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Yes, a very nice lunch, thank you!

It was nice to work through a couple of homegrown tomatoes with homemade aioli and a crunchy, hot ciabatta roll just now while watching CSpan as Reid, Durbin, Murray and Schumer aimed the spotlight on the Republican leadership, and specifically on Mitch McConnell.  McConnell, one of the more repulsive pols of recent years, does seem more than a little disturbed and out-of-touch.

Durbin, the second ranking Senate Democrat, said passing a debt ceiling increase is a matter of great urgency. "We got to get this done and done quickly," he said.

"It's crunch time," Schumer said, adding that both parties need to "hold hands and do this together."

Schumer blasted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for going to the Senate floor earlier in the day and inviting Obama to come to the Capitol today to meet with Senate Republicans regarding their demand not to allow revenues to be part of the final agreement.

"We don't need political stunts," Schumer said. ...iMarket News

By now, McConnell's no-tax line in the sand has been swept aside by a growing number of Republicans -- even a Texas senator! -- who are moving towards a consideration of revenue as part of the solution. 

It started with "loopholes" in quotes.  By now loopholes are being taken seriously.  Pretty soon someone will bang each Republican senator on the head with a history of the US showing that a) revenues were, are, and always will be 50% of the deal, and 2) economies have not been and will not be saved by anti-tax knuckledraggers defending taxpayer subsidies for oil companies' corporate jets.

At his press conference yesterday, Obama finally hammered Republicans for their reliance on the sacrifice of middle and working classes -- converting workers' hard-won resources and benefits into tax breaks for the corporate jet set.  Today Reid, Durbin, Murray and Schumer, came in and sang the chorus with gusto.  They sounded almost as coordinated as Republicans.

Maybe Dems are finally fed up and not taking it anymore. 

Unfortunately, that last sentence sounds familiar.

Well, finally!

Someone actually understands marriage.  Grown-ups only...

Colbert's in the democracy business, sort of

The FEC just approved Stephen Colbert's super-PAC, according to Think Progress.

Today, comedian Stephen Colbert attended a Federal Elections Commission (FEC) hearing to make his case for “Colbert Super PAC,” a political action committee created to highlight the 2010 Citizens United decision that opened the flood gates to corporate money in elections. In a 5 to 1 vote, the FEC board is allowing Colbert to form his PAC.

Looks like Think Progress got it a little wrong.  Here's the National Journal version.

The Federal Election Commission has approved an advisory opinion that will allow comedian Stephen Colbert to use funds from a media conglomerate to create advertisements for his independent expenditure-only political action committee.

But the commission voted, by a five to one margin, that those advertisements could not be run outside of Colbert's show, opting for the most narrow interpretation of the media exemption out of three drafts presented to commission members.

The decision is the closest campaign finance reform advocates could have come to a win. Reform advocates had worried that Colbert's request, apparently made in an effort to spotlight unregulated money flowing to so-called Super PACs, could have instead widened loopholes those PACs were already exploiting.

Business Insider calls the FEC Colbert's "straight man," and has this:

According to a tweet from POLITICO's Ken Vogel, Colbert said after the ruling was announced that serious media personalities owe him for paving the way for them to plug political groups on the air.

"I think I should get bouquets of flowers from @KarlRove ... & @SarahPalinUSA if she stays on Fox," he said.

On his show last night, Colbert said he will make his ads "less responsible," than other campaign ads on television.

WaPo tries to convince its readers that the FEC takes its job seriously (yeah, right!) and reports:

In a meeting devoid of anything beyond a gentle chuckle, the FEC decided that Colbert could go ahead with his plans to form a self-titled “super PAC” that could raise and spend unlimited money on the 2012 elections. ...

...Colbert himself said very little during the hearing, leaving most of the talking up to his attorney, Trevor Potter, and to FEC commissioners.

Meaning there were almost no jokes at all.

“If we had viewed this as just a funny request, that would have been a lot easier,” said Ellen Weintraub, a Democratic FEC member.

The real parody came outside the FEC building, where Colbert began accepting donations from fans for the newly registered “Colbert Super PAC.”

“Some people have said, ‘Is this some kind of joke?’ ” Colbert told the crowd. “I for one don’t think participating in democracy is a joke.”

In truth, Colbert may have been one of the few people in Washington yesterday who doesn't treat democracy as a joke.

Gotta wonder about Grover Norquist

Sometimes they send the wrong people off for treatment.  I do wonder about Grover Norquist in about the same way I wonder about Glenn Beck.  That said, and if we're talking about treatment here, I think treatment probably would be wasted on either of those men.  Let's save our mental health dollars for Congressional Republicans who a) signed Norquist's totally weird pledge, and b) are as cowed by Norquist as they likely would be by their dominatrix.

If the pledge had been about never accepting campaign funds in return for future favors, well hurrah.  But it's not.  It's a poisonous political confection left over from the Reagan years.  It's all powdered sugar and no nutritional value.   To sign it is idiotic enough in a democratic republic -- "I will never do the negotiating expected of me in our system and that you hired me for as your representative, no matter what!"   That this idiocy reaches into to the 2011 America at a time when intelligently applied revenues would save the economic futures of so many Americans, Republicans are sucking their thumbs and saying tremulously, "I don't dare!" even though most of them are 40 and older.

Of seven Republican refusniks in the Senate, one senator stands out.  She is not a sucker.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins is one of the seven Senate Republicans who have not signed Norquist's tax pledge. She says she doesn't sign pledges.

"I pledge allegiance to the flag and to the Constitution, and that's it," she says.

She says her vote to end the ethanol subsidy could be the start of a trend.

"There may be other loopholes in the tax laws or incentives that are no longer needed or too expensive, simply not affordable, that we should ... take a look at," she says. ...NPR

Best we can do so far, I guess, is play the loopholes game, hoping Norquist shuts up.  According to the NPR report, John Cornyn is also willing. 

The Republicans who have pulled their thumbs out of their mouths, though, are still biting their fingernails.

Droned to death

Let's see. As far as drones go, this morning we have Michele Bachmann and Somalia. 

Finishing with WaPo's Bachmann story as quickly as possible, she has been rejected and rebuked by Tom Petty.  It's not the first time Petty has tangled with a wingnut.  He also got after George W. Bush for using a Petty song as a campaign background music.  Bachmann is being told to get her cotton-pickers off  "American Girl." Wouldn't it be nice if Petty could see his way to lending her the rights to "You Wreck Me" or letting the whole Republican field of candidates use "Zombie Zoo"?

Drones like Bachmann threaten a good institution like democracy.  Other drones kill.

A U.S. drone aircraft fired on two leaders of a militant Somali organization tied to al-Qaeda, apparently wounding them, a senior U.S. military official familiar with the operation said Wednesday...

... The airstrike makes Somalia at least the sixth country where the United States is using drone aircraft to conduct lethal attacks, joining Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq and Yemen. And it comes as the CIA is expected to begin flying armed drones over Yemen in its hunt for al-Qaeda operatives. ...WaPo

What gets me about both Bachmann and bombers manipulated by Americans sitting at consoles  (and the culture they both represent) is their distance from what we call (naively, I guess) "common decency."  As long as their representations remain inside that box with the 42" or 54" picture window that sits in our family room, they don't seem very real or very threatening. 

But the moment we internalize the fact that they are both real, not fiction, and understand their intentions, is the moment we ourselves decide between human decency and the other option.

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