I say once again, why is the right calling us a bunch of Nazis?

Republicans - When you think they can get no lower, they amaze you and sink to new levels, what I cannot understand is how the country in general could ever trust a republican.

With apologies to Neill....
God damn the GOP's shit-filled soul to hell.

These guys would make Mr. Potter in It's a Wonderful Life recoil in horror and shame.

Killing grandma bad...
But killing Senator Grandpa is okay.

I believe what is sought , is the taste of victory . Vince Lombardo's sense of "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing" .
Lombardo had something the powerful mind of the "Confederate Yankee" has yet to grasp . I like to think of it as the grace and confidence one feels after living as an adult .

And they're the ones screaming about death panels.

The name says it all. The whole conservative movement is stuck in a time warp; they're still fighting the war against northern aggression.

In other places, one of the Republicans would have joined the Democrats to serve as Byrd's vote.

But then, Coburn came close to saying the same thing on the Senate floor...

JS said:
. . . what I cannot understand is how the country in general could ever trust a republican.

Let me count the ways . . .

The Democrats have a president who has an unhealthy fetish about bipartisanship and doesn't seem to understand that anything he allows members of the current incarnation of the Republican party to touch will be sullied.

The Democrats continue to hold a Charlie Brown-like belief that this time the corporate-controlled media will get the story right and tell Americans the truth about how the Republicans are to blame for most of what is wrong in this country.

For years the "leadership" of Congressional Democrats have hid under their desks and soiled themselves at the mere idea of being called a "liberal" or having a right-wing talking point aimed in their direction.

The Democrats are owned by large corporations to nearly the degree that Republicans are. A century ago Mark Twain said that America had "the best Congress that money can buy". That's no longer true. Now we merely have a Congress that money can buy.

Shall I go on?

Clearly the Democrats need more Alan Graysons and fewer Ben Nelsons.

I've read that more than one Repubnlican Senator was willing to pair with Byrd on grounds of civility, or even to vote for cloture, but the leadership (or the majority of the majority) refused to allow it.

In light of that, the supposed independence of Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins looks pretty silly. They didn't vote against cloture because that had serious concerns of one kind or another, they voted against cloture because they're terrified of Sen. McConnell (or whoever it is in the back room that pulls McConnell's strings).

Same for the supposed sane conservatives Lugar, Voinovicgh, and McCain. At least 40 members of the greatest deliberative body in the world are not free agents.

Actually, I am quite proud of our Senate Democrats. They knew this fight was coming this Christmas and they (and their dedicated staffs) are up to the challenge. You go guys (and gals)! We appreciate your efforts. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

<Broder>
This just undelines the fact that Obama must reach out to Republicans and make an effort to accommodate their concerns.

</Broder>

The darkest thoughts ever to cross the minds of liberals flow effortlessly from the tounges of wingnuts. There's no bottom to their depravity.

Vince Lombardo's....??

Between Rachel Maddow's bottom of the ninth baseball analogy and the Lombardo (Vince Lombardi's brother?) quote, I get the feeling not too many libruls watch sports.

Nonetheless, the meaning in both is clear.

Cheers.

And how many times did the Republicans wheel out ol' Strom to vote on some crap they were pushing? At least Byrd looks engaged.

Yeah, just to second Andrew's point - I'm not necessarily appalled at the "what if Byrd just died" part (it's politics... not show friends, or show business)... but the Republicans wheeled in both Strom Thurmond (and Jesse Helms IIRC) at various moments when it was needed. That's how the Senate rolls. Now, we may ask whether there's a decent interval when one ought to leave one's Senate post... but both sides play this game.

Gun Counter Gomer is a despicable excuse for a human being who has proven himself a racist, misogynistic, homophobic intellectual lightweight who could do the human race a favor by killing himself in the most horrific and embarrassing way imaginable.

Oh ... sorry. Was that too shrill?

My favorite part of the post was Owens sneering at Byrd's membership in the KKK as a young man, a membership Byrd has renounced and frequently referred to as something he's ashamed of having done. It's like Owens is upset that Byrd decided that belonging to the KKK is a bad thing.

Of course, he does call himself "Confederate Yankee," so I'm guessing Owens doesn't see anything wrong with belonging to the KKK, but thinks it's bad form to leave and denounce it.

THe right wing has long left behind any sense of decency ever since they accepted Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage as their moral compasses.

What is even more strange in the unreal world they seem to be living in. They're not trying to kill THIS healthcare reform bill, they're trying to kill any chance of healthcare reform, period. That makes no sense. Healthcare reform...oppose, Climate change, alternative energy, education, anything constructive or beneficial to the american people...oppose, oppose, oppose.

They're nihilists. They know they're dream of a right wing oppressive Christian theocracy will never happen, so they're trying to crash everything down around them. they're out to inflict fatal damage at this point. THe hateful rhetoric is in tune with their agenda.

