Last Call

Nooners has a truly bizarre column in the WSJ today (it drifts into MoDo the Red territory of weirdness) as she feels she must defend Barack Obama, because gosh, nobody else will and it's cool to hate the guy.

Cannon to the left of him, cannon to the right of him, cannon in front of him volley and thunder. That's our president's position on the political battlefield now, taking it from all sides. And the odd thing, the unique thing in terms of modern political history, is that no one really defends him, no one holds high his flag. When was the last time you put on the radio or TV and heard someone say "Open line Friday—we're talking about what it is we like best about Barack Obama!" When did you last see a cable talking head say, "The greatness of this man is as obvious as it is unnoticed"?

Is the left out there on the Internet and the airwaves talking about him? Oh, yes. They're calling him a disappointment, a sellout, a DINO—Democratic in name only. He sold out on single-payer health insurance, and then the public option. He'll sell you out on your issue too.

The pundits and columnists, dreadful people that they are, call him cold, weak, aloof, arrogant, entitled.
So let's denounce him again.

Wait—it's Christmas. Let's not. There are people who deeply admire the president, who work with him and believe he's doing right. This week, this column is their forum. They speak not for attribution to avoid the charge of suckupism.

It gets truly odd from there.  What Nooners just doesn't understand is that it's precisely because of the Village Idiocy that's so pervasive in Washington that it has become the in-thing to bash the President, one who has largely had a fantastic and productive first year in office.  It's precisely because the Village pushed two incompatible Obama memes:  the Messianic agent of change that would finally fix all of America's problems after Bush (not to mention absolve White America of racial guilt) and at the same time, the Village was fascinated with the Birther/Muslim/Manchurian Candidate angle.  It played up both of them.

The result was that the bar was set so high for Obama that even his amazing year was deemed an utter failure, and Village scolds like Nooners pushed him off the cliff.

Now they need to build him back up again...or at least they have to appear human enough to forgive and forget for a couple weeks.

In addition to a better Senate political system, we need a better fourth estate, too.

History Of The Filibuster

Ezra has a pretty informative interview with UCLA poly sci prof and Congress expert Barbara Sinclair.

And is there a particular moment where the filibusters accelerate? Or is the rise gradual?

It's gradual, to some extent. But in terms of its impact on legislation, it really has a big impact from the first Clinton Congress on. If one can say there's a break point, that's where filibusters become a regularly used partisan tool.

Previously, the filibuster frequently had some partisan element, but you'd have a lot of cases where individuals or small groups would hold them. But now it's much more a tool of the minority party. And the minority party is organized and relatively large, even when it's small by our standards. Forty Republicans is as small as it's been in a long, long time. That still means if you really get the minority to hang together, everyone on the other side becomes key.

Which is how you get the process we just saw, where Lieberman and Nelson and others become absolutely must-have, can't-lose votes.

And that means it's an invitation to extortion.

What's the story that you tell your students, or that political scientists tell their students, about the rise of the filibuster? Why did it happen?

It's not a simple story. in the more recent period in the 90s and on, it does have to do with partisan polarization. You have two fairly distinct and ideologically distinct parties. For example, one could make the argument that the first time it became official policy on the part of the minority party to use extended debate to deprive the majority of real victories was that first Clinton Congress.And then the Senate Republicans not only didn't pay a price, but they ended up gaining control. Then combine that with the fact that in a more polarized country, is harder to come up with deals that both the majority and minority think is better than the status quo.

So part of it is polarization, but part of it, you're saying, was a strategic realization that the American people do not reward the majority if it fails to deliver on its promises, and the minority recognized it had the power to keep the majority from delivering on its promises.

That's right, and we're seeing the result. It seems pretty clear that at some point early in this Congress, the Republicans really did decide their best approach was to bring Obama and the Democrats down. It is hard to make yourself popular, but to make the other guys look incompetent is not that difficult, and it worked for the Republicans in the first Clinton Congress, and the Republicans would argue the Democrats used these techniques as well.

