Being a liberal has been somewhat disheartening lately. We expected that we would have a revolutionary progressive in the White House making our hopes comes true, but instead got a compromising technocrat even more willing to appease Republicans than Clinton ever was. We expected a supermajority, but got a Congress that couldn’t pass much of anything. We expected solid opposition, but thought they could be splintered just enough to make a difference. So, many of us came to the conclusion that the Democrats were not what we thought they were, that they failed. Seeing little hope, the progressives started losing interest in the elections coming this Fall.

Big mistake. If anything, we should be galvanized, ready to fight even harder than the last election–and with good cause, because this coming midterm election could mean a whole lot more.

First of all, our expectations were way too high. We should have known that Obama was no flaming liberal. Yes, the right-wingers painted him that way, but they would have claimed that Ronald Reagan himself was the most liberal commie socialist ever had he risen from the grave, switched parties, and ran as the Democratic candidate. The Democrat on the ticket could be espousing every right-wing goal imaginable, it wouldn’t make a difference. They claim any Democratic candidate, in every election, is “the most liberal ever.” Not only that, but one of Obama’s big selling points, if you recall, was that he liked finding middle ground, he wanted to compromise as a way of reaching consensus and getting things done. So expecting him to push the nation far to the left was unrealistic.

Then there was Congress. Once Specter had switched and Al Franken’s seat was finally confirmed, we thought we had a super-majority and could sweep in any law we wanted to. Well, that was a stupid assumption. One of those 60 votes was Lieberman, who campaigned for John McCain; to expect him to vote with the Democrats on anything the Republicans pushed hard against was folly indeed. And even not counting him, many of the new Democrats won precisely because they were conservative Democrats, winning conservative states where they would have to pander to conservative sensibilities. We never had 60% in the crucial bottleneck of the Senate; at best we had just over a simple majority, at least when it comes to the controversial stuff.

And then there was Republican opposition. We knew that they would push, but I don’t think that anyone foresaw just how fantastically monolithic and almost hysterically powerful that opposition would be. They pulled no punches and did not give a moment’s hesitation in fear that their total obstructionist frenzy could work against them. With the fanatical single-mindedness usually seen only in the most feverish of zealots, they not only obstructed but poured out a tidal wave of unprecedented, unadulterated hatred and invective, issuing against the president–at all levels low and high–every pejorative one could imagine being used publicly.

With a centrist president, much less than the needed supermajority in Congress, and fanatical obstructionist opposition from the right wing, there was never a chance for much to get done. We should have seen this from examples of the past. At FiveThityEight.com, we get this chart showing the majorities that FDR and LBJ had during formative years that trended to the liberal. Note that they usually had well over 60% majorities in the Senate, while the House was always above the 50% needed there.

In short, to get even part of a meaningful agenda done, we’re gong to need more than we got before. Becoming disheartened and turning away from the polls is nothing short of self-destructive, especially as the right-wingers, tasting Democratic defeat and still possessed of whipped-up, galvanized, angry mobs of tea-bagging fanaticism, are looking at strong showings at the polls this coming November.

We have little hope of gaining the seats we need to get the things we want done. But to give up and lose seats–maybe hand Republicans a simple majority in either house, all they would need to make their scorched-earth goals total and irrevocable–would be just plain dumb.

The Democrats, for all of their weak-kneed, wavering ineptitude, never really had a chance. There were too many Blue Dogs, too much solidarity and hysteria from the right, and not enough single-minded Bush-like drive or disregard for the risks from the White House for this to work.

Had FDR faced this, the New Deal would never have passed. Had LBJ been given these numbers, neither Medicare nor the Civil Rights legislation he got through would have stood a chance.

We fooled ourselves into thinking that we had the numbers to get things done. We were wrong. We weren’t even close. Not just one more vote, but probably five more votes in the Senate may have done the job. As weak-kneed as the Dems have been, that wasn’t what broke the deal. They could have been bolder and stronger and still failed. All that was needed was for Lieberman to vote “no,” and that would be that.

That’s what we have to keep in mind in upcoming elections: More. We need more. We need to galvanize, to get out the vote. Giving up is not an option. Even at my time of greatest disgust, when I couldn’t even bear to watch any more, I knew that I would still be voting strongly, as I always will. But many have simply turned away and don’t intend to vote. If you know someone like that, make sure you turn them around. Make sure you get them their voter registration materials and egg them on to the polls in November.

Even if we don’t succeed, not losing is far better than giving up and letting these frothing, fanatical fascists take back the country and send us right back down the shaft to national self-destruction they had us falling to for the first eight years of the century.

The Public Option is now in. Senate and House both have the “Opt-out” plan, which strikes me as a win-win for Dems, as it mollifies the “Moderates” (read: somewhat-less-radical conservatives) while not really giving away anything. Unless the states themselves will be setting up Public Option plans and/or paying for them, I see no reason why anyone would want to opt-out–and the Republicans who do can be vulnerable for denying their constituents cheap, effective health care. Is my read on that right?

