From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Well, She Kinda Pissed Me Off
Her days as a sitting senator fast dwindling, Olympia Snowe (R-ME) took to the pages of Friday's Portland Press Herald and whined about the lack of get-alongness in the upper chamber:
In the 112th Congress, we're on pace to pass the fewest number of laws since 1947. … When each party's position fails, no effort is made to identify a mutually acceptable alternative. Rather, each side issues sound bites to embarrass the other party and create 30-second ads for the next election---leaving the problem unresolved. But with the rules of the United States Senate, essentially 60 votes are required to pass legislation. This means that moving past our differences and engaging in compromise is a necessity if we are to secure results.
Translation: "Meanie Republicans! Meanie Democrats! Both sides do it!"
This is, of course, bullshit, which I helpfully pointed out when I returned fire on the op-ed page the following day:
Notice anything strange, Olympia?
The reason those 60 votes are "essentially" required now is because, since they lost their grip on the majority, Republicans have systematically abused Senate rules to grind the chamber's business to a halt.
Sixty votes are required to overcome the threat of a filibuster and move a bill to the Senate floor. Once that threshold is passed, only 51 votes---a simple majority---are needed to actually pass the bill.
The filibuster was used an average of once a year between 1920 and 1970. During the 2009-2010 session…it was employed by Republicans more than 130 times, derailing legislation that could have created jobs and gotten our economy chugging along at a much healthier pace.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell publicly stated that his No. 1 goal was to make Barack Obama a one-term president. Instead of doing the people's business, McConnell and his Republican colleagues, including Sen. Snowe, coldly abused Senate rules to gum up the works and derail Obama's agenda.
Sen. Snowe went along with McConnell's plan and now has the gall to claim, essentially, that "both sides do it." Well, both sides don't do it. Republicans alone are responsible for the gridlock in the Senate ... end of story.
If Harry Reid stays true to his word and puts a stop to Republican filibuster abuse before the next term of the Senate begins, you'll see a lot more results and a lot more resolved problems. And Snowe will spend her retirement wiping a lot of egg off her face.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Note: Today is Tuesday the 13th. Stay alert---it might be a Friday in disguise.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Inauguration Day: 69
Days `til Howard Dean's birthday: 4
Percent of voters last Tuesday who IDd themselves as LGBT: 5%
Percent of them who voted for, respectively, Obama and Romney: 76%,
22%
(Source: MSNBC)
Number of presidents in past 60 years who received 50% or more of the vote in both their election and re-election: 2 (Ronald Reagan & Barack Obama)
Minimum number of used vehicles that are believed to have been destroyed by Hurricane Sandy: 250,000
(Source: National Automobile Dealers Association)
Number of solar farms that are registered to open in North Carolina: 100
(Source: NC Sustainable Energy Associuation via McClatchy)
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Tuesday Words of Wisdom from the Right-wing Blogosphere:
Republicans need to play the populst game. Republicans need to put tax hikes on the table, but lets tailor them to hit useless jobs and institutions that lefties own. Tax university endowments, tax hollywood, tax nonprofit trust funds, tax advertising (hitting media companies like google and newspapers), tax lawsuit settlements (hitting plaintiff's lawyers), tax pension payments (hitting unions) etc.
---Commenter fedFarmer at RedState
All together now: 1…2…3…
Classy!
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Found!!!
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OBAMA LANDSLIDE!!!
CHEERS to---[
Stomp Stomp Stomp!!!]---THE END. I cannot begin to count the ways that Mitt Romney proved himself to be not just a bad candidate over the last 18 months, but a bad person. In
no universe---no, not even on Kolob---is
pathological lying a characteristic of a person of integrity and good moral character. Mitt Romney literally tried to bamboozle his way into the White House, and I'll view his legacy as little more than a loogey hocked from the mouth of a billionaire brat onto the American people---he literally thought we were idiots. So it gives me endless pleasure to seal in amber the news that President Obama
officially won Florida, securing a 332-206 electoral landslide over Fusspot McFibber. I don’t know what, if anything, Mormon elders do to their members when they break a Commandment so often and with such obvious glee, but if they're fixin' to hold him down and snip his hair while he begs for mercy, I have this brief piece of advice: use wire cutters. You'll just break your scissors.
