Details count:

The US Senate is holding special one man sessions throughout Christmas and the New Year to prevent President George W. Bush from making appointments without the approval of the Democratic majority.

With the bang of a gavel, Democratic Senator Jim Webb declared the first session open on Sunday morning before closing it seconds later, without any of his colleagues present in the hall.

Noticed and appreciated.  Read more 

I’m no Villager, but it struck me there might be more than a few Beltway dog whistles in the following little story by Carl Hulse in the Times:

Fearing that President Bush would again use a Congressional recess to install disputed executive branch appointees without Senate confirmation, Democrats convened the Senate for the first of four microsessions to be held during the holiday break, precisely to thwart such an end run.

“I am glad to see the leadership stepped up here,” said Jim Webb, the junior senator from Virginia, called upon by the majority to open the Senate with a skeleton staff for the express purpose of immediately closing it down.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, chose to schedule the so-called pro forma sessions because Mr. Bush took advantage of past recesses to install nominees including John R. Bolton, as ambassador to the United Nations, and, most recently, Sam Fox, a donor to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, as ambassador to Belgium. This time, Democrats were particularly suspicious of plans to appoint as surgeon general a nominee they oppose.

“This is the first time that pro formas have been used to block recess appointments,” said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Mr. Reid.

Mr. Reid said he would be willing to consider some of the president’s more contentious nominees as long as the White House moved forward with Democratic choices for regulatory bodies like the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Excellent. Now Reid should go ahead and block everything. The Republicans are; why shouldn’t we? Tit-for-tat is a highly successful strategy, after all, even though so far the Democrats have applied it only to members of their own caucus, and their base.

Anyhow, the possible dog-whistles:  Read more 

MSNBC.com reports:

Senate Republicans blocked legislation Wednesday that would have regulated the amount of time troops spent in combat through an amendment offered by Senator Jim Webb of Virginia to the defense approprations bill H.R 1585.

The “41% Solution” of the Republicans defies their hollow claims that they “support the troops.”  Read more 

Because we didn’t start the class warfare. We’re just losing it. That needs to be fixed. Via Kos (who sure needs the hits), on the pages of the Wall Street Journal, Democratic Senator Jim Webb speaks the hitherto unspeakable truth:

The most important—and unfortunately the least debated—issue in politics today is our society’s steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America’s top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a different country. Few among them send their children to public schools; fewer still send their loved ones to fight our wars. They own most of our stocks, making the stock market an unreliable indicator of the economic health of working people. The top 1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national income, up from 8% in 1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they protect corporate America, through a vast system of loopholes.

he average American worker is seeing a different life and a troubling future. Trickle-down economics didn’t happen. Despite the vaunted all-time highs of the stock market, wages and salaries are at all-time lows as a percentage of the national wealth. At the same time, medical costs have risen 73% in the last six years alone. Half of that increase comes from wage-earners’ pockets rather than from insurance, and 47 million Americans have no medical insurance at all.

Translation: Rich fucks to working folks: Go Die!

This ever-widening divide is too often ignored or downplayed by its beneficiaries. A sense of entitlement has set in among elites, bordering on hubris. When I raised this issue with corporate leaders during the recent political campaign, I was met repeatedly with denials, and, from some, an overt lack of concern for those who are falling behind. A troubling arrogance is in the air among the nation’s most fortunate.

And now Webb uses the key word, the word we all need to be using, the word that frames this issue beautifully, and a word invented and honed in the blogosphere. Watch for it:  Read more