Image from the BBC!

What’s a pipeline got to do with a payroll tax holiday?  Ask the US Senate.

A new strategy to curb illegal immigration: fencing off the ocean.

Looks like TLC’s “All American Muslims” found some advertisers to replace Lowes.

Hunting and gathering in the holiday season.

The consequences of Tebowing.

Thanks to the LA Times!

While the country is snarling at democratic candidates in much of the country, there’s at least one Democrat whose chances of a win in 2012 look bright.

Her name is Elizabeth Warren.

If you’re thinking, “I know that name.”  you are not alone…

Warren previously served as President Obama’s Special Adviser to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which she also created.

But now she’s running for the U. S. Senate in Massachusetts facing the rookie Republican Scott Brown.

Recent polls show the candidate leading Brown by a significant 7 points. The Republican incumbent won the seat in the heavily Democratic state after the death of longtime senator Ted Kennedy. He now must run for his own full term.

The new poll results are bound to send more shockwaves across the country, where Democrats and Republicans are closely watching to see whether the Harvard Law professor can knock off one of the GOP’s rising stars. The Massachusetts race could determine the balance of power in the U.S. Senate and Democrats are making the race one of their top priorities.”

While Warren must first win her state’s primary, big name Republicans are already eyeing her as the eventual competitor.

…the consumer advocate-turned-Massachusetts Senate candidate, is fighting back after a new ad from an independent group founded by Karl Rove accuses her of being too close to big business. Warren has emerged as an early target of Rove’s Crossroads.”

Do Democrats have one thing to look forward to in 2012?

Thanks to The Washington Post!

Times are tough. Folks are suffering. Time for Washington to act, Right?

Nope!

At least that was the answer in the Senate yesterday.

In a move that should surprise no one, the Senate GOP voted unanimously to block President Obama’s jobs bill.

The $447 billion proposal faced its first real test after being touted all over the country by the president himself. But the Republicans weren’t the only ones with “doubts” about the bill.

On Tuesday morning, senior White House officials said this is just the first act in a long-term play. They brushed aside the dissent among Democrats and urged Americans instead to look at the Republicans, unanimously voting against job-creation measures.”

Facing opposition from both parties, the next steps for the legislation remain unclear.

Votes on pieces of the bill could begin later this month, perhaps as early as next week, Senate Democratic aides said. Party leaders said they needed to consult their caucus before they decide on the timing or choose the provisions to be considered separately.”

Is the president running out of time? Or will be looking for a job soon?

In the state of Massachusetts, one election promises to get plenty of national media attention.

Last week, noted consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren announced she would seek the office of United States Senator for the Democrats.

Warren, who is a professor at Harvard Law School, writes and speaks extensively on issues relating to consumer finance protection

She’s a strong advocate for protecting consumers against credit card companies, mortgage companies and student loan outfits who

“want to do business… through tricks and traps and fine print and fooling people.”

President Obama sought Warren’s advice in establishing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this year. However, she was not nominated to head the new agency. Is the protection of consumers exclusively a liberal goal?

A video of Warren on her “Talking Tour” has gotten a lot of traction online. Her knowledge of serious issues and her ability to explain them to non-experts (in a simple, unpatronizing way) have appealed to some voters.

If she wins the Democratic primary, Warren will face incumbent Republican Senator Scott Brown, the total dreamboat who won the election to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat in January of 2010. Brown’s success in that election was in part due to the lackluster campaign of his opponent, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, who the Democratic party figured was a shoo-in.

According to Public Policy Polling, Warren leads Sen. Scott Brown by two points–but, of course, it’s still very early.

Is Elizabeth Warren the candidate Massachusetts has been waiting for? Will her advocacy on behalf of the middle class win her their support? We’ve got a long campaign season ahead of us. The race between Warren and Brown is definitely one to watch.

With all the important  stuff going on in the world  (Like the finals of Dancing with The Stars) we at USDemocrazy have completely forgotten about NUCLEAR ANNIHILATION.

Yes folks, Armageddon is Back! And two people want to do something about it: Superman (see above) and President Obama (no, they are not the same person).

Let’s focus on Obama…

Russia, our arch enemy for decades is still armed to the teeth with massive amount of Nuclear bombs, missiles and even landmines. Our teeth are similarly armed.

President Obama has his own anti-nuke dental floss that he would like to deploy to both nation’s teeth. It’s the  New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) the president signed with Russia.

Designed to replace the old and expiring START treaty

“New START limits both the United States and Russia to 1,550 deployed strategic warheads, 30% below the upper limit of the 2002 Moscow Treaty.”

The treaties is signed… so the US is beginning to reduces its nuclear arms, right?

