But this isn’t about me, and it’s not even really about Warren or Cordray either. It’s about something which struck me as I read this article today, from the AP in the Miami Herald, about the “furious” GOP Senators, and what their “next move” may be on the topic of Obama’s end-run around their obstructionism, now that the Senate is coming back into session. This is the passage that struck me particularly:

Republicans have pledged retaliation for Obama’s recess appointments, but haven’t indicated what it might be.

“The Senate will need to take action to check and balance President Obama’s blatant attempt to circumvent the Senate and the Constitution, a claim of presidential power that the Bush Administration refused to make,” said Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican who is his party’s top member on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

(emphasis added)

Of course they’ve pledged retaliation. It’s what today’s GOP does, especially in an election year: throw red meat to their base. Stomp and fulminate. Whine and stick their fingers in their ears and say “la-la-la-la-la-la-I-can’t-heeeeeaaar-you.” Threaten to take their ball and go home.

What the constipated-sounding Grassley and other GOP Senators won’t do, however, is lay their cards on the table. Why? Well, as the AP piece goes on to note shortly after the above quote, “Republicans have to consider whether their actions, especially any decision to block all nominees, might play into Obama’s hands.” That may indeed be part of it. Mitch McConnell, for one, is certainly canny enough to think of such considerations. It may turn out in the end that McConnell and the rest of the Senate GOP manage to dig up  some heretofore unknown parliamentary trick from the furthest reaches of the bowels of the Big Senate Rule Book of Collegiality and Obstructionism, but I wouldn’t count on it: they’ve mined that vein pretty thoroughly already.

But the real reason Senate Republicans aren’t eager (or willing) to say exactly how they’ll “retaliate” against Obama for his having the temerity to ignore their obstructionism may be simpler than that. It may be that they just plain don’t HAVE any good options – at least, not ones which would be in any way defensible on the public stage in an election year. Think about it: the reality of McConnell’s situation is that at for at least the next year (until January, 2013), despite how the lack of progress on Democratic initiatives in the Senate makes it often appear, the Senate is actually still under Democratic control. The only way the minority GOP have been able to exercise the degree of control over the process they have up until now is by bending the Senate rules out of all proportion to their original intent (not to mention precedent) in order to essentially function as nothing more than a giant collective “no” to everything the President or the Democratic leadership of the Senate propose. McConnell isn’t actually in control of anything (except his own caucus). He can use the filibuster to stymie the will of the majority by preventing majority votes from ever taking place…but it’s important to remember that the reason the GOP DO so is because if those majority votes were held, the GOP would simply LOSE, most of the time. That’s what it means to be in the minority: you get outvoted.

So, I’ll go even further than just the truth of the suggestion that McConnell & Co. understand that trying to up the ante and continue this war might “play into Obama’s hands.” The Obama White House had to be expecting that the Senate GOP would be nearly inarticulate with spluttering rage if Obama trumped their obstructionism and recess-appointed Cordray (and the NLRB board members as well, let’s not forget). McConnell’s real-world choices for ways to respond are very, very limited indeed. What are they going to do? Pass new Senate rules which prevent such things in the future? Sorry, but to do that – to proactively get something accomplished in the Senate (as opposed to just trying to rule by negation, as McConnell & Co have been trying, with some success, it must be admitted, to do) – you have to actually be in the majority. At the very least, you have to have a good enough relationship with enough of the opposition’s members that you stand a chance of convincing enough of them on a per-issue basis to vote with you in order to pass something by majority vote. McConnell, no matter how “canny” he is, or how much he wishes it were so, can’t simply obstruct the Senate into voting FOR anything.

And over the past five years, he’s burned most of his bridges with even the moderate members of the Democratic party. One of the drawbacks of the GOP’s rule-by-negation strategy of the last five years in the Senate (since Democrats re-took control, and especially since Obama’s election) is that they’ve made themselves genuinely unlikable, both within their chamber and in general. Nobody polls congress on how they feel about other members of congress, but look no further than the abysmal-but-steady approval rating of the Senate GOP, holding fast at around 20% or even less. That’s not, by the way, to say that the Democrats in the Senate fare tremendously better – they come in at an equally-steady 32-ish percent. But it does suggest that even the traditionally-disengaged public knows where the lion’s (or perhaps the rat’s) share of the blame for congressional inaction correctly belongs, namely: squarely with the GOP. The point is: the GOP’s conscious win-at-all-costs, obstruct everything strategy hasn’t made them any friends, and has actually cost them many of the ones they thought they might have been able to count on.

So, unless they can pull some kind of additional parlor-trickery out of their…back pockets (**ahem**) this upcoming legislative session, something to make our government even more dysfunctional and rotten, McConnell and his merry band of GOP obstructionists may simply not be ABLE to do anything about President Obama’s flouting of their obstructionism, because they aren’t in the majority. This may very well show anyone who’s watching just how impotent the GOP truly are, and just how broadly disliked their policies are. It’s smart politics: let McConnell & Co. whine and stamp their feet and threaten to bring down hellfire. I think Obama knows they’re betting on a busted flush, and it may turn out that the President has finally realized there’s little downside – and in fact, considerable potential gain to be had – in calling their bluff.

President Obama will appoint former Ohio Atty. Gen. Richard Cordray on Wednesday to be the first director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, making a controversial decision to install Cordray while the Senate is in brief recess to avoid Republican opposition, according to a White House official.

And although that paragraph is “just the facts,” kudos as well to the LAT for getting the backstory right and not trying to soft-pedal it or shoot for false equivalence in an attempt to provide “balance”:

By refusing to allow Congress to adjourn, Republicans have been able to prevent recess — and recess appointments. The Senate and House have met every few days in pro forma sessions that last a matter of minutes.

Democrats, under Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, used the same strategy on occasion when President George W. Bush was in power.

But the Republicans have used the strategy throughout 2011 as the procedural arms race has escalated in the face of GOP opposition.

