Alex Koppelman says that Joe Lieberman’s decision to join the filibuster of the public option all but kills the legislation. I am very angry.
The Mahablog
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Alex Koppelman says that Joe Lieberman’s decision to join the filibuster of the public option all but kills the legislation. I am very angry.
I think it’s on their state flag: “Connecticut: the Insurance-Shill State.”
Joe’s going to be called to the Oval Office, in the middle of the night, if he does this. Oh, to be a fly on the wall. Or a mosquito carrying West Nile.
Failgunner Joe is with us on everything else except the Iraq War and, except for, well, anything and everything else… But he’s really with us! You might be able to sense it if you have a Ouija Board or Tarot Cards, and you know, like a really good Medium who call tell the difference beween an asshole an an ass.
Thanks Connecticut. It’s not like we didn’t tell ya! But, you didn’t wanna listen now, did ya?
Maybe Obama could offer him the Israeli prime minister position, that’ll get his vote! I predict he will get in line with the democrats, that homeland security committee chairmanship is way more important to the neoconsuperfratboy-Israel firster than that silly “public option”. On the other hand he did campaign for Sarah Palin, is this a big surprise?
Damn, that Joe Lieberman is just so unpredictable!
“Maybe Obama could offer him the Israeli prime minister position, that’ll get his vote!”
Psst, don’t tell Joe they got universal access to healthcare there!
Liberman is an idiot – while I should be charitable and suggest that he is demented – I am beyond angry at this pathetic man’s seeking for attention – ME ME ME – look at me and the hell I can wreck. The damage hs is doing to healthcare reform is shocking.
Gee, I wonder if Liberman would be against the public option available to all Israelis.
Excuse me – there is a procedure – the name escapes me at the moment that allows the Senate to by-pass the vote that makes a fillibuster possible. We did not want to go that way because there was a desire to see a bipartisan bill.
If they could have done this with GOP support, fine. If they have to do it with zero GOP support, oh well. DO IT ANYWAY!
My husband, self-employed and lacking insurance, has treatable but as yet untreated Multiple Sclerosis. I am incensed.
Misuse of Human Protoplasm? Oooh that’s cold – I usually save that one for my favorite Faux News bobblehead of the week. OTOH – looking at his picture on Huff Po he would have made a great extra for “Night of the Living Dead” – no need for makeup. :^)
He is posturing. He could not possibly do what he is threatening. He says if he thinks it is ‘bad for the country’ he won’t do it. WELL who would. PLEASE he is not going to filibuster the dems. Please tell me I’m right!!!!! Otherwise, despair is the only logical step.
HIs voice, omg, his voice!!
I would be surprised if this is any more than hot air. Lieberman needs to posture as a Republican to have a shot in 2012. But he’s already barely survived for supporting McCain. If he does anything more than get some slight change, claim victory, and vote for cloture, he’s out of the caucus and out of his precious Homeland Security chair. There are plenty of Democratic Senators who would laugh at his funeral.
Lieberman says, ” I don’t think we need it right now”. I guess ‘we” don’t if the taxpayers are providing a platinum insurance plan for his pampered little ass. Erinyes has got it right…we can’t afford health care insurance but we can afford to support Israel and its military to the tune of billions of dollars a year. And we can afford to piss away hundreds of billions of dollars on two losing wars.
Don’t give up hope. Lieberman is on much thinner ice than he may himself realize. The Republicans may be delighted by his support here, but he really has nowhere to go except back to the Democrats or going it alone. The Republicans themselves have no reason to give him any special positions on committees or anything else, because it would take away those positions from their own people. Plus, on many issues, Lieberman is far too liberal for the taste of the incredibly nutty wingnut base that the Republican party keeps courting.
Andrew Sullivan reposted an excellent explanation from another blog regarding what the Democratic leadership needs to do behind the scenes to get Lieberman in line. (This is the link, I highly recommend reading it, if only because it may lift your spirits! http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/10/dealing-with-joe.html ) The long and short of it is that they need to tell Lieberman that if he doesn’t at the very least refuse to go along with the Republican filibuster, he will be stripped of his seniority and committee chairmanship. He can go see if the Republicans will give him a better deal, but they probably won’t. If they do, it matters little anyway, since he appears not to be acting like much of a Democrat anyway. So, it’s either sit down and shut up, or a dusty windblown future languishing in the dull committees that no one else will have until the 2012 election.
Ah, but the other option is if Joe is going to retire now, and take up a fat lobbying job. I actually think it’s much more simple than that. He hates progressives as much as we hate him and he saw his chance to finally take his revenge for Lamont.
Booman of course, is castigating us all for pushing the Public Option now and not letting Obama handle it with his 42nd dimensional chess.
Then the Dems need to get rid of the filibuster option and make it majority rules.
Chief – ‘Majority rules’ ??????????????
What are you, some kind of commie? 🙂
I am trying to get my Canadian head around the fillibuster. It comes down to a “super majority”, the way I see it. Why doesn’t the government just say that you need a super majority to pass a bill and be done with it?
I guess the framers of the Constitution were trying to put in as many checks and balances as possible to ensure that democracy reigned, but it seems to me that your system can only bring about deadlock, especially when the minority party is hell-bent on stopping absolutely anything proposed by the majority.
Dear Canuckstani, the system is designed for gridlock on the theory that the government that is too tied up in fighting itself, will not oppress the populace. Like many things about our country, it needs to be update.
Erinyes – great point! The Senator from Israel cares far more for Israelis than he does for the American people. What a fucking slimeball!
Doug Hughes – the process is called “reconciliation” and the Dems need to ram the public option down the Republicans and Lieberman’s throats and then kick them in the stomach a few times to stimulate their digestion!
Technically, the filibuster is not governmental, it’s senatorial. The Senate gets to set its procedural rules, and one of its rules is that there is unlimited debate allowed on bills. When the time comes to move a bill forward for a vote, the Senate votes for cloture, and a cloture vote requires 60 votes to pass.
There was a time – before the Senate was televised – when the rules were such that, if debate was not shut off, there had to be a speaker on the floor, speaking. Senators would do anything – one, I heard, sang “Old MacDonald,” others read from the phone book, etc. – to hold the floor. But, the parties agreed that this was unseemly. I mean, if the American People could see their Senators behaving like childish brats to keep a bill from coming to a vote, why, they would lose their respect for the system.
So, parliamentary procedure was changed. Now, there’s another kind of call, a quorum call, or somesuch, that requires 60 votes instead. Now, people can stand in the way of a bill without any possible loss of dignity in front of television cameras.
Surprisingly – I’m sure you’re all *shocked* – this has made filibusters much more common.
Granted – when Republicans are in the minority, they filibuster a lot more often than Democrats have. But that’s only because the Democrats basically let them retain their dignity while doing so.
I do think now that voting for Ralph Nader in 2000 was a mistake, but I can take some consolation in the knowledge that I never cast a vote for a ticket that had Joe Lieberman on it.
He’s just bubbling and seething in a dark little puddle on the floor, hoping for someone to take him seriously. He’ll soon lapse back into total irrelevance.
It does make me wonder why we send money to a country that can afford healthcare for it’s people if one of the reasons he gives is that it is too expensive for our own. Maybe if we stop sending our money to those countries, he wouldn’t have to worry about the expense and we would have more to cover our healthcare needs.