Congressional republicans have a stated (through Rush Limbaugh) goal of causing our president to fail.

Obama's publicly voiced support of a public option for health care has been lukewarm at best.

If he were instead to loudly insist on a public option, wouldn't that serve to harden opposition?  Could it be that his tepid support is to avoid painting a bullseye on the measure?

Now since he has only gotten minimal republican support as it is, I'm looking for him to stiffen his support of a public option.  This will put the blue dogs in the position of failing to support thier president.

On one he had a segment on

http://catalogchoice.org/

This is an easy, FREE way to opt out of unwanted mail-order catalogs that clutter your mailbox, house, and landfills.  Not as good as a do-not-mail list, but still a step in the right direction.  Just one statistic:  A 1.2 - 1.5% order rate is considered good for companys "prospectng" with these catalogs.... >98% end up in recycle bins, or worse landfills.

I realize Josh has little control over what ads are posted on TPM. When I noticed one for a well known scam( "Google pays me $173/hr") I thought I'd warn my fellow TPMers.

This ad is NOT associated with Google,  It claims that you can make money "posting links on google", whatever that is supposed to mean.   Here is a link to a discussion of this scam on a google forum:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdSense/thread?tid=310b60ceedc1cd07&hl=en

We should not dismiss these warnings.  For we have already become much like the USSR.  We are fighting two wars based not on dire necessity, but on promoting our ideology.  Our current military spending currently exceeds that of the rest of the world combined.  The current economic crisis shows that we are on the verge of spending ourselves out of existence, and THAT is the way in which we are coming to mirror our cold war nemesis.

The average American seems to equate socialism with USSR and/or Cuban style communism.  That is far from the only example.  Sweden, France, Austria, and many other well-to-do nations are effectively socialist societies.  Far from standing in long lines for bread and other staples, they have standards of living that rival and even exceed the US.

So yes, republicans, we DO need to worry about the US becoming another USSR....not the communist one of old that you GOPers worry about, but the current bankrupt and broken state that we see today.  For that is what happens when idiology replaces reason.

Despite treating most of the constitution as nothing more than annoyance, the one amendment the Bush administration did manage to respect was the second. Allowing the "Assault Weapons" ban to expire was one of the few cracks of light in eight years of gloom.

Now we hear Mr. Holder speaking (presumably for the administration) about reinstating this stinker of a law.

Ill-conceived: Banning weapons based primarily on purely cosmetic considerations may appeal emotionally to some, yet doesn't have much impact on crime. Example: In spite of the fact that bayoneting is unheard of as a means of murder or assualt; existence of a bayonet lug on a rifle was part of the formula used to ban them.

Ineffective: The U.S. Department of Justice conducted two studies of the consequences of the 1994 assault weapons ban. In 1999, Bill Clinton's Justice Department looked exhaustively at the ban's effects. It concluded that "the public safety benefits of the 1994 ban have not yet been demonstrated." In 2001, a second Justice Department review similarly found no evidence that the ban had a statistically significant effect on violent crime. A congressionally mandated study by the Urban Institute reached comparable conclusions.

Ultimately unpopular: The Clinton administration, and Democratic congress's support of the "Assault Weapon" ban was a deciding factor in the Republican's gains in congress in 1994, and had it not been for this legislation Al Gore would have been president for the last 8 years. Imagine what a different world we would be living in if that were the case. How many soldiers have died in the hell-hole that is Iraq so that Democrats could claim to have "done something" (that actually did nothing) about evil guns?

I'm not a rich man. In fact I lost my job in March, and was unemployed until nearly election day....still I managed to donate nearly a thousand dollars to Mr. Obama's campaign efforts over the spring and summer. Public information is available that can be verified by those who doubt this claim, but you'll just have to take my word about the week I gave up meat so that I could donate $25.

I had thought that Democrats had learned their lesson in the 90's, and that this money wouldn't be wasted. Please don't waste the opportunity to do REAL good by creating feel-good-do-nothing laws aimed at influencing the behavior of lawbreakers. If you re-enact the Clinton era gun legislation, you will probably be as sucessful enacting the universal health care we so desperatly need. This past year, we had plenty of opportunity to choose Clinton Mk-II policies. Great numbers of us rejected that choice.

Mr. Obama has found experts to advise him on financial matters. Experts on diplomacy to advise him on foreign policy. Experts on unions and industry to advise him on labor matters. Please Mr. Obama, find someone that knows the difference between a semi-automatic, and a machine gun, someone who knows that there is no such thing as a "cop killer bullet", That making a gun's stock out of black plastic instead of figured walnut does nothing to make it more dangerous.....find several such people, and please listen to thier advice on this matter on which you (or at least Mr. Holder speaking for you) don't seem to be very well informed.

John McCain from last night's debate:

"Yes. Sen. Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago. I'm going to give a new direction to this economy in this country."

Dear Senator McCain,

You have made a lot of noise about how you are not President Bush, and how it is time to change the way things are done in Washington.  Senator McCain YOU are not running against President Bush, OR the way things are done in Washington.  You are running against Senator Obama, who has seldom if ever agreed with President Bush, and does not represent the beltway establishment.

Eight years ago YOU ran against president Bush.  Four years ago, you were in a position to run against him again.  Considering the mess he'd made of Iraq, even a better position than in 2000.  You chose instead to take the stage beside him, endorse his bid for reelection, and endorse his foriegn policy, his domestic policy, and his economic policy. You became his houseboy in the Senate chamber, voting overwhelmingly to support the Bush agenda, and working to convince other senators to do likewise.

Of course it is understandable that you failed to challenge a siting president of your own party in time of war. It simply isn't done. The good of the country be damned, only a maverick would have challenged George Bush for the 2004 Republican nomination.

A maverick would have spared us the last four years of the Bush administration.  Would have spared the lives of hundreds if not thousands of our brave soldiers. Would have spared the human rights of the prisoners we still hold without hope of trial, and those we have tortured. Pity that the Republican party contained no mavericks in 2004.

Regards, and good luck during the remaining years of your Senate term.

Kevbo