How 'bout putting together good populist progressive bills -- you know, ones that actually have a chance of succeeding -- and using the world's biggest bully pulpit and "grassroots" organization to mobilize support (support that would be available if the bills were actually good), daring Republicans to filibuster, all the while portraying them as corporate tools?

That way, good bills either pass, or the GOP blocks good bills.

The real question is, what should progressives/liberals/lefties do? The midterms and the next presidential election are likely to be repeats of the Massachusetts senate race with Republican wins across the country. When the right is mad, they vote, but when the left is disaffected, we tend to sit out the vote. Given the likelihood that we'll lose a bunch of seats in Congress in the midterm elections, perhaps this is an opportunity to make a clear statement. No more war without end, no faux healthcare reform with its mandate to pay the people who wrote the bill, no more tax-funded bailouts for the superrich, and no deals for "environmental reform" that turn out to be corporate welfare for polluters. But especially, we don't need a president who lies about the public option when he may have made secret deals to nix it months before the bill passed.

When President Obama's Debt Commission holds its first meeting Tuesday at 10 a.m. they will consider nothing too sacred to be examined for cuts -- even the new health care reform law, the leaders said. link

-The provision that removes the EPA's authority to regulate CO2 omissions under Clear Air Act and overall the authority of the states to set more rigorous emissions standards than federal authorities?