In every single political system people ALWAYS want to believe that "the King just has bad advisers."

REALITY: It's always the king. Period. It's not just that he chose those advisers. It's that they are telling him what he wants to hear.

You cannot seriously believe that if Obama's cabinet thought he REALLY WANTED to hear about withdrawal options from Afghanistan they wouldn't be proposing them?

That's how power works Jerome. Nobody gets to that level of power without a profound knowledge of what to say and what NOT to say. Anybody who is UNABLE to learn this valuable lesson simply doesn't last.

The number of advisers who will consistently tell the President what he DOESN'T want to hear are vanishingly small to begin with, and even occasional lapses will generally result in a loss of access and influence -- hence power. Opponents will FREEZE OUT the one offering unwelcome advice.

This does NOT mean no-one can bring the President bad news. But, they have to be VERY CAREFUL in bringing the President ADVICE he doesn't want to hear.

Perfect example: Obama is profoundly convinced that his liberal critics are WRONG and that he "wouldn't change a thing" that he's done these last 2 years. He thinks he's unfairly the victim of circumstances. Now, do you think an adviser who comes in and tries to tell Obama that his problems stem from the fact that the "stimulus was too small" and he should "propose a much larger stimulus package" even though Congress won't pass it would get very far? You'd be going against what he believes.

Nobody who wants to play the power game ignores those kind of lessons.

In fact, I rather think that Republicans are going to be tipping their hands BEFORE January about subpoenas, investigations and the possibility that "impeachment is on the table."

Of course there will be NO special prosecutor since that law expired, which will make things more difficult for the witch-huters. Congressional investigations lack the power of an independent prosecutor. The Justice Department can always ignore them and in this case, should.

BUT, on the plus side they can always shut down the government AGAIN! And they will. 100% guaranteed.

The tea-baggers are now in control and they are completely nuts.

Rasmussen's research is nonsense, not Jerome's article

This whole article is nonsense because it totally MISREPRESENTS the the Tea-baggers, mischaracterizes the arguments against them, and pretends to a symetry between right and left that doesn't exist.

1. Tea-baggers are simply the right-wing of the Republican party. They are the same people who have been voting Republican for years and are sure as hell NOT stirred up because they're:

<blockquote>"citizens demanding to be heard by an out-of-touch political establishment. Their concerns are real and their issues are legitimate."</blockquote>

The minute you hear crap like that you know this is a propaganda piece and not real research. Birthers and "Obama = Socialist Muslim!" is "legitimate" and "real?"Where's the "reality" in their racist paranoia? Are minorities really pushing whites aside and taking their jobs? Or is corporate America massively transferring jobs overseas?

2. Tea-baggers are stirred up because Fox News and Rush Limbaugh spend endless hours telling them that White America is getting screwed and it's the "magic Negro" who's doing it to them. They're suffering and minorities are rolling in welfare.

To pretend that's not deeply racist is simply more propaganda.

Because the fact remains that whatever bills got through Congress were decidedely NOT "socialist." And minorities are NOT rolling in federal dollars at the expense of white people.

So to pretend as these idiots do that we have 2 semetrical "grass roots" movements when one "movement" is orchestrated by a massive and ongoing propaganda effort is like calling Stalin's mass political theater a "grass-roots movement." The whole thing is an orchestrated fraud -- from the top down. Of course the anger and fear is real, but it's whipped up deliberately by self-conscious propaganda.

If the Tea-baggers aren't going away that's only because Fox News isn't going to stop stirring up racial discord. If it weren't for an endless campaign of lies and deception these idiots would go back to being simple Republicans -- unhappy ones because NO government is EVER going to be able to satisfy their fantasies, but Republicans nonetheless.

It's FOX NEWS that has convinced them that they're part of an "historic gathering of Patriots! instead of a manipulated band of idiots."

Sorry, but anybody who can say these things with a straight face deserves nothing but mocking:

1. "Sarah Palin (she’s cute and the left was despicable and unjustified in its treatment of her during the last presidential campaign) and Marco Rubio (he’s cute and has a heartwarming background as the son of Cuban immigrants)"

Do I have to point out how completely wrong this is? Can you spot the fundamental error? Anybody running for the Presidency of the U.S. who is that completely vacuous deserves absolutely EVERYTHING they get.

She deserves VASTLY MORE "despicable" criticism. In fact she deserves to be gutted like a dead carp on every possible occasion because she is deadly dangerous.

Millions of idiots love her. She COULD become the next President of the U.S. and being "cute" won't help us survive that apocalypse. Not at all. So BIG thumbs down there! Anything that helps to tear her to shreds is not only right but vitally necessary!

2. "I considered myself a bohemian Tea Party person, attended rallies, and was treated graciously."

