...is what Ezra Klein said times ten.

Nothing would promote bipartisanship more than five fewer Republican Senators. Who's more likely to bring this about?

The continued success of the Party depends on giving Democrats a reason to believe and a reason to participate. A reason to wear the T shirts, walk the streets and bank the phones. A reason to become precinct captains and district chairs. A reason to run for school board and county commissioner and state legislator.

Success also depends on giving Republicans a reason to yawn and say yeah, I guess I'll vote. But I'm not real thrilled with any of these people and I'm not going to write any checks or bank any phones this time around.

The Clintons haven't done this for Democrats. If anything, they do it unintentionally for the Republicans. The Clintons didn't forge a lasting Democratic coalition or build the Democratic Party. They lost all of Congress to the Republicans while trying to save Democrats from themselves.

Barack Obama is a community organizer who turned out enough South Carolina voters to not just win, but to shock and awe. He showed his potential to do what the Clintons, owing mostly to their own failures, have openly dismissed as a "fairy tale."

I've favored Edwards in the past, mostly because once I believed the Clinton "fairy tale" too. I don't think the next Democratic President's aura is going to last a hundred days, without at least five fewer Republican Senators. Edwards, for whatever reason, just isn't attracting that kind of support.

So I'm supporting Obama instead.

The government is tracking people's movements via their GPS-capable cell phones. No warrant. No probable cause. Just a federal agent's strongly-worded belief that they want to know where you are at all times.

I'm going to type in bold now, because this most understated, alarming throwaway line I've ever read.

The judge spoke on condition of anonymity.

Anonymity is for people who fear punishment for speaking up. Never, under any circumstances whatsoever, should any American judge, anywhere, ever, be speaking on condition of anonymity!!!!! Not even for a ticking nuclear time bomb.

This is how far our country has fallen.

The worst of the Republican worst have called on you to resign the Senate. Please don't. Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan is correct to say that you "represent the Republican Party." You represent it perfectly: a party of fools, hypocrites and liars of necessity whose policies are driven by selfishness and cruelty.

President Bush is a liar of necessity because he's a fool. He covered up his life history of mediocrity, addiction and failure to get elected President. His failures have only multiplied since.

Republicans are liars of necessity in that their economic policies, when described honestly, garner no more than a third of the vote.

You are a liar of necessity because you like to have sex with men in public restrooms. But you need the votes of people who think men like you belong in jail.

Your vigorous denial of involvement in the first Congressional page scandal coincided with the closing of a great political realignment. Conservative southern racists abandoned the Democratic Party and joined the Republicans. LBJ knew that by passing the Civil Rights Act, Democrats were losing the South for a generation. He also knew that it's not always easy to do what's right.

It's high time the GOP underwent a similar realignment. Republicans should repudiate racists, bigots, misogynists and homophobes, once and for all. Tell these people to stay home on election day, because they have no place in America. Democrats haven't wanted their vote for 50 years. Republicans shouldn't either.

But none of this can happen if you leave the Senate. Your perseverance will be highly inconvenient to your friends in the Republican Party. This shouldn't concern you, since they are lining up to throw you under the bus. Your only hope of redemption, from the unimaginable humiliation, pain and abandonment you must be feeling, is to stand firm, keep your Senate seat, and force your so-called friends to come to terms with the unspeakable cruelty they've inflicted.

Nixon and Kissinger negotiated the peace treaties, with help from the French. Nixon happened to resign before the last helicopter departed Saigon, so Ford presided over that. These men are Republicans.

If you subscribe to a sellout or back stab theory of why America lost Vietnam, Republicans are holding the knife and the cash.

The President already learned one lesson from Nixon: delay the inevitable until after you're safely reelected. If he truly wants to learn the lesson of Vietnam, Bush should hurry up and lose this stupid war, before it's too late.

Both.

A month or three ago, I made the foolish, careless mistake of leaving my truck unlocked in the driveway. Sure enough I woke up the next morning minus my car stereo, sunglasses, and loose change.

Does my dumb mistake excuse the thief's behavior? Of course not. I shouldn't have to be perfect to not have my stereo stolen. The thief belongs in prison because (s)he should've just damn well not stolen it.

This is where the debate of the mortgage bubble breaks down. It's like a cage match: "Dumb Borrowers" vs. "Predatory Lenders." But this is a false choice. The answer is both. Although this microeconomic tit-for-tat seems to carry the day, it's kind of irrelevant.

