If the Gang of Whatevers (Moderates? Please!) are “workhorses” (HA!) and the Leadership are “Showhorses” (Harry Reid is a ’showhorse?’), then we are dealing with:
A) Folks who know nothing of horses, and
B) Rahm is a freak of nature since I didn’t now that snakes had legs.

now = know

Preview is my friend
Preview is my friend
Preview is my friend

If only the Democrats had lost by huge margins in 2000 and 2004 and not won by such overwhelming margins in 2006 and 2008, perhaps Teh Media would have listened to them for the last 8 years… who knew the way to be heard is to get the living shit beaten out of you in consecutive elections?

Ah, it’s Milbank, who had the wisdom to abandon Olbermann for Campbell Brown’s wee CNN programme amidst the 08 campaign. Smart little Sketcher: he pulls one word out of a hat and crafts an entire column around it. Yesterday’s word must have been HORSE! Too bad he forgot to mention The Gluehorse’s antics on the Senate floor: “This bill’s not bipartisan — it’s just got two GOPs working behind closed doors!”

Which, when it was Lieberman in 2006, was the very definition of bipartisan.

Thanks Jane.

digg is open.

In a little over two years Rahm will be in a position to replace Nancy and then it gets really scary. I believe he will run for his Illinois seat in two years and try to become speaker of the house. Sometimes I think that Daschle would have made a much better choice for COS

So is “edit” as I cna’t, type well nor can I spel.

Tell me its not as grim as it sounds. Are there no noble bluebloods among the horseflesh? Don’t tell me the political class is once again willfully shafting the middle and lower classes with the pundit class (subgroup of political class, actually) cheerleading ever backward?????? Say it ain’t so, Jane!

Senator Collins always sounds to me like a third grade teacher. But maybe America responds to that kind of deliberate articulation after their infantile thralldom with the Bush crime family.

On the bright side, if we could get rid of the Reid Pelosi acquiescent “leadership” duo maybe we could start forcing the goopers to retreat.

That these “moderates” can think it is OK to cut funds effecting women, children and the least advantaged is mind boggling until one sees the people involved. I wish the WH and the “leadership” would get the heck out of the way and let the progressives get to it.

Seems to me that OB better get his act in gear, if he cannot get something done now we are in for a bloody awful four years.

Obama has only been in office less than a month, and already I am sick. How many ways can he cave? I know he can’t do anything without the Congress, and that is who I am really mad at. But WHY did Obama appoint so many GOPers? (The excuse of “his seat COULD become Democratic in 2010″ gets old.) And yes, I hear he picked Rahm to keep him from causing trouble in the House. I have no idea if that is true or not, but if it IS true, it ain’t working, Obama.

They have seen the country’s political tide turning for over 2 years now, and still they whine like it is 2003. DC is like that — very retro.

If we keep playing these games, and let the DC Democrats play them, with no negative consequences, things will never change.

WE (the voters) got them a House, Senate, and White House — in just 2 years! And now that they have it, they still act like GOPigs. SO disheartening.

OK, this is smarmy and useless, but where are the democrats who are speaking to the media about what’s wrong with the tax cuts, so they might be quoted as well. Where is the in-depth discussion on AMT that you see on the blogs, and the 42% of the bill as tax cuts (or whatever the exact # may be). Where is the argument that Nelson is a multi-millionaire who is acting in his own interests, not the people’s interests?

Is it purely the fault of the media or could Democrats have a little more msg control, talking points? Can’t the Dems to the left get together and decide on a narrative that matches Obama’s? There should be a chorus of people that get out to every show explaining that stimulus = jobs. I haven’t heard a Dems explaining why public transit is the right thing to spend on right now, or family planning. They don’t yet believe in themselves; they are still afraid of being called “radicals.” Also, it’s only been 19 days.

Instead of being disgusted, let’s get out and do something. I am happy to stand on a street corner with a sign that says: People, not Banks and Stimulus = Jobs, but I don’t want to do it all by myself. We have to change the narrative–it’s not enough to make clever comments on a blog.

You know… this whole situation has be so depressed. After such a high just a little more than two weeks ago… and after I worked so hard to get Obama elete.

I can believe that he unleashed Emmanuel and his ilk on us and I REALLY can’t believe his main econoomic advisors are some of the people who helped create this crisis.

Jane… I would really like to know if you saw this coming? Did anyone see this coming? WE all knew “bipartisanship” would triumh over content… but honestly how could he be using these people without true balance from the other side.

I really feel like it was a bait n switch or really more like Obama is a trojan horse with Rahm and the DLCers inside.

All week I have been ranting and raving about pols and media overuse and abuse of easy and slippery metaphors in connection with this stimulus legislation.

These horse metaphors are just more of the same. Rather than haircuts, stimpy and horses, the pols and the media might consider doing some analytical work, like Hugh and others here, and sharing it with the American public.

