Okay, there are 60 Democratic Senators. Some are a little weak kneed, but they signed up with the Democratic Party. So, it is time for a little hardball.
What I am talking about is the secret hold. The secret hold is a threat of filibuster. It has been around since Johnson was the Senate Majority Leader and it exists to avoid actual on the floor filibusters. However, filibusters can also be shut down with 60 votes, which just happens to be the number of Democratic Party members.
So, it is time for the current Majority Leader to tell the other party they are out of luck. Threats of filibuster must materialize before anything will happen. In other words, no secret holds.
Let's see these elected senators demonstrate some spine.
Its half past spring, what spring cleaning have you done? I still see a dozen posts from the "guess what I read in the headlines yesterday" category. Um.. Actually, I read the headlines myself and so you don't need to tell me what you more or less remember that some bl-undit regurgitated from the headlines.
Be thoughtful. Or, at least be witty.
Dang, if you can't do that, please be inscrutable or use creative poor grammar and spelling.
Last option... Be quiet.
"Better," as Lincoln is said to have said, "to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." Apparently, the self publishing blogosphere needs the Lincoln editor.
July 4th is coming up. I challenge you all to AVOID trite posts about patriotism. Its fine to love your country and all, but the other team has spent the last half-century turning patriotism into Xenophobic nationalism, so it is hard to discuss this topic without sounding stupid, trite, or like a Xenophobic nationalist. There will be plenty of paid fools to make those mistakes, try to discuss something else, such as fairies (mid-summer comes quick on the heels of July 4... check your calendar).
August will be totally boring, even Congress goes home. Here, let me give you the news now... Universal Health Care will not be passed and signed into law before Congress goes home and Sotomayor will not yet be confirmed. Republicans will continue to be acting like asses. The bright spot will be that Franken is finally seated, but we will have plenty of Democratic senators screwing things up. Now, please, don't get bent out of shape when that comes to pass. It is already true. It has always been true.
Now calm down and think about something creative to post about.
On the front page of TPM at this hour (6 pm on the 3rd of June, you can no longer put a permalink to front page articles (thanks to comment, here is permalink) there is a comment from a reader (these comments are selected by the editors, they do not post every one they get....) which ends with... "if all we wanted was recycled, conventional baby boomers wisdom devoid of any observation or original thought?"
I was actually somewhat sympathetic with the earlier part of the message, but I have noticed a growing tendency to attack members of my generation. I am offended. Has TPM selected the boomers as their target for discrimination?
The public works program that finally ended the depression is sometimes called WWII, but it is actually DoD (Department of Defense). It is the Republicans favorite program. We are still spending gobs of money on it.
My point? We shouldn't worry that spending money on public programs is long term. We have some major concerns that we can spend money on and help out the economy. These include Universal Health Care and Global Warming, not to mention restoring the infrastructure (including mass transit!).
My only hope is that the long term programs we create this time are not total money holes like DoD.
It will soon be time for round two and hardball politics. Here is the plan:
1. Load it up with as much pork as possible. 2. Not one dime for the 177 districts whose representatives voted no this time. 3. Not one dime in areas that principally support the anti-stimulus Senators. 4. Load up on extra porky pork for just enough "moderate" Republican Senators so they have no choice but to vote for it. 5. Push it through on a no negotiation, party line (plus 2 "moderate" Republican Senators) vote. 6. Tell them on round 3, it will be the same, except all current federal commitments in those 177 districts and other areas will be canceled to pay for the pork for the positive votes. Draft the bill and have it ready to go.
In other words, it is time to crush the opposition.
The Republicans want "Social Security reform" to solidify and make permanent the tax gains they achieved in the 1980s and under Bush the lesser. The Social Security Trust Fund surplus, generated by increases in the payroll tax passed in the 1980s, has made the massive tax reductions for the wealthy possible. Surprisingly, the wealthy are so greedy they do not want to share this money with the rest of us.
Yes, there is money to pay for our government including Social Security, Medicare, health care for all of us, infrastructure, and whatever else you might need. Somebody has it, and that somebody is the folks that got the tax reductions paid for with our increased payroll taxes. Tell those greedy folks you have had it up to here with them.
Whenever you hear anyone propose Social Security reform, there is one and only one reform to support:
1. Raise the ceiling on the the payroll taxes (eliminate it) and expand it to non-payroll income.
2. Continue the benefits under current practices (as if the ceiling were not eliminated).
3. Use the surplus thus generated to solve the health care finance problems.
I am so very tired of hearing about terrorists. Terrorists are the convenient boogeymen that replace communists for the Republican Party. We are all supposed to think this is a new and entirely different kind of threat. Something foreign and, well, Muslim. Hogwash.
