This ongoing rant has lots of merit and is generally spot on, but I find it interesting that you close almost every message by encouraging to dump Republicans and Democrats, but then name only Democrats (except for your reference to McAmnesty in this final post). I hate to break your bubble, but the nanny state (as you call it) is not the source of the debt. Even one of your own posts highlighted a little known fact ... that the government owes Social Security $4 trillion because it has been borrowing from it.

Now, if you look at some of my other posts, you will see that I have long contended that the Democratic Party is simply the liberal wing of the ruling elite of what used to be just this country, but for the last half century or so has morphed into this vast global network of competing rich boys and girls (and the financial institutions they represent). Within both parties there occasionally arises an independent thinker who challenges the status quo and actually forces the leadership of the respective party to sit up and take notice. As a rule, they don't last long. Witness Doctor Paul, whom you seem to think carries magic bullets or something.

His problem is that his independence is from the Republican Party, and no matter how you want to cast him, unless he repudiates that association, he is still coming from a point of view that things people are essentially bad and must be controlled by rules and laws, that wealth is inherently good and must be protected and encouraged, and that the state (and its leaders) exist to tell everyone what to do.

If you go back and reread your posts, I think you will quickly discover a couple of common threads lying right under the surface. The national debt, usurious lending practices, the power of the federal reserve, and borrow-and-spend economics all arise from Richard Nixon and the enthronement of Milton Friedman as king guru and head honcho of life, the universe, and everything. Nixon and weak Republican administrations after him started the downward spiral you have accurately pointed out. Jimmy Carter is not depicted as a silly doofess by the right wing for no reason (because he is a brilliant man with a clear, analytical head and an articulate means of expressing himself) ... he represented a possible break in the grab for power orchestrated by the William F. Buckley/Norman Podhoretz/Irving Kristol gang (for reminders, the latter's path illustrates a typical neo-con Man of the Top: founder of Public Interest and The National Interest, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, member of the Wall Street Journal Board of Contributors, President of National Affairs, Inc, and awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush ... who also gave one to George Tenet for HIS contribution to the New World Order). That gang found its hero in Ronald Reagan, and they have used the machinery of the Right to deify him ... even though he ranks right up there among the 10 Worst US Presidents of all time for crimes against humanity, for blatant theft of the National Treasury, for direct and conscious violation of the Laws of Congress, for arming the Taliban and creating Al-Qaida, for supplying Saddam Hussein with biological and chemical agents that he used against both Iran and his own people, etc. etc. etc. Ronald Reagan's one singular accomplishment was to seriously begin to undo what right-wing Republicans had been trying to undo since 1935 ... the New Deal. He broke unions. He raised taxes on the Middle Class more than one time to try to cover his incredible (for the time) national debt that his war-machine, military-industrial-complex golden savior of America sucked up. He oversaw what, for the time, was the largest transfer of wealth from one class to another in the shortest amount of time possible. He destroyed public education in California while "serving" as Governor, then tried to do the same nationally except he lacked the legal vehicle to do so. His goal, as is the goal of the neo-con movement (besides erecting a New American Empire that will make the world safe for the sale of corporate goods, whether it uses democracy is neither here nor there) is to destroy the Middle Class altogether and to keep the various sections of the middle and working classes fighting and feuding amongst themselves while they rob us blind. His efforts are only exceeded only by the current President ... the Number One Worst President of All Time.

We are going to be paying for our ill-advised and unnecessary invasion of Iraq for a very long time. As you point out. Politically (at home and abroad) and financially, as you also point out. While much of what transpired before 1995 can be attributed to a Democratic controlled Congress, everything since 1995 must be laid squarely on the shoulders of the borrow-and-spend Republican Party. Stop dealing in stereotypes of Boxer and Pelosi. Stop letting other people tell you what it is that they say and want. Listen to them. Watch C-SPAN for the rare times that they are actually on. Here is what Nancy Pelosi said to the assembled House yesterday as it passed the second part of its Energy Bill (for the second time)

As an aside, you might recall that this is the same Energy Bill that the House also passed in 2007, but the Senate couldn't muster enough votes to override a threatened Presidential Veto ... so the House broke the legislation into two parts: Part I was passed late last year, and set the new CAFE standards so strongly resisted by the President and his allies in the auto and energy corporate world. Part II is the part where tax credits are offered for research, development, and implementation of alternate energy technologies and applications. This is a good thing, done in the open where anyone who is interested can listen in and watch how the decision gets made (as opposed to the Top Secret, Executive Privileged meetings conducted by Richard [the Big D*ck] Cheney to formulate the administration's energy plan] and starts us back on the path that Jimmy Carter initiated almost 30 years ago (another black eye for the Republican Party, by the way). And, unlike Republican borrow-and-spend plans, this initiative is fully funded by money given back to the U.S. by the five big oil companies, who were given a different kind of tax credit when their offshore and foreign-sourced products was deemed to be a "domestic manufacturing enterprise" and they were handed an $18 billion tax credit designed to stimulate domestic production (and jobs). The President, of course, opposes the removal of this tax credit, and this is the reason for his original veto.