(emphasis added)

That’s exactly right: the GOP has escalated the procedural war(s) in both houses of congress – but particularly the Senate, which is more susceptible to such procedural abuses of power by the minority. This will be – in fact, already IS being – portrayed by the GOP as an unprecedented abuse of power, yada yada yada…you can almost write the half-whiny, half-fulminating script yourself. The important things here are two: 1) it is the GOP which has broken every vow, gone back on every “gentleman’s agreement,” stretched every rule to (and sometimes past) the breaking point in an effort to deny this President any victories (and ultimately to deny him a second term), and 2) on this issue, Obama did not bend. He did not cave. He did not give in to either GOP pressure, fear of not being “bipartisan” enough, or centrist-leaning, pro-banker aides’ advice to “let the (Wall St.) wookie win.”

I could probably waste a lot of time trying to guess what combination of circumstances motivated Obama to do exactly the right thing in this case: it could be because it was the right thing to do. It could be because he felt heat from progressive groups. It could be because it’s now campaign season and he’s switched back to “stump Obama” and away from “bipartisanship-seeking, conciliator-in-chief Obama.” I have no doubt that in some corners of the Internet, Obama’s decision today is already being portrayed as yet another glorious, planned-in-advance, perfectly-executed example of eleventy-dimensional chess. Any combination of those things might be the real story. But none of it matters much at this point, primarily because we’ll likely never really know what the reasons were (at least not until memoirs-time, years in the future, and possibly not even then).

But even though the political junkie in me would LOVE to know what the real combination of reasons or forces which compelled this particular decision were, and even though I think knowing would help many political observers get a better handle on how this White House operates, even THAT doesn’t change my opinion that it wouldn’t matter all that much if we knew. At least, not in comparison to the simple fact that the (obviously in-the-works for a while) decision to recess appoint Richard Cordray stands as a shining example of this administration choosing to utilize the full tools available to it in the service of the American people against powerful special interests (and the opposition party), instead of inexplicably leaving some tools available to the executive unused or cutting a premature deal that relied even in part upon the good faith of an opposition party clearly unmoored from not just restraint and ethics, but seemingly reality at times, as well.

Because although nothing is certain and no one can see the future clearly, this is the most hopeful signal we’ve had in a long time from this President that he understands the nature and MO of the forces arrayed against him as well as the realistic options he has available to him to make as much genuine progress for Americans as possible. And it is also a very hopeful signal from the President that he both wants and intends to do many of them. I seem to remember this guy from 2007-8. Only back then, he was just talking a good game about a lot of this stuff. The intervening three years have been a mixed bag in terms of both Obama’s willingness and his ability to deliver on them. Today, he’s talking about them again, but this time after having taken a giant, concrete step forward in DOING them.

Congratulations again, Mr. President, and thank you for doing the right thing when you had the ability to do so.

If you’re not on Twitter…count yourself lucky. OK, not really. What I was going to say is: if you’re not on Twitter, what’s been happening for a while now is that a group of Twitter users who are interconnected both on and off Twitter have had the long knives out for Salon blogger/attorney Glenn Greenwald, as Cole describes in his post. The reasons for such a concerted backlash against Greenwald in particular are several, but I’m not going to get into them all here. The reason for that is (as Cole also hints at): it’s incredibly inside-baseball and almost unimaginably lengthy to recount the whole mess in detail; to do it justice. If you’re interested, you won’t have any trouble finding posts in various outlets about why Greenwald (and a few other bloggers/pundits) are considered by some to be just awful. For my purposes here (and without weighing in on the merits of either the various previous complaints or Greenwald’s actual words and responses), let me just leave it by noting that a coordinated campaign of disagreement against Greenwald does indeed exist, and has existed for some time among a remarkably uniform group of people on Twitter.

What happened recently (and what precipitated Cole’s post) was that someone was (as usual) taking Greenwald to task, this time over his critique of the indefinite detention provisions of the NDAA which was signed into law by President Obama on December 31st (I’m not linking to Glenn because I didn’t link to the critiques, either). During a discussion involving Greenwald and some people who opposed him as well as some who agreed with him, one of the people who clearly agreed with Glenn’s view and thought those who were attacking him were justifying something under Obama that they’d have opposed under Bush said, hyperbolically, that Greenwald’s attackers (specifically a Twitter user named AngryBlackLady) would try to justify or support it if Obama “raped a nun live on TV.” Greenwald, a while later, said he agreed with that idea of some people’s reflexive defensiveness about Obama’s positions and actions. Aprés THAT, le deluge.

More than seventy-two hours straight of outrage and amplified Greenwald-attacking among this group resulted, with many of the attacks wrongly accusing Greenwald himself of having coined the nun-rape analogy. Although I think that, much like Nazi analogies, anything as extreme as nun-rape is often a questionable analogy to make regardless of the circumstances, I think John Cole is right when he says that Greenwald

…wasn’t minimizing rape, he was using rape as the ugliest example he could think of (and he later added child-killing and assassination), far from minimizing rape and far from making rape ‘jokes.’

That’s the backstory.

What makes Cole’s post much more relevant than (ahem) the fact that I agree with his general take on what will probably gruesomely be forever-after called “nun-rape gate” (or “NUN RAPE RAWR,” as Cole puts it), is Cole’s zeroing-in on a problem I’ve noticed for quite some time on Twitter (and in the larger blogosphere, but Twitter is in some ways sort of the crack to the blogosphere’s cocaine: concentrated and much quicker-acting): the tribalism and cliqueishness, which is concentrated in one particular area.

Here’s Cole’s take on it:

I just merely pointed out that the people doing a two day “GLENN RAPE RAWR” tweetfest simply to attack Glenn had lost the plot. And I maintain that. What Glenn said to ABL was dickish, but in the scheme of things hurled between the two of them, pretty tame. So I’m sorry to see ABL go, but I’m not going to back down to a crowd of idiots on twitter. For those of you who love to point out I was a former Republican, you are right- and I saw this kind of behavior before, where the “enemy” is always wrong and must be destroyed. Hell, y’all wanna go old school, just drop the rape stuff and call Greenwald an anti-Semite. There’s lots of material already written for you on the internet out there. So maybe I’m a little touchy when I see these manic internet pile-ons when everyone is in shoot to kill mode. Objectively pro-Saddam, anyone? Fifth column, anyone? I watch people unironically invoke “OBAMA DERANGEMENT SYNDROME,” apparently unaware that BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) was something invented by diehard Bush loyalists to deflect any and all criticism of Bush.

