auld acquaintance

We spent wonderful time this morning with long-time friends. 'Should auld acquaintance be forgot,' I hope these are not among them.

A new evil foothold: Michigan

I heard on Republican Saginaw Radio - WSGW - this morning a very interesting report. A few years ago, the Republican Party could not be happy until it had pushed through an important government reform. Bad mouthing the efforts of seasoned Michigan office holders, the Republican Party insisted on term limits and, with ample money to oil the works, it pounded through just such a change with the voters who amended the Constitution.

Now, having won both the House and Senate in the Michigan legislature as well as the governorship, the same party is talking about doing way with term limits.

There is nothing much in America more evil than the Republican Party. Child molesters would have to be considered worse, I think.

We have had a very nice Christmas here under the BIRCHES. With two children in the house and a lot of people giving gifts and sharing jokes and good conversation, it's been the best Christmas in a long time.

This personal note, bereft of any political significance, is brought to you by a grandfather who is happy as can be just now. Bear with me. I went toy shopping for the first time in 25 years or more. I didn't recognize most of the gadgets, and was amazed by a lot of the offerings.

pistolero

While this sounds just like the gun nuts want life to be, it turns out to be wrong on many levels. In the first place, running after the guy and shooting uselessly into society is dangerous to everyone but the criminal. In the second place, if the armed citizen had actually shot the fleeing felon, he would himself have committed a crime. In the third place, this is a perfect example of the uselessness of armed citizens trying to stop crime. This is something that ought to be left to the pros.

Armed customer tries to stop bank robber

Turns out the customer with the gun waited for the crook to leave the bank before trying to shoot him in the back as he fled. Not a good choice. CLICK

3 questions

Talking over coffee, we wonder about these things:

What in the world induces Senators to not want to vote for the 7 million dollar amount for critical health care for the 9/11 responders? None of us understands that.

Now that the "lame-duck" Congress is getting things done, will it turn out that this Term of Congress (that we have scorned) will actually be considered a highly successful one?

Is Mitch McConnell nuts?

Congress and Santa

It is so nice to see the Congress acting on so many delayed matters. The logjam has been, to some extent, cleared away. It used to be called "log-rolling" and may still be called that in the back rooms of the Capitol. However, this time around, all it took was an agreement to the TRILLION DOLLAR BRIBE (or thereabouts, these things being so speculative, as they play out over the years.) called the "tax extension" which handed the next generation another colossal debt.

Merry Christmas to all-y'all taxpayers, and "Sleep In Heavenly Peace."

It's Caturday

The Best Gift under the tree

ME!

sometimes it's hard to know who's getting screwed

I don't know whether Julian Assange ever committed rape, and neither do you. Sweden wants him for those charges, and the British have him and plan to let him go. Probably he should stand trial for this and then we'll all know if he did or he didn't.

He did, however, publish for all the world to read, documents which the U.S. government considered secret. This he cheerfully admits. As far as I can deduce, most of those are harmless to U.S. interests and many of them are not really secrets, they're just embarrassing. I am judging by what I've read and heard about them, because I am not going to wade through a hundred thousand documents. My ignorance, however, is no block to my ability to form an opinion.

During the Nixon Administration, we got used to hearing news like this. Information was revealed that was intended to be kept secret, but the only people apparently left in the dark were American voters. A good example was the news about the bombing the Nixon government was doing in Cambodia. Turns out the Cambodians knew about it (duh-h), the enemy (North Vietnamese) knew about it because they saw the bombs falling on them, and the American government knew about it, naturally. But the American people did not, and we got angry when we did find out. It became an item in the impeachment process.

Being familiar with the tendency of the American government to fabricate itself into wars (Vietnam and Iraq, for instance) I think we Americans have a right to know what the hell the government is doing. We shouldn't let the bastards hide behind their "confidential" and "top secret" stamps any more. The burden of sorting out what the democratically inspired people of our nation should be protected from ought not to be in the hands of the liars and cheats.

In the matter of the Wikileaks papers, I know that the Saudis and other Middle Easterners would like to keep secret the fact they want the U.S. to whack Iran. This is NOT a secret that should be kept from the American people. I, for one, and I hope I speak for gazillions of Americans, don't care if they're embarrassed by their own phony sanctimoniousness.

So, yes, I hope Assange goes free on the "leaking" changes, and I hope he keeps up his good works.

