America is a republic not a mobocracy. The reason the president has very low approval ratings is he is too liberal for us conservatives on the United States border amnesty issue. However, the Congress has even lower approval ratings because of their habit of redistributing workers’ and small business owners’ wealth to sloths and slackers!

Well that certainly explains why the Republicans in Congress have approval ratings in the low teens while the Democrats have approval ratings in the high thirties. Which averages out lower than Bush…but the Democrats (particularly rank-and-file) are higher than Bush.

So I would guess that the disgust is that those “sloths and slackers” are BIG BUSINESSES that are receiving massive Federal subsidies and military contracts for an unnecessary War brought forth on false grounds. That’s where the redistribution of “wealth” is going…UPWARD. Social Security is NOT the redistribution of wealth away from the workers. Health care programs are not the redistribution of wealth away from workers. Small businesses and the future workers in this country are the ones that are going to have to pay off those trillions in accrued Deficits and Debt generated by 6 years of Republican control of the Presidency (and longer for Congress).

Phony Inflation figures (extracting out fuel, utilities, tuition, rent increases, and ‘volatile’ food price increases while focussing upon things like Chinese imports) concealing the real cost of living.

Big Agribusiness that receives vast subsidies for NOT growing crops…or outright DESTROYING them.

Gasoline bills that have shot up 250% from the Clinton era. While Gas Company profits have skyrocketed to levels beyond comprehension every year!

Pharmaceutical “import protection” compelling those attempting to purchase generics and cheaper foreign substitutes to pay prices an order of magnitude higher than alternatives just across the border.

The dropping of regulations on mortgage lenders so that hundreds of thousands fueled a “housing bubble” that made the “Economy look Great” in terms of Construction employment, new home ‘ownership’ (hahahahahahah), and business growth in these subdivisions. Then the bubble burst, because the loans issued were ARM’s that should never have been issued. Result…the lie was exposed…the Economy was based on falsehoods and deceit. Foreign banks “owned” those homes. The foreclosures have started to have consequences that will not be gauged for generations. Homeless families, bankruptcies (under the new Bush “debt bondage” ACT ), people foregoing health insurance or paying college tuitions to make home payments, businesses shuttering up in former areas with vibrant growth.

Most of that is occurring in “Red Areas” (Central Valley of California, Orange and Riverside Counties, Florida, Ohio, Dallas-Fort Worth) in the vast suburban subdivisions where almost everybody bought into the Republican fantasy of “buy it on credit”.

America is a republic not a mobocracy. The reason the president has very low approval ratings is he is too liberal for us conservatives on the United States border amnesty issue.

What did the border ever do? Why does it need amnesty?

However, the Congress has even lower approval ratings because of their habit of redistributing workers’ and small business owners’ wealth to sloths and slackers!

We Dems are trying to stop that. We don’t believe CEOs deserve all that money either.

They seem to have a genius for choosing the worst possible course politically. For example: Take the energy bill. Now, they were obviously desperate to pass something precisely because of the impression created by the obstructionism, that they can’t get anything done. But what did they do? They were so anxious to get something that Bush would sign and that the Republican’s wouldn’t filibuster, that they threw the Renewable stuff and the repeal of tax giveaways to oil under the bus. Wouldn’t it have been better to force the Republicans to do a real filibuster, talking for hours on the senate floor in defense of tax give aways to the oil companies and against renewable energy? Or better yet, let Bush veto it and run campaign ads against the failure to over-ride the veto. What the hell, we’ve had absolutely horrible energy policy for the past fifty years, whats one more year? When the alternative is a bill that does pretty much nothing but barely raise CAFE standards years from now, something that could just as easily be done next year as this year. It’s just crazy.

The point is that the Republicans have chosen to use obstructionism as a tactic. That is within their rights to do. There is no point in crying about that. Effective politics means recognizing what tactics the other side is using and devising a counter attack that uses their actions to our advantage. I see absolutely no effort to do this. Just a sort of stunned befuddlement. It’s truly mind boggling. It’s like a monkey playing checkers. Maybe they can pull off the first move and then after that…

I bolted a few months ago.

Where did you bolt to?

well different people seem to have different ideas about when a filibuster “officially” starts.

Perhaps filibusters that only exist on paper should be called filiblusters.

When we saw pictures of the black smoke billowing out of the OEEO yesterday, my husband turned to me and said, ”Looks like the Devil, Cheney’s true master is paying him a visit.”