Harry Reid's first item of business when the next Senate is sworn in is to pull in the Republican leadership into his office and tell them in clear terms that if they even talk about attempting to block even ONE of Obama's judicial nominees, he will bring out the nuclear option. We cannot allow these Republican thugs to stop progress. Chambliss is even already on record as stating he will filibuster Obama's nominees and that is simply unacceptable.

is that very few people are taking the words of those like Gergen & the Villagers at face value anymore. Everyone knows that the fourth estate has been co-opted and we've decided to do some redevelopment on our own.

Chamblis "won" the November 4th election by 3 points; the Libertarian candidate had 3.4% of that same vote. He just didn't get over 50% of the entire vote.

So if everyone in Georgia who voted on November 4th also voted yesterday, except this time he Libertarian wasn't in the running, that would mean that Martin would have had to get all of that Libertarian's original vote. Not likely.

And the other stupid thing about Chambliss is that he credits Sarah Palin for giving him the boost to win the election yesterday. I am so sick of that woman and of people giving her credit. She brought out the base; I am quite sure she didn't sway many if any independents or Democrats.

Idiots; all of the Republigicans.

What wimpy Harry Reed needs t do is actually make the repube stand up and speak. do not take the threat of a filibuster as a simple procedural matter. make the senators that want to block and blame stand before the country and go on record as opposing/blocking progress. no need for drama harry, no bringing in the roll away beds and all that just to have them removed and look like the tool you are. make the repube work for it a bit and once they are seen for the road block they have been, the press and american people will know. to quote the senator from arizona, "make them famous, you will know their names."
seems simple enough and take a minimum amount of balls harry.

Yeah, a white conservative Repubican wins a run-off in Georgia (when he also had gotten the most votes in the general), and suddenly the tide has changed? Or, better yet, he's now claiming to be one of the "new voices" of the Republican Senate? Just shows how stupid, delusional and desperate that party has become. And Chambliss sure went out of his way to downplay whatever contributions McCain, Giuliani, etc made, while praising Palin to the heavens. This guy must think he's on to something. Till Mitch McConnell bitch slaps him, that is.

seems to be scurrying as fast as possible toward the Right, innit?

When Fred Barnes approves of a (even an ostensibly) Democratic Pres.Elect's choices for vital economic and international positions, it's time to worry, friends...

Barnes has NO sense of humor. He's not kidding. He LIKES Obama's choices. And he's not changing HIS stripes; he figures on the evidence (which is damn hard to ignore) that Mr.O ran a gae on the 'left,' and has already left 'em/us a'weeping and a'pining...

This is a prime example of the conservative media misrepresenting the realities of the day. America is center-left, not center-right. Only once the country is free from the grip of the fearmongering industrial death-complex can we truly be represented as we really are.

got to admit someones getting a nice xmass preasant!

Just bring Olympia Snow or Maine's other senator into the fold, and while they'll keep the "R" by their name, they'll do the right thing.

And I agree to the idea of having Reid threaten the nuclear option (we should co-opt the GOP's old term for it: "the Constitutional Option"). Anyone who knows history knows the filibuster isn't constitutional, and while it began a limited existence in 1841, didn't become a formal part of senate rules until 1917.

The best case for ending Rule 22 in the Senate is this: Historically, every major cause the filibuster has been used to stymie has been a progressive effort needed to advance the country and our society such as Fair Employment Practices and Civil Rights.

In the L.A. Times, Neal Gabler has an article that analyzes exactly what "conservative" Republicans have been doing, tracing their strategy back to Senator McCarthy, not to Senator Goldwater, who in 1964 lost in one of the biggest landslides in American electoral history and wrested the party from its Eastern establishment wing.

What Gabler believes is that, because of this tradition, the Republican Party will continue to move rightward. Fear and blame; rabble-rousing; the Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys and Bill O'Reillys; and now Palin. This is the direction the Party will take. Probably because it cannot be believed as the party of small government or fiscal responsibility or moral integrity; all credibility lost in the harsh reality of events; at least not until people forget and these actualities become memories and fade. It is a dangerous approach because it incites people to do violent things, especially as times become more stringent.

According to Gabler, the myth made it possible for Nixon to hide behind and co-opte conservatism, talking like a conservative while governing like a moderate, disenchanting true believers. Ronald Reagan, next, embraced it wholeheartedly, becoming the patron saint of conservatism and making it the dominant ideology in the country, even though he didn't practice it in terms of fiscal responsibility or size of government. George W. Bush picked up Reagan's fallen standard and "conservatized" government even more thoroughly than Reagan had, cheering conservatives until his presidency came crashing down around him. That's how Gabler believes the mythology tells it.

