It’s Just A Kiss

In a perfect world the photograph of a black man kissing his white wife on television would illicit little if any reaction from those viewing the photograph. However, we do not live in that perfect world and so last night when the producers of MSNBC’s, “Countdown with Keith Oberman” repeatedly cut to shots of the photograph of Justice Clarence Thomas kissing his wife while discussing her lobbying and tea party activities seemed designed to exploit the prejudice and discomfort of a certain segment of the population. It is unfortunate but we live in a world where racial prejudice is still a part of everyday life. If we are truly honest with ourselves that photograph to many is the culmination of their worst fears and nightmares. This is true in a subtle way for many Americans not just the raging bigot.

For those who are unaware of the story last night during the MSNBC show, “Countdown with Keith Oberman”, they did a story on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife Virginia (who happens to be white) establishing a conservative lobbying firm and also her possible attendance and speaking engagement at two upcoming tea party events. During the report they were showing pictures of Justice Thomas and his wife together in a variety of pictures including one of them engaged in a full mouth kiss. During the reporting of this story the show continued to cut back to the photo of Justice Thomas and his wife kissing.

Let me be clear I think that Justice Thomas and Justice Scalia are two of the worst jurist we have had in the history of the Supreme Court. I think that the activities of Justice Thomas’s wife highlighted in the story were worthy of media scrutiny. My concern does not lie in his wife’s activities reported in the story or the implications being drawn from those activities concerning possible conflicts of interest or the hypocrisy of the wife of someone who is paid by tax dollars rallying against taxes. No, my concern is with the show using what I know the producers knew was an inflammatory photograph to help bolster their argument. The show did not merely show the photograph once as part of a montage, but continued to cut back to that particular photograph and stay locked on it.

It is one thing to decry the tactics of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove; it is another to imitate those same tactics. I think it is the willingness of both sides of the political spectrum to use inflammatory images and speech that has allowed our political discourse to devolve into its current state. Was it necessary to continue to show that photograph to the reporting of that story? Remember the uproar concerning the ad that was used against Harold Ford Jr. with the white woman at the end of it winking and saying I’ll see you later or call me. I understand the desire to fight fire with fire, but in the end all you end up with is a bunch of burned up stuff. Are we, the public better served by the use of these tactics?

In my opinion by MSNBC using that photograph in that manner they are perched on a slippery slope that leads from journalism to Fox News. Is scoring short-term political points worth rousing the fears and prejudices of some people’s baser natures? For many years on the right the answer to that question has been a resounding yes, but is this a model we want to emulate? I fail to see the long-term strategy in arousing historical fears, anxieties, and prejudices in developing partnerships and common bonds. My hope is that this was a temporary lack of judgment and not a preview of coming attractions. Come on MSNBC you are better than this, that story has legs without the use of inflammatory pictures and incendiary language. I’d be curious to know if I was the only one who felt this way after the segment. Let me know what you think.

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Education – Kansas City Style

The plan will leave the district operating 33 schools, the fewest in 120 years. The district’s enrollment in 1889 was less than 18,000 — the same as its current enrollment. At its peak in the late 1960s, Kansas City was using more than 100 buildings and serving some 75,000 students. – Kansas City Star

As the school system in Kansas City, Missouri takes the national stage it is unfortunate that the reason is not because of better student achievement or more students graduating and going off to college. Instead it is because after decades of mismanagement and instability the current superintendent had to make some tough decisions. These decisions should have been made years ago as the board sit idly by while every school year more and more students left the district, but the school board chose to continue to kick the can down the road expecting some miracle to increase enrollment despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

I expect faith and looking for miracles from my religious leaders but not from elected members of the school board. There job was to evaluate the data and make planning decisions based on that data not continuing to placate a shrinking population. Each year parents in the district were voting by removing their kids from the district. I also expect stability in administration of the district’s curriculum and staff. Again we did not receive it. Instead we have had 26 superintendents in the last 39 years with a number of acting and interim folks at the helm of what can only be described as a troubled school district.

