"Judge, do I look crazy? Of course it was loaded!"

I won't bore you with the details, but anyway, instead of the 60 days in jail that the prosecutor was pushing for, my getting caught with a combat tuned Smith & Wesson chief's special ended me up doing 20 hours of community service at Glide Memorial Church, in San Francisco's Tenderloin, back when it was still skid row.

There has been large number of explanations, reasons and even derogating of the elite and those on the right concerning their behavior and seemingly lack of compassion. Ranging from fascist ideology to even psycho-pathology. Greed, racism, ignorance, close mindedness and even mental illness. And I will agree that in a number of cases that more than a few of these do apply.

ABC News/Washington Post poll draws this conclusion:

One key challenge is that while Americans are broadly dissatisfied with the system overall, vastly more – 75 percent – rate their own quality of care favorably. The difficulty thus remains where it’s been all along: Forging solutions to the current system’s problems that don’t leave people fearing they’ll lose what many see as their own good quality of care now.

"My opponent, Mr. Romney, said I wasted my presidency on healthcare. That's right, I wasted my presidency trying to bring health care to 30 million people, people in the middle class or trying to get into the middle class. In other words, if you help the middle class, you're wasting your time. 

Mr. Romney won't waste time on the middle class. 

That's essentially what he said, isn't it? Kind of reveals more about him than me. 

We have heard a lot over the last four years on how those responsible for the economic/financial crisis of 2008-2009 have gotten away scot-free. That the policies of Bush have been not only replicated by Obama, but enhanced and refined.

As the political discussions heat up with the approaching 2012 elections, I think it is of value to ponder this little experiment.

We create through the wonders of cloning two candidates to run for the US Representative seat in every district in the country.  The one running on the Democratic ticket would be a shoe in for membership in the Progressive Caucus, whereas the other would sit up shop in the Tea Party Caucus.  Neither of them would be wackos or nutjubs.  Both would be skilled in the game of politics.  A Bernie Sanders vs. Mike Pence sort of battle. 

Sorry, couldn't resist.

9 out of 12 people haven't heard of Bain.

And you can be sure that of the remaining, a lot just think it was about downsizing companies in trouble, not gutting stealing the pensions & dumping the carcasses on the taxpayer (who didn't cover all the shortfall)

What a wasted opportunity.

The facile rule of thumb pursuant to which certain drone deaths are excluded from even the minor inconvenience attendant upon acknowledging that regrettable (though purportedly unavoidable, thus justifiable) "collateral damage" has occurred turns out to have been made public at a particularly inconvenient time.