Not completely off topic, but--

It's not nice to use first names in a pejorative and insulting manner to express one's disgust with their propaganda as I listened to his platform of spinning such practices on C-span this morning.

Such tired, economic theory sales pitching is not banned under freedom of breach (I mean speech).

Mr. Armey's tired visage is quite telling.

Corporations are the benign entities that no one would want to damage, even when they suck the lifeblood from the economy under the protection of Presidents, Courts and Congress.

If we hurt them them by oversight, regulation and fair taxation--they will punish the consumer/lower-tax class by raising prices, layoffs and unnecessary absorption of government subsidies.

Is that novel or what?

From your Schwartz quote--

"In other words, the country's financial elites would use the catastrophes they'd created themselves in order to do what they'd always wanted to but couldn't get away with in normal times. They took the profit, and then imposed all the costs on everyone else."

Just as Bush used the 9-11 attack to do what he did (used twisted, "conservative" theory) "took the profit, and then imposed all the costs on everyone else."

By creating the largest bueracractic agency ever (Homeland Security) with an infusion of unaccounted, wasted billions, two debt-ridden, riddled-with-stolen cash wars, the largest tax cuts to the wealthy during those wars and finally billions in subsidies to the energy corporations while they gouged (realized historic profits) from speculated oil/gas revenues.

Would that everyone who cares about the sequential decline of rule-of-law structures and economic distortions that continue to haunt us read your piece, today.

Glenn, a good primer to why we are in this nightmare, thanks.

"From the evidence I've read, we don't yet have answers to these questions"--normbreyfogle

Different education paths, emotional experiences, prenatal, hormonal development, creative vs. analytical types, and a host of others with a question mark.

All in all--we're all a--holes on the wrong side of good vs. evil for any good reason at all. Shame we can't screw the bad guys to hell who use their god to justify the evil things.

"Conservatives take great comfort from the Old Testament wheras liberals find hope in the New Testament. I fear a conservative carrying a Bible. So much damage and suffering has resulted from rigid thinkers believing that the various punishments laid out in that book are truly the word of God."--Trainman

As we've seen in numerous election cycles--the right has been buttressed and saved by that "believer" segment of "thinking" conservative philosophy. They are the power base, as we all acknowledge.

Criticize, as faith advocates do, the renewed movement to openly criticize the theists, but the extreme Dominionists have a damaging foothold in our Congress, courts and sometimes executive branches.

They get a free ticket into most media venues and may not be challenged without the ire of most fundamentalist, and some evangelical organizations raising the victimization card.

"...you forgot "cod-piece" worship."

Yeah, I keep analyzing the sexual indulgences that some hero-worshipers find in those phallic images contained in over-stuffed baskets of goodies, but that's just my own undiagnosed, sexual projection.

Amazing, that recurring theme of deprived inner needs manifesting itself so frequently in the realm of politics and war-types.

"But 'conservative' and 'progressive' are increasingly meaningless terms in an age where we should all be more concerned with 'right and wrong' than 'right an left'."--Godwacker

Why bother--the polarity is all off. (my hyperbolic)

Thirty so years of intense, decaying, America's experiment has shown a depressing degradation into the realm of laws-don't-matter and Presidents are Popes.

Orwell is not right--he's not left--he's a god of sorts for his precognition.

"...if Bilco affords the same status to Obama. If so, we might be able to deprogram this one."

..and so goes the perplexing pathology of cognitive dissonance--that racially mixed, upstarter, leader of the socialist movement in America will never be "my CIC" (shredded Constitution be damned).

That title is reserved for the true, patriotic and eerily-elected heroes on fuel-gorged aircraft carriers coursing their way to bloody freedom.

It's so chest-thumping and uniform worshiping, I can't bear the bruises and radiance.

Observe:

"Right" thinking--there is no need to discuss the validity of the two wars--it is a forgone conclusion--they were honestly necessary and correct.

"Left" thinking--"Not so quick!" There are hundreds of facts and evidence that suggest that lies and ulterior motives were involved to propel us here.

Post 9-11 we are barraged by the standard nobility of offensive initiatives like Afghanistan and Iraq as if no body should question those horrific decisions.

Thus, one example of lock-step thinking with dire consequences.

"As an independent thinker/voter, it's my observation that the major difference between progressives and conservatives is that conservatives put party before country."-- seismicyawn

Those small "c's" or big "C's" conservatives will remind us all that they love their country more and have the "moral values" platform in the bag.

Anyone affiliated with a political party that deems party loyalty (facism) above the interest of the country, i.e., Constitution, economic stability, equal justice under the law, etc. is clearly not a lover of the country progressives adore.