have jobs. Pretty good ones too. Mike has solid-gold medical and retirement benefits paid for by all of us. Sounds like socialism to me. Mike, you ready to give up your medical and retirement benefits and be like the rest of us?

No? Didn't think so. Socialism for you is fine. The rest of us can starve, right? Sean and Mike don't see a catastrophe coming..they have great jobs. Everything looks fine to them. We don't need a stimulus package.

You know, I'm a peaceful person...but tarring and feathering are much too mild for these two clowns.

He says European socialism like it's a bad thing. For the most part people in Europe have a much higher quality of life and have for quite some time. Of course their aging populations are going to cause them enormous problems just like ours is.

As much as the Republicans like floating a "flat-tax" proposal whenever taxes come up I suggest a "flat-tax-break program". Base tax cuts, at least on personal wealth wherever possible, on a per-capita basis. That is, if I get a thousand-dollar break Donald Trump gets a thousand-dollar break.

Stop playing percentages.

When will stop paying attention, and thus giving credence to Hannity, Bill O'Reilly,Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter. Their job is to scream and yell and say outrageous, ridiculous things. They are paid more than handsomely to feed tidbits to the morons. And then the rest of us continue to be SHOCKED, SHOCKED, I tell you at the latest flame they threw. We don't care. They lost.

Whatever other ills can be attributed to tax cuts (rich-poor disparity increase, middle class income stagnation), I thought this economic crisis was caused by a credit crunch caused by subprime lending caused by deregulation.

Why do so many Democrats scream about tax cuts having got us into this mess? Regardless of whether tax cuts alone would get us out of it, they didn't get us into it, so that's not a valid reason to damn them to hell. Give a real reason, don't make one up.

This all reminds me of that other great Democrat monster under the bed, guns, as if guns leap up and pull their own trigger to kill without any hand involved, or as if guns cause so many deaths that they must be outlawed regaerdless of the constitution (but when the Bushies rape the fourth amendment, Democrats whine about how precious that amendment is), when guns are involved in far fewer deaths than cars.

So tell me, what is it about tax cuts that freaks out Democrats so much that they have to blame this crisis on them?

The last Clinton budget showed a surplus. Then boy George came in, cut taxes, and started two wars that have been shown to have wasted billions of dollars on incompetence, fraud and corruption. When boy George left we had record setting deficits. His last act was to throw 800 Billion dollars at Wall St. with NO oversight whatsoever.

Don't try tell me that the myopic insistence on tax cuts now! tax cuts forever! on the part of the completely fiscally discredited Republicans has nothing to do with the financial mess this country is in right now.

In these days when we live in such a small world, where huge numbers of Americans, through use of the internet, know people in Europe and have access to European news sources, which are often far more accurate than the wealthy/corporate owned MSM in the U.S., those Americans actually know what it's like to live in Europe, how much better the safety net is there, how amazing it seems (to us) to just walk into a clinic, often without an appointment and receive medical care without ever receiving a bill.

Sure, the Luddites who stubbornly remain disconnected to anything but the opiates of weasel news and Rubaugh (pronounced "Rube - oh" which is also the proper term for those who listen to him), might still cringe at "European Socialism," but for more and more of the US population, the lingering after-effect of the last 20 years of increasingly deregulated "free market" capitalism under which we've fallen farther and farther behind and paid more and more of the cost of national and state government while the rich sucked up all the resources produced by the very productive US economy, leave us saying

"European Socialism?" It's about dam__d time!

Tax cuts did not get us into this mess but they will not cure the problem, so why is the GOP's first solution to every financial problem a tax cut?

They believe in "trickle-down" monetary policy. If you give enough to the wealthy that will result in a benefit to the middle class and the poor.

Except that it has not worked very well. The rich are getting richer, the poor are worse off, and the middle class has been stagnant.

As for guns, you can relax. Gun control is the least of our worries right now.

So now they've sated themselves on our loot, they lay around in their ideological scat like wannabe sailors on a multi-year bender, staring into their empty bottles and mocking the detox crew.

Will they even remember the long, drunken Republican night, and the piles of bodies left behind them? Doubtful, but that shouldn't stop them from having to face them.

It's everywhere! Quick, hide! It'll git ya!

Funny how these paragons of capitalism don't bother to acknowledge the successes of what they label as socialism in our very country. As had_enough has pointed out, Pence is in line for a government pension and enjoys government health care. What's more, we are riddled with socialist institutions: our libraries and public schools, our fire and police departments, Social Security, even our military! In fact, our military (which I served in for 10 years) is the most socialist organization I have ever been associated with: universal health care, guaranteed pension, extra stipends and allowances for housing and food for families with children ("to each according to need..."), equal pay for equal rank and service time ("from each according to ability"), etc.

In the private world the NFL, arguably the most successful sports league in the world, is essentially a socialist organization: owners have instituted strict revenue sharing and salary caps amongst franchises, players have a strong union, share in the revenues, get pensions, disability and health care, and as we all know are very well compensated. In short, they "spread the wealth." Art Modell, former Ravens owner, was fond of saying that the NFL was "32 fat-cat Republicans who vote socialist."

Capitalism has brought great gaps between rich and poor. It has brought us sweatshops, child labor, unsafe working conditions, repression and war. It is socialism (through the labor movement which peaked during the Great Depression) which is responsible for job benefits, safer working conditions, the 40-hour work week, paid vacation, and other things we now take for granted.

Most of us will never be as rich as Sean Hannity. So if Obama's plan brings some socialism (which is a debatable premise), so much the better.