Picture Tom DeLay, somewhere in Texas, tuning in to CNN FOX in between meeting with his lawyers. DeLay’s party could rewrite the Constitution with the kind of majority that Democrats just won, and the left bench is still getting rolled. He still has that indictment to worry about and nobody calls other than NewsMax, but for all that it’s hard to imagine that Delay does not watch and laugh.
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JGabriel
This post no title?
(Update: Oh, it’s got one now.)
.
Shygetz
You know the Dems are asking for it. Just look at how they dress. Sluts.
TenguPhule
Fixed.
Incertus
I think it’s time someone went up to Harry Reid and said "either get the stimulus through, or get out of the way." And it has to come from within the caucus.
To add: the word also has to go out to the Blue Dogs in the Senate. The Nelsons, Landrieu, all of them–you get on board now, and do it publicly, or you don’t get shit for the next two years.
TenguPhule
Dave
The Democrats have never had a victory they couldn’t fuck up almost instantly. I mean, Reid comes out and says "We can’t pass the stimulus because of mean conservative Republicans." Dude, you have 58 Democrats! You can’t find two moderate/represent a Blue state GOP senators to cross the aisle?
As Christian Bale said so eloquently; "Fuck’s sake, man. You’re amateur."
gbear
@TenguPhule:
I like the first version better.
Joshua Norton
That little side show of insisting the NH Gov. pick a Repig senator didn’t help matters. It’s akin thinking the winning team should let the losers score a few because they’re so far ahead. In other words, a very stupid move. Obama is spending too much time telegraphing his intentions and letting the other side set up ambushes.
I think he’s using the General Custer school of thought to rationalize his actions.
JenJen
It’s downright bizarre.
Where, for example, is Sherrod Brown? And is it at all possible that the cable teevee jerkies just aren’t giving Dems any kind of equal time? Or are the Dems truly just no-call, no-shows?
Or has Obama sent the word out that he wants to be the one to sell the stimulus? Me so confused.
Dave
@Joshua Norton:
I have to disagree. Say Obama appointed Dodd to a Cabinet post and Jodi Rell put a Republican in his place. We’d all be rightly pissed, yes? It works the same way in reverse.
Look at the bright side; at least the appointee is pro-choice and a little more moderate. And since NH went blue, she’ll be under pressure to prove she can work with Obama.
amorphous
I fear it’s just not in their blood. That’s probably what puts you in a party which has a philosophy of aiming for the greater good rather in the OMGMEMEMEMEMEME! party.
@Dave: What don’t they fucking understand?
El Cid
Yup. I’m tired of playing this stupid game of pretending that the Democratic Senate leaders are yielding to Republicans out of fear rather than out of a desire to collaborate.
Gay Veteran
why blame incompetence or cowardice (especially for the past 2 years) when complicity is the answer
El Cid
@Gay Veteran: Agree. Eventually the term used for those enabling your opponents is no longer "collegial" but "collaborating".
Adrienne
Fixt.
See the moderate or blue state Republicans too: Collins, Snow, Voinovich, Martinez, Lugar, Ensign.
Dave
After these last three posts, I’ve decided the only thing I can do for the next hour is blast Rage Against the Machine at 11 and see how familiar I can become with a bottle of Jameson.
Egilsson
@Dave:
Dave, I don’t think that’s accurate.
Presumably Gregg is joining an administration because he wants to accomplish things. Supporting republican obstruction of things he is going to try in the future on behalf of the administration he is joining now is not the same as the Dodd hypothetical.
I don’t really get the Gregg appointment, except it is an example of Obama playing long ball and looking to helping the odds of a democratic takeover of that seat in 2010. Gregg would have been tough to unseat I think. And who really gives a hoot about commerce. Make sure things run, but it has not been a policy powerhouse.
Laura W
I swear I thought this was the title when I first refreshed.
Talking on phone and reading BJ is hard.
Dave
@Egilsson:
I agree their motivations may be different. I was only referring to the actions of the respective governors and how we’d react based on the two scenarios.
kay
I’m amazed that John McCain just lost a race by a substantial margin and as of this morning is still running for President. I’m amazed that Cheney has been gone only since January and is now out ‘n about slamming a sitting President on very specific national security concerns.
