Obama and us are playing a team of cheaters that have had the refs bought off.

Arrgy, My first rule as a coach was "no excuses" they don't do anybody any good. Excuses never change the end result and are a sign of weakness. Winners find a way, and they never blame anyone else for their failures. Great leaders also take full resonsibility for their whole team when it falls short. Does any of that sound like your President right now. I personally think he has it in him. Where is it though.

Coaching a team is hardly a comparison to the office of President. How rediculous to even make such a statement.

Hey, I'm an ant and no one has ever complained about the size of my turds. That elephant over there shouldn't be allowed to live.

Hear hear!

I will drink to that!

All presidents' actions are challenged in court. A somewhat recent phenomenon of the pre 2007 Republican Congress is that many vacant federal judgeships of the Clinton era went unfilled because the Congress persons used a procedural method called a "blue slip(?)" - or such - to block an appointment almost EVERY TIME that Clinton tried to fill a vacancy. The "blue slip" - or whatever it's called - allows - if it's still in practice - a senator or representative who is from a state that is under the jurisdiction of the federal court of the appointee to file the "blue slip" whichh blocks the appointment indefinitely. Then when Bush was elected those vacancies were filled by Republican judges. In this way the federal courts became very partial to the Republican cause.

That's more the real story. Wild, conjectural platitudes - "great leaders are never questioned", "no excuses in hockey" are so absurdly impertinent they are much more than irrelevant. They are willfully disingenuous, but we ain't buyin' it.

Collect your $20 anyway.

Hi Thom,

Can you talk about this onerous bill that was introduced to the Senate by both Dems (Amy Klobuchar why have you forsaken us?) that will send the death nell to high tech workers (especially older techie's) in the US. Orrin Hatch has introduced a bill that will expand the current H1B visa program from 110,000 visa's per year to 300,000 AND for the first time, include the ability of spouses to work as well. The tech industry still hasn't recovered fully since 2008, wages haven't kept pace with inflation, and now congress is going to flood the market with EVEN more foreign guest workers. Why is Congress screwing its own people?

Senate’s H-1B visa proposal goes far beyond Microsoft’s

A group of Senate Democrats and Republicans on Tuesday proposed a significant expansion of the controversial H-1B visa program. The bill would lift the cap on high-skilled foreign workers far beyond what Microsoft and other high-tech employers had hoped for.

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2020238456_microsoftvisaxml.html

meanwhile companies have set up ways to learn how to avoid hiring American's so they can get a guest workers.

Can we outsource Congresses jobs to Denmark, or Iceland, or Canada?

Can you ask Bernie about this bill in the Senate on Friday.

Thanks.

Great idea, I wish he would take a four year vacation, he deserves it. After all it has to be hard work redistributing the wealth and spending other people's money so generously.

That's OUR money. You don't actually think that state defined property rights are handed down by God or unquestionably legitimate do you?

Too many times I get too Philosophical but,

This thing called a filibuster seems to waste time not talking about anything. I didn’t know that Congress persons could do that, as I watched c-span, the Congressional channel, viewing an empty room while listening to classical music. Perhaps that is the way the old world government really worked. It didn’t work whenever it felt like. So, not too much has changed, America still is the old European style with a cable television twist, now we all get to see the empty room, do nothing room.

One of the reasons I am so cynical and bitter at times is when I found out not only this filibuster stuff but after five years a Congress person can get a pension. Thinking about it, seems they have the capability to do their own collective bargaining whenever they want to, or raise their own pay whenever. Isn’t that funny. All the while America is an “at will” working country where an employer can fire anyone who might want a collective bargaining situation. A very extraordinary miserly situation that falls under the category of extravagance that represents the excess power that exceeds the ordinary electorate that placed them there. Like me or you.

This whole scene falls under that what is evident where all men are equal are not equal. After working better than twenty years or for different companies, because of treaties, corporate decisions, greed economy to cut jobs, or downsizing I have to retire into poverty. Early in my career paid my allegiance to my country to volunteer to fight in Vietnam for this miserable ending to my American dream, for everyones freedom. Please let it be known that I shall endure but dam the lot of those who believe they are good leaders, for I went through the mill of American political damnation. I can easily fathom who is good.

For a time span I had to exhaust my retirement. One employment period the company I worked for went into bankruptcy and my pension with it. This happened because of Senate and Congressional decisions at the time. I became accountable for this and my credit rating collapsed. My personal life collapsed too, almost lost my home, and my wife. From my view whenever a recession is called what is evident is the Congress and the Senate should be held accountable for malfeasance in periods like that.

