Fuck its silent in here.......

[R-V]

Spending has to come down.

Sure. Who's gonna vote for that?  No one, not even Tea Partiers.

In the poll, Americans across all age groups and ideologies said by large margins that it was "unacceptable'' to make significant cuts in entitlement programs in order to reduce the federal deficit. Even tea party supporters, by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, declared significant cuts to Social Security "unacceptable."

Sooner or later we're just going to have to elect people who want to serve, I guess. 

DPD.  I think this quote that is sometimes attributed to Alexander Tytler seems relevant.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

I guess America IS pretty awesome if we're already 45 years past our expiration date. So who's gonna be the dictator? My money's on Gery Chico.

[World's #1 Astros Fan]

Spending has to come down.

Sure. Who's gonna vote for that?  No one, not even Tea Partiers.

In the poll, Americans across all age groups and ideologies said by large margins that it was "unacceptable'' to make significant cuts in entitlement programs in order to reduce the federal deficit. Even tea party supporters, by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, declared significant cuts to Social Security "unacceptable."

Sooner or later we're just going to have to elect people who want to serve, I guess. 

DPD.  I think this quote that is sometimes attributed to Alexander Tytler seems relevant.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

I guess America IS pretty awesome if we're already 45 years past our expiration date. So who's gonna be the dictator? My money's on Gery Chico.

Charlie Sheen.

[Internet Apex]

Spending has to come down.

Sure. Who's gonna vote for that?  No one, not even Tea Partiers.

In the poll, Americans across all age groups and ideologies said by large margins that it was "unacceptable'' to make significant cuts in entitlement programs in order to reduce the federal deficit. Even tea party supporters, by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, declared significant cuts to Social Security "unacceptable."

Sooner or later we're just going to have to elect people who want to serve, I guess. 

DPD.  I think this quote that is sometimes attributed to Alexander Tytler seems relevant.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

I guess America IS pretty awesome if we're already 45 years past our expiration date. So who's gonna be the dictator? My money's on Gery Chico.

45 years?

[R-V]

Spending has to come down.

Sure. Who's gonna vote for that?  No one, not even Tea Partiers.

In the poll, Americans across all age groups and ideologies said by large margins that it was "unacceptable'' to make significant cuts in entitlement programs in order to reduce the federal deficit. Even tea party supporters, by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, declared significant cuts to Social Security "unacceptable."

Sooner or later we're just going to have to elect people who want to serve, I guess. 

DPD.  I think this quote that is sometimes attributed to Alexander Tytler seems relevant.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

I guess America IS pretty awesome if we're already 45 years past our expiration date. So who's gonna be the dictator? My money's on Gery Chico.

45 years?

I'm a moron.

[J. Walter Weatherman]

Spending has to come down.

Sure. Who's gonna vote for that?  No one, not even Tea Partiers.

In the poll, Americans across all age groups and ideologies said by large margins that it was "unacceptable'' to make significant cuts in entitlement programs in order to reduce the federal deficit. Even tea party supporters, by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, declared significant cuts to Social Security "unacceptable."

Sooner or later we're just going to have to elect people who want to serve, I guess.  

DPD.  I think this quote that is sometimes attributed to Alexander Tytler seems relevant.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

I guess America IS pretty awesome if we're already 45 years past our expiration date. So who's gonna be the dictator? My money's on Gery Chico.

45 years?

I'm a moron.

You were just measuring the age of our glorious Republic back to the repeal of the odious Stamp Act.

A momentous victory, to be sure.

[Bort]

Spending has to come down.

Sure. Who's gonna vote for that?  No one, not even Tea Partiers.

In the poll, Americans across all age groups and ideologies said by large margins that it was "unacceptable'' to make significant cuts in entitlement programs in order to reduce the federal deficit. Even tea party supporters, by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, declared significant cuts to Social Security "unacceptable."

Sooner or later we're just going to have to elect people who want to serve, I guess.  

DPD.  I think this quote that is sometimes attributed to Alexander Tytler seems relevant.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

I guess America IS pretty awesome if we're already 45 years past our expiration date. So who's gonna be the dictator? My money's on Gery Chico.

45 years?

I'm a moron.

You were just measuring the age of our glorious Republic back to the repeal of the odious Stamp Act.

A momentous victory, to be sure.

My America ended on April 9, 1865...

[SKO]

Spending has to come down.

Sure. Who's gonna vote for that?  No one, not even Tea Partiers.

In the poll, Americans across all age groups and ideologies said by large margins that it was "unacceptable'' to make significant cuts in entitlement programs in order to reduce the federal deficit. Even tea party supporters, by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, declared significant cuts to Social Security "unacceptable."

Sooner or later we're just going to have to elect people who want to serve, I guess. 

DPD.  I think this quote that is sometimes attributed to Alexander Tytler seems relevant.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorshipa divine-right absolutist monarchy. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

You rang?

[R-V]

REAL TALK from Ezra Klein:

That's the main thing I've learned working as a reporter and political observer in Washington: No one can carry out complicated plans. All parties and groups are fractious and bumbling. But everyone always thinks everyone else is efficiently and ruthlessly carrying out complicated plans. Partisans are very good at recognizing disarray and incompetence on their side of the aisle, but they tend to think the other side is intimidatingly capable and unburdened by scruples or normal human vulnerabilities. And there's so much press interest in Svengali political consultants like Karl Rove or David Plouffe, all of whom get built up in the press as infallible tacticians, that the place just looks a lot more sophisticated than it really is.

