Hasta La Gadget!

WASHINGTON (AP) — How much difference will it make if Republicans win the Senate majority on Nov. 4, joining the GOP-run House against a Democratic White House?

Congress’ persistent gridlock is due largely, but not entirely, to the current power split in the two chambers. But even if Republicans add Senate control to their safe House majority, big legislative roadblocks will remain. President Barack Obama still can veto legislation.

Should Democrats lose six or more Senate seats, ceding the majority, they can use the power of the filibuster to thwart dozens of GOP initiatives. Republicans have employed this tactic from the minority side.

In the House, House Republicans’ deep philosophical divisions will remain. That will further complicate effort by Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to pass bills without help from Democrats, who generally demand significant concessions.

In short, conservatives who see Republican control of both houses of Congress as the path to repealing the health law, slashing regulations and other priorities probably will be disappointed.

“I think the country will face two more years of gridlock,” said Democrat Ted Strickland of Ohio, a former congressman and governor who now is president of the Washington-based Center for American Progress Action Fund.

At least three Republican senators — Marco Rubio of Florida, Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky — are considering running for president in 2016. If the GOP controls the Senate after Election Day, Strickland said, it’s hard to imagine “there not being a fight breaking out within the Republican family.”

Some Republicans are more optimistic. But even they say that if Republicans are in charge on Capitol Hill, they may have to play down conservatives’ expectations and settle for symbolic victories that highlight their differences with Democrats.

“They have to have an agenda and have to perform,” said GOP Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia, who is retiring after 22 years in the House. The party’s conservative base, he said, is tired of fiery rhetoric yielding scant results.

Republican senators, Kingston said, must be able to tell voters that “we did tax reform, we did welfare reform, we did spending reform, or something that shows that there were Republican fingerprints” at government’s highest levels.

Obama probably would veto such measures, Kingston acknowledged.

But making Obama do so will show the difference between the parties, Kingston said, and “that helps build the case why you need a Republican president.” If nothing else, Kingston said, Republicans must force Obama to sign or veto a bill to repeal his 2010 health care overhaul, a GOP priority that Senate Democrats have blocked for years.

Obama certainly would veto that effort, but he would be powerless to stop several other initiatives.

Republicans say a GOP-led Senate would join the House in conducting investigations into political matters such as the killing of Americans in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012, the Internal Revenue Service’s scrutiny of conservative groups, and perhaps a failed law enforcement program called Operation Fast and Furious.

Also, a Republican Senate could block many, if not all, of Obama’s nominations to federal courts and administration jobs that require confirmation.

One Republican goal calls for packing spending bills with legislative maneuvers, known as riders, to force various policy changes.

Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, poised to become majority leader if he wins re-election and his party takes over the Senate, outlined his thoughts in a secretly recorded speech to conservatives.

“No money can be spent to do this or to do that,” McConnell told a June gathering sponsored by the billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David. “We’re going to go after them on health care, on financial services, on the Environmental Protection Agency, across the board.”

The strategy would elevate long-running philosophical feuds between Republicans and Democrats. Democrats could use a veto or filibuster to block such bills, but that also might block spending items popular with many Americans.

Some GOP goals, such as approving the Keystone XL oil pipeline or removing a tax on medical devices, might gain enough Democratic support to make a presidential veto politically difficult.

Special rules would allow Republicans to pass a major budget bill with only 51 Senate votes. There’s talk of using the tactic to try to repeal major pieces of the health law, although the president could veto it.

Repeated vetoes or Senate filibusters might make Democrats look like obstructionists, the label they long have pinned on Republicans. But many Democrats say they would welcome a Republican push for long-stalled legislation they believe most Americans would reject.

For instance, House Republicans repeatedly have voted for deep spending cuts and major changes in Medicare, knowing a Democratic-run Senate would block them and prevent intense public scrutiny. A Republican-controlled Senate, however, would feel pressured to endorse the House plan and send it to Obama’s desk.

“Public beware,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the House Budget Committee’s top Democrat. “It’s one thing to lay out a budget in abstract. It’s another thing to impose it on the country.”

But Michael Needham, who heads the conservative Heritage Action for America, said House and Senate majorities would give Republicans “a new tool set to show the differences in the parties” heading into the 2016 presidential campaign. Instead of House Republicans expressing their budget priorities by shutting down the government, as they did last year, “this lets you do more,” Needham said.

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Follow Charles Babington on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cbabington

For anyone in the Carolina Panthers organization who doubted it, yes, Steve Smith Sr. can still play.

The Baltimore Ravens wide receiver, who has made it clear that he was looking forward to playing his former team, opened the scoring on Sunday with a wild 61-yard touchdown catch in the second quarter. Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco threw a deep pass down the left sideline with both Smith and tight end Owen Daniels in the area. Daniels tried to catch it with one hand but he ended up tipping it into the hands of Smith instead. The five-time Pro Bowler did the rest, sprinting past the Panthers secondary for the touchdown.

