A 2,000+ point drop since he took office...that is nothing to be proud of and shows the utter lack in confidence the country has in him in economic matters.

Get real. Obama has barely had time to do anything yet.

IMO, a simpler and more plausible explanation is that a lot of people have lost confidence in Wall Street. Considering the situation we are presently in, I'd say that loss of confidence is entirely justified.

Obama promised that he would fix them and the stock market (which is not a person - rich or otherwise) hates what he has done so far.

I think we got into this pickle by letting Wall Street run the show, so I'm not convinced that Wall Street's disapproval is entirely a bad thing.

BTW, I'm not sure I'd call myself a democrat, but I did vote for Obama and I do own stock. I'd like to see the market go back up again, but not if it's just another one of Wall Street's flash-in-the-pan sprees. I'd rather wait a while for growth that has a solid basis.

"So what caused this recession?" thunders Kent Brandenburg at a Web site called What Is Truth. "Greed. What caused the Great Depression? Greed.”

"Of course, it's very deep rooted," he avers. "Man is depraved and greed is part of it." There’s just one solution: Jesus Christ.

This clown fails to realize that "conservatives" have been using Jesus to sell greed.

... if and how he's going to deal with the elephant in the room: We don't have enough decent jobs in this country to support our lifestyle. The Wall Street greedbags have sent too many good jobs overseas.

Public = Charlie Brown

Wall Street = Nancy

Promise of great gains = Football

Get the picture? We've seen it before.

" ... phony baloney plastic banana goodtime rock and rollers who lie through their teeth and tell people whatever they want to hear -- but they do it so well. You're sick of it because it's destroying the country."

Gee whiz, Rush, it sounds like you're describing yourself, particularly the part about telling people what they want to hear. That's pretty much your entire shtick, isn't it?

....why in this day and age should Salon.com and its readers still give a backwards-flying motherfuck what this porcine junkie neanderthal blowhard has to say about anything?

I think it's for comic relief. It's fun to pick on that festering pustule.

He took so many drugs he almost lost his hearing. That's pretty unbelievable considering how closely related hearing and speaking are crucial to his all important job.

Since when has listening been part of Limbaugh's shtick?

Part-time gig

I believe that the framers of our constitution intended it to be a part-time gig. The language that permits "recess appointments" was included because congress was expected to be out-of-session much of the time.

IMO, congress could probably be a part-time gig if we got rid of the lobbyists.

Then we add penalties for poor performance; some examples: Any time they say something counterfactual when acting in an official capacity, deduct $10K. Any time they receive money or gifts related to their prominence (e.g. extremely valuable book contracts, use of corporate jets), deduct the value from their salary. ...

That's a great idea, and if the penalties are not limited to the base pay we might make a nice dent in the federal debt.

There's a variety of USB/ATA/SATA adapters available that will let you connect ordinary hard drives to USB ports. I have one that I use for getting data from old hard drives. It supports both ATA and SATA drives, and it cost me about $25 at Newegg.

Perhaps he forgot that unemployed workers still get to vote?

I'm sure they'll figure out a way to purge the unemployed people from the registered voter lists in time for the next election. It's the Republican Way.

I've seen first-hand what the "free market" is doing: Businesses are frantically making the problem worse as they try to protect their profits. Jobs are getting sent overseas or eliminated, pay and benefits are getting cut, businesses are delaying payment of their bills, you name it. They're doing everything they can to help themselves, regardless of how much harm it does to the country. They're in a race to the bottom, and as Mr. Leonard observed yesterday, nobody knows just how far down the bottom is.

I'm happy that president Obama is trying to do something, rather than listening to the assholes who created this mess and waiting for it to get better by itself. It ain't gonna get better by itself, and the so-called "free market" ain't doing anything to help, either.

One cannot create Socialist Workers' Paradise(TM) by taxing the hell out of the most successful people in a society.

It sure looks like a lot of our "most successful" people are parasites who are good at gaming the system. This has made them very wealthy, but has done nothing to improve the condition of our country. Some of the parasites have done a lot of damage to accumulate their wealth. I don't see why we should encourage this kind of behavior.

You seem to be arguing that we should revert to a feudal society where everyone who isn't privileged is basically "owned" by someone who is.

Greenhouse gas emissions and climate change are now the least of our worries.

Perhaps, but cleaning up our polluters might help create something we really need right now: Jobs that cannot easily be outsourced overseas.