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Thursday, January 14, 2010
Gail Collins: Filibuster Has Prevented Obama from Doing AnythingWhat a joke this column is. Talking about the Massachusetts special election, Collins gripes that his status as the 41st Republican senator could prevent the health care bill from passing. She does a little exercise to show how only a small minority of the country could bring the process to a halt: There are 100 members of the Senate. But as Brown is currently reminding us, because of the filibuster rule, it takes only 41 to stop any bill from passing.
U.S. population: 307,006,550.
Population for the 20 least-populated states: 31,434,822.
That means that in the Senate, all it takes to stop legislation is one guy plus 40 senators representing 10.2 percent of the country. In theory, of course. In practice, the 40 Republican senators do not represent the 20 smallest states in population. Texas has two Republican senators and is the second largest state with a population of 24,000,000. Florida, the fourth largest, has one GOP senator. Getting back to Massachusetts, Collins talks a bit about the enthusiasm gap: The tea-party types are euphoric, pouring money in Brown’s direction. The people who voted for Barack Obama, meanwhile, are sullen and dispirited. This is, of course, partly because of the economy, but also partly because of the sense that the president is not getting anything done.
Which brings us back to the 10 percent rule. Don’t get me started again. Doggone those nasty Republicans! Why are they filibustering all the president's programs! Labels: Filibuster, Gail Collins, New York Times
Monday, January 11, 2010
Edwards the MonsterGood lord, what a tawdry tale the whole J ohn Edwards/Elizabeth Edwards/Rielle Hunter saga turns out to be. The Silky Pony comes off pretty poorly: Many of his friends started noticing a change—the arrival of what one of his aides referred to as “the ego monster”—after he was nearly chosen by Al Gore to be his running mate in 2000: the sudden interest in superficial stuff to which Edwards had been oblivious before, from the labels on his clothes to the size of his entourage. But the real transformation occurred in the 2004 race, and especially during the general election. Edwards reveled in being inside the bubble: the Secret Service, the chartered jet, the press pack, the swarm of factotums catering to his every whim. And the crowds! The ovations! The adoration! He ate it up. In the old days, when his aides asked how a rally had gone, he would roll his eyes and self-mockingly say, “Oh, they love me.” Now he would bound down from the stage beaming and exclaim, without the slightest shred of irony, “They looooove me!” Saint Elizabeth does even worse: With her husband, she could be intensely affectionate or brutally dismissive. At times subtly, at times blatantly, she was forever letting John know that she regarded him as her intellectual inferior. She called her spouse a “hick” in front of other people and derided his parents as rednecks. One time, when a friend asked if John had read a certain book, Elizabeth burst out laughing. “Oh, he doesn’t read books,” she said. “I’m the one who reads books.” It's an amazing read, but keep in mind that the sources for it are from the Edwards campaign and have a vested interest in maintaining their own viability for the future. Labels: Elizabeth Edwards, John Edwards, Rielle Hunter
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