In a school district were only 30% of the students read at grade level and with a drop-out rate of 50% you would think that there would be some sense of urgency and commonality of purpose. Unfortunately in Kansas City you would be wrong. You see the school district problem is just a microcosm of the problems that have plagued Kansas City from the 60’s and 70’s. You see Kansas City is one of the most segregated cities in America. As a young man I recognized this fact and when I went away to college I promised myself that I would never return. At 17, I realized that no matter what I did at college I would be forever constricted in Kansas City. In Kansas City the racial lines are clearly defined and although few people talk about them we all know where they exist and to many they are stifling. You live in this area and you only socialize with these folks.

The Kansas City school district is 86% percent minority students and 80% of those students are receiving free or reduced lunches. What this means is that the school district is predominately minority and predominately poor. Since its peak enrollment of 75,000 the district has lost over 60,000 students. What that tells me is that those students who could have gotten out have left and what we are left with are the most difficult students to educate. But as with every issue in Kansas City it is cast in racial terms so the politics of race and division have trumped the welfare of the students. How many more students must the district lose before this becomes a priority for city leaders? Rather than developing a strategy to overcome these difficult challenges city officials and the school board are locked in this ninja death match where personal agendas and appealing to peoples worst angels are substituted for substantive discussion.

The unfortunate truth is that no matter how bad a system is if it is allow to continue it is because someone is profiting from it. Both sides of the racial divide in Kansas City are willing to sacrifice generation after generation of kids primarily minority kids for the sake of continuing this factionalism. The problem with a system like this is that both sides become very adept at framing issues in racial terms. One side states that there are no racial issues and the other that everything is a racial issue. It is very difficult to come together to solve major challenges when there is so much polarization. This was played out in the voting on the decision to close the schools which of course broke along racial lines. It took the courage of one African-American board member to enact this plan. My question to the other board members is this, “What is your plan to address a district that is operating at capacity when you have the student body at 40% capacity? Do you continue to ignore the reality like you have for years that your population is shrinking and your product is being rejected?

City Councilwoman Sharon Sanders Brooks, speaking to the board, lamented that the school closures will hurt the city’s central core. “Continuing the blighting of the urban core,” she said, “is scandalous and shameful.” – Kansas City Star

Instead of getting real answers to serious problems we get sound bites that play great to a certain constituency but adds nothing to the public discourse or to solving the problems. How anyone who has presided over this debacle can still remain at the head of this board is beyond me. This demonstrates the lack of priority that not only the city government puts on this issue but the public at large. We should realize that these aren’t their kids, they are all of our kids and act accordingly. Of course the answer will not be to replace those whose leadership is failing instead we will fire this superintendent and blame him for a dysfunctional system that he inherited and did not have the authority to change. How many more students, families, and jobs must we lose before someone takes this matter seriously? The three largest determinants to business development and relocation are public safety, schools, and a trained workforce. How are you doing Kansas City?

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Bizarro World: The New Left is now the Tea Party

Because of this assumption, members of the Tea Party right, like the members of the New Left, spend a lot of time worrying about being co-opted. They worry that the corrupt forces of the establishment are perpetually trying to infiltrate the purity of their ranks. – David Brooks New York Times Columnist

First of all I want to apologize to all of those people from the peace movement, civil rights movement, and the other groups from the sixties who fought and died for long denied social change in America for this article from David Brooks. Obviously while so many Americans were actually trying to grapple with a social system that they felt no longer represented who they were Mr. Brooks was too young to know what was going on. I have a real hard time taking anyone seriously who writes about a period of history that they did not actually participate in. To me most post-history is either conjecture or an attempt at a mulligan for those who are promoting their own agendas.

At no time has this fact become more true as it is now during the current period in our history when we are about to be bombarded by the “memoirs” of the disgraced Bush officials and their apologists. The three poster children for this period of selective amnesia ought to be Cheney, Rove, and now Brooks. If this column weren’t so dangerous it would almost be laughable. The reason that this column is dangerous is that it attempts to give legitimacy to the tea-partiers as neo-hippies taking on “the man” and “the system”. Nothing could be further from the truth. The tea-partiers began as astro-turf bankrolled by the defeat health-care lobbyist and no amount of cover from the right will legitimize them.