I don’t recall watching anything quite like this.
It’s a full-bore, no holds barred refusal to cede power.
They lost, but it didn’t "take".
aimai
I’m royally pissed. Why Gregg at all? He’s fucking us over onthe stimulus bill, he hasn’t pledged to support *any* of Obama’s initiatives or even respect his goddamned election in the first place, and I see no reason to put a republican in charge of the *census* and apportionment especially when that republican was on record demanding the destruction of the entire department just five years ago. I’ve always tried to give obama the benefit of the doubt and to assume there’s a "long game" there but jeebus on toast points he’s getting rolled right and left here. Why give commerce to a republican at all? If they want to serve in his cabinet let them *change to dems* and fight to show how loyal they can be. Seat Franken *now*, wheel teddy into the senate on a stretcher and pass the stimulus bill. And kick gregg to the curb by pointing out that one of his staffers was involved with abramoff.
aimai
gbear
So what do we as voters who believe that a stimulus bill without ineffective tax cuts needs to be passed to keep the economy from tanking? I can call Amy Klobuchar’s office and beg her to throw the republicans under the bus, and I can add my voice to the screaming whackos who comment to the local papers, but what else? We’re kind of at the pitchforks and torches stage right now, but I don’t even want to see how civil disobedience/disorderly conduct would be answered in this atmosphere (we’re still smarting from the republican convention in St. Paul). What the hell do we do to convince the house and senate dems to quit compromising with these freaks and act like they won the damned elections? I’m serious. Is there any means of effective construtive activism? (please don’t die laughing from this question)
Napoleon
I posted this in the last tread but maybe it should be in this one.
Josh Marshall nails it.
I think it is pretty clear at this point the right in this country intends to do everything in its power to destroy this country’s economy in order to hurt the Democrats, and the Democrats are too gutless to get rid of the filibuster and pass the plan, Republican’s be damned.
woody
The Dims have already caved.
Obama, the ‘negotiator,’ come to the table ALREADY having in mind what he’ll give away to get some spurious fucking ‘consensus.’
We are so fucked…
Josh Hueco
John Scalzi said everything that ever needed to be said about this phenomenon years ago (scroll down to ‘Liberals’).
Shygetz
I thought Rahm was supposed to whip the Congressional Dems into shape. How’s that been working out so far? But, to be fair, it’s still VERY early days.
What I don’t get it, from what I’ve read, the Senate can pass the stim under budget reconciliation rules, which disallow filibusters. So why not just do it if someone tries to obstruct? But no…instead, we get a crappy stimulus bill that Republicans STILL won’t vote for, and when it fails to help (as crappy bills often do) the Dems will wholly own it.
wilfred
Tim, you constantly peddle this crap. Try a little political Occam’s Razor instead – there isn’t any political plurality.
If there was, we would not have had continued funding of the Iraq War and would be looking at prosecutions of Bush et al.
Democrats don’t get rolled, they roll with the flow. Real people of the left, like Dennis Kucinich, get marginalized by the Democrats at the same time they get ridiculed by the right.
John
Perhaps Obama thinks he doesn’t need Gregg’s vote to pass the stimulus?
woody
I dunno wtf Gregg gets Obama &the Dims…
his record on matters over which the Commerce Dept might have influence is dismal:
Item: Voted NO on repealing tax subsidy for companies which move US jobs offshore.
Item: Voted YES on reforming bankruptcy to include means-testing & restrictions.
Item: Voted YES on restricting rules on personal bankruptcy.
Item: Rated 78% by the US COC, indicating a pro-business voting record.
Item: Voted YES on promoting free trade with Peru.
Item: Voted YES on implementing CAFTA for Central America free-trade
Item: Voted YES on establishing free trade between US & Singapore.
Item: Rated 92% by CATO, indicating a pro-free trade voting record.
Item: Voted NO on continuing federal funds for declared "sanctuary cities".
Item: Voted YES on declaring English as the official language of the US government.
