The people elected a large Democratic majority.
The Republicans were ready to ban the filibuster after we tried to block the most extreme of Bush’s judicial nominations.
Since the Democrats regained control of the Senate, Republicans have abused the filibuster rule like never before. Until 1970, no session of Congress had more than ten votes on cloture to end a filibuster. Until 2007, the record was 58. But since Democrats regained control of the Senate, filibusters have skyrocketed. The last session had a new record of 112.
[...]
In 1975, the Senate reduced the number of votes needed to end a filibuster from 67 to 60. Now, with the Party of No blocking majority rule on virtually everything the country needs, we need to do it again.
Why not? Because it’s somehow a contradiction that Democrats wanted to keep the filibuster (when they weren’t abusing it)? What about the contradiction of the Republicans who wanted it gone when they had power, and now have used it more than any Congress in history?
They’ve turned the Senate into a de facto 60 vote body, and the press has simply rolled over. We have 55+ Senators willing to vote for cloture and then let the actual vote occur.
Why else would the filibuster vote be so hugely symbolic for Senators like Lieberman? Because they know the bill would pass. Lieberman and the Republicans are going to filibuster precisely because they’d lose the vote if debate were allowed to end.
These guys have taken a procedural loophole and turned it into the rule. Why can’t the loophole be closed? Why can’t we ease the requirement to 55? Why shouldn’t it be 50? Because the Republicans will say the word “fascism” again, but louder?
I say to Hell with it all. If they want it to be a war of procedure, use procedure against them. Of course, while the press rolls over for a Republican filibuster, it’ll be BAD NEWS FOR DEMOCRATS if they use procedural retaliation.
So we’re back to the paradigm of chickenshit Democrats vs. batshit crazy shameless Republicans and a press still afraid of being called liberal (memo to press: Unless you’re willing to be a literal propaganda machine ala Fox, you’ll never escape being called liberal).
So somehow we have 55+ Senators, fairly elected, willing to let Obama follow through on what he was elected to do, with a bill so staggeringly compromised you’d expect to see 75 votes in favor, but if a minority of teaparty zombies and corporate hacks
led by Limbaugh, Beck, and Palin, can create a roadblock…
…well, just guess who will get the blame if meaningful health care reform fails to pass?
Really, folks, if you’re worried about the economy, and losing your jobs (which means losing your health care), and you’re sitting around swallowing a single line of bullshit from the Republicans, I don’t know how you live with yourselves or try to lecture me about “real” Americans, or “freedom,” or the Constitution. Recently we’ve had a guest troll try every line he could glean from Limbaugh, and fail spectacularly (and behaving like a disgusting human being in the process).
Every chance I’ve had to corner one of these people and make them stand up for what they say they believe in, and try to get them to explain coherently why I should believe anything they say, it’s a complete blow-out. They can’t do it. They just go running back to their winger friends and assure each other that they’re the REAL AMERICANS WHO ARE FIGHTING FOR WHAT OUR COUNTRY REALLY REPRESENTS AND I DON’T EVEN THINK OBAMA IS AN AMERICAN YOU KNOW…
If Beck, Limbaugh, Palin and the like really represent this country, then face facts, America: this country has jumped the shark. We are no longer serious. We are no longer grown-ups. We are no longer governed by reason. We are no longer wise. We have surrendered to our worst.
But I don’t think they do, and so we haven’t. Yet.
-jb
November 23rd, 2009 at 9:00 pm
The Democratic Party has become the Lawyers’ Party.
Barack Obama is a lawyer.
Michelle Obama is a lawyer.
Hillary Clinton is a lawyer.
Bill Clinton is a lawyer.
John Edwards is a lawyer.
Elizabeth Edwards is a lawyer.
Every Democrat nominee since 1984 went to law school (although Gore did not graduate).
Every Democrat vice presidential nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Bentsen, went to law school.
Look at leaders of the Democrat Party in Congress:
Harry Reid is a lawyer.
Nancy Pelosi is a lawyer.
The Republican Party is different.
President Bush is a businessman.
Vice President Cheney is a businessman.
The leaders of the Republican Revolution:
Newt Gingrich was a history professor.
Tom Delay was an exterminator. Dick Armey was an economist.
House Minority Leader Boehner was a plastic manufacturer.
The former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is a heart surgeon.
