"Most Republicans aren't conservatives at all. They're corporate socialists."

BEAUTIFUL! And right on target. Democrats should plaster those sentences on billboards and ads all over the country.

Well first, Kimball Rasmussen is no climate-change denying crackpot - and, in some of her characterization of Mr Rasmussen (a life-long resident of Utah), Ms Harrop displays the typical snooty pretentious condescending east coast bias we've come to expect from a media pundit born and raised in NYC and parked in Providence, RI ever since. Ms Harrop (a syndicated columnist with no apparent scientific background or practical experience in the energy industry relying solely on just parroting the popular but increasingly questionable 'mainstream science' ploy... so much for her being independent-minded-) takes considerable liberty in just pooh-poohing Rasmussen's views/conclusions. Judge for yourself... You may not agree with his conclusions - but they aren't the ravings of someone on the lunatic fringe.

While it's true the majority of people support health care/insurance reform - the majority does NOT support the program Congress is currently trying to ram through... And there is considerable question whether any and every flavor of increased government intervention/control would truly reduce costs in the long run. The government's intervention in health care/insurance the last 70 to 80 years is every bit a contributing factor to our skyrocketing health care costs.

And in her attempt to lay all the blame on those wascally Weepublicans, Ms Harrop leaves out some critical details about the recent defeat of the Bipartisan Task Force for Responsible Fiscal Action (BTFRFA)

The seven Republican co-sponsors didn't just make a last minute decision to vote against the BTFRFA the day it came to the floor - they pulled their co-sponsorship the week prior to the vote. Why? Because it was becoming obvious that any BTFRFA in the current environment would ultimately be way long on raising taxes and infinitesimally short on reducing spending.

50 Progressive Groups Oppose Conrad-Gregg Deficit Commission, Calling It 'Dangerous and Undemocratic'

For such groups, 'protecting' Social Security benefits (and all the other entitlements that now flow from Washington like manna from heaven - making up ~70% of federal government spending) from cuts is more important than dealing with the nation’s fiscal crisis - just as many conservatives would sooner see America plunge deeper into the red than raise a penny in taxes.

So here we are: the left won’t cut spending, the right won’t raise taxes, and the two remain locked in a tacit conspiracy to bankrupt America.

Just keep it up and you can be the angry minority party again. As they said in BSG, "It happened before and it will happen again." Right after the AG opens an investigation on Speaker Hunt for extorting the harmless Head Start women.

al,

I skimmed through the Rasmussen paper you cited and won't spend a lot of time on it. But one major error he made was his statement that positive feedback systems tend to be unstable. They are only unstable if the gain factor from the feedback is greater than 1 which is clearly not the case. And his citing Christopher Monkton is a laugh. Monkton confuses weather with climate when he say it's "a complex, non-linear, chaotic object that defies long-run prediction of future states." Climate science essentially describes the constraints that limit the range of the chaotic weather system and is very amenable to long range prediction.

I don't particularly support the health care coverage reforms Congress has proposed either because they don't go far enough. The evidence that government intervention would help control costs is found in all of the other developed nations that do have universal coverage. They spend about half as much per capita on health care as the US with little difference in the quality of care available.

I have to laugh when I hear Republicans talk about reducing spending . They only care about reducing spending when the Democrats are in power. Why is it that most of the national debt has been incurred during Republican administrations?

Yah know, I'm awfully glad I left here. I asked SO explicitly to know the ins and outs of those S-Corp taxes and got answers that were wrong. When I held the know it alls here to task for the lack of a correct answer, i got a lot of windy blather. When the campaign was in full swing and I adjured you blitherers to pay attention to EVERYTHING, not just the lies of the "other side".... eh.

I'm talking with my CPA. Those measures retro back into the year my small work was DESTROYED by the collapse of the economy, and Oregon, never strong, we saw defunded a LOT of research and data mining project work that was out there. No money made. But plenty owed for nothing earned.