Now, Republicans in Congress have a tough choice: when it becomes inevitable that the health care reform bill will pass, how will they vote? If they stick with opposition and the plan proves popular–as is probable–it’ll look bad for them. Right now they’re not opposing the bill because they really believe it’ll lead to Socialism or Death Panels–they’re opposing it because they want to make Obama fail and to follow industry lobbyist direction. When the bill’s passage becomes inevitable and they risk looking like partisan industry shills who opposed what is most likely to be a very popular law, how many will switch?

Of course, the GOP is not only extremely partisan right now, its members are very strictly controlled, almost the opposite of the Democrats. Likely they will stick to their opposition, and simply try their hardest to paint the law as destructive in the 2010 midterms, before it will have had enough time to prove that it works. After that, they’ll just try to take credit for it.

The right wing has been its usual nasty self with Al Franken, from the Wall Street Journal claiming he stole the election to gasbags like Limbaugh calling Franken a “genuine lunatic.” But the typical thing for those on the right to do is dismiss Franken as a comedian, as in “nothing but a.” The media picks up on this–like David Broder, for example, calling Franken a “loud-mouthed former comedian”–and there is the general sense that there is something inherently wrong in sending a jokester to the Senate.

But as the lefty blogs are now quoting Paul Krugman on, there is much more to Franken than meets the eye. Krugman points out something that many have overlooked: that Franken has real substance. In fact, he has more substance than almost anyone else in the Senate.

First off, his credentials aren’t bad: he graduated summa cum laude from Harvard, his major being Political Science. As much as the right falsely whines about how lefties hate Sarah Palin for not having such credentials, and as much as they put down people like Sotomayor for having made accomplishments of that nature, the fact is, you don’t graduate summa cum laude from Harvard without being pretty damned sharp. Not to mention that he aced the Math section of his SATs with a perfect 800. Right off the bat, one should understand that Al Franken is no intellectual lightweight. Sure, most intellectual heavyweights don’t go around publishing books calling Rush Limbaugh a “big fat idiot”–but they probably wish they could. Calling people names like that is usually not tolerated in such circles and adds to the idea that he’s not serious, but let’s face it: the title, though impolitic, was, if anything, an understatement. Franken was being subtle and nobody seemed to notice.

Second, the man is an unabashed, undeniable patriot–the actual kind, not the self-serving flag-waving opportunistic kind, or the blind, easily-fooled kind–with a special respect for those who have served. Franken just recently received the USO Merit Award for ten years of service to the organization, going on seven tours and frequently visiting military hospitals. This is not a campaign stunt in his political bid–he started doing this in 1999, visiting troops in Kosovo, three years before he got the idea of entering into politics when Paul Wellstone died and Norm Coleman grabbed his seat in a particularly dishonorable manner. But you don’t just need to go by Franken’s USO service to understand that he honors those who serve; if you listened to his radio show for any amount of time, it was pretty obvious. Nothing got Franken emotional more than his dealings with the troops, and when he saw them being mistreated or dishonored, he would start to lose it. You could hear him holding back his rage, tearing up, as he described some of the crap that they were put through, how they were getting killed because they were not sufficiently equipped or taken care of.

But most of all, Franken is, as Krugman pointed out, “a big policy wonk.” Again, you’d know this if you listened to Franken’s radio show. The man was well-prepared, knew his topics, and had his facts in order–and when he didn’t have the facts at his fingertips, he would not make them up, not assume. But when others did, he would call them out on it. Catch the segment below, with Franken showing a group of young people why they should question what they hear, work out the math, and think for themselves:

Nobody’s perfect. Franken has been wrong on stuff from time to time, as everyone will be. But if he is, it’s not from lack of trying. The man is serious, he is dedicated, and gosh darn it, he’s smart. Far from bringing down the level of discourse in the Senate, as Krugman points out, he’ll raise it. Underestimating Franken is a dangerous business; being a comedian doesn’t mean he’s not serious, it means that he can skewer you all the more skillfully. A comedian who is smart and knows his facts is not someone to be trifled with.

I love how so many of these “Liberal Media” headlines read, “Coleman Concedes Seat to Franken,” as if Coleman was the one ending this with grace or something. The Minnesota Supreme Court, a week overdue in giving its decision, voted unanimously that Norm Coleman was an ass.

Well, they didn’t quite go that far. In fact, amazingly, they bent over backwards to give Coleman the chance to drag this out even further, and did not direct Governor Pawlenty to certify the results. But Coleman and Pawlenty get no points for passing on that chance; they have already gone to asinine lengths to keep Franken away from his Senate seat, at the cost of the people of the state.

Coleman is quoted as saying, “Further litigation damages the unity of our state.” Oh, yeah, right; and Coleman’s wholly capricious and petty campaign to deny Minnesota half it’s voice in the Senate for six full months, long after it was a foregone conclusion that Coleman had lost–that didn’t even dent the “unity of the state.” It has been clear for months that Coleman had no chance, that Franken was the winner.

Lest we forget, waaay back in November, when Coleman loudly declared victory after the initial count put him a few hundred votes ahead, he–Coleman–said: “If you ask me what I would do, I would step back. I just think the need for the healing process is so important. The possibility of any change of this magnitude in the voting system we have is so remote, but that would be my judgment.” Coleman intimated that Franken should “waive his right to a recount,” in part because it would cost the people of Minnesota a whopping $86,000. All of this despite the fact that it was not Franken’s “right,” but Minnesota law said that a recount at that margin was mandatory.

