Made it to my destination- flew Southwestern for the first time, and man the open seating is genius. I found the fattest guy I could sitting by himself in a window seat, and I took the aisle seat. I knew no one would sit between us. It also seems like there is a helluva lot more leg room.
BTW- I’m laughing at the Lieberman stuff. Will all the folks who spent the last few weeks trashing the WH for being insufficiently aggressive with the public option please write up your apologies long-form? I’ll check memeorandum for you later. Pretty clearly, the swarthy guy knew the whip count better than Harry Reid. Imagine that! Of course, by noting that Team Obama has more political awareness and skill than Senate Democrats just makes me an O-bot.
Although I hear if you wish really hard and scream “Just words” at Obama, Lieberman might change his mind. That is how this shit works- I read it on the internet!
Malron
Cosign John.
Zifnab
Remember that time, back in 2006, when Lieberman was running against DKos-backed Dem Ned Lamont? And Barack Obama decided to back old Droopy. And Lieberman won the election largely on the back of GOP defectors?
Yeah, I’m really not applauding any Lieberman-induced boondoggle that Obama manages to land in. He made that bed. Now we all get to suffer through it.
At the least, I think I understand why Olympia Snowe is such a plume prize for the WH.
Halteclere
Southwest rocks. I fly it every chance I get. But thanks to the damn Write amendment I still have to fly American half of the time.
Halteclere
(oops – I meant Wright)
Svensker
No, just a ignoramus, grammar-wise. :)
Punchy
Amazing that one guy from a tiny state could so completely fuck a nation and it’s absurdly failing health care costs and coverage.
Keith G
Yes it is humorous in a very sad way . Ya think if we slip Joe a penis reduction pill that he will disappear?
Rhoda
Harry Reid had a political problem that the White House was not concerned about: Ads calling him as weak if he doesn’t get a public option. So he threw the White House under the bus. The trigger is gone. Reid isn’t even sending it to be scored. And if the White House wants a deal; they’ve got to deal with the public option and whip the caucus into shape.
That means dealing with folks they don’t have a lot of leverage over alone: but between chairmanships, money, and pork this deal can get done.
But it’ll be a bitch and it’s having blow back effects. See Pelosi’s quest for Medicare +5: Now that we know a public option will be in the final bill she’s got to fall back to negotiated rates b/c they’re afraid there are 50 votes for Medicare +5 in the Senate and the blue dogs don’t want to risk living with that.
Max
I flew Virgin America for the first time this weekend (SFO to IAD).
THAT is an airline, my friends. Power outlets at the seats so your laptop stays charged, great movie and tv selections in the seatrest in front of you, touch screen food and drink ordering (swipe your card, the waitress, oops flight attendant drops it off to you), cool mood lighting….
Their flight paths are limited, but I recommend them, especially for cross country flights.
Michael
Yeah, congratulations on not getting stuck between two balls of stink. You must have gotten to the airport, what, 3+ hours ahead? Also, congratulations on your tolerance for shitty jokes.
At this point, I have a simple request on file with my employer’s travel office: No Southwest, never, never, never.
aimai
Since the White House is admitting to making no calls, and twisting no arms, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be congratulating Obama for here? I mean, if we’d elected the guy so that Lieberman could continue to posture and the Democrats could fuck up a signature piece of legislation that Obama himself campaigned on then ok–mission accomplished! But what that has to do with Reid being able to count to 60 is beyond me. When Obama got in he had Kennedy and Byrd but no Franken. The climb to sixty was tough and they relied on Baucus to actually get the Senate Finance committee bill thorugh early enough to be able to wrangle the votes they needed back before August. Baucus’s mad skilz and the emphasis on the no-show-snowe-vote bipartisanship killed the time advantage and left us where we are right now. No one should be happy with Lieberman’s stupid grandstanding least of all “the swarthy guy” who, we were assured, was in control of his pet asshole Lieberman when he urged the Senate to let Lieberman keep his chairmanships. The rest of us prayed that Obama would show some uncharicteristic brutality and had told Lieberman he’d cut his nuts off if Lieberman ever, by word or deed, implied he’d go against Obama and Reid. Looks like we were right to doubt the wisdom of Obama backing Lieberman. There’s a trigger that will never be pulled.
aimai
Keith G
Wow, who knew that typing p e n i s would get one moderated, given that said word appears on an add on this page?
Very interesting.
jibeaux
@Keith G:
We laughed at that ad and the moderation earlier today, but that is w-i-n. Let’s get 30 Rock’s Dr. Spaceman on that mission to Lieberman, Stat.
Jon
Look on the bright side – Lane Kiffin is no longer the biggest douche in the feminine hygiene products aisle this week.
FormerSwingVoter
Hopefully, he’s just holding out for some particular bit of earmark-style bribery. Can we build a $5million medical research center in CT for him or something?
licensed to kill time
@Keith G:
Here’s a list of Spam Words in WordPress. Enlightening!
Jen7
Tell that to John over at Americablog. He’s convinced the WH doesn’t really want a public option and are trying to kill it. His evidence? Unnamed sources. Oooooohhh.
Comrade Jake
I agree wrt Obama being able to count better than Reid, but I don’t think Lieberman’s going to kill this. He’s just posturing, like he’s done his entire life.
Read Ezra’s take.
Comrade Jake
@Jen7:
Yes, but can they cite “multiple unnamed sources”?
BombIranForChrist
My guess is that Reid is 0% surprised that Lieberman is in front of the cameras preening. Do you _really_ think that Reid is so incompetent as to trust Lieberman? I mean, really?
This is nothing more than Lieberman sucking off the camera man. When cloture comes around, he’ll come around.
I am no big fan of Reid, but come on now …
Comrade Jake
Look, as long as Israel isn’t threatened by the public option, Lieberman’s not going to kill it.
mcd410x
Flew Virgin Atlantic back from London once. Awesome sauce was included.
SiubhanDuinne
Tunch was sitting in the window seat? ?
JenJen
Genius!! Noted, also.
Warren Terra
Well, I do remember this – but clearly I remember it a bit differently than you do.
Yup, Obama backed Lamont in the Democratic primary. And while Ned Lamont has always left me cold, I was quite happy to root against Lieberman, so I didn’t like Obama backing Lamont in the Democratic primary.
But you know what? Lieberman lost the Democratic primary. And in so doing he lost the support of Democrats in the general election, including Obama.
Then Lieberman did indeed win the general by securing a huge showing among Republican voters, as you say, together with altogether too many Democratic voters, whom you overlook. But it’s a bit odd to say those Democrats who backed Lieberman’s primary bid are to blame for Lieberman’s electoral success in the general – they clearly made a prediction that Lieberman would be re-elected to the Senate whether or not he won the Democratic nomination, and they decided they’d rather have him nominally within the tent when he returned to the Senate. Not a bad prediction.
ronin122
@licensed to kill time: John I suggest you put this link somewhere on your site. This can be very useful if I ever wanted to talk about the card games I play and don’t want to get blocked for the same reason calling Obama a sochulizt would.
slag
No.
