Here’s a roadmap:

First, have Boehner take bring the Senate Bill to the floor. Then let his yahoo conference pass as many stupid amendments as their black little hearts desire. Pass it with a pure Republican Majority and send it to Conference Committee. The Conference Committee adjusts the bill to what the President, Reid, McConnell, and Boehner and Pelosi agree upon as a compromise and send it back to both houses for ratification. Republicans in the Senate must agree not to filibuster and then they can all vote against it to remain “pure” but a certain number of Republicans in the House will have to agree to vote for the Conference Report so it will actually pass.

Granted…a lot of it is Kabuki theatre but that appears to be what the repubs want.

The hangup with this scenario is that any funding bill must by Constitution originate in the House of Representatives. I understand there are procedural ways around it that both the House and Senate must agree upon to by-pass the intent. I don’t know if they have the political will to do it.

I’m sort of a “process nerd” and I think this is the only way around the stalemate.

Do you remember when 14 Wisconsin Democratic Senators left the State and fled to Illinois to deny the Republican Senate a quorum to stop passage of Act 10 (denying bargaining rights for Public Employees)?

And do you also remember what the Republicans and their lackey Tea Baggers Called them?

They called them "flee-baggers"

They said they were "cowards"

They said they were "AWOL".

They accused them of dereliction of duty...

So............

What about the ENTIRE REPUBLICAN DELEGATION TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES? Aren't they "flee-baggers"? Aren't they "cowards"? Aren't they AWOL?

Walker came and spoke to a hand-picked audience in our City yesterday...it was called "Talk with Walker"* and he came up with this gem quoted in the local press:

"The state also will encourage economic development by improving transportation infrastructure during the remainder of the governor’s term, he said.

“If we can’t get (products) to and from market, that becomes a challenge to the prosperity and growth of your company,” the governor said.

Isn't that what Obama said? Business didn't build the roads to get their products to market. They didn't educate the workforce that builds the products...WE BUILT THAT TOGETHER....so Snotty Scotty says he's going to create more jobs by building up the State's INFRASTRUCTURE! So your whole stage-crafted-Potemkin Village Republican National Convention Theme WE BUILT THIS! was just another disgusting Republican lie!

*You can "talk with Walker" only if you're a Republican, read a scripted question, and hand him a handsome campaign contribution

Here's the link:

http://www.marshfieldnewsherald.com/article/20121130/MNH01/311300218/Walker-outlines-plan-create-jobs-strengthen-economy?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE&nclick_check=1

groan......

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/13/wisconsin-obamacare_n_2125468.html

from "Independent Women of America"...202 Area Code... test (before I spouted an obscenity and hung up):

"...Tuesday is our last chance to stop the implementation of Obamacare...."

Independent Women against Obamacare? I. DON'T. THINK. SO.

I dread this weekend's ads and robo calls..

buckle up cause it's gonna be a bumpy ride!

Charles Pierce is a gift...I think this sums up the way many of us on DU feel....not hysterical defeatism or equally hysterical boosterism, but a sober...somber assessment of where we really are.

http://www.esquire.com/features/cynic-president-obama-1112?click=pp

snip

We have not been a great country for a very long time, the cynic believes, and it does us no good to claim otherwise. We are not an honest and decent people in our politics, in the way we deal with one another as a political commonwealth. We will trade away our most precious rights in exchange for a bag of magic charms, and even when we find out that these include the black prison, the waterboard, and the secret microphone, we'll think we got the better of the deal. We'll swap our obligation to intelligent self-government for any huckster's trick that makes us laugh or keeps us entertained in our cars for the evening drive-time shift. We hold this truth to be self-evident — that all men are out to get what's ours.

Obama will find this out, the cynic thought. He will discover exactly how much he overrates the country as a democracy and its people as citizens. It will happen. He may not even understand it until it happens to him, but it will happen. —"The Cynic and Senator Obama," June 2008

snip

and.....

