It is true we are not in the great depression with 30% unemployment, but it’s just as true that people at the bottom of the ladder are hurting. If/when you finally get a conserative to discuss that fact, you get the response that, ‘it’s their own fault’ or ‘they are not really poor; they are just cheating the system’. Catch a conservative with one or 2 drinks, they will tell you they people on welfare are all prostitutes and drug addicts. More than 2 drinks and they will check who is listening before they get racial.

Because poverty is a state of mind. The ‘Haves’ will explain that all the ‘Have Nots’ need to do is change their attitude and all the wealth of this nation will come to them. You don’t even have to click your heels together.

At the same time they spin this narrative, they spin a second narrative. Don’t notice that it contradicts the first. The 2nd narrative is for the middle-class. They will explain that the economy is like a bunch of lifeboats surrounded by a mass of people in the water. However they word it, the message is; there’s not enough room in the lifeboats for all of ‘us’. If you try to save everyone, we all sink and perish. Save yourself and your family.

You will hear this argument in the health care debate, though more subtlly phrased. And in almost the same breath that they explain (as if to a child) that we do not have the resources to provide health care for our own people, we do have an endless supply of money for wars in Iraq and (goody, goody) Iran. Because we have a moral obligation to use our military might to bring the blessings of democracy to countries cursed with a surplus of oil.

The only good news about the increasingly crappy economy is that it’s one more big lever to get Republicans out of public life as much as possible.

Yes, there are still people saying they would vote for McCain. At this point, I think that’s credible evidence they are a danger to themselves and others, and should be put in a Home.

Though, thanks to the Republicans, we don’t have any. Just prisons.

Only a fool, in this case an individual who discounts the possibility that an honest man might sing to the cops, would invite an honest man to join his gang of criminals.

Would Watergate ever have happened without the involvement of a few honest men? It would be uncharacteristic of Bush/Cheney/etal not to have taken note.