When the mandatory recount gave the election to Franken, and when the process was so honest and above-board that even Republicans were expressing surprise as how honest and well-run the recount was, when it became clear that any further challenges were useless and all the votes had been counted as fairly as possible and there was really no chance for things to be reversed–Coleman suddenly turned hypocrite and, in a path that was not at all mandatory and which cost the people of Minnesota far more than $86,000, started a series of legal challenges which, from the start, were a transparent attempt to tie up the election results and deny Franken his seat in the Senate for as long as possible.

Again, Coleman gets no points for not taking this to the ridiculous extreme of appealing to the federal courts; had he done so, any hope that might be left of his ever again running for office would have been severely damaged. Coleman conceded for his own sake, not for Franken, and certainly not for the people of Minnesota.

Fer cryin’ out loud. Ninety–Ninety voted against funding to shut down Gitmo because of Republican scare tactics about terrorists being released on the streets of America? When Kit Bond (yes, the same guy who held that the CIA could never lie) claimed that closing Gitmo would lead to terrorists put in halfway-houses in Missouri where they would then walk the streets and slaughter Americans, I thought that this was such an example of rank alarmist stupidity that it would bolster the case against the Republican scare tactics. Anyone who was a real terror suspect would be tried and if guilty would be detained in SuperMax facilities (where we already hold many big-time terrorists like Ramzi Yousef), anyone else would not be allowed into the U.S.

But at least 47 Democrats, despite their near-supermajority in the Senate and the moral high ground, caved utterly to not just Republican scare tactics, but stupid Republican scare tactics. If the White House has not coordinated the details yet, then make it mandatory to work out the details–but don’t strip the funding and give such credence and respect for the rank idiocy and scaremongering spouted by the GOP.

What’s next? Will the Democrats rename themselves the “Democrat Socialist Party”? Frankly, at this point, that wouldn’t surprise me much. Even after the GOP abandoned the idea of rebranding the Dems with that name themselves–noting, rather chillingly, that the publicity on their proposal had “educated” Americans to be “properly fearful.”

The GOP at work, making you scared.

Great. After eight years of caving in to almost everything Bush and the Republicans wanted, now the Democrats in Congress start developing an opposition mentality. To their own party’s president. And, it seems, they are doing it as much to show their own dominance than for any other reason; if it were a principled stand against something important, that’s great, but it almost seems as if they now feel it is safer to be uncooperative and so are doing it just so they can get some political leverage.

There are a few hopeful points: first, they postured with Bush a lot before caving in to him, so maybe they’ll do that with Obama. And second, we don’t want a rubber-stamp, runaway government like the Republicans presided over. The problem is, Democrats in Congress should provide a check against their own party’s president where it is important to do so, not for the purpose of playing politics to the detriment of party unity.

I have seen right-wingers many times over the past few years point to low Congressional approval ratings as proof that Democrats are failing to lead. The trick is that they refer to the Congressional approval ratings as a whole, call it the “Democrat-Controlled Congress,” and so lay all the blame at the Democrats’ feet.

A Gallup poll out last month (referenced in C&L today) shows the reason why Congressional approval ratings are getting dragged down:

Yep: the Republicans are the ones with the bad ratings. Congressional Democrats are getting the best ratings of anyone in Washington at present. Whaddaya know. Surprisingly, more Republicans approve of the job Democrats are doing than the other way around; Republicans also have a more negative view of their own party than Democrats do of theirs:

So, the Democratic Congress unpopular? Not so much. Republicans obstructing everything in sight in a multi-year filibuster-thon? Not a big hit. Add that to the list of reasons Democrats made such surprising gains in the election this time around.

Convicted felon Ted “Series of Tubes” Stevens has, apparently, recognized that Begich’s victory is now inevitable, and has officially conceded the race. Which means, one can presume, that Stevens will not shell out the $15,000 for a recount–which means the drama is over and the election decided. And the Democrats chalk up one more vote in the Senate to help Obama get the job done come January.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, as the official recount gets started, Al Franken scores a victory as a court gives him access to documentation of rejected absentee ballots, allowing his campaign to find ballots that might have been thrown out mistakenly and have them readmitted. With 18% of the recount done, Franken picked up about 40 votes, and now is behind by only 174.

We’re down to 8,000 votes left to be counted, and Democrat Mark Begich has now doubled his lead over convicted felon and Republican Ted Stevens. Stevens, who had a 3,000-vote lead before early and absentee ballots were counted, saw his lead dwindle and then disappear, and now Begich has almost as much a lead as Stevens had held–2,374 at the moment–and with so few votes left to count, it is virtually unthinkable that Stevens could pull ahead.