The Tea-baggers are racists. Period. There was NEVER anything potentially good about it and any idea that there was is simply delusional. If you weren't clear about that from day 1 then you weren't paying attention. I KNOW what I'm talking about; my own father is a full-on Tea-bagger who likes to talk about how terrible it is that America in the future won't be a white man's country anymore. He's not the only one. His Tea-bagger friends are all the same.

He angrily rejects the idea that he's a racist: it's just that white culture is clearly superior and created all the great civilization we enjoy today and all the brown and black people coming into this country are destroying it. No hard feelings you understand. We just need to "take our country back."

THAT is why Tea-baggers are so opposed to all forms of "welfare" even when it means food stamps for their own families: because blacks and Latinos will get it too and we can't have that!

They'd rather starve than have their tax dollars "go to support some family of Mexican immigrants." Quite literally starve.

 The only "change" that's taken place in that party is that now organizers are getting media-savvy and refusing to let the drooling idiots carry signs that highlight what vicious bigots they are because it makes them look bad on national TV.

"The fact that she lacks a significant paper trail means that there is little basis on which to launch attacks against her, and no risk of a bruising Senate fight, much less a filibuster."

All the argument is that WE don't know where Kagan stands on a wide number of issues. But that doesn't mean the WHITE HOUSE doesn't know!

They have the option to ask all the questions that the Senate will NEVER get answers to like: "Exactly where do you stand on abortion? On the question of governmental power versus privacy rights? On capital punishment? On voting rights? Do you agree with the recent decision on campaign finance? How would your views be different. Etc., etc.

And they keep interrogating her until they get clear answers they like or decide to choose another candidate. The Senate is virtually powerless to get clear answers to anything, because the nominee knows enough to answer with meaningless generalities to any question. And the Senate has to have a reason to reject the President's nominee. So, meaningless platitudes are all they get.

And they know it.

But, we need to remember that the White House is emphatically NOT in that position. The potential nominee has to satisfy THEM or they won't get the nomination.

If you want a lifetime appointment to the U.S. S.Ct. you have to satisfy the President with your answers.

So, all the complaining entirely misses the point. This is EXACTLY who Obama wants because she mirrors HIS values. He's a moderate establishment Democrat and he probably WANTS to appoint moderate establishment Democrats to the Court. If she turns out to be the next Brennan it will be because Obama secretly wants that. But you better believe Obama knows  what kind of Justice she'll make.

Believing in science means that you're not a "conservative." Got it.

We should teach creationism in schools instead. You have to wonder whether America is like the Roman Empire, doomed to fall into a dark age of ignorance as more and more people turn away from reason and knowledge.

They might just as well vote to repeal a Lunar Eclipse because it is the mark of Satan!

Maine's GOP does not control national policy, and the NATIONAL party is not going to try and actually adopt these various idiocies even if a new Republican president is elected.

That's because it would make any President's job more difficult to repudiate treaties and go against the world consensus. He has to deal with other countries and adopting policies of the barking mad won't make his life with rational countries in Europe or Asia any easier.

Bush had a tough time and it got increasingly worse as his Presidency continued. With the passing years, international tolerance for the stupidity, ignorance and jingoism of the American right wing declines.

The rest of the world will not take kindly to being forced to endure another bout of "Bush fatigue." America's influence in the world would plummet immediately and probably permanently.

It's easy to rant against health care too when you know you're never going to be able to repeal it.

Reminds me of that old Simpsons' cartoon of Old Man Simpson shaking his fist in a newspaper picture titled: "Old man yells at cloud."

BTW: the tea-baggers probably will float the idea of primarying Olympia Snowe in 2012, but it's difficult to see the idea gaining any traction. She's a lot more popular than anyone else they could run and could easily pull a Lieberman by creating a "Maine for Snowe" party and running as an independent.

All that happens then is that she caucuses with Democrats and instantly becomes as big a headache as Joe-Ego.

It's a sad commentary on what happens to you when you are utterly without principles. I still remember Arlen bowing and scraping to the right-wing nut jobs when they had a hissy-fit over his comments that he hoped Bush would appoint  a "consensus" candidate for the U.S. S.Ct. instead of a hard-right conservative (like Roberts or Alito).

Rush Limbaugh and Fox News savaged him with a campaign to force him to recant and kneel in the snow or else lose his committee chairmanship. He had to promise to support Bush's cronies sight unseen.

I think that was going to be the last straw for Arlen and that he'd switch parties at that point and tell the howling loons of talk radio to sodd off. But the man has no sense of shame at all and swallowed his humiliation whole and went on his knees to "Mount Rush" eating crow all the way.

Little good it did him. He gained a couple of years of toe-ing the line until the next primary election when they mounted a furious move to oust him anyway and forced him out.

We can do better than Arlen Specter any day of the week. His recent tack to the left notwithstanding, he's just as likely to move back to the right as soon as he's elected.

We need Senators who can be relied on not to shift with the wind. 

