idrankwhat

And both can will be able to tell the Audi diesel driver whether or not he's running rich

I'm not quite sure what the big deal is. This is Washington. That's what they do. "I'll get you elected if you promise to pass this legislation that our lawyers pen for you. Then you can come work for us as a lobbyist because government pay sucks in comparison." "Thanks for getting me elected with your lavish gifts of "free speech". Now here is that political appointment to head the department that's supposed to be regulating your business." "Hey, how about I buy you and your SC justice friend an all expense paid hunting trip with me and my oily friends. And don't worry, I promise not to bring up that pending court case." "If you help me out with "x" I'll be sure to remember you when some job vacancies arise. If you really help out and there are no jobs available I'll make one." Business as usual. Distasteful, but typical.

The first one makes me hungry for greasy meat snacks. The second one make me want to smile. The third one makes me want to....... Let's just say, I like the third one too.

George always was a little slow.

Wow. He looked pretty lousy in the Stephanopoulos interview. The "accidents happen" viewpoint isn't going to go over very well and I'm surprised that George didn't take him to task over the mining accident when it is clear that there were well known ventilation issues that were ignored. As for the BP comment, Paul has a point, it IS un-American for us to play hard ball with oil companies, at least based on history. We usually subsidize them, let them write legislation, send them a few regulators for some taxpayer funded sex, fail to collect the royalty payments that they owe, and give them about $100B/year in usage of our military resources.

Well I still need to use the term, not to be funny but to help differentiate between the constituents in the tea party. I see the Tea Partyers as those who want to dismantle the lobbyist plutocracy that runs Washington. I sympathize with that group. The Tea Baggers to me are the ones with the hate signs and who seem to think that things were fine until Obama came along. In this case, "tea bagger" is also meant with derogatory overtones because I think it's much nicer than saying "fucking idiots". Then there are the political opportunists. Those are the establishment Republican leadership, the Becks, Hannitys, Limbaughs etc. who are in it for the political gamesmanship and power grab. That group has mixtures of both Tea Partyers and Tea Baggers. This mixture is where I run into problems with the Tea Party. There's some good stuff in movement but I can't associate myself with it because of the overwhelming influence from the ugliest, most destructive elements.

It's pretty easy to figure out. After a quarter century of the experiment the majority of wealth is in the hands of an extremely small minority and the number of people on food stamps is at an all time high. Doesn't sound like there was much trickling down. So maybe our legislators should get to solving some problems and coming up with some sustainable growth ideas instead of trying to simply position themselves for the next election. There are many who hope our leadership fails miserably at growing our economy and the workforce, it bodes well for them personally.

You are forgetting an especially important failed economic experiment. The data is in. Trickle down doesn't.

I'm not a day trader so I look at longer trends. And yes, the economy is a hell of a lot better than it was when we weren't sure whether or not we'd actually have one. As for the recovery, it will be slow, especially if we try to rebuild with some form of sustainability in mind. We can't go back to growing our economy on the back of purchasing cheap crap from Walmart and high stakes gambling in the financial market. When do you think the Romans realized what was happening? The shit has already hit the fan and we're covered in it. But it didn't start suddenly in January of 2009.

For the record, I'm not buying it. I doubt I'm alone. The economy was in the shitter when he got the job. It's heading the other way now (although with significant baggage). As for totalitarian impulses I'd say that you're almost a decade late on that claim. Ask Cheney. He's the unitary executive theory guy who said deficits don't matter. Were you mad when whitey was hiding in a bunker starting optional trillion dollar wars while all wrapped up in a blanket of executive privilege and loyalty statements? And in the future, if you'd like to make a point about policies that you disagree with I'd try specifically addressing the issues in question. "Pretending" to be a racist bigot will detract from your argument.

I'll agree that the republican is the shepherd, but more likely a canine shepherd which, if left alone in a pet store without control from its Lib owner, will eat and eat until its stomach bloats and it dies.

It's a false binary thought argument. You're making the mistake of thinking that not supporting the health care bill in it's current state means that people were siding with the right wing argument. Most people wanted a public option and were pissed that they didn't get it. Same goes for support for Obama. He's been solidly centrist. That pisses off a lot of folks on the left however that by no means translates to support for the right. It will just mean that the alienated left will fail to go to the polls. Virginia is a great example. 76% turnout and major Democratic gains in the 2008 election. A year later the left fields a pretty boring candidate, we get 38% voter turnout and the Republican wins. Contrary to what the rabid right shouts, that there was a some sort of radical shift to the conservative side, the reality is that the right voted, the left didn't in this consistently purple state.

Not this one, unless of course you're assuming that independents are righties. Seems kinda strange though that the elections with the highest turnout typically favor the left winged candidate. However considering that today's democrats are actually "republican-lite", you may have a point.

I'd say that the above statement is simply another example of an often employed "conservative" fallacious argument where they assign their own flaws/shortcomings/tactics to their opponent.

I'm a liberaltarian so I agree with you on pretty much all of what you wrote. But I also recognize that our government has an important role in maintaining the integrity of the United States. How does your philosophy deal with food/product safety, roads, borders, aviation, and general sustainability issues such as energy and the environment? Also, what about financial industry regulation? We just came very close to a complete financial collapse that would have devastated our country were it not for heavy handed government interference. Effective government regulation of our casino economy would likely have prevented such a close call. I'm not trying to tell you how to think but how does a "live and let live" society work when the golden rule is considered a laughable hindrance to higher quarterly earnings reports?

