It’s been a busy couple of weeks around here and my blogging has dropped off by quite a bit – not that there’s anyone making note of that or anything, but some spammers may be slightly disappointed. Nyah, etc.

I’ve read 3 books in the last week or so, and hope to get around to reviewing them. I’ve been busy being team leader of something called “Inviting Team” at Holy Moly. More on that later. I’ve been keeping an eye on the news, but not blogging about it. There’s a lot going on at worked – swamped, job task list about to change, the works. I’m horribly behind with some other stuff I need to work on at home. The usual.

Of interest last night and this morning: the Senate debate on cloture on the Levin/Reed amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill – S.2766

I’d been aware of the overnight debate story – the pictures of cots being rolled in guaranteed that. Of course, in the end, only one of them showed signs of use this morning, so either most Senators were well trained by their mammas to make their beds after arising bright and early, or only one person took advantage of them.  

Not surprisingly, the vote this morning, after all of last night’s debate, did not pass. And also not surprisingly, many of this morning’s headlines noted the Democrats had “failed” when the cloture vote didn’t pass. I’m not so sure about that, as debate continues, and democracy can’t fail as long as people are willing to stand up for what they believe in, on either side.

The “liveblogs” on dKos get reposted with instructions so as to keep the threads relatively free of clutter and chaff. Some of them truly were up all night earnestly keeping the lines of communication open. I’m not sure how much good that did, but it must have been interesting to be manning the phones at Senate offices – as commenters were leaving messages in real time moments after the cloture vote failed to pass, and reported that the staffers at Arlen Spector’s office sounded pretty tired, for one. Here’s what the instructions look like:

No pictures, no videos!

Please identify the Senator your are “live blogging” in the subject line.

Jump to the next diary at 200 comments.

…

Please try to add content to the best of your ability when you comment so that you are making a record for people who will read the liveblog later.
Also it is very helpful to identify the Senator you are liveblogging 🙂

Volunteers should publish a new diary when current Liveblog reaches 200 comments

The people at DailyKos.com have been “liveblogging” all night long. This doesn’t accomplish much, except it allows people to share the experience and act as a kind of peanut gallery, cracking wise and posting the occasional link to breaking news, as happened last night when word of the latest National Intelligence Estimate broke. The “Kossacks” start new liveblogs, and use the sites “recommended” system to keep a “mothership” diary high on the recommended list as they fill up diary after diary with comments (apparently there’s about a 300-comment limit on each diary). They’re up to “XXXII” now, and there’s more than 200 comments already on the “post-debate” diary (where the Senate has now moved on, at Sen. Reid’s direction, to debate a whole list of other bills the Republicans have held up with objections). They’ll soon be starting “XXXIII” and so on and so on, as long as C-SPAN2 carries the debate (I’m currently keeping an eye and ear open via CNN.com).

Every now and then, something interesting happens – after a lot of bloviating from both sides (the Right tend to stick to talking points and speak from a limited fund of “stay the course” cliches, the Left tend to try to get catchphrases going but can’t agree on which one they’ll all use) there’s occasionally a call for a roll call.

Last night, there was a roll call that was unexpectedly early, and then Reid announced at around midnight that there would not be another procedural roll call until 5am or so. This disappointed the all-nighters at dKos, who wanted roll calls going on at unexpected times, forcing the Senators to remain handy (and maybe use those cots. However, a deal was made, where Reid agreed that the oldest members on both sides of the aisle couldn’t really stand the pace.

Still, there are occasional flashes of light and thunder, and odd little points of interest.  The speeches from the MoveOn.org rally on the steps outside were actually much more inspiring and moving – they were from the heart. Fully one quarter of the Senate came outside to join the rally, and many spoke. About 50 House members came out, too. They all tried to get all the many special interest groups that were also there (there’s a Planned Parenthood conference in DC now, so there were a lot of NOW signs) to stop shouting for their pet issues and be united in one voice, and some speakers were better than others at both firing up the crowd and getting them to listen to what they were saying.

Later, during the roll call at around 1230pm EDT, there was a moment when Obama and Hillary Clinton stood back-to-back on the floor of the Senate, near the recordkeepers’ desks, each with a coterie gathered around them. Obama’s was about 3 times the size of Hillary’s, and the dKos’ers speculated as to whether they were pointedly avoiding each other.

The debate goes on today, with Senator Kennedy and another senator gamely bringing out the bad-ass pie charts and bar graphs as they talk about getting an education/college grant bill passed.

Reid’s strategy seems to be, “Okay, we can’t get cloture on the debate on THIS amendment, so here’s a list of all the OTHER important legislation the Republicans have held up in the same way, since we’ve got everyone’s attention,” and he’s not releasing them from debate.  Heh, heh, heh.

As one diarist puts it, “it’s not political theater, it’s democracy in action.” Well, there’s a lot of “democracy inaction” going on too, but it’s interesting how it’s being played out.