Am I the only one who's skeptical that the Democrats will be too incompetent to actually corral their 60 to vote unanimously to end a filibuster?
No, you are not.
But you may be the only one who uses skeptical to mean its opposite.
Franken keeps the number of Republicans down to 40. There are only 58 actual Democrats even with him. Sanders is better than a Dem on a lot of issues, but 60 is Holy Joe who has shown himself to be completely resistant to party discipline. (Please let Lamont win in 2012. He really ought to be punished by party members for endorsing the Republican candidate.)
4: Don't forgot that recent Democratic convert Arlen Specter is also counted among the 60.
Also, we need 60 present and voting, and two of ours (Byrd and Kennedy) are medically questionable enough that they are likely to be unable to show up for any given vote.
To echo 1, I think everybody except writers who feel obligated to make a big deal out of Norm Coleman's concession knows that this isn't huge.
I wish we had more Matt Singer types out there. Dude is a Montana activist who's started an impressive local group to press for universal health care. This is useful because Max Baucus, chairman of the Finance Committee, is from Montana. Give me robust groups like that in states like Nebraska and Maine and maybe you'd be able to put some serious pressure on Nelson, Snowe, etc.
Still, Senator Al Franken does give me the giggles. In a good way.
I agree with 1, I don't see anyone in blogs I read regularly thinking 60 will actually make a big difference. For example.
Listening to Diane Rehms and 4 pundits coming bck from the park, they noted that Kennedy and Byrd are not on the floor.
The post is dead-on. h-g is always right.
Ezra Klein is getting hard to read these days. I wish I lived in a world where young-uns didn't have to learn disappointment. There is a kind of horror to be read between EK's lines
To flip, I think knowing that we have 60 in some sense probably takes pressure off, say, the Maine senators to support a Republican filibuster; they can vote for cloture on the grounds that resistance is now futile, even if it wouldn't be.
Kennedy will rise from the grave Lazarus-like to vote on a healthcare bill. He made that Medicare one. What's going on with Byrd?
Folks, I don't know what it is worth, but Firedoglake and Open Left both organize citizen "whip" operations to flood Congress with letters, e-mail, phonecalls. Hasn't worked so far.
Here's scarecrow at FDL on the state of "Health Care Reform" as of this morning.
A comment from that thread, just for hyperbolic fun:
This all ties in with Matt Taibbi's piece. The insurance companies are probably broke and need taxpayer money to stay afloat. Wall Street is looking to the whole cap and trade deal to make trillions. After sucking the Medicare system dry, they will turn on Social Security money. Old people will once more die in the streets and get picked up in carts like before the 1930s.
How corrupt is our leadership? Pretty damn corrupt.
Speaking of Al Franken, I have always been suprised that his 'Why Not Me?" didn't attract more attention. It is clearly the funniest book on politics of its decade. Of course, I can see how it might not help someone get elected.
I'll leave with this.
Obama just is not a serious person. Politics is played at the edge of violence and beyond. FDR threatened a dictatorship in his 1st inauhural. The only way you move people like Snowe and Nelson is if they are terrified of you, and/or terrified of the streets.
Bush played it that way. He was going into Iraq, AUMF or no AUMF, and he was willing to tear the country to shreds in the process. The threat of violence was constant during Bush's 1st term.
Obama doesn't get to be nice. Politics is civil war by other means. There is no comity, there is ni piece.
Time for Obama to address the nation:
"Olympia Snowe and Charles Grassley are murdering tens of thousands of innocent people on the Senate floor. If your child dies, now you know who to blame. Here's where those Senators live."
I don't want to hear excuses from that coward in the Oval Office. He can do it.
Bob, you should read "Why Not Me?" You sound like someone who could use something funny.
6: Yeah, I didn't realize Byrd was in such bad shape, nor that Kennedy was basically absent (he's shown up a couple times, and I figured he could be a necessary vote, but it sounds like maybe not even that).
That said, I think it's CW that 60 votes for the Dems isn't a magic bullet, because of herding cats, etc. BUT, I do think that, on secondary stuff, like moving forward nominations and the like, the 60 votes are more salient - as terrible as Reid is at whipping, the basic message of "No one is looking, vote for cloture (and vote against Nominee X if you must), and save your self-regarding, Dem-torpedoing BS for the big votes" seems clear enough.
