Blase01 wrote: According to Mr Greider who writes for the Nation Magazine Obama has made a deal with the ruling elite to gut social security to pay for the stimulus plan. Check it out.

I did. I simply don't buy that Obama would be so stupid, obtuse, brain dead or whatever you choose to call it - to bite on this. Recall this is the same guy who promised during his campaign to eliminate taxes for all seniors with income $50k or less. He cannot possibly now start raiding SS or making significant cuts to appease fiscal hawks or Wall street (the same scheisters he rightly blames for the credit mess and market meltdown)

IF he DID attempt such a farcical, bone-headed move, he'd meet the same fate as Bush, only worse. In this case not only his whole Left base would revolt and sit home or go Nader (or anyone else in '12), but he's lose a lot of moderates too. Does he want to be a one-termer that badly?

Don't think so!

I agree Obama is in the pressure cooker with the deficits and mounting costs but that doesn't mean he just goes nuts, commits hari kari by touching and manhandling the third rail. Greider does make some valid points concerning the eocnomic pressure on Obama but I dispute he will cop to it.

Believe me, people now having lost jobs, health ins. and most of their 401ks are in NO mood to even remotely see or hear that more of their support is to be cut from under them.

And I believe Obama is certainly intelligent enough to appreciate that.

that Obama was never a liberal. He was always a neoliberal centrist. What he did was to superbly use the lingo of liberalism to make half the population believe he really was (something like a political Rohrschach). The most we can do is to help him along and at least try to be more left of center than right of center in his policy positions.

The demise of the Rocky began when they promoted that wingnut nitwit Vince Carroll to editor. Trying to be the conservative answer to the Denver Post he overdid it, and some of his editorials were truly off the wall.

Given Denver is largely a liberal city, the Rocky stood no chance at all competing for the remaining 200k or so subscribers most of whom (like me) didn't like reading Vince's screeds, or his letters policy (which was to allow maybe one lib letter for every conservative eight).

The Rocky did have some good columns, like Mike Littwin's (he also wrote for the Baltimore Sun when I lived in Charm City). But by and large they were just a poor, conservative shadow of the Post. Oh, I did like Garrison Keillor's columns too - when they weren't too mangled and edited for space.

The Rocky basically went as far as it could given the changing demographics of the city and state. Now - if it could have replaced the Co Springs Gazette it might still be around!

mary steyr wrote: obama will negotiate to keep the american ka-bar sharp. he is the good one, so excalibur can do no harm in his hands

Maybe. But, what if - in 2012 or 2016, it finds its way into the hands of a reconstructed Palin? If these Secrecy acts continue I would not be so sure they will be widely used if another R gets in, especially a Palin.

Leaving this illegal infrastructure in paves the way for full scale fascism in the wrong hand. Not that we don't trust Obama to do the right thing, but rather any R-successors, who may then wield them in worse ways than Bush.

Obama needs to think not only about the present but the future as well.

Meanwhile, keep up the good work, ACLU - that is why I have been a card-carrying member for the past 18 yrs.

Calvin Coolidge wrote: Lecturing on Economics without a background in differential equations is like lecturing in French Literature without a background in the French language.

What!? Differential equations?? You pretend scientists don't have a clue about DEs. You merely copy some equation from physics, change the variables and think you have a quantitative science.

Now, if you know Diff Eqns. like you assert or imply, then you will have NO problemo solving the one below. Do it, or admit you are full of shit and your DEs are all bogus, done merely for the purposes of window dressing.

dx/ (y^2 - z^2) = dy/[-xy - 3x^2 z] = dz/ (3x^y + xz)

We shall await your solution with baited breath.

And he wrote: If the government would just do absolutely nothing, I'd put my trust and faith in it.

If the government were to do absolutely nothing, and we know the private sector can't either....your kids and grandkids won't have anything to look forward to but a rotting corpse of a decaying third world throwback nation, steeped in dire poverty, ignorance and want.

Right now, whether you knuckleheads can see it or not, the government is the source of last resort. There are NO alternatives.

You had better get on yhour gnarly knees and pray that Obama's package and any others work, or we are all down the shit hole.