Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore.,bumped heads with Wall Street Thursday, proposing a tax on financial transactions that he said would deter high volume speculators while raising $150 billion a year that the government can use to "invest in our future, our infrastructure and our middle class.''  This is a small tax - a fraction of a penny - on every transaction.  To the average investor it's meaningless.  To the guys on Wall Street who are walking off with $400 million bonuses this Christmas, it's doom and destruction.  Because they don't make a damn thing of value, they just move money around, and do so now electronically instantly and with virtually no costs, thus their high profits.  We had this tax in the USA from the late 1930s until the 1960s and it not only generated enough money to pay for the SEC - it's original purpose - but it also put enough sand in the gears of the so-called "professional traders" that there were no bubbles and no crashes during that time on Wall Street.  It only makes sense.  And most other industrialized countries have a similar tax.  But, then, they you won't find billionaire banksters in Sweden or Norway.

Andrew Sullivan is offering his own reasons for parting with the conservative movement. He recently wrote: "I cannot support a movement that holds that purely religious doctrine should govern civil political decisions and that uses the sacredness of religious faith for the pursuit of worldly power. I cannot support a movement that is deeply homophobic, cynically deploys fear of homosexuals to win votes, and gives off such a racist vibe that its share of the minority vote remains pitiful. I cannot support a movement which has no real respect for the institutions of government and is prepared to use any tactic and any means to fight political warfare rather than conduct a political conversation."  Welcome back to the world of sanity, Andrew.  Wouldn't it be nice if the old Eisenhower Republicans came back into their fold and we had actual, rational political discourse in this nation again?