The best part about a 1 am vote is that the average age of the Senate is about 132 years old, which means that they are all up about eight hours past when they are used to having a warm cup of milk and dreaming of Lawrence Welk reruns and the good old days before that rock and roll music and the internet tubes ruined everything, so their normally awful speaking style is worse than usual. Joy.

President McCain is speaking about majority will. Didn’t we see that last November?

This should be interesting:

But somehow it isn’t familiar, in the sense of being part of general understanding and mainstream coverage of issues like the health reform bill. Talk shows analyze exactly how the Administration can get to 60 votes; they don’t discuss where the 60-vote practice came from and what it has done to public life. I have a gigantic article coming out soon in the Atlantic—long even by our standards! but interesting!—which concerns America’s ability to address big public problems, compared in particular with China’s. The increasing dysfunction of public institutions, notably the Senate, is a big part of this story.

As I think my article will make clear, this isn’t a partisan question—even though in any given administration it presents itself as one. (For the record, I support the health-care plan and am glad the Administration found the 60 votes.) Also for the record, as the chart below shows, the huge increase in threatened filibusters came from the Republican minority, after the Democrats took back the Senate in 2007. Since the time covered by this chart, the number of threatened (Republican) filibusters has shot up even more dramatically. Still, whoever is in control, this is a more basic and dangerous threat to the ability of any elected American government to address the big issues of its time. And the paralysis of working through the legislature is all the worse because of the contrast with modern presidents’ de facto ability to make war-and-peace decisions essentially on their own.

It will take a lot of work to reform the filibuster. Villagers will defend it to the death (there’s a natural kinship there, as the Senate is perhaps the one community in the world that is clubbier than the Village) and Republicans will have a slick set of talking points on the issue.

May I humbly suggest that the filibuster is a more worthwhile target for hippie rage than Obama is?

Having been informed in the last few days that I am an O-bot, a cultist, and a Liebercrat by my progressive betters, I would like to note that if the hissy fits of the last week were, as I’ve been told, intended to shape the debate (I guess we all love 11 dimensional chess- hoocoodanode!) and you are going to throw similar amounts of outrage over financial reform, you might want to get started BEFORE the Senate has the bill for seven months.

Unless, of course, you would like to continue the winning strategy of prepping the battlefield with artillery after the battle is over, shooting into the backs of your fellow teammates, and then spend a few days on tv taking potshots at the President and Rahm Emanuel. Your call.

David Gregory sure loves the framing of the Health Care Reform as a total loss for Obama.

*** Update ***

Speaking of, whatever happened to the Audit the Fed/Grayson/Paul initiative?

Lots of good stuff today.

Am I wrong or is that Siragua-Kenny Albert-Daryl Johnston comobo pretty good?

A fitting award for Bill Kristol’s protege:

Of all the falsehoods and distortions in the political discourse this year, one stood out from the rest.

“Death panels.”

The claim set political debate afire when it was made in August, raising issues from the role of government in health care to the bounds of acceptable political discussion. In a nod to the way technology has transformed politics, the statement wasn’t made in an interview or a television ad. Sarah Palin posted it on her Facebook page.

Her assertion — that the government would set up boards to determine whether seniors and the disabled were worthy of care — spread through newscasts, talk shows, blogs and town hall meetings. Opponents of health care legislation said it revealed the real goals of the Democratic proposals. Advocates for health reform said it showed the depths to which their opponents would sink. Still others scratched their heads and said, “Death panels? Really?”

The editors of PolitiFact.com, the fact-checking Web site of the St. Petersburg Times, have chosen it as our inaugural “Lie of the Year.”

Congratulations, wingnuts. Your anointed leader is so dishonest, independent fact-checkers are forced to make up new awards to explore the full depth of her deceit. I’m impressed.

Went to the grocery store, and with the combination of the rush to stock up on supplies and the absence of deliveries made the shelves so bare it looked like a early 80’s East German market or some post-apocalyptic video game. No zombies got me, though.

As a side note, this is the first winter I have had a car that had seat warmers, and maybe I am getting old, but I’m giving that concept a definite THUMBS UP. Another thing- exactly how bad of a driver do you have to be to get stuck in the snow in a Subaru wagon? Things are just tanks.

At any rate, go Steelers.

The guy who thought up the public option has come out in favor of voting for the Senate bill, though he criticizes the lack of a public option quite harshly.

Let’s hope this doesn’t scare Lieberman off from voting for it.

Steelers don’t start to lose until 4:15 today, so here is a pic to tide you over:

I’ll be back later.

Col. Mustard and others are burning up memeorandum about Ben Nelson’s medicaid bribe, calling it disgusting and any number of names, and you know what?

They’re largely right about Nelson’s disgraceful buyout, but missing the bigger picture.

Nelson is a self-professed conservative Democrat and a fiscal conservative. He repeatedly tells us how concerned he is about cost of any and all bills, he repeatedly intones gravely about the budget and out of control spending. Who could forget this quote from during the stimulus debate:

After receiving a nearly $900 billion bill passed by the House of Representatives, Senator Nelson led a bipartisan group of Senators in “trimming the fat, frying the bacon, and milking all the sacred cows” to cut out $108 billion in unnecessary spending and refocus the package on job creation and economic revitalization. Nelson’s efforts enabled a $787 billion package to pass, delivering $1.1 billion in investment in Nebraska, and hundreds of millions in tax relief for Nebraska’s families and businesses.

In fact, Ben Nelson doesn’t want you to forget it, because it is featured on his Senate website.

But that is while the cameras are running. When they are off, he has never found a tax cut he didn’t like and a spending bill that aided Nebraska that he could say no to. Not only did he not just love the Bush 2001 tax cuts, he loved them so much he supported the reconciliation process for them. In 2003, he was one of the 50 he voted for the second round of tax cuts.