Not working hard for something doesn’t get you a pass for not succeeding in it. It kind of does the opposite.
Warren Terra
I live by an adapted version of the old H L Mencken quote: nobody ever went politically bankrupt underestimating the competence of Harry Reid.
That said, I obviously hope that you, and Ezra Klein, are right that Holy Joe is just making empty noise. And I have a bit more faith in the ability of Chuck Schumer to count noses and to twist elbows.
Legalize
This is Lieberman preening for TV time and to show his GOP buddies like President McCain that he’s not going to do something just ’cause the black feller who got him reelected told him to.
licensed to kill time
I got upgraded to first class from coach once. They had real plates and silverware, back when you could still handle a knife on a plane without being wrestled to the floor by a stealth air marshal.
smiley
If all the bill ends up having is increased competition (buy across state lines) and a prohibition of discrimination against people with preexisting conditions, it will still be a (small) improvement.
licensed to kill time
@ronin122:
I submitted a “question” in the FAQ a month ago suggesting that tips for navigating the site be put there – clicking the reply arrow, how to blockquote without making an ass out of yourself, etc. I check hopefully every now and then to see if it has been done, but no joy so far.
donovong
All this Lieberman bullshit means is that now we have to suffer through weeks of rumors and handwringing until we get to the vote.
Obese female has not sung yet and will not for some time, so let’s save the accolades AND the pearl-clutching for a while yet, shall we? Time will tell.
RSA
It would be good to have some confidence that the plane is not going to fill up, I think. Otherwise you’ll end up one of the three unhappiest passengers on that flight.
MikeJ
Virgin Atlantic is really, really good in coach. Try it in Upper Class sometime. I usually fly “premium economy” (business class), but when I get upgrades or clients with lax travel rules i get Upper. I felt silly the first time I was offered a massage in flight, but I got used to it too quickly.
gwangung
Still making sausage, then.
smiley
@ronin122:
Interestingly, that word (spelled correctly) does not appear on the list.
Calouste
There are still flights where you can count on there being empty seats? The vast majority of flights I have been on in the last 8 years or so have been 100% full.
MikeJ
@smiley: boner pill name in the middle of it.
Xecky Gilchrist
I’ve flown SW Airlines about a hojillion times, and I’m not a big fan of their cattle-call seating methods. They’ve improved over the years, but they’re still dumb. I’ll put up with it for the kind of prices they occasionally swing, though.
Oh, and I’ve thought Lieberman was a weapons-grade putz since long before he stunk up Gore’s ticket.
valdivia
Hear hear John. I guess Reid is no longer the super hero he was yesterday when he swore he had the count and the WH was skeptical and they got trashed as traitors for seeing this?
Also, I do not know where this meme originated that Obama has done nothing to get us where we are. Can someone explain it to me? Are people really *that* deluded in thinking that Obama has just been twiddling his thumbs about this? What about the articles about the thousands of calls and hours done by his health care team in the past few months. And didn’t OFA just do a *whole day* of calls to congress last week in support of the PO? I guess OFA was doing all of this against Obama’s wishes?
Obama may not be out in front all the time but he has been working for this and if the only thing that counts as ‘working for it’ is making declarations at inopportune times to satisfy people who have no strategic sense of how to get this done then obviously we are never going to get anywhere.
Martin
Nah, it’s just an application of the urinal algorithm.
Try to keep up ladies.
lol
@2: Really, could you point out all the instances that Obama campaigned for Lieberman?
Surreal American
Bring back Lowell Weicker!
Mirthless Chopper - Frmrly TheFountainHead
I’m going to raise the level of discourse here a bit:
Lieberman is perhaps the worst piece of slime ever to encrust the halls of the Senate, may he rot in Hell and may his memory be forever linked with the most vile adjectives imaginable.
It’s true and you know it.
General Winfield Stuck
LOL, well it was a entertaining 24 hour fantasy while it lasted. But you just never know what Holy Joe will do. He might be out tomorrow with a tin cup and a sign “Will vote yea, for some teevee face time”.
Maybe Jane’s Rage Rag will pony up some ferocious “What Will Obama Do Now?” and we can all go home satisfied.
smiley
@MikeJ: I’m aware of that, which is why, along with the fact that it trips moderation here, I’m surprised it’s not on the list.
Reddalestew
Make it known to AIPAC that any bill that they may encourage will be put permently in the back of the line unless Liebermann votes for cloture.
Other
I suppose if you do not care about the public option, this post makes sense. If you do, it doesn’t.
Not sure what the logic is. Of course Obama could have avoided this Lieberman moment entirely – he could have not proposed a public option.
Of course, there would be no chance of a public option at all then. Which, as I say, if you don;t care about the public option, would not bother you.
If you do care about it, it would bother you greatly.
Governing is hard. Who knew?
beltane
@Mirthless Chopper – Frmrly TheFountainHead: You’ll get no argument from me. Too bad no one will ever wipe the smugness off that lizard’s face.
slippy
@Mirthless Chopper – Frmrly TheFountainHead: Oh, well thank God you didn’t call him a W h o r e, because then you’d have legions of Very Concerned people briskly wringing their hands in your face.
Anne Laurie
@aimai:
Word to the Word. I keep wondering what Lieberman has on Obama… I mean, beyond his presumed status as the White House Liaison to AIPAC? You’d think his sterling performance as the Republican fifth-columnist in Al Gore’s campaign would’ve cured every single Democrat of any illusions about the Evil Nutmeg Elf, and yet, Obama’s not just proclaiming but acting as though the little fvcknut could be trusted. Truly, it is one of the Great Mysteries!
soonergrunt
@General Winfield Stuck: Ask, and ye shall receive. Or maybe it’s speak of the devil and…
Lieberman Says He’ll Filibuster Health Bill; What’s Obama Going to Do?
Ked
ORBOTS! MIGHTY ORBOTS!
Sorry, just had to get that out of my system.
LT
You speak too quickly, maybe, JohnC. If this forces reconciliation up the ladder then this will all look very, very different.
smiley
BTW, Benen has a series of interesting posts on this. Including this one.
Anne Laurie
@licensed to kill time:
I think ‘we’ are hoping that the ever-receding-into-the-future Website Upgrade will make such a shortcuts list unnecessary and/or inoperative. I think ‘we’ are deluding ourselves, Mr. John Cole, but I wanna finish fixting the Lexicon before I ham-handedly-hack at anything else.
Mnemosyne
OT, but remember what Obama reportedly said about being the only thing standing between the bankers and the pitchforks?
