Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Friday, December 10, 2010

America's Senator Bernie Sanders Heroically Filibusters The Screw Deal (WITH UPDATES)

You can call what I am doing today whatever you want, you [can] call it a filibuster, you can call it a very long speech. I'm not here to set any great records or to make a spectacle. I am simply here today to take as long as I can to explain to the American people the fact that we have got to do a lot better than this agreement provides.

C-SPAN Live Feed.

Bernie's been all alone on the floor since ten in the morning, but two hours into his jeremiad Senator Sharrod Brown stepped onto the floor to help Sanders out (I suspect he needed a bathroom break or just a breather). Sanders was soon back on the floor, re-invigorated. Although she has been a critic of The Screw Deal I was surprised that Mary Landrieu appeared next on the floor to support Sanders. I sure hope others can also be counted upon to help, too. I'll update this post to salute other senators who support America's Senator in his resistance.

In an epoch in which phony filibuster threats have been deployed by Movement Republicans to scuttle effort after effort to enact progressive or even simply minimally sensible legislation, Sanders' actual physical occupation of the floor is quite historic. There are quite a few places paying attention to this event, of course, but I will say that I actually am shocked and also appalled at the mainstream but also progressive news and politics sites that are not devoting attention to this.

UPDATE: Huffington Post has a link to the filibuster, but you have to scroll to find it, AlterNet has a link, Crooks and Liars is following it, dKos has no frontpager devoted to this story, but the readers are keeping the story in sight with a Recommended Diary (UPDATE FOUR: dKos is discussing Sanders on the frontpage now, good!). We're a few hours in and Talking Points Memo isn't covering this yet, even though they follow the minute play by play vicissitudes of the most ridiculous procedural bullshit imaginable usually (UPDATE TWO: it's hours in, and now TPM is featuring the ongoing Sanders filibuster prominently at last, good!). I see nothing yet on Political Wire (UPDATE SIX: Political Wire just gave a snippet from Sanders' ongoing speech "Quote of the Day," good!), nothing on The Hill (UPDATE SEVEN: Bernie just made The Hill's front page, good!), it's not on the New York Times front page, Atrios is featuring Ike's farewell speech but hasn't mentioned Sanders' speech unfolding here and now minute by minute before our eyes (UPDATE THREE: Atrios gives Sanders a nod, good!), Steve Benen hasn't even included a mention of this in his Round Up, "news items that wouldn't necessarily generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers," (UPDATE TEN: Sanders has made Benen's "Mini-Report," good!) nothing from Think Progress (UPDATE NINE: they're highlighting Sander's "Mock Filibuster" now, okay), what the fuck?

UPDATE (FIVE): Sanders himself has said it may be as or more appropriate to call this "a long speech" as it is a "filibuster." It's a hell of a lot more of a filibuster than the abstraction that gets called a "filibuster" that Republicans have used to paralyze the Senate, irresponsibly threatening every single sensible piece of legislation supported by Obama however uncontroversial. Some are claiming he has the floor when nobody else wants it (yeah, during waning days of the lame duck nobody else wants the floor), some are claiming he isn't blocking anything so it isn't a filibuster (yeah, well, we'll see -- all I know is he is on the floor as long as he can stay on his feet or get the support of other sympathetic Senators -- and I want to see them on the goddamn floor before this is over -- and that he is using this stage to mobilize the American people to contact their Senators to stop and alter The Screw Deal, and I don't know anybody else doing more substantively to block it than this). If Sanders attracts real attention and support (UPDATE EIGHT: Bernie Sanders has been trending on twitter all day long, so many people are checking in on his speech that the Senate servers went down -- this is indeed resonating with Americans. UPDATE ELEVEN: Bernie doesn't rate an appearance on any of this week's big Sunday news shows, I see.) this can become a filibuster by any conceivable definition. That's what should happen, and the utter intellectual bankruptcy, utter moral cesspool, utter criminal intent of the Republicans exposed to their devastating cost. Call their fucking bluff, and get a better deal.

UPDATE TWELVE: He lasted eight and a half hours and drew widespread attention to important facts. The empty silence of the Senate Chamber in his wake, a silence that could have been better filled with the words of protesting Senators, made the whole exercise feel rather hollow and sad, a C-Span announcer helpfully chirping that the ongoing Quroum Call would give way Monday morning to a re-assembled Senate. Imagine Senators arriving Monday morning to the sight of Sanders and other Senators still railing against this obscenity, now under the riveted attention of millions upon millions of righteous enraged Americans! Yeah, yeah, I know....

4 comments:

jollyspaniard said...

Good for him. He's actualy doing Obama a favour. I'm not opposed to what he's doing, the more pressure applied to Obama's left flank the better. But I don't think its fair to call this a Screw Deal.

This is Obama's first broadside for the 2012 elections which he is already framing. He's done something that the rest of the Democrats failed to do during the mid terms, positioned the Republicans as the party of the top 2% in the minds of the American public and axing the myth that Republicans care about the deficit. Perhaps this is the reason why the Republicans didn't want to make this deal before the mid terms.

The messaging from the far right blowhards is a bit nervous. Many of them are seeing this as a win for Obama. The Republican party has just publicly declared that they don't give a crap about the deficit, debt and 98% of America. And Obama is going to make them repeat that declaration again in 2012. Well played I say.

Meanwhile what's happened to the Tea Party? I think they may have just gone the way of the Republican Young Guns (tm).

Dale Carrico said...

This is Obama's first broadside for the 2012 elections which he is already framing.

Yeah, he can run for President in 2012 against his own deal, and as a Democrat wanting to raise taxes, in the face of a House of Representatives with a Republican majority (unlike now) and an even slimmer majority in a more dysfuntional Senate. Brilliant.

And that's setting aside the practical and moral obscenity that Obama is asking Democrats to vote to add hundreds of billions of dollars to the ballooning deficit to give non-stimulative tax benefits to the only people who are not only not suffering but benefiting from an economic catastrophe destroying the lives of millions of their fellow citizens for no reason at all. The Screw Deal is exactly what it is.

The GOP messaging is not nervous as far as I can see. They are cackling like witches over a cauldron as far as I can see.

And believe me, the Tea Party will re-appear (possibly under another name but probably not) the moment they are needed. They are the same white racist know-nothing base mobilized by the billionaires who deploy the GOP to strengthen their oligarchy since the New Deal.

There's nothing funny about any of it. It's obvious what is happening and these evil motherfuckers don't even care that it's ovvious because that it's obvious because they don't have to.

Dale Carrico said...

I'm not mad at you Jollyspaniard, I'm mad at the situation. I'm pretty sure you know that, but I thought I should probably make that clear just in case.

jollyspaniard said...

That's ok, the more fired up US progressives are the better. They got too complacent after Obama
got elected. FDR was quoted as saying that he needed heat from the left in order to get what he wanted done.

Tax breaks for the rich are odious but there's plenty in the deal for the unemployed. Dollar for dollar Obama walked away with the most chips. And I don't see Debt as the most pressing problem for the US right now. A more progressive tax structure is a battle for another day. You're in the process of devaluing your currency anyway.

And I'm hoping Obama can pull a similar trick with renewable tax breaks (2$ attracts 9$ of investment). I'm increasingly confident that he might be able to pull that off.

Jose