Just wanted to pass along this uplifting Pete Seeger Song...seems appropriate for our President's new term. We're all in it together!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvnsB_kVNYI

Pete Seeger - God's Counting On Me, God's Counting On You (Sloop Mix)

Tonight on the show, Barney Frank said that if the election had been held with the 2010 Congressional districts, the Democrats would have taken the House.

Are there numbers that have already been run on this? Can we get the info on that, or some follow-up?

what % of seniors voted Obama/Democratic tic? Just wondering since they were a big focus at one point on the campaign trail. The Republicans would have stripped Seniors of much needed support systems.

I'm sitting here watching your show - and as happens every night, I almost choke laughing when I hear these Republican goofs shooting off their mouths.

Rachel my dear ...

The GOP f'd up our economy so bad because they IDIOTS. No, they DON'T yet understand their boy LOST and they are SOL. Anyone who doesn't understand that LOSING means the OTHER GUY has the mandate is as clueless as they come.

We can't "reason" with the GOP because the are clueless.

Great job girl - excellent coverage of the circus we've seen from the GOP during this election. "Smaller, simpler - but NOT "smarter", definition of the Republican Party :)

McConnell is still living in the Republican Bubble. I guess we should just lock him in for the remaining duration of his term. He does not intend to do anything to help his country, its residents or his state.

DISGUSTING!

I'd love to see a segment looking at this image (Will, you get how maps are destiny!):

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4794488777133&set=a.1113828162918.2019290.1143330006&type=1&theater

conservative: averse to change or innovation and holding traditional values

Everybody living in the real world is talking about how the conservative party will have to change, adapt, accomodate, modernize in order to survive. But isn't their inability to do just that essentially why they lost this one and why their future prospects are dim? Way of the Whigs?

Do you trust people as self-deluded and divorced from reality as today's Republicans to make life-and-death decisions of war and peace, health and welfare, that affect millions of Americans and others around the world?

Here are four (4) names republicans should never, ever mention
again, unless of course in the mentioning there is a punch-line:

• Dick Morris
• Donald Trump
• Karl Rove
• Uh, uh, there’s one more (can’t think of it) oops

What would be wrong with a Federal ballot for President, Senate, and House. Controlled by the federal government. Then the States can have their own state elections when ever they please and they can take as long as they want on them????

I wrote this after considering an article on Sheldon Adelson, after also thinking on the SuperPAC matter...

