Of course here in the US we have unsustainable levels of public debt: so better shape up & cut the deficit, or pretty soon we will go bankrupt like the Greeks & the Irish! Except of course, at 68.5% percentage of GDP, the US debt is smaller than that of Germany, that exemplar of fiscal rectitude, and smaller in fact than that of Austria!

And what would the professed lovers of liberty and Austrian economics have to say about this?

If you think the politics of this country are screwed-up, just a friendly reminder that it could always be much, much worse.

Urgh, I have got to stop reading the news.

I am starting to feel bad for Obama (just a little). I wonder what it does to a man to turn from the object of so much adulation to being so throughly disliked, all in so brief span of time. The liberals are disillusioned, the "moderates" have lost interest, and the conservatives haven't been appeased one bit, no matter how timid Mr. President has been.

Of course then I read this:

That appears to be the only way, said David Axelrod, that middle-class taxpayers can keep their tax cuts... "We have to deal with the world as we find it," Axelrod said... "The world of what it takes to get this done."

I suppose it is only pragmatic, but it is the pragmatism of the defeated. Doesn't Obama & co. know that "Change we can believe in" is not merely the conservation and/or accommodation of the status quo?

How does Obama expect people to fight for him and his agenda, when he won't even fight for them himself?

Every time I read another political obituary for Russ Feingold, I feel the intense desire to sock Barack Obama in the face. What a bloody, bloody waste that someone as principles and courageous as Feingold had to pay for Obama's political cowardice, equivocation, and incompetence. It's not worth it, it's just not worth it.