“Leadership is getting someone to do what they don’t want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve.”
–Tom Landry
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IN: A Few Words On The “Big Lie’s” Last Prisoner
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I thought we canceled this one in favor of a Wednesday…….
We’re going to bring the whole economy down doing that, like the Y2K bug except for real.
“France and Germany are expected to give details this weekend of an agreement to station hundreds of German troops on French soil for the first time since the second world war, in a region the countries have squabbled over for centuries.
The historic move for troops in either Alsace or Lorraine is part of a 20-year joint military project to encourage reconciliation between the two countries.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…
To inattentive layman, this seems like a really bad idea. But the two countries have deployed their joint brigade to Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, and anyone over the age of 30 doesn’t see the problem.
Still, I can’t help but be nervous…
I don’t mind having a second Tuesday today. It was nice the first time.
Oh wait. Wednesday means Senate hearings to attend. Must have a Wednesday this week, and not tomorrow.
This one is a bad bill – “coercive control” is NOT something that should be added to a Domestic Violence statue, esp when all this bill does is feed the DV industry.
This ting pretends to help the mIlitary and their families, but all it will do is kick out even more AD & Guard servicemembers with the new stupid definition. Esp the line that says PTSD and TBI are escalating extensions of Domestic Violence.
I wanted to go today, but I have a gig to do – gotta pay the bills.
SB068 was not one I planned on today. A quick read of it shows some problems. If I get a chance I’ll drop in on the hearing.
I am going for SB-088 and if possible catch a couple of others.
SB-88 is benefits coverage for same-sex state employees. This may have an impact on the Aurora benefits coverage vote for same-sex city employees when it comes up for vote Feb.23.
Both proposals, when passed, will demonstrate Colorado and Aurora are looking to be competitive for companies looking to relocate to a state and city that treats government employees the same as the companies treat their own employees. 89.3% of the top 500 companies in the U.S. offer insurance coverage for their employees in a same-sex relationship.
Post-Independent
Personally I like pickles and democracy.
THis is the one proposed appointee that I really thought was a huge mistake on President Obama’s part, and I’m elated that she now is facing an uphill battle…
From the WaPo…
Solis is a disaster. Putting her at labor is like putting a mafioso at justice.
LB you nailed it … she won’t answer general questions on Right-to-Work or Card Check/Secret Ballot Removal matters … its like Tim Geitner refusing to discuss TARP, the AIG and Bera Sterns bailouts he arranged, of the decision to let Lehman fail.
If Rush L. wants Obama to fail at implementing a new socialist American model, Solis ascension to Labor will light that fire.
I’ll take an O’Douls…
In fact Paul’s former congressional chief of staff Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., is president of something called the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama.
That a moron like Paul likes him…
🙂
come in all conservative stripes, apparently. 🙂
He’s a farce, and his supporters are only a hair less annoying than drama students at a Denny’s at midnight.
He waits until a bill is certain to pass, makes sure he loads his district up with earmarks, then votes no and says he’s against all spending.
Douche.
Also, anyone who gives ‘troofers’ the time of day deserves a kick in the nuts.
Rasmussen is nothing more than a tool of the right wing Hannity-Limbaugh-O’Reilly media. Only DailyKos polls are to be trusted. 🙂
Maybe it’s just been a while since one came out that agreed with you.
But watch your Democrat Congress go whining and running to the hills and changing the bill faster than Al Gore hits the buffet at Furrs.
Unless the prior balance was a Republic congress…..
Can’t do it as long as there’s support for EFCA. Support for effectively eliminating a secret ballot makes it inaccurate to refer to someone as “democratic”.
the Republican plan gets more popular.
Maybe Democrats could get on TV a little more often and sell their ideas? True, unlike Republican Senators they have actual jobs to do, but still I think they should find some time.
“Now, in the past few days I’ve heard criticisms of this plan that echo the very same failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis – the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems; that we can ignore fundamental challenges like energy independence and the high cost of health care and still expect our economy and our country to thrive.
I reject that theory, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change. So I urge members of Congress to act without delay. No plan is perfect, and we should work to make it stronger. But let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the essential. Let’s show people all over our country who are looking for leadership in this difficult time that we are equal to the task.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02…
So, STFU and do something. The GOP’s universal answer of “TAX CUTS!” regardless of the question, will not work this time.
It didn’t work the last eight years, you got your ass handed to you this last election, and you’re on your way to a super-minority not seen since the days of Roosevelt.
