OK, this was hilariously bad. Thanks for the laugh!

I'm a little puzzled about why my letter appears to have been removed. Yes, I was angry, and yes, I told Sirota to grow a pair, stop shrieking, and say something useful, but the misogynist trolls who comment on Broadsheet consistently say things far more offensive than anything in my comment, if I recall. I can't find the original letter text, so if by all standards I went beyond the pale and said something genuinely hurtful and inappropriate, I apologize--I certainly did not mean to. The point I was trying to make was that there are a lot of "Yoosta Bees" buzzing around (as in "I yoosta bee a librul until I got mugged")--people who were never really genuinely liberal to begin with, but have constructed a fake narrative about having seen the light and rejected liberalism, and that Sirota seemed to be becoming one of these people. It does seem as though he's trying to distinguish himself from the pack and is succeeding, if developing a reputation for histrionic sackcloth-and-ashes screeds can be considered making a name for oneself.

And, as I am about as perplexed by red_gti2000's response as it claims to have been by mine, I have to wonder, looking back over its voluminous correspondence, whether it is one of those stealth Republican PUMA trolls, a vocal supporter of Hillary who, had she actually won the Democratic nomination, would have promptly started bashing her because it simply considered her to be a more convenient and easily-defeated opponent than Obama. After all, here it is, conveniently promoting a brand of F.U.D. suspiciously indistinguishable from that currently being peddled by Limbaugh, Santelli, Jindal & company.

The Bush administration's actions, which you and your cringing ilk evidently supported, weakened our defenses, our civil rights, and our standing in the world. Why, yes, on the surface, those of us who opposed the Iraq war on the grounds that it threatened our national security and was an obscenely useless waste of human life and resources appear to have been right. History will, of course, provide more perspective, but for now it would appear that, well, you were wrong, and you're quite sore about that.

(Be grateful that you've only lost face; there are hundreds of thousands of people, both here and in Iraq, who've lost far more than that. Really, I think it deeply disrespectful to them for us to treat this as an intellectual game of chess, so I won't pursue this any farther.)

The rest of your response--well--just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Please enlighten me--I defer to the higher knowledge you claim for Those Who Are Smarter Than Me, which would presumably include your esteemed self. If his no-frills approach to talks with U.K. PM Brown is any indication, it seems that Obama clearly recognizes that the British economy is going down, though blaming government-sponsored junkets to Majorca and Phuket for Britons on the dole for its destruction seems to me a lot like blaming defaulting homeowners for our own economic crisis. (Incidentally, are these for real, or is this like the GOP canard about the high-speed rail-line between Anaheim and Las Vegas?)

So, you know, if you were verging on launching into a tiresome screed about how the coming Yerpean-style Welfare State would invoke the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, thus (you hoped) deftly proving Sirota's thesis, well, you might as well not waste your breath, because it would appear that he's not too enamored of it--or, at least, not the British version of it.

The people WITH the money and power convinced the average Archie & Edith (IQ 77) that hedonism was the American "dream!" That, sadly, was the path to separating most American fools from their money. Now, the fat cats are in a panic because they've (finally) run out of fools.

A colleague recently pointed out to me that all the societal vices that brought down ancient Rome are already present on modern America, EXCEPT... that we do not (yet) have public vomitoriums! (Frankly, I don't think that they are far away!)

All you need to know about American idiocy can be learned by looking at the TV programs we watch. (Sad,... really SAD!)

Is for that very special asshole in YOUR life...

Get back on your meds and go back to writing school.

of nothing...

This is the most vacuous article by a "liberal icon" I've ever wasted 4 minutes on.. ever.

A-Day is like any day. You can always wonder - were you chosen or left behind.

David,

I quote below Ms. Taken's last paragraph and ask that you get a grip. I have total faith in President Obama. If he is on the wrong path, he'll correct course. We have known for a long time that the last traitorous crowd's mistakes would take at least a generation to repair. Indeed, some will take centuries. Let's not sit around and wallow in self-pity. Self-pity will only make matters worse. And, believe me, they can get a lot worse. There are people in Naples, FL who will have to give up three or four of their ten McMansions.

Ms. Taken, thanks for this. I have seen and spent considerable time in places to which you allude.

"You know, there are some people who have lived in war zones their ENTIRE LIVES. We could be in this situation ourselves some day, but until then, I'll bask in the recognition that I have had it easy, even in this 'apocalypse'."

We have this page in our Sunday Real Estate ads now, "Foreclosure Solutions." This one page features photos of 36 houses between $900 (nine hundred) and $10,000, plus many other good-looking houses for slightly more. (Example: 4 BR, 2BA for $2,000)

You can look at this page and other Detroit area houses at freep.com, the Detroit Free Press web site.

When things get stabilized in a year or two, that is if we are lucky, there will be a major, and I mean major, comeupance for the US and its economic policies. Since 1945, the US has made most of the rules about international finance, which included using borrowed money to spike national income to a higher level than what would ordinarily be possible. Such stimulative policies were welcomed everywhere including exporting countries like China which showed growth of 8-10% per year. Everything was just "wonderful" until the underlying assets were found to be close to worthless and then the trust factor failed overnight. We are now in a massive deleveraging of the economy in all parts of the world and will continue until the underlying assets are repriced, resold, and are tested for accuracy in an open market. Until all this happens, nothing happens. That is the problem that Geithner faces every day and he can't seem to explain it very well and he is becoming a drag on the process. He may be gone if he can't get his arms around the technical aspects. Obama can handle the politics of any fix but I think Obama has not been served well by the technical types who are being paid to understand and explain this stuff so the president gets it right the first time.

I think the stimulus package was essentially "buying time" for Treasury to figure out how badly damaged the markets are what will it take to fix it. So Obama used some of his political capital to buy time.

I hate to say but when this is over, the US will no longer be making all the rules.