How well do you think that's going to go over at the next Fourth of July picnic or high school graduation?

Machiavellian, indeed, but it should get the job done fairly completely.

Who will build the robots? Other robots (it's robots all the way down).

It's all political theatre.

Bullroar.

The crisis from which we are recovering began when the GOP House gutted FDR's regulations during the Clinton Administration and spineless Democrats in the Senate went along with it, and Clinton signed it into law.

Go thank Citigroup (wait, now it's Citicorp again) for HR 10 and the devastation it wrought beginning with Enron and Worldcom and perfected by AIG and all the subprime over-lending and over-investing and non-regulating while Bushco went out for Pepsis.

FDR knew what he was doing. The Republicans don't, not then, not now.

Actually, the field of history's defeats is largely populated by conservatives -- monarchs, dictators, and high-handed clergymen. Of course, there's a lot of pain and death to go along with that, from the victims of the Inquisition, to the Holocaust, to civilian deaths everywhere from Dresden to Fallujah.

As disgusting as, say, Dick Cheney can be, pull the lens back and you'll see we're moving in the correct direction.

That's Chicago style, baby.

Tough to save people who don't want to be saved.

It's like the old joke about the preacher in the rising flood who climbs higher and higher on his church, declining assistance, in order, from a jeep, a boat and a helicopter saying "God will provide" until he finally drowns. He meets his maker and asks why his life wasn't saved and God says, "Who do you think sent the jeep, the boat and the helicopter?"

The GOP of the late 20th Century was a triad: Rank-and-file rural and suburban whites, big business, and Christian zealots. The party got everything it wanted, culminating in a conservative Supreme Court, the presidency of Bush 43, years of House dominance, and, briefly,
control of both chambers, the White House and the Court.

The results were devastating. The suburbs are increasingly going to the Democrats, the New York money-center banks owe their continued existence to President Obama, and all the whackos got for their time and money was a 5-4 majority that is a couple of retiremens away from reversing.

Religious zealotry has been exposed for the negative force that it has always been. Now, if the GOP loses on health care reform, many in the rank and file will give up, de-mobilize and cease their small-dollar donations. Meanwhile, large donors with business interests will funnel, at the GOP's expense, more of their lobbying dollars to conservative Democrats as the next "Republicans" in their attempt to mitigate and modify the liberal agenda. This will leave the Republican Party as a regional organization capable only of occasional obstructionism and without an agenda of its own.

The stakes are very, very high but the GOP asked for it.

The right wing cannot be convicted of a crime -- insanity defense applies.

Delicious irony, tao.