US POLITICS: AMERICANS, PLEASE WELCOME YOUR NEW PRESIDENT... SCOTT BROWN!

congrats on going to high school with that guy

I didn't - he's like a zillion years older than me, HOOS. Every time Norm offers something intelligent, fellow alums can forget about Friedman for a bit, basically.

wow so wait your parents let you skip middle school so you could go to high school with Norm Ornstein? that's rad.

I've said this before but the only famous person from my high school is Craig Kilborn ;_;

craig kilborn is better than no one--no one cool went to my high school

Except, perhaps, you. Someone's got to be the first, right?

Honestly there are like no truly famous *gentiles* from my HS.

thank god

pass it without a vote! brilliant! frankly at this point the republicans seem a little pathetic. how lame do you have to be to allow the other side to pass a bill without a vote??

oh that's not actually happening, you say? somebody should tell the republicans then, i guess

Having a political party organized around anything but ideology makes no moral sense.

since when do politics make moral sense

^^^^

you know what doesn't make moral sense? democracy

???

i presume shakey mo is talking about the dubious ethical aspects of pure majority rule

though he might just be high

when fascism comes to the usa it will be wrapped in a longhaired californian

i presume shakey mo is talking about the dubious ethical aspects of pure majority rule

yes

thanks for the vote of confidence

np

Back at The Corner:

Are the GOP Hypocrites on the Slaughter Rule? [Daniel Foster]

He strings together a lot of sentences, but none of them seem to have anything to do with each other.

I sat in on the rules committee meeting today, they essentially spent the whole freakin' time arguing about how many cameras were/should be there.

Posted more http://sumofchange.blogspot.com/2010/03/grandstanding-at-rules-committee.html

kucinich switches to 'yes'

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2010/03/17/evening-buzz-kucinich-switches-health-care-vote-from-no-to-yes/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_ac360blog+%28Blog%3A+AC360%29&utm_content=Twitter

I think the best thing for HCR politics is the CBO score that Maddow is talking about which should come out soon. It will evaluate the econopmic side of HCR. I was watching Countdown on MSNBC and there was a commercial for anti-HCR. It starts with "americans still losing their jobs, more buisnesses struggling... trillion $ health care bill, billions in new taxes, more mandates on buisnesses, health care costs will go even higher making a tough economy worse.. tell congress we can't afford to pay - employersforahealthyeconomy.org)".

thought the CBO score was supposed to be released earlier today? . . .

It's been slowed down, should be out by tomorrow

Now there is talk of the excise tax debate coming back, trying to make the CBO score better, Trumka is meeting with the White House about it, I doubt he'll take that one well.

so is the delay an indication the CBO is scoring the bill poorly?

that would be devestating, at this juncture.

yeah we'd be well fucked

I think it's less being scored poorly, and more scoring worse than the Senate Bill (I think this has to do with the Byrd rule; post-fixes, it has to do better than the original bill in deficit reduction to be passed via reconciliation).

whatever the CBO says it's true that this bill does very little to bridge the vast gulf between what the US pays per capita on health care and what the rest of the world does. so these 'we can't afford to pay' activists are right but.. where have they been the last 20 years?

Those activists have been waiting for this day, because they oppose the welfare state in its entirety, and they think bankruptcy is the way to crush it. It's not a bad strategy.

i guess everyone worried about the cbo score can calm down now

yeah. it's a good score.

i just heard the GOP leadership sputtering in an attempt to respond to the CBO's topline numbers (which is all we have now). basically, it's "the democrats can try and tweak-and-tweak this, but the american people understand that it's a trillion dollars for a new entitlement, which we can't afford." not sure how that will resonate with anyone besides tea-partiers, given the CBO scoring, but there it is.

i have 2 tvs on--the MSNBC chyron: "health care bill to reduce deficit"; the fox chyron: "health care bill to cost trillions"

why do you have 2 tvs on

4 my job

he thinks he's LBJ.

i actually have 4 tvs on but im only watching 2

lol. the power of issue-framing.

sounds like a cool job.

http://blog.echovar.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/lbj_watches_tv.jpg

http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00191/13-casino-_191525s.jpg

"so what does this job entail?"
"you have to get high and watch tv"
"oh no problem"
"yeah but sometimes you have to watch as many as 4 tvs at a time"
"I am a warrior"
"cool, you start monday"

i signed a contract that said i couldnt get high while i work :(

not even on someone else's supply?

jeez who are u working 4 hitler? (xp)

cos, y'know, everyone's heard of the standard rule but i never thought they'd get so pernickety

Max and his four televisions, today:

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/SzrhzkGZx0s/0.jpg

http://blog.newsok.com/nerdage/files/2009/07/batman-1989.jpg

I like how some posts immediately prompt an image search

some dude in a basement at Google's wondering why there's a sudden spike on GIS for "multiple televisions"