Dan, the bill’s in trouble. That’s not because the GOP is getting weaker, it’s because it’s a shit bill.
The GOP was already marginalized. It’s not getting weaker, it was already weak.
is worse than useless and that’s all the GOP has. Obama is on board with cutting out a lot of the non-stimulus related crap. Some popular Influential GOP Governors, like Gov. Christ, are on board along with many of their state legislators. So don’t get too happy about the imminent demise of the stimulus plan, LB.
emanating out of a Pelosi-led House that gets flushed. 2010 is right around the corner.
Look how much you guys are bitching and crying when you don’t need a single Republican vote to pass anything.
Hehehehe.
I’ve heard a lot of that from Jon Kyl and Mitch McConnell and John McCain all over the TV, not so much from the Democrats.
“Waah, they let us vote on my stupid amendment but they didn’t let it pass!”
“Waah, Democrats should be bipartisan even though we lost and they won!”
“Waah, Obama’s only meeting us halfway, not all the way!”
The hankie budget at the RSCC must be near-busting.
But you obviously you don’t want to have a real conversation about this. Your ultra-partisanship over the last few weeks has been disheartening LB.
I find it really weird that you were less of a red-meat throwing, bullying ideologue during the election (culminating in your vote for Obama) than you are now.
It’s garbage and will do nothing to stimulate anything other than a bigger, equally ineffective government.
Don’t ask me to buy into something I don’t want any part of. I’m glad they voted no. Let the Dems own it.
I can envision lots of things I’d want to vote with Obama’s admin on. Lots. Just not this piece of shit.
right after this one fight.
It’s going to be like this for four years. Absolutely every Obama proposal will result in Rush bitching, therefore all Republicans bitching, therefore many commentators and righty bloggers bitching. You get a lot of your information from there, and I’m sure you’ll find it very convincing.
So what were you expecting to get out of an Obama administration? The opportunity to be in the minority so you could throw stones at the majority, rather than having actual responsibility for what the government does?
is Jimmy Carter.
…are the Economic Flat-Earth Society called the House and Senate Republicans.
And their pill-popping, massively overweight, bad-haricut radio talk-show stooges, some of which make shrieking appearances on Fox Noise.
If the Repubs in Congress want to make this bill work, they need to stop stamping their feet like 4 year olds who were told they can’t go to Chucky Cheese.
They can object to certain parts of the bill, and even suggest alternatives, but hooting and shrieking that tax cuts and only tax cuts can save the Union makes them look like the obstinate jackasses they’ve decided to become.
they kindly told him to f*&k off.
It sounded to me like “Obama’s giving us 65% of everything we wanted, and that’s a good first step, so congratulations. We don’t hate him, just everyone he has anything to do with.”
Were shut out of the process entirely on this bill. Good for them voting no on the piece of shit.
Why are the Dems so desperate to have partners in crime on this thing? They don’t need the votes.
all of which were voted on. They failed.
We can let you guys have a chance at presenting your ideas, but if “bipartisanship” means we do whatever you want, that’s just dumb.
Why do Democrats want Republicans as partners? I can’t imagine. Battered wife syndrome maybe?
The Dems could pass this like a fart in the wind. Why don’t they? Because they are receiving lots of phone calls from their constituents screaming at them that it’s a total piece of shit.
$4 Billion for ACORN is not stimulus. $400 million for global warming research isn’t stimulus. There are a lot of line items in this turd that have nothing to do with stimulus, but I don’t think it’s really Obama’s fault. I think Pelosi just couldn’t resist being a liberal Democrat and loading it with a bunch of crap, thinking nobody would object.
Well, they do.
BTW, why the psychosis about Limbaugh? He’s not a party or elected official? And yet he’s the problem? Hmmm….
I don’t remember Bush singling out Olberman or any other lefty talk show folks in order to make a point or get bills through Congress, and he didn’t have the numbers Obama has.
Come on, be serious. Even you said Limbaugh was a dick two days ago, and with Republicans falling over themselves to get his approval, you really think he’s not playing a big role here? Don’t play dumb.
Without a target for ire, the Dems seem to have a hard time leading, even though they can pass anything they want.
He is a dick A brilliant, brilliant dick.
You’re a dick, but I dig you. Are they mutually exclusive?
but you admitted he was a racist (or at least had said a bunch of racist stuff). From your comments there I didn’t conclude you were a fan.
