Senate Held Hostage: Day Six

I saw the Bunning clip last night at the gym and actually LOLed (guffawed, really) at the reporter pressing the call button over and over again. It’s even better with the sound.

@mellbell: I would have run it yesterday, but it didn’t include Bunning flipping the bird on camera. I don’t know whether ABC had the footage and didn’t use it, but it would have been a Great Moment in Democracy.

I hope Bumming keeps it up. you cant buy press like that.

check out this headline from FAUX news:

Lone Republican Fights Jobless Bill

Sen. Bunning blocks bill to extend jobless benefits — to the dismay of Republicans and to the delight of Dems

He wasn’t that good a pitcher, either.

…Aaaaand he folds. From CNN: The Senate voted Tuesday to pass a $10 billion measure to extend benefits for unemployed workers and fund road projects after Sen. Jim Bunning agreed to end his filibuster.

GOP candidate with Tea Party support going down in flames in Santa Fe mayoral race. This important because Albuquerque elected some Republican worm as mayor when neither the conservative/shithead Hispanic Dem incumbent nor my friend the cool progressive Hispanic Dem would drop out and let the other guy win. A win for the incumbent will help knock down the “New Mexico is going GOP” meme, although bad guys will say “oh, but Santa Fe is so liberal.”

I’m home with a cold, so I probably won’t make it to the post-election party downtown unless Mrs RML drags me out. I think that’s were all my lib Dem local FB friends are tonight.

BTW, an interesting post on this issue:

The “Threat of an Arrogant Laboring Class, …a Threat to the Foundation not Merely of Wealth but of Existence Itself”

Apparently, Republican-style douchebaggery has an historical precedent – who knew?

Choice quote:

How to increase labor productivity? He advocated two solutions. First, the removal of all restrictions on free commerce and the accumulation of capital. Second, abolition of the poor laws which “made wages not a matter of contract between the master and the workman, but a right for one, and a tax on the other.” Senior was no longer worried about the misery caused by poverty. The events of 1830 led him to worry about the “threat of an arrogant laboring class, resorting to strikes, violence, and [unions], a threat to the foundation not merely of wealth but of existence itself.” Poor laws and dole led to a decreased incentive to work and created the arrogant attitude that workers and their families had a right to exist even if they could not or would not find work.

Sound familiar?

@redmanlaw: Glad to hear the Dems pulled one out.
Just saw sad news from Oklahoma: Wilma Mankiller has stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Lousy way to go.

@al2o3cr: Plus ça change…

@al2o3cr: That sounds like some of the philosophy espoused by the Owner class in “Julian Comstock”, a future history I just finished reading.

@Mistress Cynica: Sorry to hear that. My NDN friends on FB are not on it yet.

@al2o3cr: threat of an arrogant laboring class, resorting to strikes, violence, and [unions], a threat to the foundation not merely of wealth but of existence itself

Funny how this could be almost equally applied to the teabaggers as to latte-sipping, subway-commuting urban liberal laborers.

Arrogant: without any reason to be.

Resorting to strikes: not the teabaggers yet and certainly not libtards like me.

Resorting to violence: the teabaggers are on a hair-trigger. Maybe the libtards will grow some balls find their rage and start lashing out as well, anyone want to go out and smash the windows of your local Wal-Mart? Oh yeah, they don’t really have windows, they’re like voluntary consumer prisons, once you go in it’s hard to survive on the “outside”.

A threat to wealth and existence itself: neither seem a threat to wealth, as long as it is accumulated in increasingly fewer hands. Existence? Well, yes, both seem to be up for that.

@redmanlaw: Loved that book.