"I drank what?" -Socrates

Quite possibly. And that's not a bad thing. Washington incumbents could use a good purging. Actually I'd love to see them all purged along with a concurrent purging of "K" street but maybe I'm just dreaming. It will be interesting to see what happens to the Congressional freshmen after the lobbyists show them the Kennedy assassination video from a never before seen angle. I'm pretty sure that's what happened to Obama. Washington won't change until we control the money "free speech" flowing towards the politicians.

Good luck with that.

Thread killer.

back at you

"....never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records." Sounds like a shoo-in for Vice President.

It's not all his fault. He was just the captain at the wheel when we hit the iceberg. "Fantastic misgovernment of the kind we have seen is not an accident, nor is it the work of a few bad individuals. It is the consequence of triumph by a particular philosophy of government, by a movement that understands the liberal state as a perversion and considers the market the ideal nexus of human society. This movement is friendly to industry not just by force of campaign contributions but by conviction; it believes in entrepreneurship not merely in commerce but in politics; and the inevitable results of its ascendance are, first, the capture of the state by business and, second, all that follows: incompetence, graft, and all the other wretched flotsam that we've come to expect from Washington. The correct diagnosis is the "bad apple" thesis turned upside down. There are plenty of good conservative individuals, honorable folks who would never participate in the sort of corruption we have watched unfold over the last few years. Hang around with grassroots conservative voters in Kansas, and in the main you will find them to be honest, hardworking people. But put conservatism in charge of the state, and it behaves very differently. Now the "values" that rightist politicians eulogize on the stump disappear, and in their place we can discern an entirely different set of priorities—priorities that reveal more about the unchanging historical essence of American conservatism than do its fleeting campaigns against gay marriage or secular humanism. Conservative's leaders laugh off the idea of the public interest as airy-fairy nonsense; they caution against bringing top-notch talent into government service; they declare war on public workers. They have made a cult of outsourcing and privatizing, they have wrecked established federal operations because they disagree with them, and they have deliberately piled up an Everest of debt in order to force the government into crisis. The ruination they have wrought has been thorough; it has been a professional job." The Wrecking Crew

I was going to join the conversation. Then you erased any shred of credibility that I might have assumed you possessed. Way to go Jon.

So I assume that you're for nationalizing our oil supplies then? If not, then drilling for more oil here in the US will do little more than to reduce our reserves. Once it comes out of the ground it will be added to the world market. And if that's going to be the case then we need to make sure, at the very least, that we actually collect on our leases, something that we seem to let slide for some reason. Besides, if you consume more than you have then you're going to have to import. That's pretty easy to figure out. Using less petroleum and getting our energy from alternatives is the only way to become energy independent. But given the amount of "free speech" that the oil companies have and the fact that bribing politicians is essentially legal, I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that independence day.

Rehnquist had no bench experience either. Yet Nixon appointed him and Reagan raised him to Chief. There have been many Justices that have never served on the bench. "Requiring" it has been a fairly recent phenomenon, if I am not mistaken. NPR had a good piece on this yesterday. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126764692 Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's lack of judicial experience is front and center as an issue as she starts meeting with senators Wednesday. Historically, judicial experience has not been deemed a major qualification for service on the U.S. Supreme Court, but Republicans have been highlighting Kagan's lack of it this week. U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, in a floor speech, declared: "The American people instinctively know that a lifetime position on the Supreme Court does not lend itself to on-the-job training." Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, in a statement, said Kagan had spent her "entire professional career in Harvard Square, [Chicago's] Hyde Park and the D.C. Beltway." "We have someone who has obviously a stellar academic background, but someone with no real-world experience and someone with no judicial experience," Cornyn said. Judicial Experience The current Supreme Court is composed of men and women who all served previously on the lower federal appeals courts. But in historical terms, this is the first time the court has had such a uniform professional pedigree. "The court that decided Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 did not have a single justice who had been a judge," noted Walter Dellinger, a constitutional law professor and Supreme Court advocate. "It had three former attorneys general, three former U.S. senators, a former governor of California [and] an early chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission." In fact, as Dellinger observes, of the 111 justices who have served, 40 had no prior judicial experience. "The ranks of those who have not been judges before include some of our most illustrious Supreme Court justices," he said. "I think, in fact, if you compare the justices who have not been judges, they stand out as a more distinguished group in their work on the Supreme Court than those who had previously been judges." 'Narrow Technical Skills' Certainly, the list includes many of the most important justices, some conservative, some liberal. Among them, Chief Justice John Marshall, widely credited with establishing the judiciary as a genuinely co-equal branch of government; Chief Justice Earl Warren, who led the court in a period of expanding individual and civil rights; Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who led the court in reversing that direction; Justice Joseph Story, considered, along with Justice Marshall, to be one of the formative figures in early American jurisprudence; Justice Robert Jackson, a former attorney general whose Supreme Court opinions on the limits of executive power are routinely cited at Supreme Court confirmation hearings by the nominees and the senators; and Justices Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter, to name just two more. So why are the big names in American jurisprudence so often people who came to the court with no prior judicial experience? "People who have been judges for a long time develop very narrow technical skills, which are quite suitable for lower court positions," Dellinger said. "But cases come to the Supreme Court precisely because there is no clear legal answer, and justices have to use judgment and all the tools of a Supreme Court justice to come up with a sense of the history and structure of the Constitution and what makes a workable legal rule." That, at least, is a good theory. But one of the reasons presidents in the past 25 years have sought out lower court judges for promotion to the Supreme Court is that by looking at a lower court record, a president, or a senator for that matter, can get a reasonably good idea of what a nominee's views are. It is a lot harder to make that kind of a determination for someone who has never been a judge.