Mornin’! Great video clip.

Power to the People!

Michelle “Batshit-Crazy” Bachman?

If she’s for it, I’ve got to rethink it.

Progressive activists first need to identify who is the enemy. There are plenty of them, and some are mistaken as friends…big friends.

No point working toward goals if you’re sleeping with the enemy. It’s a prescription for failure every time.

Teh internets seem slow today.

Seconded!

Jane “thanking” Dick Cheney, too funny.

Tanks Jane. I hope you’ll hold feet that need it to the fire. We can have a government of the people and for the people but it will require some work and watching who does what. The Iranians are showing us the power of the people. We can vote the corporate representatives out of power and we can take to the streets if corporate vote counters try to steal out votes too. President Obama has 3 years to prove he is the right man for the job. We have 3 years to organize his replacement if he refuses to represent us.

Bullseye, as per usual on the right/left coalition against blank check government.

Good Morning Jane,

random thoughts – I read Kagro’s piece the day it was posted – re reading it after going through this supplemental process makes it much more clear

despite it’s fait accompli of an outcome, I personally enjoyed going through the whip process. we have been told forevuh no one wants to see the sausage being made – horsefeathers ! frankly, it was exhilirating. and it wasn’t just wanting to wipe that smirk off of Rahm’s face either. learned so much having stellar voices and hands of you, Kagro, Swanson et al at my side

thank you so much – you are, as always, the shizz

Yeah, that was classic :)

I just looked up the infamous CAFTA vote on the wiki, and CAFTA passed 217-215, with two not voting. Does a bill need a majority of those voting to pass, or a majority of those present? From what I read, CAFTA did not have a majority of those present, and Cantor holding his votes might have only been for appearances only. So too, with the vote being held open past 15 minutes — making the members go on the record when they were inclined to just not vote.

Another thing about the CAFTA vote was that the vote was held open for an additional one hour and forty-five minutes. The vote on the supplemental was held open for another 15 minutes?

omg – thanking Dick Cheney. Too funny.

You’re the shizzle, Jane….

great post jane. And right on: what will obama do if his little fed expansion is rejected?

When I’m in my deepest despair, it’s posts like this that get me back off the mat. It makes me think of the last verse of that Fight song I posted yesterday:

“And we’ll stumble, to the rumble
We’re all laughing when your ass gets beat”

let’s kick some ass.

I don’t have the advantage of being able to see what the video is all about. However, it should be noted, based on the text version above, that you’re dealing with the borg. They adopt, adapt, and improve under changing circumstances. You have to be prepared for those contingencies in future.

i think kagro x is right on. from jane’s link:

I think the fact that bloggers may be having a serious impact in lobbying and whipping Members while the situation is still fluid may just be telling us something about what we can do in the future, if we can educate ourselves and stay on top of developments in the committees.

That’s not an easy thing to do, though. It’s time and labor intensive. But it definitely gets results. And that’s precisely why it’s where the most effective lobbyists do their work. It’s a lot easier to move a dozen or so committee votes than it is to move scores of floor votes. And once a bill is reported out of committee and sent to the floor, getting it changed is an enormous undertaking, with many procedural hurdles in the path of even the most common sense amendments. Getting it done in the drafting, though, that’s the insider’s way.

but i don’t know how to do it, at least not without a subscription to cq.com (which i can’t afford). at times i’ve tried to keep abreast of some committee’s work, just by reading what’s posted on the web, getting on the the email lists and sometimes calling staffers. but boy is it hard. it’s takes a ton of time and i’m still usually still left not quite sure of what’s happening.

any suggestions on resources, etc that i may not know about? i’d really like to have a better handle on how to watch the sausage being made.

“And we’ll stumble, to the rumble
We’re all laughing when your ass gets beat”

let’s kick some ass.

yeah, I was in the mood for that. Thanks.

Agree with the above commenters.

And I liked your quip at the end about Obama’s reflexes and therefore his ability to use a pen.

I’d like Americans to behave like Iranians if there’s no public health plan.

Great job, Jane!

I have great respect for everything you write, oxdown posts and comments. IMHO, it always reflects erudite learning, which a place such as FDL can never have too much of. If you have questions about how to get into that video, I’m not very tech savvy, but a lot of people here are.

The video is just ABC asking Jane about the right left coalition, for example, Maxine Waters and Eric Kantor agreeing…..