Mostly, it's infuriating that the Senate became a supermajority body in basically two years flat. It's pretty disgusting, frankly, and the acquiescence of everybody in the Village is nauseating. Or nauseous. Whatever.
13: Ah, but he doesn't really say with what. I bet he wouldn't have gotten that staph infection if he hadn't gone into the hospital.
20: Says the woman with the extensive softball injuries. "Just give me the shot of cortisone, Coach, and I'll go back in."
Do you all know that I end up feeling like an idiot whenever I post something political because it is transpararently obvious how little reading I do once you all start commenting? I'm okay with feeling like an idiot. But never wonder why half my posts are "One time I had this story happen to me when I was younger..."
JRoth--hospitals are dangerous places. I really wonder whether he couldn't have stayed out with some sort of home health care and expensive home nursing.
Just to make you feel better, if you're thinking of me as one of the better read commenters, I feel exactly the same way about substantive posts -- that discussion is going to be a process of realizing how pathetically uneducated I am about the topic. (I was trying to post about African politics a bit a year or so ago, in the hopes that it would inspire me to follow them enough to figure out what's going on, and the realization that I had no, but absolutely no, idea what I was talking about shut me up after two or three posts.)
OTOH, if you were thinking of me as just as confused as you are, you're right!
Bave and I were talking about this recently, and we agreed that we generally experience commenting here as being surrounded by people far smarter and more interesting than ourselves, but really it's the aggregate of all of you that is so intimidatingly well-read, well-traveled, brilliant, interesting, etc. There are standouts, of course. But even with, say, personal problems, I can go to the smartest person I know and ask her what she thinks (and get a response so idiosyncratically brilliant as to be functionally useless in dealing with regular humans), or I can ask whoever's around here. The latter is usually more helpful.
/hivelove
I was mocking someone to Jammies the other day for being uninformed, and I said, "Why don't they just check with their army of incredibly well-read, smart monkeys scattered throughout the world before they spout off like that?"
Politics is played at the edge of violence...
Sad, but unfortunately true. Part of me wishes that Bush's idiotic evisceration of Social Security had gone forward. When the market tanked we'd have had middle class suburbanites clogging the parking lot at Home Depot and getting into fistfights over the last torch and pitchfork.
Right. To be goofy about it, it's like how the audience is always right on 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' -- for any question that's plausibly within the knowledge of the people asking, the right answer is overwhelmingly likely to come out of a poll of the audience. With a fair number of fairly well informed people, someone's going to know stuff about almost anything, and even if each individual only pulls out an impressive level of knowledge once a week or so, that still means that the comments as an entity usually knows a fair amount.
(On the other hand, I was totally shocked when my brother told me that his brilliant brainstorm for health-care reform is that people should be able to work off their medical bills via community service. There's uninformed and poorly thought through, and this does not even manage to be that.)
30: Maybe we only look good by comparison.
30: Yeah, it'll be great when the nation's cancer-afflicted are wandering around in culverts sweeping up cigarette butts. Get well soon!
30: Still makes more sense than homeopathy.
The Pirates made a contentious trade yesterday [This will be on-topic in a moment; just wait] and, since I'd already been thinking a lot about the team's future when I was up with Kai from 4 am, I had lots to say, but no one to say it to. To the blogs! There's a couple of fairly thoughtful Pirates blogs, so I was commenting there, in my usual mode. After a couple hours, someone wrote that (s)he understood that I was trying to make my points, but that I was kind of talking down to people and being a "meanie."
Apparently Unfogged has left me ill-suited for civil discussions elsewhere.
And, uh, sorry if I ever talk down to y'all or am a meanie. It's just because I feel nothing but contempt for you people comfortable stating my opinions strongly among such a smart group.
30: It's just a matter of setting the rates correctly. At $10,000/hr, even pretty serious medical problems become manageable.
34: If you've been seriously thinking about the future of the Pirates, you are clearly overqualified to manage them.
