So every firm that takes on debt is a bad business and that only firms that spend only out of current income succeed. Wow-- those idiots at Google who borrowed and spent for years without turning a profit really are failures.

Sarcasm off-- the above comment by Johann pretty much summarizes the intellectual bankruptcy of the balanced budget teabagger rhetoric. In fact, no company or society has succeeded without debt-- most economic historians actually understand that the ability to borrow against future growth to fund investments that pay off over time was the key to modern economic growth patterns.

But the mantra that prosperity will come from slashing services and investments is exactly the retro economics that mired economies in repeated depressions throughout the nineteenth century and early 20th.

And Obama has committed to ending Bush tax cuts on wealthier taxpayers-- something Norquist and company denounce completely.

As for health care and the financial industry, government may have messed them up but it's precisely because of conservative policies. As I noted, folks rightly do worry about corporate and elite control of government screwing them over and those areas are obvious examples.

And many countries have declared that residents, who may have lived their for decades, aren't real members of those nations-- but it's not a healthy attitude. Making crossing borders a crime is an odd place to make a law and order stand, since Americans spent a lot of years condemning the Berlin Wall and other repressive laws against crossing borders.

But that's the immigration debate-- my point is actually aimed at pro-immigrant progressives who should understand why their prized public option is complemented by an employer mandate to cover services for many people who may not get access to that public option.

And as for Erik Loomis's points below, Grant could have been tougher but it's worth noting that before the 1872 elections, his administration's attacks on the white Klan types was so effective that progressive Republicans were elected across the South. And as noted in one of my links, it was because of court decisions ham-stringing enforcement starting in 1873 that much of the force of Reconstruction began to fade. Yes, Grant could have been tougher but the election of the first black Congressmen and Senators on his watch is a testament to the seismic changes in political life on his watch.

Grant was not as progressive on economic policy and his orthodoxies did reinforce the depression of the 1870s, but he never had the rightwing economics of his GOP rivals (some of who ran against him in 1872 in combination with the Democrats). Hardly perfect but a very unfair denigration by history.

And since former Communists have been in governments across Europe for years, so does that mean we have to establish containment measures against any country where ex-Communists were involved? What's the statute of limitations on expressing words when young that you can't later disown?

But really, what ideas did Van Jones have back in 1992 that are unacceptable, other than the basic McCarthyite idea that identifying with the word "Communist" at any time means you should be barred from public life forever?

But he also says in the interview, that he got sick of the lefty infighting and unwillingness to admit that there were folks even in the capitalist world who could help those suffering. As he said in the very same interview:

"I saw our little movement destroyed over a lot of shit-talking and bullshit," he said. "It just seemed like an ongoing train crash that was calling itself a political movement. It was much more destructive internally than anyone was talking about, and much less impactful externally than anyone was willing to admit."

"I realized that there are a lot of people who are capitalists -- shudder, shudder -- who are really committed to fairly significant change in the economy, and were having bigger impacts than me and a lot of my friends with our protest signs."

His story is about overcoming youthful anger to arrive at a mature approach to coalition-building and work with everyone from business folks to labor unions to politicians.

Quoting only part of a story is exactly the disingenuous attacks that makes this rightwing smearing so reprehensible.

As for the "truthers", he never said our government brought down the World Trade Center. That hyperbole of what the original petition said, which Jones has already disavowed, is the problem.

Do you actually believe race is irrelevent? That all segregation in housing has ended and therefore where toxic dumps are located, for example, have no relationship to the geography of race in our society?