As  you can see, the Republicans used the filibuster because it worked so well for them in 1993-4.  It got them the House and Senate back.  They then blew it because Newt decided Clinton was now irrelevant and shut the government down, which was too much even for the Clinton-hating Village.  The GOP then returned the favor by impeaching the guy.

Things will never improve on this front unless we demand it.

Ace Decade

Well, time to get to the end of the year/end of the decade stuff this week, so I suggest starting off with Daryl Cagle's decade in political cartoons review.  My fav:




Come to think of it, that "Unfinished Bush Business" tag pretty much sums up the entire friggin' decade, doesn't it?

In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

John Cole asks:

It never stops:

Landrieu said she would not support the final legislation if negotiators tinkered with the Senate proposal for taxing high-cost insurance plans.

“I can only support a bill if the Cadillac plans are taxed at the level they are in the Senate [bill,]” said Landrieu. “It’s not because I’m thrilled about taxing those plans, which I’m not, but it is the No. 1 cost-containment measure in the bill. It’s what is going to drive costs down over time.”

Nelson said he would not support the final bill if it included the House proposal to impose a tax surcharge on individuals earning more than $500,000 and families earning more than $1 million.
“I’ve already said that would be a deal-breaker,” said Nelson.

Lincoln also said she has great concern. “If it moves very much at all from where we are, it’s going to be hard,” she said.

Shorter blue dogs- it is imperative we tax union workers and others making 60k a year with good benefits, but leave Paris Hilton alone. I’m sure Broder and Hiatt will love this definition of “sacrifice.”

Why do we even have a House?  They simply are not co-equal branches.

The real question is "Why do we have a filibuster in the Senate where sixty votes are required simply because an aggrieved minority party wants to and can stop all legislation?"

Seems to me the Senate is broken because the GOP is broken.

Never Waste A Opportunity To Blame The Kenyan Other

GOP crisis management 101, as demonstrated by GOP Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra.

"It's not surprising," U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, a Holland Republican, said of the alleged terrorist attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight in Detroit. ... "People have got to start connecting the dots here and maybe this is the thing that will connect the dots for the Obama administration," Hoekstra said.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that if this had happened in 2008 instead of 2009, Bush would be getting lambasted here, not Obama.  The differences are Bush deserves the scorn, where as Steve Benen points out, Pete Hoekstra should really be keeping his mouth shut on things he has no credibility on.

There are a couple of angles to this to keep in mind. First, Hoekstra would like people to believe the Obama administration isn't taking the terrorist threat seriously enough. The evidence to the contrary -- a.k.a. "reality" -- is overwhelming.

Second, when it comes to national security issues, Hoekstra has one of the more transparently ridiculous track records of any member of Congress in recent memory. We are, after all, talking about a partisan clown who held a press conference in 2006 to announce, "We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

And third, yesterday's pettiness probably has something to do with Hoekstra's gubernatorial campaign -- he needs to impress the GOP base to win his primary, and he likely assumes cheap shots at the president in light of attempted terrorism is the way to get a bump in the polls.

You play Peoria to Peoria, and you play Stupid to Teabaggers.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• As many as 45 are reported dead in a bridge collapse in India.
• The U.S. east coast is digging out from a holiday blizzard.
• California state workers will almost certainly continue to face furloughs in 2010.
• Japanese PM Hayotama's record $1 trillion budget is raising eyebrows and alarms as Japan tries to spend its way out of stagnation.
• The long rumored Apple tablet device may be a reality in 2010.
  

Last Call

Yep, this guy's a Republican alright.

Rep. Parker Griffith announced his switch to the Republican Party on Tuesday, telling the press he can "no longer align [him]self with a party that continues to pursue legislation that is bad for our country, hurts our economy, and drives us further and further into debt."

The Alabama Democratic Party issued a statement Wednesday accusing Griffith's political consultancy, Main Street Strategies, of downloading "sensitive voter identification data that was the property of the Alabama Democratic Party."

"This final act was obviously intended to aid Mr. Griffith in his new role as a Republican candidate. Upon hearing of Mr. Griffith’s switch, security measures were taken to prevent further transfers of data," the statement read.

