The U.S. Senate Committee on Finance (or, less formally, Senate Finance Committee) is a standing committee of the United States Senate. It concerns itself with matters relating to the bonded debt of the United States; customs, collection districts, and ports of entry and delivery; deposit of public moneys; general revenue sharing; health programs under the Social Security Act (notably Medicare and Medicaid) and health programs financed by a specific tax or trust fund; national social security; reciprocal trade agreements; revenue measures generally and those relating to the insular possessions; tariff and import quotas, and related matters thereto; and the transportation of dutiable goods.

I found this kind of interesting.

Congressional Republicans were protesting Pelosi's refusal to schedule a vote allowing offshore drilling yesterday, by staying on the floor and speaking after Pelosi adjourned the House for a 5 week recess. The light were shut off, the mikes killed, but they stayed there and talked.  It wouldn't have been a big deal, because C-Span's cameras were shut off, and very few people were there, but tourists were then allowed to come in and reporters were still there trying to cover the speeches, while trying not to get kicked out.

"Right at the stroke of five Georgia Rep. Tom Price announced that House Republicans were ending their impromptu protest on the floor of the chamber, ending a five-plus hour rebellion with a round of "God Bless America."
The assembled tourists, aides and members in the chamber gave Price and his compatriots a standing ovation. They left the chamber to shouts of "USA! USA! USA!"

Link

I'm sure it's probably been discussed here but I can't find the thread.  

Should Obama beat John McCain to the White House in November, it will be liberalism's last fling. In the United States and Britain, liberalism as a war-making, divisive ideology is once again being used to destroy liberalism as a reality.
...
On the war in Iraq, Obama the dove and McCain the hawk are almost united. McCain now says he wants US troops to leave in five years (instead of "100 years", his earlier option). Obama has now "reserved the right" to change his pledge to get troops out next year. "I will listen to our commanders on the ground," he now says, echoing Bush. His adviser on Iraq, Colin Kahl, says the US should maintain up to 80,000 troops in Iraq until 2010. Like McCain, Obama has voted repeatedly in the Senate to support Bush's demands for funding of the occupation of Iraq; and he has called for more troops to be sent to Afghanistan. His senior advisers embrace McCain's proposal for an aggressive "league of democracies", led by the United States, to circumvent the United Nations.
...
The objects of these uncontrollable passions are as one in their support for America's true deity, its corporate oligarchs. Despite claiming that his campaign wealth comes from small individual donors, Obama is backed by the biggest Wall Street firms: Goldman Sachs, UBS AG, Lehman Brothers, J P Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse, as well as the huge hedge fund Citadel Investment Group. "Seven of the Obama campaign's top 14 donors," wrote the investigator Pam Martens, "consisted of officers and employees of the same Wall Street firms charged time and again with looting the public and newly implicated in originating and/or bundling fraudulently made mortgages." A report by United for a Fair Economy, a non-profit group, estimates the total loss to poor Americans of colour who took out sub-prime loans as being between $164bn and $213bn: the greatest loss of wealth ever recorded for people of colour in the United States. "Washington lobbyists haven't funded my campaign," said Obama in January, "they won't run my White House and they will not drown out the voices of working Americans when I am president." According to files held by the Centre for Responsive Politics, the top five contributors to the Obama campaign are registered corporate lobbyists.

What is Obama's attraction to big business? Precisely the same as Robert Kennedy's. By offering a "new", young and apparently progressive face of the Democratic Party - with the bonus of being a member of the black elite - he can blunt and divert real opposition. That was Colin Powell's role as Bush's secretary of state. An Obama victory will bring intense pressure on the US anti-war and social justice movements to accept a Democratic administration for all its faults. If that happens, domestic resistance to rapacious America will fall silent.

...Obama talked about his Kenyan father, who "got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America, that shone as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before." To Smiley, this sounded dangerously naive. "I love America," he said, "but this ain't Disneyland. There's nothing 'magical' about America." In quieter moments, Smiley often strikes a note of concern about whether, after the campaign, Obama's "soul will be intact." One night, driving through Los Angeles with a friend, the actor Wren T. Brown, SMiley said, in a soft voice, "We are going to have to keep that brother at the top of our prayer list..."