If you’re not a reader of Balloon-Juice or a Twitter user, much of the specifics of that paragraph will be somewhat-opaque inside baseball-ish to you. So forget the specifics. The larger point, which Cole makes quite clearly, is that there is indeed a very well-defined group of people who, by their actions, seem to value a sort of clannish “sticking together” over whatever else Twitter and the blogosphere are presumably about for us political junkies, namely: exchanging opinions on current events and where we each see things going (and also wish/hope they go or are working to help ensure they go).

Although Greenwald has sometimes delved into counterattacking his detractors or at least defending himself against charges made against him on Twitter, at bottom, this is the difference between Glenn Greenwald and his detractors (for the most part): agree with him or not, Greenwald pursues the latter aim I mentioned above, namely: he opines on current events and gives his opinion on where he thinks things are vs. where they should be. What Greenwald doesn’t do is spend his valuable time and column-inches at Salon nursing an ever-growing list of grievances against those who he perceives to have sinned against someone he considers to be “on his team” (whatever that may be).

Whatever one may think of Greenwald’s demeanor or his methods, he continues to occupy a relatively powerful position (in the arena of opinion journalism) on the front page of Salon for a very good reason: because he frequently ferrets out facts that others miss, and makes a very strong case for his positions, supporting them with copious accurate references. In short, he’s an excellent opinion journalist. The specific type of opinion journalism Greenwald engages in – chiefly criticism of some of the President’s (and congressional Democrats’) policies – is literally one of the cornerstones of what journalism itself is supposed to be about. No less a person than Joseph Pulitzer himself once famously remarked that “a newspaper should have no friends.” Thomas Jefferson had numerous thoughts on the functioning of a journalistic class in the then-nascent American system, not all of them flattering (by a long shot), but the most important of them was: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” Jefferson knew that despite all the flaws and drawbacks of much of the actual day-to-day workings and dealings of specific media (and media people), when the chips are well and truly down, they are indispensable in preventing the even-greater abuses and horrors which seem to inevitably result from the actions of power that is unchecked by the cleansing sunshine of journalism.

However, as a result of his approach, Greenwald’s brand of opinion journalism strikes most in this group of his detractors as being “anti-Obama.” For Greenwald, his work is about calling out abuses of power and violations of liberties, regardless of who’s in power, but for this group of his detractors, it’s about something else. To be as fair as possible, for all I know, Greenwald may actually BE anti-Obama in the sense of being willing to vote against him – although it’s just as possible that Greenwald’s steady drumbeat of criticism of Obama’s p0licies reflects a rigorous determination to hold the current, Democratic administration to the same standards of scrutiny to which we ALL held the last, GOP-controlled administration…and that, when the time comes to vote, Greenwald will pull the lever for Obama unhesitatingly because he understands how much worse on a broad range of issues that matter to HIM any of the currently-possible replacement GOP Presidents would be. But whatever the case in that regard, Greenwald exemplifies Pulitzer’s call for newpapers (or journalists, in their professional capacity) to “have no friends”; he understands that it is not his job to pull for (or shill for) Team Obama, Team Democrat, or Team ANYTHING. Hell, the reason most regular people even ARE Democrats (the people who give real, honest consideration to why they support or oppose such things as political parties, at any rate) is because they agree on balance more than they disagree with the core issues espoused by the Democratic party – and also, often, because no other viable party exists which more closely represents their views than the Democrats. If people didn’t agree (at least more often than not), then they wouldn’t be Democrats, they’d be Republicans, or something else. For most such high-information voters, it’s about the issues, far more than it’s about the personalities. If something is objectionable under one President, it doesn’t become acceptable under another, just because the party in power changes. Certainly that seems to be, broadly speaking, Glenn Greenwald’s view.

Greenwald’s persistent critics, on the other hand (at least those on the left on Twitter), can be identified virtually to a person by a belief in President Obama’s essential goodness and success as a President coupled with this reflexive tribalism I’m describing, which puts defending “their own” against all perceived criticism (or at least attempting to mitigate the impact of any criticism) above all else. Does the recently-signed NDAA potentially allow for the indefinite detention of American citizens without trial, in express violation of the 4th amendment? NO! say the defenders of Obama/Greenwald critics – despite the evidence and reasoning Greenwald (and others) provide to the contrary. But – and here is where the cliqueishness and tribalism enter – even if the bill/law itself does so, it’s OK that it passed, and that Obama signed it…because he’d never misuse such authority.

Greenwald’s critics (at least those who fall into the group Cole mentions in his post, this “relentless group of people who, at any given moment, are hurling insults at Glenn“), may, like Greenwald, have individual or group blogs at which they offer their own takes on politics and current events. They may also offer their opinions on current events and politics on Twitter. Unlike Greenwald, by contrast, what animates the people in the group Cole mentions isn’t chiefly what is done or not done (or said or not said) by the President or congress or the courts – in short, what really gets them going isn’t what’s actually happening in the world of politics and law. Instead, what truly gets the blood of the Greenwald detractors flowing (not to mention their tweets) is defending “their guys” and/or attacking “the other guys.” And Obama, by their reckoning, as reflected in their attacks, is “their guy #1,” though the tribalism very clearly extends to all perceived “allies”:

If you haven’t noticed by now, this type of group-think is not only entirely backwards in my opinion, but also observably counterproductive. If the first responsibility of citizens (and doubly so of journalists) is to try to evaluate politicians based upon both how closely they live up to what they said they would do (or attempt to do) when they wanted citizens’ votes and how closely their actions and beliefs are consonant with those of the individual voter, then it is not only natural but almost REQUIRED that there be criticism of some of the actions of politicians from not just their opponents, but also from within the group of citizens who supported that politician in the last election. Greenwald’s critiques of Obama’s policies – or even his guesses at what Obama’s motivations for certain actions (or inactions) may be – are literally what we are each supposed to do in this country: hold our politicians, even (perhaps especially) the ones we support, accountable. Of course, it’s equally acceptable – even recommended – for others to disagree with those who disagree with a politician’s actions. We all have our differences. What’s NOT nearly as productive or understandable is for those who don’t disagree with the given actions of a politician to begin to think of those who DO disagree as “the enemy,” or as people who should be opposed, shouted down, discredited.