The simple fact is that banks create money by the act of lending. Money is just a universal I.O.U.: a promise of some future productive economic activity. There is a limit to how much money can be created, and how far divorced from productive activity it can become.

Exceeding that limit causes inflation. Really, really exceeding it causes a bubble, where inflation feeds back upon itself until people start to realize they might not get paid. They stop lending, start demanding cash, and the whole edifice comes crashing down.

This is a macroeconomic emergency, not some micro tale of how closely Richard C. from Phoenix read the terms of his super double bonus option ARM. Real banks have well established cash-reserve limits and mortgage affordability guidelines. New Deal banking regulations work very well for the banks that obey them.

Financial "innovation" is just banking by another name. Bypassing the rules that ordinary banks follow, financial "geniuses" create money by lending, just like a real bank. With only "market forces" to stop them, the "geniuses" created way too much.

Runaway housing inflation has distorted the whole economy in immeasurable ways, for decades to come. Government needs to prevent this kind of thing because the world economy depends on it, whether we feel sorry for Richard C. or not.

I am truly blessed to have not lost a job to outsourced Chinese labor. But Matel's recall of inferior and unsafe children's toys is the fruit of globalization that everyone has to eat.

It should be considered fraudulent for Matel to put its mark on the choking and lead poisoning hazards that they import.

Matel is not the first "American" company to slap its multigenerational and highly-valued "American" brand on an imported piece of garbage and keep the profits for itself.

They should be stripped of their patents, copyrights and trademarks. Let them compete as the worthless knock offs that they have become.

Because even if you're lucky enough to keep your job, your kids still get to play with trash that falls apart well before the next movie comes out.

When the Minneapolis bridge collapsed, it brought forth the predictable accusation that government can't do anything right. Fine. Liberalism has to have room for experimentation and new ideas. So I propose an experiment: go ahead and privatize the new bridge.

By "privatize," I don't mean, "give away billions of dollars worth of public assets, already bought and paid for by taxpayers, to cronies who plan to break the union, cut service, raise prices and keep the difference for themselves." I mean really and truly privatize it 100 percent.

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Now is the perfect opportunity. Auction off the land to the highest bidder. The minimum starting bid should be the downtown-Minneapolis average real estate price per square foot.

Sell the land with stipulations that a bridge must be built within one year. It must carry two more lanes than before, to allow for future expansion. It must comply with all regulations. Failure to meet these terms would result in forfeiture of the investment.

The winner would own the bridge, in every sense of the word. They would raise their own capital in the open market. They would clear the rubble, build the bridge, maintain it, insure it and be fully liable for damages if it collapsed again. They'd pay inspection fees, taxes and all other associated costs I can't think of.

The owners would be allowed to charge whatever toll they choose. They could purchase whatever toll booth or electronic surveillance and billing system they can afford with their own money. I'd even be generous and let them pay the lower, capital gains tax rate on their profits!

However, government police will not enforce the toll. The owners would have to collect their accounts payable by the same civil process as every other business.

Unfortunately, this will have to remain a thought experiment. The offer will never be made and if it were, I seriously doubt there'd be any takers. This, of course, is why government builds bridges in the first place.

I've a tendency to agree with Todd Gitlin, et al, who think Bush and Cheney deserve impeachment but we shouldn't necessarily give it to them. Sort of.

Republicans are like uninvited guests. Their policies are the political equivalent of drinking all the liquor and making passes at the women. The Clinton impeachment was like crapping in the swimming pool. And then, they have the balls to complain how lame the party was.

My friends in the media act all disgusted, while secretly admiring the audacity of it. Their friends don't even bother with the pretense.

I fantasize about retaliating, but no matter how much they deserve it, I just can't bring myself to go crap in their pool. Even if I did, our so-called friends would think, "Oh. How. Original."

I've often thought that the biggest problem with Republicans is that there are too many of them. Along those lines, I have some favors to ask Senators Clinton and Obama.

Firrst, please point out that no matter how badly the President and his surrogates deserve to be impeached, tried, convicted or all of the above, it won't happen because there are too many Republicans.

Second, please propose a Constitutional amendment to require that all Presidential pardons, commutations etc. be confirmed by the Senate. Point out that it won't pass because there are too many Republicans.