A Theft in Process

Add me to the list of people who oppose the Social Security payroll reduction. I see it as a fraud, an attempt to begin the process of dismantling the entire program. It's what the conservatives have been wanting and it's the foot-in-the-door towards converting the program into a travesty. Then they will kill it altogether.

Leave it alone! To think that Obama would support this scheme is horrifying.

I've made a discovery. Obama is a Republican. He's like those other Republicans who have run and won as Democrats. They're the "Blue Dogs" and they exist right here in my own community.

Start filling your Social Security card with zeros, if this passes, because that's what the program will be worth.

Thursday Morning Smile-Maker

The controversy being created by the government of China over whether Liu Xiaobo should receive a Nobel Peace Prize, is interesting but not very urgent. There are other Peace Prize winners - and winners of other of the prizes, such as th Literature Prize - who have met with lots of disapproval. Barack Obama was one of those. So was Henry Kissinger in his day.

Obama and his Party

SPARTY has sent an editorial comment from Paul Krugman, of the New York Times in which he criticizes Obama for his mean words towards the progressives in his party. He calls them "purists" and lectures them as if they were irresponsible and naive. This makes him self -pitying and self-centered.

Read it here and let us know what you think. Click on this link:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/the-sorrow-and-the-self-pity-2/

Obama's "deal"

The so-called compromise which Obama has made concerning tax cuts and extension of unemployment benefits seems to me to be nothing other than a surrender. A surrender is not a compromise.

What did Congressional Progressives get for their gift to rich people? Nothing. Is there any promise that Republicans will cooperate in any other area the Democrats want to work on? Not that I've heard of. Who can doubt that the poor and middle class are now at the mercy of the "malefactors of great wealth" as President Roosevelt said 70 years ago? Not I.

It's Caturday

MARSHA'S cats,

BUDDY and BABOO

enjoy a good fire.

Wacko of the Day

Representative Thomas Hackbarth of Minnesota:

OH, GO LOOK FOR YOURSELF, CLICK

Salvation in a Happy Meal.

For sensitive people, this is A SARCASM ALERT !!!!!

=================
McDonald's is a Christian Junk Food store. As I was sitting there chewing on my Big Mac and listening to the the Hallelujah Chorus, followed by the First Noel and then by Away in the Manger, I heard someone dare to complain that this was Christian music blasting away among the gnawing sounds of the fries eaters and the screaming children in the play area. I told him this was a Christian eatery and that if he didn't like it, he could move back to Athea with all the other atheists. Then he told me he was a Shinto. Where the hell do they get their nerve coming to our country and trying to mess stuff up?

shape shifters.

Some Democratic Party office holders, particularly in the South, are abandoning the Democratic Party, and switching to the Republican. For two years, these people have been demanding this and that, most especially simply to be catered to, and now that they find it politically expedient to become Republicans, off they go. There is nothing they stand for, in particular, just their own political convenience. These are the vagaries of democracy. We are well on our way to a bitter future, one in which black men will not be elected to the Presidency, and one in which self will triumph over cause.

We will all do well to look to our own interests and give up thinking universally, because that will be the route to survival. I am really not surprised. The Democrats were handed an opportunity to govern wisely. Leaderless, they threw away that chance, in no small part due to the fact that too many Republicans have been misplaced in this party anyway.

QUOTE:

ATLANTA – Staggering Election Day losses are not the Democratic Party's final indignity this year. At least 13 state lawmakers in five states have defected to Republican ranks since the Nov. 2 election, adding to already huge GOP gains in state legislatures. And that number could grow as next year's legislative sessions draw near.

The defections underscore dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party — particularly in the South — and will give Republicans a stronger hand in everything from pushing a conservative fiscal and social agenda to redrawing political maps.

In Alabama, four Democrats announced last week they were joining the GOP, giving Republicans a supermajority in the House that allows them to pass legislation without any support from the other party. The party switch of a Democratic lawmaker from New Orleans handed control of Louisiana's House to Republicans for the first time since Reconstruction.

quiz update Dec 2

The quiz has been solved! Click on Comments to see.

some things done --- Moved Forward

Yesterday, after many people had gone from coffee club, those of us remaining were discussing what victories the liberals have had over our lifetimes. Here is a list of things liberals accomplished, and which now even most conservatives accept as settled:

1. An end to legal segregation of the "races" and also, to a great extent (not complete) an end to de facto segregation.

2. Guaranteed voting rights for minorities.

3. Medicare and Medicaid.

4. Legal equality for women.

5. Rights of access for handicapped people.

6. Forcing an end to the Vietnam War, and the draft.

7. (from IRISH MIKE) -- Social Security and minimum wage.

