Well, in Canada, the conservatives are to the left of the US Democratic Party (to say nothing of the corporate-Republican wing of the Democratic Party, a/k/a the "New Democrats"). If only our "New Democrats" looked like Canada's....

But instead, we get "New Democrats" like these (http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=3869&kaid=103&subid=110) who espouse policies like these (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/17/AR201006...).

The Democratic Party is toast, and so is the USA.

And WTF is wrong with the Add Link button on Thom's site, anyway? Sorry about the ugly formatting.

Tom -- In your Hour 1 rant about the Republicans doing everything they can to sabotage the Obama presidency, you left out one sentence: "And Obama is letting them."

And he has been, since January 20, 2009.

Whether his ideological commitments are not really all that different from the Republicans ("I am a New Democrat", he proclaimed himself in March 2009), or whether he's simply pathologically afraid of calling out the Republicans and their agenda, Obama has not stood up to them in any form, either in word or in deed, even three Friedman units into his presidency and mere months before the midterm elections.

And it started at the very beginning of his presidency, as I mentioned. Going back and reading Krugman writing about the stimulus in the first quarter of 2009 proves instructive, and Krugman shows himself to be most prescient (again).

Jan. 8, 2009: "...Mr. Obama’s prescription doesn’t live up to his diagnosis. The economic plan he’s offering isn’t as strong as his language about the economic threat. In fact, it falls well short of what’s needed. ... To close a[n output] gap of more than $2 trillion — possibly a lot more, if the budget office projections turn out to be too optimistic — Mr. Obama offers a $775 billion plan. And that’s not enough. ... only about 60 percent of the Obama plan consists of public spending. The rest consists of tax cuts — and many economists are skeptical about how much these tax cuts, especially the tax breaks for business, will actually do to boost spending. (A number of Senate Democrats apparently share these doubts.) Howard Gleckman of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center summed it up in the title of a recent blog posting: 'lots of buck, not much bang.'"

And Krugman also proves prescient -- again, even before Obama's inauguration -- on "bipartisanship". Jan. 5, 2009: "Look, Republicans are not going to come on board. Make 40% of the package tax cuts, they’ll demand 100%. Then they’ll start the thing about how you can’t cut taxes on people who don’t pay taxes (with only income taxes counting, of course) and demand that the plan focus on the affluent. Then they’ll demand cuts in corporate taxes."

July 3, 2009: "Obama administration economists understand the stakes. Indeed, just a few weeks ago, Christina Romer, the chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers, published an article on the “lessons of 1937” — the year that F.D.R. gave in to the deficit and inflation hawks, with disastrous consequences both for the economy and for his political agenda. What I don’t know is whether the administration has faced up to the inadequacy of what it has done so far."

July 9, 2009: "As soon as the Obama administration-in-waiting announced its stimulus plan — this was before Inauguration Day — some of us worried that the plan would prove inadequate. And we also worried that it might be hard, as a political matter, to come back for another round. Unfortunately, those worries have proved justified. The bad employment report for June made it clear that the stimulus was, indeed, too small. But it also damaged the credibility of the administration’s economic stewardship. There’s now a real risk that President Obama will find himself caught in a political-economic trap."

One could go on, but I think we get the idea. All you have to do is google "krugman obama stimulus site:nytimes.com" to get more reading material on the subject than you could possibly want.

But one more, from a few days ago, before I go. Again from Krugman.

Blog post, July 9, 2010: "Those concerns were what had me fairly frantic in early 2009: I was terribly afraid that the failure of an inadequate stimulus to bring unemployment down would end up being seen as a refutation of the whole idea of stimulus — which is exactly what happened. And by the way, the reason I was for temporary bank nationalization was that it would make it possible to recapitalize banks quickly, and get them lending, which would help make up for the weak stimulus; what happened instead, of course, was gradual recapitalization through profits, with banks not doing much lending along the way."

And this may well prove the epitaph of the Obama Administration, from the same Krugman post: "How did things end up this way? We’ll never know whether the administration could have passed a bigger plan; we do know that it didn’t try."

Didn't Mark Williams say that there are people who use tanning booths to relieve psoriasis and other medical reasons? Don't people of color get psoriasis, exzema, etc.? Wine has medicinal qualities too, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't tax it.

re: #21 i know a light skinned african american guy who uses sunscreen

re: #20 YES in the chat room, there's a bunch of people posting upside down GOP elephant icons, you can see the stars are correct.

Thom, the NAACP is over 100 years old, and was named when "colored people" hadn't yet been turned into a slur by the likes of people like Mark.

Today, the NAACP keeps the "CP" part of their name because 1) it is their registered name, and 2) the alternative is the NAAAA. Nyah.

I think hispanics and asians have been known to use tanning booths. However I'm not expert in tanning, being a red-head, I have two colors for my skin, white and red.

N

re: 18: a la the GOP web site

re: #15: the elephant isn't upside down, the stars ON the elephant are upside down.

The Republicans have got the organizing thing all over the Democrats.

I went to the GOP site this morning to try to find an upside down picture of an elephant Thom was discussing. Of course, I never found THAT. But at the bottom of the page, loud and clear was a link where a person could find a JOB or become an INTERN for the party.

So I went to the DNC site to see if they had something similar. There was the begging for dollars and the guilt motivated rap to "volunteer". BUT NO JOBS. Not for the party, not for the nation.

WHAT makes anyone believe that anyone has TIME TO GIVE FOR FREE in a collapsing society?

And they wonder what the heck is wrong? They can't even get the FIRST PAGE of their site right.

I am tired of being misled by the DLC Dems. I want a party that represents the LEFT. I want an American Workers Party. Think we can start a new one? Call it the American Independent Movement and don't formulate it into a party. That way it can't be attacked. You can't attack a group that is not formally organized. Hence the massive effort to formally organize Afghanistan. See how long the shepherds have lived the way they WANT to live without interference? They don't want a government.

I am beginning to think they're right.

To many loyal Republicans their party loves this country, however, someone needs to clue in the members of the Republican party that make the median income (or less), that the leaders of their party don't consider the little people as part of "Their Country"

N