25
... I feel exactly the same way about substantive posts -- that discussion is going to be a process of realizing how pathetically uneducated I am about the topic. ...
You could try posting on topics you know something about.
37: LB was kidding, and you are always hostile.
The focus on 60 is stupid -- no surprise, then, that so many pundits are making such a deal of it -- but the glass on this is more than half full: seated Franken is way better than seated Coleman, and a good sight better than empty chair. That's all there is on the menu, and we're getting the best of the choices.
but the glass on this is more than half full:
The glass is 60% full.
36: I'm actually genuinely convinced that the GM made a fundamental mistake when he came on board, and has gone completely overboard in a way that is quite counterproductive (even though I think his actual moves have been generally reasonable). I'm also feeling vindicated because I recently realized that a claim I was making last season (that the Pirates were 2 mediocre starting pitchers away from being a decent team) has been completely vindicated this season.
But I'll stop yattering about this here. If you're at all interested, click my pseud.
37: But where would the fun be in that? Posts on the CPLR have a limited audience, fascinating though the new(ish) rules on how much notice you have to give when making a motion on notice are.
43: I'm deliberately refusing to support the Pirates until they either sell the team, put in a winning season, or sell beer for $2.
37 is funny, warm and meant to be helpful. Don't you people know how to read Shearer yet?
But isn't 39 how you warmly respond in kind?
I guess so. Big wheel keep on turning.
YALL SUM BULLSHIT
Chris Cilizza (high Village idjut) was one of the pundits on NPR this morning talking about Coleman/Franken, and Rehm asked Cilizza whether Coleman had taken the recount too far.
Cilizza went into this long discussion of Minnesota politics, Pawlenty, that unnameable madwoman, and the 2010 Governor race, and whether Coleman had damaged his prospects for winning the Gov race.
Nothing about fair or unfair, right or wrong, or damage to the state or nation. The only issue discussed was how the prolonged recount benefitted or damaged Coleman's political prospects.
46: I'm naturally adept at not giving a rat's ass about pro sports. I can only name three or four Steelers, two Penguins, and no Pirates.
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Contact has been made with Emerson -- says he's doing fine, but is decompressing from the energy-sink nature of the internet to do some more serious writing.
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52: I can name all the penguins I want, but they still don't come when they're called.
53: Glad to hear he's okay. I hope he's enjoying Portland. Is he living with his brother?
The glass is 60% full.
59% water, 1% fecal matter, unfortunately.
decompressing from the energy-sink nature of the internet to do some more serious writing.
I knew I was missing a piece.
56: That reminds me. I'm going to Taco Bell. Anybody want anything?
OT:
A public option, for example, is wildly popular with the public and supported by almost seventy percent of voters. But it doesn't have nearly so many fans in the United States.
Yglesias, at this point, has to be doing it on purpose. No one could possibly proofread that badly. Has anyone tried to decrypt his posts? Maybe they're a coded cry for help?
It would be very sad if you had such a longstanding reputation for typos that when you truly needed to cry for help, no one noticed your encryption.
BuHt ifE youL look Pat scorPing Opace, you'llD seEe thaSt JohnT StaArks wasS theC greateRst plaAyer of theZ modern Yera.
"The boy who misspelled wolf there"
59: The thing is, it's always the kind of thing that would be the result of posting something simple in a hurry. In that example, it's leaving off the final word. In another recent example, it's posting a screenshot that shows what he wants, but also shows a pop-up message superimposed on it. What information is being conveyed, "I'm running low on caffeine, someone come over here with a coffee?"
I bet if Yglesias's DC readers interpreted it like that, he'd love it. "Dammit, man, I know I don't work here, but let me in -- this latte is urgent!"
59% water, 1% fecal matter, unfortunately
Anyone for cookie dough?
Thanks, LB. I'm glad to hear it. Pass along best wishes, if you will.
59: This is a guy who misspelled "I" -- on two separate occasions! That probably doesn't even make his top 100 typos/malapropisms/missed words.
Glad to hear about John. The internet just doesn't seem the same without him.
I miss Emerson too. I'm glad to hear he's doing stuff he finds interesting.