8. (From Bud:): Cleaner air. I can remember the pollution.

9.( FromSPARTY) Federally mandated 40 hour workweek.

10. 11. 12. 13. (From SCOT) - Endangered Species Act, Freedom of Information Act, ending "in loco parentis" at universities, bottle deposits (where they exist).

====

FEEL FREE to add to this list. In fact, it should be lengthened.

Some recent snapshots

"Cat and the Pat"

Wyatt: Now that was a championship quality belch!

Marsha and new friend, Darius Rucker.

Bill from WNNCO and his sons, Erick and Chris. Will race anything on wheels.

Matt, son of Gigi and Sparty, holds talk with high school kids. He is a top mover and shaker with the State Republican Party.

This red-bellied woodpecker hit our window and showed every sign of having a broken wing. But when I picked him up to check him out, he flew out of my hands. Now, every day, he comes to our peanut feeder. He's as welcome as wealth.

Friend, Cal.

Our beautiful bar tenderess, Rachelle!

Oct. 20, 2010: Flourishing greenery on our back deck, weeks after it should have frozen out. Thank you Ma Nature for the beautiful fall.

Fall colors at the woods by Steve and Brenda's house.

Stop signs at Allendale and Brockway. What is the reasoning? Everyone should stop twice? Someone in the County Road Commission got a great deal on new stop signs? Or has an investment in the company? Or the jobs are so intricately defined that the same people who put in a sign can't take the other one out?

Bud and his new Dodge Calibre

another little quiz

In what American city was this photo made in about 1910?

Where and why?

S. Korea is a really rich country. N. Korea is a basket case.

S. Korea has a population of almost 50 million. N. Korea has a population of nearly 25 million.

S. Korea has had 60 years to prepare itself against an attack from N. Korea who threatens to do it quite frequently.

So, why are we there?

anyone? ....

Here is a subject about which I am naive and ignorant, so maybe you all can help me out here. I see that there is a new translation of the Bible about to hit the nation. No one has read it yet, but it's already controversial. CLICK

This is a reliving of the history of all those other translations which have been criticized. Let's say that God actually did inspire the first Bible, he (or she or they) has not, evidently, indicated a preference among all the translations, which are after all, merely translations. Is it OK to read one, by the way, in a Russian translation?

Feel free to comment.

quoted without comment

It's really too late for both parties. They're unreformable. They've squandered their legitimacy just as the US enters the fat heart of the long emergency. Neither of them have a plan, or even a single idea that isn't a dodge or a grift. Both parties tout a "recovery" that is just a cover story for accounting chicanery and statistical lies aimed at concealing the criminally-engineered national bankruptcy that they presided over in split shifts. Both parties are overwhelmingly made up of bagmen for the companies that looted America.

James Kunstler: Source: CLICK

It's Caturday

Cat's Instruction Book.

Attack anything that moves under a blanket.

The answer to the little quiz on Tuesday is posted in comments below the picture.

Letter from DASHMANN

Dashmann continues to find the Republicans detestable, perhaps because they continue to be so:

======

"The same congressmen, mostly Republicans, who want to borrow lots of money to maintain the Bush tax cuts for millionaires, today voted down borrowing a lot less money to extend jobless benefits for 3 months. (Merry Christmas all you lazy unemployed people)

"This is the same day General Motors made its initial public offering of stock on the New York Stock Exchange, after receiving loans from the Obama government, thereby preserving over a million jobs in the process, not to mention the spin-off businesses needed to support the auto firm. Those loans were widely opposed and criticized at the time by those same Republicans.

"And now Republicans vow to make Obama fail in his last 2 years as President. That means NOTHING GOOD can happen to the country the next 2 years, lest Obama be given any credit for anything good !!!

"What kind of patriots comprise the Republican party and whose side are they on???"

Yes, we're so well infromed

If you run into Alice, be sure to ask her about her trip to the PennZoil shop. You will laugh really hard.

Salvatore Giunta.

For some reason,

I feel proud myself, even though I never went near a battlefield.

Quiz

What Happened Here?

Take your best guess.

Serious or non serious answers accepted.

