You write "I do peddle absolutes" and then complain that others are engaging in "anti-intellectualism"?

I hardly know where to start.

Yes, the recent government interventions were a departure from our extreme-free-market MO. George Bush has said repeatedly that it pained him to authorize the bailouts because it goes against his philosophy of free market economics. It's that philosophy I'm referring to, not what's happened in the last few months. Which was necessary because of the utter and total failure of that philosophy. It's odd how some of you want to forget this so quickly.

Your straw man argument is here:

Only the biggets neocon dolt would argue that murder, bullets, bombs and blood can create wealth. The destruction of life and property never increases aggregate prosperity.

This was your response to the idea (from Sirota, Krugman, and me) that government spending helps alleviate a deep recession or a depression. In particular, my point that even those who now claim that the New Deal didn't work almost always cite WWII as the "real" reason that things finally turned around, which contradicts their argument entirely since WWII had the effect it did precisely because of its massive government spending.

The straw man argument is to suggest that therefore I'm proposing war as a solution. I'm not. It wasn't my point. If you can't actually see what the point was, then I'd be careful in that case about ridiculing the "intellectualism" of others.

Your assumption that anyone who disagrees with Higgs therefore hasn't read or listened to him is another mistake, but it's perfectly in keeping with your notion that absolutes are the way to see the world. Pure good and pure evil, huh? Nothing in between. So in that case, either someone agrees with Higgs, or obviously they haven't read him. Either they agree with you, or they're deluded.

We're all familiar with that attitude, we've just lived through eight years of it at the very top. Spare me, please.

"This whole notion that somehow I exceeded my authority here, was usurping his authority, is simply not true. It's an urban legend, never happened."

What you have to realize is that in Cheney's view of things, in which Bush was the Emperor of the Universe, with dictatorial powers to do whatever the heck he wanted, then Cheney's role, as despotic ruler belonging to no particular branch of government and only empowered to authorize leaks, wiretaps, and carry out secret political campaigns to reveal the identity of CIA agents who crossed him, was only a secondary role to Emperor Bush and Cheney didn't overstep his boundaries at all.

If you just listen to Fox like Cheney does it all makes sense, foolish Earthlings.

So Cheney goes off into the horizon, another urban legend, sort of like Bigfoot. Some day people will swear they actually have photos of him, but others will claim that they're clearly faked, nothing that ridiculous could have actually been elected and put in the White House.

I find it hard to imagine that Obama and Reid would have reversed their principled anti-Blagojevich stand to back a vaguely qualified but mediocre white cadidate.

So the Democrats in the White House and the Senate would refuse to seat the person who the Governor of Illinois appointed?

On what grounds?

This whole thing has been a ridiculous mess, but not entirely because of Blagojevich. The accusations by Fitzgerald are not even an indictment, and an indictment is not a conviction. I realize that its mostly right wingers who point this out, from purely political motives, but in fact, as Obama has made clear, it's true. The idea that anyone who's even accused of wrongdoing-- before he's convicted, before he's even indicted-- is assumed to be guilty and stripped of all rights and his office, this is frankly absurd and something Democrats would scream bloody murder about were it being called for BY Republicans against another Democrat.

People in Illinois seem to be the most vocal about this, saying oh come on, he's obviously a crook and so on. However it simply doesn't work that way, and Reid's initial bluster about refusing to seat a perfectly legal appointee was as stupid as his wishy washy reversal of himself.

The main lesson of this whole thing is that no one is beyond political opportunism, not Blagojovich clearly, but also not Ried, nor the Editor of Salon. Calling for barring a legal appointment with no particular standing for such a move is pure political hypocrisy, and Reid walked right into a trap and was made, once again, to look weak.

"Once, comic books were against Nazis and Hitler and were very up front in supporting America’s fight against them. But those days are over. Both DC and Marvel Comics long ago embraced left-wing politics..."

So the left wing was against fighting the Nazis?

Actually, the main faction working vocally against entering WWII was a right wing group called "America First".

Ah, wingnuts, is there anything you can't just make up?

to the list of those "slapping around " Obama, because his piece online at this same site right now takes Krugman even further.

Salon has become a two-stop place for me mostly, Greenwald and Tom Tomorrow. The rest is either middle-of-the-road-hugging establishment media echo chamber fare like this piece, or inane sensational tabloid fodder focusing on who said what on the latest edition of some equally meaningless "political" show on cable with a name like "Hardball". I fully expect World Wrestling reviews to join the soap opera articles any day now.