As a Jew, I find this deeply insulting. Are you accusing us, as a people, of being unable to accept someone merely because of the religion of his father?

According to the conservative playbook, that's exactly what you are supposed to do. To them, you are not people with feelings or judgement, you are just things that are expected to react to stimuli in the predicted manner.

The logic behind this statement is simple: If you don't support Republican positions, then you aren't a person and your opinion doesn't count. Republicans try to realize this policy by conducting purges of voter registration lists just before each election.

He appears to be a real military-type Admiral:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/02/20070227-3.html

"President George W. Bush today announced two key appointments to the Executive Residence staff, naming Rear Admiral Stephen W. Rochon as Director of the Executive Residence and Chief Usher and Dennis Freemyer as Deputy Director of the Executive Residence and Deputy Chief Usher.

Admiral Rochon will be the eighth Chief Usher of the White House.

Admiral Rochon will serve his last day on active duty with the Coast Guard on March 9, and begin his service at the White House on March 12. Admiral Rochon succeeds Gary Walters, who retired in January 2007 after 20 years as White House Chief Usher. ..."

Why does our government spend so much time, effort and money on a hopeless effort to completely eliminate the threat of terrorist attacks, but deliberately ignore environmental threats that hurt more people than terrorists ever could?

Pro-Life and Family Values, indeed. It's all a pile of crap.

I think "Pro-life" is one of those deliberately misleading names that was chosen for P.R. value. In my experience, pro-lifers don't really give a rat's ass about life. All they really care about is making sure that anyone who has sex has to pay for their pleasure with 20 years of their life spent raising a child.

... is that they are so deeply committed to their dogma that they can't even conceive of the possibility that it might be wrong. They will continue to believe that their policies are infallibly correct, and that they lost the election only because they didn't package their product properly. The difficulty is that voters now seem to realize that the product itself sucks, no matter how it's packaged.

When do we get jackbooted thugs kicking doors in and confiscating Bratz products from screaming children?

... that the other rightwingnuts will listen to Barone's remarks and go apeshit at the "liberal media" for something that they never did.

60 is meaningless when there are so many "blue dog" Democrats who vote with the Republicans.

The menu for "the dinner in honor of the summit on financial markets and the world economy" wasn't thought out very well

On the contrary. I think it perfectly illustrates the administration's attitude. Perhaps next Mrs. Bush will announce her plan to solve world hunger: Let them eat cake!

... if the Republicans still want her after they figure out what they want to be going forward.

Oh please, oh please let there be an interviewer who will question her about these points on nationwide T.V.

She Who Must Not Be Elected will pay for it.

More likely she'll make the State of Alaska pay for it, or maybe get somebody else to foot the bill. It's a pretty safe bet it won't be her own money.

... to get Obama to fly off the handle and do the kinds of irrational things they got Bush to do.

Republicans and fundamentalists are natural partners: Both depend on people believing wild promises that nobody has even seen fulfilled.

The American automobile industry is like a patient who's bleeding to death -- yes, it may be obvious he needs transfusions to stay alive, but is it sensible to do NOTHING but give him pint after pint, when nothing is actually being done to STOP THE BLEEDING?

I think the same can be said of the entire country. We bleed about $60 billion every month because of our trade deficit. Pumping money into the economy with "stimulus packages" is a waste of time because all of it quickly vanishes overseas.

... demanding their release from the government's business-killing regulations.

Yeah, just like the finance industry did ...

Call it TARP fallout...

I think TARP set new records for:

1) Speed with which execution deviated from what congress approved.

2) Lack of transparency

3) Failure to produce desired result

4) Speed with which (3) was recognized

I can't blame congress for having cold feet about another bailout.

We know about elastic vs. inelastic demand, but can supply be described in the same terms? Is oil supply as inelastic as demand?

It would appear that oil-producing countries are over the same kind of barrel as their customers: They need the money so badly that they'll produce at the maximum possible rate regardless of price.

...Apparently the election was supposed to be passing judgement on the GOP alone--are we or are we not as right-wing as we should be ...

Maybe the GOP should write this country off as a hopeless failure and go peddle their dogma someplace else.

America's economic future is not automotive engineering, it is financial engineering ...

I think that's the first time you've said something that left me flabbergasted. If anything, the incredible mess we are in suggests that we a singularly inept at financial engineering.

I'd love to know how you think we can peddle financial engineering after we've screwed things up so badly.

. . . how do people get so hard of thinking ?

I think the basic problem is a profound inability to conceive even the possibility that anyone might want anything different than they do.