Actually my original intent was to ask if the pledge signed by Republicans is an act of 'treason". One definition of treason is "the betrayal of one's own country by waging war against it or by consciously or purposefully acting to aid its enemies." In the case of the Republicans in Congress, no one could ever prove "conscious". But Republicans may have given aid and comfort to China, our military competitor.

Throughout our history, both as a state and as individuals, Texans have been strengthened, assured and lifted up through prayer...It is fitting that Texans should join together in prayer to humbly seek an end to this ongoing drought and these devastating wildfires."...

NOW, THEREFORE, I, RICK PERRY, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas. I urge Texans of all faiths and traditions to offer prayers on that day for the healing of our land, the rebuilding of our communities and the restoration of our normal and robust way of life.

CHAAC (Mayan Rain God)

I guess that sometimes prayer works!

Flooding in Charlotte.

Flooding in Missouri.

Flooding in Iowa.

Flooding in Tennessee.

Flooding in North Dakota.

Flooding in Arkansas.

Flooding in Texas.

Thank you Governor Perry!

And thank the good Lord!

The last few weeks have, with good reason, worried liberals and others.  Once again, we have seen the only political party that even attempts to speak for any of our concerns fail horribly.  The debt ceiling debate was an inherently winnable policy fight on a number of different grounds.  While the ultimate deal (as we noted in its aftermath) is better than we could expect considering how badly the Democratic leadership failed, it still amounts to a loss in terms of the debate.  It legitimizes Republican bad economics.  It legitimizes "austerity".  None of this is particularly good.

Given all that, it's worth taking a moment to figure out how the Democratic Party can recover strategically from this sort of a failure.  It's a good question.  Fortunately, there are answers.

It is not uncommon to hear Americans complain about the United Nations (UN) and the participation of the U.S. within it. These critics, very often, simply don’t get it.  They don’t understand the reasons why the UN was created and what the goals of the institution are, and it is vital to understand those reasons in order to understand the United Nations.

I’ve been a steadfast Obama supporter every since the very first day he arrived on the political scene, but I must admit, it hasn’t always been easy. First, even as a candidate, he reversed his position on FISA after it was revealed that the Bush administration had been illegally spying on the American people. Then once elected, instead of allowing his attorney general the free hand to hold Bush and Cheney accountable for the war crimes committed in Iraq as prescribed both by law, and his oath of office, he sent the message to his attorney general, and the American people, that we shouldn’t "look back" on the murder of close to a million people.

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Then, instead of giving us the change that we could believe in that he promised during the campaign, he’s allowed the Republican Party to frame a completely false political debate which has given them free rein to hold the American people hostage and keep us in absolute misery. And while all this is going on, the only word coming out of his mouth is "compromise."

PLATONIC OR MORONIC?

Why, that all those mercenary individuals, whom the many call Sophists and whom they deem to be their adversaries, do, in fact, teach nothing but the opinion of the many, that is to say, the opinions of their assemblies; and this is their wisdom.

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.7.vi.html

We now have legislation that has been passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the Prez so that my SS check for $674.00 will be duly deposited in my free checking account.

The entire piece of legislation is much more complicated than I could ever surmise or relate. Others who would merely imitate Icarus are not at a loss for words so why should my opinion matter anyway?

My interest revolves around this Super Committee!

Watching the whole debate about whether the rich (now known as Job Creators 'cause we can't call 'em RICH anymore) should pay more or less in taxes has got me thinking. And I think that maybe we've done our Job Creators a bit of a disservice.

Rich people are like German Shepherds--they're smart, they're high-strung, and if you don't give them stuff to think about and do, they'll spend all their time chewing on the furniture and biting the wrong people. Or getting a really weird color tan. Why, it's almost cruel to lower Rich People's taxes, like George Bush did, without giving them a way to justify themselves by living up to their reputation as Job Creators. It takes away their pride--they may not know it, but the Rich have sunk into a well of complacency that would put any Welfare Queen to shame. Surely, a rich person's mind is a terrible thing to waste.

Wake up. Read Krugman. He's right, of course. The baby Conservative sharing the page with him even agrees, and writes a column which seems to have it about right, too. Small world.

I just watched Claire McCaskill make a ridiculous statement on "Meet The Press," where she accused the "extremes" on the right and left of dominating the current economic debate and called for new and louder moderate voices of compromise.

The left has had no voice in this debate whatsoever.  Claire McCaskill doesn't speak for the left. President Obama barely allows himself to speak to the left, much less for it.  Bernie Sanders is not even a loud voice in the economic debate.

Letter to President Obama.

Sir, we have both come by "rescue" dogs recently. Yours is a Portuguese Water Dog and mine is a Chesapeake Bay Dog. I love dogs and nothing against your dog Bo but anyone can see your dog is a foreigner. The Chesapeake Bay dog was developed in America, not a socialist country which bankrupted itself.

No doubt many of us have heard by now that nearly half of all Americans pay no taxes. Now, of course, an easy response to that is to correct that statement by pointing out that all Americans pay taxes, but that still leaves the statement that nearly half of all Americans pay no federal income taxes as being true.

You can't say you weren't warned. It was repeated over and over again: just because there is no presidential election, does not mean that it is not as important to vote in 2010 as it was in 2008. The bleat in this space went this way:

We are at a very difficult point in our history. The moment we are in always seems more significant than those of the past, and I suspect this election, or this crossroads may not be as much a moment of decision as it seems today, but, as Rachel explained perfectly the other day, we almost seem to have lost the will to do anything but hunker down, tell each other why we don't trust one another and whimper about our broken political system. This is not the time to put one's head in the sand, or to complain about things we wish the President had done, but did not. Dreaming about third parties, or making ours more liberal, has no place as we approach this election.

In the famous Monty Python parrot sketch, Michael Palin’s understandable outrage at being sold a Norwegian Blue that was actually “stone dead” as he put it, does not get him a new bird. What it does get him – from the John Cleese character who originally sold it to him – is a barrage of obfuscating re-specifications of the bird’s condition. No matter that the bird by this point “has passed on….is no more…has ceased to be” – is, in fact, “AN EX-PARROT;” and no matter that its current capacity to stay upright is entirely due to the foresight shown by John Cleese in nailing it to its perch. The new owner is simply told that the bird, far from being dead, is “resting,” “stunned,”  “prefers kipping on its back,” and – my favorite – “pining for the fjords.”

The sketch works, of course, only because both Palin and Cleese had access to a thesaurus. The humor comes from the play on words. Well, a thesaurus is working overtime in Washington D.C. right now, though its use is making nobody laugh. There is obfuscation aplenty, and it is thickening: which is why I recommend “pining for the fjords” to any of you who, like me, are growing increasingly outraged by our mainstream media’s inability to “tell it as it is.”

As many of you have probably already read, GDP growth in the second quarter of 2011 was an anemic 1.3%, falling far short of the projected 1.8% - which itself would have been weak, even if we had hit that number.  And growth for the first quarter of this year was revised downward from 1.9% to 0.4%.   That's right ... 0.4%.

One has to wonder whether the alleged 1.3% of growth for the second quarter will be revised downward as well when the miserable numbers are recomputed three months from now.