They probably should have listened.
jeffreyw
@licensed to kill time:
Wow, memories. I was flyin back home from the Nam, had a standby ticket that was upgraded to first class on a flight from SeaTac to St Louis. Served white wine by a steward with a towel on his arm, showin me the label and stuff. Go-o-o-ll-ee as Pvt. Pyle was wont to say.
Martin
Oooh, Fallows published my email. I’m all aglow (more than I’m getting off of the H1N1 I have. Btw, it’s teh suck).
General Winfield Stuck
The thing is, it’s not now about Obama, but his liberal Senate Colleagues who will be reassigning chairmanships, and there continued disdain for Joe backing Mccain. Which was cemented into contempt for Joe after he spoke at the GOP convention.
The only thing he has on Obama is what we see, the deciding vote to invoke cloture on big legislation. I don’t blame Obama for schmoozing Joementum for pure political reasons. If I were guessing, and I am, Joe is planning to extract all he can get for his vote, with the bidding to begin with keeping his chair on the HSC.
The fiscal hawk routine he is doing is just hogwash and he knows it, since the bill has many tradeoffs to be paid for, at least to a large extent.
Rock
I gotta agree with Firedoglake. Joe isn’t off the reservation, he’s doing what Obama wants. I think that Reid’s opt-out proclamation was theater to assuage progressives. The final bill will have a trigger that will never be pulled, which is what Obama wanted all along. Lieberman gives them the fall-guy for having to go that direction.
Any honest assessment of Obama in office has to conclude he’s a corporatist. Actions (and inactions) speak louder than words.
Anne Laurie
@smiley:
No, but the political term contains the name of a popular Pen1s Enbiggment Pill which does.
General Winfield Stuck
@soonergrunt:
Thanks, but honestly I saw that FDL post from the previous thread and just forgot to link it.
dfd
@Rock: I love how this is all a grand conspiracy to thwart the public option.
General Winfield Stuck
@Rock:
Any honest assessment is that you are full of shit. Go back to the conspiracy fever swamps/
bago
Virgin all the way.
Nick
@Zifnab:
I remember when he backed Lieberman in the primary, like everyone else in the party, but endorsed Lamont in the general election.
General Winfield Stuck
Ezra lays out why he doesn’t take Lieberman’s filibuster threat seriously.
licensed to kill time
@Anne Laurie:
Wow, really? A totally intuitive and fully navigable site in the future? My breath, it’s baited(sic). I hope the upgrade goes better than John’s Win7 experience ;-) Thanks for the explanation, Anne Laurie.
But it is fun to watch us all flail around, butchering blockquotes and cursing the lack of an edit function. PEBCAK or FYWP? You be the judge!
@jeffreyw:
I remember when you could order your meal ahead of time – kosher? vegetarian? no problem! And it was real food, not bags of snack.
Demo Woman
@Rock: Just to put your mind at ease I consulted the Ouija Board and FDL is wrong. Go back to you cave now.
licensed to kill time
@jeffreyw:
Oh, and honest to dog, they’d give you little packs of two or three cigarettes if you forgot to bring your own. And everybody smoked.
SiubhanDuinne
@Anne Laurie: So does speshalist.
smiley
@Anne Laurie: Jeez, this is the second time I’ve responded to this. I know that the word in question is embedded in the S word and that the embedded word is on the list (I checked before posting my original comment.) This is not a big deal. I was just surprised that words that frequently trip moderation, for reasons not always obvious, are not included. Kinda defeats the purpose of the list.
Demo Woman
@General Winfield Stuck: The last sentence is cuz maybe he was like that.
In the previous thread Kay pointed out that he never really voted for big legislation. Once he discovered K Street he left the other guy in MS.
SiubhanDuinne
@bago:
Isn’t that kind of, I dunno, oxymoronic or self-defeating or something?
kay
@Rock:
That doesn’t even make sense. There are already three “fall guys”, and they’re all Democrats.
You want Obama to tie this up in a neat little package and remove all the doubt, and he can’t do that.
They’re doing what assholes in the Senate do, which is leverage their own power. They’re not going to give that away with a public “yes”. The second they say “yes” we can all go back to ignoring them.
If Harry Reid doesn’t know this, he’s an idiot.
Demo Woman
@Demo Woman: Wow! The blockquote is suppose to be It may be that…..
General Winfield Stuck
@Demo Woman:
?
MikeJ
@smiley: I think you misunderstand the purpose of the list. It’s not there to warn people what will trip it, it’s there to show admins what the filter is actually doing. That is the actual spam filter list, not the side effects of the spam filter list.
smiley
@MikeJ: Got it.
trollhattan
re. WP schpamn words–Most make some sort of sense but “t*h*o*r c*a*r*l*s*o*n?!? I know someone of that name and other than being a serial Saab owner is a fine ‘mercun citizen et al. Wisconsin Tourism Federation?
smiley
@MikeJ: P.S, Thanks.
Demo Woman
General Winfield Stuck:
I think that Ezra is being naive. Joe has not done anything for a long time in the way of human rights. He got his start by supporting civil rights but for the last few decades he has been supported by lobbyists. I really hate to sound harsh but point to me where he has been of value for human rights.
kay
@Demo Woman:
I just question this whole premise. Look, it is easy to be a liberal in Connecticut on things like abortion or the Voting Rights Act or The Lily Ledbetter Act.
I’m looking for a policy or preference that costs something, to some profit center (other than taxpayers), cash money.
I’m not worried about overturning settled law. I don’t need Joe Leiberman.
I looked for environmental legislation, because to me, that’s a “tell”, between a bullshit “liberal” voting record and a big business stooge who mouthes platitudes.
Environmental legislation costs business, and there is no moneyed interest that pushes environmentalism, so it’s easy to read.
That’s what I would like to see, and I don’t see that, in Leiberman.
I think he’s full of shit.
Anne Laurie
@smiley:
“It’s
ChinatownWordPress. Jake. Get used to it.”licensed to kill time
@Demo Woman:
@Demo Woman:
Now see, isn’t this amusing?
(I am not laughing at you , Demo Woman! Just laughing at the Blockquote Fail and Splutter!)
freelancer
@SiubhanDuinne:
You crack me up.
jl
I don’t know whether there is a grand conspiracy against the public option or not. Right now, the limited public options being proposed will do just enough to slightly improve the healthcare situation, not much more. So, not sure why anyone would bother unless it is a pre-emptive strike against it to prevent expansion after it is shown that the idea works (and I firmly believe it will work quite well in the populations that can enroll).
But I do not withdraw my criticism of Obama. He promised change and to be guided by good policy and that is what he should try to deliver.
So, here I stand, I can do no other. Cole can send the Tunchinator to deal with me. I am ready, and at peace with myself, having spoken the truth.