The do-gooders agenda

U.S. News
Ban on circumcision proposed in San Francisco

Here's the story: CLICK

An opinion statement: It started with a war on meat eating. It spread to the war on tobacco. It spread to a war on fat people. And then, it's extended to what the fast-food restaurants are allowed to serve. And now, the holiness of our genitalia! I'm not sure what will be next, but I would like to suggest this possibility: Requiring men to sit down on the john when they urinate.

mistake

Here's my feeble attempt to correct a common mistake.

Everyone who detests what the Republicans stand for these days, is not necessarily a Democrat.

====

BTW: Has anyone out there heard any proposal from either of these political parties for actually creating jobs?

Sent By SPARTY

--- (From The Nation)

This chart shows how the rich are getting much richer than ever in the past few years. How will this serve democracy?

anyone besides me think we ought to impeach Justice Samuel Alito?

I'm going to call my Senators, or write them a letter, or maybe an e-mail.

There are more comments being added to JABBERWOCKY below. Thanks.

P.S. - The article from Newsweek recommended by Mike is very good.

Click on this line:="http://www.newsweek.com/2010/11/06/klein-the-do-lots-111th-congress.html"

The U.S. military has concluded that the missile firing off California was not a missile firing at all, it was a contrail from American Airlines fight 808. There you have it folks, the absolute "gospel truth." I'll go with that.

What would you do?

This is the latest DASHMANN challenge. He asked his e-mailing friends what they would do in the following circumstance, and he gives the answers he received. Add your comments, please.

=========

What would YOU do with her ??????

From Georgy Ann Geyer’s column11-4-10

http://www.uexpress.com/georgieannegeyer/?uc_full_date=20101104

Let me tell you a story -- about me. I'm warning you so you can check out, should you want to. You see, I had worked nearly 50 years, done everything right, paid all my car, home and health insurance premiums, etc. Then three years ago, after I had to have a nasty 10-hour cancer operation, my private insurance company canceled me. I was costing it too much.

No matter that, all those years I was healthy, the insurance folks were busy as little bees investing my fees for their profit. No matter that this was their contract, not only with me, but effectively with the entire American people.

No, it had all come down -- as in thousands of similar cases every year -- to simple greed on the part of the insurance companies.

But the worst part has been that, when I have told individual Americans who are against the health care bill my story and asked them, "Then what would you do with me? Put me out on the street?" none of them answer me. And maybe this really IS what we've come to.

What would YOU do with her ??????

==============

Here are the answers I received ------- I leave it to you to decide who takes the more thoughtful approach to things

Right Wing answers –

“I guess we'll let Obama take [care] of her like he said he would. Actually I don't see a problem. Maybe you should check with Snopes”

Three years ago? I would have complained to my Democratic congressman and asked him to do something. However, that would have been futile as he wouldn't have been capable.

Independent answer –

I would do what every American would do. Republican, Democrat or Independent. Pass a healthcare bill like the parts

now implemented in the current bill. This part is a no brainer. We just don't need 2700 pages of what no one has read and don't have a clue what all of the implications are.

Left wing answer –

As the old Neil Diamond song goes: Except for the name and and a few of the details my story's the same one. It's so very sad about Georgy's plight. The good ole American tradition is to have a spaghetti dinner and other fund raisers. What we real needed years ago( T. Roosevelt proposed it about 1906) and still need is universal, single payer, non'profithealth care. I sure wish I knew how to answer this question in the now with compassion and real solutions.

Jabberwocky

Fascinating that the Deficit Reduction Commission set up to study how to reduce the debt from 13.8 Trillion as well as the Trillion dollar deficit, has proposed a plan that:

1. They say cannot be passed.

2. Still will not result in a balanced budget.

3. Only reduces the deficit by .75T and the debt by not one penny.

Now, I am one of those 7 Billion people on this swirling orb we call Earth, who does not understand the fine art of MACRO-economics, but, I say this: Everyone who thinks we can reduce spending and get ourselves out of this horrible economy that Bush and the Democratic Congress created in 2003- 2010, is nuts! This includes every politician -- evidently, every Republican just elected, and some of the Democrats -- who is calling for "lower spending and no new taxes!"

We are living in monumentally corrupt times. When I peer through my future scope, I see violence on a MACRO-scale. As the middle class dwindles and the wealthy class gets wealthier, there will be big trouble.

Where in the world ... ?

... is the American sense of perspective?

By watching BBC News I have discovered something very interesting and enlightening. President Obama's trips to India and Indonesia seem to have been quite successful in alleviating fears of foreigners that the Americans are filled with hate for them, showing that we are not hostile to Islam in general, and that we are still a country of tolerance and democracy. He was enthusiastically received in both nations.

