Harry Reid Tees Up Potential Filibuster Rule Fight (VIDEO)

Huff Post

Posted: 07/09/2013 4:39 pm EDT  |  Updated: 07/09/2013 6:27 pm EDT

WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) signaled Tuesday that his Democratic caucus members are becoming so frustrated with Republicans blocking President Barack Obama’s nominees that they will again consider whether to invoke the so-called nuclear option to change Senate rules.

“I’m going to have a full meeting with my caucus on Thursday. We’re going to talk about nominations,” Reid said. He did not hint what he would do, but suggested his deliberations were far enough along that the sessions with his members would be decisive.

“I think Thursday, by the time the day’s out, you’ll have a better idea of what we’re going to try to do on this,” Reid told reporters on Capitol Hill.

Senate Democrats had threatened to change rules at the start of the session to make filibusters more difficult, but settled on only mild reforms. At the time, Reid promised not to change the rules for the rest of the Senate session as long as the GOP members conducted themselves in the a less obstructive manner more in keeping with Senate history.

But soon thereafter, Republicans attempted the first-ever filibuster of a defense secretary nominee. They have also slow-walked numerous nominees, subjecting them to hundreds of questions before granting a vote — usually resulting in overwhelming confirmation.

The nuclear option involves using arcane Senate parliamentary procedures to force a simple majority vote, which would than set precedent for similar future votes. Many Democrats feel like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has broken his side of the agreement, and they may be prepared to break theirs.

MORE HERE

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A Republican Sabotage?

Tuesday morning on CNBC, the spazzy white guys in lower Manhattan were debating how the administration and Congress can best repair the economy, and mainly the jobless numbers. At one point, Rick Santelli, the hyperkinetic shoutcaster and instigator of the tea party movement, began to flail around, waving his arms above his head while yelling, “Stop spending! Stop spending! Stop spending!”

And contrary to accusations from one of the other spazzy white panelists, Santelli insisted he wasn’t calling for more tax cuts. Just a freeze in government spending. Somehow.

Fine. Show us another time in American history when a spending freeze — and a spending freeze alone — jump-started an economic recovery following a deep recession and high unemployment. Show us. Where in the world is Santelli getting this?

It doesn’t really matter from which hole Santelli’s latest television meltdown was extricated. Suffice to say, there is no historical precedent for any such thing. In fact, the often-referenced spending cuts of 1937 caused the opposite effect: a backslide in the economic recovery during the Great Depression. Oh, sorry. There we go again — referencing actual “history” instead of just screeching incongruous, contradictory and unsubstantiated nonsense, which seems to be the accepted style of discourse these days.

Santelli’s rant is just another performance in a broader strategy by the Republicans and tea party movement to deliberately sabotage the economic recovery. Not unlike Santelli’s “stop spending” idea, this is a strategy which also, to the best of my knowledge, has no historical precedent. For the first time ever — and this is worth repeating — one of the two major political parties in America is sabotaging a delicate economic recovery for the sake of humiliating the president and his party, and subsequently recapturing a political majority.

More than a year ago, Rush Limbaugh both predicted this and set the table for it to occur. They want the president to fail, and now it’s clear that they’re willing to take the economic recovery down in order to make it so. Is there any doubt who leads the Republican Party?

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Bill Maher On BP Oil Spill: ‘I Feel Oily … I Feel Their Sh*t On Me’ (VIDEO)

Bill Maher On BP Oil Spill: ‘I Feel Oily … I Feel Their Sh*t On Me’ (VIDEO)

Huff Post- First Posted: 06-12-10 01:06 AM   |   Updated: 06-12-10 09:09 AM

Friday marked Bill Maher’s last show of the season, and while the BP oil spill has been a subject on “Real Time” from week to week, this time Maher defined it as the subject.

“I have been holding my nose about this oil issue. Every week, I do not want to talk about it and we do. But you know, this is the last show of the season, my last time to vent, so I kind of had a change of heart this week, and this whole show might just be about how much oil sucks,” he said at the opening of the show’s panel segment. “And I feel oily. Now that those pictures come in of the wildlife, I feel dir– I feel their shit on me. I feel like someone from Greenpeace should scrub me down every night.”

Rachel Maddow, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham and former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) joined Maher on the panel, and when he asked what would have to happen for the gulf catastrophe to have some meaning, all three turned to the obvious answer — a major step forward on a comprehensive alternative-energy policy.

“We’re trying to drill all of our oil, or a huge proportion of our oil, from the place where we get all our shrimp and oysters. And that’s awkward, it turns out,” Maddow quipped.

Maher let loose on a host of villains-of-the-week during the segment, laughing at Blanche Lincoln’s claim that her vote was “not for sale” and calling the Houston oilman, lifelong game hunter and recent estate-tax dodger Dan Duncan a “world-class asshole.” But the panel zeroed in on the Senate filibuster as the reason why President Obama, in Maher’s words, “had to lie, basically.”