Dems have this urge to be bipartisan. We apparently don’t trust ourselves to just push stuff through. That’s the psychosis, IMO.
If Democrats were Republicans, we wouldn’t need 60 votes in the Senate. Republicans wanted the nuclear option because a couple of judges got filibustered. That was all. Legislation didn’t. Then Republicans filibustered everything Democrats did, and we still don’t use it. There’s apparently a running filibuster that started in January 2007 and never ended, on all legislation. If I were in charge, I’d do the nuclear option, then I’d pass a 51-49 bill to cut all Republican senators nuts off. (Olympia Snowe gets a pass, she’s cool sometimes.)
That way, when they went on TV crying like little girls, they’d actually SOUND like little girls.
Rush is imminently powerful in the Republican party, solely because of the influence he carries with their constituency. When Rush says something, a huge listener base contacts their Republican representative.
Rush has as much power as any entertainment/media figure can.
Oh, that’s right, you can’t because it doesn’t.
You know…like the $200 million in rubbers was…
Link.
to a partisan attack. How about linking to the actual legislation which says nothing of the sort.
It’s funny how it still doesn’t mention Repub candidate John McCain’s appearance at an ACORN event, in which he praised the organization. But it is a true fact that Obama and ACORN are joined at the hip, in some delusional, self-illuminated way.
Even the snippet of that article you post has a tiny bit of responsible reporting:
“Probably chief among the groups to benefit from stimulus spending will be ACORN, the infamous network of 100-plus left-wing activist groups.”
Probably. Not will, not has, probably.
I’m going to go to OpenCongress.org and track the bill there. That’s about the best place to see the bill’s updates without relying on the Biased (insert direction here)-wing media.
.
the best kind.
.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…
Rather than the Rushbo talking points?
Here‘s the Library of Congress link to the legislation
The “$4.19 billion for ACORN” is a myth–the money is for governments and non-profits through a competitive bidding process. While ACORN is a nonprofit that’s the only connection; ACORN is not mentioned in the bill, the ‘connection’ is just right-wing scare tactics.
Competitive bidding is a good idea–lack of it is one of the reasons we have paid far too much for so many things under the last president.
Here is the relevant portion of the bill:
The CDBG was set up under that socialist called Gerald Ford, BTW.
You are becoming terribly blinded by your ideology my friend.
ACORN has said it doesn’t intend to bid on the CDF.
But LB and his ilk have to rail against ACORN because … well, because it worked so well in the last election.
$$ BILLION FOR ACORN they scream–even made it in Dougy’s little op-ed in the Gazette the other day, uncorrected printed as fact.
All one needs to do is read the actual bill–not that Lamborn or many of the other GOP congresscritters have bothered to do that…
It’s simply a lie. A myth. Bogus right-wing talking point, repeated ad nauseum in hope that it might then become true.
Now that the GOP has picked
JoeSam thePlumberWar Correspondentunlicensed handy man as their adviser I foresee great tribulation a head.Charlie Crist.
Progressives need to pick up the phone NOW to counter the onslaught of conservative calls to Congress, and push the Senate to fight for a bold economic recovery bill that creates jobs and counters the recession.
Here are 3 simple steps to guide your calls…
Step 1) Dial 1-866-544-7573. You will be given brief instructions (which you can skip by pressing “1”) then forwarded to the Congressional switchboard operator. Tell the operator which state you’re from, and ask to be connected to one of your senators.
Step 2) Tell Your Senators: Pass a bold economic recovery bill that puts America back to work. Here are some talking points to help guide your call.
h/t Thanks Digby
* I urge you to pass a big and bold economic recovery bill that puts priority on getting Americans back to work and ending the recession.
* Please resist attempts to weaken the bill with more corporate tax breaks and cuts in public investment.
* My community would benefit greatly from investments in infrastructure, green jobs, education, health care, unemployment assistance and state government aid.
You Dems can pass whatever you want without a single R vote.
I noticed the “stimulus” had grown to over $900 billion today.
The cost of not acting will make the great depression look like a walk in the park, given the global interelationships.
Thanks to “your president” GWB….the economy teeters on the edge of disaster. What don’t you understand about stimulus.
My complain about you, long standing, is that you trivialize and personalize the issues. That’s what got us into this mess.