If they join a Tory coalition all that will happen is that in about 6 months to a year the Tories will feel strong enough to stage another election in which they get an outright majority and tell the LD's to sodd off.

And then at that point you wonder if they will have peaked. They'd be firmly cemented into 3rd place and out of power. Their one chance relies on sharing power with Labor for as long as possible and getting electoral reform, plus hoping the minds of voters changes.

It's like they KNOW this shit can't be good long-term for the Republican party, but they just can't help themselves. They have to do it anyway.

Pandering to their extremist base is just what they're about these days. And there's no chance this won't backfire.

Do they think AZ Latinos will forget this kind of treatment? Or that they'll all be cowed into submission by these "tough" new laws designed to say: "get out!" to their friends and family members?

I don't know what this is going to do for Republicans in 2010, but it's pretty clear that it's not going to be great news for them in 2015 or 20.

So Bennett's claim was that this was "just party activists" who vote in caucuses. I don't know, but it's likely that only active Democrts will vote in the primary either so if this is an indication of his level of support he's not doing that well.

Living in Denver I've heard a bit from Bennett (which wasn't that hard for him since I contacted his office several times), but I've heard nothing so far from Romanoff whose campaign has been invisible so far.

Gail Norton, the Wicked Witch of the West who's running for the GOP has a huge war-chest so she'll be on TV 24/7 this fall for sure, spreading her evil lies. She really is a foul bitch queen, but is a lot more polished a politician than their usual GOP standard-bearers who tend to be crackpot Billionaire businessmen like Pete Coors.

Bennett has amassed some money, but Romanoff will have to prove he can be funded to the necessary degree to win this race.

I'd say it's a toss-up race right now and the outcome will depend on what happens to the economy between now and then (probably not a whole lot in terms of jobs but there might at least be an attempt at a new jobs bill in Congress).

I'd prefer Romanoff, but Bennett's recent activism makes him palatable as well.

My one fear is that Bennett would revert to being a Blue Dog once he's been elected and start blathering about the desperate need to reduce the deficit.

In that imaginary Bizarro world where everything is the polar opposite of the way it is in the real world, Joe Biden would be willing to overrule the Senate Parlimentarian to push HCR through via reconciliation.

In the REAL world, cowardly Democrats would all faint and soil themselves, the media would scream about a "shocking degree of partisanship" and Republicans would "declare war" and prophesy "the end of the Senate".

Personally, I think the "end of the Senate" would be a GOOD thing, but sadly it's not going to happen.

You just can't expect the members of the world's most exclusive millionaires club to don Che Guevera t-shirts and start actually doing things the right-wing and their corporate masters hate. That would be "too partisan."

ERGO: This is all blather. Nothing is going to happen. Biden will at most whine publicly about the "obstructionism" of the Republicans.

You just saw that 59 Democrats couldn't even break the filibuster of ONE LONE Senator, crazy Jim Bunning -- despite promising to do just that. They gave up and surrendered instead of forcing him to stay up and hold the floor over the weekend while everybody else went home.

Democrats are just utterly pathetic weaklings who always surrender their lunch money at the first sign of Republican demands.

Scott Brown is a tea-bagger in sheep's clothing not some kind of "centrist." He will tack HARD right in the next 2 years because he has a real chance of winning the Republican nomination for President in 2012.

Why not? He's an empty suit pretty-boy who smiles good for the camera and can be depended on to do what he's told once in office.

In short he's George Bush III -- perfect for the Republican party that emphasizes personality over substance.

Of course he will only have been a Senator for 2 years then and know almost nothing about foreign policy (or domestic policy for that matter), but that isn't stopping Sarah Palin! Why should it stop Brown who would have a MUCH better chance than Palin who has already convinced 2/3 of America that she's a blithering idiot unfit to be President?

Brown is everything the Republican party wants in it's Presidential candidates, but in order to be the wing-nut's choice in 2012 he has to rant and scream at Obama for the next 2 years.

If he tries to play the "bi-partisan" role by voting for some legislation Obama proposes he'll infuriate the right-wing and blow his chances of the nomination. So, FAT chance!

They're not paying a price for total obstructionism so why not go all out?

The problem is that Democrats have NO WAY to "highlight that." Filibusters don't mean that Jim DeMint and his new buddy Brown will stand in the well of the Senate like Mr. Smith goes to Washington!

They'll just tie the Senate up with boring procedural motions with ONE Republican Senator on the floor denying a quorum, and the 40 others standing in front of CNN Reporters denouncing whatever bill is up for consideration.

The only chance Democrats have is to do the ONE thing they will NEVER do: adopt the Nuclear Option and go to majority rule.

I was unhappy when the Republicans failed to use the Nuclear Option back in 2005 because I saw then that nothing would be lost by it and if Democrats ever got in charge it would enable them to do something.