Not long after being cut by the Panthers after 13 seasons in the offseason, Smith warned that “there’s going to be blood and guts everywhere” if he happened to face them this season. He ended up signing a three-year deal with the Ravens. During Baltimore’s season opener against Cincinnati, the 35-year-old looked at a television camera and told whoever was listening that anyone who thinks he can’t play anymore will find out in Week 4.

They’re finding out.

Notes from Indian Country
By Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji)
September 29, 2014

When I observe American Indians being deliberately deleted from nearly every aspect of American history, I usually refer to the old Jewish adage that goes, “What are we, chopped liver?”

Let me be very frank with you today. As I sit writing this column as I have every Sunday for the past 34 years I am terribly frustrated at the total lack of understanding and basic ignorance that still exists about America’s first citizens.

First of all I don’t even want to get into what you non-Indians should call us, or even what many Indians want to be called. Everybody born in America is a Native American so we can’t claim exclusivity to that name. Our local newspaper uses the word “Native” when referring to us, but I always think of an old Hollywood movie where the white folks are sitting around a fire and they hear the drums beating and one says, “The Natives are restless tonight.”

Let me just introduce my own feelings by saying most of us old timers (elders) prefer to be called “Indian.” It is what we grew up with and we do not find it demeaning or insulting. We were born Indians and we will die Indians. Indios refers to God in Spanish and it is not a bad word.

Should the Nation’s oldest Indian organization, The National Congress of American Indians, change its name? What about the National Indian Education Association or the Indian Historical Society? Are these organization living dinosaurs to be kicked aside by political correctness?

There are those who will never understand why I, Suzanne Harjo, Vernon Bellecourt, Michael Haney and Charlene Teters fought against the use of Indians as mascots for America’s fun and games for more than 40 years. Can’t the average American understand that it is not an honor to have our culture stolen, mimicked and insulted by fanatical football and baseball fans? Bellecourt and Haney are dead now and Suzanne, Char and I are tired, really tired of fighting racism under the guise of ignorance. We are not, and have never been “Redskins.” Find yourself an Indian and walk up to him or her and say, “Hey, Redskin” and see how honored they are. And then stand back before you get punched.

Last week someone in Sioux Falls, South Dakota decided to enumerate all of the different languages spoken in that city. Low and behold when all of the more than 100 languages were itemized, the people for whom the state was named, the Dakota, and their cousins the Lakota and Nakota, were not included for having a different language. We are not out of sight, just out of mind.

It doesn’t end there. A headline in the Rapid City Journal reads; Leadership South Dakota prepares next wave. The lead sentence goes, “For South Dakota to thrive, its leaders need to understand what makes South Dakota unique.”

Forty one South Dakotans were selected for the South Dakota Leadership Program and of the 41guess how many were Indians? If South Dakota is looking to thrive it should learn that a part of the uniqueness it hopes to retain, a big part as a matter of fact, are the American Indians that make up 15 percent of its population. I find this particularly galling because the average South Dakotan knows less about its largest minority than do the people of Germany.

Let me point out a few simple facts. All Indians are not rolling in money from gambling casinos. The poorest counties in America are still on the Indian reservations. No, we do not get monthly checks from the government and free college educations. What we do get free is the poorest health care of any American citizen and the worst educational system in America with the highest high school dropout rate of any race of people. As a race we have the highest rate of diabetes and the highest rate of alcoholism and drug addiction. While America is busy sending millions to fight diseases in Africa, Indians here in America are dying. Is that fair?

No, we do not still live in teepees, but teepees would probably be welcome to the thousands of homeless Indians.

The American Indian has never asked for a handout. All they have ever asked for is that America honor the treaties their ancestors signed in full faith. Perhaps those treaties were forged as a stop-gap for Manifest Destiny, but they are still sacred documents to the many Indian nations that signed them. If the United States would honor the treaties to the letter of the law, there would be no poverty in Indian country.

We are not feathered warriors racing across your movie screens nor are we mascots for your fun and games; we are human beings and all we ask is that you honor our treaties and give us back our human dignity.

(Tim Giago is an Oglala Lakota born and raised on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. He has been a newspaper publisher, journalist and columnist for more than 35 years. He was awarded the distinguished Nieman Fellowship to Harvard in 1990 and can be reached at editor@nsweekly.com)

With its recent acquisition of  LiveRail, an enterprise software company that manages programmatic video ad sales for publishers, Facebook is embracing a big opportunity to service publishers — and, with a particular emphasis on delivering mobile ads, explains Brian Boland, VP for Ads Product Marketing and Ad Tech, in this interview with Beet.TV

We spoke with him about the emerging Facebook advertising tech stack and the integration of LiveRail as a free-standing unit.   We interviewed him at the LiveRail video publisher forum this week in Manhattan.

You can find this post on Beet.TV.

The Power Glove was the quirkiest little peripheral ever devised for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Although if found only limited use on that platform, modern day tinkers with access to cheap and simple microcontrollers can now turn these 25-year-old video game artifacts into futuristic wearables.

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