Color me cynical but this news out of the Senate raises all kind of red flags for me:A strong bipartisan majority in the United States Senate took a firm stand in favor of requiring 60 votes to pass any kind of cap and trade legislation...The abuse of the filibuster is a huge problem in the Senate that needs to get fixed.
This is good for Republicans, since it helps them achieve their goal of destroying the planet. And it’s good for Democrats, since it helps them achieve their goal of pretending to try to avoid the destruction of the planet while ensuring that, in practice, the planet is destroyed.[*] And Senators Johanns was born in 1950, so he’ll almost surely be dead by 2050 (along with countless residents of flood-prone areas of the developing world) so it’s basically all good.
One way to avoid the filibuster is to use the budget reconciliation process, which prevents the minority from invoking a filibuster.
Under President Bush, the Republicans in Congress used and abused the budget reconciliation process to ram down just about anything and everything they wanted (John McCain admitted as much in a speech at the Heritage Foundation).
So, here we stand at a time of great crisis with a rabid, unhinged minority in Congress that has proven itself to be wholly and fundamentally unserious about governing.
Given all that, what do the cynical establishmentarians currently running the Democratic party do?
Yep, they caved and are practically begging the lunatics in the minority to force the country into another failed effort to address things like health care and climate change that so desperately threaten
Maybe I'm just in a bad mood today but, well, I can't shake the feeling that we're on the road to getting royally fucked.
* - Yes, Yglesias is being imprecise by talking about the "planet being destroyed". Yes, no one is suggesting the planet will be "destroyed" by climate change. And yes, what he really means is that the quality of human civilization will be negatively impacted.