Item: Voted YES on building a fence along the Mexican border.
Item: Voted NO on giving Guest Workers a path to citizenship.
Item: Increase limitations for H-1B, H-2B, and L-visas.
Are you starting to see a pattern here?
jrg
O/T, but this is full of win.
Libby
Reid really, really has to go. All I can figure is some GOPer has something so horrible on him that he is deliberately sabotaging the process to keep it quiet.
But to be fair, you can’t really count the Blue Dog types as guaranteed votes either so it’s not like they have a real filibuster proof majority. Of course, if they starting actually making them stand up there and filibuster instead of just caving at the mere threat, I’d bet you would see that option used a whole lot less. As in almost never.
At the moment, I can only conclude we are well and truly f*cked.
Ben
The dems need to get the sand out of their vag.
Libby
Meanwhile, if you’ll forgive a blogwhore, (it’s been a while) and you’re a GOS reader, kwickkick had left this mortal coil. RIP.
Adrienne
@kay: I’m completely with you. Cheney had like, what? An 8% approval rating when he left office? We couldn’t wheel his ass out of town fast enough. McCain lost by what? 7% or like 9-10M votes? The largest Democratic popular vote beat down in at least a generation – to a black guy, named Barack Hussein Obama 7 years after 9/11 – made possible by the deepseated hate for Cheney’s administration. Why these assclowns think anyone gives a damn what they think is beyond me.
Damn, at least Bush quietly exited stage left. I haven’t a peep out of him since Inauguration night.
Brien Jackson
This reminds me of the "playing poker with Harry Reid" dilemna. What you’ve got, basically, are the Republicans as the guy at the table with the short stack going all in after the river with a shit board. Everyone knows you don’t fold to that, so long as you have a decent number of chips, because odds are best they’re just buying the pot. You call them and make them take the chips. In this scenario, you’d basically make the Republicans vote against cloture, thereby "killing" the bill, and then deal with the fallout (crashing market) in the interim. There’s no way tey could do that, and you’d get to pass it anyway in a few days, while the GOP would still take the hit.
Instead, Reid’s folding.
Ash Can
I’m all for whacking everyone in sight with a rolled-up newspaper if it’s warranted, but in this case I’m seeing the onus of the stimulus holdup/fuckup falling not on "the Dems" in general but on Harry Reid specifically. I’m convinced at this point that Reid’s primary objective is to maintain the cozy private-club nature of the Senate, and that means being excessively nice to the Republican senators and giving Obama a cold shoulder if necessary. Heck, he’s all but said so himself ("I don’t work for Obama; we won’t be a rubber stamp for him" or some such drivel). I know that Obama loves coalition-building, but I’d like to think that, for the sake of the country, he’s running out of patience behind the scenes, and sooner rather than later at that.
Adrienne
I concur, but as bad as this sounds, I honestly don’t know who we could get to replace him that would do the job any better. The entire Senate Democratic Caucus seems like they are afflicted with the same disease. Even after winning the past two elections, actually kicking ass, they still seem afraid of the big, bad, Republicans. WTF am I missing here. The PEOPLE seem to have spoken about who we want leading us and it damn sure wasn’t the Republicans.
Say what you want about Pelosi, but she knows who won this election and is acting as such.
Sean
Harry Reid was totally ineffective as minority leader and he’s proven to be totally ineffective as Majority Leader too. I mean, he just makes it waaay too easy for the Republicans to walk all over him.
He’s a stooge. He’s a patsy. He allows himself to be repeatedly humiliated by the likes of friggin’ Rob Blogojevich.
Trent Lott was a closet-case of the first order and he never bent over as much as Reid does.
What I don’t understand about Reid is: What is driving him to be so complicit with the Republicans? This is really becoming a pathology.
-S
Stuck
@JenJen:
To me, this is the big question, I’ve been wondering about the last few days. Wish I knew the answer, but dem pushback is not present , whatever the reason, and wingnuts are delighted to hog the mic and dispense the bullshit..
Obama is going to have to let go the ideal of trying to please everybody, that includes wingnuts and those in his own party who want their party favors is this critical bill.