Think of it this way: politician X makes decision Y or supports bill Z: that’s ordinary, commonplace, a productive part of the political system. Certain people from the politician’s same general political persuasion support that politician’s decision/position, and give voice to their support in various forums: also ordinary, commonplace, and a productive part of the political system. Other people from the same general political persuasion oppose that particular decision/position, and also write about it in various forums: STILL also ordinary, commonplace, and a productive part of the political system. But then, the first group – those who supported the politician’s decision – band together en masse to decry at great length and often with ad hominem strawman arguments, the second group of individual citizens and journalists who opposed the decision. That last one is the only one of the foregoing scenarios/actions which hold zero – in fact, net negative – value: it is neither ordinary and commonplace, nor is it a productive part of our political system. Nothing of value, politically, comes from citizens or journalists attacking other citizens or journalists over political issues. That’s where things like, say, the Civil War come from, to use an extreme example. How much time is spent by Obama fans attacking other citizens or journalists who disagree with them? No one knows for sure, but countless hours, at the least.

The reason I say such activities are actually a net negative political value is twofold. First, what ELSE could have been done with that time? How many phone-bank calls could have been made, voters registered, precincts organized, etc? Greenwald critics may argue (indeed, I have seen them argue) that they do those activist things anyway, and that they’re perfectly able to do both actual activism AND still pile on perceived liberal “enemies” in their spare time, but there’s unquestionably an opportunity cost to all the haranguing: it takes time and energy to keep up a steady stream of character assassination, energy and time which could be used elsewhere in the service of what the Greenwald critics claim is their number one priority: re-electing the President and preventing a Republican advance in congress (or strengthening Democratic gains). Second, no one who isn’t already in agreement with the bash-Greenwald agenda (as well as probably already very familiar with the vicissitudes of intra-lefty Twitter-wrangling) is going to read such extended bashes against fellow progressives and think: “wow, that’s really motivating.” No one will read such things and become LESS turned-off. But plenty of liberals, Democrats and progressives may read such broadsides against authors like Greenwald or others who they often find themselves in agreement with and find themselves both repelled by the vitriol and also feeling attacked-by-association when they hear suggestions that anyone who agrees with, retweets, or in fact does anything but shun and excoriate these journalists/bloggers is stupid/evil/deluded.

In the end – and to repeat – criticizing politicians is literally a responsibility of citizenship and conscience. Hammering away publicly and repeatedly at other people (or perceived groups of people) because they disagree or refuse to “support the team” is not, and it advances no one’s political fortunes, nor does it further the cause of reasonable discourse or even dissent. It’s just tribalism and tearing-down. And this type of tribalism and cliqueishness discredits those who (consciously or unconsciously) practice it, and makes the political process worse. It is in no way analogous to the criticism of elected officials’ decisions – even biased criticism.

Hell, from the point of view of most liberals/progressives/Democrats, Republicans’ typical comments would exemplify “biased criticism” of the President/Democrats, but you’ll not see (and indeed it would strike most people as odd if they saw) lefties criticizing Republicans simply because they disagree with the President or with Democratic principles. You’ll often see plenty of arguing with Republicans’ IDEAS, yes – arguing often done in a very confrontational or angry manner. But that’s not the same thing at all as saying:”if you’ve got a problem with anybody I roll with” (as the tweet above says), well, caveat orator, buddy: we’re coming for ya. You just won’t see most of the people who attack Greenwald and others they consider to be “the professional left” going after the GOP because they are critical or disagree. It’s expected that Republicans will criticize Democrats/progressives/liberals, because even Greenwald critics understand that Republicans have a different view of things and different set of beliefs about what they would like/expect government to do. But fellow Democrats/progressives/liberals? Those are the people for whom Greenwald’s critics reserve their most withering scorn and concerted attacks (not to mention the lion’s share of unwitting hypocrisy in doing so). Why? Because the Greenwald critics, as evidenced by their actions, clearly believe that anyone who self-identifies with any of those labels (Democrat, progressive, liberal) OUGHT to be on Team Obama – that they ought to either agree with the President or congressional Democrats universally, or at the very least, that if, for some incomprehensible reason they disagree, they ought to at least have the “decency” or the “smarts” to simply shut up about it, lest they hurt the team. “STFU” (Shut the Fuck Up) is a big favorite shorthand slogan of Obama fans/Greenwald detractors. That might earn a few high-fives around the tribal campfire, but it’s hardly a substitute for genuine political discourse.

I don’t blame the President and his team at all for sending out these glad tidings. It WAS a shockingly complete rout of Boehner and his pro-1% flying monkeys. Congratulations all ’round. For real. Only…the email focused upon the involvement of individual citizens who took to their computers and their webcams to record stories of what an extra $40 per paycheck means to them. While I’m sure that helped reassure the Democrats (and warn the Republicans) that the 99% really did stand with the President and the Democrats on this issue.

That made me write the following response:

Although I’d like to believe the heartwarming fiction that it was only the response of tens of thousands of people who took to the web to tell their stories of privation via a tax increase which made the difference between the payroll tax holiday passing and it NOT passing, I’ve watched Washington work for too long to be fooled by that story. And so have all of you.

After all, it wasn’t as if John Boehner and the rest of the obstructionists in the house GOP really didn’t understand the concept of a tax cut and what it could mean for people. That’s Republicans’ wheelhouse issue. Or at least it used to be. Perhaps that may be changing…that would be the true miracle of Christmas as it applies to gridlocked Washington this year.

No, what made the difference (as we both know) was the both the President and the Democrats in the House AND Senate simply stood firm. You knew you had the people at your backs and the facts on your side, and this time, you simply. didn’t. cave.

And look what it got you.