I second Selise’s comment.

Most of the time, I’m confused by the double negatives or the yes means no of voting.
It is a wonder that our congressmen always know which way to vote–that they don’t accidentally vote the opposite of their intention. There must be someone in the wings reminding them of what to do. I’d like to know more about that information distribution network. It is normally just Rahm Emanuel? Is it a breakfast or lunch room group huddle? a formal email list? phone bank?

Thanks for the link to KagroX’s piece.

Thanks Jane. Both corporate political parties are failing the people. We should be joining with those on the right when we agree. For instance we should be working more with Libertarian organizations and individuals to lobby for accountability on torture. If we are together we can possibly scare the corporate Dems. and Republicans into doing the right thing. Strange Bedfellows Lives!

When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. Aligning with Repubs should give anyone, especially someone who sees herself as progressive, pause. The problem is a system which permits candidates to renege on campaign promises. In other situations, misrepresentation is fraud.

The question is what should we do? It is unlikely more of the same will change things.

I think KagroX is right, at least in principle. Moving legislation when it only requires a dozen Congressmen is easier than when it requires a hundred. Of course, the dozen are probably more compromised by the special interests they are supposed to watch over. IOW, those dozen may be using all four feet while they’re resisting being dragged in the right direction, not just two.

My hope is that it’s their own staffers, but it seems possible that their peers and the lobbyists are in the network as well.

Phoenix Woman is upstairs with: “Franken-Coleman Update, 06/18/09: Is Today The Day?”

Great job Jane. You do a fantastic job on television too. Keep up the good work.

To LooHoo:

I’d like Americans to behave like Iranians if there’s no public health plan.

If we act like Iranians BEFORE the vote, maybe we’ll get a good plan. I suggested on another thread this morning that if we can get all the progressive blogs and grass roots organizations on board, we could stage some massive demonstrations this summer to insist on a good plan — heck, why not shoot for a full single-payer model?

you have no idea how much that song, and the work at FDL and related sites, have saved my sanity this week.

my anger with the democrats and with president Obama has reached epic proportions.

As far as lying down with dogs, I think we need to acknowledge there are some common interests with the right. Not on a lot of issues, but we certainly can form an uneasy alliance to reign in the Fed. We may have different reasons to be suspicious of the Fed, but that doesn’t mean we can’t work together on this one issue.

but that doesn’t mean we can’t work together on this one issue.

Agreed, but be sure to shower with potent anti-flea soap afterward.

howdy gal :D and pdaly as well -

selise, you are probably a kagro regular but I wanna make a general comment prompted by yours

as to the how and the why - reading CongressMatters every day, even when it isn’t something I’m particularly interested in has made a difference. amazing how much we absorb. concepts that made no sense to me when I first started reading (all that parliamentary stuff) is now something I’m comfortable with – just by slogging through it on a regular basis.

opencongress.org/ is also a very handy site (look ! a wiki and glossary) put together by Sunlight Foundation’s Participatory Politics Foundation.

p.s. personally, after reading through brief histories at these sites, one learns there are/were very powerful forces aligned against open-ness and transparency, so I pretty much read ‘em even when I don’t want to just because it pisses off the powerful

Thanks, I enjoyed it myself. I know lots of others don’t always find sausage making fun so nice to hear that!

Thanks Boo. My connection is dial-up which is a major bottleneck for streaming video. That’s a most unlikely oil-water combination of Congresscritters. Something is wrong with that picture, for sure.

Brendan rocks.

I agree. And we do. We’ve worked with the Ron Paul people and Bruce Fein on civil liberties stuff, and should do more.

Hard to break out of standard political molds, but as long as you’re limited by them, you have to remember that they exist to reinforce the existing power structure. I don’t have any time for Naderism, but I do believe in finding creative ways to leverage energy.

108 trillion for foreign banks. 1 trillion for health care.

News Flash! People die without health care.

