U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell has announced her support for the final version of the financial regulatory reform bill, despite concerns that the legislation still did not go quite far enough, after tough new regulations on derivatives were added in conference.
“I will vote in support of the conference report because it makes great strides toward our ultimate goal: bringing all standard derivatives onto exchanges and clearinghouses, with aggregate position limits and strong anti-manipulation tools…”
Get that? I sure don’t. And that’s one of the things I love about Sen. Cantwell: she’s a wonk’s wonk, and she’s not afraid to flaunt it. Isn’t it comforting to know that there’s at least one person in the Senate who apparently understands the financial legislation they’re writing?
Anyway, Cantwell’s announcement is kinda big news, as up until now she had been one of the Democratic holdouts. “This legislation is not perfect,” Cantwell admits, and she promises to continue pushing for “bolder actions.” But now that she got much of what she wanted on derivatives regulations, she’s fully on board.
Get that? I sure don’t.
This should explain everything:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4Uv4ftekaI
At least Maria understands the legislation. Patty is still waiting for Emily’s List to tell her to vote for it.
LOL…
Don Joe nailed it.
Now Maria needs to clue in her old buddy Russ Feingold. He’s still in full-Kucinich mode on the bill.
Unfortunately, in the Senate purity trollery has consequences, i.e. no cloture.
“At least Maria understands the legislation. Patty is still waiting for Emily’s List to tell her to vote for it.”
Patty Murray hasn’t been waiting on instructions. She’s been on board from the start. Cantwell and Feingold were the only notable holdouts. Expect a similar announcement from Feingold tomorrow.
purity troll is the new black. goldman sachs forevah!
This is why we need to elect Suzan DelBene in the 8th. She’s a liberal, and pro-business, and she knows how to reconcile the two in order to forge good policy that is functional, creates jobs, and protects the environment.
Reichert beat Cornell graduate Dave Ross, who knows more about public policy than just about anyone in the known universe. He then beat Darcy Burner who graduated from Harvard with a degree in Computer Science with a special field of Economics.
Now he faces DelBene, who has a degree in Biology from Reed College, and an MBA from the UW, was a founding partner in Drugstore.com, took it public, and was a VP at Microsoft, and was CEO and president of Nimble Technology. Whew!
Reichert spent two years at Concordia Lutheran College, and has never drawn a private sector paycheck.
Can we elect the smart one for a change?
Public policy is more complicated than the tea partiers think. There’s more to it than guns are good, and gays and taxes are bad.
The 8th district has tons of potential with good colleges, skilled workforce, lots of biotech, pharma, medical research, software talent, etc… DelBene has ideas about how to tap into that potential in order to create jobs.
Reichert hasn’t done a thing other than parrot Republican economic policy talking points.
Financial reform??? I don’t believe it.
I do, however, believe in the French revolution against the aristocracy and the fact that the aristocracy there is gone.
Senator Murray told me quite some time ago that she’s voting for it.
Interesting segment on Maddow with Ezra Klein last night on why bipartisanship in the Senate doesn’t work, except as a way for Republicans to water down key Democratic legislation until whatever victory is eked out (without their help) is no real victory:
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.co.....e-only-one
and reform is the new fudged word…just like investment means spending…reform only means fake legistlation that does nothing real..
Do the Republicans have ANY real policies or are they using the Senate as a cat box?
There must be serious people with business like ideas about how to make financial reform work … we will never hear anything serious from the current collection of tomcats as long as all they think about is how to get their balls back.
The saddest part of this behavior is that the Republicans seem incapable of discussion at any level above that of a schoolyard bully.
Of course , the “left” also has such people … HAs own Lee is easily in that class as an incoherent ideologue.
The difference is that Democrats seem to have box trained its version of crazy people.
Maybe we need a new reality TV series … The Catfight where the tomcats can hurl verbal cat shit at each other? … a variation on Fox, co hosted by Limbaugh and HA’s own Lee?
My respect for Senator Cantwell continues to grow. She is doing the right thing for both the American people and the Democrats.
And I love that she is willing to dig into wonky issues and work until she really understands them. We are hugely lucky in this state in our Senators and the nation is lucky that we send such good ones to the other Washington.
@13
I met Cantwell once, she’s scary smart and very cool.
@11 fake legistlation that does nothing real
Well, then, if it doesn’t do anything real, why are Senate Republicans and Wall Street against it?
c’mon N – why is demanding MORE than what the leafy neighborhood, relatively affluent, always accomadating sell outs can swallow
why is that “purity troll”.
if we used a 0 to 180 scale and assigned 0 as FAR right and 180 as FAR left,
there are about 1900 people in Boston, Berkely and Seattle who think the whole world could run on telepathic organic tofu shingles, tires and gasoline —
the other 90% ++ of American is sitting about 135 degrees off of FAR right, the current American fascist party string pullers are 15 degrees off of far right, AND our sell outs like cantwell & murray & kerry & dodd & barney are sitting about 40 degrees off of far right, in the far right defined space known as “moderate”.
come outta ronk and goldy ville, N in Seattle! for all the education all you all have, it is stunning how you all just keep repeating this DLC-ish conventional wisdom, sell outism excuse making blather which is ONLY affordable to that Democratic “backbone” of professional / managerial chickenshits living in nice ‘hoods.
rmm.