We need this legisation and the forces at work in shaping it illuminated, rather than obscured by the misuse of language.

pranced? PRANCED??? Ah, jeez . . .

She always sounds like a kindergarten teacher to me! Glad to me it’s not just me who thinks she missed her calling as a grade school teacher.

Collins might sound like a third grade teacher but we should be thankful that she isn’t one or those students would be in trouble in the fourth grade.

Although come to think of it, she would do less damage to the country as a whole if she were a 3rd grade teacher instead of a United States Senator.

Good morning Ms. Collins.

I’m still confused as to how, exactly, all this is Rahm’s fault. Weren’t the moderate Senators the ones who watered down the bill?

And if it’s early enough to pronounce Obama’s presidency a failure, it’s also early enough of me to be unutterably weary of people pronouncing Obama’s presidency a failure after less than a month. By all means, criticize the stimulus and protest against what was removed. But do we really gain anything by calling Obama a fifth columnist every time he does something we disagree with?

(((kyeo))) Having done that, I am now headed into the witness protection program.

Because he is more interested in carrying out Obama’s charm offensive with the Republicans than getting good bill done.

Doesn’t Dana kind of leave out the “assdela” horses?

Speaking as someone who has a barn full of horses, here’s a point that Milbanks seems to have forgotten. In the real world, work horses were replaced by tractors and combines long, long ago – and that replacement didn’t come about bc the workhorses were able to deal with the evolving requirments of the nation.

Meanwhile, show horses learned new steps.

Assdela Horses, though, have managed to survive and thrive without ever having to adapt. Go figure.

I am getting a little annoyed at the notion of capitulating with holders of an ideology that wrought the very problems that plague us. Why bargain with lawmakers that have no intention of voting for the legislation anyway? If the Senate chooses to stall, let the stallers benefit from the relentless hew and cry of national destruction.

If you start with the link in the next-to-last paragraph, you go to Jane’s post yesterday morning on Rahm and COBRA. If you click on the first link in that post, you are taken to a WaPo0 story from yesterday. Half way down the first page there is this little nugget:

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel attended the final meetings in Reid’s office last night to work out lingering differences. Before Emanuel arrived, Collins said, Democrats were advocating $63 billion in cuts. “Then Rahm got involved, and a much better proposal came forward,” she said.

So yeah, Rahm is meddling in the mix and making matters worse in his drive to undercut Pelosi and the House leadership. Relaize in the quoted piece, that’s Republican Senator Susan Collins claiming Rahm made the Dem proposal “better”

I see that quite a few people here and elsewhere on the net are becoming upset with Obama because things don’t seem to be changing very much. When I was saying over a year ago that this would be the case, I was certainly written off as not understanding how different Obama was. Don’t misunderstand me, I voted for him because I felt that he would do a much better job than mccain. We would go down the same road to where mccain would lead us, but certainly much more slowly.

Obama was sending all sorts of signals to the DC Insiders that he would be one of them if he were elected, so there was no worry. As anyone can see, Obama has not strayed too far from the party line on any particular topic. The idea of “looking forward, not back” means that it doesn’t matter how many laws w and his people broke, we will write that off and say that it can’t happen again. Of course it can, and will.

The only thing that surprises me is how easily Obama rolls over. I know I will be attacked for saying that, but sooner or later, the same people will be saying that too. They will be “wrong for the right reasons,” so they will be the “serious” people.

Sorry for all the typos… I’ve been sick this morning and my wireless keyboard acts up sometimes…. what I menat to say was “after I worked so hard to get him elected” and “I can’t believe he has unleasshed Emmanuel on us…”

We try to help Rahm from time to time. Especially when it comes to giving him the finger. He is short handed in that area.

Because as Jane pointed out on the front page a day or so ago… Emmanuel stepped in and according to the repub work horse “things got much better”… eg Emmanuel slashed even more education funds, etc. and is now working hard to make Reid and Pelosi look bad. I guess that would be called apartisanship or unpartisanship.

I have an article from 2007 that describes how Rahm, as head of the DCCC, actively worked to get grassroots anti-war Dems defeated… and in one case he even went so far as to recruit a Repub to become a Dem to run against the grassroots candidate… who lost.

Having just (belatedly) read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctine I was struck by how the financial classes retain the ability to administer “shocks” even when the the people have “woken up” and managed to put the dissident party in power. The effect is the dissidents are unable to implement the policies they were elected to enact, resulting in loss of credibility for the “left” and creating the opportunity for the right to sweep back into power. If you add in, our garagantuan MIC to the mix along with the rw noise machine its easy to see the same dynamic at play as existed in post-apartheid South Africa, Latin America, etc.