However, the game is not entirely over. While Begich’s lead is now safely outside the margin that would require a recount, Stevens could still ask for one, and it would only cost him $15,000–chump change that could easily be made up with a bribe or two. On the other hand, Alaska’s ballot system is said to be reliable enough that a recount would have little chance of changing the outcome, and there is likely to be a fair amount of pressure on Stevens to let it be, by Republicans who would rather not deal with the spotlight of a convicted felon who stands to be ejected from the Senate anyway clawing for the slightest chance to overturn the standing results.

Considering the unlikeliness of Stevens winning and the probability of him being thrown out of the Senate even if he wins, I am not sure that I agree with the Alaska Daily News when they say a recount is likely to happen.

It looks like one way or another, Alaska is pretty much a lock for the Democrats. Next up: Minnesota, where Franken stands a better-than-average chance of overturning Norm Coleman’s 215-vote lead in the state’s mandatory recount.

Update: With only 2500 absentee ballots left to count, Democrat Mark Begich now leads by 3,700 votes. The news agencies are calling this a “win” for Begich. So now we have to wait until Stevens decides whether he will concede or pay for a recount.

Here’s a doozy:

CNN Anchor Tony Harris: How will we — “we,” big “we” — make this work? I’m talking Republicans, Democrats, independents, Libertarians. Republicans — do Republicans want to work with a President-elect Obama?

Bay Buchanan: Well, it all depends on which direction the country — Obama wants to take the country. If he is really going to govern from the center and recognizes that the nation is center to right, then we’re gonna work with him, just as we worked with Bill Clinton to get welfare reform.

In other words, “we’ll be bipartisan as long as the other side does what we want them to do.” Yeah, that’s bipartisanship.

I am really, really glad that the Dems have won such a commanding majority, else we’d be in for four years of rather horrific gridlock. Remember, the Republicans in the Senate used the filibuster at least three times more in the last session of Congress than it had ever been used before; they blocked virtually every single Democratic initiative out the gate. Even as they blamed Democrats as being the “do nothing” Congress, they crowed openly about how being obstructionist “worked for them.”

Republicans have, for too long, been far too greedy, far too insistent on having everything go their way. Remember when they got more of their judicial appointments confirmed than any party in living history–98 percent were approved–and then screamed that the Democrats were being “obstructionist” because they refused to rubber-stamp the most egregiously extremist and corrupt right-wing judges that even some conservatives gagged at?

For me, the best representation of this attitude was that one Republican woman who complained about Starbucks coffee cups when it was found that more of them had left-leaning quotes printed on them than right-leaning quotes: “oh well, I’m not surprised. I’m used to being under-represented.” This was 2005, when Republicans had held the White House, both houses of Congress, had a stronger voice on the Supreme Court, and had a media filled with right-wing voices–and here was this woman whining about how she was “under-represented” because her coffee cups disagreed with her more often than not.

The problem is, Republicans like Buchanan don’t seem to realize that their bargaining position has been whittled down to almost nothing. With even more Republican Senate seats coming up for election in the next round (the last round where Republicans stand to lose the most, after Democrats won big the last two times), there will probably be at least a few Republicans who won’t want to be held up as the ones who blocked progress.

While Republicans may be able to hold on to the barest sliver of obstructionist power, the fact is that they are marginalized now more than they have been for a long time–maybe more than they have been ever, all things considered. To still go about with such arrogant hubris, demanding things be done their way or not at all, is flirting with disaster.

Before the 2006 midterm election, this is what the balance of power looked like in Congress:

And what it looks like after the 2008 election, just two years later:

Now, look at those numbers and tell me that Democrats in Congress haven’t been given a big, fat mandate.

Senate Republicans are still filibustering everything in sight. Today’s lineup:

Giving Washington D.C. residents representation in Congress. Washington D.C. has more people in it than the state of Wyoming (D.C.: 581,000; Wyoming: 493,000), but Wyoming has full representation in Congress. The people of D.C. don’t get that privilege. They are effectively living under the equivalent of colonial rule–taxation without representation. Democrats want to give those people a vote. Republicans oppose for a simple reason: D.C. would vote Democratic. If they would vote Republican, the GOP senators would vote for the measure in a heartbeat. But they’re not, so the GOP wants to continue denying them their fair representation. With a filibuster, no less.

Senator Webb of Virginia wants to give U.S. troops–you know, the ones we’re supposed to be supporting?–enough leave time back home so they won’t be as over-stressed and overburdened. Bush has repeatedly extended their tours of duty, bringing them back to Iraq again and again, forcing them to stay longer and longer each time. The strain is showing. Suicide rates among veterans and soldiers are climbing. So Webb–a decorated Marine officer whose son is also a Marine and is serving in Iraq–introduced an amendment to a defense funding bill that will require our troops to get as much time at home as they serve abroad.

So how do the Republicans in the Senate respond? With a filibuster, forcing our troops to serve beyond all reasonable expectations, and get burnt out. Way to support the troops!

Somebody buy Fox News a dictionary! Or a spell checker.

And then there’s Habeas Corpus (which, apparently, Fox News can’t even spell–see inset at right), which Democrat Chris Dodd is trying restore after Bush and Gonzales denied Americans has any such right. Guess what Republicans are planning to do to keep Americans from enjoying that right? Yep. Filibuster time!

