Yeah, I was really hoping Obama would make a head fake toward including them, then just pass whatever he wanted.

Dems really have to understand that the traditional media is an active opponent in anything they want to see happen.  These are folks who genuinely, for whatever reason, want to see America turn into a banana republic.  The only way to solve this is to do good things and continue to discredit them until most of them go under and some actual newspapers can arise in their place.

I agree.  I think that if the republicans want to play obstructionist, the dems should sit back and let them.  Make them filibuster, pass it as is along strict party lines.  Make the republicans face up to the fact that the voting public does not agree with their petty bullshit.  Better yet, add more progressive stuff to it and then pass it along straight party lines.  Play hardball with them if necessary.  After all, we won, as Obama so nicely put it last week.

Because the only thing playing nice is going to get us is a bill that is a giant waste of time and money that won’t work and something the republicans can point to in two or four years as a giant waste of time and money that didn’t work.  Playing hardball now is a gamble, sure, but it’s a gamble with the potential to pay really big in terms of economic success, power, and general self respect on the part of the dems in Congress and the Senate and for the voting public.

Like I said, women, blacks, hispanics.  Next shoe to drop is there will be a program someplace which could conceivably help illegal aliens.

I’m hoping that it will be a head fake in the end. After all, Obama’s been President less than a week, so maybe this is the early stages. Then he’ll pull some jiu-jitsu by going on national tv and saying “we tried to work with Republicans, and we still will, but it’s regrettable and obvious that some are just not serious about dealing with the problems hard-working Americans have to face everyday.”

Easy solution… fuck ‘em.

The House has enough support that it doesn’t matter what the Repubes do, and in the Senate, Reid just needs to approach Sens. Specter, Snowe, and Collins and tell them, “you don’t want to be on the wrong side of history.”

Pass it through the House - even if not one Repube votes for it - and push it through the Senate.

The Congressional Dems just need to understand that they really do have the GOP by the shorthairs here, and not cower to the fact that they might not get the desired “bipartisan support.”

What I fear will happen is that the weak-willed Dems will let the GOP have their way with the bill, and by the time all is said and done, at least half of it will be in the form of tax cuts - including thoroughly unnecessary taxcuts for the top 5% - and a lot of good things in the bill will die.

As I understand it, Rep. Boner’s (yes, I misspelled it on purpose) whining about contraceptives is likely to work in his favor - I think the family planning provisions of the bill are about to get the axe.

The GOP - contrary to their whining - has gotten provisions in the initial bill already.  1/3 of the $825 Billion package was written in the form of tax cuts in its first draft.  What the fuck more do they thing that they are entitled to?

Blast him as the MSM will, President Obama was dead right when he flat-out stated the words, “I won.”

We didn’t just vote for the ability to say that the Democrats now run the White House and have strong majorities in both houses of Congress - we voted for the likely legislation that those majorities and that White House would produce.

Now is not a time for the Dems to revert to their 2007-2009 ways of cowering in fear.  There’s a good guy in the White House, and there’s a lot more strength in the Congressional numbers now.

They need to take advantage of the power and the mandate that has been given to them by the American public.

If they don’t, it will likely cost them (and us) in 2010.

Pass the legislation as is over their objections.  We have the votes, we have the mandate.  Obama will never have more power to set the agenda than right now.

John McCain ran on a platform of tax cuts for the rich, cutting spending, and continuing deregulation.  He was *spanked* in the election.  The Republicans are no longer the leaders, they can whine till their hearts content.  The MSM and Sunday Bobble Heads need to get over the fact that all their connections to GOP heads are nearly meaningless in the world today.

Make it very clear—transparent even—that Republicans are simply obstructing legislation.  Force them to filibuster.  Then pass it anyway—as you were elected to do.

Then listen to Rush et. al. continue to blather that the losses are because the GOP isn’t far enough to the right.  Watch the mid-term elections continue to go bluer.  Giggle, but continue to push for change in the Dem primaries by getting rid of Blue Dogs.

Pray that during his second term, Obama really lets his left wing fly.

Well put, Incertus, Nacho Daddy.

I really think (and desperately hope) that this is the case. In my imaginary land, Obama offers various concessions which the repugs slap down and then turns to the American People and says (on you tube) “Look. I’ve tried changing this legislation this way and that way for these people and their continued resistance shows that they don’t actually *care* how much you’re suffering. We do. And we’re ending this. With the version of this bill we wanted in the first place, no comprimises. So next time we offer to parley, Republicans, keep this in mind.”

It occurs to me that Obama’s great strength is his oratory.  It might be time to revive the idea of the “fireside chats” - going directly to the people without letting it get cut up for soundbites by the media - using the economic crisis as an excuse.

