The amazing thing is that our capacity to provide for our needs will sit idle because there's no way to please the accountants.

... seems to have outrun our ability to understand and control it.

... should have a little talk with the people on Wall Street. Customers might have money to buy the music industry's products if the Wall Street greedheads weren't sending so many good-paying jobs overseas to increase profits.

... that the carnage in Gaza is exactly what Hamas wanted, and that Israel has once again given Hamas what they want by taking the bait.

Military might has limitations. In particular, it doesn't work well unless you are willing to kill everyone on the "enemy" side. Politicians who plan on "limited" use of military power are idiots.

... because it is politically committed to ignoring the problem. Our government is unwilling to confront the trade deficit because too many vested interests are making money on the deficit.

Pumping money into the economy with "stimulus packages" doesn't work because the money soon vanishes overseas, leaving behind only huge increases in federal debt. Creating make-work with infrastructure improvement programs will be of little use unless the new infrastructure somehow reduces imports or increases exports.

If the U.S. has 3% of the world's oil reserves and 25% of the world's oil consumption, attempting to satisfy our needs entirely from domestic reserves will exhaust those reserves ten times as fast as the rest of the world. IOW, if there's enough oil left to keep the world going for another 100 years, the U.S. would exhaust its own reserves in only 10 years.

There are solutions, but sometimes they are ignored by people who have the power to make them work. I'll give an example.

I've been telecommuting for about 10 years. My ten-year-old car has less than 13,000 miles on it. I've saved a LOT of money on gasoline. I think I'm satisfying my employer's needs because I've survived many rounds of brutal headcount reduction. Nonetheless, my employer is making noises about ending all telecommuting and making everyone drive to the office every day because they just don't like telecommuting. Management has never offered any good reasons for this, they just don't like it. I have heard plenty of people at other companies report the same management attitudes.

Communication gets easier, faster and cheaper every day. Physically moving people gets more expensive every day. Why do companies insist on making people travel every day to jobs can be done just as well from home?

Exactly my point. We could save an awful lot of gasoline and reduce traffic on our roads by having more people telecommute, but it's not happening because management can't seem to act in a mature manner.

How many other conservation opportunities are we missing for similarly silly reasons?

Split them all up into pieces that are small enough to be allowed to fail. We can't afford financial institutions that are so big that the government feels compelled to help when they screw up.

... that we didn't have an official swearing-out of Dubya. Did Billy Graham have a prior committment?

I don't know about that. My brand new Lincoln MKZ gets the same mileage as the Ford Model A which was made a hundred years ago.

Maybe that's because Detroit has been offsetting their efficiency improvements by adding tons of expensive crap to their products.

... can it be used to download Firefox?

I agree that tax cuts alone didn't cause the problem. It was the combination of tax cuts and increased spending that did in the federal budget.

So why did Bush insist on tax cuts when he knew damn well he was looking for the slightest excuse to go to war against Iraq?

It seems for more intelligent to instead tax people on what they spend.

Are you sure that's a good idea in our so-called "consumer-driven economy"?

I also have serious doubts that a 25% tax on house sales is going to help the real estate market.

I defy Republicans to go around pretending to be patriotic using those two words instead of "taxes" and "taxpayers."

AFAICT, Republicans are very selective in their use of the word "Patriotic". They only bring it out when it suits their agenda. For example, have you ever heard one of them ask companies to be patriotic by not sending jobs overseas?

The quickest and most direct form of stimulus, the one which lets the market rule and private actors determine the efficiency of the spending, is tax cuts.

We've tried that ever since Reagan, and thirty years of it has gotten us where we are today.

There was a time when giving money to businesses and wealthy people might have helped by creating jobs. That doesn't work anymore because companies are sending jobs overseas as fast as they can. These days, putting more money in the hands of investors only seems to accelerate the exodus of decent jobs.

Remember, people who make minimum wage at Wal-Mart usually can't afford the fancy crap that your patrons would like to sell to them. If you want a vigorous consumer-driven economy, you should start thinking about ways to create decent jobs for Americans.

... until they are made to suffer consequences. They have no shame, so criticizing their behavior is a waste of time.

I'm sure the government could charge them with something if they really wanted to. The fact that this hasn't happened suggests a lack of will on the government's part.

The obvious argument from the banks is that "they need these bonuses to retain the top talent during these complicated times".

The nature of the "interesting times" casts doubt on the existence of talent worth retaining. What was that talent doing while this mess was being created?