Apparently, Republicans feel that since the Democrats used the filibuster in a strictly limited fashion to block far fewer judges than Republicans denied Clinton (Bush got through more nominees than any president in recent history), it is now OK for Republicans to filibuster everything in sight. As always, taking things to extremes.

Democrats blocked bat-guano crazy extremist judges that one could easily choke on. Republicans are filibustering your Constitutional right to Habeas Corpus, leave time for extremely overburdened soldiers, and the right for Americans to have representation in Congress. You know, commie liberal stuff.

Republicans are living up to their promise to Americans: burn out the troops and wreck the military, strike down your Constitutional rights, and deny minority voters the right to representation in Congress, using the very same means they themselves called “unconstitutional” and “undemocratic.”

These guys deserve to lose everything in the next election. Let’s see that they do.

I have posted before on how Republicans, who before this year went apeshit whenever Democrats even hinted at a filibuster, have started using the filibuster far more in a few months than Democrats did in several years. It appears that this trend is not only continuing, but that Republicans are now cashing in on their obstructionism by blocking everything Democrats do and then turn around and call them the “do-nothing Congress.” Talking Points Memo comments on this:

For the last several years, Republicans, with a 55-seat majority, cried like young children if Dems even considered a procedural hurdle. They said voters would punish obstructionists. They said it was borderline unconstitutional. They said to stand in the way of majority rule was to undermine a basic principle of our democratic system.

And wouldn’t you know it; the shameless hypocrites didn’t mean a word of it. As Roll Call reported this week, 239 separate bills have passed the House, only to find Senate Republicans “objecting to just about every major piece of legislation” that Harry Reid has tried to bring to the floor, whether it enjoys bi-partisan support or not.

The fact is, the Democratic majority in Congress has been passing truckloads of popular legislation in the House, only to find Republicans filibustering like there’s no tomorrow, not allowing up-or-down votes that they so recently claimed were the only fair thing to do.

And before you think that this is simply a case of turnabout being fair play, keep in mind these facts: (1) Republicans are being far more obstructionist and are using the filibuster far, far more often than Democrats ever did; (2) Republicans reacted vehemently whenever the Democrats did this, crying foul like there was no tomorrow and threatening the “nuclear option” of doing away with the filibuster at the drop of a hat; and (3) Democrats, despite being obstructed far worse than they ever gave, are not objecting to the filibuster itself and have not even hinted at the nuclear option. They resent the obstructionism, but are not complaining about the method.

In short: the Democrats are being consistent, trying to play by the rules, while the Republicans are so shamelessly hypocritical and opportunistic as to boggle the imagination. This is not simply turning the tables, this is about as lopsided as it gets. and Republicans are not ashamed at all:

Indeed, Senate Republicans — the ones accusing Dems of being a “do-nothing Congress” — are proud of their efforts. Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott boasted, “The strategy of being obstructionist can work or fail. So far it’s working for us.”

And in the end, that’s all that matters to the GOP: if it works for them. Forget consistency, forget fairness, forget fair play, forget honesty, forget just about anything right or wrong; these are “null sets” to congressional Republicans. It either works for them, and therefore is good and right, or it doesn’t, and so it is evil and immoral.

In the first half of the first session of this Congress, Republicans have used the filibuster 13 times; compare that to the whole first sessions of the previous two Congresses,when Democrats used it a total of four times. If I’m reading that right, Republicans are filibustering at a rate 12 times more than Democrats did. Republicans have filibustered and killed the Employee Free Choice Act, a minimum wage increase, renewable energy and clean-energy bills, cheap Canadian pharmaceutical imports, a bill to allow Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices, and a large number of immigration bill amendments. Republicans are blocking bills from going to committee, blocking them from being debated, blocking them from getting the up-or-down vote they once said was a sacrament. Just go to this page and see how many times the word “Cloture” appears; it’s staggering.

And of course, the “liberal” media is completely ignoring the hypocrisy and instead are playing along with Republican spin. Surprise!

Democrats have traditionally been called tax-and-spenders and weak on security by the right wing. The tax-and-spend meme goes back a ways; I remember hearing it especially in the Reagan 80’s. It’s always been a lie, easily proved. Just go to your local library, like I did, and look up the budgets during those years. You’ll find that out of the eight budget years during the Reagan administration, the Democratic-run Congress passed budget bills that were less than what Reagan had called for–in seven out of eight years. Had Democrats simply spent what Reagan asked for, we would have spent more; how that makes Democrats high spenders is not exactly explained by the right-wing rhetoric.

But today we see the conservative Reality Distortion Field™ even more strongly in play. For six years we suffered unchecked excessive porkbarrel orgies passed by the Republican-controlled Congress, not once vetoed by Bush for overspending (he only vetoed one bill, and it was over stem cell research). The Clinton surplus was destroyed right out of the gate by Bush and his Congress, and the deficit has been back up to Reagan-era levels ever since.

And yet, after all of this, Bush has the unmitigated gall to call the Democrats big spenders, whipping out the old, tired, but ultimately effective (thanks to that damned Liberal Media™!) canard about tax-and-spending Democrats:

President Bush warned Congress on Saturday that he will use his veto power to stop runaway government spending.

