Sorry I can't join all the hand wringing.

Palin has nothing else to sell but a sexuality that evidently makes heterosexual males orgasmic. That she wraps it in the flag is no surprise either. The GOP abandoned any serious discussion of politics a long time ago in favor of fear, emotion, shallow sloganeering, and polarization. The Newsweek cover is prima facia documentation of all that and, sexist as it may be, it is honest.

Palin knows how to get attention, and all this fulmination about sexism, while true as far as it goes, plays right into her tropes. Predictable knee-jerk responses to the Newsweek cover, across the political spectrum, merely demonstrates how surficial journalism and our politics have become.

Clearly we are witnessing an attempt to form a far right-wing Kristianist party. Rather than moving to the middle the Rethugs are heading to the frontier of radicalism thinking they lost because they aren't conservative enough. Such delusions are difficult to erase given that crowd's insistence on constructing and living in a parallel reality,

The inevitability of a split among the Rethugs is becoming clear. If Hoffman wins the split will accelerate, and the pattern of insisting on hard-hard- right GOP candidates in 2010 will have been established. If he loses, the looney-tunes will try it again wherever they can These nutcases are not easily discouraged because they have no brains.

A small rump party of fascists isn't something any country needs, but I suspect we'll be getting one soon.

The perpetrators of such atrocities are often unknowing and unwitting pawns in a multi-dimensional and compartmentalized game that can't easily be traced to those who are ultimately responsible. As ever, perception trumps and hides reality.

The question of who gains when something horrible like this happens should always be asked and pursued as far as possible. Somehow the hawks are always high on the list of the usual suspects. Certainly that is true for the American and israeli variety. Perpetual conflict always benefits someone either politically and certainly economically, so Cole's analysis is on the right track. But the layers on this onion are many, and he may have only peeled the most outer ones.

With two of the big three Rethuglican female stooges (I can't quite decide who the third one is) endorsing Hoffman one has to ask where is the legendary GOP discipline? Is there no penalty to be paid for publicly endorsing an independent? I would have thought that to be heresy.

The likes of Palin and Bachmann really think their worldview and attitudes have a big following. All they do is preach to their small choir, and when that choir cheers loudly they feel validated. These two lunatics may become responsible for triggering the unavoidable, and perhaps imminent, split of the Rethugs. The corporate/money side of the party knows the political landscape isn't far right and hopelessly nuts, and will dissolve the coalition that has worked for them until recently. So, let there be a small looney-tune fascist party relegated to the hinterlands of the homeland. The wingnut crowd is largely irrelevant, if noisy, now.

Perhaps the 2010 mid-terms will be last straw, provided the Dim Dems don't continue blowing it. Wouldn't it be nice to send this benighted bunch of knuckle draggers back to their caves.

Getting rid of Reid is the Democrats only hope for salvation in the 2010 mid-terms. He personifies the spinlessness of the supposedly majority party. What greater evidence does anyone need for how the Democrats have been corrupted by the corporate state, and separated from their traditional base than electing and keeping a feckless and senile hack like Reid as majority leader. There must be 51 Democrats who would vote him out. The nine who might vote against him should be punished, punished, and punished some more. Until the Democrats impose a measure of discipline on their ranks they will lose, lose, lose in the coming elections, and we'll be back to the real lunatics running the asylum.

Getting rid of Reid as majority leader should be considered an act of patriotism.

I wouldn't want Spector's seat to go to a Rethug, but neither would I like to see him get another term. Toomey is far too lunatic-right for Pennsylvania no matter how reviled Spector might be. If Spector wins the primary, and I hope he doesn't, it'll be another hold-your-nose election for Democrats and independents who don't want a rereun of sanctimonius Santorum.

Aside from back-stabbing Joe Lieberman, Spector really needs to go to his reward.

Sad little Joe knows, or should know, that if he votes against healthcare reform he's finished with the Democrats. He'll lose his committee chairmanship, which he barely kept after trashing Obama and supporting McCain, and he will be seen as a pariah by his erstwhile party. Poor little Joe generally knows what's good for him, so unless he wants to spend the remainder of his last term in total misery in the outer darkness of the Senate, he'll vote for the final bill.