell, he&amp;#039;s a real bipartisan deal-maker, he is. And Lamar (!) is looking over his right shoulder and seeing dragons, too. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a19733/shutdown-politics-continued-110113/>