I applaud these two giants rising as I would T-Rex after a shortage of teeth.

Voters: it's our country, our assets they're gobbling up. Break 'em Dano.

You're so right - Carter is Christian decency at its best. It's so strange to see faux-Christians like Ann Coulter and the like railing against the ONLY president in our lifetime who is at all close to the true Christian model. You'd think the religious right could put up a candidate with half the decency of Carter.............but, uh, no.

In years to come, the most generous thing W will have done for the world is vacating the premises.

At least in Southern California, a very large percentage of the economy is tied into the construction industry. Almost ALL of the people here hurting most are in that industry - contractors, subs, suppliers, designers, home stores, etc. Any surge in the housing market will have a direct affect on that portion of the economy, and not a nano-second too soon. People are waiting with bated breath for that sort of news.

Other industries - film - are hit hard too, but tend to have more resources set aside (are higher paid) than construction workers. Academic employers seem not affected at all, or very little (although the state's near bankruptcy is starting to hit them hard too).

The construction industry here was one of the first to be affected precisely 1 1/2 years ago, when banks stopped lending, and when politicians and pundits (geez, I hates pundits to pieces) were still trying to spin the economic news.

what naysayers! 85% of Americans are solidly in favor of health re-form - and this was NOT the case the last time health care came around in the 90's. Congress is an alternate reality, for sure, but no one can hide from those numbers much longer. Not Congress persons, not even cranks.

That's the first thing you've said that I agree with 100%. Well put.

what a great job he did with that voice, those thoughts and ideas. What a GREAT speech. He's got the floor with black America, and he's using it well. All the white (or other) armchair quarterbacks here are free to listen and get uplifted too.

(Reality check: he didn't tell his audience to go home and sit in the dark, or to blame you.)

Wow - massive bankruptcy as a tool for for down-sizing. Isn't that what we're doing right now? And compared to salaries earned on Wall Street for produding NOTHING, I can't imagine a more productive "production" than supplying homes for people moving somewhere, say like Southern California. The vast majority of those houses are occupied you know - by real people, not abstractions.

Of course densification would be incredibly welcome, and the downturn will inevitably reinforce that (sprawl is unsustainable), but armchair solutions like everybody-but-thou going under seem a bit harsh. But perhaps you're right.

Meanwhile, can we all come over and live at your house?

I'm sorry - I read your post and I don't understand what you're talking about.

I posted originally in response to someone who didn't think the downturn of the housing market could affect job losses, as opposed to the reverse, that job losses cause a housing downturn. It's a bit of a moot point, but in S. Cal. it's a very real occurrence - I watched it happen. Collapsing markets, construction stopped, jobs lost. Other areas may be different, I don't know, but them's the facts.

I don't agree with you that massive bankruptcy is a solution for ANYONE. I agree it may happen, but it's to be resisted. That seems to me the humane way to go forward.

However I don't know how we get from there to millions of Iraqis dead. I don't think you'll find anyone here more incensed by the disastrous and illegal war Bush/Cheney foisted on us. It's a resource war, as you suggest - one of choice, and completely avoidable. There are always other ways.

We will downsize as a country - that's inevitable - but it will happen incrementally, hopefully, just as our national appetite grew incrementally. It's happening already, and our best efforts are essentially to manage the pain.

Suggesting massive disaster as a silver lining seems more like a sport than a solution.

Mistaken identity: I'm not the poster boy for more housing in S. Cal. - I'm saying that it's far too easy to blithely claim that massive bankruptcies are a good thing, than to notice that real people are affected. There but for the grace of God go you.

Of course blocks are empty - many were filled with workers who have split. And there were plenty of what seemed like unnecessary speculative developments, but before the downturn they didn't sit empty for long. Go figure. Many of those gone won't come back. It's neither a disease nor a cure.

The topic was 15% unemployment (some say it's closer to 20% in S. Cal, depending on how you measure it). Is that a good thing? Is massive displacement of people, or disruption of their lives a silver lining? The disease is the cure? Really? If those people don't work in construction - where would you place them?

The core of our problems are too many people. It's very simple to say that some will have to go. Where? Which ones?

Bottom line for me: I don't think we've at all exhausted our brains in finding ways to deal with our populations, do you?