Nebraska's Chuck Hagel is retiring - who's next to jump off the SS GOP?

This is getting to be real good - no sense waiting until the water is over the wheelhouse.

in my opinion would be Stevens or Domenici. As to which one of those is first, due to age and the fact that investigations have been going on longer for him, I would guess Stevens. Also Alaska will seem like more of a safe bet than New Mexico as an open seat.

These guys see the writing on the wall. Better to not run at all than get booted out.

Diebold) (--two evil twins running our elections) is falling into. In California, with our new "knight in shining armor" Secretary of State, Debra Bowen, ES&S voting machines have been de-certified, and ES&S threatened with a total ban in the state, and with penalties of $1000 per machine for every fraudulent claim of secure voting, plus refund repayment to the counties!

Hagel had a financial interest in ES&S, when he was first (s)elected Senator--by ES&S voting machines! His whole career is a fraud, from day one.

ES&S is even more stinky than Diebold (which had Wally O'Dell as CEO, a Bush/Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser). ES&S--a spinoff of Diebold--was initially funded by rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon foundation (which touts the death penalty for homosexuals, among other things).

I've always been suspicious of Chuck Hagel's purported Republican "moderation"--coming from such fraudulent and fascist roots. But I think the mask may be about to be rippled off these election theft corporations, and maybe Hagel is getting out of the way of a shit-storm. That he would resign, as a "rat" jumping from the sinking Titanic of Bushism, doesn't make all that much sense. Politically, he is positioned to benefit from their demise--to help pick up the pieces of the party they broke. But, knowing what I know about Diebold and ES&S, and what I suspect (--"smoking gun" on '04 in the Rove RNC emails, that is, direct line to Diebold/ES&S programmers), and the filthy dirty billions of taxpayer dollars pouring into Diebold/ES&S's Bushite pockets, for extremely insecure and insider hackable voting systems, and how all this came about, I think it's possible that Hagel's retirement may be just ahead of major exposure of Diebold/ES&S.

Diebold (which does ATMs as well) has tried to distance itself from what I think is a humongous threatening election scandal--the worst in our history. They just recently separated the election division off, and gave it a new name (Premier? --or some bland shit like that). And now ES&S (a spinoff of Diebold) is also in trouble--not just in California, also Florida and other places. In Florida, it was ES&S voting machines that 'disappeared' 18,000 votes for Congress in Democratic areas, in an '06 election that was 'won' by the Republican (natch!) by only 350 or so votes. The most blatant theft yet. (And our purported 'Democratic' Congress did nothing about it. NOTHING!)

We've got a number of "star" and "would-be star" corporatist politicians, slavering over the prospect of rising to power on Leftist policies that they have no belief in, and no intention of implementing. One of them is Christopher Dodd (one of the chief architects--along with Tom Delay and Bob Ney--of Bushite-corporate controlled "trade secret" vote counting). (Diebold/ES&S owe Dodd a big favor.) Why wouldn't Hagel persist in similar ambitions? Hard to say, but his connection to ES&S might be the clue.

historically the reddest states in the country! (well ok, there's Utah...and maybe Mississippi...but still.)

The fact that we're even discussing this possibility speaks volumes. Who has the National Party no More now, Zell Miller?

If memory serves, Senator Boren left perhaps because there was a good chance he could've been in for an embarassing loss when GOP fortunes were riding high.

Now, the Republicans are seeing themselves sailing into a "perfect storm" in 2008.

The difference being that I get to actually ENJOY seeing THIS trend unfold!