Glenn: I'm no expert on the beliefs of all the different sects of fundamentalist nutcases but I did a quick Google search and here's what some of them believe:

"'And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith Jehovah, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein. And I will bring the third part into the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried' (Zechariah 13:8, 9). According to Zechariah’s prophecy, two thirds of the children of Israel in the land will perish, but the one third that are left will be refined and be awaiting the deliverance of God at the second coming of Christ which is described in the next chapter of Zechariah. [John F. Walvoord, Israel in Prophecy (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, [1962] 1988), p. 108."

I remember vividly my first real encounter with a fundamentalist nutcase when I was travelling through Alabama back in the early 80's. He told me all about the Rapture (which I had never heard of before despite being raised in a strict religious family) and he was certain that two-thirds of the Jews would burn in Hell. I just thought he was insane, but it turns out he was one of milions.

Glenn: I think the idea is that the Jews are given a last chance to acknoweledge the One True Real Messiah but they are so evil and stubborn that even in the context of having just witnessed the Apocalypse, it is prophesied that two-thirds of them would choose eternal damnation with the Devil over paradise with Jesus. That's just the way they are, I guess.

Klein is a blowhard and a bellwether whose opinions are swayed less by principled, rational analysis and more by how he can keep up his credibility with the extremist conservatives whose approval he craves like a junkie craves the next hit.

It wasn't hard to be right about Iraq. All you had to do was not be an incredulous idiot. Klein got it wrong because, in the context of the slanderous traitor talk being thrown around by the Republican extremists, he judged his position by the criterion of how safe it was rather than by how much sense it made.

Sorry Joe, you jumped on the bandwagon, buddy. Feels great at the time, but sucks hard if the bandwagon goes over a cliff.

The only sentence in which "Joe Klein" and "serious" belong together is this: "Joe Klein is a serious asshole."

I don't believe Joe Klein for one second. He has a history of lying and making disingenuous or even outright false statements about his own activities and statements. He was obviously responding to Glenn.

Holy shit! Glenn Greenwald and Digby firing both barrels simultaneously! That's what I call firepower.

Take that Royalist Republicans!

Digby is the Queen of the blogosphere. Keep her around with Glenn Greenwald and Sidney Blumenthal and rule the realm of political magazines for a long, long time.

jebldmm said, "We have, at best, 49 votes in the Senate. Out of 100. That's not a majority. We got lucky and have nominal control of Congress, but not enough to do any damn good."

I guess jebldmm is not any better at reading than he is at political analysis. Jeb: Glenn already obliterated your position. If the Republican senate minority is able to stop tons of legislation by threatening a filibuster, then surely the Democratic majority could do the same. I repeat: if the Democrats cared enough and/or had enough balls, they could easily stop any new FISA legislation.

Did you get that jedldmm? If the Democrats cared enough and/or had enough balls, they could easily stop any new FISA legislation.

It's a very tough question. I think Ralph Nader was an idiot given the exact circumstances at the time, but the Democrats' continual capitulation even when they control Congress and Bush is at historic lows in the polls is extremely, extremely disheartening.

I'm open to the idea of a new party. We could use a realignment in this country, and historically one way realignment has occurred is when one party simply replaces another party, as the Republican party did to the Whigs.

But that's not going to happen in 2008, and we need to do what we can in the short-term because we face a serious short-term threat to our republic. In the meantime, while we await a new party, let's do what we can to transform the current dysfunctional one.

I don't have a great answer but I think Ned Lamont's example is instructive. Let's do two things:

1) Take over the Democratic party from the grassroots. I don't mean organizing at the grassroots to support the usual candidates. I mean doing what the Christian Coalition did and taking the goddamn party back from the pathetic losers who currently control it.

2) Target all these Democratic collaborators in the primaries and kick their asses out the old-fashioned way: vote them out.

Spare us all the blathering about needing "veto-proof" majorities (which have rarely ever existed in any Congress), yada yada yada...

As Glenn pointed out in the comments, the Republican MINORITY in the Senate has had a field day stopping legislation by threatening filibuster. The Democratic MAJORITY could just as well use the same tactic.