It only stops debate if the proposer gives up without attempting to debate. Otherwise you begin debate and keep it going until the obstructionists get tired and quit debating. This is a real filibuster. What we have now is senators who are too lazy and zealous for their comforts to even try to work to get their motions passed. This rests clearly on the Democrats senate leadership who could make progress if they tried, without changing any rules. We could say that they are collaborating in their own defeat, but we would have to assume that they really wanted to succeed in the first place.

A simple distinction to be made here is the difference between “cost” and “price”. price=(cost+profit)

In the world of medical care, everybody along the chain of supply and service (from the surgical supplies, to the instruments, to the scanners, to the hospital rooms) thinks they are right to take as much profit as the market can stand, and the market can stand a lot because the insurance companies have the world’s biggest barrel of money. And when the barrel gets low, they just charge some more in premiums and add on some co-payments.

Its not the cost of medical care that is any higher in the USA. Its the price of everything connected to medical care. And the difference is “Profit”.

This is just carrying on traditions from the Old Countries.

Since there are no dark skinned people in Northern Europe, the white people up there have had to become racist against one another. You should hear the jokes the Swedes tell about the Norwegians.

“Did you here the one about Ole and Lena walking down the road ….?”

Inflation is the enemy of those who live on income from their assets, rents, interest payments and dividends. Unemployment is the enemy of those who work for wages and pay rents and interest on debts.In its original ideal, our government’s economic apparatus was supposed to work in a balanced fashion to moderate both inflation and unemployment, but it no longer even pretends to do so.

The government has been captured by those who want it to fight on their side against inflation. It is not so much a choice as it is a brutal fact of the reality of power, and the power of money to corrupt the leadership of society.

This was Mr Obama’s baby from day 1. He thought up the commission, established its purpose and appointed its members. He was and remains devoted to the idea that this will be his great legacy, which is why the damn thing will not die, no matter how many times it is killed.

They are determined that it will happen, and, by God, it is going to happen.

The austerity that is being imposed on the European countries one by one, is being imposed on us. We will be ruled by a new order of global financial royalty and aristocracy through corporations instead of national governments.

Do you remember that line about drowning the government in the bathtub? Well, this is how they are doing it. It’s happening now, and both parties in power connived together to accomplish it.

In my college ethics classes I ask the students to write a short paper answering the following question: “How do actions which are unethical and unlawful in time of peace become considered ethical and lawful in time of war?”

I have yet to get a convincing answer.

Most people assume that peaceful efforts will fail, and sooner or later we have to fight. But the truth is that violent efforts will always fail and sooner or later we will have to make peace. But we have put some much effort into making war, we don’t know how to make peace.

Will the banks now be able to get these lawsuits kicked out of court by citing the foreclosure settlement?

It was all just a show to keep people entertained and talking. Perry, Gingrich, and Bachman too.

We are no longer a nation that even pretends to live under the rule of law, which I think means, more or less, that America is dead. What shall we call that which remains?

Unemployment is the enemy of those who live on wages. Inflation is the enemy of those who live on rents, interest and dividends.

In our case it is pretty clear which enemy the government will attack and which it will ignore.

Its a land grab along the lines of feudal lords or plantation owners running the small farmers into debt, taking their farms and then turning them into share croppers.

I used to think that this was a counter-reformation pushing back the gains of the New Deal. Then I thought it was pushing back the Progressive Era. Apparently it is actually pushing back to beyond the beginning of the modern era entirely, back to the rule of kings, land lords and hereditary nobility.

Only for a very brief time was the Supreme Court EVER sympathetic to the power of the state to regulate “private property”, even human “private property” We are seeing here simply a reversion to the status quo ante New Deal or even ante-bellum. Read a very interesting book about the saga of human rights versus racism and segregation before the Supreme Court: Simple Justice by Robert Klueger.

The dominant public philosophy—and principal priority—of the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Taft in the Twenties remained what it had been for almost the entire life of the institution: to defend private property against unjustified intrusions upon it by government.

Kluger, Richard (2011-08-24). Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality

At this point, who cares any more. They are clearly intent on doing whatever they want to benefit themselves, and they will be allowed to do it by the officials who were supposed to be protecting the public.

This is the voice of my depression talking.

What about the part of the plan where they were not going to make the defense cuts and take that money out of the other side of the budget? Extra cuts will have to cut those cuts even farther.

This is the way it looks when they drown the baby in the bathtub. Its the culmination of their plan designed and executed by Northquist. And the democrats in the congress and the white house have played along with it every step of the way since Jimmy Carter.

“I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.”

macassio, If you don’t already know them, you should try to read Dewey’s papers “The Philosophy of Democracy” and “The Ethics of of Democracy”. They give the analysis of Dewey’s opposition of the idea of democracy (the value of everyone and the right of everyone to have a say in how they live) versus hierarchy in knowledge and values.

If the air traffic control system is already stretched to the limit, how can anyone imagine adding thousands of flying “objects” operated by amateurs by remote control into our airspace? Maybe by 2115, never by 2015.

How are people who are homeless, probably unemployed going to get lawyers, pay expenses, travel hundreds of miles to hearings, take time off work (if they are employed) and spend days hanging around courthouses to contest these claims, when they may not have a permanent address, a telephone number, or even a suit and tie to wear to court?