Even though the "sensitive" voter data helped elect Griffith in 2008, "in the wee hours before he became a Republican, Parker Griffith’s political operatives, with full knowledge of what was occurring, went online and downloaded our confidential records,” Alabama Democratic Party Chairman Joe Turnham said.

Because nothing says "I'm a Republican" like a final quasi-legal "screw you" on the way out the door.

Christmas Presense

So apparently, there are conflicting reports tonight about a Nigerian Muslim who may or may not be actually affiliated with AQ who tried to detonate "an explosive substance" aboard an airliner that had just landed in Detroit by way of Amsterdam.

The suspect is 23-year-old Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, a federal official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid affecting an ongoing investigation. ABC News and NBC News reported that he attends University College of London, where he studied engineering.

While not on the TSA's "no-fly" list, Abdulmutallab's name appears to be included in the government's records of terrorist suspects, according to a preliminary review, authorities said.

Abdulmutallab has told federal investigators that he had ties to al-Qaeda and traveled to Yemen to collect the incendiary device and instructions on how to use it, according to a federal counterterrorism official briefed on the case. But authorities have yet to verify the claim, and they expect to conduct several more interviews before they determine whether he is credible, the official said.

Apparently all this guy did was burn himself rather badly in the process and singe a couple of nearby passengers.  It is a reminder that there are pretty sick people out there who really do want to hurt Americans.

Then again, there are plenty of Americans actually managing to kill other Americans too today.  Perspective, as always.

A Kroogmas Carol

Here's some holiday reading while you're waiting to make room in the downstairs oven for that casserole for later today.  Santa Krugman has a story for you:

Indulge me while I tell you a story — a near-future version of Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol.” It begins with sad news: young Timothy Cratchit, a k a Tiny Tim, is sick. And his treatment will cost far more than his parents can pay out of pocket.

Fortunately, our story is set in 2014, and the Cratchits have health insurance. Not from their employer: Ebenezer Scrooge doesn’t do employee benefits. And just a few years earlier they wouldn’t have been able to buy insurance on their own because Tiny Tim has a pre-existing condition, and, anyway, the premiums would have been out of their reach.

But reform legislation enacted in 2010 banned insurance discrimination on the basis of medical history and also created a system of subsidies to help families pay for coverage. Even so, insurance doesn’t come cheap — but the Cratchits do have it, and they’re grateful. God bless us, everyone.

O.K., that was fiction, but there will be millions of real stories like that in the years to come. Imperfect as it is, the legislation that passed the Senate on Thursday and will probably, in a slightly modified version, soon become law will make America a much better country.

And there's the reality, folks.  Have a merry Christmas.  Something got done for a change in this country.  The lesson for progressives?

If progressives want more, they’ll have to make changing those Senate rules a priority. They’ll also have to work long term on electing a more progressive Congress. But, meanwhile, the bill the Senate has just passed, with a few tweaks — I’d especially like to move the start date up from 2014, if that’s at all possible — is more or less what the Democratic leadership can get.

And for all its flaws and limitations, it’s a great achievement. It will provide real, concrete help to tens of millions of Americans and greater security to everyone. And it establishes the principle — even if it falls somewhat short in practice — that all Americans are entitled to essential health care.

It's not the 30 Rock Christmas tree...but it's not Charlie Brown's beat up little shrub, either.  The lesson of course is to elect people who will be inclined to improve this bill.

Last Call

Something to remember this Christmas Eve, Gallup's annual religion poll shows that 78% of Americans identify themselves as Christian, but that's down from 85% in 1998.

The trend results are based on annual averages of Gallup's religious identity data in America that stretch back over 60 years. One of the most significant trends documented during this period is the substantial increase in the percentage of American adults who don't identify with any specific religion. In 1948, only 2% of Americans did not identify with a religion. That percentage began to rise in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Eleven years ago, in 1998, 6% of Americans did not identify with a religion, a number that rose to 10% by 2002. This year's average of 13% of Americans who claim no religious identity is the highest in Gallup records.

