What The FIlibuster "saved us from"

Opinion: How I Learned to Love the Filibuster - WNYC:

"Obama and company would have likely been able to go much farther than the vast majority would have wanted them to in regards to health care reform and passed actual socialized healthcare legislation, without the filibuster, as well as not needed to pay for the program without moderates pressing that issue.

Without the filibuster, the stimulus package Obama passed would have been much more wasteful and directed even more so at special interest groups beholden to the left, just as the stimulus package Bush passed would have been the mirror opposite"

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Solomon Kleinsmith wanks away at his "aren't we great in the center" BS again.

There is no possible chance that there were 50 votes for "socialized health care legislation". That is just fucking fantasy. Further, President Obama has shown no tendency in that direction, ever.

As for the stimulus package ... if it would have been a 1.5 trillion dollar package that consisted of simply hiring people to dig and then fill in holes in the ground for 2 years then it would have increased aggregate demand and folks would have bought things and companies would have been looking to hire folks.

And people ask me why I think these soi disant centrist types are a bigger danger to our country than the GOP.

Grr

Comment Of The Day - PJMedia Edition

The PJ Tatler » A Comment About Bizarre neo-swastika reminiscent of “The Great Dictator” used as power symbol by OWS leaders: "First they came for the #s,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a #.

Then they came for the @s,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a @.

Then they came for the /s,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a /.

Then they came for :.
and there was no one left to speak out for :."

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Andrew Breitbart is still an idiot

» ** UPDATE: White House Denies **Was President Obama Really Sitting in Front of an Assembly Line in this Video? - Big Government: "President Obama delivered his weekly address to the nation from Detroit, Michigan this week after visiting workers at a GM assembly plant. When the video hit at Breitbart.tv, our tip box suddenly became very active with people claiming that the President was actually sitting in front of a green screen and the background image was really a composite image of an assembly line.
"

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Interesting Little Car

Tata Motors Mini CAT Air Car to debut in 2012 | Car Advice | Reviews: "Tata Motors and ex-Formula One engineer Guy N. from a Luxembourg MDI have come up with a car that runs on air. Dubbed the Tata Mini CAT, or Air Car, the environmentally-friendly car uses no petrol, requires little maintenance and has a range of around 300km between re-gassing. Tata hopes to have it on the market in India in 2012.

"

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Nom Nom Nom

The birthers eat their own - The Washington Post: "The people who brought you the Barack Obama birth-certificate hullabaloo now have a new target: Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a man often speculated to be the next Republican vice presidential nominee. While they’re at it, they also have Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana and perhaps a future presidential candidate, in their sights."

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Rich Get Richer, Poor Get Poorer

First look at US pay data, it’s awful | David Cay Johnston:

"There were fewer jobs and they paid less last year, except at the very top where, the number of people making more than $1 million increased by 20 percent over 2009.

The median paycheck — half made more, half less — fell again in 2010, down 1.2 percent to $26,364. That works out to $507 a week, the lowest level, after adjusting for inflation, since 1999.

The number of Americans with any work fell again last year, down by more than a half million from 2009 to less than 150.4 million."

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Anderson Cooper Apologizes for Repeating Lie that 47% of Americans Don't Pay Taxes During GOP Debate | Video Cafe

Anderson Cooper Apologizes for Repeating Lie that 47% of Americans Don't Pay Taxes During GOP Debate | Video Cafe: "I came close to posting this bit the night of the debate and slamming Anderson Cooper for repeating the right-wing lie that 47% of Americans don't pay any taxes at all, conflating income taxes with the average levels of taxation that all Americans pay for plenty of other things, and Cooper beat me to it by offering this apology for his misstatement during the CNN GOP debate this week which he moderated.

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The simplest possible RFID emulator

Very Cool

No True Scotsman - Climate Skeptic Edition

I wondered how Luboš Motl was going to spin this result away:

Let's just assume, for a moment, that the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study is legit. What exactly did they find? Well, in a nutshell, global warming is definitely real. Since the mid-1950s, average global land temperatures have risen by nearly two degrees Fahrenheit. For what it's worth, this agrees very closely with previous global warming studies that were dismissed by skeptics for one reason or another. The Berkeley study also found that pretty much everything that climate change skeptics used to discredit previous studies ultimately made no statistically significant differences to the overall result.

I am not surprised:

In the video below, Andrew Revkin says that a "skeptic confirms substantial recent global warming". This is not a truly valid proposition because Richard Muller is no skeptic: realizing that Michael Mann has made things that can't be tolerated in science is nice and it may make you a heretic among some hardcore believers but it's not enough for you to be a genuine climate skeptic.

And So It Begins - Manic Progressives falling out of love with Warren already?

Elizabeth Warren’s Jobs Plan: War with Iran « naked capitalism:

"As much as your humble blogger still regards Elizabeth Warren as preferable to Scott Brown in the Massachusetts Senate race, the evidence from her campaign is that she is no progressive, unless you define “progressive” to mean “centrist/Hamilton Project Democrat willing to throw a few extra bones to the average Joe.”

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I wondered how long it was going to take for folks to start saying things like this. I have to admit that I figured they would at least wait until she won the election.

RIP - Dennis Ritchie

Dennis Ritchie: the other man inside your iPhone | Technology | The Observer: "It's funny how fickle fame can be. One week Steve Jobs dies and his death tops the news agendas in dozens of countries. Just over a week later, Dennis Ritchie dies and nobody – except for a few geeks – notices. And yet his work touched the lives of far more people than anything Steve Jobs ever did. In fact if you're reading this online then the chances are that the router which connects you to the internet is running a descendant of the software that Ritchie and his colleague Ken Thompson created in 1969.

"

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Basement Scraper?

Humans Invent | Innovation, Craftsmanship & Design: "t could be time to say sayonara to the skyscraper and hello to underground living. If Mexican architects have their way we’ll all be living in Earthscrapers over 30 stories below ground. Forget loft living, the next trend might be subterranean suburbia.
"

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On Firedoglake and Rush

They Shoot Warlords, Don’t They? | TBogg: "I do admit I’m a bit startled that in essence they’re agreeing with Rushbo. I use that fat fuck as a barometer….if he’s thinking this way, I lean that way."

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Not The Onion But Just As Funny

Homeopathic economist suggests injecting ‘up to £1’ into economy | NewsBiscuit: "Harliton has calculated that £1 invested properly will completely cure the world economy. “The key is to find the correct dilution.”, explained Harliton, “I know £1 sounds a lot but if it’s introduced in 10p doses throughout the year, the economy will soon return to a balanced state. I’ve already written a series of post-dated prescriptions from my chakra book.”

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"March" - Kat Maslich-Bode

Just Beautiful