I've had this exact same conversation almost word for word on my local newspaper website.

Whatever cards they have to play, Republicans play them to the hilt. They have utterly no compunction about being inconsistent. There is no end to the list of principles that they will totally reverse.

They will feel quite differently now about filibusters. And the nuclear option.

When their guy is ahead by a few hundred votes, the right thing to do is for the Democrat to bow out gracefully for the good of the nation. When the situation is reversed, lawsuits galore.

Let's see how they feel now about transparency of the executive branch.

Anyone else?

What makes the whoel cartoon so funny is that it's absolutely true.

BUt it's worse - It's the LEFT that is swooning over Obama's "post partisanship" - and what a smooth savvy guy he is giving a position of honor to this guy.

The left will spend the next few years castigating itself for not being "inclusive" - the right will just rip us to shreds claiming we're intolerant.

We're fucked - and we've fucked ourselves.

This is supposed to be a happy occasion.

Let us not bicker and argue about who killed who.

Just bite his head off, Sparky.

which is one reason why the left can't beat them. Remember that because of the inevitable statistics of the Flying Bell Curve Monster, 49.n% of people are BELOW AVERAGE in any area analysed.

It takes real intelligence to run a nation, but the majority of people are not intelligent. Thus, the people always end up ruled by intelligent but dishonest "leaders" who are willing to lie ot the masses for their own personal gain. This is because the intelligent and honest leaders speak above the majority's head, and the stupid majority therefore reject them as "elitists" because they can't understand.

And the proof is today's NYT op-ed by John Bolton and John Yoo arguing that the new president not get too far ahead of Congress in making treaties (or any other doings) with the rest of the world, AKA without their oversight.

You just can't make this shit up!!

Remember that because of the inevitable statistics of the Flying Bell Curve Monster, 49.n% of people are BELOW AVERAGE in any area analysed.

You may see this as either good news or bad news, but that statement is false. It's a common mistake to confuse average with median, and in fact it is a tactic frequently used by politicians, especially conservatives, to intentionally fudge numbers and create misleading impressions of how many people their financial proposals will benefit.

Considering bell curves, they are almost never perfectly symmetrical and will "lean" to the right or to the left. The majority of the samples in such curves will be either higher than the average value (leaning right) or lower (leaning left), and not a perfect 50-50 split. That's what the median represents: half of the values in a given sample are higher than the median and half are lower, by definition. The median value and average value of a large sample are almost never identical.

As an extreme example, if you take the average income of 1000 people and one of them is Bill Gates, 99.9% will be far below the average.

You might nonetheless be right that most people are stupid, but consider this: most people in this country who voted in November, voted for Obama!

most people in this country who voted in November, voted for Obama!

You were making statistical sense until you posted this. It's very possible that those who voted (for either major candidate or others) fell more in the intelligent side of the "bell curve."

I haven't seen any evidence that those who voted were a true representative sample of the population as a whole.

Using your statement as a guide, it is possible that stupid people voted. McCain's votes had to come from somewhere.

When Harold Carswell's name was suggested for the Supreme Court, the argument was that mediocre people deserved a voice in the Government, too.

Guys, Girls,

I didn't vote for McCain, but it is possible that someone intelligent did vote for him, and it's also possible an idiot voted for Obama. Let's try not to cast aspersions just because someone has a different opinion from us.

There are glaring examples from both parties and all ends of the political spectrum (and there are leftist Republicans as there are conservative Democrats, so let's not make the mistake of thinking that political party is equivalent to the conservative/liberal/populist/libertarian scale, neo- or otherwise) of mistakes having been made past and present. The consequences may have been unintended (but that does not mean they were unforeseeable).

The "point" is that we need strong and non-uniform voices laying out choices and critiquing everything. There is no monopoly on intelligence or foresight. Personally, I prefer having different parties controlling the administration and congress - it leads to better oversight and more balanced approaches.

The GOP has no reason to cooperate and the Dems just want to punish everyone.

When Bush won, democrats, liberals, the left in general weren't into cooperating one iota.

It wasn't until 9-11 that Democrats rolled over and played dead, and then had the unmitigated temerity to stand back and act like they had nothing to do with anything, like phone tapping or torture, which they didn't object to until after the fact.

And if we had been attacked again, that of course would have been Bush's failing as well.

Also false is the notion put fourth that the right is willing to concede that the blame is theirs. Most of what I've been reading is the community reinvestment act is to blame for the meltdown, ACORN, community organizers, ect ect.

I don't hear a chorus of reconciliation from the right. Mostly they're trying to figure out what's what and what the party stands for, which if they could figure it out, would give them a giant one up over the D's who, as far as anyone can tell, stand for absolutely nothing outside of ballsy sliminess.