Friendship and cooperation were his themes; he spoke with honesty and understanding. He got friendship and enthusiasm in return from his audiences and the large crowds who came to cheer him and Mrs. Obama. I didn't really get those messages from American TV.

Of course, I am not watching as much "news" as I used to, but I have the impression that CNN thinks (in-as-much-as a huge American corporation can actually "think") that he was pandering to his Muslim background, ignoring American hostility towards the world, and trying to give away American jobs. As the new American generations would say these days, "WTF?"

Unidentified Flying Missile

A missile was launched off the coast of California. The Pentagon says it does not know what the missile was.

I don't believe that.

NOTE: SPARTY sez:

A great line from Dick Cavett on the CBS Morning program today - He said he felt bad for John McCain in 2008 when he picked Palin - "He aimed low, and missed."

NOTE: A new DASHMANN Challenge is coming soon.

that Boner charm

I understand that John Boner will be the next Speaker of the House. He says he's a good, Christian American. In-so-far-as he's a well known liar, I would like to point out that I have seen neither his birth certificate nor his baptismal certificate, and until I do, I assume he's a foreign born Hindu, and that his first loyalty is to Nepal.

This just HAS to be the headline of the day:

"Pope Defends Family while Spain's Gays hold 'Kiss-In' "

It's Caturday

Cats' Instruction Booklet:

Go anywhere you want in your house,

but don't break their valuable things.

The DASHMANN Challenge

The Following posting is from Dashmann:

About 9 days ago I sent an e-mail to the people who send me right wing stuff, asking them if they could point out any Republican legislation in our country’s history that had been as beneficial and well accepted by the general public as the Democratic sponsored Social Security and Medicare programs.

For a week, no one could come up with anything positive, but I did get a lot of tirades berating SS and MED , despite most of the same people taking full advantage of those programs.

When challenged about accepting benefits from programs they did not believe in, one correctly pointed out he had contributed to them so why not?

A couple people pointed to the Republicans providing national security, despite the worst homeland attack since Pearl harbor taking place on a Republican President's watch, and the perpetrator is still alive and free!!!

Finally my cousin in Alaska, who sends me occasional right wing stuff, but not the mass e-mail Enquirer type lies and half-truth things, came up with Abolishment of Slavery put into law by Republicans and their President Lincoln, and vehemently opposed by southern Democrats!!! I agree that this may be the most important and far reaching resolution ever passed.

She and one other person also named the Civil Rights act of 1964, and while it was well supported by Republicans, it garnered slightly more Democratic votes and 2 Democratic Presidents, Kennedy and Johnson, were in office at the time. The same southern Democrats successors again were its biggest opponents. But it was truly an example of the parties working together to do what was right for America.

Now we come to today, and the same Republican party that began the civil rights movement over 150 years ago, has shifted 180 degrees and now wants to make everybody afraid of anything that isn’t white or Christian !!!

Furthermore, the Republican leaders, Boehner and McConnell have declared that getting rid of Obama is the most important thing they have to accomplish, even at the expense of stifling any recovery that may be underway, because that recovery would make Obama look good in 2 years.

That about wraps up this subject, but I leave the right wingers with one more question.

Will the Republicans and Tea Partiers you are electing try to do what is right for America, even though it may lead to Obama’s re-election in 2 years ???

If not, you may as well send me to Washington –I can vote NO on everything as easily as they can at a fraction of the cost !

Goodbye Sparky Anderson

"He wants to do so good so bad."

The Tiger's second sad death of the year.

note from JERRY

note from Sparty

From Hendrick Hertzberg in The New Yorker - with all the rehashing by all the pundits, this is probably the most perceptive comment I've read/heard:

"President Obama and the Democrats kept the Great Recession from becoming the second Great Depression. But the presence of pain is more keenly felt than the absence of agony."

More disasters yet to come? I hope so.

The Democrats engineered and operated their own destruction in this election, and Obama egged them on. They deserved this calamity and now they have it. I hear he's admitting it. This will make him smarter than most of the minions barely toiling in Democratic sinecures across the country, who I'm sure are puzzled by the whole thing. They will now have to try to find a new constituency because I can't imagine what combination of interests will make them viable in four years. And good riddance to them if they totally fall apart.

Here is something with which I heartily agree, from this morning's New York Times: CLICK

welcome John Boner. I never liked you and never will.

