Several people have noted that CA has screwed itself with the anti-democratic Prop 13 (anti-democratic because even when a majority of the people want to raise taxes a minority can stop them). This was an act of generational warfare. The so-called "greatest generation" decided that since their offspring were now out of school there was no longer any reason to pay property taxes to educate the next group of kids. Over the ensuing years they then voted themselves all sorts of additional exemptions to having their own property tax rates reset when they changed houses. Now that this mess is in place, it will take an incredibly skilled politician to undo the damage.

That said, consider this: Californians have been subsidizing the Federal government for many decades. Unlike Southern states, the average Californian pays something like $1.25 in federal taxes for every $1.00 of federal services. In the South, it is more like $1.25 received for every $1.00 paid. Has CitiBank been subsidizing the rest of the country like CA? Aside from the obvious justice in helping out the State that has so generously propped up the other 49 when it has a desperate need, consider what a collapsed CA means for the rest of the country.

And here I thought that his brother's illegal disenfranchisement of 35000 black voters, the illegal butterfly ballots and the questionable halting of the recount (which went on to show that Gore actually won FL) were all rather settled issues demonstrating that Bush did not win in 2000. Also, do we not remember Blackwell, Diebold (and its chairman's promise to deliver Ohio's electoral votes) and the routing of the Ohio voting data through the GOP's servers in TN in 2004? It looks much more like Bush was elected zero times than two times. And let's not forget the uneven distribution of polling booths such that people who live in wealthy neighborhoods have no waiting lines and poor people wait hours to vote. Our elections make those in Cuba look free and fair.

I thought only gay people did weddings these days.

Most of the information of our impending deep doo-doo situation with regards to dwindling oil supplies has been available for decades. In the face of decent, though incomplete, facts and reasonable models what have we done? Exactly what we are doing, which is damn near nothing good. We still use monstrous cars to move our over-large bottoms around town, heat or cool our buildings to 72-75F, use clothes dryers indiscriminately and generally consume like pigs. I sometimes feel that today's youth would have a good case of self-defense for the extermination of their elders when I consider what we have done to the only planet that we know of that can support them.

I don't seem to remember McCain speaking very forcefully about a couple of stolen elections here in the U.S.; in 2000 and 2004 there was abundant evidence of tampering from Jeb's illegal disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of blacks to Blackwell's routing of the vote data through Republican computers in TN. I guess it is only okay for our religious party to steal elections.

It seems to me that what we really need is a funding system that taxes graduates as a percentage of their income rather than based on the cost of their education. Those who use their education to make boatloads of dough will pay more while those who go into low-paying public service jobs pay a pittance. It all balances out like health insurance is supposed to.

You know darned good and well that no cop would ever use a machete on a Republican; they wouldn't want to risk infection with whatever brain-wasting disease causes people to be wingnuts.

"There is a decent possibility that by the end of this year we could see the passage of ... the most significant healthcare reform in generations"

I was around for the beginning of Medicare. What Obama has on the table is nowhere near as significant as what the "Greatest Generation" put in place for themselves in '65. Is 45 years enough to qualify as generations (in which case I may well live through more than a handful of generations) or are you considering the paltry reform package proposed by Obama and the health-industrial complex to be on a par with Medicare and Medicaid?

Face it. We were snookered. I expected bad things out of Reagan and the usurping Bush, but Obama sold us a bill of goods. He's a smart guy, but his cowardice may well doom our nation.

That was the best advice I have ever seen here. Are you sure you're not an eighty-year old man from Modesto who happens to be my uncle? Or maybe a sixty-five year old from Nome who happens to be my other uncle? I ask because they both helped my parents deal with me along similar lines to what you suggest several decades ago. Again, that was a great piece.

How manny Frenchmen does it take to defend Paris? No one knows, it has never been tried.

Would Congress bend to Obama's will? How can we know if he won't try. I actually doubt that he really wants to fix Wall Street. If he did, he wouldn't surround himself with some of its worst actors.

Is this something about some T.V. entertainer?

Maybe what people are really trying to say is that the "stimulus" money keeps going to the wealthy instead of to direct job creation for everyone else. This would lead people to approve of Obama (he is at least trying to do something) but disapprove of his handling of the economy and the deficit spending in its current form.

I think they are missing her kindergarten art projects too. No way she can be confirmed until they are found and handed over.