Here is what I learned: you want folks to trust your analysis. You pride yourselves therein. But if you misstep and a listener/asker holds you to task, you are uncompromisingly terse with them, and take no responsibility for the quality of your vaunted leadership, analysis and reading. I did a lot of reading and found things that did not add up to what I was hearing. I asked for very specified clarification - and it was an expensive misfire.

Zara, fire up the bats. I'm on vacation.

This fragment from Alcatross says a lot: "...relying solely on just parroting the popular but increasingly questionable 'mainstream science' ploy."

Too bad we don't have time machines Alcatross. You could have saved your ilk a lot of headaches if you had just executed Galileo.

Galileo was threatened for refusing to follow the "official" line of what science was allowed to say and discover. Sounds like the religion of Global Warmism, doesn't it?

Posted by: Anonymous | Feb 21, 2010 4:34:36 PM

Galileo was threatened for refusing to follow the "official" line of what science was allowed to say and discover. Sounds like the religion of Global Warmism, doesn't it?

Sure does! A bunch of baby mongering, monied, fat old men trying to beat off any progressive tumescence!!! Fucking village trolls yucking moronically, "Showed him; showed him". Yup. Just like a TEA protest. It's Sunday, troll. Don't you have something to be worshipping, or is electronic graffiti now considered a ministry? Cutting taxes is good. Let's start by totally eliminating exemptions for dependents and Churches! Only arm the military with what the other side has. Character. You want to show character you fight mano a mano, not from a video screen cum latte. Want less government. FCC. Gone. DEA. Gone.

I work in the your senior Senator's office in DC and you don't know half what these "disrupters" are up to. The cost, etc. is appalling. You should be hung for treason. Fucking moron.

Kori,

What a marvelous display of superior intelligence.

Bipartisanship isn't the solution; bipartisanship is the problem.

I thank Jeff for the thumbs up.

For the record, my column does appear in several papers in Oregon and Washington, including the Seattle Times, Spokane Spokesman-Review, The Everett Herald and Yakima Herald-Republic.

I'm also in The Denver Post, Detroit News, Miami Herald, Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, Kansas City Star, Omaha World-Herald and about 150 other fine publications.

BTW, my next column is about Evan Bayh.

Yes, thanks for the clue, Jeff. I think many of us that only read dead trees for climactic data were unaware.

Posted by: DeanOR | Feb 21, 2010 10:13:20 PM

Bipartisanship isn't the solution; bipartisanship is the problem.

Bipartisanship could be great, but, unfortunately it's another word taken over by pols, and now it is simply a synonym for "co-opted".

I love it. Richard as close to speechless as it gets.

Of course, rw.

the left won’t cut spending, the right won’t raise taxes, and the two remain locked in a tacit conspiracy to bankrupt America.

And of course none of them talks about pissing away $700+ billion annually to maintain a vast imperial military machine. Nope, can't touch that, we'd be so...insecure. The Russkies and Chinese would probably invade Oregon the next day if the military budget were cut.

The Russkies and Chinese would probably invade Oregon the next day if the military budget were cut.

Hard for them to invade when there's no diff and they already own it, respectively (but point taken).

Evan B. is a disgrace. I had my first political conversation with a pol when I was 6, and it was with his father, Birch. How many town halls has Evan held at kindergartens? And his father wasn't running for anything in 1966! His whining is merely a symptom that today's rep thinks that their groveling after campaign funds on a daily basis is stupid too. They would rather not do that as well. Almost smacks of work.

I can recall every question I asked and the responses. I would love to hear his son answer them today. Definitely a symptom of how far we have fallen.

Bipartisanship isn't the solution; bipartisanship is the problem.

Steph Lady Gaga is a Man

Of course, the reason Pat is the only BO regular contributor in this debate, is that the others don't want to be reminded that Evan B was in Obama's top five, final VP considerations.

Remember?

Zara, fire up the bats. I'm on vacation.

<h2>Less than a month. Seems like you've been gone a lifetime!</h2>