“The American people do not want to return to the days of tax-and-spend policies,” Bush said in his radio address.

The House passed a $37 billion budget for the Homeland Security Department on Friday, but Republicans rallied enough votes to uphold a promised veto from Bush.

Six years. For six years Republicans in Congress spent more than any other Congress in history. More pork-barrel bills and amendments than ever before. And the president, who could have checked it with veto threats, never did so. Bill after expensive pork-laden bill, Bush instead signed off on them, all of them–reserving his sole veto for a partisan issue to satisfy the hard-core religious right. Bush and the Republican Congress overspent by hundreds of billions of dollars, with several billion taxpayer dollars lost through corruption and bad accounting in Iraq alone.

But maybe Democrats deserve to be called tax-and-spenders today; what kind of pork did they heap on to the latest bill?

The spending bill passed 268 to 150. It calls for $2.1 billion in spending, or 6 percent, above the president’s request and 14 percent more than in the current fiscal year.

The bill would double the president’s financing request for state antiterrorism grants to $550 million and set aside $400 million in grants for port security, $190 million more than the president proposed.

Yep, those damned Democrats have gone and blown a couple billion dollars on antiterrorism and port security funding. You know, the kind of stuff that the 9/11 commission urged that we spend, and the Bush administration and congressional conservatives have blocked for years. Because they’re strong on defense. Democrats are tax-and-spenders because they oppose huge, multi-trillion dollar giveaways to the super-rich and to profit-heavy corporations, and they’re for spending a few hundred million more on minimally funding local governments’ ability to respond to terrorist attacks and other disasters. Because they’re weak on defense. The bastards!

But if you look closer, you’ll see a stronger underlying reason for Bush’s opposition:

Perhaps the most hotly contested part of the bill is a requirement that department contractors pay their employees at least the local prevailing wage. The provision, part of broader Democratic efforts to enact legislation being pushed by unions, would allow the president to waive so-called Davis-Bacon restrictions only in times of national emergency.

You’ve probably heard of this provision before. Remember after Katrina, when Bush and Republicans poured billions of dollars into “rebuilding” New Orleans, but mostly just pumped the money into the pockets of their campaign contributors? At the same time, Bush and the Republicans were trying to short-change hired labor–the same people they were supposedly trying to uplift. You see, the corporations that were getting huge, no-bid contracts wanted to pad their own pockets by using emergency provisions to pay less than market wages for labor.

Well, those nasty, middle-class-hating Democrats are at it again, trying to make it so the government funding does not allow people receiving the funds to pay below-market wages. And that’s the main reason Bush is against the bill. Forget that the workers deserve to be paid a fair wage–and that’s exactly what it is, a fair, “local prevailing wage.” Because it’s pro-worker, that means it’s pro-union, and therefore it must be an evil liberal plot.

Maybe if the Democrats had laden the bill with actual pork, Bush would have signed the bill out of sheer habit.

Remember how Republicans used to rail against the use of the filibuster? Remember how they used to claim that it was undemocratic and un-American, and that there should be a straight up or down vote? Remember how they used to threaten the nuclear option if the Democrats dared to be so vile as to even consider filibustering?

All of that is interesting when you consider that in the past few months, Republicans have used the filibuster more than Democrats did over a period of years. As The Carpetbagger reports:

…over the last couple of months, Senate Republicans have filibustered a minimum-wage increase, filibustered a debate over a non-binding resolution on the war (twice), threatened to filibuster two appropriations bills, and filibustered a bill that would have led to lower prices on prescription medication.

That last one is the most recent: Republicans have stopped cold an attempt to allow Medicare to negotiate for drug prices. There really is no defense for that; it is a complete and utter sell-out to Big Pharma, and is a betrayal of the American people. That’s almost as bad as stopping the minimum wage hike with a filibuster. And now the Republicans are threatening to filibuster a vote which would give Washington D.C. citizens representation in Congress; I mean, how more democratic and American could you be in wanting to give Americans the right to vote and be represented? But D.C. is mostly Democratic, so…

What’s amazing here is that their filibusters seem targeted at stopping legislation that follows the will of the people–most Americans want a minimum wage hike, and end to the Iraq War, and Medicare negotiations. And even more ironic, the filibusters aren’t even necessary, as Bush has vowed to veto all of this legislation in any case.

So where is the “liberal media” on this story? Well, they’re reporting on the filibuster as a background story, no big emphasis, but virtually no one is noting the extreme hypocrisy practiced by the Republicans in their hyperactive usage of the practice, or that Democrats are not threatening the “nuclear option” every time a filibuster is hinted at. Maybe it would be a bigger story if the Democrats railed against the filibuster like Republicans did, if they threatened the nuclear option constantly, like the Republicans did. Maybe it would even be more effective politically. But it would also be inconsistent.

In short, the Democrats are being fair and honest in accepting the use of the practice, while the Republicans are being unbelievable hypocrites. But because the Democrats are being fair and honest, nobody is picking up on the story. Instead, the media goes hog-wild when Nancy Pelosi wears a scarf. Nice to see their priorities are in order.

