What nobody is paying attention to, is that Greece ran up a huge deficit under a conservative government that didn't want to make an effort to collect taxes... then lost to the Panhellenic Socialist Union just in time for the socialists to take the blame for the necessary austerity measures. Ireland was running very little debt until the government made an impulsive, and in retrospect unwise, decision to guarantee all the obligations of a set of very profligate banks in the private sector. A more nuanced measure, to guarantee the accounts of individual depositors up to a certain level, would have been wiser, and let the shareholders eat their bad judgement.

Further, the real problem is not that the level of debt is utterly unsustainable, but that governments have become dependent upon a private bond market which fluctuates wildly for all kinds of reasons, rational and irrational, and then government have to bow to "the market." If national debts were financed by patriotic contributions from savings (remember when every public school in America sold weekly stamps for U.S. savings bonds?) it would be a more manageable situation.

One sympathizes when reading of medieval money lenders, who were periodically imprisoned by the king until they agreed to forgive large sums of debt. But, by the same token government policy should not be held hostage to the whims of private investors eithers. There is a lot to unwind here, but unsustainable social benefits has little or nothing to do with it.

Ironically, the Roman Catholic Church includes books about the Macabees in their Bible, which most Protestants do not. It is one of the Apocrypha. I suspect it was originally put in their because it contains reference to the Hasmonean monarchy forming a long-distance alliance with the Roman Republic, which was good press for a church trying to kiss up to Roman authorities, and/or becoming the Official Church of the Roman Empire. I would expect that Gibson will be faithful to the Apocrypha in his presentation. I once asked an Orthodox rabbi what status the Apocrypha had to observant Jews. He replied that the Apocrypha were... apocryphal.

Perhaps an equally good measure would be the hatchet job Gibson did on Scottish history with "Braveheart," in which the facts were changed to show of Gibson's manly physique and sexual prowess. Sir William Wallace WAS an adherent of the Balliols, and therefore an enemy of the Bruce's, who NEVER gave him any support. Wallace never took York, and he never had an affair with Edward II's French wife, because she came over to England to marry Edward AFTER Wallace had been beheaded. Also, Edward was not a short, skinny, effeminate homosexual. He was a tall, broad-shouldered, athletic homosexual. I expect Gibson will do something equally accurate about the Macabees. Unfortunately, people will probably not only go to see it, but will take what they see in the movies as gospel truth.

Stereotypes and generalizations are seldom accurate, including Chait's. Pollak tacitly admits that his information is not better, then goes ahead with the same sort of stereotype and generalization. Yeah, Democratic Jews do it too, some of them, and so do some Republicans. Its a tangled tale, if we remember that tradtionally, Republican conservatives and southern Democrats considered Jews only marginally more acceptable than people of African descent, also writing off the Jews as socialists, which many were, the ones who were not capitalists, which not a few were.

There is no evidence that Bibi dislikes the President of the United States for his skin color -- any more than the man's more virulent critics in his own country. Republicans dislike ANY Democrat who wins an election, because it interferes with their sense of entitlement. (Democrats feel the same way about Republicans who win states like Massachusetts or districts in Brooklyn, but Republicans fell they are entitled to a century or two of nationwide majorities, and gosh darn it people turn to the OTHER party every eight to twelve years or so).

Bibi does not want to do ANY kind of deal with ANY semblance of a Palestinian state. He should, our President reminds him that he should, and he doesn't want to. That's shortsighted, and/or tunnel vision, but its not racism. In 1947, the United Nations voted to partition the former British Mandate of Palestine. That may or may not have been a good idea, but so it was voted. The UN had no troops to enforce its decision, and the British weren't going to have anything to do with enforcement. Various Arab armies thought they could take the whole ball of wax. They lost. They ended up with less territory than they would have got if they went along with the partition resolution. Fortunes of war. Now, what the Palestinian Authority can realistically expect to govern is a smaller piece of land, but by the same resolution that established the state of Israel, they should be able to establish a functional state there. Thanks to the IDF, it is no longer ruled by Jordan, or Egypt. Bibi needs to grow up. So does Chait.

This is too bad. If it weren't for Geithner pushing the "responsible" Wall Street positions carrying over from the Bush administration's "economic rescue" package, Obama might have gone ahead and broken up anything "too big to fail" into pieces that could be ALLOWED to fail without generating 30% unemployment. He was so afraid this sensible capitalist measure would get him labeled a "socialist" that he let Geithner run things.

Now the Democrats need to summon up the spine to honestly tell the American people what the Republicans are afraid to tell voters: we can't have tax cuts, and a balanced budget, without sharply reducing or eliminating programs that some majority of voters or other really wants. To most people "balancing the budget" translates "of course we have to balance the budget, but we shouldn't cut _______" (fill in the speaker's preferred programs, whether it is Medicare, agricultural subsidied, or the military. If we really mean to balance the budget, we can't afford the size military operation we've been running. Which may be good, Europe can pay for its own defense now. Can the Democrats summon up the courage to take this pledge?
http://aintnosuchthing.blogspot.com/2011/08/tanst...

Sounds like free enterprise and individual initiative to me! Let the free market sort this out! If the teachers are that bad, nobody will send their kids to these schools, and they will wither on the vine. I live in a city with a well developed voucher program, taken advantage of by many religious schools, many well-intentioned dreamers of how much better schools could be, and many fly-by-night hucksters. It doesn't take too long for the latter to be out of business.

On the other hand, if the teachers learn what it is like to appeal to parents and work with students and deliver a successful result, they might take what they've learned into their next collective bargaining session.

I don't see what the problem is here, except maybe a bit of sour grapes.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA .

This, on Breitbart's site? The man who put O'Reilly in the embarrassing position of having to apologize to Shirley Sherrod, after it turned out that the "white farmer" and his wife sprang to her defence and said she saved their farm????? You have a lot of nerve talking about selective editing here.

