It's a common, very human, psychological phenomenon which comes into play when the person who talks constantly, (but is at some deeper level uncomfortable with how much they, themselves, talk) accuses someone else of talking too much, or where the person who's a bit overweight (or fears they might be now, or might be on the way to becoming so) comments critically or sarcastically about someone they perceive to be "fat." The man who is worried about his own masculinity is often critical and even abusive toward those other men whom he perceives to be softer and weaker than he (and of course, toward women in general).

Projection is essentially part of a collection of psychological dodges used unconsciously by those who aren't choosing to or who, despite considerable effort, are unable to live up to what they proclaim to be their own standards of behavior and appearance.

Most of our neocon friends have definite dictatorial/fascist tendencies brought about by their frustration at being unable to convince the rest of the public of the wisdom of their policies and their worldview (born as they are of psychological dysfunction), but those dictatorial/fascist tendencies run counter to their own most cherished beliefs so they work diligently to ignore those tendencies in themselves (even as they express them in their policies) and project everything they're doing that runs counter to their beliefs onto others whom they then bitterly accuse of being what they, themselves, clearly are.

Good counseling might help them a great deal, but then again, they usually take counseling to be a sign of weakness, so, no matter how miserable and angry they are as the result of their dysfunctions they will continue to try to build a world wherein all of us can be as miserable as they, themselves, are, and in exactly the same ways. This makes them a bit dangerous.

To all the Neocon trolls out there: unless you're prepared to proceed to the nearest military recruiting office and enlist in the military in order to be ready to go to Iran and fight to overthrow the Guardian Council and the Ayatollah, AND have your taxes raised substantially to pay down the debt for the Iraq war and pay the expenses of the new war you seem to desire so strongly, might I humbly suggest you keep your hypocritical thoughts to yourself.

As long as it's THEIR unitary executive (read dictator). Personally, I prefer Democracy, even if making laws continues to be like making sausage. That's the way it works when it's working properly.

As to Obama trying to include the Republicans, he's only letting them take enough rope to hang themselves with in the fall of 2010. If he were to take them on directly in the way some in this comment section would like him to do, he would only be feeding them and Rubaugh, Hannity, O'Reily, Beck, et al, massive amounts of ammunition with which they would rally their followers, likely to even more violent acts against who knows who?

If all of us were expecting a single president to accomplish exactly what we ourselves would accomplish if we were made the king or queen of the world, we were deluding ourselves from the very beginning. Let's try a bit of reality for a change and remember that the government does not accomplish things by the 12-hour news cycle. It's usually more like the 12-month news cycle.

If you want to have an impact, find a way to influence those who are standing the in the way of Obama accomplishing what you want him to accomplish. If you can't round up enough friends to change THEM, how do you expect him to do so?

The "Bully Pulpit" is, after all, only a pulpit. How often to you go out and do exactly what your pastor/minister/priest/rabbi/imam/shaman advises each week?

They're just admitting it (finally).

If there's an analyst out there who uses constant polling and understands the "tipping points" in chaos theory, i.e. is doing more than pulling numbers out of his or her a_s to explain what's going on, I've yet to see it. They need to be polling the bankers to see if they've crawled out form under their beds yet.

What's happening, now is that the economy has very little motion in any direction. That being the case, EVERY little blip of statistical information becomes a tipping point in which perceptions and behavior change radically. This can happen two or three times a day.

Added together, all these changes make for very erratic market/financial behavior. This will continue until some overriding sense develops that there's a reason for things to move forward or a reason for things to go backward.

I'm convinced that the leaders of our national financial institutions have been so badly burned by their own collective shortsighted, stupid, illogical behavior, that they're shy of taking any risks at all, right now.

I'm equally convinced that new ideas, new products, new research are all out there waiting to be funded until they become profit-making ventures. The real tipping point will be when the financial folks stop trying to figure out how to hang onto what they've got, personally and corporately, and start funding new possibilities.

Of course it would also help if they began actually investing in productive activities that create jobs instead of continuing to do what they've done for the past thirty years: trying to find new ways to make money playing games with other people's money.