Independent Bernie Sanders is on a tear on the Senate floor, filibustering the prez’s tax-cut bargain old-school style — by speaking at length. And I do mean at length. He’s been at it since this morning, railing against the capitalists and for the working stiffs, and shows no signs of running down.
“It is a proposal which gives much too much to people who don’t need it,” he says, and more than once, too. “I think we can do a lot better.”
From your voice to God’s ears, Bernie. Let’s just hope He’s not hanging around with the Appliantologists down at Joe’s Garage.
• Late update: Aw, too bad — Bernie finally yielded the floor … after more than nine hours. Chapeau to the man from the great state of Vermont.
Mad Blog Media 
Obama pulled the ex-prez card and laid it on the table in the form of Bill Clinton. That guy still has it and can still bring the presidential wood in tough time like these. It would be great to have him back commanding in the trenches, taking the fight to the Reps in his nasty, back alley way, instead of Obama’s I’m smarter than you method. Ah, the good old days….
Ya gotta wonder when one of the Repugliest of all, Charles Krauthammer says Obama “won the great tax showdown of 2010.” Is this sarcasm? The last bit of his editorial, where he writes “Not even Democrats are that stupid. The remaining question is whether they are stupid enough to not understand – and therefore vote down – the swindle of the year just pulled off by their president.” kind of sums it up…and even ol’ Slick Willie said it was the “best deal out there”…so maybe Obama is smarter than many of his fellow Democrats? And he DID keep some unemployment checks coming through the holidays for more than a few. I’d vote for him again…especially if the opponents were McInsane and ditzy Palin!
Yeah, both of these guys are smart — and neither is as “liberal” as the Other Side would have Americans think. Obama’s hostage-takers metaphor is an apt one: no tax breaks for the rich, no respite for the poor. It just boggles my mind that the Donks are incapable of making headway with the story lines the Elefinks are handing them.
For the most part, small-population states tend to be red red red (Wyoming comes to mind), so some on the leftward side argue that the Senate should be abolished in the name of progress. My state — Vermont (!) — is a great exception. There are conservative old-liners, but to some extent Vermont is a concentrator for east-coast liberals, so we have Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders as senators — both of them are terrific, and their senate seats are as solid as Barre granite. There are only 600,000 people in Vermont, but we have the same number of senators as Texas. Sorry guys, that was the Original Intent of the Founding Fathers.
The Donks are amazingly stupid — I joined ’em only to try to keep Dubya away from the levers of power (how successful that was) and bailed out after the hatchet-job they did to Vermont’s Howard Dean. Somehow I fear they’ll screw up the opportunities the Repuglican “tax breaks for the rich” and the Tea Party (KKK without the pointy hats) will hand them over the next two years. I’m hoping the smart half of our marriage’s plans work out so we only spend 4-5 months each year in the US of A starting next year. I can run the bike tours for the summer months and enjoy “la dolce vita” the rest of the time!