June 30, 2010 .... the END of unemployment benefits!

Well, today's vote was 58-38 -- a TWENTY VOTE margin for the love of a duck! And in favor of helping the little guy along for a while too! But, of course, it takes a 60 vote majority to overcome a filibuster ... and Senator Robert Byrd passed on to Glory a week too soon. His passing (plus the earlier demise of Senator Ted Kennedy) left "only" 58 Democrats, thanks to Mr. Lieberman's switcharoobob to protect the Insurance and Banking fat cats in Connecticut.

The fat cats kept the single-payer option out of the Health Care Reform Bill (Lieberman again!) and managed to stop Financial Reform (umm ... Lieberman again!) ... while letting the Estate Tax lapse for another year and maintaining the high salaries of medical doctors who treat Medicare/Medicaid patients.

And using the deficit as an excuse is as silly as was the Iraq (and Afghanistan) War(s) that built the deficit in the first place--along with a badly timed tax cut for the wealthy. Of course the amendment to increase the tax (back to what it was) for those earning more than $200,000 per year went down to ... (what else?) ... another filibuster.

And yes, they were behind the lawsuit that allowed a judge to override Obama's moratorium on deep water off-shore drilling ... simply to give us six months to examine the safety of such silliness. Rep. Joe Barton's now famous apology to BP for our even suggesting that they set aside $20B for the (non-billionaire oilmen) Louisianans, Mississippians and Alabamans who are suffering while that insufferable leak continues to blacken the Gulf of Mexico.

You'd almost think that those two oilmen, What's-His-Face and his sidekick, were still front and center, wouldn't you? How long was it anyway since "Mission Accomplished" ... or since we allowed Osama bin Laden to slip through our hands at Tora-Bora?