Tonight’s the fourth Wednesday in October and that means that it’s once again time for the regular meeting of Baltimore’s Chapter of Drinking Liberally. For those not familiar DL is an informal group of Liberals and Progressives that meets twice monthly at Dougherty’s in Mount Vernon to have a few beers and chat about issues in the political and social spheres. Tonight’s meeting gets underway at 8, and new folks are encouraged to come out and say hello, as recent meetings have been increasingly small in number.
The fourth Wednesday also means it’s once again time to get on our high horse to rant and round-up all things political. Two weeks ago, we told you in this space that the Democrats were going to “win” the shutdown and looky-looky we were right again. John Boehner caved completely before we hit the debt ceiling and a bill that could have been passed before the shutdown even began was finally passed after more than two full weeks of Tea Party nonsense. After wavering badly on Syria President Obama once again looks like the guy with the biggest dick inside the beltway, which he probably is.
Beyond the end of the shutdown the news has slowed down a bit. Healthcare.gov glitches, Corey Booker becoming a senator and then marrying a bunch of gay couples, etc. Obama did come out and announce what are going to be the White House’s next three priorities, which are passing a budget, passing a farm bill, and immigration reform. Those all seem pretty sensible and prudent and would set the country on the “right track,” but we’ll see. The House GOP is anything but sensible and prudent and it’s doubtful they’ve learned much of anything from their horribly embarrassing loss of the shutdown.
We also want to take this opportunity to point out that this Friday Hardball host Chris Matthews will appear at the Enoch Pratt Central Branch to hawk copies of his new book Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked about the relationship between President Reagan and former house speaker Tip O’Neill, under whom Matthews worked at the time.
The Chop is a fan of Matthews and so we’re looking forward to hearing him wax political off the air for once. Not that Hardball hasn’t been his own personal soapbox for years, but we will enjoy the chance to see him opine without the constraints of segment timing and broadcast cameras.
We’ve also been changing the channel every time we’ve seen Matthews start pitching his book in the past month since we knew we’d probably be going to see him on Friday, and between Hardball and NBC shows from Today straight through to the Tonight Show that’s been a lot of clicking.
Friday’s event is free and begins at 7:00.