American Politics Thread 2013: I'm a cool Rodham grandma in the USA

vote with your dollars, people, it's all that counts

Reid should change the rules to make it illegal for the Republicans to control the senate. Problem: solved!

Honestly, if they just made filibuster-ers stand there and babble like they did in the good ol' days, I think we'd not only see fewer filibusters, we'd also weed out some of the weaker-hearted politicians, who'd keel over on the floor mid-babble. Wouldn't that be an easier rule to change? What is the argument against once again forcing people to stand up or shut up? Is the argument that that would be ... too hard? Too inconvenient? At the very least, we might get another cable channel out of it.

86 presidential nominees filibustered prior to 2009, 82 since? nice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQv_vgcvqiM

An alternative, uh, reading:

So is the Republican use of the filibuster today simply fair turn-around — with Democrats in no position to complain when Republicans use tactics they themselves introduced? If so, that would be enough to illustrate the hypocrisy of today’s Democratic protests. But that’s not what’s at issue here. In the D.C. Circuit matter, which has driven Senator Reid to the nuclear option, Republicans are not raising ideological objections to Obama’s nominees — as Democrats did when they filibustered Bush’s picks. Their objection, rather, is that these judges are not needed, because the workload of the court is so light. In fact, speaking of hypocrisy, Democrats, in the minority in the 109th Congress, used that very rationale to urge Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter in a July 2006 letter not to confirm any additional Bush nominees to the D.C. Circuit — and none was confirmed after that letter from Senators Leahy, Feinstein, Schumer, and Durbin was sent, all of whom are still on the committee. Yet now, when the court’s workload is even lighter, Democrats cry foul when Republicans point that out.

the courts workload is so light that they have to call in a bunch of ostensibly retired conservative judges to rule on stuff!

Plus the court's workload has been statistically analyzed by other folks who say it has not changed much: when the Republicans happily reached a deal to get nominees on that court.

im sure everyone is a total hypocrite who cares the filibuster is garbage nuke the senate

Nuking the senate leaves us only the house and its tea party yahoos making laws.

nuke the house

also

http://24.media.tumblr.com/b7cd62f4c9fd440bc0b105dc7ba2275f/tumblr_mpfqkpmvvv1qm3ypqo1_500.gif

so NPR had this story on the bill to 'fix' federal IT:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/11/21/246345010/how-healthcare-gov-is-giving-a-once-obscure-bill-a-boost

Nuking the legislative and executive branches leaves us with "state's rights" ascendant again. Jim Crow, anyone?

listen we can just keep nuking its really not a problem

(**winks at lagoon & shoots him a finger gun**)

and.... it's done

awesome

who gives a shit

President Christie

GIVE'EM HELL HARRY

lol u guys so crazy

otm:

Norm Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, told TPM that Republicans forced Harry Reid to "go nuclear" after his Democratic majority took the historic step Thursday and ended the filibuster for executive nominees and non-Supreme Court judicial nominees.

"For whatever reason, the Republicans decided to go nuclear first, with this utterly unnecessary violation of their own agreement and open decision to block the president from filling vacancies for his entire term, no matter how well qualified the nominees," Ornstein told TPM in an email. "It was a set of actions begging for a return nuclear response."

He also speculated that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) secretly wanted Democrats to go nuclear so he could use the same tactic to end the filibuster entirely if and when Republicans takes the majority.

"McConnell's threat, it seems to me, makes clear the strategy: let Dems take the first step, and we will then bear no blame when we entirely blow up the Senate's rules after we take all the reins of power," he said.

I have mixed feelings about this. basically the Senate doesn't work the way it used to and they need to figure out some new rules. I guess.

gonna be awhile before GOP has the Senate or the Presidency again so who knows what's gonna happen

ya I would bet on democrats ending the filibuster altogether before the republicans do

my guess next time you see one party control both houses and the presidency the filibuster will be bye bye

I mean whether McConnell is even gonna be in the Senate another term is a legit question so if he has a "grand plan" it sort of doesn't matter (yet)

it's just too bad democrats didn't come around last time that happened (and too bad ted kennedy died) otherwise we'd have a much better healthcare law right now and cap and trade and prob all sorts other cool laws

Reid did what McConnell was gonna do anyway. I don't see anything in the Con-stee-tution adducing the filibustering of executive nominees.

http://pc-museum.com/046-imsai8080/wargames-05.jpg

Reid did what McConnell was gonna do anyway.

― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, November 21, 2013 1:30 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lot of thinkpieces being written right now willfully ignoring this obvious point

think this is kinda rad & necessary because Jesus fuckin Christ this generation of Republicans

good simple american folks

how much longer do we think tea party people stay around

old people live a long time these days

true but aren't most of the tea party representatives fairly young?

non-whites die faster

well they're just the spriteful political entrepreneurs making use of the opportunity

Under the circumstances, it was the only sensible response. The circumstances were totally fucked up, though, so this response inevitably has some coloration of being fucked up, too.

tea party will be around for a while, tea party has been around for a while, its just the populist core of the gop with the moderate husk pulled off

the filibuster was the thing that was fucked up

well they're just the spriteful political entrepreneurs making use of the opportunity

surely you mean spiteful

anyway the thing that people never remember about 'the tea party' is that these people didn't just like, come out of the forest one day, these people were knocking on doors for dubya etc etc

xps

sprites have a bad temper, seriously

never would've thought reid would go nuclear before iran did

ps -- i kiss you senator warren

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/21/warren-were-in-this-mess-because-washington-has-ignored-the-middle-class-for-a-generation/

conservative scholar posits 12 dimensional chess http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/norm-ornstein-republicans-forced-reid-s-hand-on-the-nuclear-option

yeah that's 'what I excerpted a few mintues ago. When an old centrist goat like Orenstein is riled up it's serious.

Killing the filibuster will undoubtedly open the door to some extreme nominees, but I'm at peace with that, let the majority run things. It was no more a tool for democracy in the hands of Democrats than it is with the Republicans, just wasn't abused quite as badly.

Drum:

So here's what I wonder: why weren't Republicans ever willing to negotiate a reform of the filibuster that might have kept it within the spirit of the orginal founding intent of the Senate?

What I have in mind is a reform that would have allowed the minority party to slow things down, but would have forced them to pay a price when they did it. Because the real problem with the filibuster as it stands now is that it's basically cost-free. All it takes to start a filibuster is a nod from any member of the Senate, which means that every bill, every judge, every nominee is filibustered. The minority party has the untrammeled power to stop everything, and these days they do.

But what if filibusters came at a cost of some sort? There have been several proposals along these lines, and all of them would have allowed the minority party to obstruct things they truly felt strongly about. But there would have been a limit to how many things could be obstructed, or how long the obstruction could go on, and the majority party could eventually have gotten its way if it felt strongly enough. It would have been ugly, but at least Republicans would have retained some ability to gum up the works.

Instead, by refusing to compromise in any way, they've lost everything

ezra klein goes for the precedent line too, which is silly, what was the precedent for what the democrats did today, they did it because they wanted to, just like when the filibuster is eliminated altogether it will be because senators want to http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/11/21/9-reasons-the-filibuster-change-is-a-huge-deal