Do that, figure out the very best economic package possible without giving a toss for ideology, and then state that *that* is what will be sent to the House.  And remind Americans that the Republicans got them into this mess, and that he will name and shame any Republicans who get in the way of getting them out.

Pass the legislation as is over their objections.  We have the votes, we have the mandate.  Obama will never have more power to set the agenda than right now.

We don’t quite have the votes.  We’re about 2 (3 until Norm Coleman finally gives up) shy.  They can try and bottle this up forever, but they do it at great risk.  Telling Pennsylvania to shove it while his party tries to kill the stimulus package isn’t going to win Specter votes in ‘10.  Same with Ohio and Voniovich.

And, of course, there are the Blue Dogs in the House to consider.

Trying to pass a bill and watching it fall on its face isn’t going to help the economy and its not going to help the progressive agenda.  It has to at least have the facade of bipartisan appeal and pick off enough GOP stragglers to shore up against opposition from the center.

That said, if Erick Cantor has an issue that none of the outliers care about or if Boehner is just throwing up more bluster so he can bluster, then Obama has safely tell them to screw off.  And no one will care.

I’m imagining something similar to the scene in last week’s BSG episode, except with Rahm Emmanuel holding the fake classified documents.

Y’all ain’t gettin’ this.  Obama is being brilliant.  He doesn’t give a ***t if they play ball or not.  He has them twixt a rock an a hard place.  If they’re obstructionist they’re doomed.  If they play ball, they’re co-opted.  If he gives them a couple of goodies (which they know is all they can really expect) their whacko supporters will pillory them for selling out too cheap.

If they filibuster, they’ll get a couple or three defectors or we’ll trot out the Nuclear Option which will put an end to the 60 vote requirement till further notice.  If they vote no but do not filibuster well then Limbaugh and friends will cut their throats.

It is NOT a good time to be a Rethug.

“I fail to see why this can’t be resolved by letting a few of them know that they vote for the bill as is, or they get their sexual habits involving diapers, congressional pages, or airport bathrooms leaked to the press.”

Absolutely. Let’s sick Larry Flynt on ‘em.

We don’t quite have the votes.  We’re about 2 (3 until Norm Coleman finally gives up) shy.  They can try and bottle this up forever, but they do it at great risk.  Telling Pennsylvania to shove it while his party tries to kill the stimulus package isn’t going to win Specter votes in ‘10.  Same with Ohio and Voniovich.

Actually, we have 58 Senate votes, putting us 2 shy.  Franken will be #59, but likely won’t be involved in this matter.

Voinovich isn’t playing for re-election, so no use trying to talk him into anything, as he has nothing to lose.  He won’t be a Senator in 2010, either way.

Specter is one of the keys, and I think either Snowe or Collins or both can be lured in as well.

But even with that in mind, the Dems do have the power to force an actual, literal filibuster if the Senate GOP members plan to stand in unity against the bill.

Make the assholes whip out the phonebook and do their best Strom Thurmond impersonation for 24 hours - no bathroom breaks allowed - if they want to filibuster.  Don’t allow the mere threat of filibuster to kill this thing.  If the GOP says that they will filibuster in the Senate, FORCE them to put on their circus sideshow.  In a straight up-or-down vote, the bill passes easily.  You don’t need 60 votes to pass legislation, you only need it to prevent filibuster.  So if the GOP really wants to play chicken here, call their bluff.  FORCE them to do a real live filibuster, and wear them out.

I think Magis is right. The machinery (and marginal amount of brains) the GOP had in place when they were a majority no longer exists, replaced by absolute simpletons like Boehner. Now that Boehner’s basically trying to whip the fragmented pile of miscreants into voting against, no matter what, the majority is free to do what they want, leaving individual GOP Representatives and Senators in toss-up districts and states to decide whether they want to gamble with their 2010 re-election chances.

ha! What a ridiculous blog post! Racist??? No one heard of ACORN until a black President? What nonsense! ACORN came to the front after allegations of voter fraud during the Bush/Kerry race. Last time I checked, Kerry was white. Or is “the new racism” white Republicans who are racist against white Democrats? They also had famous run-ins in 1995 and 2003 - or were those also covertly aimed at a future black Presidency that had not been conceived yet?

http://www.slate.com/id/2201958/

How silly!

And I hope the Dems refuse to work with the Republicans. Then they have no one to blame but themselves when the bailout does nothing.

Heh, as versus Bush’s masterful management of the US economy?

Please.  We both know that if Obama is successful, it will be because of “variable and inconsistent lags” or some such, so that all successes are Republican and all failures are Democratic.

I say Obama just gives up the dream of bi-partisan support, steam roll the Republicans, and tell the country “hey, I tried!”

