"Its ideological insistence on cutting taxes for the richest Americans ran up a record deficit."

There is nothing ideological about it. Ideological decisions are made out of principle, regardless of the merits of those principles.

But flat tax schemes and lower taxes for the rich are self-serving decisions, not ideological ones. They serve the financial needs of the wealthy base of the GOP, nothing more.

Here's my response as a centre-left Democrat and Obama supporter:

Neither candidate is addressing the economic crisis head-on, because neither wants to risk damaging their campaign by telling their supporters the truth; our country is broke, and we won't be able to do much beyond belt-tightening for a while, regardless of Senate super-majorities or party affiliations.

Obama seems, albeit indirectly, to understand this issue better than McCain for the simple reason that he equates the economic crisis with the need to get out of Iraq. The spending we are engaging in over there could and should be diverted to much-needed triage at home.

As for taxes, I suspect both candidates would try to avoid increases to preserve their chances in 2012. But the much-vaunted tax cuts for the middle class that they both suggest will probably not happen. Bush has racked up a debt, and we are going to have to pay it off the old-fashioned way; with tax-payer dollars.

No group of individuals has ever asked for it more than this bunch. Beat them to a pulp and send them the bill.

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

is not that Lieberman campaigned for McCain, but rather that he campaigned against Obama, purposefully mischaracterizing his position on Israel in order to inflame Jewish-American suspicions. If he had limited himself to simply serving as a character witness for John McCain, he'd be fine now.

But he crossed the line, and he has to go. Yes, as Elephantman says, it's a net gain of 1 for Republicans in the Senate. But the Democrats need to send a message early on that they place a premium on party discipline now that they're in power.

And to all the people who will inevitably say that this shows Democratic intolerance for dissent, again I say that Democrats dissent all the time without recrimination, BUT YOU DON'T ATTACK YOUR OWN PARTY'S PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE. EVER.

And this is AFTER Obama stood by Lieberman in the Connecticut 2006 race. It's the height of ingratitude.

We as a party are better off knowing where we stand with Lieberman, rather than constantly looking over our shoulder to see whether he will support us or undermine us. Put him in the GOP and let them deal with him. We all know we're not going to achieve 60 seats anyway, which means we're going to have to reach across the aisle to Collins, Snowe and Specter regardless. Removing Lieberman from around our necks doesn't change that dynamic one iota.

"Again, I think that the Republicans ought to be able to form natural alliances with Latino Catholics and, absent a real live black candidate, at least some evangelical blacks. It will require some work."

The Republicans shouldn't worry about alliances with this or that group until they create a coherent reason to vote for them at all. They need ideas, which they currently don't have, and only will have, once they stop excoriating the "Georgetown cocktail-sipping conservatives" that McCain derided and start listening to them.

Peggy Noonan, George Will, Chris Buckley, David Brooks, Kathleen Parker and on and on...

I watched Pawlenty and Sanford talk on the News-Hour tonight. The amount of rationalization and verbal gymnastics they engaged in in order to avoid actually taking responsibility for their own failure was amazing.

Pawlenty said, several times, that they couldn't have won this year because of the 'anti-incumbency headwinds' they were facing. Gee, Governor, could those headwinds have been self-created? Or they just originate on their own?

Isn't denial one of the twelve stages of grief? Is that what we're watching now; a party deeply in denial of their own failure?

Integrity isn't talking about where things went wrong AFTER you lose an election. It's self-correcting to remain true to your self-professed principles when there is no self-serving reason to do so.

You had your turn, ours now.

...before the other boys start yelling at you.

As young males, up to our eyeballs in hormones and longing, many of us watched as comparably aged young women went for older men. "They're just more confident." "He owns a motorcycle." "He has money." blah blah blah

We listened to our sisters in their early 20's talk about all the fun they were having.

We hated you at first, ladies. But we eventually accepted that that was how the game is played. We learned to understand that we would have our moment too, that at 30 or 40, our career in full swing, WE would be the objects of longing. So we bit our lip, kept our heads down, and got back to work.

And you know what? We were right. The older I get, the better it gets for me and the harder it gets for women.

Is that fair? I'm not sure. But the whining and protestations from woman after woman, all of "a certain age," inevitably leads me to ask one question: were any of these women complaining when they were 21 years old, having a ball with the guy with the grad degree and the motorcycle and passing me up for a date?

I'm not trying to be mean, but are these older ladies REALLY trying to say that they should have all the fun when we're young AND all the fun when we're old? That, to me, doesn't seem fair.