It was interesting watching the whistleblower today state that he had been warning the SEC since 2000 (Let’s see, who was elected then?) that Madoff was a ponzi scheme and a collapse was inevitable. But, stacked with Bush appointments (Let the free market work), he was ignored. Now, multiple suicides later, and Billions lost that destroyes generations of work and wealth building…it’s coming to light.
Get serious and recognize that Reagan economics was a manipulation for the wealthy, that has led to a few getting obscenely rich, while every other boat sank. Is that what is right, fair, sustainable and desirable?
trying to exercise their oversight role again…and the (Bush-appointed) SEC guy trying to claim executive privilege kept him from answering questions.
But keep the bill to actual stimulus.
DO you think there’s nothing in it that could be left out?
You also realize that supporting this bill makes it impossible for you to credibly criticize anything Bush ever spent money on, including the Iraq war.
THis bill is now likely going to be over a trillion dollars. We’re less than a month into Obama’s administration…
or even of the least bad. If a stimulus package could be passed that were perfectly designed, to fit all tastes and arguments, fantastico! But politics is the art of compromise, and, while you oppose this package, others support it. One person’s pork is another’s stimulus. You, of course, are free to oppose the package, and you’re free to argue that you do so because it is larded with pork instead of focused on stimulus. But, in the end, you will never be able to argue that you supported a stimulus package, just not this stimulus package: You’re not being given a choice of alternatives at the moment.
in the perfect or the good, he’s the enemy of both. Your reasoned defense of compromise and accurate description how legislation actually gets made — it’s falling on deaf ears. The Republicans’ only hope is a complete economic collapse and the hope voters blame the Democrats rather than the obstructionists who allowed it to happen.
There has been some BS in this bill, and it’s angered Obama as well.
I don’t want collapse, and I voted for Obama. I just want to keep it as real as I can with a trillion dollars on the line for my kids.
Most of the Republicans opposing the bill are doing it for the reason I said, nibbling around the edges while ignoring the oncoming freight train. But you get hundreds of legislators — each beholden to their home districts or states — together to write legislation and you’re going to have some junk in it. That’s a cost of doing government in a representative democracy.
Do you trust those fuckers (regardless of party) with your kids and grandkids’ dough?
I don’t especially after the $200 million condom buy issue. I mean, come on.
But if you buy that the stimulus is needed — to close an estimated $1.2 trillion spending gap in the economy this year, which is already taking an awful toll but could accelerate — then nit-picking in the hundreds of millions is just delaying the fix. Stimulus dollars are basically fungible in the economy — within some limits, it simply doesn’t matter how the money is spent, so long as it’s spent. And frankly, complaining about condom spending that actually moves dollars through the economy (and has some beneficial effects, at least to condom users) when it’s a fraction of the TARP money that went out in bonuses (which doesn’t get spent) strikes me as a silly trees-for-the-forest issue.
Without them, we get fewer babies, hence fewer workers in 20 years, hence lower tax revenues. Don’t you libjerks ever plan for the future?
fewer STDs, fewer unwanted pregnancies, and fewer abortions.
But Repubs don’t want fewer abortions. That would cut into their wedge issue rhetoric.
-King Charles I’s answer to Cromwell’s offer to buy his crown for a dollar.
The preceding post ceased to make sense when sxp changed his tag-line. Okay, it didn’t make much sense even before that….
Stimulus means pumping federal money into the economy to make up for crashing consumer and business demand. Social service spending enters and stimulates the economy the same as building roads, and it can be spent faster.
Climate researchers and public health workers buy office supplies, eat lunch at restaurants and put gas in their vehicles, same as construction workers — so what’s your beef with climate change research and STD prevention as a tiny slice of a giant spending bill, if the intent is to spend money on useful things as quickly as possible?
Blaming Obama — less than a month into his administration! — for the cost of this bill is ludicrous. He’s cleaning up the biggest financial mess in generations, left by the same economic geniuses now blocking the stimulus bill.
Your comparison between Bush spending — and the tax cuts that were a gift to his base — when he inherited a surplus, and stimulus spending when the economy is on the verge of collapse makes no sense, but nice try.
(I know you will)
From Krugman:
“But the part that really got me was Broder saying that we need “the best ideas from both parties.”
“You see, this isn’t a brainstorming session – it’s a collision of fundamentally incompatible world views. If one thing is clear from the stimulus debate, it’s that the two parties have utterly different economic doctrines. Democrats believe in something more or less like standard textbook macroeconomics; Republicans believe in a doctrine under which tax cuts are the universal elixir, and government spending is almost always bad.”
