As I've said before; our political system is not capable of dealing with long term complex issues. Between entrenched special interests that fight to maintain the status quo, a legislative branch beholden to those interests, a political culture that only looks as far as the next election cycle, a fundamentally broken news media, an ignorant misinformed and unengaged electorate and a host of other problems it will be miracle if US makes to the half century mark as anything other than third rate power with most of its citizens living in abject poverty trying to get buy with crumbling infrastructure and a collapsing environment.

Over the past twenty years or so.

Wages shrink, debt goes up, income disparity widens and the US sinks lower and lower into the abyss. An economy based on 'services' that does not produce anything tangible can not sustain itself over the long term.

A huge percentage of GDP 'growth' over the last decade has been in the financial industry. That's recently been revealed as little more than illusion. Little more than ever larger bets made against ever smaller real assets ($100k piece of land underwriting $10 million in 'derivatives').

Such as system does not generate wealth. It concentrates it in ever smaller pools.

Unless Obama, Reid and the rest of the Democrats get their act together in the next couple of weeks healthcare reform is going to die. The public option is pretty much dead in the water at this point and the reminder of the bill is on life support.

No Republican is going to vote for ANY bill and far too many Dems have voice opposition to key provisions. Public sentiment has turned away from health reform (thanks in no small part to the all the fearmongering and lies).

Control of the White House, overwhelming control of the House and 60 seats in the Senate and the Democrats prove that they are incapable of accomplishing anything. The Republican machine has run rings around them across the board and they pretty just stood their and took it and many joined in the fun.

I've said a few weeks ago that I believe in the Democrat's polices. I just don't believe the Democrats ability to make those policies happen.

Building those cloning labs under Walt Disney World and cultivating the cells of Annette Funicello was BRILLIANT.

The parallels to the Clinton years are starting to get scary. The difference is how fast the right has become completely unhinged. Fox was bad but they never had anybody as nuts as Beck prancing around in the 90s. I really believe we're looking at another Ok bombing in the next 12-16 months.

As for the audience numbers ...

Fox's ratings are always their highest when they get to play 'voice of the opposition'. Just like MSNBC went up when they played up opposition to Bush.

There was money in the February stimulus bill to help homeowners improve energy efficiency. It was cut down a lot by Republicans and Blue-Dog Dems but it is there Among other things there is up to $1,500 to replace old windows.

Having actually seen the pilot for Vampire Diaries at Comic-Con (I had to sit through it to get the Mythbusters panel that followed) I can say that it pretty much lives up to its rep as a low rent version of Twilight (yes I know these books came first, the producers and stars stressed A LOT during the panel that followed the pilot).

It's terribly cliched. The dialogue while not bad is just bland and predictable. It was fairly easy to see how most of the scenese were going to progess (or look girl wondering off alone in woods, I hope nothing bad happens). The actor playing Stefan is flat and has little charisma, which makes all the shots of high school girls drooling as passes them by a lot funnier than they are intended. Nina Dobrov is passable in her role.

It hits all the usual plot points; vampire fighting urge to chow down on girl at first sight of blood, awkward first meeting, jealous ex and deep/emo girl tripe (she's writes in her diary while hanging out in a cemetary next to her parents graves, how deep).

The show desperately needs a sense of humor. It's trying sooo hard to be earnest and deep that it ends up falling flat and wondering over into melodrama and not good melodrama. If it had at least made the effort to acknowledge its own cliches, poke a little fun at itself that would have gone a long way towards making it more watchable.

By the end of the his life William Buckley had all but disavowed the movement he helped to create. He rejected much of the neo-com view of the world. He denounced the anti-intellectual elements of the Christian Right. Buckley was a firm believer that true conservative ideas could stand up to liberal ideas in a fair honest debate. He avoided hyperbole and appeals to base fears. While I disagreed with much of what Buckley stood for I always respected his intelligence and willingness to debate with the best the Left had to offer. He rarely shied away from real debate about issues.

In todays world he would not be accepted as a mainstream leader of the party. Todays Republicans reject honest debate. They have fully embraced the anti-intellectualism of the Christian Right. Mainstream party leaders prefer fearmongering to teaching and open dialogue.

Is it any wonder that many of Buckley's intellectual heirs (and his own son) ended up endorsing Obama for President. Had he been alive I'm almost positive William Buckley would have endorsed Obama as well.