Gun Counter Gomer is a despicable excuse for a human being who has proven himself a racist, misogynistic, homophobic intellectual lightweight who could do the human race a favor by killing himself in the most horrific and embarrassing way imaginable.

In the words of Clyde Bruckman (Peter Boyle) on "The X-Files":

"You know, there are worse ways to go, but I can't think of a more undignified way than autoerotic asphyxiation."

Confederate Yankee sounds like a former colleague of mine who passed away a few weeks ago: A staunch and fierce ideologue who had no ability to transcend the immediate circumstance of "what's in it for me."

My colleague served my union as treasurer when I served as president, and he showed no quarter for fellow colleagues who were having legitimate beefs with their supervisor whom my recently departed colleague defended even as his and my colleagues were suffering. He couldn't take the union stance, or even the decent stance in light of the supervisors documented whim and caprice.

My recently departed colleague also had a penchant for gay-hating, and he made no bones about rhetorically denigrating other people he saw as "abnormal." Well, to make a very long story a bit shorter, he was diagnosed with colon cancer, and ended up asking all his colleagues to donate to his sick leave, to what turned out to be 2 1/2 years of donations.

Yes, Confederate Yankee is an asshole much like my colleague who left us without copping to his reliance upon those who he condemned, and as such, Confederate Yankee will get his! -Kevo

Remember, "the South shall rise again?" Well, consider the no-separationists, the secessionists, the birthers, the tenthers, the culture warriors, the teabaggers, the anti-immigrationists...

It's not a surprise that Confed Yankee is a angry dolt: hey, he's a winger. But you'd think he'd remember his beloved Republitards wheeling Strom Thurmond around for more than a decade.

Why the hell do we still require Senators to be present to cast their votes. We've had the technology for decades to let Senators and Congresspeople vote from anywhere. And don't give me crap about 'floor debates'. Those have been nothing but scripted predictable events for the years now.

The most satisying result of removing the 60-vote cloture vote will be the neutering of Joe Lieberman. He is a Big Man with the rule, a dispensable nobody with it gone. Same for Ben Nelson.

The United States exists because a near-invalid was "wheeled in" to a vote. That's why Caesar Rodney is on the Delaware quarter.

Confederate Yankee is one huge mess of insecurities and desperation to prove he is the cartoon he man manly man.

He always sounds like he on a roid rage.

The old term for a "Confederate Yankee" was "Copperhead Traitor." In this case it's still very applicable.

This guy celebrates the Confederacy: white supremacy, unregenerate racism, reflexive militarism, an anti-democratic "aristocracy," the subjugation of women....

Back when I had my little blog "That's Another Fine Mess," I had a couple run-ins with this little turd. He's basically your typical right wing asshole who thinks it's "funny" to be "non-PC" and tell racist/sexist jokes and such.

It's also rather descpicable that Gun Counter Gomer implies that the Democrats "wheeled Byrd in" as if he were some passive, non-responsive creature. It was surely Byrd's intention to vote - he would have fought to do so.

I remember sometime in the 1980s the Republicans wheeled in Pete Wilson on a gurney to get the votes they needed to pass a bill out of the Senate. It's not like dramatic, last minute manuevers in the Senate haven't been tried before.

I suspect this Confederate Yankee would be singing a different tune if it was a bill he supported and the parties involved were differently aligned.

I'd sure like to experience a week, just a week!, without hearing about manufactured GOP outrage over what is normal course of business in govermental affairs. Barring that, maybe they could offer a realistic prescriptive to change the way laws are being passed, not advocating the death of a sitting member of the legislature.

Steve: I also remember the vote on the Stimulus Bill (believe it was that) where the Dems had to keep the vote open so that Senator Brown could fly back from his mother's funeral to cast a vote. Not one Republican would vote aye and simply say while he objects to the bill he is voting aye so that Senator Brown need not rush back from his mother's funeral. The failure of any Republican to do that really pissed me off.

A fine example of knee-jerk vitriol devoid of intelligent analysis or basic practical thinking from the extreme right. Were Sen Byrd to die or suffer a completely debilitating medical condition, the Democratic Governor of West Virginia, Joe Manchin III (whose term expires on January 14, 2013) would surely immediately appoint another Democrat to take Sen Byrd's place. Net result? Zero change in the vote on health reform except perhpas a slight delay. Confederate Yankee should go all the way and express his hate by researching to find a Democratic Senator in a state with a Republican Governor who could and would appoint a very conservative, anti-healthcare replacement Senator. And then he and his ilk could I suppose petition their god for that Senator's early death or coma. Despicable is the word that comes to mind -- immediately after the word stupid!

To expand on Mnemosyne's post @ 11:02 AM, I think that Gomer's version of autoerotic death would be for one or both barrels of his shotgun to discharge as he was in the process of "catching," if you get my drift.

Yes, that's literally being a gun lover, which I'm sure that he would fully admit to being.