Though, I am puzzled. Why all the fuss over exactly what is in the Senate bill? The real show will be in the conference. The corrupt filthy rich old coots can put anything they want in their bill (say, special funds for curative unicorns, which the GOP might buy into, if they were corporate unicorns). Still, I think Obama should be applying more public pressure.
eemom
If there wasn’t so much very important stuff at issue, and Joe Lieberman were not in fact the biggest asshole turncoat backstabber since Judas Iscariot, I could totally get a kick out of watching the steam pour out of Lady Jane’s perky little ears. She’s been waging that Fatwa trying to bring down Lieberman since 2005……..and she ain’t never made so much as a dent. He just keeps right on ticking.
So — again, if there weren’t so much at stake — it would be kind of hilarious that Pal Joey would pop up just now as evidence of the FDL conspiracy du jour.
Plus, Janie’s the one who’s been insisting all along that the filibuster was an empty threat. Time to revise history again.
eemom
and btw, I really don’t think Obama’s endorsement had a hell of a lot to do with Lieberman’s re-election.
General Winfield Stuck
@Demo Woman:
On foreign policy I think your right about Joe, and all the atrocities of Bush and Cheney Joe has been with them.
But this is domestic legislation and the PO comes under social safety net policy, and Joe has always been basically pro that whether it’s medicare, medicaid, food stamps etc….etc…Though he did support welfare reform as did Clinton and other dems. Still. all in all I think Ezra is generally right, but also a lot has happened in the last 10 years leaving Joe with resentments that might have made him change. We will see.
Plus, if you read Joe’s statement, there is a lot of wiggle room. It sounds like someone asking indirectly for a ransom to me.
jl
Speaking S p * m f * l t * r s, why hasn’t the blog program learned about whole word searches?
Somebody sends me a pitch of b * n * r p * l l s, with the names embeded in words like eleemosynary, anarcho-syndicalist, or timocracy, I probably would not understand it.
Demo Woman
@kay: I definitely agree with you. I lived in CT although many, many years ago. It was very progressive then. I used a midwife for the birth of my son and had no problem nursing him in public. That was 30 years ago.
Joe did not support the recount during the 2000 election so my feelings might be warped but to me he’s useless.
FYI, Hadassah was ahead of me in high school. I know her because she would come to my house to see my sister. She is a very confident person.
Chuck Butcher
Monday my wife and I flew Boise to OHare to Tampa and this Monday Tampa to OHare to Tampa. I liked the 757 from Tampa, I disliked the Canadaire 700 cigar tube from and to Boise and the OHare – Tampa Airbus made my blood boil (and run cold), hate those damn things. All United flights, Economy (guess why). I do have a two hour drive to/from Boise.
This tired me out. Gus is still pouting about the 1 week absence and he got to stay with someone he regards as pack. I am so glad to be home, despite 40’s F and falling leaves (sub-freezing last night) versus mid-80s FL.
Demo Woman
@licensed to kill time: Pretty funny… How do you blockquote an empty space?
Paul
Here’s a newsflash for a few people here:
You cannot WISH Joe Lieberman out of the Senate.
Whether he has a committee chair, committee seat, or even a plain old chair, he is still the 60th vote.
No – actually he’s the 56th vote since the other 5 conservative dems will probably join him.
This is Harry Reid’s fault. He brought a bill to the floor without the assurances of 60 Democrats. This is called stupid.
Perry Como
Southwest story: arrive at John Wayne Airport at 8ish AM for a 9:30ish AM flight to San Fran (had a group of guys from work going up for Halloween). Hit the bar and do the shot of tequila and Corona for $6. Have our boarding passes and the stewardess directs us to sit in the very front. After the hilarious plane safety instructions, the stewardess starts feeding us beer. As in, when one of us is done, she hands the person another. Best. Flight. Ever.
andrewtna
Bullshit. Getting a bill with the public option opt-out passed has much more hope than passing a bill with a trigger – the White House’s preferred plan.
The WH strategy has been to appease a few conservative Dems and hope the liberal members of the caucus rubberstamp the bill.
This strategy does not mesh with the facts on the ground, which is that there are more liberal Senators who have said they would not vote for a trigger than there are conservative Dems on the fence about the opt-out. In truth, the math is tough either way.
Listen – I’ve been a big supporter of Obama, I’ve been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on most everything, but I firmly believe that, if the WH had or would finally put all of its weight behind the public option, we wouldn’t still be talking here about Dem defections.
As for Lieberman, he may be a total ass, but his tune might change if they threatened to revoke his chairmanship. I don’t think he alone would torpedo this bill without the mutual support of a few rogue Dems.
General Winfield Stuck
And here is a good website showing Lieberman’s voting and statements history on a whole range of issues.
The US Chamber of Commerce was not impressed with Joe’s voting on bidness issues.
Comrade Jake
@aimai:
This point will make sense if Lieberman chooses to actually filibuster. Otherwise, not so much really. Unless you care about posturing.
General Winfield Stuck
@andrewtna:
Well, dude, we are only talking about possibly one dem defection of one Senator who isn’t even a dem. And it only takes one. So what was your point again?
Comrade Jake
@kay:
Good post.
Demo Woman
@andrewtna: Since the President has always supported a public option, I’m going to wait and see what happens. The stimulus was not as big as I had hoped but it certainly was not the plan that several liberal sites were touting. Take a deep breath, cross your fingers and hopefully we will get a package that contains costs.
Comrade Jake
I’m just wondering what fantasyland people are living in where they just know all the Democratic Senators would follow Obama in lockstep if only he was forceful enough. I mean, seriously? I know Obama is Jesus Christ but that’s kind of ridiculous.
General Winfield Stuck
@Comrade Jake:
And unfortunately, too many dems do.
dfd
But who are the King and Queen of Posture?
jl
I do know that all the Senators will not move in lockstep if only Obama were forceful enough. I am not asking for sheer force. I am asking for leadership in arguing for good policy in an effort to provide cover for some Senators, to reassure the cowardly, and to focus public attention and pressure on the remainder.
I think Reid can impose requirement for a real filibuster where they have to actually stand up and talk. I think that would be a good idea too.
Brien Jackson
THIS IS NOT A FILIBUSTER.
Honestly, if you want to criticize the way someone handles the politics of legislating, at least have the courtesy to do more than reference a crappy old movie to learn about Congressional rules.
jl
@Brien Jackson: Well, OK, I was sloppy. I was not referencing an old movie. I meant that other business had to stop until the matter was disposed of, or whatever the technical jargon is. That is what I understand from reading histories of the filibuster.
It doesn’t matter whether they talk or just stay home and drink. There should be a cost to extending debate, as I believe there was until recently.
If I still have it wrong, tell me how I am wrong, or provide a reference.
kay
@General Winfield Stuck:
Thanks for the link, Stuck, but follow it all the way through.
The Chamber endorsed two Democrats in 2006.