“I saw this week that Lindsey Graham is pulled out of the global warming bill, and the whole reason Obama was coming out in favor of more drilling was as a sop to the conservatives. To try to get Lindsey Graham on his side, somebody like that, to get a couple of Republican vote, which would not be necessary if we did not have this filibuster nonsense, if you didn’t need 60 votes to pass anything. That’s why this president said something. That’s why he had to lie, basically. And the lie was, drilling has never been safer. And we know for a fact, actually, drilling has never been more dangerous. Not just this spill, but before this spill.”

Frist employed several less-than-coherent defenses of Senate procedure and minority rights (most notably: “In the Senate, you can do anything that can’t be done”), but Maddow laid the blame at his party’s door for paralyzing Congress by procedural means. “And Republicans should have to answer for that,” she said, “because it’s a really stupid way to run the country.”

Later on, Maher targeted the political canard of “running a state like a business,” which he and Maddow pointed out can be foolish given the cross-purposes of government and private enterprise. And Arizona won the final showdown in Maher’s “Stupidest State” contest, edging out Texas to receive a trophy of a man with his head up his ass. Maher claimed he’d send the trophy to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer.

WATCH VIDEO HERE

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Republicans Are Setting Filibuster Record

Republicans Setting Filibuster Record

STEVEN R. HURST | 03/ 1/10 02:03 PM |

WASHINGTON — The filibuster – tool of obstruction in the U.S. Senate – is alternately blamed and praised for wilting President Barack Obama’s ambitious agenda. Some even say it’s made the nation ungovernable.

Maybe, maybe not. Obama’s term still has three years to run.

More certain, however: Opposition Republicans are using the delaying tactic at a record-setting pace.

“The numbers are astonishing in this Congress,” says Jim Riddlesperger, political science professor at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.

The filibuster, using seemingly endless debate to block legislative action, has become entrenched like a dandelion tap root in the midst of the shrill partisanship gripping Washington.

But the filibuster is nothing new. Its use dates to the mists of Senate history, but until the civil rights era, it was rarely used.

A tactic unique to the Senate, the filibuster means a simple majority guarantees nothing when it comes to passing laws.

“The rules of the Senate are designed to give muscle to the minority,” said Senate historian Donald Ritchie.

With the Senate now made up of 100 members, two for each of the 50 states, an opposition filibuster can only be broken with 60 votes – a three-fifths majority.

MORE HERE

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The Democrats Need To Find Some Spine And Quick

In the 1998 midterms, Democrats actually gained seats. A rare thing for the president’s party to pick up congressional seats in a second midterm election. Nevertheless, the Democrats won the day and Republicans lost a net five seats.

Take a guess how the Republicans responded. Naturally, they freaked out like infants and demanded that the party shift to the center, you know, where it’s safe — abandoning their congressional agenda in lieu of safe, small beans policy. Then they waited for all of the Democrats to be seated before they moved any votes to the floor. You know, just to be fair.

Wait, no. That’s what the Democrats are doing in the aftermath of the Massachusetts special election.

The Republicans, in the days immediately after being “thumped” in the midterms, didn’t make pee-pee in their big boy pants. They didn’t freak out and reevaluate their agenda or crawl back to moderate Democrats for additional support.

The Republicans impeached the president.

Before anyone was sworn in, the Republican House of Representatives voted to impeach President William Jefferson Clinton on December 19, 1998.

Hey, Democrats. Do you like apples?

Now, I’m not suggesting that the Democrats should suddenly race around trying to quickly remove Republicans who have engaged in nefarious underpants parties. (I’m looking at you, John Ensign — who voted for impeachment, by the way.)

I’m just suggesting that the Democrats find their mysteriously vanishing spines, and right quick.

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Senate Passes Health Care Bill

Senate Passes Health Care Bill With 60 Votes

Crooks and Liars

By Heather Monday Dec 21, 2009 10:00am

From The New York Times–Health Bill Passes Key Test in the Senate With 60 Votes:

After a long day of acid, partisan debate, Senate Democrats held ranks early Monday in a dead-of-night procedural vote that proved they had locked in the decisive margin needed to pass a far-reaching overhaul of the nation’s health care system.

The roll was called shortly after 1 a.m., with Washington still snowbound after a weekend blizzard, and the Senate voted on party lines to cut off a Republican filibuster of a package of changes to the health care bill by the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada.

The vote was 60 to 40 — a tally that is expected to be repeated four times as further procedural hurdles are cleared in the days ahead, and then once more in a dramatic, if predictable, finale tentatively scheduled for 7 p.m. on Christmas Eve.

VIDEO AND MORE HERE

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