Third, please introduce legislation declaring "executive privilege" null and void after the President in question leaves office. Point out that it won't pass because there are too many Republicans. Make its passage the first priority of your administration, in concert with a new, fillibuster-proof Democratic Senate.

Finally, please commit your administration to investigating and prosecuting all crimes of every Bush appointee, starting the day you take office, when pardons and privileges are no longer a possibility. But it won't happen if there are too many Republicans.

I find it hard to talk about China without discussing how inferior their products are. I've been blessed that I never had to experience a job loss due to outsourced manufacturing. But I've bought more than my share of Chinese-made junk, and quality products are getting harder and harder to find. The economic models don't adequately account for this.

For example, I recently had to do a plumbing repair that required 1.5 inch PVC pipe. Well the Chinese "inch and a half" pipe was just a fraction of an inch smaller and thinner than its 25-year-old American counterpart. The difference is barely perceptible to the naked eye, but just enough where the pipe ends had to be filed down to make them fit. A simple repair turned into a major ordeal, just to save the company....what? 2 cents per thousand feet of pipe?

I've tried to use Chinese wood screws that snapped from the torque of a manual screwdriver. I've had electric appliances burn out after a couple of years,  because the manufacturer used the smallest, cheapest gauge wire they could get away with. For a nickel more, my coffee pot could've lasted a lifetime. It took about 20 washes to wear holes in my T shirts from Wal Mart.

These products carry the same American and American-sounding brands as always. Even if the savings was passed on to me, which I highly doubt, it cost more in gas to go back to the store for another coffee pot than whatever they could've possibly saved by using 22 gauge wire instead of 20.

These companies should be stripped of their storied, decades-old American brands. The inferior junk they're importing does not live up to the brands' reputation and it's borderline fraudulent to label it as such.

I think Kevin Drum (via Joe Klein) is on to something.

This modern-day Flight of Icarus known as the Bush Administration seems genuinely confused about the nature of power. In Iraq, they harbor a strange, ahistorical delusion that people give up power voluntarily. Thus, this or that Shiite faction is supposed to share power with these or those Sunnis and everyone will all just get along with the Kurds, and there'll be a functional, stable democracy in the Middle East.

But nobody ever gives up power voluntarily. It always has to be taken and domestically, Bush understands this perfectly well. Everything Bush has done serves the goal of increasing his and his people's power. The Iraq occupation is the linchpin of the whole effort, but there are many examples:

Illegal wiretapping. Suspension of Habeas Corpus. Torture. Voter purges. Deployment of U.S. Attorneys as partisan hit men. Support the troops. War on Terror. All in the name of keeping Republicans in power.

Bush is exactly right about something. Democrats' planned "no confidence" vote against Alberto Gonzales is, in fact, pure political theater. They ought to stand up, TAKE power, and impeach the S.O.B.

I'm against it.

Politics should certainly be guided by the Enlightenment principles of empiricism and reason. Elected leaders should exerise a respectful caution against being too sure of themselves, and should remain mindful that good people can have different opinions.

However, all these things should happen within the Democratic Party. Republicans in general, and George W. Bush in particular, are liars who can't be trusted. The bipartisan dream of good people negotiating in good faith, and respectfully agreeing to disagree, is simple impossible. Republicans are not good people and they don't bargain in good faith.

After six years of watching Democrats get suckered, I believe in "bipartisanship" that really isn't. Democrats should have a civilized, respectful, internal debate that produces legislation all Democrats can support. Republicans will do everything in their power to interfere with this process, and the universal response to this should be, "GOP, STFU."

Any Republican who happens to know a good thing when they see it, or doesn't want to be on the losing side of history or whatever, is welcome to save their own hide by selling out their party to vote with us.

When that happens, we congratulate their bipartisanship.

In the spirit that the only stupid question is the one never asked, here's another one that isn't being asked, although it should be.

Never have corporate interests received so much of what they wanted from our government. Between the Energy Bill, the Bankruptcy Bill, all the various tax breaks, loopholes, subsidies, pork out the wazoo and regulations either  overturned, ignored, unenforced, or never enacted at all, you'd think there was never a better time for American business.

So why do we not have the lowest unemployment rate in the history of the universe, or at least one lower than when this Republican Fire Sale of America began?? 

You can buy American-made boots for less than a pair of Air Jordans.

When free trade creates wealth, where does it all go? What is government's role in making sure the benefits of trade are shared equitably?

How old should you have to be before you can afford your own apartment?