the midterms were much a result of the extreme widespread horridness of bush and republicans, so extreme that the usually witless and unengaged couldn’t help but notice at least a little. With a win, the blaring horn of disaster isn’t going to be quite so loud. Also, it will have compitition from the mighty wurlitizeer that is loudest and most affective when republicans aren’t in charge F’ing everything up (and bush has pretty much been nuetered as both right and left agree hs is an idiot disaster so railing against him isn’t very effective).

The point is that much of the motivation for non-lefties to listen to left blogostan has been reduced (expect the screaming beasts on the right to ramp up ever louder).
.

UMMMMM…. Apparently he doesn’t realize y’all are just getting started. Us RABID LAMBS want more… More MORE!
There is just so very much more to do & change & work on. We all have PLENTY to keep us busy for years to come.
One HELL of a good job so far!! :o)

And as a template, Democrats can use the aggressive prosecution of Bill Clinton by Republicans back in the 1990s.

Oh wait, those Republican prosecutions of Clinton had more to do with a partisan smear job, involving mostly smoke and mirrors, than going after someone actually guilty of war profiteering, influence peddling, graft, corruption or whatever.

For instance, the Whitewater prosecution involved a failed land deal from twenty years earlier that actually cost the Clinton’s money.

On the other hand, what the “culture of corruption” Republicans in the Bush years have done has cost American taxpayers (and their children) untold billions of dollars (if not trillions) far into the future.

Clinton lied about a consensual sex act between him and another consenting adult…thus leading to his impeachment.

Bush lied about the necessity of going to war in Iraq, constantly asserting or implying that somehow Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks, that Hussein had WMD, that Hussein was an imminent threat to our national security…which has lead to a disastrous war in Iraq, massive war profiteering, tens of thousands of our brave soldiers who’ve been killed or maimed for life, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis either killed or maimed for life…and yet, impeachment of Bush is apparently off the table.

Therefore, Democrats starting in January 2007 must begin aggressive hearings, hearings just as aggressive as Republicans called against President Bill Clinton.

Think Watergate, but a hundred times more intensive because of the widespread Republican corruption that Democrats will be investigating.

Voters who voted Democrat on Nov. 7th demand nothing less.

And, the way I figure it, once the Democrats in control of Congress start conducting aggressive and comprehensive hearings into the rampant corruption on display in the Republican Party today (and over the past 6 years) that Bush/Cheney/Rove/Gonzales will become so much obstructionist toward these investigations (much more than Nixon was during Watergate) that sufficient grounds will emerge to finally bring Bush/Cheney and all the gang up on impeachment or criminal charges.

But Democrats shouldn’t get ahead of themselves. One step at a time. The criminals aren’t going anywhere. Unless, once the heat is turned up on the Bush administration, Georgie flees to his family’s 100,000 acre ranch down in Paraguay.

You guys rock.

I saw this idiotic article earlier today and nearly fell off my chair laughing at the notion of liberals not being able to rage against the machine because we are in power.

We’re not in power. The Democratic party is. We hang out with the Dems because it’s our only access to power in this country. But we do it reluctantly. And as for not raging against anybody in power… Well, that’s what we do. It’s what we’ve always done, since the days of Jefferson and Franklin and John Hancock. You’re not a liberal if you’re not taking on power, even if it’s your side who has it.

kirk murphy @ 161

HotFlash @ 157

prostratedragon @
149

Over at No Quarter, SusanUnPC found something nifty for the Gates shoebox:

Gates was on the board of directors of VoteHere, a strange little company
that was the biggest elections industry lobbyist for the Help America Vote
Act (HAVA).

VoteHere spent more money than ES&S, Diebold, and Sequoia combined to help
ram HAVA through. And HAVA, of course, was a bill sponsored by by convicted Abramoff pal Bob Ney and K-street lobbyist buddy Steny Hoyer. HAVA put electronic voting on steroids.

The post also has links to the lobbying forms.

Isn’t Steny Hoyer another name we were asked to look out for?

Sweet Holy Jesus and Blessed Goddess!

HotFlash, what a catch!

Please let it be Congresscriter Hoyer….

This is undoubtedly our man: WASHINGTON, DC – House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer (MD), who was the lead Democratic sponsor in the House of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), …

So, what do we do with this clue?

As Hoyer is the DLC candidate against Murtha for Majority Leader, I’m wondering how Hoyer’s paid work for the same folks who are tanking his Congressional colleagues goes over with:

the Congresscritters whose votes he needs to tank Murtha for the DLC.

I’m also wondering if the association with Abramoff is reallly what the DLC want to peddle when “corruption” was the #2 election issue.

Seems like an extreme form of triangulation even for Rahm and the DLC.

But then I’m not from Daley’s machine, so I don’t see the world Rahm sees.

I don’t fuck over my friends, either.

Apparently Rahm’s political acumen is so keen that he thinks the best pick for Majority Leader is the guy who helped Dem members lose their elections – and got campaign cash to do it.

Attaboy, Rahm. Go Steny!

(that’s just two ideas of how to use this clue. of course, as i don’t live in D.C. , i’ve no way of raising this in social networks there.

In group dynamics, Steny was sleeping with everyone’s enemy – and getting paid for it.

Sharing this sense of tribal betrayal will be easiest for someone in the social networks of the Dem congresscrtters. I’d expect this clue will resonate most powerfully if introduced by such a person (or persons).

The corruption aspect of Steny’s bid – because it relates to how the group appears to the outside – may be most powerful when raised by “out-groups” with the ear of Congress critters and/or media.

Hmm – I wonder if any rabid lambs could help?)

Patrick 4/4 @ 181

This is a crystal-clear example of the kind of ass-covering demagoguery that 9/11 opened us up to. The Iraq War Resolution that so many presidential hopefuls and other squeamish dems voted for out of fear for their careers shows why we have to keep our New Democratic Overlords on a very short leash.

Having spent the better part of a year writing about defense spending issues, I think this is something that the public knows so little about that if the truth comes out, it’s going to devastating politically–for all concerned. The amount of money being spent on defense and war is eating up much of the discretionary budget, and so much of it is hidden (the defense appropriations bill is only part of the actual spending), and the amount of it funded by debt is rapidly increasing the interest of the debt, which is further eating away at other spending.

In many ways, the country simply can’t afford to continue this military expansionism for neo-colonial purposes. We can’t have better education, serious energy R&D and pay for the development work necessary to address climate change without scaling back defense spending.

If people understood, for example, that we’re closing bases here to fund the construction of more and more bases overseas (and that it’s enormously expensive to maintain a middle-American lifestyle in the midst of, say, Uzbekistan), they’d want some explanation for where this militarism is leading us. If it’s just for oil, it means we’re spending more and more to ensure high profits for multinationals as those resources shrink.

We don’t have a clue right now about what technologies might pull our energy asses out of the fire twenty or thirty from now, but, what’s certain is that if we continue spending this sort of money on the military, on the international credit card, we aren’t going to have any money left to fund that future technology. Others will do it and we’ll have to pay them for it. (!)

Name to remember: Jane Harman