But I tend to be shocked at how sophisticated it isn't. Communication between various political actors -- a crucial ingredient in any serious plan -- is surprisingly informal and inadequate. Members of Congress and their staffs don't really have access to secret, efficient networks of information. Instead, they read Roll Call and the Hill and The Washington Post and keep their televisions tuned to cable news, turning up the volume when a colleague involved in a bill they're interested in appears on the screen. Then everyone sits around and speculates about what they just heard. Most every political reporter can back me up when I say that it's extremely common for key players on both sides of the aisle to ask you what you're hearing or how you'd rate the chances of their bill -- and this typically happens when you're sitting down to ask them the very same questions. It's terribly disappointing and, I'm convinced, 100 percent genuine.

[morpheus]

REAL TALK from Ezra Klein:

That's the main thing I've learned working as a reporter and political observer in Washington: No one can carry out complicated plans. All parties and groups are fractious and bumbling. But everyone always thinks everyone else is efficiently and ruthlessly carrying out complicated plans. Partisans are very good at recognizing disarray and incompetence on their side of the aisle, but they tend to think the other side is intimidatingly capable and unburdened by scruples or normal human vulnerabilities. And there's so much press interest in Svengali political consultants like Karl Rove or David Plouffe, all of whom get built up in the press as infallible tacticians, that the place just looks a lot more sophisticated than it really is.

But I tend to be shocked at how sophisticated it isn't. Communication between various political actors -- a crucial ingredient in any serious plan -- is surprisingly informal and inadequate. Members of Congress and their staffs don't really have access to secret, efficient networks of information. Instead, they read Roll Call and the Hill and The Washington Post and keep their televisions tuned to cable news, turning up the volume when a colleague involved in a bill they're interested in appears on the screen. Then everyone sits around and speculates about what they just heard. Most every political reporter can back me up when I say that it's extremely common for key players on both sides of the aisle to ask you what you're hearing or how you'd rate the chances of their bill -- and this typically happens when you're sitting down to ask them the very same questions. It's terribly disappointing and, I'm convinced, 100 percent genuine.

That sounds correct and awful at the same time.  All the more reason to *not* have them wield so much power.

[J. Walter Weatherman]

REAL TALK from Ezra Klein:

That's the main thing I've learned working as a reporter and political observer in Washington: No one can carry out complicated plans. All parties and groups are fractious and bumbling. But everyone always thinks everyone else is efficiently and ruthlessly carrying out complicated plans. Partisans are very good at recognizing disarray and incompetence on their side of the aisle, but they tend to think the other side is intimidatingly capable and unburdened by scruples or normal human vulnerabilities. And there's so much press interest in Svengali political consultants like Karl Rove or David Plouffe, all of whom get built up in the press as infallible tacticians, that the place just looks a lot more sophisticated than it really is.

But I tend to be shocked at how sophisticated it isn't. Communication between various political actors -- a crucial ingredient in any serious plan -- is surprisingly informal and inadequate. Members of Congress and their staffs don't really have access to secret, efficient networks of information. Instead, they read Roll Call and the Hill and The Washington Post and keep their televisions tuned to cable news, turning up the volume when a colleague involved in a bill they're interested in appears on the screen. Then everyone sits around and speculates about what they just heard. Most every political reporter can back me up when I say that it's extremely common for key players on both sides of the aisle to ask you what you're hearing or how you'd rate the chances of their bill -- and this typically happens when you're sitting down to ask them the very same questions. It's terribly disappointing and, I'm convinced, 100 percent genuine.

That sounds correct and awful at the same time.  All the more reason to *not* have them wield so much power.

Obviously that kind of power should be kept in Wall Street investment bank boardrooms, where they've demonstrated that they can handle it.

[Gilgamesh]

Wow, I wonder why...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/06/AR2011030602662.html

New Hampshire's new Republican state House speaker is pretty clear about what he thinks of college kids and how they vote. They're "foolish," Speaker William O'Brien said in a recent speech to a tea party group. "Voting as a liberal. That's what kids do," he added, his comments taped by a state Democratic Party staffer and posted on YouTube. Students lack "life experience," and "they just vote their feelings."

Douche.

Still, the sponsor of the measure, state Rep. Gregory Sorg, addressing a packed public hearing room late last month, focused his ire directly at the college set.

Average taxpayers in college towns, he said, are having their votes "diluted or entirely canceled by those of a huge, largely monolithic demographic group . . . composed of people with a dearth of experience and a plethora of the easy self-confidence that only ignorance and inexperience can produce."

Their "youthful idealism," he added, "is focused on remaking the world, with themselves in charge, of course, rather than with the mundane humdrum of local government."

[CT III]

This doesn't sound good.

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20110305/ISSUE01/303059975/crains-investigation-illinois-prepaid-tuition-plan-struggles-as-college-costs-soar#ixzz1FowgbkrW

[Brownie]

And, the distinguished member from Illinois wants to add the right to free unicorns and rainbows to the Constitution as well.

[Gilgamesh]

And, the distinguished member from Illinois wants to add the right to free unicorns and rainbows to the Constitution as well.

Every child in America could use an international airport, Mr. Burns.

[CBStew]

And, the distinguished member from Illinois wants to add the right to free unicorns and rainbows to the Constitution as well.

Please tell me that he didn't go to public schools.