Tell me again how the Bush white house and DOJ caved-in under a wave of subpoenas for emails.

And the Obama administration does nothing ... But wait! I hear that Gibbs has convinced Obama to go with a new campaign slogan for the mid-terms; it's sure to get out the progressives and energize the electorate: "No We Can't!"

Stonewall 'em and let 'em howl. Or else send administration officials to testify to the effect that "you're delusional, Congressman."

Why have you already conceded the House, Steve? I mean, give me a break. Talk like this is self-fulling. The polls don't look that bad, and I truly think Obama and the Democrats will come out swinging in September. Obama does everything in his own time, remember?

This fall, a vote for the Republican brand is testament to political ignorance - unless one makes over $250,000 net pay a year! -Kevo

Everyone gets what they deserve:
- the people who elect these folks get a dysfunctional legislative branch
- those who don't vote at all get a dysfunctional legislative branch, too.
- those who vote democratic get a dysfunctional legislative branch they can point fingers at.

And America gets screwed for not leashing her corporate branch.

It's like cigarettes. The prime reason for quitting smoking is that the cigarette companies have made it so very hard to quit — on purpose.

One look at the insane amounts of money these people are willing to spend to grind government and progressives to a halt should be all anyone needs to know that they must be stopped.

One of the leaders of the GOP investigators will be Darrell Issa R-CA. Issa is famous for calling out the known liar yellowcake Joe Wilson in a congressional hearing. Wilson's face was priceless when Issa called him out on his crap. Issa should have asked Wilson why her said NO uranium is in Niger when in fact it is.

If the GOP takes over the House, there will be articles of impeachment filed for something before the term is out.

I gotta agree with pol. Some of us are out here working overtime to make sure the GOP doesn't wind up back in power. And yet all we see in liberal blogosphere is coverage of Beck's rally and TPM even has the latest idiocy from Pam Geller.

Any mention that one of the President's economic advisers wrote an op-ed in the NYT calling for another stimulus bill? Nah.

Enough doom and gloom. Grab a mitt and get in the game. 65 days and counting.

Kevin H. says: "One of the leaders of the GOP investigators will be Darrell Issa R-CA. Issa is famous for calling out the known liar yellowcake Joe Wilson in a congressional hearing. Wilson's face was priceless when Issa called him out on his crap. Issa should have asked Wilson why her said NO uranium is in Niger when in fact it is.

Shhhhh, I don't think Kevin knows that all of this is bullcrap. Don't let on. A couple more years and it will be a full decade since the yellowcake story was proven to be a lie. We'll let him in on the joke at the party.

Krugman wasn't a political pundit until the Clinton-era witch hunts culminated in impeachment proceedings. That "radicalized" him since he realized the economy is ultimately a subset of a broader political reality. In short: without social democracy there can be no real democracy. Too much economic inequality leads to political inequality. And the proof shows up in political campaigns based on the manipulation of worried voters, particularly those prone to social-status anxiety.

I'm with pol and markg8. Stop talking acceptance, as if you're already half-licked (ooooo, that sounds dirty). The teabaggers and the Republicans make up in noise what they lack in support. They're not as close to striking distance as people are letting on. Why are Democrats so defeatist? Jeez, it's a good thing you have Republicans, or you wouldn't have a military. Stop throwing up your hands and wailing, "All is lost; lost!!!"

No Kevin H.

What Darrell Issa is famous for is hiring his wife to be a campaign consultant on a COMMISSION basis. In other words, every dollar a contributor funneled to his campaign through her meant money in HIS pocket.

Thanks to the completely non-functional House Ethics committee during the Republican led era, this blatantly corrupt practice got white-washed.

As for his "calling out" Joe Wilson, Issa was as full of shit then as you are now. Among other things, Wilson never said that there was no Uranium in Niger or if he did, he misspoke. In both his report to the CIA and the op-ed that put him on Cheney's enemies list, he said that Niger had strict controls on its Uranium supply which would make selling large quantities of it to rogue regimes impractical. This was the same conclusion that Marine General Carlton W. Fulford, Jr reported to the Joint Chiefs and that U.S. Ambassador to Niger Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick reported to the State Department.

There is an answer to the witch hunts that Democrats didn't have during the Clinton era: George W. Bush. There were so many scandals during his administration that Republicans in Congress didn't think were worth even investigating. It shouldn't be too hard to pick a new one and find some choice quotes from whoever leads the latest Obama "scandal" of the day.

"Do Republicans really think X is worse than Y from back in the Bush days which they didn't even think should be investigated?" Pound that talking point over and over and hopefully it will sink in that the Bush administration was far more corrupt than Obama has been so far. I'm not happy with Obama's stand on various issues, especially privacy-related, but he hasn't picked corrupt people as far as we know.

I agree with "Pol" that Obama and the Dems (some)
will come out swinging in Sept and Oct. Obama's natural coolness and reticence, and the fear about looking like the "angry black man" are going to have to take the back seat to political survival.If the GOP does end up taking over the House it will be easy for Obama and the Dems to attack the GOP for the fun and games, while the country circles the drain. They will end up looking like the grown ups.

