Now that members are beginning to announce their votes we can start tracking the total votes. The current count of yes and no votes are as follows, the remainder being undecided. Obviously we can assume most or all Democrats will vote yes but until they announce I won’t list them. We’ve also got a pool going in the replies. Feel free to chime in. YES: 22 votes (16D, 6R) NO:  24 votes (all R) Democrats are currently 16-0 on the nomination (trending for 60-0) Republicans are currently...

The Senate Judiciary Committee has voted 13-6 to send the nomination of Justice to Be Sotomayor to the full Senate. Democrats votes 12-0 in favor while Republicans voted 6-1 against. Sadly it seems that the trend which prevailed in the Roberts and Alito nominations is continuing. A full track of all announced Senators can be found here.

One of the steps in the civil rights movement was the elimination of literacy tests for voting. These tests had been used improperly by racists to deny minorities the right to vote. However when I see a video like this I start to wonder if maybe we need to bring them back

An interesting article about the problems being faced by the Democrats and the liberal versus moderate wings of the party.

I’ve been  thinking about this whole thing and wondering, is it really a race issue or is it a class issue ? I don’t know the background of the officer involved, but if he’s a Boston area police officer the odds are he grew up in a middle or working class home, probably a blue collar neighborhood. He probably did not grow up in an upper class family. This is not to look down on him in any way, simply it’s a likely background for most police officers in the Boston area. Now...

The California budget package has passed through the State Senate and is currently heading has passed through the State Assembly, with passage expected later today. But as Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters points out, this is only a short term solution as California is now on a 5 or 6 month budget cycle. Some parts of the deal that took money from local governments was taken out of the final package so that could prevent threatened lawsuits. I tend to agree with Walters, we had a big budget battle...

According to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, there will not be a vote on health care reform prior to the August recess. Reid seems to be accepting what everyone has already sensed, that it simply is not going to be possible to get a vote before the August recess begins. President Obama doesn’t seem to agree on the subject though, he indicated that he will still be pushing for a vote in the next few weeks. I suspect that Obama knows that the vote isn’t possible but he needs to keep...

Those who have read my prior posts on Mr. Savage are aware that I am far from a fan of his program. I find him highly offensive, homophobic and racist. I think he is a jerk and if his radio show were to vanish from the planet tomorrow morning I would not mourn in the least. However there are some things I like even less than Mr. Savage and one of those things is censorship in the name of political correctness. You may or may not have heard than he is currently banned from entering the United Kingdom...

Earlier this morning President Obama came out to speak on health care reform so I thought it a proper topic for a posting today. I think it goes without saying that everyone agrees the current system is a mess and needs changes. We are spending billions, if not trillions, of dollars on health care and yet we still have millions of Americans without coverage and millions more with coverage that doesn’t seem to be working. Having said that, I am a little disturbed by some of the rhetoric from...

It looks like California ‘leaders’ have reached a tentative deal to settle the 2009-10 budget. According to the San Francisco Chronicle: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders reached a tentative budget compromise Monday to plug a $26.3 billion deficit by making hefty cuts in education, health and welfare services, and taking billions of dollars from county governments. The plan also includes handing over some nonviolent illegal- immigrant prison inmates to federal officials...

A recent poll shows that support for President Obama’s economic programs is weakening. While 56% still say they think his policies will help the economy that is a big drop from the 72% he had in an earlier poll. He has also seen his ‘tax and spend’ label grow by 11% and six in ten surveyed do not support additional stimulus spending. While clearly 56% is still a solid support level for Obama the drop is pretty significant and it does look like he will have trouble pushing through...

Forty years ago today, July 20th, 1969 and for a instant in time we were united in celebration. I was still a baby when this happened but I have spoken to family members who talk about how everyone was watching and holding their breath. Children watched their fathers cry as they watched a human being step foot on the surface of the moon. Indeed I don’t know that any of us who were not alive that day can truly share the significance of that moment, which man consider to be one of the greatest...

