Thank you Oleeb, for bringing this some attention, which it richly deserves.  I've been watching and listening on and off all morning and have been a bit surprised hardly anyone has mentioned it.

The question I can't find the answer to is why now and not Monday when it might in fact delay a vote?  Do you know what the strategy is? 

Just got home and had an email from a friend who told me to turn on C-Span 2 and watch Bernie prove he's a national hero.  I'm about to cry, I'm so moved by him.  I'm off to tell the world. . .

(Thanks, Oleeb, for starting this.)

The Cspan link is a loop, I think.  Is it over?  Here's Bernie on the class war; I'd been saving it for a stand-alone, but here it is.

Oops; I just dialed up Cspan, but not with kgb's link; he's still speaking.  Go Bernie!

I get a kick out of him. Even more than Kucinich.

If there is one man who speaks what I think it is Bernie. I get his emails regularly.

God forgive me, but I wish he were President of the United States.

Hmmm...David Dayan has this up at FDL.

"Bernie Sanders has been speaking for almost four hours on the Senate floor, in what some are describing as a filibuster.

"It’s not a filibuster. Not unless he holds the floor until at least Monday and beyond.

There’s a set vote on the tax cut bill on Monday. Nothing else has been scheduled to move today. Bernie is not really blocking anything. This puts Sanders’ speech into the Congressional record; I’m not sure there’s an additional purpose.

But that’s not to say it isn’t important. Sanders is calling attention to the massive inequality in America, which will only be stratified further by a tax cut bill that raises taxes from current law for 25 million low-income workers and gives millionaires a tax cut of about $139,000 a person. He’s explaining America’s insane trade policies, which have cut out the American manufacturing base and hollowed out the middle class. He’s taking on corporate CEO pay, and the two-income trap, and basically making the progressive critique of an economy bought and paid for by the very rich.

What’s more, he’s picked up support, not only from usual suspects by Sherrod Brown but from conservative Democrat Mary Landrieu, who acknowledged she doesn’t always agree with her colleague but said that he has “done his homework” about the tax cut deal. After slamming the deal as unfair to the poor and to minorities and giving a very cogent argument about inequality, Landrieu hilariously concluded by saying she might vote for the bill, but she’d be “loud” about it. Nevertheless, you’re seeing issues discussed on the Senate floor that almost never come up in any other context. Political theater is sadly one of the few ways to cut through the clutter in America, and that’s what Sanders is up to, I suspect."

http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/12/10/bernie-sanders-long-speech-raises-attention-to-tax-cut-deal/

BERNIE NEEDS MOAR TRACTOR!

Good news!  I have my own opinions! 

Bad news!  I have my own opinions!

Don't get me wrong.  I love Bernie.  But what is the alternative?  Does anyone have an alternative that they can pass?  That's the operative word.  Can it get passed?

Obama solds out social security!  That's the biggest news in ALL of this.  Obama sold out social security!

If there is anything that needs doing to this bill, it is putting the lock back on social security.  Want to get Independents vocal on this bill, there it is.  Want to see if the tea baggers are real, ask them if they agree social security should be mortgaged to allow less than 2% of the population to keep millions of dollars to go with their other millions. There is nothing more longstanding in importance then retaining that social safety net.  Let's talk about that, if we are going to comlpain.  Not about what we give the rich.  Let's talk about what we're putting on the line.  It sucks to be poor, too, but we only have a few poor, a few too many, but still, they are a minority and we only have a few rich in a  minority.  For the time being, for as long as it lasts, most of us are in the middle and we should talk about where this hurts us, the most of us.  Make it personal, people, and feelings will emerge and we will get some power behind our objection to this bill. But let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater.  We need something!  Letting the tax cuts expire is not really a good alternative either.

Frankly, this is the last stab the Dems have to get anything passed, and passing nothing is a pathetic legacy.   For their two years with a sizable majority the Dems managed damn little.  There were no other plans then Obama's with any kind of traction in the healthcare debate.  There was nothing but cheap shots among the pols.  All kinds of complaints, but no viable alternatives ever emerged.  There were no effective deals made to get anything else passed either.  We want to blame this on the GOP, we want to scream at Obama for being a bad negotiator.  He did something.  Anybody else?!?  Anybody?

Two years to make changes, the Dems needed just a couple votes more to pass a bill, any bill.  Did the Dems ever get any of those?  I mean, besides healthcare reform, did the Dems get anything accomplished with their magnificent majority?  All you could hear was "I don't like this" and "I don't like that."  Oh yeah?  What are you going to do?  What have you done?  Nuthin'!  Obama started healthcare reform.  We have a place to dig in our feet and push forward.  It's not perfect, but it's something.  Here we may have something too, an extension of unemployment.  It's not much, but the unemployed might be able to dig in and push forward from here too.  At the rate the Dems are going, those unemployed are going to thank the GOP, because they are the ones who will get this bill passed.  Yeah, that really makes the whole thing smell, knowing the GOP are lining up to support this, but there is no evidence at all that the Dems can effectively accomplish any alternative.

Maybe I should have thought about this some more, but sometimes I toss things out just to see how folks react.  Maybe a different perspective will lead to yet another perspective which might just be the one.  I'm sure there are holes in my argument, but I always gain a lot of insight in reading the responses, and from time to time, I feel like I get something right.  That's why I keep putting things out there, just hoping it might lead to something that will work.    

It's also why I still golf, every now and then, I get one long and right down the center of the fairway.  LOL!!! 

In response to LisB (above)

"They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

"Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me, and I welcome their hatred."

- FDR campaign speech, 1936

Even FDR knew politics wasn't a matter of building consensus, and there was certainly no consensus among the electorate during his time. Fifty years later, I encountered people who railed against him as a "socialist" or a "communist" or other such nonsense we hear thrown about these days.

FDR had a plan. He had principles. He knew he wasn't going to be popular with the banks and industry and the oligarchs of his time.

But he went to war against the oppressors in good conscience and on behalf of the people who were suffering. And he won, too.

THAT'S politics, Lis. THAT'S leadership. It's ugly. It's confrontational. And it's necessary if we are ever to gain control of our government, and all the hand-wringing in the world ain't gonna change it.