Wrong! thanks to that pesky thing called the US Constitution, the Senate needs to ratify all treaties signed by the President.

Unfortunately, many Senators, mostly Republicans have stated their opposition.

All hopes is not lost for the treaty Slate’s Fred Kaplan notes but he does fear that rather than nuclear peace

Republican leadership might think it’s more important to deny Obama any victory, to make him seem ineffective and thus erode his chances of re-election in 2012 (the GOP’s No. 1 priority, according to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell).

Republicans, tired of being cast as the villian, argue that they oppose the treaty in order to protect America rather than out of spite to President Obama.

In this spirit, The Heritage Foundation, a Conservative think tank, poses some questions on the sense of ratifying the treaty:

Question #1. Would you support a treaty that requires the U.S. to cut more weapons and launchers than the Russians…

Question #2. Would you support a treaty that requires the U.S. to share sensitive missile defense information with Russia, information that might be passed to Iran to help them plan how to defeat U.S. missile defenses?…

Question #3. Do you think an independent commission not accountable to the U.S. government should be able to dictate limits to missile defense?…

These points may not fully hold water Spencer Ackerman, of Danger Room, believes based on Republicans shifting arguments against the treaty:

First the argument was that New START would inhibit missile defense, so the military leadership assured senators it won’t. Then the GOP’s point man on New START, Jon Kyl, wanted money to modernize the nuclear stockpile. So Obama pledged $80 billion for upgrading the weapons and nuclear facilities housing them over the next ten years, and then sweetened the pot with another $4.1 billion.

Since our phone calls to the folks on Capital Hill were ignored why don’t you, our readers, provide comments on New START. Is it the road to global peace or does it weaken America’s defenses?

This week’s ad comes to us from a contender against Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont in the Democratic primary. Daniel Freilich makes a couple promises in this ad, but forgot to promise that if he got enough votes, TV viewers in Vermont would get more campaign gems like these. Check it out:

If the premise of the commercial seems familiar, it might be because you’ve seen those Old Spice ads that were such a hit on the Internet this summer. Nothing like basing your campaign strategy on deodorant marketing!

Now, we need your help in gauging public opinion on the greatness of the ads you’ll be seeing as the election season progresses. Comment away! (And don’t let the fact that Freilich only gained 11% of the vote in the August 24 primary sway you.)

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.

You might remember last week when we posted on the messy road to getting enough votes for this bill to pass the House. They did it, but keep in mind — the bill still has to pass the Senate. From Time:

The second bill passed by the House late Sunday will make adjustments to the legislation [...] using a process known as budget reconciliation. Such changes would be filibuster-proof in the Senate… Even so, it will be an anticlimax to Sunday’s historic House vote, which will send the underlying Senate bill to President Obama’s desk for signature.

But, it is widely believed that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has the votes to pass the bill there too. (Yet CBS indicates that it won’t be easy. Is anything ever easy in that town, though?)

Nevertheless, there was some cause for excitement in Washington, especially amongst Democrats. President Obama gave a powerful statement shortly after passage, indicating that the win is not for a party, but for the people. Watch it here. (We highly recommend!)

Support for the bill amongst the public came greatly from Obama’s Organizing for America activists. The Nation indicates the importance of the organization’s calls and letters to Congresspeople in this article, saying:

In the homestretch [...] the numbers and coverage suggest that OFA was able to channel grassroots support for the bill in effective and even confrontational ways.

And before we get to the part with all of the cynicism and stuff, have a look-see at the top newspaper headlines for what many are calling an historic day from the Newseum.

OK — now the not-so uplifting part. Basically, no one knows who came out winning after this battle has been fought and continues to be fought.

The folks at PoliticsDaily ask “Which Party’s Risky Health Care Bet Will Pay Off in November?” Both sides have their talking points, hoping that their efforts will help their cause come mid-term election time in a few months. They write:

Republicans have stuck to their talking points for months on end. (The bill is a government takeover, it will kill freedom, we can’t afford it, Americans don’t want it, “kill the bill” and “start over.”)

Meanwhile, the Democrats are taking, obviously, a different approach:

Democrats prefer to stress protections for people with insurance, coverage for 32 million people who don’t have it, steps to curb rising costs, and nonpartisan projections that their bill will cut the deficit.

The Los Angeles Times ruminates on how the Democrats will turn this win around into something viable for keeping their majority this fall:

President Obama was spared a devastating defeat, and squabbling lawmakers showed they could accomplish something epic and important in the face of unanimous GOP opposition. That should count for something, they hope, at a time when many voters had written off Washington as utterly dysfunctional.

