We're not gonna take it

The Right-wing noise machine is bad enough, but it's even worse when the Left joins in:

Matt Taibbi:

The biggest problem with modern American liberalism may be the word itself. There’s just something about the word, liberal, something about the way it sounds – it just hits the ear wrong.

. . . A lot of it, surely, has to do with the relentless abuse liberalism takes in the right-wing media, on Fox and afternoon radio, and amid the Townhall.com network of newspaper invective-hurlers.

Ya think? Deep thoughts, indeed. Let's re-state: "I hate that mean bad guys have pissed in my pool, so now I'm going to just fill it in".

John Ridley:

Five months into the Democratically-controlled Congress, and all I'm seeing is some bad slapstick. The ultimate moment hee-larity -- and lets hope it's ultimate rather than penultimate -- would be the Gonzales no-confidence vote. A useless dollop of turgid showmanship that in the end the Dems couldn't even get to the floor for a vote.

Do you understand how Congress works? With the Republicans attempting to filibuster everything the Democrats want to pass, what exactly are the Democrats supposed to do?

Do you understand cloture?:

This originally required a supermajority of two-thirds of all senators (i.e. 64 out of 96). However, it proved very difficult to achieve this; the Senate tried eleven times between 1927 and 1962 to invoke cloture but failed each time. Filibuster was particularly heavily used by senators from Southern states to block civil rights legislation.

Now there's a surprise. As usual, conservative are trying to block progressives.

And then there's John Judis:

Congress's approval rating is even lower than President Bush's--it's at 23 percent according to the latest NBC-Wall Street Journal poll. And, in another poll, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's favorability rating is down there with Scooter Libby--at 19 percent. Some Democrats blame their low standing with the public on the difficulties inherent in controlling Congress when the opposition party controls the White House. The fact is that the Democrats, with only a 50-49 majority, do not have enough votes to override White House vetoes or even to stop a Republican filibuster.

Blame the victims. Kill the messenger. Please, folks, show some reality-based thinking.

As long as the Right has a veto-proof number, and as long as GWBushCo will VETO EVERYTHING ON HIS DESK FROM DEMOCRATS, the power of the Democrats, while nominal, is really ephemeral.

So quit your bitching and work for a greater majority.