Especially after war profiteering where many Congressional and Senate and with presidents that expand their bank accounts in what the electorate should identify as “Extravagate”. This whole scene that we witness is an obnoxious crime, previously characterized by Hal Fonts said it very well, and has my sentiments. Now is the moment not only for a president to fix the economy, immigration , or jobs, ending war, etc., and besides pardoning a really good new style president one who could and should start to issue indictments rather than just pardons at the end of a term.

This America is really looking for that balance of power that a president is capable of. Just as President Obama can issue a bill about immigration or better such as jobs. What is expected from a new and young America is looking for that leadership, with a directive such as investigations that lead towards indictments. Any and all that could clean up our government. No, Obama is not a messiah, but I keep hearing he has courage.

From my view, The American government and the industry is so unbalanced and corrupt it will never have a golden era, a golden age of peace and prosperity that can be newly recorded with the greatest consumer society ever recorded in history. For those who believe in God it would be something proud to give that notion, that pease prosperity, happyness, and tranqility back to him the God that knows it can happen for the many of us that believe in God. For if you only believe in random order into and out of chaos that is why we are where we are.

Quote Mark Saulys:

He'd need a crisis, a 9/11 or burning of the Reichstag so he could do what Bush tried to do and Hitler did, gain dictatorship by getting emergency powers to the excecutive branch.

Oh, you mean like president Darth Cheney did? Would not be surprised to see a story about competing book titles or movie titles about his story titled something like "The Imperial Vice Presidency".

Talk about a dictator ... while W was either riding his bicycle or on vacation at the "ranch" in Crawford Texas, Cheney was attempting to re-write the constitution in order to fill the pockets of his fat cat buddies back at Halliburton. Cheney somehow had people scared into not challenging his redefinition of the powers of the office of vice president.

Both of those SOB's should have been arrested for war crimes for their torture regime, among other crimes. Lawyer shopping until they found some Justice underling that would write them a "get out of jail free card" that authorized torture techniques banned at least since Nuremberg?

Any "dictator" charges leveled at the current president are far outweighed by the actual offenses of the previous administration that have resulted in them, since they left office 4 years ago, being afraid they will be arrested if they leave the country.

The current administration has also not exercised that "signing statement" techniques W and Cheney loved to use to ignore portions of laws they did not like. You may not think the current president's use of executive orders is legal and constitutional, but it is, and so was the b.s. the previous administration pulled with the signing statements.

Someone has been consuming too much RW radio or TV or some other media that may be delivered with a touch of an Australian accent. The Hitler references again? Please!

No argument here Nachos, but I don't think black has anything to do with it. No doubt this country is stuck in the left- right paradigm. They have all us drones watching a stupid game and taking sides like it matters While the massive defecit spending on special interest group voters AND corporations demands (military industrial complex) continues. Spending is the tool for re- election and more centralized power. If you don't have inflation protected assets in this storm you will never build wealth or financial security as this irresponsible fiscal policy relies on the accommodating monetary policy of the federal reserve to create the fiat money. Inflation is the monster that is and will be eating the so called middle class that both parties say they want to help. We have to break the cycle, reduce the spending reduce the tax burden, take some pain and push through it.

If Harry Reid had done REAL filibuster reform, we would be in the process of filling 700 federal court vacancies. Please notice that this court decision did not "appear" until AFTER Mr. Reid gave away all his power to influence the future course of the American judiciary. Had Mr. Reid enacted REAL filibuster reform, these judges would have been worried about angering Mr. Reid.

Global,

labor, by far, isn't always justly compensated. As Woody Guthrie said, "The gambling man is rich, the working man is poor". What may be legal isn't always ethical, by any means. Everything shouldn't be organized to serve the investor class.

The masterminds who decide how much of your income you should keep or how much it should be subsidized are you and I - and everyone else - deciding collectively and democratically.

There is nothing handed down by God saying which or how much that has to be. We just gotta decide.

I still think Obama's biggest mistake was not declaring a national emergency when he first took office in his first term and using that power to clean house, restore the Constitution, and prosecute the Bush Administration for it's plethora of war crimes and unconstitutional acts including the one he's forced to take advantage of to do so.

He would have been able to completely remove or eliminate all radical corporate influences from the government including those who pose as his biggest obstacles in the past 4 years.

If one were to draw a parallel between his Administration and the plot of the movie Blazing Saddles, this Sharif Bart is doing a poor job of ridding the City of Rockridge of the corporate influences and hired goons sponsored by the Office of the Governor.

Of course, even in the movie, Sharif Bart had insurmountable opposition, even from the citizenry he was sworn to protect. In the end however, through unorthodox means and pure intent, he managed to thwart the evil influences and save the town. I do hope that movie is a foreshadow of things to come.