Everyone from Paul Krugman to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal took to their respective podiums and called this one an unmitigated disaster for Boehner and his Tea Party minions. And rightly so. It WAS an unmitigated disaster for them. But let’s be clear about the reasons, here: YOU did it, not us. The public has a responsibility every couple of years to change the makeup of Washington, if enough of us don’t like what’s been going on.

The problem is – or has been, up until now – that no matter how we seem to shuffle the deck each biennial election, Washington doesn’t seem to change into what we need, want or – in most cases – into what the people running for the seats we elect them to promised they’d push for.

This time was different. You stayed the course, to quote a certain ex-President. We’ve never doubted that you knew what was right, or what would work…we’ve just been disappointed because time and again, you seemed to lack either the political will or the negotiating skill to make it actually happen. There’s a limit to what the public can do, once the election is over. Every election, we’re painfully aware that we’re not electing policies, we’re electing individuals, and that means a crap-shoot. It means we’re getting a pig in a poke. We TRY to get what we want by electing people who SAY they’re for this or that…but, too often, it just doesn’t happen, even when it seems like it was quite possible.

This time, YOU held the line, not us. We don’t vote on the floor of congress. We don’t have veto power (or the power of a threatened veto). You do. And look what happens when you stick together and USE IT. You win.

Remember that. It’s an important lesson, one I’m sure I sound patronizing to even remind you about. I don’t mean to sound patronizing, but the truth is that, from out here, far too often it seems as if you’ve forgotten that simple fact. Once the election’s over, YOU have the power. And when you step up and use it, you’ll instantly have that astonishingly hopeful coalition of the public behind you that you had in 2008.

I hope that won’t be lost on you as you head into 2012. Good job on this one, truly. See what YOU can accomplish when you don’t let the GOP steamroll you?

But contrary to what I know some people suspect, I am not now, and have never been anti-Obama. Other than the fact that there’s plenty about this administration’s actions that deserves criticism, the other reason there’s perhaps a higher ratio of criticism to kudos around here when it comes to the President is that I’ve always thought it’s the job of citizens (not just journalists) to hold their leaders accountable to what they said they’d do – or hinted they might do. It’s citizens’ jobs to push like heck for the things they want to see from their government, and to make it known when those things aren’t accomplished.

In business, there’s an old bit of wisdom which has it that a happy customer will tell – MAYBE – their spouse or best friend about their good experience, but a customer you upset or give short shrift to will tell EVERYONE. To see the truth of this, one only need visit the consumer reviews section of any commerce web site that allows such things. And the same general human tendency is present in politics too: when an elected official does what they’re supposed to do, it not as big news – or as celebrated – as when they fail to do so.

But, whether in politics or business, when something truly great is done or achieved, people take the time to notice it, and to mention it. And notice is exactly what I did today when I read this (video at link, too!):

With the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta was able to win a raffle that gave her the first off-the-ship kiss, a Navy tradition, with her girlfriend of two years, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell

When the couple began dating, they had to hide their status under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. The 17-year-old policy was repealed in September. On Wednesday, in front of Gaeta’s entire ship and a cheering crowd, the two women made history as the first same-sex couple to share the coveted kiss.

Damn. That’s just awesome. Thank you, President Obama.

This year, the Lie of the Year goes to the claim that Representative Paul Ryan’s proposed medical plan, put forth earlier this year and then quickly abandoned by Republicans when it became clear it could not pass the Senate under any circumstances, would end Medicare.

It’s hard to know where to start with this, since the finding is so obviously, on-its-face untrue that it almost beggars the imagination that it earned coveted “lie of the year” spot at one of the nation’s most prominent (and supposedly eminent) fact-checking websites.

PolitiFact’s claim that this is a “lie” at all – let alone the biggest one of the year – centers on their (specious) reasoning that because Paul Ryan, throughout his plan’s text, still called the new, untested, untried program he intended to substitute for traditional Medicare, “Medicare.”

Really, that’s their reasoning: that Ryan still calls his plan “Medicare.”

PolitiFact proudly displays over a half-dozen separate instances of “refutation” of similar claims from earlier in the year, which led many commenters, such as Dave Dayen at FireDogLake to dramatically highlight the absurdity of such a claim:

You buy a hamburger from me and I give you a piece of hard black leather on a bun. You protest and I say, no, I’m still calling it a hamburger, so you got what you asked for. You start running around telling everyone I sell leather as hamburgers, and I get my local fact-checking organization to criticize you, because I clearly call the leather on a bun I sold you “hamburger.” They call you the liar of the year.

That’s exactly why the claim is wrong. If I take 40 pounds of modeling clay, a dozen bobby pins and a blowtorch and create something which I then call “Medicare”….is it fair to call it “Medicare” in the context that PolitiFact uses to justify their claim of “Lie of the Year” about Democratic characterizations of Ryan’s plan? Or does that word have some intrinsic meaning which one cannot stray too far from before the word loses all real-world meaning?

But wait, you say: a lump of burned clay isn’t a medical plan! At least Ryan’s plan IS a medical plan for the nation’s seniors. Of sorts. And you’d be correct to observe thusly…but my question about whether this plan is, in fact, Medicare just because it is a health care measure for old people remains. What makes Medicare Medicare? The answer is actually quite simple: Medicare is a government-run, single-payer plan which guarantees medical care to our nation’s seniors. It’s a bit (quite a bit, in fact) more complex than that in its details, but that’s the broad definition. When Medicare was passed, the nation had guaranteed medical security to its elderly population. Paul Ryan’s plan, by contrast, replaced that system with what amounts to a voucher for seniors to purchase health care for themselves on the open market from private companies. Over the past few years, many of us have had direct experience (and all of us have been witness to) some of the ways in which the for-profit insurance industry fails to address the needs of the population it purports to serve. Recissions, refusal to cover people with pre-existing conditions, unbearable premium increases – these are only a few of the areas in which horror stories emerge when considering modern American private health insurance. Ryan’s plan – simply put – exchanges a simple, guaranteed system of health care for elderly Americans for an untested, untried shot at giving the keys to America’s elderly’s health care back to the private, for-profit insurance companies. What makes Medicare Medicare, and what made it historic, is that government stepped up and said: we’re going to ensure that our nation’s old people don’t die in pain in awful surroundings because they cannot afford to pay for care. Ryan’s plan reinstates this insecurity. It privatizes our nation’s health insurance system for the elderly.

