. . . get invited to the good parties.

. . . but the transition is beginning to suggest a Talking Heads "Once In A Lifetime" administration - Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.

To the skeptics ... Obama showed during the campaign that the political tactics of the past were mostly ineffective against him. Do not underestimate the brilliance of this man. He will govern by bringing all parties together to solve problems. -- mikelx

There aren't five moderate Republicans left in either house of congress and he already rolled over on Lieberman. He's not going to bring all parties together. He needs to go to the American public, explain what happened over the last eight years and explain why things need to change. He needs to publicly shame anyone who supports tax cuts, not promote them.

Middle-income tax cuts, which amount to pocket change and will not raise consumption, are the last thing the country needs right now. Rather, tax rates need to be returned to where they were in 2000.

"Rather, tax rates need to be returned to where they were in 2000."

The economy in 2000 was capable of handling those tax rates. If it weren't for that, I would agree with you. -- mikelx

The economic problems we have now have nothing to do with the tax rates on unearned income (dividends and capital gains) or the earned income tax rate for incomes of $500K/year and higher. This is what we lost in 2001. There were no appreciable reductions in middle-income taxes.

The paltry give back proposed by Obama will only increase the debt without raising consumption and is just stupid.

BTW, John McCain was ineligible also because he was born in Panama. -- ChillyDogg

Since both of McCain's parents were American citizens, he's an American, regardless of where he was born. Furthermore, if he was born in a U.S. military hospital (likely), the U.S. government considers embassies and military facilities to be sovereign extensions of the U.S.

You can defend our mostly outdated constitution all you like. But you'd be better off learning U.S. civil and criminal law, much of which has nothing to do with the constitution, if you want to defend something.

Until we all have flying cars, we do need to maintain our current network of arterials, highways and bridges. Otherwise, all new federal money for transportation needs to go to the expansion of light and heavy rail, subways and the development of vehicles that will run on a renewable, non-polluting fuel source.

Yes, I know - my butt, monkeys fly out of.

With over a trillion dollars of new government spending on the line, . . . -- dawdler

The figure being discussed, much to the chagrin of many econonists, is only $750 billion, which may get whittled down by the time a spending bill reaches the conference committee. I think Krugman stated that a more realistic figure was $1.15 trillion to get the job done.

But salmon need rivers and streams to return to for spawning. Most of the historic spawning grounds for most West Coast (south of British Columbia) salmon have been gone for decades. Even if you removed every dam from every river in Washington, Oregon and Northern California, you may never be able to restore salmon to their natural habitat because the fish we've been consuming for the last fifty year are generations removed from hereditary streams.

The best we can hope for is rebuilding the runs that exist now.

Why do we insist on believing the climate and, indeed, ecosystems should remain stable now when neither ever have?

The point is that the Earth's climate is changing much more rapidly than it ever has in the past, excepting a collision with an asteroid or meteor, and the cause it traceable to human activity. If we were able to return the level of CO2 in the atmosphere to what it was in 1890 (unlikely), we'd find ourselves with longer, colder winters and cooler summers, which help maintain an ecosystem in the ocean more favorable to Pacific marine life in general. It's not only salmon that have declined.

Perhaps if we didn't catch so many California salmon there would be more?

There were never that many California salmon to begin with when compared to the northern part of the Pacific. Most of ocean off most of the coast in California is too warm for salmon. So the decline of the California runs pales in importance to the declines in Washington and Oregon. When I was a child, there was still a commercial salmon fishery in Puget Sound. Now, you're considered lucky if you can catch one there sport fishing. The sea lions outside of the Ballard Locks are about the only creatures eating "local" salmon.

Everyone is talking about how bad dams are for salmon and we should get rid of all of them we can. Well, those dams provide our electricity and drinking water. If it came down to it, would you rather have more salmon or a glass of water? Which do you think the government will go for? -- traumatic

True, though several dams in Washington and Idaho have been identified as expendable with no significant affect on the supply of electricity, especially if we started storing our excess in batteries rather than selling it to California and elsewhere (find your own!). They are already taking one dam down on the Elwha River on the Olympic Peninsula.

http://www.nps.gov/olym/naturescience/elwha-ecosystem-restoration.htm

The problem with the dams is that next to no thought went into same runs and how to mitigate dams effects on salmon. Few of them have ladders. But even with them, some are such monstrous construction, that you probably couldn't build large enough ladders to get the fish over Bonneville and certainly not Grand Coulee.