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At this point, I think Obama has kissed Democrats goodbye…

by: btchakir

Tue Dec 07, 2010 at 08:58:43 AM EST


As of this morning it seems that Obama is ready to deal with the Right... extend the Bush tax cuts for a couple of years in exchange for one year's extension of Unemployment funding. The tax cut deal is tentative. It hasn't gone through Congress yet (although McConnell is probably dribbling with laughter in his office), but it probably will.
btchakir :: At this point, I think Obama has kissed Democrats goodbye…
When even Conservatives like Joe Scarborough sees and comments on the fact that Obama is moving directly to the Right...
and will not increase job creation much, but will add at least a trillion new bucks to the deficit. And who is going to lend it to us? The Chinese? Are we going to listen to Obama's financial team that extending tax cuts are going to get us out of recession?

And now we won't be able to blame this crap on Bush anymore. Obama owns it and is most likely making himself a one-term President. And a lot of very unhappy Democrats like me will probably help him to become a one-termer. As Joe Scarborough just said: "At least they can't call him a Socialist any more."

I think it is up to Nancy Pelosi (certainly not Harry Reid) to try to hold this arrangement off... and, as I have said before, it would be better to have this whole arrangement with the Right flushed down the toilet and get NO tax cut extensions for ANYONE, than to do anything like what is coming out of the White House. (Steny Hoyer, however, will go along with it... miserable power seeker... and will undermine Pelosi.)

So now we have to pay for increased troops in Afghanistan where we are getting nowhere even faster than before, we have to suffer increasing rather than decreasing unemployment making our tax revenues even lower, and we can look forward to a GOP-controlled future... amazing with a Democratic White House and Senate... which will take us further from the America that was built by generations of progressive leaders from Roosevelt (FDR) through Johnson.

If the Tea Party takeover has taught us anything, it is that we need a new grass-roots progressive movement. And we have to push from the ground up. It's going to take 30 years.

At least.  

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btchkir (0.00 / 0)
Joe Scarborough is wrong. It doesn't matter what Obama does to appease the right, they'll still call him a socialist.

Unfortunately to avoid long-term environmental devastation, I don't think we have 30 years.

When a man embarks upon a crime, he is morally guilty of any other crime which may spring from it. Sherlock Holmes.


Disaster (4.00 / 3)
Bernie Sanders is right - If the Republicans want to do it, let them do it.  Why be complicit?  Where the heck is my change?  And BTW, Mr. President, don't lecture me about having to compromise like I don't understand that - I understand that and so do most liberals - what I don't understand is why you will not fight - and be seen to fight - for the things you explictly ran on and were elected to do.

Rule XXII (4.00 / 2)
I never make any friends, not even Clem or Carnacki, when I bring this up.

If you can't explain it without using the phrase "make them really filibuster", you lose.

If you are not lobbying for rules reform, you are bad for the front page of West Virginia Blue.

I wish I could get drunk.

NFTT: Support My Team or I Will Dance


crazy rule -- dump it (0.00 / 0)
We absolutely, positively need the Senate to reform itself in January, 2012 with new rules. The filibuster does not work in practice, in any way close to what most people imagine it.

[ Parent ]
make them filibuster (4.00 / 1)
The rules are arcane but they'll never muster the votes to change it.

The Dem-led Senate should make the Republicans actually filibuster. Now they just take a vote at the very beginning of a filibuster to see if they can break  - if they don't get the 60 they need they let that kill the bill.

Instead we should actually make the GOP stand-up for 72hrs (or however long they can last) and talk a bill to death. Let's see if they actually have the stones to read the phone book for 4 days to fight for millionaire tax breaks.

This would put a spotlight on them and make them look extreme - like they are.


[ Parent ]
jcsaunders -- YOU LOSE! (but it was really a trick question ;)) (4.00 / 1)
here is no way to "make them filibuster" under the current rules. Democrats have to produce 51 senators for a quorum to prevent the one Dr. No or Sen. Deminted in the GOP from moving to adjourn, a motion which trumps the current business on the floor. The rule change for 67 to proceed to the motion coming down to60 involved other changes that elimated the old style Strom Thrumond hold the floor with a telephone book adn a pot to piss in filibuster.

Go back and read it again. And the same 51 Dem  Senators can change the rules on the first day of a new Congress.

NFTT: Support My Team or I Will Dance


[ Parent ]
Clem--we get a chance on Monday 3 Jan 2011, for 51 votes. (0.00 / 0)
The two track system was the solution of leadership of Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield and Senate Majority Whip Byrd. Rule XXII as it exists was Mansfield and Byrd's solution to "real" filibuster of old. All business stopped until the matter being filibustered was disposed off.

NFTT: Support My Team or I Will Dance

[ Parent ]
Just to twist the knife, mistermix at balloon-juice (0.00 / 0)
Is TV Connected to Twitter?

You don't have to be an O-bot to see that the biggest challenge to progressivism in this country is the Senate. Though it's always given rural, conservative states a bigger voice in Congress, the aggressive use of the filibuster has turned it into the place where progressive legislation goes to die.

Most of the drama we experienced in the 111th Congress is directly related to the anachronistic rules of the Senate. If progressives need a windmill to tilt at, why not pick filibuster reform? Is it because it would take time, patience, subtlety and political cunning?



NFTT: Support My Team or I Will Dance

been tilting at that one for a while... (0.00 / 0)
[ Parent ]
Kucinich, Nader or McKinney in 2012? (0.00 / 0)
You tell me?  

because just like one of balloon-juice tags (0.00 / 0)
Obama is the Black Jimmy Carter, so primary his ass, go ahead. See if Palin's favorable don't improve after that.

Vote Nader if his ego puts him on a ticket with a party he has done nothing to help build since whenever.

Vote for McKinney, go ahead, or whatever crazy ex-Congresscritter you want. Ron Paul will probably take West Virginia anyway, right?

Because that will really show the GOP shitheads in the Senate how disgusted you are with what POTUS has accomplished.


NFTT: Support My Team or I Will Dance


[ Parent ]
And your solution is to turn the other cheak... (0.00 / 0)
roll over, beg and play dead?

[ Parent ]
i realize this is not parlimentary democracy (0.00 / 0)
and third party candidates that show up every four years make my political stomach turn. and you assume that the lack of the invisible pink unicorn promised to each and everyone one of us on the campaign trail in 2008 is some slap in the face. i live in senate world where reality is named rule xxii and the place is deminted.

no i am not playing dead, i am playing with feeding progressive issue news to congressional staff. i have no intention of ever thinking any candidate is "ideal", just like the spouse of thirty years.

i can liken this to making a marriage work. the first time one partner doesn't live up to some fantasy formed before the cinderella wedding you run to the divorce lawyer? there are lines not to be crossed and others are flexible.

they are dealing with the bush tax hikes, so you know that time bomb has got to stink. and i consider unemployment insurance a necessary counter cyclical expenditure. should i take my ball and go home? yelling from the sidelines behind the glass barrier is so much safer.

NFTT: Support My Team or I Will Dance


[ Parent ]
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