I would have had a lot more to report, but HuffPo and TPM (here and here) beat me to the punch.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend the first half of the summit – I was covering a conference on Iran for most of the morning and into the early afternoon.  So I missed Reid, Schumer and Menendez.

Moreover, I was lucky to be in the room at all.  I had not been invited and the room was overbooked and bumping up against its capacity.  If I hadn’t run into Senator Stabenow in the hallway and asked for help, I’da been out in the cold.

The first panel I caught was supposed to be about health care, but it diverged wildly.  Before you know it, we were talking about the broad spectrum of progressive trials and tribulations.  Senator Stabenow said it best, “It’s been a hard year for us.”  Both Stabenow and Sanders implored us to uncurl the circular firing squad and train our fire on conservatives.  And then Senator Stabenow turned the floor over to Ed Schultz so he could say his peace.

Ed despaired at the lack of a Democratic message machine.  He recalled the discipline with which Republicans fanned out across the networks to push for their agenda when they had the reins, and wondered why we aren’t seeing something similar from Reid and Schumer and Dodd.  Senator Stabenow had much to say in response and seemed to take Ed’s point, but she also raised a defense:  that some Democratic Senators are afraid to go on progressive programs because they’ll be forced to play defense.  She went on to suggest that she’d like to see more of us doing more to provide cover and defend the Democratic caucus against the constant barrage of nonsense-charges leveled by the right-wing noise machine.

At that, John Arivosis stood up to call bull-shit.  He pointed out that this has become a fairly common charge and that it’s coming from all quarters of the administration and Congress.  To him, the idea was eye-ball popping ludicrous; who’s done a more effective job of carrying the progressive message than bloggers and new media?  Democrats certainly aren’t being served well by Chris Matthews, Brit Hume, Wolf Blitzer, and Howie Klein!  If anyone has had the back of Democrats, it was the people in that room.

The Senators began to respond when I stood up and suggested that it probably makes sense for them to do what is in their own power to help themselves, and if there is trouble with the progressive media, it stems from the fact that the progressive wing of the Senate hasn’t done much by way of acting in their own interest.

There was a chart behind Senator Stabenow.  The top line said that 14,000 people would die every year for want of health insurance.  I said that should mean something to progressives in the Senate.  That we’re frustrated because even as progressives form the majority of the Democratic caucus, they do nothing to impose party discipline…  That Harry Reid says there will be no consequences imposed on Democrats provide crucial support for Republican filibusters, and instead of demanding party discipline on procedural votes by asserting their numbers, the progressives in the caucus accept Reid’s leadership.   As a result, Blanche Lincoln, for example, can join with Republicans to filibuster health care reform, cap and trade, EFCA and any number of other progressive policies.  As far as I can tell, progressives in the caucus could force her out of her Agriculture Committee Chair if they wanted to, but so far they’ve decided to cave to her demands instead.  It’s enough to make a guy wonder why they bother with the chart citing 14,000 lost lives every year.

Senator Stabenow told me she didn’t think I was being fair.  I didn’t get why, but Senator Brown quickly jumped in with some welcome news.  He told us that Committee Chairs will be up for election in the next Congress and that nobody is guaranteed to keep their seat.  Ryan Grim brings some expert analysis:

“We’re going to elect committee chairs next year,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). “The current chairs that are sitting there now understand that we’ll be electing chairs next year,” he added, saying the idea had been cleared with Senate leadership.

Under current rules, members of the caucus can weigh in by objecting to an overall Senate organizing resolution, but don’t have an up-or-down vote on each chair.

Historically, the seniority system has been one of the chief obstacles to legislative progress. It is more difficult to continuously get elected to the Senate — or to get elected at a young age — in a big state, rather than a small state. That imbalance means that the most senior members of the Senate are almost all from rural, conservative states, giving them outsized influence in a chamber where they already have outsized influence because of minority protections and the two-per-state makeup of the chamber.

