Monday Open Thread
Well, it’s Monday much to my dismay. Why do the weekends go so fast? Let’s get started with an open thread.
For all those Republicans bashing Harry Reid try to remember the difference between his remarks and those of Trent Lott. Trent Lott said the following, at the 100th birthday celebration of Strom Thurmond:
When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years, either.
Thurmond ran as a segregationist.
Two things in tandem ended Lott’s career in the senate leadership. First, Lott had a long history of support for and association with segregationist and white supremacist groups in the South. Not in some distant past but in the year’s just before his downfall. (He was also a staunch opponent of virtually all civil rights legislation. But that actually didn’t distinguish him that much for many other Southern Republicans of his generation.) To a lot of us at the time it was always a bit of a mystery how someone with his record could have risen as high as he had. This was all widely known in Washington, DC but it was by common agreement overlooked and excused. (In many ways, because of this, it was a scandal of official Washington — as much as Lott.)
What Harry Reid said was clueless and insensitive and I’m certainly not going to make any excuses for them. Harry Reid’s comments were actually in support of Obama’s campaign. You do see the difference don’t you?
Despite what you’ve been hearing, Obama had a really good year. A new study by Congressional Quarterly found that Obama won 96.7% of votes in Congress.
In all, Congress took 151 votes in which Obama had taken a position ahead of time.
His wins included votes for creating a massive economic stimulus package, bailing out the auto industry, letting the Food and Drug Administration regulate tobacco and confirming Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
But they also included key moves toward overhauling the health care system, regulating financial services and reducing greenhouse gases which have not yet passed both chambers of Congress.
…
In the House, Obama won 68 votes and lost four.
Among the losses: a vote to disapprove further spending on a bank bailout and a July vote to pass a food safety overhaul. Both were temporary setbacks since Congress eventually ended up supporting the president’s position.
In the Senate, Obama won 78 votes and lost one.
The Republican win there came on an amendment which would have barred spending money to transfer detainees from the Guantanamo Bay prison camp to the United States. In the end, the bill allowed the transfer under certain conditions.
Obama probably will not enjoy the majorities he has now for the rest of his term. Now is the best time to get progressive legislation passed.
Tags: Open Thread
I actually think we will see the most “change” at the beginning of his second term. Once the recovery act starts really showing it worked, and the economy recovers the repukes and conservunists will look like even bigger morons than usual. I predict they will then retreat even further to their insane base and something like prayer in schools with be their main fight. It will be a party of conservative white Christians who think this country should be a christian theocracy with closed borders so everyone not white and christian. That will be what you HAVE to believe to be a republican and anyone who disagrees with any of that tripe will be Teabagged as a socialist….. not surprisingly 80% of the country will be labeled as “Anti American”.
Saddly, the Right Hate Party might commit some acts of terrorism only proving to the world what they are really about…. But once they are shown to be cut from the same thuggish cloth as Osama, we will finally have grown up discussions about energy, consumer protection, health care and equality.
I think that the Democratic majority in congress will slide in the mid-year elections as expected. It will be interesting to see what happens in 2012, especially if some of the legislation passed bears some fruit. Maybe the majority could be regained. I have said repeatedly that this 60 senate majority is worse than a 59 one, because every senator thinks they are the important one (Leiberman, I mean you)when these votes come around. It might be easier to deal without it.
Since this is an open thread, I assume that means talk or ask about anything. How about – Why can’t the conference committee on the health care bills “compromise” by adding the public option to the senate plan rather than removing it from the house plan? Except for the obvios reasons of not passing the senate, why can’t the fight for a public option start again and be won this time? My copy of “Only a Bill” from Schoolhouse Rock doesn’t cover this in enough detail for me.
A word to the wise: it’s wise to keep in mind that Halperin is a hack when talking about his new gossip book:
As Greg Sargent puts it – we’re talking a paraphrase from someone who talked to someone who’s now deceased. Clinton, of course, denies saying this.
Richard, great question.
The reason the public option won’t be put back into the bill is because there is one more cloture vote where you need 60 Senators. Lieberman and Nelson are still threatening to filibuster. We’ll see an improved bill over the Senate bill I think but it will be close to the parameters of the current Senate bill.