Brien Jackson
I don’t think Reid was a bad minority leader by any stretch. He lost a lot of ground when Republicans were willing to use the reconciliation process, but there’s really nothing the minority leader can do about that.
Ben
@Sean:
Didn’t Reid have a stroke a few years back? Maybe that is part of the problem. He is spineless.
Bootlegger
@jrg: Awesome.
Bootlegger
I seriously don’t get the whole "we need to act more like the Republicans" argument for how the Democrats should wield power. Isn’t part of the point the fact that Democrats have some different values than Republicans? Aren’t values for harmony and inclusion part of that? So why "act like them"? And don’t anyone say "it works", because I’ll just have to point out reality to you.
The Grand Panjandrum
Tim you are assuming that Obama wants the bill passed in its current form. This bill was largely written by the House Democrats and if Obama and Reid can trim all that waste (ooh … 2%) the mouth breathers are screaming about they look like the adults. This is as much about perception as it is about getting shit done. The House bill isn’t all that. As a matter of fact it hardly addresses infrastructure and almost entirely avoids public transit funding. The bill coming out of the Senate will be a different bill and I suspect better for the country all around.
Basically I am reading a lot of bitching about what is and isn’t being done. Until the final legislation is complete I don’t see much to bitch about.
Punchy
I’m going to go out on a limb and say this StimPak is DOA. Dems completely absent on TV screens, radio, and newspapers.
JL
Obama is hosting another gathering at the White House this evening. Please serve those awesome brownies somebody made for me decades ago.
Stuck
@The Grand Panjandrum:
What you said.
agorabum
Everybody needs to take a deep breath and relax.
The Senate is different than the House, and Obama is just slow playing the Republicans. While the vox populi are angry about wall street bonuses, the Republicans are chanting tax cuts for the rich. How is that going to work out for them at the ballot box?
Obama’s only been on the job for 2 weeks. He operates differently: no suprise bills rammed through without anyone reading them. He is procedurally opposed to that type of legislation. He was a Senator, from The Worlds Most Deliberative Body. He wants them to deliberate. (and hopefully the Senate can add some more funds for transit support). Give the guy at least a month. And at the end of it all, the Stimulus is still going to be passed.
I know there is a 24 hour news cycle, but just because news anchors hyperventilate over every trivial thing that happens in a day doesn’t mean we need to.
I mean, we will, since that’s what the blogosphere does (oh sweet, sweet, non-stop daily content). But let’s try to laugh more at the Republicans daily instead of freaking out against Obama (who’s already done plenty of good in a few weeks).
Bootlegger
@The Grand Panjandrum: Exactly. BO gets the bill he wants without having a knock-down drag-out with his own party in the House. He lets the R’s do the heavy lifting, compliments everyone for their "great ideas" and in the end gets a decent bill.
Bootlegger
@JL: I’ve got some in my freezer, I’ll even share.
kay
@Adrienne:
Damn, at least Bush quietly exited stage left. I haven’t a peep out of him since Inauguration night.
I’m trying to remember when a very-very-recent past VP attacked a new President on national security.
If the tables were turned, and this were, oh, Al Gore in February of 2001, and not Dick Cheney, this would be blaring headline national news outrage.
Maybe someone can correct me, but Cheney is way the hell out there on this. This you can’t do.
headpan
Seriously, if there is a method to his whiny-assed madness, as a Dem I’d like to be clued in. Otherwise, it’s so frustrating to see him bow and scrape to repubes, I want to pull my hair out in clumps. It really does wonders for the morale of the party as a whole. We want to see some ass-kicking and we know Obama can’t do it, must stay above the fray and such, so it’s Reid’s job to get ‘er done. But he has ALWAYS been this way. I’m really tired of trying to pick apart the "mysterious" strategies of the Dems, if indeed that’s what they are as opposed to reflexively stuffing their heads up wrinkly old republican asses like Mitch McConnell’s. I have given them my money, my support, my time. For what? I think I’ll check back in 6 months and see how things are goin’ then.
Ash Can
@JL:
I can dream, right?
