Fright Night On Capital Hill0

by Nicole Breanne

Obama put forth his job bill, and on Tuesday night the Republicans killed it. Today they trotted out a freshman Senator from Kentucky, Rand Paul, to inform the nation that the Republicans have come up with a better plan, one that will bring 5 million jobs compared to Obama’s 1.9 million. But Paul won’t say how. In fact no one will say how. The plan hasn’t been turned in to Obama, and basically we’re all in the dark on this one.

What bothers me most about this isn’t that they didn’t give a reason why they hate Obama’s plan –– except for the fact that it’s Obama’s –– apparently that’s reason enough. Or that they come up with their own plan, but won’t talk about it. What pisses me off about this is the way they killed it: they filibustered it. This word has been thrown around on every news station and is used in countless articles, but the media rarely explain what it is. So here goes:

A filibuster is the use of irregular or obstructive tactics by a member of a legislative assembly to prevent the adoption of a measure generally favored or to force a decision against the will of the majority. Often the device used is an exceptionally long speech, in some cases lasting for a day or days, or a series of such speeches to accomplish this purpose.

But that’s not what the Republicans did – turns ut they didn’t even need to! They simply said they would filibuster the bill and the Democrats backed down like babies. They’ve been doing that for over a year now. They set a record for “filibuster” but no one ever did it. It was a record for the most times a branch of government threatened to throw a temper tantrum. That’s a proud moment America.

I’m all for making a system work for you and Republicans are really good doing just that. The only problem is their system is fear. They run on the politics of fear, and anyone that watches scary movies knows you don’t make the best decisions when scared (ie. why are you running upstairs when your dumbass should be running out the front door). This is what the Republican’s do, they incite fear and they’ve gotten really good at it. In turn the Democrats just roll over, and they’ve gotten really good at that. We’re coming into an election and the GOP is prancing out its best contenders. There’s been a lot of talk from the Right, they seem adamant that we need to get rid of Obama and all our problems will be resolved. Get rid of the Democrat President (because things were so damn good under Bush!?!) and put in a Republican and all will be kittens and rainbows. But, they have yet to say how.