One of them was Leiberman, for having “the highest cumulative Chamber voting score of any Democrat in the northeast”.
His populist phase began in 1999 and ended in 2001, apparently.
I don’t need Joe Leiberman to secure the Voting Rights Act. His “liberal record” is relevant to, oh, “the issues we faced” in 1974.
bago
@SiubhanDuinne: That would be virgins all the way down.
kay
@Demo Woman:
Leiberman was the point man on Bush’s ENORMOUS expansion of federal grants to religious agencies and organizations.
His wife then secured a huge grant.
I’d like them all audited, every non-profit that receives federal money, because God knows that the hell Bush was handing out, but instead we decided to focus on just one: ACORN.
Throwin Stones
@Keith G: Late as usual, but this KeithG comment FTW.
winguts to iraq
when I fly SW, I just look for the hottest chica, and sit next to her.
General Winfield Stuck
@kay:
I’m not defending Lieberman in 2009 or even 2006, when the COC endorsed him over Lamont who they saw as even more liberal. I am defending Ezra’s claim that on Social Safety Net policy, which the PO is, Lieberman has been a solid liberal progressive, from 1974 to the present. Sorry, but that’s just the facts. That he is now a sniveling opportunist with axes to grind and pure self interest to promote is not the point. The point is, for him to now vote to obstruct a PO would run exactly opposite to his full public servant history.
And I don’t think he will, and I think Harry Reid already knows that. But will have to pay joe his ransom, likely a committee chair guaranteed for the rest of his Senate career.
Demo Woman
@kay: I was trying to be coy in my remarks about Liebermans wife. If you ever saw Grease, she was the one with the shoulders way back, not that there is anything wrong with that. If Reid wants this bill done, he needs to count out Joe.
lyons
He just wants obama to change his position on the settlements? I have no idea what he is up to here…
Demo Woman
@General Winfield Stuck: Reid will have better luck bribing someone else.
Joe said he was a democratic member except for nuking countries and he has already proved that wrong by today’s statement. He cannot be trusted.
Jim C
Hey Jerkoff,
Why not wait until you see the final bill before you claim anything was accomplished and you are owed apologies.
Have you not seen the Democrats fail time & again???
You truly are that ignorant.
Go George Bush I. He was such a good guy.
kay
@General Winfield Stuck:
I don’t think it’s a good comparison, Medicare and health care reform, if Medicare’s what we mean by the “social safety net”.
I would also dispute that Leiberman supports the “social safety net” in any form, because he was one of the main movers behind privatizing it, and running federal money thru religious orgs.
I know he isn’t going to attack Social Security. He’s not suicidal.
I question whether he will ever support anything that cuts into insurance company profits, and I flat out dispute the broad premise that he some warm spot for “the social safety net” or ‘the commons”.
He wants the social safety net privatized, and run through religious organizations. So did Jesse Helms. And George W Bush.
General Winfield Stuck
@Demo Woman:
I didn’t say anything about trust, that is a strawman, but the fact is, he is the sixtyeth vote needed to break a certain GOP filibuster, and his stances on foreign policy are irrelevant to HCR. He probably won’t be the only one to get something for his vote. He is just going to be the most public one, which is Joe’s way.
jl
A little history of filibuster rules
My understanding is that in the good old days
1) Senators throwing a filibuster had to hold the floor (and, yes, I know that does not mean Jimmy Stewart had to stand up and talk until he fell over)
2) Took more than 41 Senators to start one.
Many Americans are familiar with the filibuster conducted by Jimmy Stewart, playing Senator Jefferson Smith in Frank Capra’s film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but there have been some famous filibusters in the real-life Senate as well. During the 1930s, Senator Huey P. Long effectively used the filibuster against bills that he thought favored the rich over the poor. The Louisiana senator frustrated his colleagues while entertaining spectators with his recitations of Shakespeare and his reading of recipes for “pot-likkers.” Long once held the Senate floor for fifteen hours. The record for the longest individual speech goes to South Carolina’s J. Strom Thurmond who filibustered for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Filibuster_Cloture.htm
In 1975, the Senate reduced the number of votes needed to invoke cloture to three-fifths (60) of Senate membership. At the same time, they made the filibuster “invisible” by requiring only that 41 Senators state that they intend to filibuster; critics say this makes the modern filibuster “painless.”
http://uspolitics.about.com/od/usgovernment/a/filibuster.htm
The Modern Filibuster and Its Predecessor
Here is how filibusters had worked for decades, before the advent of Mansfield’s system: To conduct a filibuster, a Senator had to be recognized by the presiding officer and then had to maintain the floor by talking. Because one man (or woman) can only talk so long without sitting, eating, sleeping, and other human necessities, the Senator running the filibuster can yield to a colleague who has joined in the filibuster to continue, thus operating like a tag team.
Teams of Senators relieved one another so they would not lose the floor. They would sleep on sofas in the Senate cloakroom. Some even wore a device known to long-distance bus drivers as a motorman’s pal – enabling them to relieve themselves without leaving the Senate Floor.
Whenever the Senate had a filibuster, all other Senate business came to a halt. The filibusters occupied the Senate floor 24 hours, seven days a week, until they either got the proposal they wanted removed from the Senate’s agenda, or a cloture vote ended the filibuster.
With Mansfield’s proposal, all this changed. The Senate is generally a collegial body – doing much of its business, of necessity, by “unanimous consent.” Under Mansfield’s “two track” system, the Senate agreed, by unanimous consent, to spend its mornings on the matter being filibustered, and the afternoon on other business.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20030523.html
General Winfield Stuck
@kay:
We are just going to have to disagree then. And will find out soon enough who is right.
kay
@Demo Woman:
I figured. The NYTimes followed the Leiberman-wife-grant story for a little while, then dropped it.
Those grants are one of my pet peeves. I have learned to live with the fact that fundamentalist religious are using federal money to indoctrinate, but I’d like a goddamned audit every once in a while.
Just look at the books. That’s all I ask.
jl
So, my point is that the modern filibuster is effectively a new rule requiring a super majority in the Senate. All that has to happen is that 41 Senators state they intend to hold a filibuster. Then the filibuster can occur while other business proceeds until a cloture vote occurs on the item filibustered.
It would be better if filibusters were more visible. Now it is effectively just a requirement for a supermajority, and contradicts one of the principles of democracy, that majority rules whenever it does not violate the constitution or constitutional rights of citiznes.
So, that is what I meant.
Looks like Reid cannot change rules enough to force that, though he did try to make one filibuster stop other business awhile ago, I think.
General Winfield Stuck
@kay:
Can’t let this one go though. We are talking about Joe’s threat to filibuster the Public Option, not HCR as a whole. And the PO does fall under social safety net to provide insurance to those who can’t get it for whatever reason, though mostly due to poverty.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Fly Southworst more than once, then you’ll learn why their reputation is overblown.
