The man that embodies those values is Congressman Ron Paul, who cause quite a stir and set fund raising records despite the mainstream media’s best attempts to crush his upstart candidacy.

Ron Paul called the recession in the debates in December of 07, while the other candidates were still blowing smoke up your you-know-whats. He understands economics and knows that phony “stimulus” and bailouts just steal from the productive parts of society to reward the failures. He honors and respects the Constitution. This is what the GOP should be all about. This is also what the Democrats should be all about, instead of trying to create the USSR 2.0

Instead, they have become Rushactionary Rushpublicans with no real leaders, so they turn to simplistic ‘me-toos’ in the form of Palin for Hillary and Steele for Obama.

While those outside the confimes of the right-wing delusion see the obvious tokenism, the insiders really see their send-ups as the real deal.

When elected Party officials have to apoligize for their perspectives to a bloviating blowhard, how can that Party be considered viable?

I watched him on foxes say the whole reason where in this recession was because of black minority, spin deregulation policies, as if it was going great but there needed to be more deregulation and that was the cause of our problems and we should cut cap gain taxes even lower.

Steele got own by rush cause the repub party dont respect him and is using him(like there did with palin for hillary supporters) to get people on there side nothing more, nothing less.

As for Rush L. and republicans instead of trying to before more moderate and think outside the boxes they ran to rush l. asked him to speak for them and raise the hardcore right-wing troops for them. Please name a current congressman or senate republican that criticizes rush and doesnt run back and say sorry to him.

It took steele less than a day to hand his jewels back to him.

I love your show but you and other members of the press fan the flames of anxiety about the economy by the way you talk about it. I know you feel passionately about the current state of affairs, but as the bearer of news you have the opportunity to provide the wider context. Of course things will get worse before they improve. It has just been weeks since Obama has laid out his plans. The news will continue to show a deterioration for awhile, but then things will, hopefully, improve. New figures coming out each day or week are part of a larger process of meeting a crisis and working it through.

This seems particularly important when so much depends on a confidence or lack of confidence in the economy. The barrage of figures only creates doubt when in fact a lot of what is happening is unfortunately predictable as we try to work ourselves out of this crisis. Just a calm statement of reality can help listeners hear the news without becoming overly discouraged: “as might be expected, unemployment continues to rise”, etc. As Obama is doing, we need to urge folks to go out and spend (within reason) and buy homes and cars and invest in the market. If they don’t, we won’t recover.

Indeed it might be interesting to have a program on how the coverage of this crisis has been and how that coverage might be affecting those struggling to understand what has happened and what may fix it.

Thanks for your great work,

DS

Pulezzzz

Switzerland, had a system much like our and they rebuilt it from the ground up and it is a multiple payer system.

The insurance and pharmaceutical companies objected and were pushed screaming and dragging into the system and you know what everyone is happy for the most part.

The Netherlands is another system to look at.

However we are our worst enemies as Walt Kelly was found of saying, “We have met the enemy and he is us”…

People in this country seem to still cling to this idea that government is bad and big government is worse.
I have one idea that all Conservatives and Libertarians and all of us for that matter should think about; the Bush years have shown us what this kind of ideology can bring, a complete destruction of good government. Witness Katrina which is still a problem. Witness the debacle in Iraq. Look at how a huge amount of what the government does or did was out sourced to private companies at huge waste to tax payers. Fraud was rampant and there was little or no oversight or competitive bidding. My impression of Obama is that he is keenly aware of this and I think that he wants to make government better, more efficient and less wasteful, to all the naysayers out there I have two questions.

1: What’s wrong with that?
2: Do you have any better ideas?

Before you respond with the typical Republican party line please think about this; supply side has failed, Reaganomics has failed. All of the ideology of small government and unfettered market economics has failed.

I don’t have any answers, all I know is that what we are now living through is the results of a lot of things going wrong all at the same time due to these failures mentioned above.

The missile defense system is being mischaracterized by your panel. While the mainstream media takes seriously the notion the US is building this to defend the Czech Republic from Iran; in technical literature and foreign policy journals in the US and in Asia it is widely recognized as a component in giving the United States “first strike capability”, something it has sought since 1949.

The reason the US or Russia dont have first strike capabilities now, is that if say the US attacks Russia with everything it has, it is still likely a small number of missiles would survive to retaliate against the US; hence “Mutually Assured Destruction”. A missile defense shield cannot, as Condi Rice points out, defend against the full force of Russia’s arsenal, that is, a Russian first strike. However it COULD defend against a Russian retaliation that is cripple from a US first strike.

That is to say, in sum, the missile defense shield would give the US the power to attack Russia without fearing any retaliation. You may not agree with it, but this is how it is talked about in security and foreign policy journals; even establishment publications like Foreign Affairs. It is only on CNN or Fox News that this is taken seriously as defending eastern europe from iran.

Thank you,

Kevin Maley

Where was this idiot for the 12 years Republicans WERE in power???!!!! Eight for six of those years they had both houses AND the presidency AND huge revenues!!???
All Republicans managed in that time was MASSIVE giveaways to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Matthew Continetti is either clueless or a lying partisan hack!

And can someone in the media please counter the Republican talking point that Republicans are completely out of power and Dems can doo anything they want? Last I checked, Republicans were still thwarting Dems with their one all important swing vote. Nothing can get done without the Republican leadership willingly donating that one vote.

The SEC is full of lawyers who don’t know anything about high finance and markets. I know someone who might be getting a job there as an SEC attorney, but he is not financial wiz….they need to fill that place with people like Markopolis, the guy who had warned the SEC about Madoff for months with no action.