He's certainly no pea picker like Smith.

He's actually a pretty good senator on a lot of fronts. Not really splashy, but slowly building seniority and working on his long time interests in senior issues, and yes, health care. He actually had a couple of fairly decent proposals out there. I do like Merkley more, but then, he hasn't really been there long enough yet to tell how he's going to turn out. Both of them are typical, middle of road, Orygon Slog Dems.

Oh... and yeah... we may be third world here, but we have the best beer, some of the best music, and oh yeah... there's that beautiful coast line... or the gorge... or....

I found a couple places in Idaho that I really love. The Payette River is just about the prettiest, little river in the whole northwest, and the both the Sawtooth and River of no return wilderness areas are stunning. Even the rednecks are getting tamer over the years. You also have a lot of fantastic hot springs, many of them in that area.

And if Bama ends up signing this abortion, I will refuse to vote for any Democrat ever again. It's pointless. Why give these Republican lite dreck smears any support at all? What friggin' difference did it make to court the corporate fascists like this? I'll just bury my head in the sand and forget all about politics. The last eight months have ended up being more frustrating to me than the previous eight years were. At least I expected Bush to screw everything and everybody except his rich patrons.

This country is ungovernable. At least by rational, fact based people.

To hell with it......

You lost, buddy?

Say... is that a gun in your pocket, or just a crack pipe?

is ruled by a queen and her family.

maybe it's something Oedipal that makes the poor laddie so fearful?

Let's have a figurehead monarchy... only Republicans can be "lords and ladies", but that's ALL they can be: toothless, powerless, figureheads.

Problem solved. And we won't have to invest in feeding them in the camps.

Between "conservative" and progressive activists is that the former will support what they're told to support, and the latter want to see actual, measurable progress.

Cheerleading and simplistic chants work well for the red meat crowd, but fall flat with the reality based community that is the core base of the Democratic Party and the people who elected this man. If you can't deliver anything but this lobbyist screwed pooch, then don't hold your breath waiting for this progressive to come to your aid.

Why can't we just copy success (i.e., Canada, or US Medicare for seniors) rather than creating a new incredibly complex system that no one understands?

Because the lobbyists wouldn't like it.... The businesses in charge of bilking the country for their health care wouldn't be able to make enough money to pay their CEOs those multi million dollar "salaries"... AND because the shameless hacks who make up too much of the smoke and mirror "majority" that the Democrats have on paper would get cut off from the gravy train.

of her in her underpants, Carrie isn't even really a blonde at all!

Fake boobs, fake hair, fake religion, fake opinion....

fake....

Some of the writers here make the mistake of projecting. Many of us on the left have been working our entire adult lives on progressive issues in general and bringing sane health care policies - i.e. SINGLE PAYER - to this country. Those of us long in this fight realize that it's all process and no conclusion, per se. Many, many of us - including myself - are simply fed up at this abomination that Mr. Insurance Money Baucus has puked out. It's NO incredmental improvement; it's a bald faced, cynical attempt to PRETEND to "reform" the unfixable private insurance company rip off by giving that very industry everything it could dream of having. It's ten steps backward and no steps forward.

So... NO.... you "collective responsibility" folks, trying to blame progressive activists for the massive fail to deliver ANY leadership on this is just plain factually wrong.

Will do ANYTHING to keep his name in the news. He wants the presidency so bad it's embarrassing.... almost worse than his inflated sense of being entitled to it. Hopefully, between his preening presence and that of Bible Spice, all the air will be sucked out any room that prospective challengers to Obama enter. If there's any room left, Huckabee's there, stepping into the breech to insure defeat for the Neo Monarchists of the Republican party.

...snd the Drug War black market would look like a kid's lemonade stand by comparison

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

This stuff writes itself.

Is the best birthday possible for a man. I get the "birthday boy" attention, complete with numerous cooing females clucking over "momma's valentine", AND I don't have to make a big official production of Valentine's Day for my sweetie, because, damn it, it's MY birthday!

At least theoretically.

And... WTF? Isn't this the "age of Aquarius" anyway...??? whatever happened to that?

Don't even bother with guns.

We have a problem with somebody... we just "put a man on it"...

guns are for grunts not gumbahs.