All airlines suck, including Southworst. My most crappy flight experiences have been on, you guessed it, this airline.
Chad N Freude
@General Winfield Stuck: This is not a knock on you, mon Général, but there is a lot of mind-reading of Obama on this blog. I have no idea why people believe they know or can guess what he’s thinking or what he’s doing behind the scenes. I have absolutely no clue … wait! Maybe that means I should speculate, too. I think you get my point. Everybody is entitled to assume what they wish and speculate as they wish, but I haven’t seen any reason to take any of the speculation seriously, and I remain puzzled by the administration’s lack of clear action and — so far — disappointed.
soonergrunt
@Throwin Stones: seconded!
Chad N Freude
@Chad N Freude: I think I clicked on the wrong return arrow, thus invalidating my entire thesis.
John O
LOL, John, and thanks again. You sure do think like me (thus are a genius, QED) about stuff like this.
I don’t ever blog-whore out here, but I can tell you that the e-mail I sent to Lieberman’s office, while polite, was not exactly what you call complimentary. But it was one helluva lot meaner than this post.
As crappy and hateful and moronic as Republican principles have been for the majority or minorities of this country, at least a few of them have principles.
John O
@General Winfield Stuck:
I sure hope so, General.
And I pointed this out in my e-mail to him. (Paraphrasing) “I’m sure there are things you want out of this that I don’t know about that I think are good, but on this particular issue you get no quarter from me. This isn’t a game for people who’ve suffered from absent or crapy health care, which you and yours haven’t had to consider for a long time.”
And so on.
At least I’m not watching any cable gasbags, going on a month+ now.
Demo Woman
@General Winfield Stuck: Actually hospitals can no longer throw the indigent on the streets. The folks that are getting hurt are the middle class and folks older than 50.
General Winfield Stuck
@Chad N Freude:
Well, speculation is fun, usually, if there is effort of thought behind it. And see, I think your speculating that since you don’t see evidence of “clear action and—so far—” then it must not be occurring. Since we only see what’s done in public, I will speculate that a lot of clear action is in fact occurring behind the scenes.
To me, the fact that we are where we are with an issue that has been attempted and dreamed about many times before and fallen far short of the advanced stage we have entered, this is a success in itself. Whether it ends up actually getting done remains to be seen. But because it is so very important, it should be expected that folks put a lot of effort in reading the tea leaves we can see, and can’t.
Demo Woman
Bush touted that every one in America could get treatment and spoke about emergency rooms.. That is the most costly treatment available.
John O
@General Winfield Stuck:
Right on again, General.
Nobody is even close to being able to know what is really going on, big picture-wise.
For all we know, Obama asked Lieberman to do this, because in the long run (2 weeks, in this case) it games out pretty well for both of them.
General Winfield Stuck
@John O:
I said in a comment yesterday that Lieberman was the wild card, and unfortunately he is being just that. But even if he votes to block HCR, then I really think it will light a fire under the progressive majority of Senators to do it by Reconciliation.
But who the fuck knows right now. Certainly not I.
Chad N Freude
Not what I meant. I should have said “the administration’s apparent lack” or “lack of evidence of any clear action” or something like that. I’m not assuming there isn’t any, I am bothered by not seeing any evidence of it.
Demo Woman
@John O: That’s a stretch because remember when Barack took Joe to the corner and Joe did not look happy.
Chad N Freude
@General Winfield Stuck: My last comment should have pointed here.
robertdsc-PowerBook
Just testing my new PB out. it’s purty.
Firefox 3.5.3 on Tiger 10.4.11.
General Winfield Stuck
@Chad N Freude:
I know. We are all anxious about this right now about not knowing how it’s going to turn out. Too important to not be worried.
andrewtna
@General Winfield Stuck:
Did you read what I wrote?
You’re only talking about one defection who isn’t a Dem, but there are at least two Dems holding out – Ben Nelson and Kent Conrad.
Roland Burris of all people has said he will not vote for a bill that doesn’t contain a public option. So what was your point then?
The point of my earlier post was that it’s better to have 57 votes for a bill with an opt-out than to have less votes for a bill with a trigger.
We’re witnessing the best-case scenario right now, and it’s still ugly.
Chad N Freude
@General Winfield Stuck: But it would be irresponsible not to speculate.
John O
I played a lot of formal Chicago amateur basketball.
Obama will dunk on Lieberman unless this is planned. He tries to be nice, but in the end Obama knows you just can’t be all the time.
I may be misjudging this particular instance of the President showing his nads, but I have a sneaking suspicion it will be a Democrat to whom he shows them, and it seems to me the timing is about right in the example of Joe. As someone pointed out earlier, Joe has been historically pro-reform (at least in terms of rhetoric) on health care and Obama has the ammo to beat the snot out of ol’ Joe, because I believe Obama and his team are the first Admin to know we can go to the tape.
It’s simple good politics.
Anne Laurie
@kay:
Seconded. But Haddassah’s little buddies’ orgs probly didn’t have nearly so many non-white and poor people sitting in the top-level offices, and the Media Village Idiots think it’s not really a crime when rich white people are doing the stealing.
John O
@Demo Woman:
I thought about mentioning that, DW, but I watched it several times and it was pretty clear to me who was bottom.
The POTUS simply has more leverage.
General Winfield Stuck
@andrewtna:
Yes, I did read what you wrote and I disagree that Obama’s been taking sides one way or another at appeasing anyone. He has basically had a hands off approach, at least in public. And that could be and has been criticized for style. But not by me, because I don’t think public hammering of dem cc’rs works like it does on the GOP side.
I just think Obama wants to get any bill passed initially out of the Senate, with or without a PO and start the real game in conference where the more lib House and Pelosi have sway and take it from there on a PO and how to proceed to get it through the Senate.
Chad N Freude
Just glanced at TPM. It is so-o-o not encouraging.
John O
All I care about is the end game.
Nobody has brought this further along. No half-black guy has ever won the Presidency in a landslide.
No President has ever proposed an upgrade to our energy-delivery system completely under the proverbial radar.
I was, like 90% of all Americans, very much behind my President on 9-11. We all know how that turned out.
So I’ll figure Obama knows a little bit more about all this than I do, for now.
Demo Woman
@Chad N Freude: I haven’t gone over since Josh highlighter Chuck Todd’s statement on the White House aide which was bogus.
Demo Woman
@John O: lol.. I have a friend who came close to giving up on Obama and I mentioned the stimulus, the Lily Ledbetter bill and the hate crimes bill and said to take a deep breath and two aspirins.
John O
Does anyone at all remember “the public option is dead?”
It may wind up dying, for sure, but it will die hard, this time.
If I understand this right, the POTUS is betting on his opposition from the Left, because he can read numbers. And the POTUS knows his left can, too.
