Writing about today's Connecticut Senate debate, Matt Stoller, in his fantastic piece writes:

After the debate, both Schlesinger and Lamont were mobbed by reporters and supporters outside, but Joe was nowhere to be found. Some friends here think that Joe is scared to face reporters, but I don't think that's what's going on. I think Joe actually and honestly doesn't like people and doesn't want to deal with them if he doesn't have to. That's why he doesn't like or care about doing good visibility events - his ego isn't fed by large crowds since he doesn't think much of people he doesn't know.

And Joe doesn't know the people of Connecticut. The central reality of the political creature that is Joe Lieberman is that he is of the Washington DC Establishment and of Washington, DC. Connecticut is not where Joe Lieberman's from at all anymore. This reality explains everything he does, says and yearns for.

Sally Quinn inadvertently performs a great public service by demonstrating, in no uncertain terms, how clueless the Beltway Media is:

Don Rumsfeld is the shrewdest person in Washington.

Oh there's more of course but let's consider that one line and think about how clueless and out of touch one would have to be to write that. I would say it gets better but of course, after that start, that is impossible, but this is almost its equal:

It is hard for the American people to turn completely against the president. It seems tantamount to patricide. We're much more comfortable being able to blame someone else for the president's mistakes. Laura Bush will never be the scapegoat. For now, it's [Snowball] Rumsfeld.

Lakoff vindicated one might say - strict father and all that. Except for the fact that the President's rating are in the 30s. Oh and the only for GOP Presidents Sally Quinn rule. See, she led the charge against Clinton trashing "her town."

This is the first open thread since the new site launched Monday.  All topics are welcome.

For those of you who want to see the comment you are responding to in the same window as the one you are writing in, if your comments are set to "nested" or "threaded" there will be a "reply to this" button in each comment.  Click on the "reply to this" for the comment you want to respond to and that comment will be there when the commenting screen opens.  

So you can view and cut and paste from the individual comment you are replying to and view both in the same window.

Update: I deleted this post by accident (I'm learning Scoop too for the first time).  Let's start again.

We've corrected most of the bugs (including those posted in the comments we thought warranted fixing) and the RSS feed.

I'm very happy with the move, and hope you are too.   Change is never easy, try it out, see if you don't get used to it.

Before I let the developers off the hook, here's your last chance to tell us what isn't working or what you wish we would change.

I go on and on about how to fight the political battle. But in a post, Digby discussed how governance has changed in our country:

It really can't be overstated how Newt's bare knuckle style of politics changed the way things worked in Washington. When it was combined with the big money media operations that finally came to fruition during that era --- Limbaugh, FOX etc. --- any old fashioned notions of political comity went out the window. And it was such a strong series of below the belt punches that it knocked the Democrats to the ground for nearly a decade. (It was providence that the Democratic president at the time was a skilled rope-a-dope fighter who could withstand a relentless rain of blows.)

Indeed, it has been governance as an extension of scorched earth politics and is the single most important reason why today's Republican Party simply is incapable of competent governance.

But let's assume Democrats, in some imaginable miracle, take both houses of Congress, how should they run the Congress? Some thoughts on the other side.

Update: The RSS feed is fixed. It displays the entire post, formatted and with pictures if you access it here or just the basic xml is here

We had problems with the RSS feed yesterday and this morning. It's fixed now, but set to display the first 40 words of entries. Does anyone remember what it used to show? Was it the whole article or just a paragraph or so? Which would you prefer?

If you have any issues with the new site, logging in, commenting or anything else, you can report them here.

Remember first to create a new account with your old (or different, your choice) user name and a password. You should get a screen right back that says "user created." User names must be letters, numerals or spaces.

If you don't see the link to create a new account it is here.

You can set your display preferences to suit you. For example, the number of entries to display on your home page. The ones immediately preceding that will show up in the middle right column under "older entries."

You can also set how you want comments displayed, flat, nested or threaded. I prefer nested. You can reply to a specific comment now, as opposed to the whole thread of comments.

You can also view all your comments, but those written before scoop won't come up under your name until we build a function that allows you to "claim them."

TalkLeft has moved to Scoop. The problems with comments are resolved. Just register once, and you will be set.

I hope you like the new ease of commenting. Once you register, you can post comments. If you want to be able to post diaries, e-mail me and I will consider re-setting your permissions to be able to do so.

TalkLeft should both load faster now and your comments (once you register) should be pretty close to instantaneous. We're on a huge server, and we're the only site on it.

It's taken 40 days and 40 nights and more than a few thousand dollars. Be kind.

If you have problems, e-mail me.

by Last Night in Little Rock

Yet another Republican House member is under investigation--for influence peddling.

AP reports today that Rep. Curt Weldon, R-PA 7, is under federal investigation for seeking lobbying and consulting contracts worth over $1M for his daughter Karen. Weldon's staff denied knowledge of an investigation with an interesting choice of words:

After yet another 20 hours of working on the site migration to Scoop yesterday and today, it looks like it will be early morning before we go live. To tide you over, here's Tom Petty and Eddie Vedder in Denver performing The Waiting (is The Hardest Part.)

Why is this the Last Worthless Evening? Because comments on this site will finally be fixed when TalkLeft launches on Scoop (beta version) tomorrow night. The new server is up and running and loaded. I will be so glad not to have to push comments through by hand every few minutes or hours as I've been doing for the last 45 days and the site will be so much faster. Hope you all like it as much as I do.

In the meantime, enjoy this Don Henley classic....from when he looked really sexy with his long hair. I used to think he was singing just to me. (For those not into guys, the woman in the video is really hot too.)