So, yes, the Medicaid bribe for Ben Nelson is a disgrace and shameful in so many ways. It is truly outrageous and a scathing indictment of our current system and the ridiculous hoops that have to be jumped through to get anything done in the Senate. Someone truly concerned with budgetary matters and the health and security of the nation would have said- “If fully funding this program is that valuable to Nebraska, it probably has some value across the other 49 states, and I should work to secure that funding and find a way to pay for it with budget cuts elsewhere or a new funding mechanism.”

But he didn’t, did he? He extorted what he could for his state, didn’t care how that money was paid for, and went before the cameras to wax eloquent about abortion.

*** Update ***

Kthug, also.

Because that is just how the “fiscal conservatives” in both parties roll.

He isn’t just buddies with the C-Street Family and the Senate Republican leadership, he’s got new friends popping up all over. Here, the Weekly Standard begs him to kill the bill in the House:

Are there enough votes in the House to pass a health care bill very close to the one the Senate is preparing to pass? Bart Stupak says the Senate bill’s abortion language is “unacceptable” and has pledged to lead a group of pro-life Democrats to vote against final passage if the issue isn’t resolved. How many votes can Stupak bring with him?

Nice friends you got there, Bart.

Have at it.

BTW- Smells seem far more important to Lily in the snow than when there is no snow. Are the scents highlighted like a bright color on a clean canvas when there is snow?

*** Update ***

The traffic cop segment is killing me.

*** Update #2 ***

Land shark:

I apologize in advance for such wankery on Saturday night, but I just stumbled across this in a Gail Collins article:

Back in 1971, Congress passed a bill aimed at providing high-quality early childhood education and after-school programs for any American family that wanted them. It was bipartisan, which in those days meant more than a whole lot of Democrats and somebody from Maine. “Having been a working mother, I knew what day-care problems were like,” said Martha Phillips, who was at that time a staffer at the Republican Research Committee in the House.

Then Richard Nixon surprised almost everyone by vetoing it, with a scathing message written by Pat Buchanan, claiming the bill would “commit the vast moral authority of the National Government to the side of communal approaches to child rearing.”

The social right, which was just beginning to come into its own, was delighted! Opponents reinforced the message with a massive letter-writing campaign. They accused members of Congress of plotting to deprive parents of the right to take their offspring to church, give children the power to sue their parents for forcing them to do chores, and, in general, turn the country into a Maoist concentration camp.

Which made me think of this (from a Kathleen Parker piece):

A telling anecdote recounted by Pat Buchanan to New Yorker writer George Packer last year captures the dark spirit that still hovers around the GOP. In 1966 Buchanan and Richard Nixon were at the Wade Hampton Hotel in Columbia, S.C., where Nixon worked a crowd into a frenzy: “Buchanan recalls that the room was full of sweat, cigar smoke, and rage; the rhetoric, which was about patriotism and law and order, ‘burned the paint off the walls.’ As they left the hotel, Nixon said, ‘This is the future of this Party, right here in the South.’ ”

I’ve read much of Nixonland, but I still don’t understand how much Nixon changed American politics, since I know nothing of pre-Nixon (or even pre-Reagan, really) politics. How much did Nixon change things? I know there were all kinds of crazy rightists before Nixon, John Birchers and so on, but that seems a separate issue. It’s one thing to have crazy right-wingers, it’s another to mainstream their paranoia in a way that turns the entire nation’s politics into a crazed right-wing drama. Which, if we’re honest with ourselves, is what our politics has been for quite some time. Was Nixon the primary catalyst for this?

I think of this also because I’ve been following the silly Kaplan “Most Influential Person of the Decade” tournament, where the finalists are Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush. And I wonder: was Nixon the most influential American of the last 50 years?

I don’t mean for this to be an anti-Republican screed. What I’m referring to here is a general political atmosphere, one that some Republicans almost certainly don’t like.

DougJ +5

It is just so depressing so many deeply stupid people are serving in Congress. Here is the latest:

Spending in health care is going to increase no matter what happens. It is going to increase at a completely unsustainable rate if we do nothing. Which is why we’ve been talking about reforming health care for the last couple of decades, and precisely why we’ve been talking about it intently for the last two. It is why we have been talking about “getting health care costs under control” for years. It is why Republicans, for all my lifetime, have been screaming that Medicaid and Medicare are going to bankrupt us- that is, until a couple of weeks ago when in an act of sheer political cynicism, the RNC and the Republicans decided to guarantee unlimited and unchecked Medicare benefits forever.

It is almost like these Republicans are so damned stupid they have no idea what the hell we are even debating. How are they supposed to have a coherent response or be constructive participants if they can’t even figure out the debate?

And that is Tom Price, the Chairman of the Republican Study Committee. The Republican “think tank” in Congress.

And it is “Democratic,” you silly ponce.

This could get interesting:

Stupak said that he was in Northern Michigan, without internet access, with the emails were sent from his office to McConnell’s. Smith “should have let me make up my own mind,” said Stupak.

A spokesman for McConnell declined to comment about the staffers’ exchange.

“Smith” is Erika Smith, the Stupak aide coordinating with the Republicans and others this morning. I’d bet that while the House Democrats will tolerate a lot of things, openly coordinating with Senate Republicans is too much for even them, and Stupak is going to walk this down rather quickly.

Well, things are back to normal around here. That was one crazy week of hippie-on-hippie violence. Then again, I’ve always said that hippies need to have a civil war or at least to have American boys and girls going door to door telling them to suck on this.

Does anyone here have any good recipes for holiday drinks? Preferably without eggs or cream but with alcohol.