Gabler's thesis is that the real connection is from Sen. Joe McCarthy, to Nixon to Bush and possibly now to Sarah Palin. McCarthy attacked alleged communists and the Democrats whom he accused of shielding them, as well as the centrist American establishment, Eastern intellectuals and the power class, many of whom were Republicans, including moderate ones. McCarthyism became a means to play on the anxieties of Americans, convincing them of danger and conspiracy even when they didn't exist, which he used to build power and support. George H.W. Bush used it to get himself elected, terrifying voters with Willie Horton (and denigrating Dukakis as a commander-in-chief). His son used fear of 9/11 and convincing voters that John Kerry was a coward and a liar and would hand the nation over to terrorists, tried and true McCarthy tactics used very aggressively, and W. then used fear and stealth in pushing through totalitarian unconstitutional measures. The thread continued through McCain and then Palin, probably through Rove (who also coached W.), and I quote from Gabler, "That's why John McCain kept describing Barack Obama as some sort of alien and why Palin, taking a page right out of the McCarthy playbook, kept pushing Obama's relationship with onetime radical William Ayers."

It is, I believe a shame, because some of the original precepts of fiscal responsibility and keeping government out of peoples' lives and moral integrity are well worth preserving. The Republican Party which stood for those princples was a Grand Old Party. But, I hate to say it, those are all too easily trumped by fear-mongering and, I might add, difficult to achieve. I would nominate the Republican Party today as the Party of Fear, as opposed to the Party of Solutions. And, if that's the direction it's going in, yes, it's a shame.

The consistent thing about guys like Jeb Bush, in line with the old Republican philosophy, is to be against something, not for it; to be in a position to scare people, not to advocate good positive things. Putting people and ideas down is the tack they have taken; witness McCain's whole campaign; witness Sarah's natural proclivities. So Jeb Bush starts off by surfacing and proposing that the Republicans start a "shadow government" to watch, and criticize, and follow what Obama's Administration does closely.

What bothers me about this, deeply, I might add, is the fact that it is not being supportive in any way. No one is saying, if we want to survive, we have to work together, guys. No, the implication is that "they" (Democrats) are the enemy. And in this terrible time, when the country is literally falling apart, and everybody is unsettled, these isolated Republicans are settling in to be critical. As if they aren't losing their savings, too; as if they are exempt; as if, should the country really fail, they wouldn't be affected. Quite a blind spot. isn't it. They aren't even pretending to help, to support, to work with their counterparts to make things better for everybody, themselves included. How antedeluvian, how "old school", how traditional, how like McCarthy and all of the Republican demogogues, to stand back and continue criticizing the Democrats who are working very hard, very earnestly, to fix what went wrong with this country.

So Jeb Bush is nothing more than another toxic Republican, joining in the long line of negative right-wing naysayers and destroyers, no better than Limbaugh and Hannity and O'Reilly. Pretty disgusting, I'd say. Stand on the sidelines and criticize while the Titanic goes down; criticize everything the crew and captain does. Disgusting, guys, absolutely disgusting. For more, see: www.ocpatriot-runningcomments.blogspot.com.

I simply do not understand how the American media (whatever part of it has any credibility, especially post-2000) can even give the slightest credence to pathetically and patently overhyped gasbags such as Bill Kristol, George Will, Tom Friedman, or (in a slightly lesser league of gasbaggery) David Gergen.

I still recall, years ago, watching Friedman for the first time on Charlie Rose or some such program, and being told up-front that this was a "Pulitzer Winner" journalist. I still remember being so clearly underwhelmed by the puny intellectual impact this star journalist had upon me from the get-go.

Over the years, I have only come to realize that American media and American discourse are both populated by mediocre minds, and bloviating gasbags. Money plays the game, and the citizenry are fed a diet of pure garbage. Rupert Murdoch and allies deliberately propagate and ensure this- and, sadly, such extreme intellectual lightweights often get much mileage even at well-regarded academic institutions such as Yale and Harvard.

Any place in the world where brainless hatemongers capable of nothing but vicious lies and propaganda, such as Limbaugh, Coulter and O'Reilly, can have such huge audiences, and muster such attention in the nation's affairs- well, it only confirms that the American body-politic's opium-administration program has been enormously successful.

A nation so opiated, perhaps rightly deserves the intended responses from mindless hate-propaganda such as Willy Horton, "Harold, wink, wink, call me," "Max Cleland, the terrorist enabler," and the like. This is as far from enlightenment as one can imagine.

Little wonder, then, that the world is in such a sorry state, even after centuries of scientific progress, brought on by the tireless efforts of bright and wise men and women in human history.

Like many bloggers have said, the fact that there was a runoff in a solidly Republican state like Georgia was unbelieveable in itself. It's deeply insulting to anyone with intelligence that somehow Chambliss's victory is the real mandate, not Mr. Obama's. Now that the GOP has 41 Senate seats (with one undecided), they are in charge, and the Dems should be more like them.

Dems won 7 seats in the Senate, 25 in the House, and the White House. The GOP wins a seat that they were expected to win, even though it was tough for them. So, of course, this is great news for the Republicans.