We’ll see. For me, it only matters a little at this point. Incremental gains are fine by me.
General Winfield Stuck
@John O:
Yes, mostly by hapless wingnuts whistling past the graveyard on the way to the next Tea Bag Party.
MNPundit
What the fuck? Swarthy guy?
Perhaps if he had actually put out some REAL FUCKING EFFORT this could have been avoided. No senator is saying “Obama called me” not one. Not one. Lieberman was HIS mentor and Obama saved his ass.
You think I’m an idiot but this is Obama’s fault.
John O
@MNPundit:
C’mon, MNP! You have NO IDEA how much effort Obama has put into this, except publicly, which matters not a whit!
gwangung
You act like you know what’s going on.
How does this distinguish you from the pundits and Villagers?
John O
@gwangung:
Yeah, gg, it’s like the GOP on global warming, or tax cuts, or abortion.
“Why can’t anyone SEE how right I am!”
These folks, kind and decent folks since they’re hanging out here, are behaving like Villagers.
John O
Nightnight, y’all. Work to do in the dreaded morning.
Can’t wait to hear about the John-Lily reunion.
gwangung
@John O: I don’t want to dump on folks around here (as opposed to Villagers). The frustration is real, and the motives are good. However, two things occur to me. One, we don’t have any info. I mean, none. No idea what’s going on in private meetings. No idea what’s going on in back channels (except for the fact that meetings ARE going on and they are frequent). Making conclusions in an information vacuum is kinda silly.
Second, this process is the furthest along than it’s ever has been. Coupled with the information void, we have no idea what tactics were key to getting us to this point. For all we know, getting up and public and “providing real leadership” may have had the opposite effect. We won’t know until later. But it’s quite possible that doing business as usual, and acting as past Presidents/politicians have done would have allowed opponents to settle into well known and well tested political tactics–the very fact that it’s so low key and so unusual may have allowed reform to have gone further because opponents didn’t know how to handle that low-keyed approach.
valdivia
@gwangung: This.
DaBomb
@John O: Welcome to the jungle.
As the President has said since the beginning he wants a public option, Valerie Jarret has said it, Axelrod has said it and host of other folks. But for some folks, if it doesn’t fit their concern trolling or soap opera narrative, they aren’t buying it.
It doesn’t matter what bill comes out of the Senate, conference is what’s important and not all of posturing or Kabuki.
DaBomb
@gwangung: Yeppers in agreement.
valdivia
@DaBomb:
Again you and I in agreement. What worries me a lot is that because Reid did this now the way he did it we may not get a bill out of the Senate at all. We could have had the PO at the end of the process but now this might stall earlier all because Reid wanted to be a hero. I am actually rather dispirited today. I felt Obama had a smart strategy that Reid stepped all over. I hope there is someone else int he Senate counting votes because Reid seems useless to me. Okay rant over.
Chad N Freude
@gwangung: Your first paragraph is the same point I tried to make upthread in an exchange with General W S.
LD50
@MNPundit:
Why are you assuming that if he had, they’d all be saying so?
General Winfield Stuck
@valdivia:
It’s just impossible to know right now what Reid knows or doesn’t know. One thing Reid has never been accused of is reckless heroism. He is a cautious to a fault leader, and it is hard for me to believe he did this without knowing what it would take to get Lieberman to go along. But if he did err like you say, then it is not good for the cause in general, but would not fatally damage it imo/
We should know sooner rather than later because Reid will drop the PO if he doesn’t have the votes, before it goes to the Senate Floor, which could be as soon as next week. Of course, there is the possibility Harry has gone insane and bent on committing political suicide and taking HCR with him, but I doubt that.
DaBomb
@valdivia: Yeah, I can understand being dispirited on this one, but as the General stated up thread, Lieberman has always voted for Social Safety Net issues. Voting against this bill with all the heat it has generated would be political suicide.
I believe Lieberman is posturing and playing games.
We just have to wait and see.
DaBomb
@General Winfield Stuck: This.
valdivia
@DaBomb:
Keeping fingers crossed hoping you guys are right. I guess the other thing that gets me even more dispirited is to see how many people actually believe Obama has done nothing to get us where we are. Just amazing. Sigh.
Thanks though for the pep post. ;-)
valdivia
@General Winfield Stuck:
thanks to you too Stuck. Once again you guys having breathing right.
Litlebritdifrnt
@gwangung:
Wot he/she said. With sprinkles.
Elie the Amateur
valdivida:
Just remember that a lot of the blogs and MSM foment discord and agrievement — got to keep the pot stirred up to get those comments
They think that is the only way to stimulate “action” – as in argument vs discussion.
To do that, you must be negative and intense, or both…
So yeah, Obama has done nothing to get us here. If health care passes, Lord knows, it was due to the failure of the opposition rather than the success of his or his team’s strategy or approach or project management….
That is just where we are with this right now…
Joe Buck
No apologies from me. The kind of bill President Snowe wanted to write would be worse than nothing, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Lieberman booted out of his committee chair before this is over.
Obama needs to be in there twisting arms, and dissidents need to pay a price. Do you think that the Republican leadership would let their moderates get away with this crap?
Elie the Amateur
Joe Buck:
The Republican leadership is not and should not be our model.
Top down cram down is so passe. Yawn.
How about representative democracy? How about negotiation and convincing versus twisting arms and busting heads? Now there’s a thought! Brains versus brawn.
Get your rocks off some other way. Your model is what got us the success of the Bush years. That worked so well, right?
Nice butch name ya got there though
Chad N Freude
@Joe Buck:
Of course not, but the Republicans have, at least until now, maintained strict discipline over legislators who behave like a school of fish, moving as one. Democrats behave more like molecules in a heated gas and are not amenable to discipline of any kind.
And who are these Republican moderates of which you speak? They are mythical beasts.
I have to go now. It’s midnight, Cowboy.
Maybe
Or maybe Lieberman wouldn’t have felt like he had room to do this had the White House come out strongly at some point. Maybe the WH’s aloofness on this has some correlation to the troubles Reid and Pelosi are having rounding up the votes they thought were there. Maybe you ought to remember that whole “consistently wrong” tagline before you jump on the opportunity to gloat over a process you haven’t seen the end result of yet.
But who am I kidding? This is Balloon Juice, where we leap to conclusions so that we can feel justified ridiculing others for doing the same.
Maybe
@Punchy:
You’re right. Clearly Lieberman will be solely and exclusively responsible should HCR fail (or get watered down to the point where failure would’ve been preferable.) He is the only politician involved in the process who made any decisions at any point and has written all the bills entirely by himself, thus it makes sense that he should be the only one held to account.
Of course back in the real world it’s looking entirely possible that the only thing that would’ve been different had Lieberman been tossed outt’ve the caucus would be that he’d be opposing this from a position of diminished power and credibility, but I guess acknowledging that would also imply that you guys were admitting Obama is capable of making mistakes.