In short, Medicare is Medicare; Paul Ryan’s plan is just insurance with a voucher.

But that didn’t stop PolitiFact from repeatedly claiming that Democrats were “lying” (often “pants on fire” lying) when they claimed that Ryan’s plan “ended” or “killed” Medicare.

The most interesting stories of all about this ugly debacle have been two under-the-radar stories, both of which bear on the question of exactly HOW PolitiFact arrived at their decision to view things in this way. PolitiFact themselves have a page up which gives a clue to the first of the stories. Called How we chose the 2011 Lie of the Year, it points out, about a third of the way down its length, that “[w]e faced a new wrinkle this year: campaigning from both sides.” In other words, they PolitiFact were lobbied. Hard. But not, as it turns out, equally from both sides. Digby runs down the reality: “Paul Ryan emails his PAC, complete with a video” urging every one of his supporters and networked-in fellow-travelers to “…click here to cast your vote now at Politifact.” In other words, as Digby says, he stuffed the ballot box. Digby also points out that in the end, the editors at PolitiFact themselves chose this as their “Lie”; it wasn’t done by reader votes alone. In fact, the PolitiFact piece points out early on that the Ryan plan “lie” wasn’t even the top vote-getter. It came in third, behind John Kyl’s risible claim that “90% of Planned Parenthood services are abortions” and the biggest one in the readers’ opinion, the Republican claim that “zero jobs” were created by the economic stimulus.

So, if the hotly-contested claim that Democrats had lied about Ryan’s plan didn’t even finish second, let alone first, in readers’ surveys, what led PolitiFact to choose it as “Lie of the Year?

Politics, pure and simple.

One of the dangers of “independent” fact-checking organizations is that, even if they are truly “independent” (as in: free of any financial or other ties to groups or individuals with a vested interest in one or more areas the fact-checkers cover), they are not infallible, and they are especially not free from ordinary human biases. In this case, it’s important to notice some of the facts surrounding why PolitiFact probably chose to elevate one of their stories from the #3 slot into the marquee position.

Fact-checking by outside, “impartial” services like PolitiFact is a fairly new phenomenon in its current form. Fact checking itself has always existed, of course, but traditionally it was performed in-house by journalists and the publications they worked for, as a means of ensuring their own reputations as neutral arbiters and reliable sources of balanced information. With the advent of the 24-hour news cycle, however, as well as the dramatic decline in newspaper readership (and thus, newspaper budgets), much fact-checking has gone by the wayside. Indeed, on certain previously-esteemed television shows like the venerable Meet the Press, new anchor David Gregory has famously insisted that it is not his job to fact-check his guests (virtually all of whom are among the most powerful people in the nation, either in government or (less frequently) business). Gregory, and an increasing number of his colleagues in journalism, apparently view fact-checking as time-consuming, boring and not all that helpful. He’s content – by his own admission – to simply allow the powerful public figures his show hosts onto his set to say whatever it is they wish to say, without challenge or refutation, leaving it up to the viewer to decide what was true, what was exaggerated, and what was complete self-serving falsehood.

Enter the “independent” fact-checking organization.

Of the new fact-checkers, two names – PolitiFact and Factcheck.org – are by far the best-known. That’s why this story of getting the Ryan claims so wrong is so important: because these organizations now have a tremendous amount of power to shape the narrative about what is true and what is not, even what is allowed to be spoken of in “serious” conversations and what is out-of-bounds.

Over the past two years, as PolitiFact themselves helpfully point out, both claims which took the coveted “lie of the year” spot were also about health care. What PolitiFact glosses over lightly, however, is the equally true fact that both years, those health-care related claims which took “lie of the year” honors were Republican whoppers. In 2009, it was the then-relevant Sarah Palin’s claim that the PPACA (“Obamacare”) included “death panels,” and in 2010 it was the oft-repeated GOP claim that the PPACA represented a “government takeover” of health care. In both instances, PolitiFact did a good job showing why these claims actually WERE false and misleading. On this year’s ballot, ALL of the other claims in the running – indeed, most of the claims they covered, period, were again GOP whoppers told about this or that Democratic proposal.

It seems quite likely, based upon the fact that this was the ONLY “lie” in three straight years that wasn’t from the GOP, and upon the fact that PolitiFact’s editors had to pull it out of third place in the readers’ poll, that PolitiFact simply fell victim to the fear of appearing biased against Republicans and/or in favor of Democrats by continuing to point out impartially how badly out-of-whack the lying/abuse of power situation in today’s Washington truly is, even if the facts would indicate that’s what they should do.

But perhaps the most interesting story about PolitiFact’s shameful bowing to the “both sides do it/are to blame” false equivalency was pointed out by Dave Weigel in Slate today:

Getting somewhat lost in this discussion is where the “ends Medicare” line came from. It was not birthed like Athena from the skull of Nancy Pelosi. It came from an April 4, 2011 preview of the Ryan plan by Naftali Bendavid, writing in the Wall Street Journal — that simmering pot of liberal bias.

That’s possibly the most convincing, most damning piece of evidence yet that PolitiFact simply bent to the somewhat natural human instinct to believe that things can’t possibly be all one way or all the other way – along with a desire to see that their own impartiality wasn’t “tarnished” by continuing to report the truth that it is by FAR the Republicans doing most of the lying in congress these days. Why else would an organization devoted to forensic dissection of public figures’ claims about policy fail to mention the primary text from which the claim they’re purporting to debunk came?

Why? Because admitting that Paul Ryan’s plan does, in fact, end Medicare as we’ve all known it and replace it with something entirely unlike Medicare – a voucher system – was at first so non-controversial that it was first pointed out in the pages of one of the most well-known – and well-respected – conservative newspapers, the Wall Street Journal. Only, mentioning that would’ve thrown cold water on the notion that this was some wild-eyed Democratic exaggeration or “lie.” Mentioning that the GOP initially thought this would be so well-received that they didn’t attempt at all to hide the fact that they were eliminating Medicare, and everyone from Barack Obama to the op-ed page editors at the Wall Street Journal knew it, wouldn’t go very will with the notion that this was some mendacious Democratic plot.

