Gov. Sanford is a pillar of Republican virtue

or a philanderer depending on your interpretation of the facts.

With family values like this how much longer can the repubs claim to be concerned about the sanctity of marriage? Seems to me that having sex with a person you are not married to is more of a threat than 2 guys being allowed to get married.

Of course I am on the fringe with my thinking. It is gays not a violation of marriage vows that is the real threat to marriage. Yeah . Right.

Nancy Pelosi scares me

I think she is the scariest person I have ever seen. She makes me want to invite a serial killer over for a quiet dinner. She makes me feel hopeless. Why couldn't she be a force for good instead of being a total hack? Such a hypocrite. I know it may seem odd as I am the Liberal Treehugger and all but I would really like to see her out of office. She makes Tom Delay look like a Golden Retriever.
Oh well, at least we still have Hillary!

I love

Trees, kittens, panda bears. I love the way the new shoots leave the barren landscape all defensive. One thing I don't love is pirates. There is something to be said about having guns with all the pirates running around. Go ahead (click) we are just a food aid ship (click click) yup, no arms on this ship. Too bad it was a Dutch ship and they don't have the 2nd amendment.

$500,000 is the limit to executive pay

“One of the big questions is whether it will make it more difficult to recruit and retain executives at these companies,” said Claudia Allen, chair of corporate governance at the Chicago-based law firm of Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg.

Since when does leading a company into finincial ruin establish criteria that make one valueable to a company? It would seem to me that if an executive fails to make a company profitable (after all that is the ONLY consideration in a capitalist economy) they should either get maybe a cost-of-living increase or nothing or simply loose their job.
I don't know about you but I would be thrilled to make half a million a year with NO bonus. I think it is fair to say that nearly anyone who lives in America would consider a salary of half a million to be a big increase. Maybe as high as %90 of Americans would make a substantial ammount more if that was the pay they received.
These executives are not a hundred time more important than the person who sits in a cubicle or works in the mail room. It is time that we recognize that we as a working society have been screwed for so long that cutting someones pay to half a million dollars a year is considered a serious move. How about we cut their pay to ten percent of the lowest paid employee? Then if the company is profitable we can discuss a bonus for everyone not just the executives.

Happy New Year and all that

So with the recent jetliner crash I had to wonder if I were the only one who's first reaction was not "oh my god those poor people" or "oh goodness I hope everyone was okay" but rather, my first thought after hearing about the cause of the crash was "Those poor geese". I just wish that we would think of the animals for a change.

Conservativism is maybe not dead but it smells really bad

When Christopher Buckley comes out in support of Obama it is a sign that the Conservative movement has no heir. It is over. Time to try something new.
Or perhaps it is time to try having government actually be conservative for a change. Let's face it. We have not seen, fiscal, social, or any other sort of conservativism for the past eight years. Bush has been the biggest liberal I've ever seen. Bush has imposed more government control than any other president in history.
Taxation, no problem! We tax the hel1 out of the middle class and use the government to eliminate equity while moving as much wealth into the hands of the few as possible.

I don't think Obama is the solution to this but I do think I'd rather have his brand of "Conservativism" than Bush's.

I know that at least Obama admits that the government has a role to play and he will not try to dismantle the government while at teh same time use it for every nefarious purpose under the sun.

Vote for Bob Barr!

Debate

I watched the debate last Friday night. I was impressed with Jim Lherer's moderating and the way he insisted that the candidates speak to each other instead of in the third person. McCain seemed unable to address Obama in the first person though, despite several attempts by the moderator to have a direct conversation and debate... Obama seemed a little more able to speak to McCain directly, although he tended to want to address the American people. I think in McCain's case it is from decades of Senatorial formality that he is unable to address a single person and must speak to the masses. But Obama is the one who's eliteist. Riiiiight.

I was amazed as I listened to McCain accuse Obama of not understanding the difference between a strategy and a tactic. Only to confuse the two himself in his description of a tactic (the surge) as a strategy.
Obama then demonstrated his grasp of strategy vs. a tactic. Only to have McCain describe a tactic as a strategy again in regard to Afganistan.

I was sad that Obama didn't change the framework of the issues effectively. He could have been a little more assertive with regard to what is a priority for America.
McCain was expecting his expose of Obama's definition of "wealthy" as individuals who make more than $250,000 a year to outrage Americans. Most of the Americans listening I think were saying "I wish I made $250,000 a year" not "Outrageous! I make ten times that! This will not stand!!!" So no points there. We as a nation have been driven to the outskirts of an economic wasteland by eight years of "Conservative" policies. My brother calls for an investigation into the Senate Banking Commitee but I think any investigation would reveal that the rapeublican policy of deregulation and hands-off-the-market regulation combined with a willingness to look the other way was behind this.
What surprises me is that anyone is surprized that this happened. Economists have been screaming about this for years.
But back to the debate. Poor responses from both of the candidates on what they would do about this "crisis" and how it would effect their administration's first days in office.
Poor response from Obama when talking about Iran. Instead of falling into the Republican framework and calling Iran a "rouge" nation he could have used that opportunity to refer to Iran as a "Mavrick" nation.
He missed one shot there. But then he doesn't have me advising him on his speaches either...
McCain just spouted the usual party line about taxes and terrorists. Nothing of substance at all. He tried to scare America a bit more. At least Obama took him on regarding his support of Bush inc's plans for the rest of us.
I'd give Obama the edge on this debate, but not by much.