>>> The Republicans want to lose in November.
>> Good call all the way, Dude.
>> Deja vu all over again - shades of 1996.
>> When they ran Dole against Clinton - another word for "no-show".
>> Looks like they're planning another no-show for '08.
>
> Maybe the reason they want to lose is so that they can get Dems to
> ballance the budget by shifting the tax burden, this way so they can
> start again with a big bankroll like they did after the Clinton
> surplus. Bush had fun spending that. They need some trickle up
> economics once in a while and so they, as Chait says, can hibernate
> till the bank is full again;
>
> The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and
> Hijacked by Crackpot Economics
> by Jonathan Chait
>
>
http://www.amazon.com/Big-Con-Washington-Hoodwinked-Economics/dp/0618...
>
> Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
> INTRODUCTION
>
> I have this problem. Whenever I try to explain what's happening in
> American politics—I mean, what's really happening—I wind up sounding a
> bit like an unhinged conspiracy theorist. But honestly, I'm not. My
> politics are actually quite moderate. (Most real lefties, in fact,
> think I'm a Washington establishment sellout.) So please give let me a
> chance to explain myself when I tell you the following: American
> politics has been hijacked by a tiny coterie of right-wing economic
> extremists, some of them ideological zealots, others merely greedy, a
> few of them possibly insane. (Stay with me.) The scope of their
> triumph is breathtaking. Over the course of the last three decades,
> they have moved from the right-wing fringe to the commanding heights
> of the national agenda. Notions that would have been laughed at a
> generation ago—that cutting taxes for the very rich is the best
> response to any and every economic circumstance, or that it is
> perfectly appropriate to turn the most rapacious and self-interested
> elements of the business lobby into essentially an arm of the federal
> government—are now so pervasive, they barely attract any notice.
>
> The result has been a slow-motion disaster. Income inequality has
> approached levels normally associated with Third World oligarchies,
> not healthy Western democracies. The federal government has grown so
> encrusted with business lobbyists that it can no longer meet the great
> public challenges of our time. Not even many conservative voters or
> intellectuals find the result congenial. Government is no smaller—it
> is simply more debt- ridden and more beholden to wealthy elites.
>