The percentage of Americans who identify as Catholic, Protestant, or some other non-Catholic Christian faith has been concomitantly decreasing over the years. This suggests that one of the major patterns of religious transition in America in recent decades has been the shift from identification as Christian to the status of having no specific religious identification.

In 1948, 91% of Americans identified with a Christian faith. Twenty years ago, in 1989, 82% of Americans identified as Christian. Ten years ago, it was 84%. This year, as noted, 78% of all American adults identify with a Christian faith.

There has also been a slight increase in the percentage of Americans who identify with a religion that is not specifically classified as Christian. Sixty years ago, for example, 4% of Americans identified with a non-Christian religion. By 1989, 9% of Americans were in this non-Christian religion category, the same percentage as today.

That's important.  There are a number of Americans out there who aren't Christian, but there are a growing number of Americans who simply don't see themselves as having a religion.  Keep in mind that 13% represents tens of millions of Americans, too.  So whatever religion you celebrate...or don't, for that matter...have a good one.

And remember, it's not an excuse to find a difference, but a similarity.

A Right Nasty Scrum, Mate

Quite the row over at BooMan's place, where he's even more strident that I am about Jane Hamsher's Devil's bargain with the teabaggers and is wondering when the rest of FDL's progressives will be looking for a way out of there as a result.  Best comments over there so far by Fighting Bill:

Hamsher is a breast cancer survivor, multiple times, and clearly there is a deep personal well to her feelings about reform. She was also a fierce anti-war voice who stepped out of the blogosphere shadows to take on national prominence in helping to lead Ned Lamont to the Democratic senatorial nomination in CT. The problem is that somewhere along the way, the spotlight has gone to her head and clouded her judgement. She didn't help Lamont to victory; instead, Joe Lieberman survived and has more power than ever before. His anemic presidential run in 2004 is a distant memory--he's a playa now.

She had good points to make about Caroline Kennedy's weaknesses as a Senate candidate, but she was strident and absolutist as she went about vilifiying her. We got Gillebrand in the deal.

Now this: she has adopted a self-defeating position that is all about HER and not at all about the 30 million people who can be helped by an imperfect bill. Like it or not, the bill is a foot in the door that will yield opportunities for improvement in short order. Anyone who looks to her for strategy, as so many in the left seem to be doing, are not paying enough attention.

Her passion, her reasoning, her fight, yes I respect it.  Her choice of allies and her all or nothing decision when "all" is impossible right now and nothing is untenable, immoral and unsustainable?  No.

And Yet Another Thing

John Cole makes this point about the totally screwball "Fire Rahmbo" coalition between Jane Hamsher and Grover Norquist:

Another thing that really pisses me off about this jihad against Rahm Emanuel is that the message it implicitly sends is that Obama is not calling the shots- he’s just Rahm’s puppet. That is explicitly a Republican frame- that Obama is weak and an empty suit.

I'll go a step further.  It's more than that, the "Obama is an empty suit meme" has always smacked of implied racism, the same "soft bigotry of low expectations"/"The Bell Curve" bullshit that Obama's just not quite bright enough to be Commander-In-Chief because he's...well...you know. Naturally, the theory goes, he needs a politically smart white guy to run the show for him while just smiles and nods and teaches him the ropes.  Obama's attitude is laissaze faire and all because he has no choice:  he's the just black guy on the outside of the cereal box, the real decisions are made by other, smarter, not_black folks.

That's the stuff that really burns me.  You really can distill much of the whisper campaign against him to racism, and the Right then finds a way to build on it, capturing the impatience of those on the Left to then serve to destroy the progressives altogether.

Now I'm no Annenberg School graduate, but even I can see this crap for what it is.

We Have A Winner, Folks

I knew the Wingers would grimly intone the end of the United States of America as we know it due to today's Senate bill passage, but two reactions stand out as some of the worst punditry I can recall seeing on the entire issue.  First, Rick Moran warms up paragraph after paragraph of mendacious warnings, calling the bill the "worst piece of legislation in my lifetime" while managing to absolve the GOP...

