How should this be debated?  Is it even given the opportunity for that debate?  And at the end of the debate will the majority govern? 

Not in todays Congress - in particular the Senate.  The Senate is no longer a body of democratic, majority rule.  It is rather a pissing match of radical, anti-democratic, selfish, small minded adolescents lacking the ability or where-with-all to act like civil, adult thinking representatives of their constituents, able to concede loss to the majority thinking body or rule.

The jobless extension bill is going nowhere fast.  Like most legislation given to this Senate body it is spat on by opposing parties and never debated in a way that, yes our founding fathers would have expected to be debated. Rather it has become a club of middle schoolers unable to act civil, with honor and integrity by many in its ranks. Throwing tantrums unless they get their way, no matter what - regardless of the fact that they might be in the minority.  Voice your case but concede to democratic, majority rule.

Business Week's headline reads, "BP's Cap Is Recovering Gulf Oil, May Get 90% Of Leak" and the New York Times reads, "Cap Is Collecting Oil, but Results of Effort Is Still Unclear".  Guess it depends on the news source doesn't it?  I think public opinion of the news media to qualify the news they report is pretty much that they don't and that the media outlets are pretty much clowns.  There are exceptions to the rule of course.  What do you think?

Here we go with more political rhetoric (definition: out and out crap!) from both political parties.  Although one side seems more adept at it then the other, but in all fairness all we get is garbage and empty promises all designed to seemingly just serve one purpose - keep themselves in office!

Lies and deceit about healthcare (again from both sides) will ultimately give us little, if any movement forward.  We are the least progressive industrialized nation in the world concerning healthcare.  Yes, it is the best if you can pay for it and no it won't kill via death panels or bring on socialist, communist, Marxist society.

I know it is too much to expect and our news media outlets (loosely termed at best) will never help the cause much if at all.  There are a handful of politicians that are honest about the debate but they get drowned out in the mass (ignorant) hysteria.

Most if not all have by now heard about the landmark ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court on campaign finance law.  How this leaves any semblance of the idea that democracy will not be ruled by the financial puppet strings controlled by the wealthiest individuals and now, the wealthiest, most powerful corporations.  The only thing left, the only dividing line, the last test of common sense and honesty is the individual vote of the American public. 

Decenting Justice, John Paul Stevens said, "At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics." 

God help us all!