The Press Secretary himself, Robert Gibbs tweeted (he’s nothing if not on the cusp of media!) this article which sums the whole thing up pretty shortly and concise-ly.

Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.

We hope you get something out of these articles when you try to figure out the importance of health care and where in the world it all goes from here. Have an opinion? Question? Snide remarks? Let us know in the comments section!

]]> http://www.usdemocrazy.net/2010/03/22/night-of-passage/feed/ 1 http://www.usdemocrazy.net/2010/03/02/financial-reform-fades/ http://www.usdemocrazy.net/2010/03/02/financial-reform-fades/#comments Tue, 02 Mar 2010 05:06:35 +0000 MZ Hammmer http://www.usdemocrazy.net/?p=5855

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!

The Wall Street Journal reports that a potential Senate bill, among other things, would place the Federal Reserve in charge of consumer protection in the financial markets.

(You can view the consumer protection part of the plan, spearheaded by Senator Chris Dodd, here…brought to you by Mother Jones).

Reform should be bringing out cheers, right? Well, some don’t seem to think this bill contains much reform at all.

The blog Calculated Risk snidely remarks on the proposal that

wasn’t the Fed already responsible for consumer financial protection?

Don’t think Calculated Risk are the only one who picked up on this.

Heather Booth, Executive Director of the Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), an alliance of organizations promoting changes in the way Wall Street us regulated, issued this statement on the Senate proposal:

The revised proposal does not provide what is needed to protect American families or the financial system as a whole: a strong, independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency

Yesterday, Paul Krugman, Noble winning economist, wrote in a similar vein that this bill

eliminates a key plank of the Obama administration’s proposals, the creation of a strong, independent agency protecting consumers.

Not only that but Mr. Krugman goes so far as to say that

it’s time to draw a line in the sand

and that no reform bill is better than

such a watered-down reform.

Now the question may be forming in your head (at least it did in ours), how could a reform bill, such as that passed by the House of Representatives, with support from the White House and many Americans become watered down?

Arianna Huffington, namesake of the Huffington Post, conjectures that the weakening of the bill was due to the banking lobby .

A couple of hundred million dollars later, and we’re left with this punch-to-the-gut of reform, from the top-line summary of Dodd’s plan: “the independent agency proposal would be dropped.”

Representative Barney Frank, a key player in the House of Representative’s reform, states the weak Senate bill is because

Procedurally, the Senate Republicans are killing this or watering it down,

We’ve taken a look at what the experts have said on this issue… perhaps it’s best we hear from those who will be most affected by this so-called reform. That would be YOU.

That’s right, we want you to go to the top right of this article, where it says “leave a comment”, click that spot and write your thoughts.  Otherwise we may just have to write them for you.

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.This sort of “blanket hold” is legal according to congressional rules, but has never been tried before in this way. Ezra Klein of the Washington Post explained the idea of a “hold” in an easy-to-understand way:

The Senate generally uses unanimous consent agreements to set the rules for a bill or a nomination. A hold, in its simplest form, is a promise to object to unanimous consent…That’s why holds are effective on bills and nominations that people don’t care about: The majority doesn’t want to waste that much time breaking the obstruction of the minority.

As a U.S. Senator, I believe that the review of judicial nominations is one of the most important responsibilities of the Senate, and I firmly believe that each of the President’s nominees should be afforded a straight up-or-down vote.

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)

Quoted in a TPM article, Obama says:

“Understand what’s at stake here Massachusetts. It’s whether we’re going forward or going backwards,” Obama said during a rally for Coakley as he tried to energize his dispirited base in this Democratic stronghold. “If you were fired up in the last election, I need you more fired up in this election.”

So, what do the polls say? Will Coakley save the agenda? Or will Brown upset 59 senators and countless other health care champions?

Well, a poll reported in the Boston Herald indicates that Brown is leading Coakley 50% to 46%. (Mr. Brown does have a former Red Sox pitcher, Curt Schilling, on his side.)

Coakley shot back at some of Schilling’s remarks with the ultimate insult, calling him a Yankees fan. Either way, the folks over at poll-heaven FiveThirtyEight.com are still calling it a toss-up.

Some say Martha Coakley is destined to lose. New York Magazine posted a blog entitled “Who’s to Blame for a Candidate Like Coakley?” in which they write,

Even if Martha Coakley manages to win Tuesday’s Massachusetts special election, she’ll come out of the race a loser.

Mother Jones considers what happens if Coakley loses, which would definitely be an unwelcome wake-up call to the Democrats. Losing a blue seat in a blue state on the eve of health care reform would not reflect well upon the party.

Stay tuned and tell us what you think!