It’s become an old joke over the last decade or so (basically, since the rise of FOX News) that “reality has a pronounced liberal bias” because modern Republicans are, as many observers have noted, perfectly willing to argue that either things aren’t as the evidence shows they are (think: the whole evolution/climate change idiocies) or that reality itself is wrong if it conflicts with GOP dogma. That’s fine: the constitution allows for free speech and doesn’t discriminate against or prevent speech that’s intentionally deceptive or misleading or even outright false. In fact, the concept of free speech rests in part on the premise that the cure for bad, false, deceptive speech is MORE, better, correct and accurate speech. It’s an implicit belief that truth will out, eventually, given enough time.

And it usually does, in our system. But it may do so less often if fallible organizations like PolitiFact arise to be viewed as infallible or even just trusted arbiters of what the truth – or at least the facts – are. Fact-checking can be a very valuable service indeed, done correctly and diligently. But if nothing else, PolitiFact’s 2011 “lie of the year” scandal should remind us all that we shouldn’t take ANY claim as gospel just because it came from an organization with “fact” in its name.

How can House Republicans force the Senate not to adjourn? Republicans, always on the lookout for ways to deny President Obama and the Democrats their due authority and legislative goals, have discovered and are utilizing a never-before-used-in-this-way provision of the constitution, Article I, section 5, clause 4, which reads:

Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.

This means even though Democrats are still in the majority in the Senate, Harry Reid cannot simply adjourn the Senate for the holiday break (during which time President Obama could recess-appoint some of the blocked nominees the GOP has been filibustering). Instead, the Senate will hold a pro-forma session every three days which will last no more than a couple of minutes, but which is long enough to prevent the Senate from considering itself in recess for the entire month-plus between yesterday and January 23. In short, what this means in practice is: President Obama will not be able to recess-appoint Richard Cordray to the CFPB.

Unless.

Unless Mr. Obama is willing to take steps of his own, also granted to him explicitly by the constitution. Specifically, Article II, section 3, clause 3, which reads:

[The President] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.

The constitution is an astonishing document. Although the framers could not foresee everything which might come to pass in the future, they did in an amazing number of instances have an uncanny insight into human nature as applied in the political process, setting up our justly-vaunted system of checks and balances. Most people, when they hear of checks and balances, think of the separation of powers into three branches of government, with good reason. But the framers’ clear desire not to have the government shanghied by any faction using the law as a procedural weapon for subverting the will of the people or the balanced operation of government, can be seen in many smaller and less famous portions of the constitution, as well. This is definitely one of them.

Everyone knows the framers were considerably worried about the re-imposition of a monarchy. That’s why they gave the President considerable power but made him or her subordinate to congress in many key areas. Conversely, however, the framers had already (in the late 1700s!) seen enough of legislative grandstanding, gridlock, treachery and abuse in Europe that they also were able to foresee the kind of shenanigans that might ensue in a body so large and diffuse in responsibility as congress. So they put little mini-checks and balances directly into our constitution so the President, while he could not and cannot simply ride roughshod over congress, can use power specifically granted to him to break up such ideological and legislative logjams.

I’ve written extensively already about the self-professed need of the Obama administration to have a competent, pro-consumer director of the CFPB. The administration themselves has highlighted this need, and I agree 100% with their reasoning. Now, as every alert onlooker has observed already, the time has come for the White House to put up or shut up about this desire. The Republicans have opened the door by using an obscure provision of the constitution to jam up the Senate majority into accepting the will of the OTHER chamber. Now, President Obama can and should allow the houses of congress to function as the framers intended them to. He has the explicit authority to force the Senate (and House) into adjournment, during which time recess appointments can be made. Even the GOP Senators don’t assert that Cordray is unfit to helm the CFPB; they simply don’t want the CFPB itself to exist. Too late. They already lost that battle, and their unprecedented obstructionism must be met with equally unprecedented obstruction-removal.

Break the logjam. Adjourn congress for the holidays. Recess appoint Richard Cordray so he can begin protecting consumers from fiscal predation. Obstructionism delenda est!

And indeed, there are times when the fact-checking services (not just PolitiFact) get it wrong. Despite the occasional gaffes, mistakes and (inevitable, human) bias that sometimes creeps into their work, however, the fact-checking services DO provide an invaluable service: they do the research and verification that the average news consumer has neither the time nor, often, the skills to perform on a daily basis for themselves in order to make sure that the news they’re getting is factually correct. So, while it’s important to “watch the watchers” and make sure the fact-checkers got it right, when they make a pronouncement, it’s worth paying attention to.

Such is the case with the recent fact-checking by PolitiFact of Senator Sherrod Brown’s claim that the GOP obstruction of President Obama’s nomination of Richard Cordray to helm the CFPB specifically because they objected to the agency itself that Cordray is nominated to direct, was literally without precedent in Senate history.

PolitiFact checked into Brown’s claim and (surprise, surprise!) after their investigation, rated it true:

…based on the record, including its nuance, we take the Senate historian’s word: Brown was correct when he said this was the first time that a political party has blocked a nomination unless changes were made to an agency. To repeat Ritchie’s words: “We searched through past cases and could not find anything that fit the current circumstance.”

We rate Brown’s claim true.

That’s “true.” Not “mostly true” or “partly true,” but TRUE, full stop.

PolitiFact also, as is their wont, goes out of their way to say that their determination “isn’t a question of which side is morally or politically correct,” and I agree: it isn’t (and shouldn’t be) PolitiFact’s job to determine which side of a question of fact is morally or politically correct. But the determination itself of which side was speaking truthfully and which side was not can and should lead voters, readers, media figures and the public at large to draw conclusions about the political or moral worth of each side’s claims and/or action.

