I remember the Thomas hearings quite well, watching every minute from bed with a bad back. If Biden had, as Skylark suggests, hung Anita Hill out there, not allowing any witnesses who would back her up, I'd be seconding Skylark's emotion.

But other witnesses did back up a pattern of behavior that should have killed the nomination, and the public knew about it the next day.

Angela Wright, told the Senate Judiciary Committee behind closed doors that Thomas had repeatedly made similar comments to her, and was basically a creepy pig.

While Biden, chair of the Judiciary Committee, decided against publicly hearing Wright's testimony, it was in the papers the next day. Remember, the issue was whether Hill's testimony was credible, and her testimony was so explosive, having others testify about lesser acts of conduct ranging from the boorish to the improper, only diminished the impact of Hill's testimony.

And there were others who said that Thomas was unfit, by his behavior, including a District Court judge. And every member of the Senate was aware of it. I'm not sure that Biden's strategy was wrong, or that more testimony of the type Hill made would have switched any votes.

As the guy who wrote Violence Against Women Act, I think Biden gets it. And I think he got it then, struggling to juggle allowing explosive testimony with the limits he could get out of the Committee.

But if we disagree over how the Thomas hearings were handled, certainly we can agree that Biden was wonderful during the Bork hearings, and dropped him in the trick bag pretty well.

Not to worry. Palin will implode by October. She's not ready for prime time.

When I first heard this on CNN this morning, I said to myself, "Self, he didn't really say that, did he?"

Imagine, in only in the eighth year of his presidency, the President learns there is interdependence on our economy.

"My first instinct was to let the market work until I realized, upon being briefed by the experts, of how significant this problem became....... It turns out that there's a lot of interlinks throughout the financial system. The system had grown to a point where a lot of people were dependent upon each other, and that the collapse of one part of the system wouldn't just affect a part of the financial markets; it would affect the average citizen -- and how."

George Bush, September 20, 2008- on the bailout proposal

My God, that explains it. Now we know how we got into this mess. This is a "Eureka!!" moment.

George Bush skipped the first month of Microeconomics at Yale in the fall of 1964.

Now, 44 years later, after having spent a half-trillion dollars on a war without requiring anyone to pay for it, and advocating the "Opportunity Society," in which anyone could get a loan to buy a house worth 8 times their annual income, a really nice big pink house, loans first written by guys who two years earlier were slapping mashed potatoes on plastic plates at a KFC, advertising by putting up a posters on telephone poles-- Buy a House - Call 800-555-5555--, and convincing customers that for $799 dollars they could get a mortgage with a monthly payment of $39.95 for three years and by then they'd be in better shape from all the money they were saving, but they had to sign here at the x, by Thursday, and 'oops oh, yeah, I guess a mistake was made and there's an extra digit at the end of your annual income on this sheet of paper but we'll have to fix it later, and yup, if the appraiser says the ranch you're buying is worth twice what you're paying for it than it must be so, and that's good cause you're already ahead of the game', and those mortgages were then pitched to mortgage companies located in storefronts that double as an H&R Block during tax season, and then within thirty days that paper was bundled up with hundreds of others, wrapped with a bow, and sold to a big bank, and no one ever said, "wait a minute, this is too damn easy," because the stockholders want to hit quarterly profit projections, or else, so let's, all of us, close our eyes and pretend this is all on the up and up, and that someone really did go out and look at the house and look at that guys 1040.

So yeah, Mr. President, thank goodness you have 'experts' who essentially told you that "parts is parts, fused."

So who's gonna pay for your hangover, Mr. President? And let's cut taxes while we're at it?

Let's continue, in the words of Chris Dodd, to privatize wealth, and socialize debt. We'll all be better for it, right Mr. President.

And the next time you hear one of those cranks say that Barney Frank is a soandso, remind them that Barney voted against repealing Glass-Steagall 2, which is, IMHO, what started us down this road.

As for me, I'm taking the Chargers and the Over.

You touched 'em all Bill E. But, what do you mean Obama's Black? I thought he was a Muslim,Socialist from Kenya who once dated Paris Hilton (or was it 'Lil Kim).