60 ... by gimleteye

When I was a kid, sixty was a magic number. It belonged to the home run king, Babe Ruth. Today sixty holds another fascination: the numerical majority signifying control of the US Senate. In recent weeks the nation has experienced how fragile that number is, applied to the Democratic majority. Any piece of legislation is subject to the preferences of one or two senators, provided of course that the minority party maintains its discipline and votes against the majority every step of the way. What about the Democratic "base": the aspirations of those young worker bees who propelled then candidate Obama through the Iowa caucuses in the dead of winter in 2007 and 2008? Pfft. When Democrats or Republicans hold a narrow majority, the balance tips in favor of giant special interests whose money influences political campaigns. The big corporate interests-- mainly Oil and Coal-- are helping to fund the radical, extremist wing of the Republican party in the 2010 mid-term elections: they want their country back and are calling themselves "conservatives" though when they held the reins of power they were anything but conservative. That is how James Inhofe, US Senator from Oklahoma (R), crows that climate change legislation-- never mind that the Senate has not brought the matter to debate-- is "dead on arrival".