What Mr. Brooks fails to realize is that there are profound differences between what the tea-partiers are protesting and the protests of the “new left”. Has he forgotten that there was actually a war going on in Southeast Asia that was taking the lives, dreams, and family members of hundreds of thousands of Americans? Has also forgotten that blacks were living under the crushing oppression of Jim Crow while their civil rights were being denied in all areas of America? Has he forgotten that many blacks were still being lynched, sent to prison, and beaten for trying to express the rights that he and his friends take for granted? His attempts to equate the tea-partiers exploits to those of people who were willing to risk life, limb, and future for a true cause is not just disingenuous, it’s an insult to the memory of all of the slain civil rights workers and anti-war protesters.

To be fair many people may actually believe that President Obama is a foreign-born citizen and is not legitimately President. There also may be those who truly believe that he is leading the country towards socialism through a government take-over of healthcare. There may be those who truly believe that the federal budget was balanced prior to his taking office, that the country was at full-employment, and our economy was flying right along until President Obama’s coup took over in January of 2009. The truth is that we know that the “paranoia” of the sixties radicals was well founded by the release of so many FBI documents and internal government memos. To compare their legitimate fears to those of a bunch of folks many of whom who have some form of government healthcare today who believe that healthcare reform is a government plot to create death panels is unconscionable.

Actually, I am quite pleased that the Republicans are trying to recruit the tea-party folks it will give them a taste of what Democrats go through daily when you have a big tent. When you allow every voice to be heard you are liable to hear some things you weren’t expecting and for a party where everything is scripted right up to the candidates voting record for the next 10 years this could be a little disheartening. I agree the tea-partiers are radical and theatrical but to compare corporate mouthpiece Dick Armey to Saul Alinsky who spent his life trying to improve the lives of those less-fortunate is a stretch even for Brooks.

"Negroes were being lynched regularly in the South as the first stirrings of black opposition began to be felt, and many of the white civil rights organizers and labor agitators who had started to work with them were tarred, feathered, castrated -- or killed. Most Southern politicians were members of the Ku Klux Klan and had no compunction about boasting of it” – Saul Alinsky

For David Brooks to try and give credence to the “straw” and “boogie” men of the tea-partiers as being similar to the new left is criminal. Mr. Brooks, I don’t know where you got your research of the sixties and seventies but you might leave that history to those who were actually there. Another small difference between the two that continually gets ignored by the mainstream media is during the protests of the new left all races were represented because the issues being addressed affected all the people in the country. Where is the “melting pot” with the tea-party movement? If the issues they are protesting actually affected us all like the injustices of racism or the destruction of a senseless war where are the rest of the folks? Are minorities not concerned with losing their freedoms in a communist takeover?

One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as 'that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're right.' If you don't have that, if you think you've got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated. The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics, from the persecutions of the Inquisition on down to Communist purges and Nazi genocide. – Saul Alinsky

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Corporations and the Destroying of America

There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible. – Henry Ford

We are entering a new era in the history of American life. Never in our history have we faced the possibility of millions of Americans not only being unemployed during this recession but not being able to be employed once this recession ends. Many economists predict that even after we recover that the unemployment rates will continue to be high for years. Job growth has continued to shrink in America for decades as many corporations have elected to ship American jobs overseas in a race to the bottom for the cheapest labor. They have moved manufacturing from third-world country to third-world country with no regard for its long-term consequences to the American worker. Corporations have traded the viability of the American labor force for short-term profits and Wall Street ratings.

What the heads of many of today’s corporations have forgotten is that if we lose the American middle-class which was created with manufacturing there will be no one left to purchase their products. The thing that Henry Ford understood was that if his workers or the American people could not afford the products he was manufacturing then there would be no profits and that is why he wanted to pay his workers a livable wage. Now does this take away from the fact that he was adamantly anti-union? Of course not, but it does prove that he recognized how consumerism benefited not only Ford but American corporations as a whole.

When Ford started the 40-hour work week and a minimum wage he was criticized by other industrialists and by Wall Street. He proved, however, that paying people more would enable Ford workers to afford the cars they were producing and be good for the economy. Ford explained the change in part of the "Wages" chapter of My Life and Work. He labeled the increased compensation as profit-sharing rather than wages. – Wikipedia

Imagine today if someone like Ford were to once again make such proposals how they would be criticized by other CEO’s and Wall Street. This mentality of greed and getting rich at any cost by American corporations is going to turn the American economy into the very rich and the rest of us. If we do not have a vehicle for the majority of American citizens to reach and stay in the middle-class we are setting the stage for our descent into third-world status. Are we willing as a nation to accept large numbers of our fellow citizens unemployed and living on the public welfare rolls. Those same rolls we have continued to reduce in an effort to decrease our support for our friends and neighbors. At least the Europeans have laid the foundation for a support and safety net to help them adequately address the shortfalls in the capitalist model. We on the other hand have accepted the false meme of the wealthy that “good” citizens don’t take handouts.