Actually it’s funny that Cole didn’t look far enough ahead while relishing the opportunity to snark off about ‘O-bots’ that he didn’t see how he was opening himself right up for someone to argue that this is Obama’s own doing. But again, consistently wrong… or, I’m sorry, were we pretending that Obama didn’t have any part in the Lieberman/caucus decision? I need to make sure which revision of the Obama-As-Omniscient-And-Infinitely-Capable-Backroom-Dealer script we’re working from here. It’s the one where he’s always working out secret backroom deals that will benefit us all – except in the cases where things don’t seem to be going well for him, at which point he’s a hand-off guy who respects the democratic process by letting Congress make up their own minds right? (See also #176 above)
kay
@valdivia:
Nah. Reid screwed it all up. Lieberman is the spoiler. It’s his job to kill any momentum. The three Democrats will use him as cover.
Maybe Mrs. Bayh ( Wellpoint ) and Mrs. Lieberman ( formerly of Hill and Knowlton, health care division) can get together and plan strategy.
Harry Reid has to be corrupt because no one is this stupid.
I hope Senator Snowe is still available. She has the singular advantage of not actually being on the payroll of the opposition.
kay
@valdivia:
And, if you think he won’t do it, you’re delusional.
Lieberman broke the Democrat’s filibuster on the bankruptcy bill, then covered his ass by voting “no” on the final, with a windy moralistic speech about the middle class, and how he had planned “amendments” to protect his constituents, none of which were adopted, as he knew they wouldn’t be. Twenty minutes on national television, every word a lie.
Shameless.
They have 57 votes, which Obama knew, and Reid has handed these creeps a podium to demonize reform. Thanks, Harry.
valdivia
@kay:
yes it is what I thought. What idiots.
kay
@valdivia:
We basically shut the law office down to fight the bankruptcy bill. All for naught. I have a chip on my shoulder :)
I knew our people couldn’t pay both their mortgage and their crushing load of unsecured debt (credit cards and medical debt), and I knew the Bush economy was a mirage, and it was going to crash. They made it harder to discharge unsecured debt just as people were finding they couldn’t make their mortgage. It bordered on cruelty.
So, don’t count on Joe. He’ll screw us.
liberal
@Demo Woman:
Did you mention handing over more money to banksters?
Savage Henry
@ aimai
Maybe I’m giving Obama too much credit, but I think he is always 3 steps ahead. I think that he supported Lieberman keeping his committee posts so that he could keep some leverage in his back pocket.
With a big publicity opportunity like this, of course Lieberman is going to start stroking himself in front of the cameras. But the Dem leadership can now threaten him with stripping his committee posts if he gets out of line. If they had taken the revenge route after the election, Lieberman would already be on the GOP side and there would be no leverage. This way they have something.
Lieberman is a shallow opportunist. Once he knows that he’s got some real skin in the game, he’s going to back down.
General Winfield Stuck
@kay:
I’m sorry Kay, but this is just wrong. You may be right in the end about Lieberman scuttling the PO by voting with repubs to filibuster, but Lieberman did not break a dem filibuster on Bankruptcy bill. He, along with 13 other dems voted to break the dem filibuster attempt on the Bankruptcy bill making the yea on cloture at 69 votes. Most of those then voted yea on the bill, plus a couple of other dems. Lieberman voted no on final passage.
could be that “chip on your shoulder” is making you a little delusional?
kay
@General Winfield Stuck:
Stuck, did he vote to break the filibuster? I mean, this is nitpicking. Incidentally, it would have been braver and more honest for him to have voted “yes”on the final bill.
He’s a fraud.
kay
@General Winfield Stuck:
I know I’m supposed to include the other Democrats who backed the bankruptcy bill. But, we’re not talking about them.
I’m not going to play this game. Lieberman is not a reliable vote, on any issue, and hasn’t been one for years.
At least Kent Conrad shows his cards.
Obama wasn’t counting Lieberman, nor should he.
kay
@General Winfield Stuck:
It did not matter that he voted no on the final bill. The cloture vote was the whole fight. He knew that.
General Winfield Stuck
@kay:
I fully agree with this and I despise the guy, but he does have self interest and right now we just don’t know precisely what that is, neither you nor I. It could be he just turned evil and is out to destroy the dem party, but I seriously doubt that.
kay
@General Winfield Stuck:
You may be right. I don’t see how he covers his ass on health care reform like he did on bankruptcy.
Too, a lot more people are watching. We’ll have to see if it benefits him, I guess.
General Winfield Stuck
@kay:
Kay, your original comment left the impression that it was Lieberman’s vote that made the difference on breaking the Bankruptcy bill filibuster. It did not. I just think we ought to try and stick to facts is all.
General Winfield Stuck
@kay:
And you may be right, In fact, I suspect you are after reading more about Joe’s statements yesterday. But the guy is completely unpredictable and will turn on a dime. I have always said this will likely have to be done thru reconciliation in the end.
Original Lee
The Senate has turned into a pro wrestling league. I hope everybody has their script memorized. Also.
General Winfield Stuck
@kay:
Oh, and one more thing
:-)
kay
@General Winfield Stuck:
Okay, but you keep contradicting me with non-contradictions.
He voted for cloture on bankruptcy. Far from being “anti-business” he was endorsed by the Chamber in 2006.
He has an undeserved reputation as a “liberal” and that bi-partisan cred gets him on television. When he gets on television, he trashes liberals.
I’d really rather have a Republican.
General Winfield Stuck
@kay:
Lieberman broke the Democrat’s filibuster on the bankruptcy bill,
General Winfield Stuck
@kay:
After thinking about it for awhile, maybe your right. If not nitpicking, then close enough. I bitch about it when I get nitpicked, so I should practice my own preaching.
Lieberman is an ass, so we agree on that anyways.
kay
@General Winfield Stuck:
I’ll stop. I promise. I’m genuinely worried about this, is the reason I’m haranguing you.
I have this stupid idea that the universe will generate “momentum” or something, and I don’t want anyone blocking that.
I can justify the blue dogs. I understand rural people, and I understand the blue dog’s democratic voters, who are, essentially, conservatives.
But, Connecticut? Please.
tomtom
SWA FYI
Southwest does not have agreements with other airlines to carry stranded passengers.
Unlike the major airlines, if you are stranded due to weather or whatever Southwest will not put you on another carrier’s flight. You have to wait for the next Southwest flight. If that flight is the next day you pay for your own hotel. I know this because it happened to me.
Southwest – not to be confused with a full-service airline.
Scottofny
@Mirthless Chopper – Frmrly TheFountainHead:
Wow! Given the competition, that’s one hell of an indictment.
Hard to disagree…
S