We have lived with "terrorism" for at least 100 years (caution pdf), and were never very terrified by it until it became the necessary foil for the Republican party. The real terrorists are the folks that take these occasional incidents and turn them into something more than what they are. My top nomination for a banned word is "terrorism" and all its cognates. It is pure political rhetoric designed to reinforce the message that we are at constant war (thus, bye bye civil liberties) and to scare us into cow towing to the authoritarians in our midst.
Look carefully at this poll. While it is nominally about the Gaza situation, it is more significantly about the behavior of Republicans. Specifically it says (on the second page) that the Republicans view every possible international condition as more threatening than the Democrats do. Think about that. What that means is that they are cowards. Chickens. Afraid of their shadow.
Cowardice is often the seed of bully behavior, as we all know. And we all know that Republicans like to throw their weight around.
I am damn tired of cowards trying to take charge of American international policy to behave like play room bullies just to appease their own fears. Remember when everyone from Thomas Friedman to Darth Cheney swaggers and roars what they are really doing is revealing their own very wide yellow streaks on their backs.
Following are some excerpts from Facebook.. I have deleted the names.
(From a posted item) Two 11-year-old girls articulate their personal goal to become shahids [people who die for Allah], explaining that "all Palestinian children" see Shahada [death for Allah] - because of its promised grand Afterlife - as more worthwhile than living. ... Add Comment - 6 Comments - Share Name deleted at 8:36pm January 5 these people are fucking retards, i'm sorry... Name deleted at 8:39pm January 5 they are uncivilized neanderthals and they deserve to live in the caves that they were destined to.. sorry for my outburst lol Name deleted at 8:52pm January 5 wow Name deleted at 10:17pm January 5 the smartest thing i head in hears.... you know what it is?.. these "children are not childrenthey are little warriors.". thats why ISRAEL SHOULD NOT THINK OF THEM AS KILLING CHILDREN WHEN THEY THROW ROCKS AT THE SOLDIERS.. BUT OF KILLING LITTLE WARRIORS WHO WILL GROW UP TO BE BIG TERRORISTS! Name deleted at 11:35pm January 5 soooooo truee ^^^^
Here are the Republican Senators who will be up for election in 2010:
Alabama Shelby, Richard Alaska Murkowski, Lisa Arizona McCain, John Florida Martinez, Mel* Georgia Isakson, Johnny Idaho Crapo, Mike Kentucky Bunning, Jim Louisiana Vitter, David Missouri Bond, Kit New Hampshire Gregg, Judd* North Carolina Burr, Richard* Ohio Voinovich, George* Oklahoma Coburn, Tom Pennsylvania Specter, Arlen* South Carolina DeMint, Jim South Dakota Thune, John Utah Bennett, Robert Iowa Grassley, Chuck* Kansas Brownback, Sam
As a good Democrat, I would like to expel some of the repulsive ones like Sam Brownback or David Vitter. But, in the real world, we need to break the filibuster. I have placed asterisks by the six Republican Senators who are from states won by Obama. Martinez has already said he is resigning, so we should focus on winning the seat, but there is little we can do to presure him away from filibusters. Based strictly on Obama's margin of victory, the three most vulnerable are Grassley, Specter, and Judd. We need to raise money and take them on *now,* not in two years. Every filibuster vote should receive a response. Time for action.
I think folks have this Little Rickie Warren thing all wrong. Obama promised to meet the leaders of the enemies of America without preconditions early in the campaign. We all applauded. Now he is demonstrating his sincerity. I hope the negotiations for disarmament go well. If not, perhaps we can build a wall around Rickie's compound.
I was having a conversation with my friend last night when it came to me, this over sized recession is more than it appears. As we boomers have been told since the 1970s, we are going to create a big problem for the economy when we retire because the workforce will fall to a ratio of something of the order of 1 worker for every 3 people in the country (I do not recall when I first heard this, or if this is the correct ratio, but this is the nature of the "productivity" problem). This ratio is considered unsustainable.
The obvious effect of major public policies has been to force more people into the workforce (social security retirement age incrementing up does this directly, social security privatization would create winners-with good investments-who could retire early, and losers-with bad investments- who may never retire). But all of these have been weak tea.
That brings us to this economic collapse... It is going to create a restructuring of the economy because of the productivity problem. It may, in fact, be part of the productivity problem... Aging boomers who realized that they were going to have meager retirements took out easy equity loans on their homes to build up their portfolios so that could retire early... a baby boom improvised (economic) explosive device... now it has exploded blowing a hole in our economy....
The boomers can explode again if we don't fix this thing!
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Location UhMerica
Party When I can
Politics I think of myself as in the middle of the road, but as far as I can tell, all the traffic is way over there in the field on the right, so you figure it out.
Favorite Quotes "Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none."
"Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country."
"I am not a crook."
Bio
I live on a small island in the Atlantic Ocean, not far off the coast of New York. Not far, at all. I did not always live in the Nawth. In the state where I grew up (which does not know it is a state), *every* American cultural practice began. It is in their history books.
