“Bipartisanship” does NOT mean “My way or the highway,” but that’s the way the admin and current Congress have defined it.

Conservative ideology is not empty

It’s not empty, it’s muddled, especially by so-cons who claim that anyone who is not a so-con is not a “real” conservative. The net result of which has been Little Tent shrinkage of the GOP and swelling of the ranks of indies as fiscons and libertarians and Mainstreeters have left in droves, sick of the religious right.

Conservative ideology is not empty. Big Government is. Taxing the “rich” is not the answer…it’s not their fault others don’t earn more. We shouldn’t punish people who are ambitious and have mastered their talents in ways most of us can’t.

How old are you? Over 65? Did you turn down Medicare?

I’m 11 years from Medicare, and unemployed. When you conservatives get around to solving my problems, then you will earn your way back into power, since you caused my problems by opposing heath care reform 16 years ago and tanking the economy with huge deficits caused by tax cuts for the rich and two wars on borrowed money.

Your one-note is getting very old to those of us barely hanging on with no end in sight.

Of course, since all of you believe in Galt, my being laid off in my fifties is my fault. Please, you lost because your ideology is empty. Get over it.

In fact, it’s BOTH sides fault, because neither will budge.

I don’t think the economy is going to bounce back imminently. I think that the just-better-than-dead-cat bounce in the stock market is out of steam, and there isn’t enough good economic news. I think many of the gov’t mitigation measures undertaken, while useful from the perspective of soothing the pain of dislocated workers and preventing an even worse economic nosedive, will also delay any eventual recovery. If you shallow out any dive, you also shallow out the rise. That’s God’s rule, not mine.

America bought itself an artificially high standard of living on borrowed money. The cathedral of unsustainable practices has collapsed. and now what’s left is a big hole of debt we all dug.

The only way out of the hole is straight up the hill. Produce more, spend less.

To whom?

The public supports a public option and the republicans don’t. So what is more important: pleasing republicans or the public?

Personally I like Pelosi (probably in the minority there), and I think she’s a good speaker (not a tyrant like Gingrich et al) and while she is a bit more liberal than the middle, she understands the dire situation we are in. Grassley has stated that bipartisanship=no public option. Is that something that we want Justin? Why try to find bipartisanship when the other side says no to anything that isn’t part of their talking points/platform. Makes no sense. The public granted the dems a supermajority so they should push through their platform. If it fails then people will vote them out. This is the joy of a democratic republic. I think in the end we will have a public option without republican votes and the dems will retain their majorities in 2010 unless the republicans get on board with the rest of the country- especially the younger voters who will be running this country in no time at all.

I’m not exactly sure why she doesn’t realize that her President promised bi-partisanship

She realizes that such promises were just talk. Obama has never, so far as I can tell, understoon bipartisanship as meaning anything more than “the other side can come along if they agree with me.”

Of course I get that from my magic eightball.