Please, please, please let the Republicans filibuster against the stimulus package. Let Harry "Cloture" Reid NOT enable them to merely threaten a filibuster. Let the Senate Republicans actually filibuster, let them make complete asses out of themselves, dooming them in 2010 to even further marginalization. Or, let Obama manage to peel off the last remaining GOP "moderates" and get that vote.

But what Reid must not do is offer a fig leaf for the Republicans to hide behind, as he has always done. If they are against this stimulus package, make them filibuster against it, so Americans can see this, get pissed off, and call and write their senators and pressure them.

The stimulus package is already too weak, needs to be stronger, but something is better than nothing, and the GOP has an incredibly weak hand to play in this, so it would be a disaster to let them win with that weak hand because of Reid's terrible non-leadership in the Senate.

The Propaganda Ministry runs the GOP, first, last, and always. I'm not surprised that an elected official pales before the Republican propaganda minister Limbaugh. It would've been far cooler if Gingrey had been brave enough to stand up to Limbaugh. Ah, well.

The one advantage the GOP has, even as a minority party (or even especially as a minority party), is that the voters who are with them are the ones who will be with them even if they put the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to the torch. They have a hardcore voting bloc of mouthbreathers who will stay with them, regardless of what they do -- or even because of their idiotic stances on issues, standing in the way of the nefarious Obama. I think that's why we see the GOP standing in the way of the country's best interests. They know that there's not much fat left to trim from their ranks (and the ones likeliest to fall are the more moderate Republicans -- the very worst of the worst are largely safer in their districts), so there's almost no political cost to being as obstructionist as they want to be.

Obama and his people should find what's left of the Republican moderates, that endangered species, and try to bring them on board, because those are the only ones he'll be able to (possibly) budge.

It's pretty pathetic, but it's going to be how Boehner and the others try to run things from the back seat.

The GOPeons will follow orders. Note that their mission in the wake of 2008 is to prevent Obama from doing a good job, so they'll do whatever they can to keep him from having any victories. That is their strategy. It doesn't stop Obama from making them look like assholes by trying to be bipartisan, only to get a smackdown from them, but make no mistake that the GOP's "fix" to the problem of losing in 2006 and 2008 is not to help a Democratic administration navigate the country out of the mess the Republicans' economics largely created, but rather, to keep a Democratic administration from claiming victories and improving things, so they can shamelessly say "Look! See? They're no worse than we are! Vote for us!"

This kind of cynical politicking is their bag; my hope is that Obama and the Democrats who aren't part of the problem work around these folks and improve things, or else voters get pissed off enough to continue voting out Republicans in 2010, given the Democrats a still bigger majority.

Instability is a political boon to a party out of favor and power, so look to the GOP to continue to obstruct, obscure, and oppress. Loyal opposition died decades ago, at least within the GOP.

Sadly, the climate's changing faster than the minds of the deniers. And even once we've reached a point of no return on it (if we haven't already), they'll merely find another area to be ignorant about, or will blame liberals for it, or will perhaps even celebrate it as proof that God is angry with secular humanism, or something like that. Ignorance is its own reward.

The funniest thing I think with Blago's attempt to sway public opinion against this impeachment trial is that public opinion was already against Blago before Blagogate -- he was terribly unpopular -- so, what he really hopes to gain from this latest round of media stunts makes no sense to me. Unless perhaps he's hoping to win a book deal down the road for his memoirs or something, by being as "Rodiculous" as he can be.

What is it going to be, a coloring book? Who's going to read it? I imagine the mouthbreathers who love her not being avid readers.

God, last year, I said that no matter what, some of the wingdings would not recognize Obama's legitimacy. They're just so predictable. They'll find any excuse not to support him. It's just absurd.

"Mission Accomplished. God Bless Amerika."

So, have the Republicans begun impeachment proceedings against President Obama, yet?

Today is a good day. This is good stuff. Even Roberts' boning up the Chief Justice's ONE PUBLIC TASK couldn't mar the joy of the moment. Nice one, Roberts. Smooth.

And Dick Cheney couldn't have looked more Dick Cheneyish if he'd tried. Somehow, I don't think he'll be doing too much fishing in Wyoming, unless he's planning to use himself as bait.

Obama's got a huge, unenviable task ahead of him, but if he gets the country back on its feet, he's going to be legendary.

When you think of the country he was handed in 2000, and the country he leaves behind, one can only bid him good riddance. The damage this man and his co-president Cheney did to our country is inestimable (certainly assisted in this by a complicit Congress, a co-opted Supreme Court, and an asleep-at-the-switch media). Good riddance, former president GW Bush.