It’s bad enough that we had to endure a Summer and Fall of “Crazy Eileens” disrupting meetings with their anti-health care reform rhetoric and their crazy birther BS, on Congressmen calling the POTUS a liar while on the floor of the House, of self-styled commentators on FAUX news calling progressives a cancer on socitey, but now they’ve gone too far – http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/tea-partiers-call-lewis-nr-frank-ft-at-capitol-hill-protest.php?ref=fpblg. When did it become permissable in the course of debate to call people N***** and F****t? I’m not asking my fellow progressives on here, I’m directing this at those conervatives that read this blog and comment here, either openly or anonymously.
Daily Archives: March 20, 2010
Deem and Pass Is Out
After spending a week getting themselves all riled up about “Demon Pass”, it seems the procedural maneuver has been ruled out:
House leaders have decided to take a separate vote on the Senate health-care bill, rejecting an earlier, much-criticized strategy that would have permitted them to “deem” the unpopular measure passed without an explicit vote.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said Saturday that the House would take three votes Sunday: first, on a resolution that will set the terms of debate; second, on a package of amendments to the Senate bill that have been demanded by House members; and third, on the Senate bill itself.
Van Hollen, who has been working on the issue with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said House leaders concluded that that order — approving the amendments before approving the Senate bill — makes clear that the House intends to modify the Senate bill and not approve the Senate bill itself.
The big break seems to be that House Democrats have gotten the assurance they needed, namely “House leaders have seen a letter, signed by more than 50 Senate Democrats, saying they will vote for the reconciliation amendment.”
This is all good news to me. I would have grinned and bore it if deem and pass was the only way to get the bill passed, but I never liked it. To me, it seemed somewhat irresponsible to let something as important as this bill be in a position where there was even an outside chance it could be thrown out on procedural grounds. I’m glad that the House Dems came to their senses and decided that the voting order alone was sufficient.
Weekend Open Thread
Welcome to the first day of Spring! It certainly feels like spring out there. I’ve been puttering around in my yard this afternoon. This is a big weekend – tomorrow the House votes on the health care reform bill. It’s still down to the wire but the House Democrats are seeming increasingly confident. So, let’s get started with the open thread.
A French documentary has reconfirmed the Milgram experiment:
The fictitious game show had all the trappings of a real TV quiz show, including a beautiful and well-known hostess, and a raucous audience. A group of contestants posed questions to a man sitting inside a box in front of them in an electric chair.
The hostess and a chanting audience urged the players — who had levers in front of them — to send jolts of electricity into the man in the box when he gave an incorrect answer.
Even when the player screamed out in pain for them to stop, 80 percent of the contestants kept zapping him. In reality, the man in the electric chair was an actor who wasn’t really being shocked — but the players and the audience did not know that.
…
Television talk shows ruminated over the documentary Thursday. Comparisons are being drawn to the manipulation of the masses in Nazi Germany. One of the game show participants, Jerome Pasanau, said in an interview that he was still haunted by the experience.
“I wanted to stop the whole time, but I just couldn’t. I didn’t have the will to do it. And that goes against my nature,” he said. “I haven’t really figured out why I did it.”
Pasanau told the TV host that he felt intimidated and isolated on the fictitious game show set, and that the crowd was overbearing. The host countered by pulling up footage of Pasanau pumping 460 volts of electricity until the actor pretending to be electrocuted seems to keel over dead.
Rush Limbaugh fail. Rush Limbaugh accidentally gave the phone number for a pro-reform group to his flying monkey brigade:
Unfortunately for Rush, he gave out the toll-free FamiliesUSA number on his show on Tuesday, which meant his anti-reform listeners got a pro-reform message when they tried to call Congress. So many Rush fans called the FamiliesUSA number on Tuesday that it caused a massive spike in call volume, which was immediately noticed by the group’s telephone re-routing vendor. Not wanting to pick up the tab for anti-reform calls, of course, FamiliesUSA immediately shut down the number and got a new one, which is posted above and now functioning as intended. (FamiliesUSA executive director Ron Pollack says the cost of that brief spike is in the thousands of dollars. “It’s an ironic form of flattery,” he quipped when I reached him earlier today.)