The next panel covered energy and the green economy.  There was a lot of talk about putting a price on carbon and messaging, and frankly, the presenters (Bingaham, Boxer, Cardin and Shaheen) didn’t sound all that optimistic about the fortunes of the legislation.  The entire hour-plus went by without a single mention of nuclear power.  I thought that was striking – nukes used to be a flash-point of debate and very controversial.  But President Obama recently announced billions for new nuke plants and the news went over with a collective yawn.  I wondered if progressives were supportive of the new policy and if we got any concessions (on, for example, new source review or cooperation with energy legislation) from power companies in exchange for jump-starting the nuke process.

Boxer mentioned that she has long-standing reservations with regards to nuclear because of the waste issue (the stuff is deadly for tens, if not hundreds of thousands of years.  By way of comparison, the Egyptian pyramids are about 3,000 years old; the earliest human civilizations sprung up less than 10,000 years ago), but that she sees nuclear as an inevitable component of energy policy.  She added that power companies are on board because they want an alternative to burning coal – especially if they are facing a levy on emissions.  I followed up by asking if it is an efficient use of money – how many solar panels could we construct for all the billions we’re committing to nukes?  Cardin weighed in saying that we aren’t spending too much (most of what’s being offered are loan guarantees) and that if we don’t do nukes, we’ll be burning more coal and sending more money to troublesome parts of the world in exchange for oil.

Here’s a bit from TPM’s report:

The progressive Senators tasked with guiding a climate change bill through the back-logged Senate say they’re ready to grease the legislative wheels with nuclear power. Speaking at the Progressive Media Summit this afternoon, Senators said it was time to embrace the atom as the key to comprehensive climate change legislation this year.

“I happen to be one of the Senators who’s concerned about waste,” Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said. “But most progressives in the Senate believe nuclear power is part of the solution at this time.”

…

Obama’s environmental proposals include the construction of new nuclear power plants for the first time in decades, which Obama and nuclear proponents say are the best short-term way to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuel-burning power generation.

Conservatives have long been in favor of new nuclear plants. Now it seems that the Senate’s left wing — once the home to the strongest critics of nuclear power — is on board with Obama’s plan.

“If we don’t expand nuclear power, there are going to be more coal plants and more oil plants,” Cardin said. “Nuclear power has been accepted as part of the solution [to climate change] among progressives.”

And that was my day at the progressive media summit.

The dynamic duo! Enough to strike fear into hearts of liberals everywhere (or at least a sense of superior bemusement). For the life of me, I don’t know how wingnut space-time didn’t collapse on itself into a far-right-wing singularity.

Honestly, King used to talk with me fairly frequently and said some pretty nutty things. When I posted the videos, he stopped talking to me. On the other hand, Congresswoman Bachmann used to ignore me and walk with head bowed in silence as I peppered her with questions. For some reason or another, more recently she’s been very friendly and open.

I, obviously, was wondering why these two hadn’t signed on to Paul Ryan’s roadmap for America.

The Senator was one of four that initially signed on to a letter asking Harry Reid to include a public option in the “side-car” reconciliation health care bill expected to come out of the Senate.

Representative Rohrabacher tells StarkReports that he doesn’t regret hanging out with a bunch of Afghani mujahadeen.

Republican Congressman Paul Ryan has circulated a “roadmap” for America – a document laying out Republican ideas. In it, he privatizes social security and cuts the rate of Medicare growth, amongst other things. I’ve been asking Republican Representatives if they like the plan and expect to endorse it.

Virginia Foxx had a pretty unique response (again). She asked the cops to save her from the scary questions.

If you’ve been around the internets very long, you’ll be familiar with the content producer’s dilemma. We produce, put the stuff on the web, everyone enjoys it and, uhh… every now and again, we have to ask you to kick in a few dollars so that we can keep doing the work.

Now it’s my turn.