While we pull our hair out over big money interests running game on our elections, why is it that the issue of election reform is not made a hot button topic? Some people feel the silence by both President Obama and Governor Romney during the election, on the matter of climate change was a great and terrible shame. And while it indeed was, I was continually struck by an even more stunning silence, and that was the silence of the American people on the matter of election reform.
No matter how we've tried to spin and play it, no matter the reform measures proposed, no matter the legislation passed, then overturned and ignored...election and specifically campaign finance reform has continually been absent from our national dialogue.
The developments related to the Citizens United ruling, which is in large part is what has played into the public left's outrage and uproar over Sheldon Adelson, seems to have brought the actual question of moneys influence on our elections into some small measure of discussion, but at the same time, while we all scrap and hustle to ring the bells over everything from race relations to the degree to which we as a nation are devout capitalists, we seem to consistently as a nation and as a people, and especially as a big tent American ideology, forego examining the means by which our elections, and by way of such, our government, is corrupted and bought.
Sure, droves of SuperPAC candidates lost badly in this last election. And sure, many may be inspired to see that as some populist ability to fend off industrial and elite class corruptions of our public institutions, but in truth, this is simply not the case.
So fine, SuperPAC candidates lost. But regular corporate money candidates still managed to slide into seats of power. And beyond that, even those who oppose corporate hegemony of our political discourse, such as newly elected Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, are forced by the nature of our electoral system, to spend equal if not greater amounts of time fundraising, as they do working to expess a real vision for the future.
The private financing schemes in this country, be they at the SuperPAC level, or simply those lower levels which mandate that campaigns for office operate as not for profit businesses, create environments wherein elected officials are right off the bat, required to bend and yield to the demands of specific interest groups who can provide them with material and financial resources, which they are sadly required to come up with to help establish our government.
Corruption, by which I mean the undue and unfair levels of additional influence single individuals or institutions may gain over people of power, is rooted in our electoral system. As we sit and scratch our heads over why we as a collective, popular nation, are forced time and time again to choose between the lesser of evils in any given election, we constantly fail to see why it is our options are so limited.
And with some of us, this effort then leads us to third parties. Hopeless heroes tilting at windmills in defiance of a two party system which most mistakenly believe has existed since the founding of this nation. In truth, the two party dynamic and the reliance on big money resources for support, both stem primarily from the evolutions of politics and marketing in this country, which spawned primarily under the Wilson administration.
People like George Creel and Edwin Bernaise, who were both hired under Wilson to help crush all opposition to the American engagement in World War One, are largely hailed as the fathers of modern marketing, public relations and political communications. They were the first to realize and practice the art of selling imaginary ideas to the public at large, and the first to realize that you can limit peoples options as much as you like, so long as you allow there to remain "options" to be selected from. These men were the first to sell the illusion of freedom that we now enjoy today.
But beyond a history lesson, of which the American people could use many and more of (and no, I'm not a Libertarian who thinks Jefferson was an author of the Bible, I'm speaking real history and not the popular mythology invoked by people without sound contemporary argument,) the lesson and message is truly this. We as a people will never be able to reconcile our political differences, have the real debates which need to be argued, nail down the real solutions to issues which need to be addressed, or even identify those issues via our sole final authoritative public institution of government, until we cleanse the process by which such is formed of its corruptive influences once and for all.
What we need is for both media personalities such as our host here, as well as the American people, to openly, consistently and loudly demand that private financing for elections be eliminated and that public resources for campaigns be allotted via public demonstrations of support for given candidates and parties, by way of petition, ballot initiative and extended rounds of voting.
Eliminate the poison that is the big money dog-and-pony show and you not only clean out the elections, you make it so that those seeking to be our leaders are not beholden, right out of the gate, to whatever monied influence happens to side up to them. It is the money which lends lobbyists their power. The money which sets legislative agendas and spending plans, long before the first vote is cast. It is time we as a people and as a nation, demand not only more of our government, but more for ourselves. Its time we took the power back.
Demand now, here and everywhere, that campaign finance reform be a top issue in 2014 and beyond, for as long as it takes. Because until we get the money out of our elections, we can kiss any hope of having a stately, civic, functioning government goodbye.

This is a no-brainer. Obama's next move should be to pardon Don Siegelman.

The Republic pundits' complaint that Latinos, women, and blacks voted for Obama just because they want "stuff" is actually why I thought the extravagantly wealthy poured money into Romney's campaign. America's hyper rich can't seem to settle for only having a couple of yachts, numerous private planes, and several houses. They wanted somebody who would cut essential services like health, education and transportation to give them more tax breaks. So they personally can enjoy - more stuff.

Lots of denial out there in Republistan, but this politico piece stands out as a more reasonable assessment. There's still hope that cooler heads will eventually prevail.

Republicans ponder way forward

Also: "Obama won by suppressing the [white] vote."

Rove. Rove never changes.

I understand that it's the President's job to be a leader. But I also understand that it's Congress's job to propose laws that can solve the problems our economy faces. Does Senator McConnell understand that? Does he know what his job is? Does he think the American people are too stupid to understand what his job is?

The javelin got speared. Seems appropriate for what he proposed to do to us.

Hey Rachel, Something for your crack research staff to check out:

I once heard a statistic about number of women in national political offices. At the time, the US ranked behind Turkmenistan (sp.?) in 32nd place.

Is there any chance we've moved up the list? Let's beat Turkmenistan! Woo-Hoo!