Yes, Richard, since it’s an open thread you can discuss what you want. In other threads we try to ask people to stay somewhat on topic.
Screw it. The Dems shouldn’t dig in their heels in protecting Reid. Let’s force him out!
Handing repubs a scalp definitely works. A scalp which lets them define the contours of the discussion about race.
Yep, that’ll be smart.
Donviti told me that Nemski isn’t known for his deep thoughts… 🙂
nemski needs to be glad I’m out of town.
😡
Speaking of textbooks, is there anyone working on e-textbooks or pdf versions that can be printed on demand? That seems to be a pathway around the Texas revisionist BS. I doubt it would be less expensive, since I imagine that the money is in the development of the material, not in the printing.
Alternate textbooks are widely available. The difficulty is, standardizing textbooks across the country increases the incentives for publishers to hit the least common denominator with the mass market ones.
Here’s an overview of some open-source textbook projects. The consensus seems to be “not ready for prime time,” but as with any open source project, you need to jump in and contribute to make it better. The point is not to wait until it’s perfect, but make a commitment to the project and assign some teachers to participate in the work.
gotta agree with nem on this one cass. Reid keeps making excuses for why he cant push foward a progressive agenda. He keeps putting the feelings and good names of idiots like LIEberman over the good of the country. First he needed a majority to stop bush and reverse the damage…. then it wasn’t enough… he needed 60 votes. He should have burned LIEberman at the stake and fueled the fire with all the donations from cingia and aetna. Forced the bastard to admit WHY he was against a public option that would have insured millions more. I understand Reid needed 60 votes and had to make concessions, but he put up ZERO fight. At least not in public… where it could have had some impact. Make Ben Nelson look like a bully for his Nevada deal. Do SOMETHING to make it look like you arent the playground bitch of every senator who wants to protect their campaign dollars. I bet we keep a majority…. regain more seats in 2012, but i want all that done minus Neslon, and Landreu, and Reid, and Carper and all the other backstabbing Republicrats.
Reid has plenty of problems as majority leader, but essentially your complaint is not that Reid can’t win his votes, but that he wins ugly. Reid has had a lot of ugly hands here and no one else would have gotten there without horsetrading. But apparently we’re back to magic. That said, there are many reasons to dump Reid but not for his description of Obama.
I’m still not seeing how dumping Lieberman magically gets the Democrats 60 votes. If not Lieberman then it’s Snowe and Collins. Do you think they’d vote for the public option?
BREAKING ON OBAMA! Firedoglake has a mass email petition out on line today, stating the Obama administration relied on an economist Jonathan Gruber to make the public case for health care reform even its most unpopular parts. Turns out the administration failed to disclose it paid the economist $780,000 for his work! This is a huge ethical violation and undermines health care reform.
Once Firedoglake disclosed it, the NYTimes WaPO and Time Mag, all said THEY should have disclosed….well why didnt they? Corporate press keeping the corporate insurance industry in the corporate business while pretending to be “watch dogs for the citizens”. Thank God for bloggers where real journalism is, 2010 USA.
Obama and his administration failed to reveal that David Axelrods Public Relations firm was given a contract for $28M dealing with big pharma.
You see people it dont matter if the donkey or the elephant sits in DC….they are all screwing you and me.
JK, I moved this comment to the open thread, where it is more appropriate.
McGuire is a lying sack of shit.
McGuire has admitted lying to Congress. He should be jailed.
Meh. McGuire and baseball should have never been in front of Congress in the first place. It was a GOP diversionary tactic back in 2005. Indeed, IIRC, didn’t McGuire refuse to answer that question re steroids? So how could he be lying? Or guilty of perjury or lying to Congress?
Seriously, are people shocked by this, though? Ever since McGuire’s career started it was obvious he was on steroids.
Ta-nehisi Coates has a couple if interesting posts up on Donovan McNabb:
Dump McNabb!
Dump McNabb Cont
Very much enjoyed the Markell town hall.
I think it’s horrible that the Obama administration paid an economist to do economic analysis.