A report from the non partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) indicates that the proposed health care plan will not curb costs and could end up increasing costs. In a bemusing reaction many Democrats have attacked the report and tried to label CBO Director Douglas W. Elmendorf as a partisan hack of some kind. Considering that 1) the CBO has long been recognized as non partisan, 2) these same Democrats loved the CBO when it made not so positive reports about Bush  policies and 3) the Democrats...

Many of us were not lucky enough to experience it the first time around but I urge everybody to keep their eyes for the many events covering the 40th anniversary of man landing on the moon. The net has tons of coverage including a minute by minute reenactment at We Chose The Moon CNN, Fox, MSNBC, etc all plan to have extensive coverage over the weekend. 40 years ago tonight, the world held its breath as a countdown began. God Bless Them.

Another tragedy involving the boys in blue. Our prayers are with the families of all those who were injured.

As many bloggers both here at TMV and around the net have already pointed out it seems likely that Justice to Be Sotomayor will win a fairly easy confirmation. It is probable that she will get unanimous support from the Democrats and a decent level of support from the GOP. So I thought I would offer a commentary on the criticism already appearing in some quarters about how the GOP is being obstructionist and somehow improper in their conduct on the Judiciary committee. If you look at history though...

Obviously at this point I don’t have much to post in this thread but I thought it would be useful to have one in which we at TMV tracked the announced vote on the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor. I will update it as votes are announced, so if you’re wondering where things stand please keep an eye here.

The first day of hearings are complete and we didn’t really have any surprises. Members of both parties said what they were expected to say and for the most part they remained reasonably civil. Republicans were careful to strike a balance between satisfying the desire of their base for a thorough review of the nominee and avoiding going too far in their rhetoric. Democrats were careful to strike their own balance between sounding like they wanted to just rubber stamp the nominee and not giving...

Today marks the beginning of the hearings into the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Based on past history we can expect today to be more style than substance, with both the nominee and the members of the committee offering introductory statements and setting the ground for the rest of the hearings. As the hearings proceed I think it is proper for both parties to consider just how they ought to proceed. To begin with I think it is perfectly reasonable in these kind of hearings...

Recently the Nestle company had to recall a huge amount of cookie dough because of E Coli contamination. This recall probably cost them millions and it now seems they may have arrived at this point by trying to cut corners on food safety issues. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Nestle has repeatedly refused to cooperate with FDA requests to provide information during inspections. While they complied with the minimum standards under the law they certainly could have cooperated in more depth. While...

As part of his visit to Ghana, President Obama took time to visit a former slave fort located on the African coast. To be sure there was more style than substance in this event but there was a pretty significant and moving nature to the event. Even for those of us who don’t support everything the President does there has always been a bit of pride in the fact that a nation that once allowed slavery is now governed by a man who would have been such a slave. This symbolism is perhaps more poignant...

A few interesting political tidbits came out today In New York, Governor David Paterson has appointed a new Lt. Governor in an effort to resolve the ongoing dispute in the State Senate. For those who may have missed some of this battle, the short version is that New York has no provision for replacing a vacancy in the office of Lt. Governor so when Paterson took over for Eliot Spitzer, the state had nobody in the post. This became a problem when a Democrat in the State Senate jumped ship and left...

With the 40th anniversary of the Moon Landing coming up in a couple weeks I thought I’d start posting some relevant videos. The first  is purely for sentiment, and to give us all a post we can agree on.

Moments ago they officially swore in Senator Franken so the party now has it’s 60th vote. The crowd in the chamber seemed to be mostly Democrats though that is not surprising since the Congress is just getting back from it’s break and so members are presumably settling in to start the new session. So time to see what the Democratic majority can do.

Being  a resident of California almost requires you to be some form of environmentalist and I certainly am one who is concerned about the environment and making sure we do what we can to protect it. But I also believe we need a level of realism in balancing the environment with the economy. Unless we plan to move  into caves again we need to recognize that work  and environment need to go hand in hand. It is in this light that I find this ruling to be disturbing. Chevron was working to upgrade...