Ed, I don’t see how refusing to vote for a ginormous pork laden bill that the pols knew was not the what their constituents wanted equates to a temper tantrum?

Is it remotely possible in your world to see that it’s the Democrats whose definition of bipartisanship is “do it our way” ? A fitting example, Mr. Obama himself who said just days before the vote, “on some of these issues we’re just going to have ideological differences. I won. So I think on that one,I trump you.”

Well, there’s the Mommy Party (Dems);
and the Daddy Party (GOP).

You’re catching on quite well.

BTW, Ed, in today’s Senate, all you have to do is threaten to filibuster, and the Maj.Leader does a quick count of the votes in his pocket, and if there aren’t 60 in there, he pulls the legislation from the docket.
Very rarely will anyone even have to start reading from the phone book.
Robert Byrd would, but since the on-set of his senility, it is more embarrassing for him, and his fellow Senators, than it is a legislative roadblock.

Bingo! We have A Winner!

Congratualations, Ed. You’ve figured out how the filibuster works in today’s U.S.Senate.
You don’t stand at your desk with War & Peace anymore, and start reading aloud;
you just notify the Maj.Leader that you intend to filibuster something (a threat), and he does a quick head-count, and if he doesn’t have 60 votes in his pocket, he pulls the item from the docket.

Plus you had the army of grass roots lobbyists from Fannie and Freddie stirring up trouble for any member of Conress who looked like they might oppose any housing initiative or impose more regulation on them. The stories of what those folks did are truly entertaining if you want to read about intimidation tactics.