bobquasit | A letter to Salon

A letter I wrote tonight in response to a rather stupid argument in Salon. The author suggested that Democrats ought to welcome the elimination of the filibuster, because:

In "Dump the filibuster!", Farhad Manjoo says "...however slim the chances are of Democrats' winning 51 Senate seats, they're a lot better than the possibility of their winning 60 seats".

By that logic, I have a lot better chance to spontaneously fly 20 feet upward out of my chair, than 20,000 feet. But I'm not buying a parachute.

Suggestion: The Republicans would not have taken this step if they weren't pretty darn sure that they would never be out of power again. Why would they think that? Perhaps because of the black box voting process, as reported on several occasions in Salon.

After all, we don't know what goes on in those boxes - but we do know that the presidents of the companies that make and run them are fervent right-wing Republicans.

Could it be that Karl Rove knows something that we don't? It would certainly be unprecedented for him to hand a loaded weapon to his political victims, after all.

We'll see if they print it.