I’ve been doing this for about six months now and while many days come and go without anything particularly noteworthy happening, every now and then I do have a moment where, I think, I’m doing really good movement work. Whether it’s the birther videos, or asking Republicans how they justify voting against the Al Franken anti-rape amendment, exposing David Vitter’s racism, or demonstrating that even after six months of debate, republicans still couldn’t tell me how many of their constituents were uninsured, or holding Andy Breitbart accountable, or chatting with Trent Franks and dredging up some ugly primordial race issues…

Well, the point I’m trying to make is that you have a reporter getting up every day, trekking to the Hill and generating primary reports from a perspective that is all but dead on the Hill – that of a progressive. My intent isn’t to pat myself on the back, and god knows there are a lot of progressive reporters in DC that are more talented than I am, but… None of them are doing what I’m doing in terms of staking out the Hill and conducting video interviews using questions derived from the populist progressive base.

Anyway, I’ve probably already overcooked this goose. If you like what you see here, please drop some coin in the paypal sidebar widget

(pssst…. it’s over there ——–>>>>———–>>>>>>>————->>>>>>)

or email me for a snail-mail address, mstark_at_starkreports_dot_com.

Thank you.

MS

In a nutshell he says reconciliation can only be used for budgetary matters, even though he concedes that it’s been used for social legislation in the past. The difference between those cases and this one, he says, is that previous mal-uses of reconciliation were overwhelmingly bi-partisan. To him the 60 Democratic votes the legislation has already achieved counts for nil since there was no substantial Republican support.

This argument should really be offensive, especially when you consider the number of voters represented by the 60 Senators that voted for the bill compared to the number represented by the 40 that voted against it.

I brought up the second round of Bush tax cuts which required Dick Cheney, acting as tie-breaker, to cast the deciding vote. Hatch pointed out that it was a $350 billion bill; this health care bill deals with $2.5 trillion. Of course, Democrats will say that the health care bill is, at worst, revenue neutral and that in may even reduce overall costs.

In any event, it’s not clear to me why Democrats could not have raised the same hue and cry when tax cuts were passed over their objections. Why couldn’t they have said that such a partisan use of reconciliation would doom the Senate?

Again, I didn’t get to ask everything I would have liked. For example, the delay of this bill has caused an immediate reduction in Medicare payments to doctors treating the elderly. Is it fair to say that Republicans cut Medicare again?

With that said, Hatch makes it clear that a filibuster will not hold; that other Republicans will join with Democrats to defeat Bunning’s hostage-taking gambit.

Now the question is: Why in the world hasn’t Harry Reid scheduled the cloture vote?

At the conclusion of this interview, I was given a letter signed by Hatch, Cornyn, Kyl, Sessions and a few other Republicans that took AG Holder to task for not naming the lawyers he has on staff that previously represented Gitmo detainees. That made his answer here pretty obvious.

His staff was antsy; I could tell they had to be somewhere, so I tried to accommodate them as best I could. (Don’t get on the bad side of staff!)

But… I really want to know… If a lawyer had previously defended a rapist, or for that matter, a drunk driver, child abuser or wife-beater, should they be allowed to work at the Justice Department? How do we know where their loyalties lie?

NYT Magazine:

Arianna [Brown's daughter] told me that he showed up for his first real date with her mother, Gail Huff, a TV newscaster to whom he has been married for more than 23 years, in pink leather shorts. It’s family lore.

The pinkish color drained from his face when I asked him about it during a conversation in his campaign office just before we took off in the truck. He clarified that the shorts weren’t something that he went out and purchased — it wasn’t like that at all. “I did the couture shows, and instead of paying in cash, they paid in clothes,” he said. “And one of the things I had to wear were leather shorts. And these happened to be pink.”

As he told the story, he seemed, almost in spite of himself, to get into it. “If I wore these now,” he said, “I’d get shot. But it was the ’80s. Pastels were in. It was all pastel-y.” The shorts went with his tan at the time and a pair of white shoes that he owned, so he gave them a whirl. “Gail comes out and she’s like, ‘Those are pink shorts.’ I said: ‘Yeah, you like them? They’re great. Comfortable. Feel this leather.’ ” With this last phrase, he slowly stroked the side of one of his thighs, apparently miming the gesture he made in front of her.

He emphasized: “This isn’t cheap leather. This is, like, $750 shorts back then.” He shook his head at the memory. “Crazy stuff.”