Senate Blocks Arctic Drilling Provision
The Senate today failed to pass a major defense appropriations bill after a Democratic-led bloc stymied it with a filibuster in an effort to force removal of a controversial provision on oil drilling in an Alaskan wildlife refuge.
With 60 votes needed to overcome the filibuster and cut off debate on the bill, its backers fell short by four votes. The tally on a motion to invoke cloture so the Senate could move to a vote on the bill itself was 56-44.
A clear majority is not enough to get anything done in the Senate these days. How did this happen? It started with the judicial nominees and when the media declared it acceptable practice by treating the filibuster as a routine occurance.
Typical of democrats, they campaigned (mostly lying about what they believe) on issues, lost seats, but still feel that they deserve control.
They feel the same way about heroin addicts. Sure someone chooses to stick a needle in their arm, sure they can't string a coherent sentence together, sure they are a huge hygeine risk, but that doesn't mean that they don't deserve to live in a nice house and have a "family wage job" just like that guy over there who studied and worked hard his whole life and doesn't do drugs.
8 comments:
The fillibuster has been around and used this way since the founding of the Republic. Of course there was the infamous Strom Thurmond 26-hour fillibuster of civil rights laws and it was used by the R's when they were in the minority.
To say that it is only recently that it has been used this way is revisionist in the extreme.
So other than the racists (who were dems), please provide me with a few examples of common use of the filibuster.
Don't we have Alaska for OIL? Let's use it and tell the towel heads to try to buy weapons selling rugs and pottery. Why are the Demoncrats always on the side of the enemy? From stalling the Patriot act to letting Saddam kill millions the Democrats are EVIL!
Where is the connection between Heroin Addicts and the democrats fillibustering to stop oil from being drilled in the wildlife refuge in Alaska?
The connection is the mindset. They think that losers should still be winners.
What was interesting was hearing Ted Stevens (the senior Senator from Alaska) beg for support for ANWR. At one time Ted Stevens was one of the most powerful Senators on the hill as he chaired the Appropriations committee.
You probably remember hearing about all those major pork projects (think East Bank Esplande, unnecessary freeways, and air fields for 5000 people towns) that flowed forward when he was chair. Stevens mentioned all the help he gave to every senator regardless of party in their efforts to blow money. He actually was beggin ('remember all the crap I gave you to bribe your help on this').
I couldn't believe Stevens was begging. It just proves that if you want a friend in politics go buy a dog. Especially if your hoping to make friends with liberals.
The D's who voted against Civil Rights later became R's. How else do you explain that the Dems have gotten nearly all the black vote for the past thirty to forty years?
In fact read the below description about a judicial fillibuster:
1968: The GOP and Abe Fortas
In June 1968, Chief Justice Earl Warren told President Lyndon Johnson that he planned to retire from the Supreme Court, giving LBJ enough time to appoint a new chief justice and get him confirmed before a new president took office. The Democrats feared that Nixon might win, and Abe Fortas, already on the Supreme Court, had been a Johnson crony. With LBJ all the talk about separation of powers didn't mean much, and Fortas, even while on the Supreme Court, regularly attended White House staff meetings; he briefed the president on secret deliberations; and on behalf of LBJ, he pressured senators who opposed the war in Vietnam. When the Judiciary Committee revealed that Fortas received a private stipend, equivalent to 40 percent of his court salary, to teach an American University summer course, his nomination lost traction in the Senate. Everett Dirksen, the Republican minority leader, who had backed Fortas, withdrew support, as did Johnson's mentor, Georgia's Richard Russell. The debate disintegrated into a filibuster, led by Michigan senator Robert Griffin and others, and on October 1, 1968, the Senate failed to invoke cloture. Johnson then withdrew the nomination.
And Republicans have pretty much only hot air to offer the growing number of Americans who earn chump change despite having "studied and worked hard his whole life and doesn't do drugs." One of the reasons marriage is declining in this country is the growing number of men who don't earn enough to support a family (or come even close to that) and who therefore are considered unmarriageable. There are about a dozen guys where I work and ZERO are married, and as far as I am aware, ZERO have any realistic prospects of getting married any time in the foreseeable future. And of course, Republicans talk a good line about promoting marriage - GWB even had a specialist in the White House - while they sell the working class down the river.
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