Roadblock Blog

It really makes you wonder sometimes.

As the Washington Post put it, in their inimitably witty style:

"Senate Democrats failed to muster enough votes this morning to close debate on the energy bill passed by the House yesterday... the Senate voted 53-42 to close debate, falling short of the 60 votes needed to permit a vote on passage."

Here's what that means, in less WaPo-wonky terms.

This morning's Senate score: Flat Earth Caucus 1, Green Earth Caucus 0.

And the Roadblock Republicans' filibuster countdown ticker went up one more click.

After years and years of being trapped in an ever-degrading environmental quagmire, it looked like the Good Guys were finally getting our country's energy policies back on the high road again. Literally.

And so the Grand Obstructionist Party's pachydermic pothole producers dutifully lined up in the middle of the high road this morning and shoved that energy bill back into the ditch again.

What? Put the planet ahead of politics, you say? Cut back on big oil profits to save a few little trees? Worst of all, let those pesky Democrats actually pass a bill that is sane, sound, and socially acceptable? Hell, no! That would just be all kinds of wrong!

The Republicans … well, they aren’t even pretending anymore. They don’t have any principles worthy of the name, since “getting more of us elected and/or in choice lobbying jobs” doesn’t count as a principle.

For years, the bedrock rhetorical principle of the GOP was “lower taxes for the middle class.” Which was always baloney because what they really wanted was lower taxes for the rich. But, they usually managed to throw a bone to the middle class in all of their tax bills for political cover.

But now, they blocked crucial reform to the Alternative Minimum Tax, causing 21.5 million Americans to get caught in the AMT and have to pay higher taxes. These are now people who didn’t get the benefits of the irresponsible Bush tax cuts for the rich, forced to pay more in taxes because of the Roadblocks of the Republicans.

If they had any souls, they’d be ashamed.

More than just a few, in fact. RR.com is a group creation, a site where people can come and hang out and play and poke fun at the Republicans in the roadway. It’s all about the U — as in U, the User, as in user interaction, as in user community activism, as in user-generated content.

So don’t be shy, step right on up. Give us (and your fellow users) your two cents in comments you post to the blog articles. Send in links to your favorite anti-roadblock pics and vid sites. Tell us your great ideas about more fun stuff for us to keep adding to the site.

And if you like writing snarky blog posts or drawing cartoons or making web videos, and you’d like to see your own name up in lights here on the RR.com site, just drop a comment to us on this thread so we can hook up with you.

That’s what true blue poliblogger G. V. Faith did, and her first RR.com byline as a featured contributor is right below this one.

We’re glad to add Faith to the RR.com posting team, helping us poke sticks in the spokes of the Roadblock Republicans. And we hope your bylines will joining hers here on the website Real Soon Now, too.

You would think a house (and Senate) half full of Roadblock Republicans would be more than too many. It is, and we’re working to change that. But there are others who stand in the way of progress. There’s the Bush administration, of course, which has dug a hole so deep you could bury our country’s moral authority in it and still have room for our massive budget deficit.

But it’s not just our elected Republicans who are responsible for America’s descent into the sinkhole. No, there are also big money donors, right-wing hacks, and other members of the Roadblock Republicans Aiders and Abetters League willing to spend millions of dollars to attack Democrats with vile slander and villainous personal attacks.

And one of them just opened up a big can of whoop-ass on himself.

Everybody knows that athletes are your basic non-intellectual type folks who don’t have a clue when it comes to politics, right. (Well, maybe not quite all athletes...)

So it was with more than a slightly raised eyebrow that we read about Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling coming out of his political closet and endorsing John McCain yesterday:

“I gotta go with McCain,” said Schilling. “As we get through this, and we start to hear things, I’m not voting party line anymore. I’m voting for the guy that I know is going to be the same person four years from now that he was when [he was] elected. I need to trust somebody because I don’t agree with anybody’s platform front to back. I just need to know that the person that I’m putting in the office is not going to… people don’t want to hear this but President Bush has stayed very true to what he’s wanted, and what he’s done, and I just think the office is bigger than any one person. I need somebody that I can trust to do right by the country and stick to their guns.”

Sorry, Curt, that curve ball just went too way too far wide of the plate. Better stick to the low sliders from here on out instead.

The desire to obstruct - let's call it the Roadblock Imperative - runs deep in the Republican Party. Our original Roadblockers were all Senators, but let's clear the way for the Roadblock-in-Chief, the goalie of the Republican Party (to mix metaphors), jealously guarding the net so no actual accomplishments for the American people get through. Yes, I'm talking about George W. Bush. He kept his veto pen in a forgotten corner of the closet, unused next to his copy of the Constitution, when the Republicans were busy running up the biggest deficits in the history of the land while they built Bridges to Nowhere (literally and figuratively). But now that Democrats have scratched and clawed through the Roadblocks in Congress, Bush has found his veto pen, dusted it off, and asked Cheney how to spell "veto":

Here at RR.com, we believe in the power of serious snarkasm.

If that sounds like a contradiction in terms, it shouldn’t.

There can’t be a better role model for the way we do things here than the late, great Molly Ivins, and these are her own words to live and work by:

“So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”

— Molly Ivins, 1944-2007

Good golly, Miss Molly! You may not be here to celebrate the sheer joy of kickin’, ahm, elephants with us anymore… but we don’t ever doubt for a Fort Worth minute that you’re still lookin’ down at what we’re doin’ here and grinnin’ from ear to ear.

So… like all we do, ma’am, this blog’s for you.

Rush Limbaugh’s lying through his teeth again. (Of course he is, his lips are moving.) Just ask David Wade, who’s certainly no stranger to getting his snark on, too:

“At first I thought, that's not Rush, that's just the OxyContin talking. Nonetheless, this is a despicable but unsurprising new lie from a man whose closest brush with combat came when customs officials tried to take away his Viagra. This portly peddler of hate is once again wrong on the facts. ... Rush Limbaugh's ignorance and determination to divide Americans is just another reminder that you can't spell ‘Rush Limbaugh' without the letters L-I-A-R.”

[In which the legendary D.C. Madam maven Miss Millicent Mary O’Malley explains it all for you.]

Dear Millie,

Your good friend,
Greatly Vexed in Vacaville