Miscellaneous 49

1) Jimmy Carter has, on several occasions, provided significant praise to Howard Baker and Bob Michael (the Senate and House minority leaders during his Presidency). He actually feels that they were every bit as helpful to him as his fellow Democrats were. I ask you, folks, compare THAT to the current situation in Washington (increasingly loathsome clowns such as Kyl and McConnell opposing the President for nothing more than what seems to be naked political gain). I mean, I know that there's always been gambling going on down there, but this - this is absolutely fucked!............2) It's been an interesting week, hasn't it? DADT gets repealed 65-31. The START treaty passes 71-26. And just yesterday the aid to 9/11 first responders bill gets passed unanimously......Hm. Can you say Mitch McConnell isn't as powerful as he thinks he is?............3) I was watching MSNBC the other night (I don't even remember which show it was) and they had on this liberal economist (yeah, I know, no big fat frigging surprise there - no, I don't remember that fellow's name, either). I almost turned the channel but, damn, this guy was good. He had this one idea, in particular, which I thought was especially brilliant. He said that, instead of bailing the states out again, we do for them what we did for Wall Street - i.e., provide them a bunch of low interest loans (a la TARP). This way, the states can get some needed relief AND the federal government can get the bulk of the money back, some of it quite possibly with interest. Sounds like a total win-win situation to me. You?