Remember how that one Senator prevented the Iraq War by putting a hold on it?

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Yeah, me neither...

Funny how that works.

[WhiteTara]

1. sure...Iraq is a vacationers paradise

and we should book our trips this week, cause that all worked out so well for all of us.
:sarcasm:

[eleny]

4. Remember when there were tv ads for vacationing in Kurdistan?

The Kurds were pushing the area as "the other Iraq" for vacationers.

[WhiteTara]

7. No, but I would love to meet their rug makers

I love their designs.

[gateley]

2. This is just insane. nt

[Lorien]

11. It is indeed. nt

[wroberts189]

3. Remember when you only needed 51 votes to pass a bill..?

I remember that one. Now we are all told a different narrative.

And the threat of a filibuster was the same as an actual filibuster?

Do not remember that... except one time when the Dems threatened to use it and the pubs said if they did they would get rid of it. So they made a deal... you don't use it and we will not get rid of it.

As Rachel Maddow said "What a deal"

What is wrong with the collective memory of this country?


knr

[dsc]

5. the extention will eventually pass as would have the war

if someone had pulled a Bunning. Bunning can delay the vote about a week or so unless he gets 40 members to filibuster with him. In essence Bunning is forcing the Senate to have some cloture votes on this legislation which takes time, and time has run out on the benefits.

[DCKit]

6. She or He would have been drawn and quartered with an assist from the M$M.

Except, of course, on that "Fair and Balanced" news station.

[snot]

8. Every day of delay of that tragedy would have been another step toward

exposing how ridiculous the pretexts for war were.

Remember, the only coherent justification for it was that Saddam was so close to striking the U.S. with WMD that we could not afford to wait even the month or two needed for the UN inspectors to complete their task.

[ThomWV]

9. Back to the top with ye ....

[nashville_brook]

10. kickee.

[TheWraith]

12. You're surprised that there are different standards for Democrats and Republicans? nt

[tom_paine]

13. I used to remember when America was at least partially free from Corporate Domination.

But that was so long ago now, it seems like a dream.

[Chisox08]

14. When were those days?

I'm to young to remember them.

[tom_paine]

16. I suppose everything is relative, but it was long ago, it seems

Still, I would say in the early 80s, under Reagan (really just a pre-Alzheimer's Front Man for the First Bush Imperium - 1981-1992), was the last time the system of Checks and Balances, New Deal protections such as finance regulation, FCC Media Regulation (to keep from over-concentration of ownership), and the rest of it still worked even remotely well.

That was because Bushifcation was still in such early stages, and the Founding Fathers really did create quite a set of documents in the Declaration, Constitution and Bill of Rights it took the Bushies so long to dismantle it's many layers of concentric protections to create the modern Corporate State/Inverted Totalitarianism we have today.

So that time period still functioned in many ways how the Old American Republic had evolved to become in post WWII America.

Meanwhile, the Bushies were eating the foundation out from under Representative Democracy and our Constitutional Republic.

But from the outside, the edifice seemed to function reasonably well and even sometimes responsive to the will of the people. Was there corruption? Of course. But nothing compared to today and Nixon was at least exposed (if not prosecuted) for breaking the law. And the media, while far from perfect was not monolithic and crazily blabbering with pundits. It wasn't perfect, either, but you could rely that the facts they gave at least gave something of an accurate picture of what was going on.

There were actually such things as fact, demonstrable facts, not a competition to see who could scream their marketing in more ears as being the modern definition of truth.

Only a very few people truly knew what was going on back then, or could fathom the scope of the multi-pronged assault our nation was going to suffer on every level. I wasn't one of them.

In the early 80s, in fact, it seemed as if liberal excesses were being necessarily trimmed by Reagan in those days when the "swinging pendulum" theory of the USA was actually real.

As opposed the this Empire we live in today which is heading straight toward either Far-Right Corporate Domination and Neofeudalist Statism or something much worse and more classical totalitarian like the old Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. Not very appetizing in either case. But it will be specifically tailored for this time and this nation, an old snake wearing a new skin.

I'd like to better describe how it felt, but can't. It was a time when you could read the book "1984" and laugh to yourself how such could NEVER happen here. When the principle of advertising, marketing, PR and behavioral psychology hadn't come to rule almost every aspect of our lives.

The Clinton Era, for those of us who still didn't really pick up on what was going on, was a nostalgic time because it brought that feeling even though the reality was the increasing strangulation of our Representative Democracy by the nascent Busho-Corporate State. It might not have been true, but it FELT still free.

[SlingBlade]

15. Yea, Aint it. Time for a mulligan I think

[AllyCat]

17. As I've been told her again and again over the past few days, this was part of the genius

Just quit griping and know that this was played perfectly. :eyes:

[Dr.Phool]

18. Didn't Dodd put a hold on a bill, and Reid ignored it?

I can't remember which one it was. It may have been telecom immunity.

[change_notfinetuning]

19. Or how that one senator voted not to certify the 2000 Florida election results,

so they could investigate further?

Me neither . . . In a joint session of Congress, 20 members of the House refused to certify the result, but not one single senator would be so courageous. The Supreme Court decision could have been moot if one person in the senate had stood up for a full recount in Florida.

Yep, funny. I guess.

[formercia]

21. Maxine Waters on the floor of the Senate pleading for a signature

from Just one Senator. Jon Corzine sitting there openly laughing at her. It was prophetic.

[liberation]

22. One could very well make a case that was the day in which we could have pronounced dead

our democratic experiment.

Funny, the black caucus in congress where the only ones willing to stand up and do the right thing. The senate simply stood there and did nothing, Gore included (but he is now a hero, because he gives cool powerpoint presentations and is trying to make a killing from cap'n'trade investments apparently).

[change_notfinetuning]

23. cap'n'trade - another Wall St. type boondoggle waiting to happen. n/t

[change_notfinetuning]

24. Senator Maxine Waters - sounds good doesn't it? n/t

[formercia]

25. I would vote for her if she ran for President.

She is a hero in my eyes.

[Mithreal]

20. Damn. That is painful.

[slipslidingaway]

26. Remember that the Dems controlled the Senate at the time of the Iraq War vote. n/t