I’m thinking we need a new way of fighting back focusing on the local/state/regional level. The thing is, states and localities have to deal with this shit on the ground, and don’t have the luxury of just printing more money when things get tough. Mayors, governors, county officials should be royally pissed off that the feds just printed a bunch more money and it’s not going to give much more than a placebo effect for their constituent’s ailments. If we can get these officials to stand with us in organized protest, Washington might pay attention. If they still don’t, there are various ways “reverse shock” could be inficted, such as wholsale withdrawl of participation from their nasty, corrupt financial system as much of Latin America has done.

Lee Van Cleef had the same problem as I noted in “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.” Same finger on the same hand. I wonder which one is Rahmbo?

i still maintain OB’s following another’s lead and it looks to me like clinton 3…. i thought rahm was supposed to be DA MAN and capable of getting things done?? wha hoppen?? and why are dems allowing repugs to control the message?? i find that among many others to be very disturbing…

I am with you on that, OFG.

Altho I haven’t read the book, I’ve been thinking that this stimulus bill reflects the monied elites getting their way. $86BILLION in tax cuts in a stimulus package and gutted education and Head Start funding.

Studies have shown that if we can do away with the high dropout rates, that will stimulate our economy enormously. But they aren’t taking the long view as Pelosi pointed out.

I think the rwers orchestrated the collapse just before Bush’s departure so that Obama would inherit and be blamed for failing to fix it. B@stards.

Yep.

What’s going on is classic Shock Doctrine tactics. And it’s working. To say there is “disarray” on the left is an understatement. The bill is shameful on so many levels, but to realize that the White House is directly responsible for many of the cuts we’re railing about is too much for a lot of people to bear. How can it be that the White House itself colluded on these measures to further cut taxes and reduce or eliminate desperately needed funding for states and education?

It’s shocking.

But as you say, the Shock Doctrine doesn’t only work one way, to benefit the Plutocrats. It can be turned around and used against them.

It’s time to think in those terms.

Don’t beat yourself up, I usually leave off the K and the W insuring I will be excoriated by all the English professors in the room.
My most frequent sin is the word your often times typing your when I mean you’re. I now just use ur and allow the reader to insert letters and punctuation as they see fit.

Another point I think we are overlooking is the influence of Chicago politics into the whole Obama Rahm mix. Anyone who is old enough can remember that Chicago is not a breeding ground for honest politicians. When the DNC moved it’s headquarters there during the primaries we could have predicted the Rahm style of head butting.

I am surprised by how much of the bill is devoted to Health Information Technology and the development of HIT regional centers.

I am not surprised by Rahm.

Jane,

Harry Reid cut his own legs off when he declared a gentlemen’s agreement not to actually make the Republicans filibuster. By not requiring an actual filibuster, it takes a super majority to do anything, when it should just take a simple majority. I wish there was some sort of petition to sign to make it clear that an actual filibuster should take place. I have sent letters to Senator Reid, but I only get the automated response.

Geez, is it me – or is the stoopid burning this week? I feel like I’m in freaking Victoria Australia!! It was so much easier when the obstruction was simply Republican and stupid – but now, can’t someone, anyone, like the President get us on the same page? Who won this last election? Can’t anyone be available for media coverage besides Newt and The Straight Talker?
Geezus . . . . . . .H… Christ on a bike. …….

You’re kidding, yes? Did you not notice how many of us were literally bullied off and banned from blogs we’d be participating at for years because we didn’t buy in to the media hype selling “hope and change”? Have you ever seen the Democratic Party as brutally split as it was during the primaries? We’re still out here and most of us can’t believe anyone is surprised by what is happening. We tried. Gawd knows we tried. For whatever reason a whole lot of people didn’t want to hear it.

Not funny. Latest figures 108 dead. It will rise.

Joe Lieberman is the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t he? Kind of Karmic return to Harry Reid and the other pampered weasels in the millionaires’ club.

How quickly Claire McCaskill has blended into the millionaire club’s culture. Can we do a better vetting job next time, Howie?

I have no doubt that the only reason Rahm is undercutting the house leadership (and there were many good times to do so, but not this time) is his own political schemes to become speaker of the house. The guy’s a snake in the grass.

Somehow I think that maternal authority figure posture is less threatening for the closet or not misogynists in US and in Congress.

Good point. And the little ones might be more HER speed.

Also to wake up the country that the hypnotic and seductive corporate media IS NOT THE PEOPLE’S FRIEND, INSTRUCTOR, PARENT VOICE, whatever!

Rahm was the great advocate of BLUE dogs, right?

Rahm’s not making nice with Repubs because of some international hawkish agenda later?

kleptocrats.

Crap I posted on the wrong thread. What is wrong with Dana Milbank? Is he still drinking from his 90s skull and bones sippy cup? This piece is written as if it were the Clinton era. Particularly irritating is the part fondly quoting Liarman’s little jocularisms. Does Rahm/Milbank plan to rescue Liarman/Collins’ and the rest of the political windsniffers’ reputations? Did Milbank give himself a smug pat on the back when he wrote this er “piece?”