Hello Chaos

The biggest changes I see as a result of the election are these:

1. There will be a new Speaker of the House who appears before the cameras al the time, instead of only occasionally like Pelosi did. He will be talking about how terrible the other party is, just like he always has, and the deadlock in Congress will not be resolved, although he will find a lot of Democrats ready to sell out to him.

2. There will be more lies on television. This is a natural consequence of some of the crazy people now coming into office, as well as the old-guard liars. There may be a new Liars Caucus in the Senate.

3. Obama will now get nothing passed. The Republicans will now get nothing passed.

4. The wealthy on Wall Street, etc., will be doing even better.

5. The Congress, already hopelessly corrupt, will continue to be hopelessly corrupt.

6. The Democratic Party will continue to wander on leaderless, but this time, straight for another electoral disaster in 2012, by which time, Obama will have mealy-mouthed himself into history.

HOME

WE ARE HOME

- from the vacation most people didn't now we were on.

I've heard it's not good to broadcast that you will be gone, especially on Facebook.

However, it's good to tell everyone you're home.

Smiles to you all, and there will be more, later.

Now, I'm going swimming!

Change I could believe in

President Obama has refused to endorse for election, a Democratic candidate for Rhode Island governor who is much more conservative than the Independent candidate.

Well, bully for him! The only problem is, he refuses to endorse the independent, as well. This is spineless.

The Democrat, Frank Caprio has told Obama to "take his endorsement and shove it."

If the liberals in this country, Democrat or otherwise, had any leadership as bold and certain as Caprio, we wouldn't be in the mess we are, I think. Millions of people out there want the country to solve the problems of the nation in a less belligerent, plutocratic, and self-centered manner than Republicans offer, but not in the helter-skelter, aimless, pettifogging way that the Democratic Party has offered recently.

We need leadership on the left! Haven't had any effective leadership in years. Where's our hero riding to the rescue?

Good Bye Polly

We note the passing of Polly, the cat that ruled the home of the Dashmanns. She died yesterday, still a sweet and lovely young lady who managed to survive 17 years on only one kidney.

It's Caturday

This cat owns

Felix

And offers herself

as a towel

Green-Up?

IRISH MIKE, shown here, was talking this morning about the "greening" of the country in recent years. He is, himself, very much of a conservationist and advocate of advancing green technology.

He was saying that countless businesses and whole industries (even including the military industry stationed abroad) is making more-and-more use of new green technologies, completely free from government control or coercion. This is because so many are finding it saves money, or makes money.

He can tell you specific examples. Anyone else see this happening? Seems as if, maybe, the whole movement is taking off on its own steam.

========

FOOTNOTE:

See here: CLICK

Update

The DSCC - Democratic Senate Campaign Committee - wants me to send them $212,000 before midnight. Should I do it?

money grubbers

The Democratic Party, and a full stable of their bright stars, keep asking me for money. The reason? If I don't, the Republicans will take over Congress. Well, I admit that's not a good idea, but I can't throw too many laurels at the gang of Dems who're running it now. So, not a dollar will I send. Is that evil?

Friends Report - Oct. 20.

A few snaps from a gathering:

extension of a conversation with a friend.

Among all those wandering around in a daze, we must include all those Republicans who somehow think they are the ones entitled to be angry, or "mad as hell" as they often say (unable to stretch themselves to something more original), or "pissed off" as they often say, trying to sound hip in a world they don't understand.

You couldn't be farther from the truth.

No one is more pissed off than the liberals of this country who have watched their former political party roll over and spread its legs for interests that are completely inimical to the programs and reforms that they supposedly stand for. This is the party of Wall Street bailouts without a jobs program, of human equality platforms without gay marriage laws, of "the party of the common man" without a law to deal one way or another with the illegal immigrants. This is the former "democratic" Democratic Party that couldn't pass a health care reform act that didn't provide fabulously for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. This is the Democratic Party that complains about Republican campaign finance shenanigans, but which wouldn't dream of using its congressional majorities to correct these clear abuses.

The generation now entrenched in power is not able to correct these problems, because they are too rich. Like the Congress they tolerate, they have sold out their politics to their pocketbooks. Unlike the protesters and anti-war placard wavers they once were, they are now complacent in the repose of their TV rooms, enjoying the benefits of a comfortable lifestyle that unions and the Democratic Party gave them.

So it will be up to the next generation to give this country it's figurative (or maybe even literal) Reichstag fire house cleaning. Where we might go from there, I cannot imagine.