But Rush’s callers didn’t understand this whole re-routing thing and many were absolutely and astoundingly enraged. Many of them assumed the pro-reform message they got was a left-wing conspiracy to take over government. Think this is a stretch?
Here’s a Youtube video [Ed note: the video has been removed] posted by one such caller, who believed he had discovered a blatant case of “Obama propoganda…Alert the patriots: Tyrants are ruining our country !”
He’s not alone. After FamiliesUSA turned off their original toll free number, it was bought by someone else who must have known about the mixup. That new person put a pro-reform bulletin on an answering machine and recorded messages left by angry – and I mean very angry – Rush listeners. WARNING: Many of the message contain obscenities – they can be accessed by calling 206-666-6666.
You can follow the developments on the health care reform vote at TPM’s Live Countdown to Reform Wire. The latest developments – Stupak is still causing trouble, deem & pass is probably history and President Obama may sign an Executive Order reaffirming the abortion restrictions.
Castle On The Attack
Mike Castle’s attack machine appears to be stirring. Yesterday I saw this message on Twitter:
Dozens of NCC employees to be laid off in July as a result of Coons’ budget. Read more: http://tinyurl.com/yazxuxg http://fb.me/sUhrYIPW
I couldn’t get the first link to work, but the second link leads to the same message on his Facebook page.
It’s a bit ironic that Castle is criticizing Coons for cutting jobs considering Castle voted against the jobs bill (the one he said he’d support). If I were Chris Coons, I’d blast this Castle hypocrisy far and wide since Coons is having to deal with the fallout of Castle’s and the GOP’s economic policies from the lost decade.
Also, completely predictably, Castle announced that he’s voting no on health care reform.
If you want to know what kind of Senator Mike Castle will be, all you need to do is follow his Twitter feed. He’ll continue to vote with the GOP while making noises about caring about the people of Delaware. Then he’ll vote against our interests anyway.
Christine O’Donnell’s Legal Woes
Poster anon brings our attention to this article in the News Journal about Christine O’Donnell. The article details O’Donnell’s various legal and money issues.
But while she was courting voters, she amassed thousands of dollars in campaign debt, was confronted by the IRS about unpaid income taxes and sold her Wilmington home to a campaign staffer to avoid a sheriff’s sale ordered to settle mortgage claims, a News Journal investigation shows.
I love this quote by O’Donnell:
“I think the fact that I have struggled financially is what makes me so sympathetic,” O’Donnell said.
Like most Republicans, nothing is ever her fault.
“This type of malicious behavior from supporters of a desperate career politician is to be expected because he cannot defend his big spending, liberal voting record,” O’Donnell said Friday when asked about past legal troubles. “Just because the lords of the backroom have an obnoxious sense of entitlement to promote one of their own, doesn’t mean their gutter politics are in the best interests of the voters.”
Her legal debt problems are detailed in the article, but here’s a summary.
– She has an almost $12,000 tax lien from the IRS from 2005
– She has a campaign debt of $24,000. She has raised $11,000 for this race so far.
– She has an upaid settlement to her alma mater of Fairleigh Dickinson which dates back to 1994. Fairleigh Dickinson is withholding her degree. Is she reporting herself as a college graduate in her resume?
– She lives in a house owned by a campaign staffer. At least half of her rent is paid by her campaign donations.
– She had a well-known dispute with a previous employer, ISI. She sued them for gender discrimination and they accused her of running a for-profit PR business on the company’s time. That suit has been dropped by O’Donnell.
– A house she bought in Hockessin went into foreclosure. She owed $90,000 on the house. The house was about to be sold by auction when she sold it to Brent Vasher, her boyfriend at the time for $135,000.
O’Donnell stands no chance of winning. I think Mike Castle will continue to ignore O’Donnell and focus his fire on Chris Coons.