Wednesday Open Thread
Welcome to your Wednesday open thread. I dropped my brother off at the airport today after a major day of shopping. I am tired!
Don’t you feel sorry for the pitiful, put-upon Christian martyrs?
To Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s suggestion that the Senate come back the week after Christmas isn’t just a way to complete a busy lame duck agenda — but an attack on people of the Christian faith.
“It is impossible to do all of the things that the majority leader laid out,” Kyl said today, “frankly, without disrespecting the institution and without disrespecting one of the two holiest of holidays for Christians and the families of all of the Senate, not just the senators themselves but all of the staff.”
I think I would like to join this religion where you don’t have to work but get paid a lot of money. Remember – John Kyl thinks the unemployed are lazy.
I’m very heartened to see a coalition of progressive groups send a letter (PDF) outlining some Merkley/Udallish ideas about Senate procedure:
We ask Senators to move forward with reforms consistent with these eight principles:
1. On the first legislative day of a new Congress, the Senate may, by majority vote, end a filibuster on a rules change and adopt new rules.
2. There should only be one opportunity to filibuster any given measure or nomination, so
motions to proceed and motions to refer to conference should not be subject to filibuster.
3. Secret “holds” should be eliminated.
4. The amount of delay time after cloture is invoked on a bill should be reduced.
5. There should be no post-cloture debate on nominations.
6. Instead of requiring that those seeking to break a filibuster muster a specified number of
votes, the burden should be shifted to require those filibustering to produce a specified number of votes to continue the filibuster.
7. Those waging a filibuster should be required to continuously hold the floor and debate.
8. Once all Senators have had a reasonable opportunity to express their views, every measure or nomination should be brought to a yes or no vote in a timely manner.
It feels like Senate reform is picking up momentum. The Senate will vote on new rules on January 5.
Tags: Open Thread
Sen. Ted Kaufman going to town on the pandemic of fake deficit hawkery.
Stop making that duckface!
Our Senators justify their tax votes:
Carper says he had his own bill that was crappy in a whole different way. Coons claims he had to choose between “irresponsible” and “dangerous” and chose “irresponsible.”
The President met with his corporate overlords today:
“I want to dispel any notion we want to inhibit your success,” President Obama told 20 CEOs this morning, according to a source in the room. “We want to be boosters because when you do well, America does well.”
This is what he believes. Guess what, Mr. Obama: in 2010 corporations saw record profits while unemployment continues to soar, poverty rises, and wages shrink.
We needed a Roosevelt but we got a Hoover. Happy Holidays, America.
Has Obomba ever met with a delegation of people his overlords have ‘economically disappeared’ ?
HuffPo has a good item on wikki-leaks. Ariana gives us something to think about at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/the-media-gets-it-wrong-o_b_797436.html
delacrat,this phrase,‘economically disappeared’, is PERFECT.
It includes everyone and every entity disenfranchised by this uncaring and unfeeling corporate and gotta have more culture endemic today.
If you coined it, CONGRATULATIONS!!!
This term should spread like wildfire and be continually USED.
The “disappeared” in S.American dictatorships brought world-wide attention and shone a bright light on them.Changes came.
You know, I am starting to get really pissed at the unemployed.
There are 15 million of them now, all of them voter-eligible, and they gave us this Congress. If they had delivered a Democratic House, and a slightly more Democratic Senate, the whole bogus hostage situation would have been averted. We would have fought and decisively won a partisan battle over taxes and benefits. And Social Security (the next hostage) would not be at risk.
Get off your asses and support some real Democrats and some real Democratic policies, unemployed people. It’s not like you don’t have the time. What are you waiting for, more tax cuts?
Heck, if you won’t do it for yourselves, do it for me, for the day I join you.