Republican Christians pick and choose too. I mean, they sure do love themselves some pork BBQ, shrimp cocktail, unbridled greed, and divorce.

As much as I sympathize with your frustration at the seeming inconsistencies of cafeteria Christians, I can't think of a single religious person I know, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, or Wiccan who doesn't pick and choose. The more interesting and important question to me is what they pick & choose and why, and most important of all, how it affects me and how I want to live my life.

It's all very well to post inane rhetorical question here, but you really think it's at all persuasive to hide your points in the form of passive-aggressive questions rather than just stating flat out what you really think and why? Do you really even care, or are you just using this forum as a platform for your own fake questions, all of which assume the answers you're pretending to seek? Is there really any answer that will make you stop and reflect on your views rather than merely react from your preset opinions? Will you still be throwing out straw-man scenarios when Glenn has addressed your pseudo-questions in good faith, or will his answers be ignored just like his original points in his original posts were ignored as if they didn't exist because to honestly engage Glenn would force you to reconsider your most deeply held illusions and that thought of that scares you, just as all the people who who protested and wrote about and marched against abortion rights because they claim that abortion is murder didn't care that George W. Bush did absolutely nothing to stop the millions of "murders" happening in this country because he was a Republican?

Why are you surprised by people who are surprised? They're in here every day exclaiming their surprisedness! ;)

Should have read something like:

@ PDA

Why are you so surprised by the the people who ask Glenn why he's so surprise... etc. etc.

...that questions of fairness are moot at this point. However unwise my neighbors may have been in accepting their loans - and however wise we were to get a low-interest, fixed-rate loan - it's in our self interest to prevent empty, foreclosed homes from blighting our (urban) neighborhood.

We've an abandoned home one street over - it's been empty for close to two years and that whole time has had a hole in the roof. The bank or whoever owns it can't be bothered to fix it or maintain the yard. Furthermore, there are several rented homes in our neighborhood which are also poorly kept up because the owners don't live there and the renters don't own it. (I've nothing against renters. They have little stake in making improvements on property they don't own. It's the landlords and banks that are shirking their responsibilities to the neighborhood.)

It's not even a property value thing for us. It's simply about having a nice, livable community, and keeping people in their houses is key to that.

I understand that compromise can be politically pragmatic, but it's not necessarily practically pragmatic.

Economists such as Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz have argued that the current stimulus plan, however politically pragmatic it seems, is practically useless or worse - a half-step that will waste money and increase our debt without enough of a stimulating effect to get the economy growing again. Basically, they argue that the only thing worse than doing nothing is doing too little.

If one accepts this criticism and if the purpose of pragmatism is to help one achieve certain goals, how is it at all pragmatic to make a compromises that make achieving those goals impossible?