Bob, you and I and a great many other interested parties don’t think the current legislation does enough. The vast majority of the country doesn’t know one way or the other, and doesn’t really care how it comes out … they wish Congress would just stop arguing about it and taking up all that TV time that could be better used to dig into Sandra Bullock’s divorce and the ultimate destination of LeBron James.
But for those few of us who are concerned about the financial legislation, we still have to understand that laws are written by Congress. And that the Capitol Hill process works by Capitol Hill’s rules.
With that in mind, Russ played it wrong. By saying that he was an absolute NO unless very strong provisions were included, he left an opening for the “moderates” to say something that sounded more accommodating … that they might vote for cloture if their pet provisions were included. When Senate procedure demands 60 votes in order to get to the actual vote on the measure, and when Reid just lost one of his 58 potential “Democratic” votes (Ben Nelson’s a lost cause, and I’m including Lieberman), then nothing can be passed without at least three Republicans. Without Feingold, it’s four Republicans. If you don’t have Russ Feingold, then you need the Maine twins, Scott Brown, and still another Republican. Who would you suggest? Jim Imhofe? Jeff Sessions? Jon Kyl?
So how do you propose to pass anything in this environment? Ranting semi-coherently about what assholes all those DC politicians are doesn’t count as a method of passing the bill. Nor does screaming that they should all be replaced, and nor does threatening to withhold support from Patty Murray to increase the likelihood that Dino Rossi would represent us for the next 6 years.
You may call this sell-out “DLC-ish conventional wisdom”, but it’s simply recognition of the way the legislative process works in this country.
14. “I met Cantwell once, she’s scary smart and very cool.”
Yeah, it’s the reptillian eyes that make her scary, and you have to be smart and cool to avoid getting caught banging another womans husband. Oooops, well I guess she isn’t all THAT smart and cool.
@18
So? just because Sen. Cantwell isn’t the sort of person you or I might want to have a beer with (though she strikes me more as the wine type) doesn’t diminish the value of her work in the Senate.
I really don’t care who the good Senator sleeps with, I don’t see how that is relevant to her job.
19. Someone told me that liberals have no moral compass so could that explain your lack of concert that the senator would think it okay to wreck someone elses marriage. Just asking.
IMO it is relevant to her job. It speaks to character.
@20
What about the husband? He was the one cheating.
Besides it isn’t like people on both sides, elected officials or not, have a terribly clean record on having affairs. At least Sen. Cantwell isn’t a hypocrite like some of the moral scolds who doth protest too much.
Dear “Riiiight!”,
Larry Craig, David Vitter, John Ensign, Mark Souder, Vito Fossella, Mark Foley, Don Sherwood, Steve LaTourette, Newt Gingrich, Bob Barr, Henry Hyde, Helen Chenoweth, Dan Burton, Bob Livingston, Bob Packwood, Ken Calvert, Don Lukens, Arlan Stangeland.
That’s just Republican Senators and House members since 1990. I don’t recall you complaining about their character.
22
Ah, yes, Henry Hyde, he of the “youthful indiscretion” he indulged at 47 years old. Hey, I wonder if I could still get away with a little youthful indiscretion . . .
@22 – that list is going into my google stash of political hit parades –
the barrage is so incessant … THANKS for the list!
about @17 … your arguments are the arguments of the current Democratic “backbone” – the professional / managerial classes who got the better SAT LSAT GRE scores, who wrote the better admission letters – who were successful in a bureaucratic salon which has been allowed to exist in the British-American empire cuz of the empire’s affluence, NOT cuz this bureaucratic salon really adds much value.
Look at how many people do NOT vote. Look at how many people of lower incomes vote against their self interest by voting for the right wingers.
We need a NEW populism. We SHOULD ALL know how much ANY and ALL legislation costs each of us per hour worked, and, therefore how many hours do we need to work per year to pay for that legislation.
You and I KNOW that without enough community investment, the computers don’t get built cuz there are no roads to deliver the parts, the computers don’t get sold cuz there ain’t no roads to deliver the computers, the infrastructure of electricity can’t be maintained so there is no where to plug computers in – so bill gates & allchin & balmer …can either support the community, so they can get rich, OR NOT make money …
or how about move to fucking nigeria !
EVERYONE has to know that, and I think with competent messaging everyone could know it.
We, all community members, SHOULD be demanding EVERY stinking dime lieberman and dodd and kerry STOLE from the community by compromising with those thieving fascist bastards.
Instead, the people who live in the good hoods keep telling ALL of us about the latest hurdle and the latest hoop and the latest bureaucratic obstacle –
We need a new populism, The Prince meets Excel – and we need bureaucrats to hang it up, the empire is over.
rmm.
@19
I have, in fact, seen Cantwell drink a beer and eat a burger. Although, I was expecting her to be a few inches taller then she is.
@18
As long as you don’t go crowing about how people behave in private and then go around doing exactly the things you were crowing against, what you do in private is no one else’s never mind.
See #22 for a partial list.
Look, I hope the people that work with and under me at work have happy, healthy, lives outside of work, but what I really care about is them showing up at work ready and able to do their jobs. Same goes for Cantwell. She must be doing alright, I mean, you couldn’t find something work related to attack her with.
@25
Does Cantwell have a nice turd-cutter?