But here is something that the wealthy have not shared with the general public, “There have been no new manufacturing jobs created in the US since 1999” - Red Alert

In addition "Middle-income families made less in 2008, when adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1999 – and the number is sure to have declined further during a difficult 2009," the Washington Post reported. "The Aughts were the first decade of falling median incomes since figures were first compiled in the 1960s."

It is no wonder the ranks of the fringe groups are growing whenever the white middle-class feel threatened there is never a shortage of scapegoats to be sacrificed. The concern of course is that the real culprits are allowed to continue business as usual while the rest of us fight it out over the crumbs that have fallen from the table. Instead of fighting over the rich folk's crumbs we need to be demanding the pie be enlarged so that we all can get our fair share. For too long we have bought the lie that there is only limited assets and that our corporate overseers know best how to distribute those assets and anyone who complains is naïve at best and a socialist at worse.

The time has come for this dysfunctional government to begin to stand up for the people of this nation and not just the corporations. We need to enact a fee on corporations who ship our jobs overseas and invest that money to allow entrepreneurs who are willing to create green sustainable manufacturing jobs right here in America to do so. You should be allowed to create jobs wherever you choose but our tax dollars should not be used to subsidize our own demise. We should be manufacturing new battery technology, wind turbines, and solar technology right here in America. It is up to our elected officials to predict the future technologies and ensure that our workers are in a position to take advantage of those trends. We have economists, experts, and futurists who have for decades predicted where technology and manufacturing are headed and yet the American worker finds themselves in this position?

The American consumer is also the American worker, and if we don't do something to protect our manufacturing base here at home, it is going to be hard to buy any retail goods. - Lindsay Graham
The Disputed Truth

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The Next Election Syndrome

''In my father's day, you legislated for four years and campaigned for two; now it's full time,'' Bayh said this week. ''It never stops. My bottom line is that there are a lot of really good people trapped in a dysfunctional system desperately in need of reform.'' - Ohio.com

One of the main causes of the political gridlock that is gripping Washington and has brought our federal government to a screeching halt is the phenomenon of the constant campaign. Regardless of whether you win or lose moments after the election it all begins again. The problem with the constant campaign is that you basically invalidate the results of the previous election. You exchange long-term legislative initiatives for short-term political gains. Because you are always running for re-election or election to another office there is little if any incentive for compromise or accomplishing any legislative business. Bringing home pork has replaced solving complex political issues. Instead of running on any legislative record of accomplishments our congressional leaders are now campaigning on how much pork they have delivered to their districts.

As a result of this process we have sessions of congress that continue to kick the can down the road when it comes to solving major issues facing the American people. Issues like campaign reform, entitlement programs, and health-care reform continue to be discussed, debated and left to languish in session after session of congress. There may have been a time when this process was allowable in our nations past, but with the looming crisis's facing our country this attitude is no longer an option. With massive unemployment, thousands of Americans dying each year due to a lack of health-care coverage, and the corporations amassing millions of dollars of profit at the expense of middle America we no longer have the luxury of a dysfunctional government.

The main problem I have with the tea-baggers is that they have allowed themselves to be co-opted by the same interests they claim to be against. If we in America could ever get past the trivial tribal issues that continue to divide us we could remake this country into a greater vision than the founding fathers could ever have had. The problem with going back to 1776 is that we were not a land of freedom for all and so there are many folks who are not willing to go backwards to some false premise of America. There has to be a way of taking what was good with the original visions of the fore fathers and wed it to the inclusion of all Americans. We will never be able to accomplish this if we continue to hold on to the things that divide us and ignore the so many more things that unite us.