CHEERS to the lion's final roar. Yes, I was giddy over the election results. But I never actually broke my face smiling until I read that Romney's defeat was orchestrated by a dear departed friend of ours. Via Paul Begala:
"Wanna beat Romney? Here's how ya do it: he pulls
an Etch-A-Sketch, you pull a victim of Bain Capital."
We were given a road map by none other than the late, great Ted Kennedy. As the 2008 election was approaching, I paid the senator a visit. I thought Romney might be the GOP nominee, and Kennedy gave me a tutorial on how to beat him. Don’t underestimate Romney, Kennedy said. He’s smart and resourceful and will say anything, take any position. Kennedy recounted how his campaign team tracked down employees of companies that had been shut down after being bought by Bain Capital. Shamelessly copying Kennedy’s plan, we interviewed dozens of laid-off middle-class working people. Their stories were emblematic of the collapse of the middle class: factories closed, health benefits canceled, lives ruined.
Mitt may have planned his "retroactive retirement," but I doubt he ever saw in his crystal ball a "proactive kick in the nuts" by a dead guy. That's gotta retro-hurt.
JEERS to stupid damn wars. On this date in 1982, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial---a vee shape which points at the State Department---was dedicated. Our suggestion for the shape of the future Iraq War Memorial: a Dubya on a spindle that points in the direction of wherever Chimpy McFlightsuit is at any given moment.
JEERS to thinkin' with the wrong head. Another titan falls off his pedestal. CIA Director General David Petraeus resigned after admitting to an affair with his biographer. The news has "spooked" (Ha Ha Ha!!!) the intelligence community, gobsmacked the military and shocked every American who ever addressed him as "Saint Petraeus." But not everybody is a Debbie Downer over it. Said Newt Gingrich: "Only two more affairs and David Petraeus will love America enough to run for president."
CHEERS to what's for din dins. Archaeologists in France have snootily discovered a wooly mammoth skeleton. It roamed the earth sometime between 50,000 and 200,000 years ago (3,000-4,000 years in Creationism Time):
Poised to join the wooly
mammoth in extinction?
The find, first made in July but kept secret until this week, has yielded a second, even more exciting, discovery. Two tiny fragments of flint blade have been found embedded in the mammoth's skull close to one of its tusks.
"What we have found here is a moment in pre-history in an absolutely extraordinary state of preservation," said Pascal Depaepe, technical director of the French national institute for preventative archeology, INRAP. "It is my belief that the mammoth was butchered by Neanderthals on this spot. Whether the animal was hunted down by them, or found dead some time later, we may never be able to tell. The concept of rotten meat is, after all, a relatively modern idea."
Thank you, USDA budget cuts.
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Four years ago in C&J: November 13, 2008
JEERS to today's financial update. On the money front, massive corporations deemed "too big to fail" continued sucking down taxpayers' money like John McCain with a bottle of Maalox at 11pm on November 4th. Meanwhile Treasury Secretary Henry "Hoover" Paulson changed his strategy yesterday by announcing that he was plowing what's left of the $700 billion bailout money into Thomas Kinkade collectible thimbles. So far the effect has been like throwing a pebble in the ocean, but the point isn’t to dig us out but to inspire CONFIDENCE! If this bailout plan doesn’t work, it will be your fault, dear citizen, for not waving your pompoms hard enough. Our next report in 30 minutes, during which we'll say exactly the same thing. Have a nice day!
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And just one more…
Happy Blogiversary #12!
CHEERS to the Gandalf of Bloggerland. Happy anniversary to Josh Marshall's
Talking Points Memo, which turns 12 years old today. You can re-live the birth of this progressive supernova in
his early posts during the 2000 Florida recount...although it might cause your blood pressure to spike. Josh and his crew provide no-frills original reporting with just enough analysis and snark to help us make sense of politics, and nothing the righty blogs offer comes close to TPM's objectivity, accuracy and speed. During the 2012 election cycle TPM was a daily must-click destination, and it's been great seeing 'em take off over the course of the past dozen trips around the sun. Of course, they're no Great Orange Satan...but no one's perfect.
Oh, and on this date in 1789 Ben Franklin wrote, "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." As if to underscore his point, he died five months later---two days after April 15th. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Grover Norquist: Obama Won By Calling Bill In Portland Maine "A Poopy Head"
---Think Progress
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