If some of this would have accomplished some of the goals the Democrats set out to fulfill, there’s a chance that reasonable conservatives could have supported it. After all, no bill is going to be perfect, and the opposition, working with the material you have at hand in order to improve it, might have achieved at least the appearance of bi-partisanship.

It’s not the the Democrats were necessarily not interested in bi-partisanship as it was they were not interested in the gradualist approach favored by those few lawmakers in the GOP who would have supported health care reform. When even Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins wouldn’t get on board, this should have been a sign that what the Democrats were proposing was a bridge too far even for moderate Republicans.

Married to process rather than sticking to substance, Harry Reid then took a bad bill and made it infinitely worse by trying to please all segments of his caucus. The buy offs, the favors - all the little ornaments Reid added to this Christmas tree of a bill made it less fair, more complex, and more expensive.

Look, Rick, there was zero amount of GOP Senators that ever would have voted for this bill.  Until 2013 at the minimum, the Republican Party has abdicated any and all responsibility for legislating anything.  They simply vote no and then complain they aren't allowed to run the country anymore.  Over a hundred cloture or procedural votes in 2009 alone, Rick.  You can't be that dense.  Nobody believes for a second the GOP is going to do anything but blockade this Congress.

But then we have a winner for worst Wingnut douchebaggery of 2009 hands down as Dan Riehl directly compares the passage to a terror attack on America:

Sixty suicidal terrorists aka Socialist-Democrat Senators strapped over 2,000 pages of dynamite to themselves in the Capitol this morning, as they vowed to blow up America's superior health care system in coming months. The group is being coordinated by a Washington, DC man identified as Barack Hussein Obama.

Reid opened the Senate floor at 7 a.m. and channeled Ted Kennedy: “The work goes on. The cause endures… and yet here we are, minutes away from doing what others have tried but none have achieved.”

Republican leader Mitch McConnell responded: “This fight isn’t over. My colleagues and I will work to stop this bill from becoming law. That’s the clear will of the American people — and we’re going to continue to fight on their behalf.”

Obama supplies the terrorists with funding through a large criminal enterprise referred to as an Internal Revenue Service, or IRS. The IRS steals monies from innocent Americans, including the unborn of future generations, to fund the groups destructive plans. Reports suggest the terrorists within the Capitol are prepared to die for their cause if they must.

Only citizen political militias scattered across the country stand between the terrorists and the destruction of what has long been hailed as the greatest and freest nation in the world. For Americans, the international war against totalitarianism has come home.

Cry havoc! and let loose the dogs of war, that this foul deed shall smell above the earth with carrion men, groaning for burial. *

Really.  This asshole just outright called them terrorists, called the President a terrorist mastermind, and called for the people to rise up against them.

Riehl is so far off the map he's in another year's atlas.  This is the kind of stuff that I've been talking about since I started this blog, the level of unbridled, blood-drunk hatred against the Democrats that borders on the delusional and sociopathic.

This is Obama Derangement Syndrome.  And it's only getting worse.

StupidiNews!

(slightly late edition.  Sorry, day off and overslept a bit.)

• Along a straight party line vote the Senate passed a health care reform bill this morning, 60-39 (minus KY's own Jim Bunning.)
• New jobless claims fell to 452,000, a fifteen-month low.
• New Census numbers show Texas remains the fastest growing state in the nation.
• California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger plans to ask the President for help with the state's $21 billion 2010 budget gap.
• Last minute online Christmas shoppers found Amazon and Walmart's sites were down last night, knocked out by a denial of service attack Grinch.
  

Last Call

Oh for crying out loud.

There are few stranger political bedfellows than conservative anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist and liberal blogger Jane Hamsher. But the two joined forces on Wednesday to call for the resignation of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, in a letter they penned to Attorney General Eric Holder.

...what the Rumpies said.  I mean honestly.  As much as I'd like to see Rahmbo taken down a notch for his "we're dealin!" mentality, this is soooooo not the answer.