Who was the last Republican president who was a lawyer? Gerald Ford, who left office 31 years ago and who barely won the Republican nomination as a sitting president, running against Ronald Reagan in 1976.
The Republican Party is made up of real people doing real work, who are often the targets of lawyers.
The Democrat Party is made up of lawyers. Democrats mock and scorn men who create wealth, like Bush and Cheney, or who heal the sick, like Frist, or who immerse themselves in history, like Gingrich.
The Lawyers’ Party sees these sorts of people, who provide goods and services that people want, as the enemies of America. And, so we have seen the procession of official enemies, in the eyes of the Lawyers’ Party, grow.
Against whom do Hillary and Obama rail? Pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, hospitals, manufacturers, fast food restaurant chains, large retail businesses, bankers, and anyone producing anything of value in our nation.
This is the natural consequence of viewing everything through the eyes of lawyers.
Lawyers solve problems by successfully representing their clients, in this case the American people.
Lawyers seek to have new laws passed, they seek to win lawsuits, they press appellate courts to overturn precedent, and lawyers always parse language to favor their side.
Confined to the narrow practice of law, that is fine. But it is an awful way to govern a great nation.
When politicians as lawyers begin to view some Americans as clients and other Americans as opposing parties, then the role of the legal system in our life becomes all-consuming. Some Americans become “adverse parties” of our very government. We are not all litigants in some vast social class-action suit.
We are citizens of a republic that promises us a great deal of freedom from laws, from courts, and from lawyers.
Today, we are drowning in laws; we are contorted by judicial decisions; we are driven to distraction by omnipresent lawyers in all parts of our once private lives. America has a place for laws and lawyers, but that place is modest and reasonable, not vast and unchecked. When the most important decision for our next president is whom he will appoint to the Supreme Court, the role of lawyers and the law in America is too big. When lawyers use criminal prosecution as a continuation of politics by other means, as happened in the lynching of Scooter Libby and Tom Delay, then the power of lawyers in America is too great. When House Democrats sue America in order to hamstring our efforts to learn what our enemies are planning to do to us, then the role of litigation in America has become crushing.
We cannot expect the Lawyers’ Party to provide real change, real reform or real hope in America Most Americans know that a republic in which every major government action must be blessed by nine unelected judges is not what Washington intended in 1789. Most Americans grasp that we cannot fight a war when ACLU lawsuits snap at the heels of our defenders. Most Americans intuit that more lawyers and judges will not restore declining moral values or spark the spirit of enterprise in our economy.
Perhaps Americans will understand that change cannot be brought to our nation by those lawyers who already largely dictate American society and business. Perhaps Americans will see that hope does not come from the mouths of lawyers but from personal dreams nourished by hard work. Perhaps Americans will embrace the truth that more lawyers with more power will only make our problems worse.
The United States has 5% of the world’s population and 66% of the world’s lawyers! Tort (Legal) reform legislation has been introduced in congress several times in the last several years to limit punitive damages in ridiculous lawsuits such as “spilling hot coffee on yourself and suing the establishment that sold it to you” and also to limit punitive damages in huge medical malpractice lawsuits. This legislation has continually been blocked from even being voted on by the Democrat Party. When you see that 97% of the political contributions from the American Trial Lawyers Association goes to the Democrat Party, then you realize who is responsible for our medical and product costs being so high!
November 23rd, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Nice plagiarizing there, Group. You’ve finally proven without a doubt that you’re a depraved, shameless, lying bastard who couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the truth if it would save your mother’s life.
November 23rd, 2009 at 9:45 pm
[...] The people elected a large Democratic majority. [...]
November 25th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
can never understand what all this “no longer” business is all about. at what point in history were we a grown-up nation, governed by reason? was it when we interred anybody who looked Japanese in camps? maybe it was when we had black and white people drinking from different fountains? when women weren’t allowed to vote?
wake up and taste the cynical truth. any storied past in which we acted nobly most of the time, etc., is a lie, and a pernicious one.
November 25th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
That’s one of the commonly shared characteristics of religious extremism; the belief in a “golden era” that we must get back to in order to save humanity…a mythical time when “traditional values” were upheld. Like those romantic days when women understood their roll in the household and respected a man’s authority and when minorities knew their place.
November 25th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
The good old days!