I suggest we all send $2 to the Koch's with our thanks for the MANY good/decent things the Koch family has done both in their own community, and for the US economy.

Obama is a silly man, and has never once been able to take responsibility for his own failures.

What Gov Perdue has suggested is exactly what I have feared since Obama was elected. He's built a back-up government with his system of Czars and government agencies who are writing law under the guise of regulations. He's suggested a non-armed forces militia. It is not beyond belief that Gov Perdue's remarks were, indeed, a trial balloon. The blind-eye turned, and the tacit approval of threats of violence made by Union thugs, as well as the building violence among youth gangs may also be the early stages of what could escalate to such proportions that martial law could be exercised.

It's like the frog in a pot of water. When you put him in the pot, the water is cold. By the time he realizes that you've turned up the heat, it's too late for him to get out of the pot - he's cooked. Hopefully folks will be alert to any other signals like the one Gov Perdue has provided.

Excellent article - there is no question that a great portion of our citizenry is poorly informed about how an economy works/fails, and it is easy to mislead with just a few sound-bites. One must always consider the source and remember the question that applies - "How can you tell if Mr Reich is lying?" ...... If his lips are moving you should start checking the veracity of what he's just said. Every time.

I consider Krauthammer and Will to be fairly wise and well informed commentators, but would encourage those of you who trust their assessment of Palin to go back in history a little and read some of their statements about Reagan and others. Today, many of their predictions/remarks have proven to be inaccurate - even wildly wrong in many cases. In particular, the remarks that Dr. Krauthammer made about Barak Obama following his election showed that Charles's knowledge/understanding of BO was completely off the mark - though plenty of accurate, well documented information was available in advance of the election had he chosen to form an understanding instead of an opinion. So I'd suggest that we NOT be sheep blindly following any pundit, commentator or "expert" - even those whom we typically respect - without checking their feet for clay residue. There is enough information available in this day and age to set aside "reputations", (which are often inaccurate), and do our own homework. AVOID OPINIONS - THE INFO IS OUT THERE TO BE USED IN FORMING AN UNDERSTANDING, INSTEAD.

Two thumbs up!

Amen!

Ezra Klein has made himself a laughing-stock. (Old term - he may not "get it"). I can't help but wonder what his actual reading comprehension level is. Good news, though - The US House of Representatives is going to start this year's session with a reading of the Constitution, and - if a volunteer tutor can be found - perhaps there is hope for some remedial training for Mr. Klein. I know it's tough for such a callow (old term - he may not "get it") fellow who obvious has taken an overdose of vitamin "I", but if my 9 year old grandson can understand the constitution, maybe Mr. Klein has a chance of catching up on his sadly deficient education.

I also usually agree with Mr Krauthammer - in fact I look for his input pretty consistently - but I agree that he is wrong this time.

Jaciscully - the proposal to have the Census Bureau accountable directly to the White House was torpedoed. The Census Bureau remains under the umbrella of the Department of Commerce. Don't take my word for it - check it out.

Note: This response is probably only of interest to those who have worked the decennial census

So true about the bad supervisors, Snoopcat - in Field Operations we had them mostly in NRFU where incompetent Crew Leaders (CL's) eventually disqualified themselves, and other CL's had to come in and clean up the mess! I got one of those and it was the one task I would have skipped if I could have! In the LCO, we were blessed with great people in Field Operations, Admin or Quality Assurance (and you know who that leaves LOL) - so we were lucky!

Maybe it was just our LCO, but as a CL on multiple operations, we were encouraged to weed out cheaters quickly. This became a huge challenge for Crew Leaders during NRFU because we didn't receive ANY of the the tracking reports that - according to our Crew Leader training and manuals - were to have been provided to us on a regular basis. We had been trained to use these reports to assist us in spotting data falsification but the reports never materialized, according to the LCO, because of IT issues.

In order to compensate for the lack of tracking reports, the NRFU CL's and Assistants were forced to put in a lot of additional hours. Besides checking for data falsification, we quickly learned that we had to manually track every questionnaire. Since our authorized overtime didn't cover the time it took to compensate for the missing reports, many of us worked dozens of hours each week for which we were not paid. And - officially - of course that didn't happen.

On the good news side, we DID terminate anyone caught falsifying data though, and any of their work that could be was redone. We were lucky to be supported by our AMFO/AMQA in weeding out those who were just "pencil whipping" the questionnaires, but I hear you saying that this wasn't your experience and I bet you're not alone.

One anomaly we did run into - (and I don't know what could have done to prevent it) - were a handful of respondents and proxies who thought it was clever to give us bogus information and then deny that they'd ever provided it when contacted by the QA team. I had to personally follow up on a few of these cases. One guy admitted to me that he'd given three different sets of information to the original enumerator and two others who were sent to follow up after he denied being the proxy. Go figure :(