If we allow this phenomenon of constant campaigning to continue to invalidate our elections it will only give rise to the lunatic fringe and the anarchists who want to remove all government from America. We have elections for a reason and when you lose an election you do not have the option of preventing the victorious party from governing. You have the right to present your arguments and ideas but you lost for a reason. You can't have it both ways where on the one hand you laud the political process of democracy, but at the same time if the results are not to your liking you can invalidate them through obstructionism and become political opportunists. We have to get rid of this false meme that there is a rational opposition with rational grievances against the Dems and this President. If the bi-partisan commission on the budget is not proof enough of the duplicity of these Republicans then no amount of proof will suffice. It is incumbent upon a free press to expose this duplicity and not allow these obstructionists to have it both ways. This notion of an objective press being one that presents both sides as rational is absurd when one group is not acting rational.

Another problem with the constant campaign is that campaigns are also constantly doing fundraising and putting campaigns into bed with special interests that are now crafting our legislation. The key to election victories has gone from candidate competency to candidate fundraising ability and the two are not the same. Candidates now have to appeal to the baser instincts of the party faithful and cannot be seen as being complicit in the legislative accomplishments of the other side. This has led to obstructionism versus compromise. It becomes almost impossible to work with someone whom you have demonized in getting elected and now must work with once the election is over. Of course now the election is never over so where does that leave the American public. What many of today's politicians have forgotten is that in order for democracy to work it must be by the consent of the people and if you contaminate the process then you can very easily remove the consent.

This is the era of the constant campaign – where in order to break through the clutter, first time candidates must start their campaigns two years out and former candidates start campaigning again the day after Election Day. - Joe Garecht

The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy - Charles de Montesquieu

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The Republicans, the Supreme Court, & the Corporations

I use to think that what has occurred over the last few years has just been a random series of political events and while they were devastating they were still unrelated. As I see more of our democracy breaking down I am becoming more skeptical concerning the randomness of these events. I have still yet to figure out how you lose two election cycles in a row and yet claim victory for your ideas that were soundly rejected and proven to be bankrupt. The thing about the Republican PR machine is that they have been allowed to create an alternate reality.

This alternate reality resembles our reality in many ways albeit one. In both realities the facts are the same but how they are interpreted are very different. It is a fact that the Republicans were decisively defeated in the election of 2008, no one can dispute that. Yet according to this alternative reality the election was not a repudiation of Republican ideas it was a repudiation of George W. Bush as if he were acting single-handedly to bring down the government and the country. It didn’t take long for them to throw George W. under the “straight talk” express bus. The sad part of all this is how Democrats have allowed this re-writing of history to continue unabated. It is one thing for Dick Cheney to come out from under his rock to defend his torturous record, but to allow these other clowns to distance themselves from the impending collapse that the Dems inherited is unconscionable. There have been more Dick Cheney sightings since he left office than the entire eight years he was in office. I don’t recall him being this accessible when he authorizing torture.

But let’s take a moment to see if we can connect the dots. First the Republicans work to cripple the government and make it appear incapable of solving the problems of average Americans. These average Americans become disillusioned with their government and accept the Republican meme that the government cannot be trusted to do anything and therefore all government intervention is anti-American and anti-founding fathers. Yet the government has a record when allowed to perform of successfully running programs like Medicare and Medicaid which these same average Americans count on every day. Add to this mix that you prevent any Democratic legislation from being enacted not because it is bad for the country but merely because it is politically expedient and you now have a dysfunctional legislative process. So you have a government that is not trusted to correctly sell postage stamps and a legislative process that is being obstructed to the point of a standstill.

The next dot is in the event that the federal government no longer functions to solve average American’s problems who then fills the void? Who then is able to advance policy and get legislation through? Well, thanks to the recent ruling of the Supreme Court that void will now be filled by the corporations. Let’s be clear it is not that the corporations were not instrumental in our body politic prior to this ruling. Corporations have continued to circumvent our democracy through campaign cash and lobbying efforts. Corporations have historically influenced public opinion and policy through the media by using advertising; they have used campaign cash and lobbying efforts, and the threat of extortion through plant closures and higher prices. What the Supreme Court has done is allowed the corporation’s unfettered access and influence in our political system at a time when the system is perceived as broken. What they did was the equivalent of giving Halliburton a no-bid contract to America to provide arms and materiel during war time.

