Posts Tagged ‘Senate’
We’d like to pretend we understood everything that was going on in the House over the past two days… But, well, we didn’t. (Hey, you try explaining parliamentary procedure!)
So, we’re here to show you what we’ve been reading to educate ourselves on just what happened yesterday when the House (well, the House Democrats, really) voted to pass this historic health care reform legislation. …read more.
Thanks to Wikicommons.
Question: Do you remember that recent financial crisis that was going to (play scary music) DESTROY THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT!?! (in case you don’t… crawl out from under your rock and check out US Democrazy’s past coverage).
Fortunately for us, politicians everywhere agreed to do everything possible to ensure that such a crisis did not happen again.
Unfortunately, these politicians cannot seem to agree on… what exactly “everything possible” means…
Like everything in Washington these days, reform of the financial and banking industry (which helped create the almighty mess we are stuck in) is in a partisan deadlock.
There was some progress made in 2009 when the House of Representatives passed a financial reform bill last December.
Since then, that bill has languished in the clutches of the US Senate (an organization about as fast as molasses up hill in January).
But HARK! (play triumphant music) all that is about to change! A Senate version of the bill may be emerging! …read more.
Photo Credit: The Washington Post
Washington DC is rolling in pork. We don’t meat all those BBQ ribs consumed at Super Bowl Parties (Who Dat?!).
No, we are talking about pork-barrel spending. That’s when politicians grab government funds for pet projects in their congressional districts.
Now, to be fair, every politician does this. If congress folk bring home the Bacon (hence the term “Pork”) to their district voters love ‘em for it. Who doesn’t like somebody else’s money being spent on them?
But there are some in Congress who are artfully abusing working this system. The most notorious example might be Alabama Senator Richard Shelby’s $40 billion pet project (yes, that is Billion with a B).
His local project wants to take taxpayer money to create air-to-air refueling tankers and an explosive testing lab for the FBI (let’s hope the the exposive testing does not take place inside the fuel tankers).
Okay…maybe the USA needs these projects…but Senator Shelby has a curious way of convincing opponents to support him: he is using BLACKMAIL.
The powerful Senator has decided to block any of the Obama administration’s nominees (and there are loads) until he gets his Mega Billion Payout. …read more.
Scott Brown (left) annd Martha Coakley
This coming Tuesday is an important day for USDemocrazy. We’re going to see Avatar for the sixteenth time!
But apparently it’s also a big day for blue people that have nothing to do with James Cameron: the Democrats.
Tuesday there will be an election for a Massachusetts Senate seat occupied by the late Ted Kennedy. This election is tightly tied to health care reform, an issue Mr. Kennedy was very passionate about.
Here’s the contenders: Democrat Martha Coakley vs. Republican Scott Brown. And it’s going to be a close one, folks.
Why is this a big election for health care reform? Says the Wall Street Journal:
If Brown wins, ObamaCare dies. He would be the 41st vote to prevent any compromise legislation from coming to the floor of the Senate.
And if ObamaCare dies, then Mr. Obama himself won’t look so great. Hence why he has been right there with Coakley, campaigning hard for a Democrat to keep the seat. (check out above video that doesn’t include hecklers) …read more.
Image taken from fruitfly.wordpress.com
We here at USDemocrazy are quite familiar with reruns. By reruns, we mean our editors mercilessly rerun the same gripes about our alleged bad speling.
But this week, we have come across a rerun of the political sort.
The Associated Press reported over the weekend that former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani may be seeking to re-ignite his political career. …read more.
We at US Democrazy may not have been working last Saturday night, but our friends on Capital Hill were.
Recently you may recall that there has been a bit of a tussle about health care reform. (Okay.. it wasn’t a tussle, more like a mud wrestling match).
Well, a health care bill has taken its first tentative steps towards life after a close 220-215 vote in the House of Representatives.
What does the bill entail? A lot, it’s over 1000 pages short long. For a more sane, digestible look, here is the official summary.
Peter Orszag, who heads the Office of Management and Budget
We are told nothing in life is free, (except the useless advice given to us by our editors). With this in mind, we at USDemocrazy regularly set out to find websites that have real value.
With all the talk of billions of dollars being spent by the government… we wanted to find out how something of real value (our money) is being spent. …read more.
WHY DID YOU STOP PANICKING?!?! Swine flu is not gone!!!!
Shocking! Apple announces an electrifying feature of its iPods and iPhones.
Michael Steele: Back and With a Vengeance. Summer blockbuster or real life?
So, Guantanamo, what’s new with you these days? No one is sure…
We here at USDemocrazy ponder politics quite a lot. (That’s why we get paid the big bucks — wait… we haven’t been paid in a while… Gotta go talk to someone about that.)
You know who DOES get paid? Senators… and right now things are really paying off for Democratic Senators.
Yesterday it was announced Pennsylvania’s Republican Senator Arlen Specter… is SWITCHING OVER TO THE DEMOCRATS!
That’s gotta make some people (namely, Republicans) unhappy, right? You betcha. (Michael Steele said Specter basically “flipped the bird” to Republican leadership…)
The best explanation for this monumental switch can be heard straight from the horse’s mouth (or do we call him a donkey now?), which you can see in the video above.
Now… this switcheroo is kind of a big deal.
Specter’s addition to the Democrats in the Senate would give them a filibuster-proof majority (it takes 60 votes… they currently have 59). This will allow the Democrats to straitjacket any Republican opposition and bulldoze through their (and President Obama’s) agenda.
This a body blow to an already reeling Republican opposition.
There’s so much news on this subject right now that we’re going to let those people who are WAY smarter than us do the talking. I mean, those journalists get paid too… So they better be doing a good job.
Here goes:
Salon explores “The Specter of a shrinking GOP”
The NYT gives us the deets (that’s hip-talk for details, we’ve been told).
Was this just a career-saving move? Some say yes.
The floor is now open for debate on what will be Specter’s contribution to the Dems.
Can he alter Obama’s financial agenda? Really?
What does this supermajority truly mean?
How’s the GOP taking this? Maybe better than we thought? (But maybe not.)
He was against party-switching before he was for it.
Finally, what does our good ol’ Vice Prez think? As a Democrat, he’s pretty happy. Here’s what he had to say:
I welcome my old friend to the Democratic Party. Senator Arlen Specter is a man of remarkable courage and integrity. I know he will remain a powerful and independent voice for Pennsylvania and the country.
Do you think party-switching should be allowed? How do you feel about Specter’s choice? We know we’re still caught up in the whirl of news stories, so we’d appreciate some opinions…
