to include video of the longwinded and unctious Hatch. He blathered one while working over his nose, on camera. I watched the memorial live last night. Of these four videos, Culver was by far the best.

Alas, the last speaker, Caroline, spoke in a flat monotone, without passion. And Vicky was the model of poise and composure.

Yes Joan, Ted jr's tribute to his dad was very moving. But for me, the more moving scene was his grandchildren and young neices and nephews offering the prayers of the faithful. As I watched, I hoped that, rather than suffer embarassment, the Republicans in the gathering would have to respond "Lord hear our prayer" as those kids prayed for everything that Teddy fought for. I spoke out loud to those Republicans on my screen: "are you listening to this you S.O.Bs?"

The day following the breaking of this story in the news, the S.F. Chronicle published a brief interview with Garrido's brother. In that interview he discussed Garrido's wife, whom he called a "robot" who would go along with anything Garrido said. They met while she was visiting a relative in prison, and married him while he was still behind bars.

The brother claims to have had no knowledge of this kidnapping. One wonders if he too is complicit. How does a family member remain ignorant of such a crime for 18 years? If neighbors who had no access to the property were suspicious, how could a brother, who presumably had access, remain ignorant?

Anyway, it's pretty clear that "robot" is a pretty good description of Garrido's wife. After all, between the time that he kidnapped Jaycee, and the time of this discovery, Garrido went back to prison for a parole violation. During that time, Jaycee remained in captivity, held by Garrido's wife.

BTW, why must the term "alleged" be used? This creep has confessed. Moreover, in a recorded phone interview from jail he said that this story, when all the facts were out, would be seen as "heartwarming." HEARTWARMING! He actually used that word.

In his interview with the S.F. Chronicle, the brother said that the mother "thought he (Garrido) could do no wrong." The brother also said that the mother passed away and left the house to Garrido. But she was alive and living in the house when Garrido committed this crime.

You can find the interview in the Chronicle archives.

Blanche Lincoln is a Democrat from the great state of Wal-Mart, er, Arkansas.

Remember, Wal-Mart is notorious of working people just to the threshold of full-time status, so as to avoid having to provide benefits. If real reform took place, Wal-Mart might have to provide medical coverage to all its employees, thus reaching into the pockets of one of the wealthiest families in the country, the Waltons.

And they probably got her relatively cheap. A couple hundred thou in her campaign fund and their billions are safe. Its how the system works.

We need single payer, not just a public option. But we won't get it until we get single payer elections.

Andrew;

I hope your question is rhetorical because otherwise I'd have to believe that you acturally don't know where the jobs will come from. And I know you're smarter than that.

Go into any store and try to find U.S. made goods. You'll find a few things, but the overwhelming majority of goods will be made outside the U.S., usually by U.S. companies that have chased lower and lower wages around the globe. This is the result of "trade deals." But what kind of "deal" moves only in one direction? Where are the reciprocal sales of U.S. goods to the countries selling their wares in this country? The answer is that they are blocked by contrived barriers.

The only companies exporting U.S. made goods are Intel, which has a near monopoly on microprocessors, and the makers of semiconductor processing captial equipment, and a small handful of others. But even Intel and the semiconductor capital equipment makers do lots of their work outside our borders. Moreover, if they moved all work back to the U.S., they couldn't begin to make a dent in our unemployment numbers.

The answer to your question is that we have to start forcing our trading partners to actually TRADE; i.e., buy U.S. made goods at a dollar for dollar parity, or something close to it.

Protectionism, you say? Who cares what name you put on it? Only the bought-off pols in Washington. Ask the people who elected our solons if they care what name you put on it. They want jobs back in the U.S.

While we're at it, we can start to require Japan, Germany, South Korea and others to defend themselves so that we can slash our obscene defense budget.

Does that answer your question?

This is merely covering asses, nothing more. But I bet that Obama caves.

The blue dogs, instead of kissing their asses. But that would mean starting out by cleaning out the White House staff.

Unless and until steps are taken to recover manufacturing jobs, there will be no real and lasting growth in employment. If this means tariffs, then enact them. If this means naming China a currency manipulator, then name them. If you call this protectionism, call it that. Give it any name you want, but get the U.S. manufacturing sector back on it's feet and working again and the economy will recover.

There is no reason on earth for Salon or Alex to waste perfectly good electrons on this idiot. He just isn't news worthy. He is such a fringe actor that he doesn't merit coverage. Why waste our time or your's writing about him?

With both Baucus and Reid on board, there has to be a fly in the ointment somewhere.