I point this out because in this case, there is already both hand-wringing on the Democratic side and saber-rattling on the GOP side that if President Obama should recess-appoint Mr. Cordray to the post Republicans are denying him even a confirmation vote for, it will be seen by voters as a power play or even an abuse of power by the President. Making matters worse, it may even be difficult for Mr. Obama to make a standard-issue recess appointment like the ones George W. Bush used to install John Bolton as head of the United States UN delegation, because even though it is the Senate which provides advise and consent on Presidential nominations, there is an obscure rule in Congress which provides that each house must obtain the permission of the other house if it wishes to adjourn for more than three days.

In the past, recess appointments weren’t made by Presidents during such short Congressional breaks, so it would indeed be unprecedented for President Obama to do so now. Ordinarily the upcoming winter/Christmas break would be much longer than three days, but because the GOP-controlled House of Representatives is working with the GOP-minority Senate to try to stymie as many Obama appointments as they can, they are utilizing this obscure congressional rule to deny the Senate the ability to go into recess for longer than a few days. This sets up the specter of President Obama having to either forcing Congress to adjourn (a power the President has, but which has never been used by a President), or make a recess appointment in a much shorter break than has ever occurred before. Either action by President Obama would indeed be without precedent in American history.

However, this is a conscious strategy by the GOP. They are already utilizing every tool at their disposal to prevent the CFPB from functioning effectively as a consumer bulwark against rapacious lenders, and they are counting on the fact that the President will lose his nerve if his only choices are to take one of a number of unprecedented steps in order to accomplish what should be a relatively routine task. Indeed, Republican Senators and right-wing media figures are already bloviating against “unprecedented abuses of power” and the like by the President.

In truth, I am not usually a fan of creative rule-interpretation in government, even when it benefits “my side,” precisely because of the precedent it can set. There’s always the proverbial possibility of opening up Pandora’s box, and with it, a host of unforeseen consequences which might be potentially very damaging. But in this case, the President himself has already pushed Cordray’s nomination to the forefront of the White House agenda, with the President publicly and repeatedly highlighting the importance of installing a staunch consumer ally into the position as the head of the CFPB. President Obama is quite right to do place such emphasis: the Dodd-Frank law provides for this position to be filled, and if it remains unfilled, the CFPB cannot fulfill all of its mandate to protect consumers from predatory lending.

Throughout this dragged-out mess, as the PolitiFact investigation reminds us, it is Republicans who have been the ones taking unprecedented steps, not Democrats. The GOP leadership want to re-legislate the creation of the bureau itself, and its structure and powers. Too bad. That time has passed. If they truly believe the CFPB to be a threat to the country (instead of just to the bankers who pull the GOP strings), then they should wait until the next time they’re in the majority in the Senate and control the White House, and see how well they do at repealing or gutting the CFPB. See what the public thinks about going back to the days of fifteen-page credit card agreements and predatory payday lending at thirty, forty, fifty percent interest. Indeed, that’s why the GOP is fighting so hard – and so dirty – now: because they know for certain that once this bureau is fully up and functioning, the public is going to LOVE it and wonder how they ever did without it. Mitch McConnell and John Boehner know full well that they’ve got one chance to strangle this pro-consumer agency in its infancy, before the public gets a chance to see how well it will protect them. So they’re pulling out ALL the stops.

From a tactical standpoint, I suppose, you can’t fault them: they are playing (as they always do) as hard as they can, playing to win. President Obama, however, should take a page from the GOP’s playbook and play equally hard; play to win for voters and consumers. The President and Democrats are agreed that the country needs the CFPB to have a pro-consumer director, sooner rather than later. They have both the public and the law on their side. More importantly, they are right in their assessment. Richard Cordray is the director the CFPB and the public deserve, and President Obama should not allow himself to be cowed by threats of taking “unprecedented action” by opposition leaders who utilize parliamentary parlor tricks and equally unprecedented maneuvering to block what the law provides for. As PolitiFact reminds us, it is the Republicans who are taking unprecedented steps to block reform; President Obama should not fail to use the tools which the constitution clearly puts at his disposal to break such a logjam of obstructionism. Although taking such steps would indeed be unprecedented, doing so would also be a nothing more than an appropriate proportional response to the unprecedented obstruction of the GOP. To put it more bluntly – and in keeping with PolitiFact’s meter with which I began this post – here’s a graphical representation of how much weight President Obama should assign to GOP warnings against him taking “unprecedented steps” to appoint Richard Cordray to head the CFPB:

Recess appoint Richard Cordray by whatever means necessary.

Describing the blockade of Richard Cordray to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as a form of nullification sounds accurate to me. Cordray is almost an afterthought to this issue. Republicans disagree with the concept of a federal agency that looks out for consumers. So they plan to stop any effort to staff the agency with a director, which has the added benefit in this case of holding off consumer protection regulation of non-bank financial institutions, unless it is gutted.

[...]

Democrats and the President have an option here. They can simply force a recess appointment. The President has all the tools at his disposal to get a director in place, whether by forcing Congress to adjourn, or using the inter-session period as a recess to use his appointment power.

But the most important bit of Dayen’s post – and indeed, about the Cordray nomination and the entire tawdry fight over the CFPB itself – is this:

These [actions] may seem like power plays, but as power plays go they pale in comparison to Senate Republicans hijacking an entire agency and blocking anyone from serving as its director until their demands are met. In other words, a recess appointment would be a proportional response at this point. And Republicans would grumble about it, but I don’t see why anyone should care about that. Putting a greater spotlight on their intentions here should be the goal.

So yes, Republicans are using a nullification strategy. But it cannot be successful without Democratic toothlessness, a form of complicity. Democrats could have Cordray in place by the end of the year.

Exactly the situation, as it stands today. If either a banker-stooge nominee is substituted for Cordray, or the agency itself is neutered (as Republicans have stated is their real goal), it will have been entirely, ENTIRELY because Democrats chose not to pursue readily available, workable options to get Cordray installed. Yes, any such recess appointment would only last until the expiration of the current congress – far less than the current five year term the Director of the CFPB is supposed to hold. But once consumers and the media get a sense of what a fully-empowered CFPB can do, there won’t be any question they’ll want a strong consumer advocate helming it. The GOP know this. That’s why they’re going all-out to stop it NOW, before the horse is out of the barn. President Obama has the tools to foil them. It’s up to him – entirely – to choose to use them.