But I agree that those ineffectual clowns trying to infiltrate Tea Party events are both an embarrassment and a waste of time. If the Tea Party is that bad, it will implode of its own weight. If not, it won't be derailed by a few bad actors. Sort of like the right wingers who waved an old Russian flag at an Obama rally, no? StopConRhetoric is right.

Oh please. Soviet style?????? When is the last time you read about teachers unions in the Soviet Union operating independently of the government? Teachers unions pouring into Red Square to protest Kremlin budget allocations or curriculum decisions? Teachers subverting the party line by asking student to answer test questions about Soviet imperialism? There are legitimate criticisms to be made about education in America, but to call this "Soviet Style" is about as sensible as the lame jokes (mostly on the part of wannabe lefties) referencing the "People's Republic of Santa Monica." Hell, Santa Monica doesn't even have a Sergeant Schulz garden variety security service, let alone a ruthless, efficient number like the KGB. (Yes, I know, I'm mixing metaphors, Sergeant Schulz was German and his greatest fear was being sent to the Russian front to fight AGAINST the Soviet Union). Please, spare us the misplaced analogies. For both lefties and righties, the "Soviet" jokes are brought to you by our genuine geopolitical distance from the REALITIES of Soviet life.

I am as frustrated as anyone by the assumption that "all right thinking people feel and think the way I do," no matter what ideology it comes from. I could, however, easily rewrite those test questions to be perfectly sound:

1) Analyze the major factors that led the United States to acquire political and economic influence outside its own borders. Analyze why it was, or was not, accurate to call this "imperialism," either in the sense embraced by Mark Twain and Andrew Carnegie, or in the sense later charged by various communist tendencies.

2) Examine the development of nuclear technology in the United States, for both military and civilian uses; analyze what the benefits and costs have been, and whether it is worth developing further, or should be decommissioned.

3) Assess the legal, social, and economic status of Americans of African descent, including those who were free prior to 1863, those who had been enslaved and were emancipated, and those born after 1863. Include assessments of Booker T. Washington, Monroe Trotter, W.E.B. Du Bois, the Civil Rights Movement, and the reasons for the emergence and decline of the Black Power movement.

4) This question is unobjectionable as is, although clumsily worded. Anyone of "pro-life" sentiments or principles could perfectly well work with it, and write their own perspective in response. Further, there is nothing "Soviet" about the subject. At various times, the USSR freely allowed or viciously suppressed abortion.

5) What's wrong with that?

6) Oh, I could argue with that one for sure. How about, examine the failure of the League of Nations to support the independence of Ethiopia? Would the League have been stronger if the United States had joined? Would this have been a good decision for the United States? Why or why not? If I were answering this, I would analyze why Woodrow Wilson was an ignorant meddler and Henry Cabot Lodge was a narrow-minded fool.

The grade is about how well you substantiate your position, no? If a committed communist submitted a properly footnoted and research paper in Thomas Sowell's class, he would give the student an A+, wouldn't he? I could work that with my aged high school history teacher in 1971... don't these modern day right-wing high school students have the spine and the cojones to do the same?

Oh, too be sure, this is exactly what Protestant bluebloods, both the northern and southern variants, used to say about Catholics, particularly Irish Catholics. They weren't entirely wrong either. Some of those priests and bishops were thoroughly bigotted autocratic fanatics. Read Paul Blanshard's American Democracy and Catholic Power. It was well researched and soberly presented.

However, as we know, whether or not the Catholic Church offered an assimilating creed, America assimilated them, with little damage to the political fabric of the republic. Anyone less bigotted than the Ku Klux Klan had confidence that we could accept millions of Catholics into our body politic, and survive as a pluralistic democracy, without stigmatizing every individual of the Roman Catholic faith. Guess what? Most of us, at least those not bottled up in Hollywood or other closed communities, know Muslims personally, as neighbors, co-workers, and struggling business owners. They are too busy making a living and investing in America to indulge in jihad.

NBC can apologize to Satan. It has done God a big favor. James Madison once said that the better part of showing respect for the sacred name of Jesus would be NOT to insert it into a mere legislative enactment. The man knew what he was talking about when he said that religion must be protected from "the profane hand of the civil magistrate." The words "under God" never belonged in a pledge to a flag created by men's hands, or to the mere human construct of a nation. Actually, the pledge itself borders on a violation of the Second Commandment, but at least the hubris of sticking reference to God into it has, in these instances, been blessedly removed.

Right after 9.11.2001, most of the government bureaucracy's talking heads were telling the mesmerized microphones of the Mainstream Media that "our world changed forever." Few to no Americans acted like it. We all went on with our merry lives, and only those families who actually lost someone in the twin towers, or had a relative serving in the ALL VOLUNTEER military (read: those who didn't, in Dick Cheney's words, have "something better to do") really noticed a difference. The truth is, an occasional terror bombing makes headlines, and provides the blogosphere a football to kick around, not to mention those in the immediate vicinity die, but life goes on, and the 300 million minus a few hundred or a few thousand people who are left really do need jobs, medical coverage, and all that mundane stuff our president has been dealing with.

Not much was missed catching this particularly would-be bomber EXCEPT for half a dozen intelligence departments putting two and two together. We all know that government departments operate as they do, almost completely oblivious to whoever may happen to be president, what party he is from, who controls congress, or who is sitting on the Supreme Court. What is needed now is fairly minor: get the names of people who obviously are a real hazard onto lists to be given a thorough body search before letting them on a plane. That would have exposed the detonator on his leg, which would have led to the explosives in his underwear. Our president can handle that. Whether the intelligence community can, we'll find out. Ethnic profiling? Yeah, that would have caught Richard Reid right away.