Never has a body of American voters been screwed and betrayed like the people who voted for Obama.

He was either a stealth plant or an ambitious and incompetent liar. Maybe both.

Bush was a creep and a rat. But you expected that from that Family and that party.

Obama did us worse by giving false hope to millions of Americans who had been disenfranchised for years. He killed whatever hope they and I will ever have for the future of this country.

I live part of the year in the rural mid Atlantic South. Prior to the election in 2008, I was stunned to hear very traditional folks willing to give Obama a try. They won't do it again. Guaranteed.

He coulda been a new generation of leadership software, but he turned out to be just the next version of the same old virus.

Agore,

If you really think the Third World initiated this cycle of violence against innocent people trying to live a simple life in peace, then why are your soldiers occupying Iraq, who had nothing to do with the terrorist assaults of 9/11?

I don't want you to feel guilt. I want you to understand that your failure to control your country has consequences for you in particular. Once again, what you reap, you sow.

For you to advocate anonymous killing by an unmanned drone where you don't risk any harm puts you at the bottom of the inhuman shitbin, right below those who kill knowing they will be killed as well.

Your guilt or lack thereof means about as much to me as you do.

"Geithner, contrary to popular belief, didn't have the powers of a bankruptcy court."

Geithner instead stood in the way and protected the insolvent parties from a bankruptcy court where this matter should, under our system of laws, have been settled.

Oh, yeah, the sky was falling a la Lehman Bros. all over again.

Bee Ess!

The pieces would have re-assembled, the sun would have risen and the rats would have been run out of the pantry except that Tim Geithner, already culpable for his non-performance of his duties policing for the Fed, was the weakest willy in the room. He would have peed in his pants rather than confront Henry Paulson and the CEO of Goldman Sachs.

This is a classic case of where multiple Public Officials, who had sworn an oath to protect this country, instead helped to usher out our democracy.

Hang 'em High!

The Mumbai attack was an example of the Third World's version of attack drone aircraft that rain down indiscriminate death on civilians in Pakistan and elsewhere.

Rather like the hijackers with box cutters were like the Third World version of Cruise Missile Shock and Awe.

We reap what we sow.

Only they do it a lot cheaper.

Since this thread has again migrated to GK's past opinion that we forgive torture and those who authorized it and move on, I'll throw in my two cents:

I was also taken aback by that column and wondered what logic or principles it followed. Having followed GK for years, I must conclude that it was a flawed application of Midwest pragmatism and Christian forgiveness.

If we choose to judge, may we do so based upon deeds:

He has long entertained a nation with a peaceful mix of self-depracating humor, traditional music and sharp wit. His shows invariably take us back to a time when we were productive, caring, spiritual, neighborly and unafraid.

He can reasonably be accused of naivete' and faulty logic, but an accessory to torture?! No.

Re: Afghanistan: We are up to all our Evil in this faraway country, from killing hundreds of prisoners of war by closing them up in storage containers on the desert to the torture and murder you know is ongoing at Bagram.

The Taliban's greatest threat to Shadowy Power-That-Is and the CIA was their campaign against the opium trade. Amerikan Treachery Inc. was not gonna put up with that.

May I reach back?

Chinese workers living underground in ice caves chip and blast their way through miles of solid granite of the Sierra Nevada then sprint their way across the Nevada salt flats and desert, meeting the Union Pacific crews in Utah to join and complete the 2000 mile transcontinental railway.

18 kilometers of track to Mecca? Yawn.

I admit that I am a conflicted happy/sad soul with the "Old Grumbler" on one shoulder and Garrison on the other. Alternating throughout my day, one or the other wins out with their version of truth and reality, for they are both right.

The past is a cache of memories both golden-sweet and heart-aching. The present is both the rich aroma of good coffee and the utter exhaustion of headlights in the grain fields. The future is both the twinkle of my new grandson's eyes and the foreclosure man at my door.

Ahhhhhh, IKEA.

What bad can you say of a firm that has reversed the flow of jobs to China? Instead of hiring Third World workers to assemble their stuff, they have hired you and will pay you with the discounted price of their stuff. It makes my (part) Swedish heart swell with pride!

My first encounter with IKEA occurred when we were finishing off a cottage that my married kids would be living in. We could hardly afford expensive kitchen counters, cabinets and appliances. So we turned to IKEA. Then arrived the kitchen in countless flat boxes. As I knashed my teeth over how I'd been swindled, my kids began patiently assembling. Before you knew it, a complete birchwood kitchen materialized. I thought to myself, wait until all this cheap stuff falls apart. But that IKEA kitchen is now ten years old, with no deterioration and the birchwood surfaces have taken on a rich gold patina that everyone remarks about.

And I must confess that my wife and I sometimes slip off to IKEA for a romantic working peoples' breakfast.

If only the Goldman Sachs Billionaires could enjoy such luxury.....