PS: Thanks for the dose of chill, Grand P and agorabum. I do feel better now.
kay
@Bootlegger:
That was my original thought. Obama wants three big things, the Dems in Congress want a bunch of other stuff, he’s not going to sell their other stuff, because he has the Big Goals.
I don’t know anymore, honestly.
Napoleon
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Huh? You do know the Republicans (and some Dem enablers) are talking now of trimming $200-300B (which is 33%+) from the package. That will make the package too small to save the country from a depression.
Bootlegger
@kay: And keep in mind that he isn’t the driver here, he is the Executive and the entire Legislative branch can tell him to get bent anytime they like. So by definition his influence is limited to persuasion. The Villagers keep calling it "Obama’s stimulus package", but its nothing of the sort. The House started the ball rolling with every liberal wet dream under the sun and they did it without Republican input. So Obama can’t do anything about that except let the Republicans cry on his shoulder. The more august Senate sees it and makes some changes, this time working with the Republicans, and in the end they approve something that will get more votes from all sides AND something BO wants to sign.
He’s showing serious game here if you ask me.
liberal
@kay:
I think you’re right, re the history of such things, but given that Cheney is a thug and a war criminal, it’s not surprising.
4jkb4ia
I clicked through from Steve Benen to the WaPo story, and the stimulus is being held up because Democrats don’t belong to any organized political party. The Republicans are doing nothing but make noise. If it is Congress’s responsibility to write the bill Obama cannot go out and defend everything in it as job creation. And the suggestion of holding down mortgage rates was political genius.
oh really
I fear this is the kind of thinking that allows Democrats to lose no matter how many Senators they have.
Balconesfault
@Dave:
Who cares? The Governor is answerable to one constituency – those who elected him. The wishes of Gregg, the wishes of Obama, should mean nothing.
And you’d better believe that the wishes of Obama would in fact mean nothing with a Repub Guv. At the nicest, he’d laugh in Obama’s face for the request. At the worst, he’d say "sure", then turn around and name a Repub.
4jkb4ia
Did you see Nate today? Good summary
Stuck
@4jkb4ia:
Agreed, (if you were being serious). I look for some form of this to get amended into the bill.
J Royce
I blame Ralph Nader. The "new" Progressives destroyed the man and his legacy so we could secure a Democratic majority, and now look.
It’s almost like the Dems don’t properly appreciate the debt they owe the new Big-Tent reform progressives for throwing out their principles and desecrating someone who actually stood up in defense of the Middle Class.
We just did it so you’d love us, Dem leaders. Sheesh, you’d think that would make the Congressional Dems grateful and FINALLY begin to represent us out of thankfulness.
Damn you, Nader!
/dailykos et all
Sam Simple
Sometimes words only take you so far and then you have to start punching people in the nose. I think we are there.
Rome Again
I wouldn’t look to Ensign. That blue state was red not that long ago, and he doesn’t care about anything but party purity.
Rome Again
I used to believe Bush leaving the WH was never going to happen, little did I realize that he could leave and his minions would still treat reality as if he were still there.
TenguPhule
Fixed.
Conservatively Liberal
I read that the mannequin suppliers have come up with a unique solution to the problem of retail stores not being able to efficiently store mannequins when they are not in use. Due to the way they are shaped, there really is no way to store many of them in a small area. I hear that they have created the ‘Harry Reid Series’ of experimental mannequins which bend over and fold themselves in half for better storage with the press of a single button.
They only have one last bug to work out: It keeps dropping its pants every time the button is pressed and before it bends over.
Mz Brown
At least someone’s out there doing something about this pork laden spending bill that will instantly double-down every citizen’s average debt. Ask yourself if you really gave the new government carte blanche to double your debt – and will we all do what it takes to be sure this doesn’t get passed to the next generation? That’s a gamble I don’t want to take. See this article at
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1870699,00.html
"One trillion dollars divided by 300 million Americans comes out to $3,333. Then you search for a useful comparison. A convenient — though perhaps unsettling — comparison is to the amount of credit-card debt carried by the average person in this country. That figure is $3,245."