Yes, but what is the policy?

How is anyone who is not a member of the current president's inner circle supposed to formulate policy? Bush is running the most secretive administration in history. AFAICT, this administration only recognizes three categories of information:

1) State secrets

2) Things that are hidden behind executive privilege

3) Propaganda, which is the only kind that escapes to the outside world

Nobody outside of the administration has much of a clue what is really going on in this country, and most of our intelligence about other countries is jealously guarded and released only in distorted and/or redacted snippets as suits Bush's agenda.

IMO, the next occupant has to take office and spend a while finding out what the hell has really been going on before any concrete policy can be formulated.

If Obama wins, I expect Bush to try to sabotage Obama's administration by giving it a carefully-prepared package of misinformation during transition.

... does Batman go around deliberately creating new enemies so he can demand more powers that he says he needs to defend us against them?

Why should I care? I know no one in the military. There's no draft. My taxes have gone down.

You may think your taxes have gone down, but guess again. Bush's tax cuts and wanton deficit spending have forced the U.S. government to create tons of new money to cover expenses, and the flood of new money has destroyed the value of the dollar.

You're paying for this every time you fill your gas tank, buy food, or buy anything else that has some dependency on oil. Your savings, if you have any, have been taxed AGAIN at a rate higher than the highest income tax bracket. Your paycheck is effectively smaller than it used to be.

You're getting screwed, and you don't seem to realize it.

a) If Iraqis resist the occupation, we must stay.

b) If Iraqis don't resist the occupation, we can leave.

I think you meant:

b) If Iraqis don't resist the occupation, we find another reason why we have to stay.

Come November, it's open season on Republicans. You'll each be given a fully-loaded ballot, and there's no bag limit.

Laws like this aren't really expected to produce the advertised results. They are only passed so that politicians can say they are "doing something". The worst part is that any congresscritter that has the brains and the integrity to vote against one of them gets tarred and feather by his/her colleagues, so the silly things always pass.

see people?! Obama is a farce and a Bush-lover.

Aren't you jumping the gun a bit? A political blog reports that someone on Obama's VP search team mentioned a name, and you're talking about it like it's a done deal.

I've got over three months before I have make any decisions. Since I'm pretty certain that I'm NOT psychic, I'll have to do it the ordinary way by watching what happens in the meantime.

Obama is getting a variety of opinions from people in the know about some of our most pressing problems. I'm pleased that he is doing this, rather than letting party dogma be his only input.

McSame is saying that the only way out of the mess is to do more of the same stuff that got us into it.

Meanwhile, the peanut gallery gripes about the propriety of the word "summit" in the headlines.

...with crazy Johnny McSame it's a verb, a noun and "Surge".

Heh. Now all we have to do is establish a meme that "surge" is a word from the pornography industry.

Housing is becoming more affordable, right?

Yes and no.

It's one thing for the price of an existing home to decline: The unfortunate owner takes a hit on the sale, but that doesn't make a national crisis.

It's another matter entirely when the price people can pay for houses is less than what it costs to build them. That means the death of the home construction industry, and an eventual serious housing shortage when our population increases to the point where new houses are needed.

What could possibly go wrong with that? Nothing.

"Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff."

Frank Zappa
US musician, singer, & songwriter (1940 - 1993)

"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite."

-- John Kenneth Galbraith

Bingo. Both systems involve an elite inner circle that dishes it out while everyone else takes it. The only difference I can see is in the seasoning that is applied to the bullshit.

... that somebody would build a keyboard that doesn't have the windows keys located between the control and the alt keys. I don't use the windows keys very much, and hitting them by accident is a real pain in the butt.

Rush is right to complain about this one, and it isn't 'envy' talking. Chinese fuel subsidies continue to keep demand artificially high in China, and the costs are being born by consumers in countries without subsidies - the US, for instance.

Rush is complaining about the wrong people. The reason the Chinese can afford to do this is because of all the so-called American companies that have sent manufacturing work to China. This is a double whammy because it not only makes things more expensive for Americans, it also leaves Americans with less money to pay for them.

I'd also like to remind Rush that his precious Republicans have been kissing the companies' asses and giving them tax breaks to reward them for draining American's economic lifeblood.