“Obama may be able to get a few Republican Senators to go along with his plan; or he can get a lot of Republican votes by, in effect, becoming a Republican. There is no middle ground.”
Got that? I know Krugman is a Nobel Prize winning economist, but what he wrote today really isn’t that complicated.
Bipartisanship doesn’t work when there isn’t a middle ground. Obama won the election. People want Obama’s economic philosophy, not the GOP’s.
After all, damn near every prof at CU uses his ‘Macro’ textbook. 🙂
As much as I like Krugman, he likes to ignore political reality too often. No, there’s no middle ground on something like this, but, this being a republic and all, you have to invent a middle.
We don’t have a dictator and repubs hold enough seats to influence the outcome of this package. If we want to pass a bill you have to include enough dumb repub ideas to pass something. Either that or wait until the country physically can’t function anymore and we invoke the nuclear option.
There is a “middle ground” in this…it’s just farther to the right than any of us want it to be.
because the Republicans either don’t believe or willfully deny that the economy can be helped by a stimulus-spending bill.
with the entire repub caucus. No one is going to get Saxby Chambliss or David Vitter to vote yes on any stimulus package.
The question is what’s it going to take to get Nelson (NE), Pryor, Lincoln, any other conservative dems along with, Collins, Snowe, and/or Murkowski to vote Yes.
I suspect getting them to vote yes won’t mean cutting all the actual “stimulating” aspects of the stimulus nor will it mean caving to a ton of useless tax cuts.
The “middle” I’m talking about is made up of a handful of repubs and the entire dem caucus.
and I don’t see any evidence at all for that assertion. The tax cuts were put in specifically to placate them, and every single one of them voted against it.
Just how many Republican ideas can we put into this bill? At some point it will become the exact bill McCain would have proposed. And even then Republicans will vote against it, because at this point it doesn’t seem to be about the ideology anymore. It’s about being pissed off that they lost, and objecting to literally every single thing Obama does, three weeks in.
You’re right, eventually it will look like the McCain Economic Destruction…uh…I mean, Stimulus package.
Short of going nuclear option on repubs, you have to include as many dumb ideas as will get the bill through the senate. it sucks, it’s dumb…but it’s reality.
If they can placate the Collins’ and Snowes of the world and keep Ben Nelson’s mouth shut, they can pass something. Get it the hell out of the Senate into Conference and hopefully pass it again when it comes back.
1) Dems aren’t all in agreement, in part because constituents aren’t sure they like the stimulus package, or any stimulus package. Some Dems in opposition probably have sincere objections, and others probably are making a political calculation. But, while the parties are relevant, they are not the whole story. And,
2) Due to the change in rules regarding fillibusters (that you only need to announce the intention to fillibuster to effectuate a fillibuster), 60 votes are needed in the Senate rather than a simple majority, and the Dems don’t have 60 seats in the senate. Last time I checked, there were only 57 seated Dems (not counting Lieberman). Am I missing something (sincerely)?
Constituent concerns, from my point of view, are mostly due to a combination of distrust of government, and an unwillingness to endure what Barney Frank referred to as “collateral benefit.” Addressing the second issue: A woman in asking Jared Polis a question last Saturday was livid that stimulus money should benefit people who didn’t act responsibly, such as homeowners who bit off more than they could chew. She seemed oblivious to the argument that if the answer to the question “what is in our collective economic best interest?” leads to an answer that benefits undeserving people, but which saves all of our bacon, then it’s not necessarily the wisest course of action to cut off your nose to spite your face.
I think both are aspects of a levels-of-analysis error: The assumption that government spending yields only individualized and not collective benefits is a levels-of-analysis error; and the assumption that in a world dependent on principle-agent relationships, that the one such arrangement that is somehow inherently incapable of performing any useful function is the one called “government,” is just some repeated incantation rather than a reasonable conclusion. Government, like all principle-agent arrangements, suffers from an inherent agency problem, one which incurs costs to solve, but one which, all things considered, is sometimes the most efficient solution to certain kinds of problems, since all solutions, including market solutions, involve certain costs and benefits.
Euro Fighter Typhoon vs. a Bugatti Veyron
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
One of the most entertaining shows on TV. I hope they don’t screw up too bad with the U.S. version.
.
longtime apologist for Israeli appropriation of Palestinian lands, Tom Friedman, says
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02…
that an Israeli party on the ascendancy is regarded as fascistic.
.