In the six years during the Bush presidency when Republicans controlled Congress, Bush vetoed only one piece of legislation, and that was for stem cell research funding. One reporter noted that this was the “cleanest record since the veto-less presidency of James A. Garfield. He was shot four months after he took office in 1881 and died several months later.”

In the past six weeks or so, Bush has issued threats against no fewer then sixteen different pieces of legislation, and it looks like he will probably follow up on every single threat. The bills threatened include the current war funding bill, bills on minimum wage, union rights, medication negotiating rights for Medicare, a sheaf of bills on open government (FOI requests, presidential library donor disclosure, and whistleblower protection), and the same stem-cell bill that Bush vetoed last year. And reports say that the real conflicts have yet to come.

It’s good to see Bush backing up his vow for bipartisanship with action.

From Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid, to President Bush over his promised veto of the Democrat’s new bill on Iraq:

Last week the House of Representatives on a bipartisan vote passed an emergency supplemental spending bill. The Senate is poised to pass its version of the bill as soon as later today. Both bills contain much needed funding for our troops and our veterans. Both bills also chart a new course forward in Iraq. Given the importance and urgency of this legislation to our troops and our security, we are quite disturbed by your insistence to veto it. Rather than work with the Congress to develop a bill you could sign, you apparently intend to follow a political strategy that would needlessly delay funding for our troops.

The bill, as you may have heard, provides $122 billion in funding for the troops as well as other necessary provisions–but also mandates a March 31, 2008 withdrawal date for U.S. forces in Iraq. Depending on how things work out, this could be a similar situation to the famous government-shutdown showdown between Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress.

When Bush vetoes the bill (a sure enough thing that I won’t bother using the word “if”), necessary funding for the troops will be put off. It will then be a game of public perception: who is cutting off funding for the troops, the Democrats or Bush? Both sides will claim that the other is being unreasonable. Each side will have an advantage: Democrats will have public opinion on their side (most Americans want us out of this war), but Bush will likely be able to depend on his bully pulpit and on a more-freindly-than-not media to get his side out to the people more.

But if Democrats play it just right, they could get the upper hand. When Bush vetoes the bill, they should stress compromise and talks, do everything they can to offer different versions of the bill, removing the pork and perhaps even modifying the withdrawal date–but not taking it out altogether. Bush has nothing really to offer back; he won’t budge on any withdrawal date, and really won’t be able to give any other compromises. As a result, the Democrats will appear to be flexible while Bush is intransigent. If the Democrats then send a modified bill, with everything they desire removed from the bill except a withdrawal date, back to Bush, and still he vetoes it, Bush could easily be seen as the baddie.

On an aside, this entire situation is sweetly ironic, in that the Democrats are using Bush’s favorite tactic against him: you’re either for our legislation, or you hate the troops. So, which is it, George?

Remember how Republicans were furious when the staff of the White House Travel Office was fired, even though they served at the pleasure of the president who had every right to fire them? Remember how the GOP made a huge issue out of it, sicced Kenneth Starr on it, and even tied it in with the whole Vince Foster suicide and claimed that there was a massive conspiracy where Hillary Clinton shot Foster and… well, you remember.

Well, Republicans aren’t so interested in investigating firings now. Especially since the firings were not low-level flunkies in some travel office, but instead were seven highly-regarded U.S. Attorneys. Especially since the firings were not travel office personnel charged with embezzlement, but instead were serious investigators who were looking into political corruption. Especially since those said attorneys were doing things that Republicans didn’t like.

Among the seven fired attorneys were Carol Lam, the California prosecutor who had brought down Duke Cunningham, and who was investigating other corrupt Republican politicians, and David Iglesias, who was investigating a Democrat in New Mexico–but had defied pressure to change his timetable so the investigation could become an election-year scandal.

People were already suspicious about the firings, as they were attributed to “performance-related” issues, even though the attorneys in question had been doing their jobs very well. Adding to the suspicion was the fact that the Bush administration was replacing the fired attorneys with political flunkies, most notably when Arkansas attorney Bud Cummings was fired so that a Karl Rove flunky could take his place. [Update: though suggested in irony, the idea that the Rove flunky got assigned to Arkansas just in time to wield subpoena power in order to dig up dirt on Hillary is not such an outrageous one....]

Making the stench worse was the Bush administration using a terror-related power given them in the “Patriot” Act which allowed them to make indefinite appointments to these offices without review.

Iglesias even goes so far as to say that he was told directly by the Justice Department that the firings were so that Bush appointees could take their places, not because they weren’t doing their jobs well.

Well, of course you can’t expect Republicans to go for an investigation of Republicans, any more than you could expect Democrats to go along with an investigation of Democrats (what the hell are they thinking with appointing Jefferson to a committee, anyway?).

However, the firing of U.S. Attorneys who were investigating Republicans or refusing to politicize the investigation of Democrats is clearly more than just a little political scandal; it is obstruction of justice at the very least.

Last year, nothing would have come of this. Now, the Democrats have the gavel, and they’re going to use it.

About damn time.

