Yeah, catfish, welcome to debates with bistro: it's often all or nothing.  I have no idea why I get in political debates with him because he flies off into this hyperbole a lot.   But enough personal picking.

I realize my own position, as others have poked at, is a little wimpy, the "it's not so bad" situation.   I guess I've always been a bit of the silver lining sort, in order to approach politics without the need for armed insurrection; that's part of what the reliance on history is and the long-view, is that I can go into a situation, look for one that was similar, and keep myself from losing it. 

The position I'm also on is that we've come to this part here with only two years of data, and part of the worst was during an election year, which always brings the worst in US politics out, especially when you have an external influence like Palin and her TP exerting undue pressure on people looking to hold their positions in the backdrop of an already tense situation like a recession/depression.   It's one of those perfect storms of terrible situations.  And yet it's been in the space of a year and a half.  If things continue exactly like this, I believe I would be sliding ever further into the "Ok, we're fucked" category.

But some people tend to confuse optimism or pragmatism with naivete or ignorance.   Where it seems that the assumption is I don't know anything about politics or what's going on.

For all my "Now they'll see they gotta get things going", things in 2011 may be this bad; we've got a divided Congress so any bills thrown back and forth will be squeezed so far of compromise that they may be deformed.  The Census data was released so the whole year is going to be Gerrymander-o-rama, ESPECIALLY in Texas since they're getting those tasty four seats and Florida getting two.  (If there's anything that's especially worrying it's Texas and Florida getting more power in the HoR in the 2012 election.)

However, at the same time, it's not like the Republicans can actually accomplish the tearing down of the walls they wanted to.  In order to repeal most of the Health Care stuff like Bohner is squawking about, they'd have to get 3/4 to approve of it, in order to show Obama that they could easily override his veto of it.  Pssh, fat chance of that happening.  The first month is going to be full of the reshuffling of the cards and posturing we've come to expect from transfers of power, and maybe those justices will get held off a bit longer while this hashes out.   And you've mentioned the fixes to filibustering that I think will go a long way to tweaking what the funadmental problem is here.

I hate to say "Let's wait and see", but this might be one of those times where that's applicable.

I'm pretty sure Anu posted the pic of Leo squinting because Bis made his text the size of the moon.

That's no moon....