Tuesday Open Thread [1.5.15]

Tuesday Open Thread [1.5.15]

Wall Street Journal: “Six is the number of Democratic senators that Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s new Republican Majority Leader, will have to woo over to his side to reach the 60 votes needed to break filibusters. Republicans have 54 seats and therefore a majority in the new Senate, which is nice for them. But it doesn’t guarantee much of anything, because most items of importance can be filibustered to death, and breaking a filibuster requires a super-majority of 60 votes.” Tom Carper will always be available for anything that Mitch McConnell asks for, because BIPARTISANSHIP!, so really, the GOP has 55 Senators. Joe Manchin will likely join a lot too, so 56. I imagine Joe Donnelly of Indiana is reachable too. 57. On certain issues, given her red state-ness, Heidi Hietkamp of North Dakota is gettable. 58. But really, that's it. All the traitorous red-state moderate Dems either got beat or retired last year. But there is always Tom Carper. BIPARTISANSHIP!!!!
Politics is Petty

Politics is Petty

Nancy Willing at Delaware Way has been all over this and I'm sure El Som will be into the nitty gritty of how and why Kowalko was bounced from the Chairmanship of Energy and from the Education Committee. All I can really add is that Jack Markell seems to really hate John Kowalko on a personal level. I had heard stories from early in Jack's tenure and I chalked it up to hyperbole, but it gets hard to ignore stories when confirming evidence starts to pile up.
Friday Open Thread [1.2.15]

Friday Open Thread [1.2.15]

Matt Taibbi on the news that the fascist police state loving NYPD has begun a work slowdown/stoppage:
“My first response to this news was confusion. I get why the police are protesting – they’re pissed at Mayor de Blasio, and more on that in a minute – but this sort of ‘protest’ pulls this story out of the standard left-right culture war script it had been following and into surreal territory.” “I don’t know any police officer anywhere who would refuse to arrest a truly dangerous criminal as part of a PBA-led political gambit. So the essence of this protest seems now to be about trying to hit de Blasio where it hurts, i.e. in the budget, without actually endangering the public. So this police protest, unwittingly, is leading to the exposure of the very policies that anger so many different constituencies about modern law-enforcement tactics.”
Indeed.

Happy New Year!!

I hope everyone had a safe yet enjoyable evening last night. And now a New Year begins, and I am very optimistic about this year. On a personal and politic level, I have a feeling that this year will be a very good one. Use this as an Open Thread. I will be posting pictures of the Middletown Hummers Parade later, especially the politically themed hummers (and that doesn't sound clean to me).