You can get Snowe, Collins, or Specter to support this, easy. All the pundits say it is a fati compli, Obama was just at least trying to get a LITTLE bi-partisan support to make it look better. Now he just needs to forget that and tell them to go to hell. He tried, they didn’t want to listen.

So if the GOP really wants to play chicken here, call their bluff.  FORCE them to do a real live filibuster, and wear them out.

Hey, I’d love to see a full blown filibuster if the Dems honestly don’t have anything better to do.  If we can break them once, that’s all it really takes.  The GOP never loses more than when the pull one of their “I’m going to shut down the government” hissy-fits.

But there’s more to a move like that than meets the eye.  A handful of conservative Dems have their own stake in the game here.  The difference between 60 and 50 is one (two without Franken, thank you for the correction) Republican but nine Democrats.  You give up a lot of political capital if your party doesn’t have to worry about a filibuster anymore.

Sure, PrivatePigg.  Lie your head off.  But don’t forget that I’m a) white b) half redneck and c) not sheltered from the private opinions assholes like yourself spout when they feel safe.  And I know a racist dog whistle when I hear one.  It’s just “ACORN” when it’s spoken in public, but in private homes, the meaning of it gets spelled out more clearly.

It occurs to me that Obama’s great strength is his oratory.  It might be time to revive the idea of the “fireside chats” - going directly to the people without letting it get cut up for soundbites by the media - using the economic crisis as an excuse.

Forgiven, PiatoR, because it’s not your country, but ta-da.

The might be plans to buy votes (and of course, reward the loyal) with home-district infrastructure projects.  That would explain why infrastructure spending is so low at the outset - he knows that it’s going to explode when they get down to it.  I would expect that to all go down in quiet, last minute deals.
So, could the solution be carefully selected, high quality pork?

Your average wingnut had never even heard of ACORN before we had a black candidate for President.

Conservatives have been aware of ACORN’s activities for years.  It is not race that is the concern, but the corruption.

Scary urban corruption, right Bismarck? Maybe a little ethnic, too. Don’t play dumb.

Conservatives have been aware of ACORN’s activities for years.  It is not race that is the concern, but the corruption.

My ass. If there were actual corruption going on at ACORN, conservatives would have had them shut down by now. They had the power to get a Democratic governor put in jail on trumped up charges—you expect me to believe they couldn’t take down a legitimately dirty grassroots organization? Please. All ACORN is guilty of doing is getting people who wouldn’t vote for Republicans on a bet to exercise their right of franchise, and conservatives can’t fucking stand that because they know that if people vote their pocketbooks, Republicans don’t win majorities.

Nicely put.

...except that most of that won’t get you fired (Vitter and Craig both still have jobs), so they probably don’t care. They obviously don’t experience the emotion of shame like other people, or they would have resigned in disgrace. Like they would have been hollering for any Democrats who were involved in diaper-fucking prostitutes to do.

Conservatives have been aware of ACORN’s activities for years.  It is not race that is the concern, but the corruption.

...aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand we’ve all just been timewarped back to October 2008 all over again.

Sorry, the whining didn’t work before, and it won’t work again.

Nobody has ever disputed that bad registrations have come through - ACORN themselves have acknowledged the existence of the bad registrations, and purged them when they screened through them.

But what you are really trying to hint at is voter fraud - a crime for more serious than voter registration fraud.

And for all of the innuendo that the Repukes have tried to pile on about alleged voter fraud, they have never once produced a single, real live example of a non-existent voter casting an illegitimate vote in an actual election because some low-paid kid with ACORN filled out Mickey Mouse on a registration form.

So, aside from some bad voter registration forms getting filled out with bogus info and never actually being used to cast fraudulent ballots, where is this rampant corruption you speak of?

“Conservatives have been aware of ACORN’s activities for years.  It is race that is the concern, especially the registering people of the wrong races to vote.”

There, Bismarck, I fixed it for you.

Am I the only one who thinks some Rethug group collected at least one “Zombie Reagan” or some other bogus name?  Or are Republicans perfect when they sign up new voters?...

...and, of course, the follow up question (that never gets asked) is how many times did that “Mickey Mouse” vote?  Or does the fact they didn’t vote of no concern because it doesn’t support their arguments?...

President Obama and his team have come up with a great idea.  Using tax money to pay his precinct workers will save his campaign a great deal of money in the next election.  The Republicans never seem to catch on.