So ... Nancy Pelosi stood on the floor of the Congress and challenged the President to tell the American people why five companies, EACH of which claimed $30-$50 billion dollar PROFITS last year could not afford to return the $18 billion TOTAL they have all been collectively given and not still have a $26-$46 billion profit margin? Besides demanding a pay-as-you-go system for funding the so-called nanny state, she pretty clearly pointed out where a whole lot of our people's wealth is going ... oh sure, almost anyone has some of their saved money tied up in oil one way or another (another part of the corporate strategy to corporatize us all, by the way), but I know for a fact that my Life Insurance premiums and my 501(c) savings amount to a trifle return each year when compared to those investors who REALLY benefit from oil ... like anything, you have to put in money to earn money, and the percentages are not in my favor.

And that's enough. I am going to write a little bit about Chinese inventions.

"Just credit my account"?  Have your eyes and ears been stopped up for the past 7.5 years?  How do we fight the most expensive war on record and cut taxes at the same time?  Oh yeah ... we borrow the money!  Who inherited a multi-billion surplus and squandered it for your grandchildren to pay for?

All you have to do is read any newspaper and they will tell you that Barack Obama will end the tax cuts given to the wealthiest 5% of the people in this country (which is to "raising taxes" what replacing the whiskey you snuck out of mom and dad's bottle last night) and CUT taxes on people earning under $250K a year (who now are paying a disproportionate share of those taxes), and ELIMINATING taxes on seniors earning under $50K.  He has proposed tax-cuts to new businesses and small businesses, and tax incentives to those actively seeking to invest in alternative energy and clean emissions ... while cutting loopholes to hedge-fund CEOs (the guys whose companies speculate on oil futures and artificially -- maybe even consciously -- drive up the cost for a barrel of oil) so they pay taxes on their billion dollar incomes at the income tax rate (30%) instead of the capital gains rate (15%); stop allowing oil importers claim a tax break given to "manufacturers"; and to clamp down on those so-called "American" companies who set up shells outside the US to avoid paying any tax at all (like Halliburton).

There is no crisis in Social Security except the one manufactured by laissez-faire corporatists and conservative think tanks whose hidden agenda is to privatize one of the few socialized social programs that actually work by turning it over to for-profit insurance companies more concerned with churning profits than providing "security".

Please find and cite the source for your claim that Barack Obama favors "amnesty" for illegal immigrants.  He does favor a regulated guest worker program, and a clearly defined pathway for undocumented residents to seek citizenship if they desire it; he is opposed to the deportation of 12,000,000 undocumented workers for the simple reason he does not believe they can all be found or that the effort to find them won't create more illegalities than they stem; he voted in favor of building a fence to keep people out (fat lot of good that's going to do).  The rest is up to you.

According to the article you cited, "Spending constraints on the federal budget were removed in 2002".  Seems to me in 2002, only the Congress could remove such constraints.  Gosh, who ran the Congress in 2002.  And who asked that Congress to follow his suggestions lock-step (which obviously, it did)?  And, since 2006, the new Congress does not authorize expenditures unless it finds funds to cover the costs, or cuts costs from a different program.  Gosh ... which party is now in control of the Congress?

And the reasons that "supplemental emergency funding" exists?  Because every effort of the Congress to pass a budget THAT CUTS SPENDING is either vetoed, or threatened with a veto!

An honest person would look at what is happening and analyze that before drawing conclusions, not draw a conclusion then look at ways to cherry-pick facts to support the conclusion.

And do you know what they do with all the Natural Gas coming up with the crude in Prudho?  They pump it back into the cavity and cap it.

I have a friend in Texas who used to work the oil fields.  In his neighborhood (that is, the subdivision where he lives), the still operating wells have all been capped.

And, on a related note ... most of the lumber felled in the Pacific Northwest goes to Japan and China, just like the oil and for just the same reasons.  But then, they process that wood and then sell it back to us as fiberboard, plywood, paper ... you name it.  And it isn't cheaper than it would be if processed here and sold.