The final dot is the corporations themselves who have historically shown that they have little regard for democracy or the will of the people. It is common wisdom in the world that the capitalists of America will sell you the rope to hang them with and this decision by the Supreme Court may bring this gem of wisdom to fruition. Once the will of the people has been stymied by corrupt politicians and obstructionists the only coherent voice from the chaos will be the benevolent corporations who will ride in and rescue the American public from its impending doom at the hand of government mismanagement. These of course would be the same corporations who took this economy to the brink of Armageddon and continue to provide each other with immoral compensation for these failures. I guess the Republicans are not the only ones living in this alternative reality. You now get giant bonuses for running your company into the ground by gambling with its assets and why not your company will not be liable for it anyway.

There is a foundation being laid in America and I am afraid that we are so busy concentrating on the minutiae of the 24 hour news cycle that we are missing the larger picture. As Pink Floyd so aptly stated you build a wall one brick at a time and these are just more bricks in the wall.

I find rebellion packaged by a major corporation a little hard to take seriously. – David Byrne

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Republicans Do Not Have To Win

The election of 1994 only reinforced the strategy of no. Why help the majority pass legislation when you can stall until voters, frustrated with gridlock, throw the other side out? Once out of power, Democrats went to school on the GOP delaying tactics. - Robert Schlesinger

As I look over the Republican strategy of the last year and its impact on the electorate one thing is abundantly clear. The Republicans do not have to win at anything, because even when they lose they win according to their scorecards. The Scott Brown election in Massachusetts has been presented as this massive shift in the public’s desire for President Obama’s “changey, hopey” message. While the Scott Brown election was troubling, I think in the long run it will be beneficial to Democrats. It will be beneficial to Democrats because I think it has exposed the absurdity of this super-majority being necessary to govern and to pass any legislation.

Already we are beginning to see stirrings from Democrats about changing the Senate rules and for good reason. The Republicans have turned the filibuster into their own personal veto. Election results have become invalidated and the democracy that so many Americans grew up believing in has become dysfunctional. And as long as nothing gets done then the minority party can claim that the majority party is not responding to the wishes of the American people. By employing this strategy the Republicans have given fuel to the directionless populist movement known as the “tea-baggers”, who’s only common thread appears to be that they are against government and who can blame them. My belief is that what many of them are against is a government that is broken with no possible remedy in sight.

Even folks who previously believed in the power of government to affect positive change in the lives of people are on the ropes after the whole health-care debacle. Unlike many of the right-wing conservative talking heads I do not think that the way to move forward is to go backwards. This strategy plays right into the hands of their obstinate politicians who only have to prevent government from working to win and not actually get anything done. The Democratic strategy moving forward should be to make democracy work again not by trying to continue to seek bi-partisanship with a group that has no intention of working with you, but by changing the rules to allow our democracy to work. What many Americans just want to see is action being taken even if that action is wrong.

The American public is not that concerned with ideology as much as we are being told. There are segments to the extremes of both parties that hold those entrenched ideological positions but most Americans are pragmatist and they just want to see that something gets done. They want to believe that somebody is listening to them and responding to their concerns. If the Democrats are not able to provide them with that then they will suffer great loses in November. The truth is that for the long-term future of America this strategy of breaking our democracy holds dangers that the politicians and strategists of today are not concerned with and that is dangerous. If we continue this cycle of each party getting elected and no one accomplishing anything then the future of our whole democracy is at stake. Eventually the country will become ungovernable and maybe that is the goal of the Republicans.

A good example of this phenomenon of just do something is George W. Bush even in the midst of his wrecking the country he continued to score fairly high marks until the end. Those marks were due in a large part I believe to his ability to appear to be getting things done, they may have been the wrong things but they were getting things done. If the Democrats have any chance of salvaging this November they had better get down to the business of making government work again. I say this not because of its short term benefit of keeping them in power but because of its long-term benefit and that is because it is the right thing to do for our nation.

Scorched earth campaigns may win you the battle, but it leaves the land barren and unfruitful for a long time and with the current state of our nation is this something we can afford?

In the first 50 years of the filibuster, it was used only 35 times. But the last Congress alone had 112 cloture motions filed, plus threats of more. This is the tyranny of the minority. - Peter Fenn

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