In a new poll released by the Florida Chamber of Commerce, 45 percent of Florida voters said they would vote for Sen. John McCain if the presidential election were held today. Forty percent said they would vote for Sen. Barack Obama. Fifteen percent were undecided.

A person's ideological bent is important to consider , but the arguments a person makes can and should be evaluated independently.

If McCain says eg, 'budget deficits are bad', his statement is correct regardless of his motivation for making it.  (I'm stealing Cream's example from a slightly different topic).

EVEN on NPR...NPR!!!!!!!!   When Obama FIRST made the comment about him being black raised eyebrows there.  The commenter said something to the effect that Obama needed to be very careful about lobbing the race card.

When NPR is even lecturing about Obama using the race card you KNOW he's in trouble.

From St. Petersburg Times newspaper:

In a new poll released by the Florida Chamber of Commerce, 45 percent of Florida voters said they would vote for Sen. John McCain if the presidential election were held today. Forty percent said they would vote for Sen. Barack Obama. Fifteen percent were undecided. ...

The flippity-floppity on offshore drilling being the most recent head-slapping example.

If you want the Democratic Party to move as far to the right as Obama is dragging it ... fine.  

But please respect people who choose to complain about it.

Quite frankly, he's frustrating as all heck. His lack of experience was my concern when this all started. I could have gotten past that if he brought other solid 'stuff' with him. Right now, he's a major disconnect.

For more than a year I've been trying to make clear that I think nothing is going to change in terms of US foreign policy until enough people use the leverage they already have, and withhold support of and votes for democrats until they do what people want them to do.

For the record, I don't hate Obama.

I will most likely vote for him.

I disagree with him on policies and strategy.  I think what angers many Obama supporters is that those of us who were critical of him from the beginning were right.

Obama's either a good candidate or a bad candidate, regardless of what I, Robot Porter, or any other commenter on TL says.  It really doesn't matter what someone's motivations are, their praise or criticism is either valid or invalid.

But rather than respond to what people are stating, your standard response to any criticism of Obama is 'basher!' 'hater!' and other variations.

What's more likely is you just don't like it for the Dem candidate to be criticized.

I just configured and ordered a touchscreen tablet notebook computer from Costco.com -- an HP TX2500Z.  For a ridiculously low price, I got lots of memory, 320 Gig hard disk, plus icky Vista.  Of course, I had to get Vista, because its tablet functionality is supposedly better.

I'm a student, a 45 year old working on a second undergrad degree in Biology (first degree was PolSci).  I take a class every quarter.  With about 4 classes to go, I finally decided I needed a note-taking PC -- one where you can draw pictures with a stylus and not just type.  The nice side benefit is I can install my GPS software on it and use the computer as a big-screened touchscreen GPS.

And of course, Costco's liberal 3-month return policy makes it a risk-free buy.

So it will be fun.  Anybody have a tablet PC and like it?  Hate it?

"I was in Union, Mo., which is 98 percent white, a rural conservative, and what I said was what I think everyone knows, which is that I don't look like I came out of central casting when it comes to presidential candidates," he told The St. Petersburg Times. "There was nobody there who thought at all that I was trying to inject race in this."

new] On the fairy tale? (none / 0) (#12)
by Big Tent Democrat on Sat Aug 02, 2008 at 09:07:25 AM EST

Never.
I disagree with Wilentz that Bill Clinton's mention of Jesse Jackson was not racial. He was attempting to diminish Obama's win in South Carolina and used Jackson as the comparison. It was very wrong of Clinton to do that.

I must remind myself that it's OK on this blog to provide conjecture on what everyone else is trying to do and that that includes commenting on the bloggers on this site themselves.

Yes.  That's what BTD THINKS Bill was trying to do.

And BTD was WRONG.

Just like he was wrong when he thought Hillary was trying to say something menacing when talking about RFK.

What a pathetic comment.

It deserves to be removed from a forum that tries to rise above conjecture, slander and divisive rhetoric.