I more respect for the Iranian people than my own (present company excluded).

those are great links, and kagro x is a national treasure (i still refer to his series on the nuclear option and filibusters from when he blogged with marcy). and i’ve been on the committeewatch and then the openhouse listserv since the very beginning. still though, getting news of what’s happening in the committees, in real time, is just very hard. especially when they do mark up in secret (yes i’m referring to the HELP committee). cq.com is the only service i’ve found that does a good job of that (i got a temporary test subscription once about a year and a half ago for a few weeks and it was AWESOME).

what is naderism?

fyi – in case you haven’t tried it already. open another tab/window, click on vid, wait for the little red/pink line to go all the way through to the end and then watch it. no stops/interruptions

here, for example, is a current thread on committee markups, etc from the openhouseproject:

http://groups.google.com/group…..3a84?hl=en

most excellent link my sistah. thankee

Naderism is the rejection of both political parties, something I have come to advocate, although I don’t accept the label.

A right-left coalition is unlikely to work because while both oppose Obama’s actions they do so for radically different reasons. I caught for instance a few minutes of the Leahy hearing with AG Holder. Both liberals and conservatives expressed disappointment in him. The liberals because he wouldn’t reject Bush’s excesses in things like domestic spying and indefinite detention. The right because he hadn’t embraced these excesses sufficiently. This is not the basis for a stable coalition even on a single issue.

As we saw with the war supplemental, Obama will either turn to the Blue Dogs or peel off a few progressives. We need to think less about winning votes (because we won’t) and more about moving into opposition.

Well said and I agree.

“This is happening just as the administration is moving to give the Fed even more unchecked power. How does the administration plan to force that through Congress when 234 members have publicly said the Fed needs to be reined in?”

I have heard some people say the only way the government and Wall Street will listen to the American public is if we have a “mortgage strike“. A mortgage strike is like a rent strike that they have in NYC when a landlord will not fix the building. In this case, if everyone would delay sending in the mortgage for 7 days past the due date, it would cause the banksters to FREAK OUT!!! It wouldn’t affect anyone’s credit rating because those are only reported if loans are 30 days late or more. But a delay in loan processing of 7 days would cost the banks millions in anxiety!

It would also get Obama to pay attention to the little people who contributed $50 or $100 — because they believed he would fight for thier interests.

My hat is off to Jane. Working with conservatives about a common interest — that is PROGRESSIVE!

I’ve been critical about SS crisis – the need to use general tax revenue to pay benefits… Looking at Bruce Webb’s analysis has me rethinking it a bit. Even using only payroll taxes the funding issue can be dealt with at a cost of about $1.50 a week. While that is anathema for the no taxes wingnuts, if presented correctly it isn’t a loser.

The increase in the on book federal debt is something to worry about after the economic crisis is dealt with. In the meantime speaking up for infrastructure improvements, getting the most bang for each stimulus buck is important. Right now stimulate – fix bridges, water systems, electrical grids. Invest in clean energy research. Extend unemployment, food stamps. Pay for it all out of the productivity improvements that the working infrastructure and research enable.

I’m a bit perturbed that you link HR 1207 to wingnuts like Michele Bachman, but have consistently neglected to say Ron Paul sponsored, wrote and introduced it. Now that Paul isn’t a candidate maybe some credit where credit is due? Yeah he’s bad on abortion rights. He’s coming at the Fed from a gold bug perspective, but he is also standing up for transparency. And he voted against the supplemental as an anti-war measure and stood up and talked about the power of the purse for holding the executive accountable.

Kudos are worth giving, and they can help with our strange bedfellow allies for accountability.

I like how this happened organically. When an opportuntiy presents itself like this, it important to recognize the potential of where it could it lead. Examining it, and working with is a way to see if it has merits, and in the process is a learning experience that will help in the future.

If we can’t get enough progressives to matter, perhaps we are not in the mainstream as much as we think. It matters who you align yourself with.

Wouldn’t surprise me that, if everyone in that group had a say, there would be a pecking order. Deepest pockets counting for the most to inform the congressperson how to vote.

Thanks cbl2 and selise. I’ve bookmarked those links to get me started in understanding the sausage making business.

Jane, you were great.

But a question: what is “Top Line”? [Can you tell I don’t watch tv, except for Keith & Rachel?]

I was also struck, as I am whenever I do manage to catch the “MSM,” at how ignorant the “interviewers” are, how they work off talking points or “gems” that they have to get into the conversation, and generally how worthless they are. [It’s kinda interesting to go through your two interviewers’ questions & remarks and note how many political cliches they manage to insert. And is “the Left” ever going to stop being a curse word?]

That to me is what the difference is between these fools and Rachel: she clearly studies her heart out for every interview, asks good initial quesitons, and follows up. Her brain is engaged, not just her mouth.