I guess now would be a good time to remind that the previous Republican attorney general was of the position that White House staff need not respond to subpoenas if the president tells them not to.

And if the Obamaites have any guts, they'll say to Issa: "The first bullshit subpoena you issue, Holder will open investigations on the hows and whys we got into Iraq, the wiretapping, etc., so fast it will make your head spin. And we'll find out pretty quickly whether public opinion will be behind your investigations or our investigations."

Another claim to fame for Mr. Issa?

Instigating shit in California during the Enron manipulation of energy delivery, leading directly to a recall election against the sitting governor.

He got the recall, we got Arnold, and now that Arnold is leaving, we got nothing any better than when Issa began the shit stirring that lead to the original disruption of civic government!

Boy, what a waste of time the Republican brand is these days - shear idiocy disguised as concern! -Kevo

Right-wingers and their Republican allies came out of the Clinton experience thinking that impeachment is just a form of recall or vote of no confidence. They will pursue it against Obama on any pretext they can come up with.

I'm beginning to see this strategy as a net positive for Obama's re-election, and another wave of victories for Dems in 2012.

If I could, I would advise the White House to respond to every single subpoena with these kinds questions:

How much will this subpoena reduce the deficit?
How many Jobs with this hearing create?

The President will go on governing the country, the Congress will be as deadlocked next year as it is this year and Republicans will remind every one with two neurons to rub together that they really are the Party of Ill Will.

Now what was Will Rogers quote, "I don't belong to an organized political party, I'm a Democrat"

Anyway, Democrats want the insitutions of government to function, real rule of law, whereas the current Republican aganda is basically heading us to kleptocracy-with them being the klepticans. Poster child, Bush's Dept. Of Interior. And what happened to all those $billions that were supposed to go to training the Afgan army?

Now the people ignoring the rules, or changing them so they can fleece people, are clearly upset no they have to grow up and behave. So they throw tantrums, and abuse all the rules. Would criket be criket if it were not for all the unwritten conventions? Changing rules meant to block tyranny of the majority, which are now being used to create a tyranny of the minority, would be difficult if you still want to block tyranny of the majority. But when you're dealing with spoiled brats...

The core proble, as EJ Dionne points out in his column today, is that Obama doesn't "politick". he doesn't push hard for any cause, doesn't present voters with a vision of a different America, doesn't push pack hard against those who would destoy him.

More and more, Obama is looking like Neville Chamberlain. A nice guy, a reformer, accomplished a lot --including making key decisions that made for the eventual success of the RAF. However, Chamberlain is primarily remembered for what he DIDN'T do: Stand up forcefully to those who wished to destroy him and his allies.

Obama is NOT going to change. The Dems need find new leaders in the Senate-- and the President--- who are comfortable with "politicking" and have a burning desire to be Politician-in Chief rather than Compromiser-in-Chief. Job 1 for that President will be to end the Senate filibuster so that political- and policy- effective bills can be passed for job creation, real health care reform, etc., etc.

The Republicans will end the filibuster the day they need to do so. It's the Dem's Maginot line. There is a decent chance that historians of the future will treat Obama and most currently-elected Dems the way they treat the Karenski Governement of about 1917 or Center to center-left parties in Germany and France 1932-1940: weak, well-meaning, confused, frightened fools that think appeasment/compromise is the best way to treat those whose primary goal is acquisition of political power and your destruction.

Progressive Dempocrats have Not been serial critics of Obama. All started out as strong supporters in 1/09. Many of us saw the problems with the stimulus bill in 3/09-- and the underlying reasons for those problems--that have constantly been repeated and with no sign of their being corrected. It is a given that Chamberlain would never have been a Churchill--- nor BHO a TR, FDR, HST, JFK, LBJ, or RWR.
Sticking with Obama in the hope he will change now also meets Einstein's definition of insanity: constantly repeating the same experiment in the hope that next time you'll get a different result. The times call for a TR, FDR, HST, JFK, LBJ, or RWR--- which, i suspect, is one reason why many TEA-Partiers like strong personalities such as Palin, Beck and Limbaugh and do not assess the causes they espouse [we've seen that movie many times in the last 100 years.]

In the Clinton era, House Republicans held hearings on garbage that was manufactured out of thin air, and subpoenas were issued just for the sake of issuing subpoenas.

If we still had a functioning media that took its responsibilities seriously, it might explain to the public just how many millions of their tax dollars were needlessly flushed down the toilet by the Rethugs during these sham "investigations." Given the current state of the economy, I'd think most people wouldn't exactly be thrilled to see a repeat of this nonsense if they knew the staggering waste of money involved. Then again, that's if the public knew. I'm sure we can count on the easily titillated D.C. press corps to maintain proper Village decorum and keep such unpleasantness under the rug.

I can see it now. Then in 2012 their will be a Republican cry to restore honor to the WH.

Just like Bush did.

Here we go with the BS.