Remember back when Republicans considered the filibuster to be pure evil? Whenever Democratic politicians used it, say, to block the umpteenth attempt to nominate the same extremist hardcore right-wing nutballs into high court positions, the Republicans, furious that they could only get 95% of their nominees forced through the Senate, screamed bloody murder and threatened to outlaw the filibuster altogether with what they called the “nuclear option” (sorry, the “constitutional option”)?

Yeah, Republicans despise the filibuster. Not just because it was used to deny them total and absolute dominance, of course–they loathed the filibuster in principle, and made a big thing of it. After all, the filibuster denied a straight up-or-down vote! What were those sneaky, underhanded Democrats up to, if they were so chicken as to not want a simple, apple-pie American procedure like a straight up-or-down vote! Those weasels!

I mean, if Republicans ever lost their majority in the Senate, they would never resort to such a nasty, underhanded, un-American, pinko commie… uh… err….

Okay, sarcasm off.

You of course by now have used your incredible psychic powers of clairvoyance to determine that–yes, you guessed it–Republicans in the Senate wasted no time at all in resorting to using the filibuster, and from their speed in adopting the tactic, are likely to start using it far more often than Democrats used to. Which is fine: that’s how things are supposed to work. Better the government be hog-tied than to allow one party to run wild. Democrats didn’t use it enough when they were in the minority; now you can expect Republicans, despite their former hatred of the procedure on principles, to go nuts with it.

Democrats don’t like it and will complain, but they’re not going to go “nuclear” over it; it’s the Republicans who are the hypocrites here.

Already Senate Republicans are using the filibuster to block a straight up-or-down vote on a resolution to oppose Bush’s “Surge™” in Iraq.

Note, however, that the media, at least at this time, is scared gutless of using the “F” word to describe what Republicans are doing. Read the USA Today article I linked to just above, you’ll see that they “blocked” and “sidetracked” the vote, which “was 49-47, or 11 short of the 60 needed to go ahead with debate.” They didn’t even use the word “cloture,” for Christ’s sake. The only mainstream story I could find that used the word “filibuster” to describe the Iraq War resolution vote was US News & World Report. Everybody else I could find used words like “block” or “stop“–and neither representative article mentions the “F” word anywhere.

Meanwhile, Republicans in the Senate used a version of the filibuster in committee to stop a bill designed to make it easier to form unions (how horrible! America has never been about forming unions! That’s commie talk!), and while the press did use the “F” word then, it was only in forms like “rare filibuster” and “mini filibuster.”

So, Republicans are being rank hypocrites and the media is too weak-kneed to even come close to calling them on it. Looks like business as usual.

You have got to see this speech by Ted Kennedy on the floor of the Senate. After Republicans have introduced at least 179 amendments (no typo) to the minimum wage bill over the past five days, Kennedy hit the roof.

Republicans are trying to kill the minimum wage increase now after having prevented it from coming up repeatedly over the past decade. Amendments of all sorts have been attempted, most of them poison pills, adding up to $200 billion dollars in proposals not directly involved with the minimum wage. And there are another 70 amendments the Republicans plan to throw at the bill.

The Republicans’ main stated objection is that the increase in the minimum wage will hurt businesses, especially small businesses. Kennedy shot that down quickly, by pointing out that over the past several years, Congress has passed $240 billion in tax breaks for corporations, and $36 billion in tax breaks for small businesses–and despite a 42% increase in productivity, not a single extra penny has been mandated for the workers.

Then Kennedy got ticked off:

What is the price, we ask the other side? What is the price that you want from these working men and women? What cost? How much more do we have to give to the private sector and to business? How many billion dollars more, are you asking, are you requiring?

When does the greed stop, we ask the other side? That’s the question and that’s the issue. …

Do you have such disdain for hard-working Americans that you want to pile all your amendments on this? Why don’t you just hold your amendments until other pieces of legislation? Why this volume of amendments on just the issue to try and raise the minimum wage? What is it about it that drives you Republicans crazy? What is it? Something. Something! What is the price that the workers have to pay to get an increase? What is it about working men and women that you find so offensive?

The boldface on that last sentence I added, but with Kennedy’s passion, it very well could have been his.

Republicans are being shameless on this one. Begrudging Americans on the lowest rungs even a cost-of-living increase while piling huge mountains of cash on the few who are making record profits already. Kennedy’s question hits to the heart of the matter: Republicans must find the average American pretty damned offensive.

But this is not a surprise. The GOP passed through bills that supported huge pharmaceutical firms, making obscene profits, over elderly people of modest means just trying to stay alive. They voted for legislation that favored the credit industry, already flush with cash, over the poorer people of the nation. They gave billions and billions to Halliburton and other contractors, and billions more for weapons systems we won’t need or use, and then chintzed on the soldiery by not giving them adequate armor or supplies whilst cutting their benefits and VA care back home. Republicans will fight through hell itself to give another hundred billion in tax cuts to those who sit upon piles of cash, but will not move a finger except in defiance when it comes to a meager nod to the people who actually produce that wealth but are denied access to it.

Whatever their rhetoric or prose, Republicans have spoken loudly and clearly with their actions: they despise the average American, especially those working the hardest and reaping the least.