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=5FF874F9-18FE-70B2-A89977D364B3A669

http://www.opinionjournal.com/forms/printThis.html?id=110009189

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2003982533&zsection_id=20039

http://www.opinionjournal.com/forms/printThis.html?id=110009214

http://www.kmbc.com/print/10214492/detail.html

http://www.epionline.org/news_print.cfm?rid=171

http://www.consumersrightsleague.org/UploadedFiles/ACORN_AHC_Report.pdf

Thank god Bismarck is there to hold back the forces of evil who are trying to get those people to vote!

***

BTW, Oh Great Emperor of Greater Germania (or are you a giant battleship sunk by the British?), what is Obama this week? 

Crypto-Marxist, ultra-liberal, soul-brother of Che Guevara seeking to reanimate Lenin’s corpse and have him rule the whole world while making all white people slaves? 

Uber-fascist, Hitler-worshipping, crypto-radical advocate for the American Police State who will take away our guns and our DVDs of Red Dawn and then enslave all white people? 

Secret Islamist passing as Christian to better infiltrate his fellow jihadists into positions of power throughout the government, waiting to hear the secret word in a tape from bin Laden to start the Mooslim takeover of the US, thus ensuring the enslavement of all white people?

I can hardly wait to find out…

This may be the same shill who trolled a year ago and linked to a nutty site saying that it was good that Galileo was persecuted.

The stick rule could be of use.

. . . what is Obama this week?

He is just another liberal thug trying to create his idea of utopia.

It is not race that is the concern, but the corruption.

Also, leprechauns smoke cheeba, your cat talks to you in Spanish, and you’re not full of shit.

And what’s your idea of utopia? Tying people up in the basement of your pawnshop? Or silencing astrologists and calling them heretics?

Oh wait, I didn’t read the full post. Your idiocy writes itself, Bismarck (and you are an insult to the city of the same name!)

If the democrats were like the republicans, they’d just use the conference committee. Pass a bill in each house, and then throw in whatever “adjustments” and “compromises” they want.

It’s just “ACORN” when it’s spoken in public, but in private homes, the meaning of it gets spelled out more clearly.

And this is journalism? Nothing to cite, just your own personal opinion of what you think goes on in private homes? Brilliant.

Opinions of Bush are irrelevant - hate him for all I care. But to say no one knew ACORN before Obama’s run is patently false. Even if you think ACORN is a legitimate group, the fact still remains that Republicans were complaining about ACORN long before Obama was even a Senator. Even if you think their complaining is bullshit, it took place long before Obama. It’s a fact. Just go read news reports prior to Kerry’s election. I’m sorry that torpedoes your little racism theory, but, honestly, developing your theory based only on “what you think goes on in people’s private homes” is a crappy way to develop a theory.

Acorn is not the problem;  it is part of the solution.  Keep ‘em funded and some one assigned to their backside.  In four years they’ll drive the Republicans crazy and we’ll have another million legally registered Democrats who will vote instead of make excuses.

DTG:

The republican noise machine is even worse than you suggest. In most of the states where GOP operatives natter about ACORN turning in false voter registrations it’s a felony—for obvious good reason—not to turn in every single completed registration form your workers get. (And if the law allowed private organizations to not submit registrations they believed false, there would be GOP tricksters submitting bogus cards just so that they could scream about ACORN rejecting them. In the meantime, of course, there are credible allegations in every election of GOP-linked organizations collecting and then discarding democratic voter registrations, but oddly enough no action from prosecutors.)

PrivatePigg,

To quote our long departed Fearless Leader, “So what?”

So what if Republicans complained about ACORN before.  What makes you think the fact that they help people of a higher melanin count than your normal Republican wasn’t a factor then as well?

Racism was far more blatant this election cycle, what with the Obama Waffles and Magic Negro songs, et. al, but it’s never been absent.  What do you think the Southern Strategy is?  Why did Reagan announce his candidacy at Philadelphia, Mississippi?

We didn’t start noticing the racism in this particular election cycle.  We’ve seen it all along.  And ACORN was discussed in detail in several threads here during the last election, so pardon us if we’ve seen your arguments before.

One of the reasons President Obama wants to get some Republicans on board is that he remembers 1994.  The Clinton tax increase was passed without a single Republican vote, and that, along with the Clinton health care fiasco, helped propel the GOP to the congressional majority in the 1994 election.

But the more I read about it, the more I want to say: why not just do nothing at all?  The recession will end, because that’s the nature of the business cycle.  If we pass this pork-laden bill, we’ll have trillion dollar deficits for the rest of Mr Obama’s first—and hopefully last—term.

This stimulus plan is like a visit to the dentist.  The dentist might give you Novacaine, but Novacaine doesn’t prevent pain; it simply delays it long enough for the dentist to do his work; the pain eventually arrives.

Well, maybe we should take our pain now, and get it over with, rather than delaying it until we start having to borrow even more to service a larger debt.