I believe you'd do well to also read Luke Mitchell's "Understanding Obamacare" in the NOTEBOOK section of the December issue of Harper's.

The real battle in Washington is seldom between conservatives and liberals or between the right and the left or "red America" and "blue America." It is nearly always a more local contest, over which politicians will enjoy the privilege of representing the interests of the rich.

It's really quite an eye opening explication of exactly why whatever healthcare reform Obama ends up taking credit for is going to be something that no one is going to like more than the insurance industry itself.

It may feel calming and sanguine to remind everyone that "Obama is a centrist Democrat" but the actuality is that he and his party have supplanted the Republicans as the party of business and the Republicans now have no one to represent but themselves and "the fear, rage, and jealousy that have always animated a significant minority of American voters."

As Mitchell concludes, "it is difficult to imagine anything good coming from a system that moderates the will of corporations with the fantasies of hysterics."

Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful I'm not Obama, too, and I never expected him to hose out the stables in a single year. But all indications are that the stink on the horizon for a long time to come is nothing to be grateful about.

I think Kostrick's Jack London quote is a great one; I agree with its sentiments in every respect.

My question is: if he's so worried about the country gong down the road to tyranny, how come he never showed up at a George W Bush event with a pistol?

You keep knocking off the right-wingnuts with such ease and aplomb and some powerful, geezerly old guy is going to up and propose marriage to you one day.

It's a thankless job, but somebody's got to do it. Thank you Joan for trying to point out that there shouldn't even be a debate about torture. It's illegal and those who approved it, ordered it and committed it should be prosecuted. End of story.

Extra bonus points for doing this before dawn on a Sunday.

Thanks Joan for taking a firm stance on this issue. Bybee is only the first, most obvious person who ought to be taken down as a result of information only just now reliably coming to light.

Emanuel and Obama may consider this a time for reflectioln, but what they ought to reflect on is the president's oath of office, the part that says he will "...preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the united States."

They should take their time, they should do it right, but the end result -- if there is any justice in this world -- should be imprisonment for a host of former Bush administration officials, including the two guys at the top.

To paraphrase the great Forrest Gump, Newsworthiness is like a box of chocolates...

In this citizen's view, it's certainly big news that a sitting president has systematically, publicly broken the law, committing high crimes and misdemeanors virtually from the moment he removed his hand from the Bible after taking his oath of office, that his criminality has been a matter of public record and debate for years, that at least two members of the House of Representatives have introduced Articles of Impeachment against him, that the resolutions have been belittled and disavowed by the House Speaker, and that not even a fighting quorum of the People's elected representatives believe the President's malfeasance bears discussion on the floor of Congress.

That the American people would appear to have lost the taste for performing the difficult work of preserving their constitutional democracy should be big news, but as everyone knows, the news is as the news does.

There's a lot of other letters posted here, so I may well be late to the game, but I'd just like to weigh in with this:

had her name been Alan, Tom or John, he would not have called her "sweetie." True enough. He might well have called her "buster," "bud," "champ," "fella," "big guy," "dude," "boss," "ace," or any other of a whole panoply of "terms of endearment" guys have for one another.

Every time I try to watch Chris Matthews I fail to make it through a whole clip because the guy just won't shut up. He consistently talks over his guests and seems more in love with the sound of his own voice than anything else.

Kevin James is a moron and a blowhard but Matthews manages to make one feel for the guy.

Canceling cable was the smartest move I ever made.

If you think our process is corrupt and broken, he's your man.

'Nuff said.

...windows to the soul, baby; windows to the soul.

Hard to reconcile Joey Dorsey getting called for "bumping Chalmers on the dribble about a mile from the basket," and Derrick Rose NOT getting called for "contact and Collins went down."

If the refs call the foul on Rose it's a different ball game.

It's also a different ball game if Memphis hits any of the four three throws they missed down the stretch.

It's also a different ball game if the refs don't take away a Memphis point after reviewing a Rose three pointer during a TV time out. Given your past criticism of instant replay in a variety of circumstances, King, it's surprising you didn't mention it here.

Great game, though.