Now, four years on, the cynic wonders if the president yet has learned what he needed to learn. He has been subject to unprecedented political obstructionism and to a campaign of personal slander unseen in this country since the days when Thomas Jefferson was hiring James Callender to do his dirty work for him back in 1800. Some of the deepest muck from the river basin was churned up to the surface. And there was an audience for it. Rank insanity drove television ratings and made stars out of weeping hucksters. In 2010, the American people — whose essential unity and wisdom he so warmly praised in the speech that made him a star in 2004 — returned a singularly reactionary Congress full of utterly ridiculous men and women. They dedicated themselves to his political destruction, and they proved themselves willing to wreck the country and its economy, and to cause untold pain to millions of Americans into the bargain, in order to achieve it.

I don't think the Republicans particularly care about what happens in the debates.

I don't think they care if the fact-checkers catch them in one lie after another, time and time again.

Why?

Because Romney learned how to win in the primaries by "carpet-bombing" his opponents with negative ads 24/7 in the final week(s) of before the election.

Get ready..it's coming

Are we prepared? How are we going to fight back?

Some of you know that Dennis Smith is Walker's Secretary of DHS and point man for trying to dissemble Badgercare and anything else Medicaid related...there are cuts to W2, Child Support and all other programs that Smith and the Heritage Foundation (where he came from) want to do away with...

and now, he's added yet another scandal to the Walker Administrations long list of atrocities

http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/crime_and_courts/state-lawyer-s-husband-charged-with-trying-to-kill-her/article_6d30f666-ebe5-11e1-998f-001a4bcf887a.html

So what happened in the recall election yesterday? I think it was a number of things.

First, Money works. It allowed Walker's spin to be repeated so many times that it had to sink in.. even if it wasn't true. $30MM is a lot of cash and buys a lot of access.

Second, (and I have to credit my spouse for this insight) It was a "rematch"...Walker vs Barrett and nobody really wanted to see a rematch. ..a "do-over"...an instant replay...as much as I like and respect Tom, I think another candidate would have done better.

Third, "Divide and Conquer" works. The entire popular support for Walker's Union bashing legislation was jealousy and envy of the have-nots against the (percieved) "haves". Teachers salaries were held up to scorn and ridicule. Public workers salaries and benefits were played against the un-employed and under-employed. I personally know of people who voted for Walker because they thought "Walker gave the teachers union what they deserved!". Jealousy ...pure and simple...divide and conquer.

And finally...it was a referendum against recalls themselves. There has been a steady diet of recalls in the last 16 months. ..a steady diet of petitions, signature drives and elections...people (some people anyway) were just sick of it.

I am disappointed. That's for sure. I never have been a fan of Scott Walker and probably never will be. I am proud of the progressives of Wisconsin for the remarkable thing they did in bringing it to the election.....

I am also royally pissed at the Supreme Court for "Citizens United" which allows 15-16 Billionaires to buy a state government for the bargain basement price of $30MM.

I will "go to the mountain-top" and think this through. Then I will decide what path I will follow.

This has been a rough year for Wisconsin.


We've seen our proud traditions hijacked by a ruthless right-wing, corporate agenda and told that we're "better off because of it".

But we've fought back...and we've fought back valiantly.

And Tuesday will tell us if we have been successful.

So let's make it clear what's at stake here...

Tuesday will tell us if people count more than money.
Tuesday will tell us if corporations own the government or if people own the government
Tuesday will tell us if the right to organize and negotiate for wages and working conditions is still alive in Wisconsin
Tuesday will tell us what kind of model Wisconsin will be for the rest of the nation...a model of democracy or corporate rule.
Tuesday will tell us if a few billionaires have succeeded in breaking the will of an entire state...and if they can do it throughout the nation

I don't know where this will go on Tuesday.

I've run into a lot of kool-aide drinkers in the past few weeks and I've seen families divided over the issues like I've never seen before...I am worried about the unthinking-unreasoning minions who follow Walker like they follow the Green Bay Packers..."my team against your team..my team right or wrong"

But I've also run into a lot of really folks dedicated to the spirit of Wisconsin...and I've seen the hours they've put into this effort and the size of their hearts.

Go vote on Tuesday...and bring a friend with you...or maybe two or three friends....

There's a lot at stake here.

(end of sermon to the choir)