Wait, so he's ok and off satisfying his non-carnal desires? WTF?
44
But where would the fun be in that? Posts on the CPLR have a limited audience, fascinating though the new(ish) rules on how much notice you have to give when making a motion on notice are.
Surely there is a happy median. A bunch of Supreme Court decisions were just handed down. While the Ricci case may be overexposed some of the others were interesting also.
Also this local case case reflecting the importance of certain federal court deadlines.
Emerson's frequent comment on the subject of the original post was that 70 is the new 60.
That comment ties couple things together nicely, I think.
72.3: Sotomayor, that cold-blooded Puerto Rican bitch. Aren't there judges who have an ounce of empathy?*
*For instance, see Alito's "White Like me" concurrence with Ricci.
As it happens, I also corresponded with Emerson this morning, and we'll be meeting soon for beer. Y'all are welcome to join us.
72: IANAL, but that procedural bullshit ought to be handled better. Like throwing the tardy lawyer in jail instead of denying his client justice.
76: In that case, somebody rich enough could probably pay a shitty lawyer to do time for them.
72: Fair enough. The other problem with posts on topics I do know something about is that I have to put some time into thinking about them -- if I wanted to say anything about Ricci, e.g., I couldn't do it properly without a fair amount of effort. (That is, what I think of it depends on the intersection between the procedural posture and the general rule of law in Title VII cases, and I haven't worked out the details yet.)
On the other hand, my boss (my distant boss) is now SC certified to pwn all banks. Woohoo! Power!
78: Yeah, Scalia's state's rights assholeness triumphed over his corporatist assholeness. The Bush dipshit brigrade came through like the money-worshipping suck-ups they are though.
77 - good point. There's just something terribly unjust about putting someone away for a mistake made by their lawyer.
There's just something terribly unjust about putting someone away for a mistake made by their lawyer.
Oy. Yes but. If the deadline's excused when the lawyer fucks it up, there's no deadline ever (as in 77, and really, no one's going to send the lawyer to jail for the fuckup). Sometimes, there's a value to having a deadline. (In this case, I think forgiving the tardiness would be an admirable use of judicial discretion, but I think, offhand and without actually doing the work I need to do to justify having an opinion, that in the context of habeas petitions, there's not much room left by statute and precedent for discretion. Habeas procedure is harsh.)
Some of us are trying our best on the Yglesias front.
83: I normally don't talk this way, but I think the only response to that link is ZOMG ROFLMAO.
68 is shocking. At least that's what A think.
There's just something terribly unjust about putting someone away for a mistake made by their lawyer.
This is true, and it also happens every day of the week, and I don't think I'm imaginative enough to think up a system in which it doesn't (except maybe one without lawyers, which is cheating). I certainly wouldn't cast any blame on Sotomayor for it, as the linked article sort of seems to want to do.
I do remember a situation in which a judge I worked for once extended a procedural deadline to excuse a simple mistake of calculation by a lawyer. But I remember it because it was the exception, not the rule. Myself, I get short of breath (and get someone else to doublecheck me) every time I have to calculate a filing deadline.
If I'm reading 78 correctly, may I say I feel for the banks. LB's distant boss can be a real pain in the tokhes.
tokhes
You spelled "tuchus" wrong.
(Sorry, I couldn't resist.)
Well, if you're going to go down that road, I think what I may have spelled wrong is "tuckus." (I actually had no idea what spelling to use and had to go ask Google.)
You're all spelling it wrong because you're using the wrong characters.
You're all spelling it wrong because you're anti-Semitic.
Missed opportunity, neb. Bigotry thread convergence and everything!
The problem isn't that the Democrats are wimpy even with 60 members in the senate, the problem is that they're Republican-lite. It's not that they're scared to support progressive causes, or that its leaders are too weak to force the blue dogs to support them, it's that these causes are barely supported in the first place.
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2. L'amour-propre est le plus grand de tous les flatteurs.
Self-love is the greatest of flatterers.
(why not "greatest of all flatterers? why do they do this?)
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92: tous (and its cousins) is a big thorny issue with regard to French to English and English to French translation.