your every comment [well, starting yesterday at 11:33…at least] is spot on. Bravo.

Cap & trade will be a disaster for ordinary people. It will lower our standard of living by making energy (and everything made using energy) more expensive. But it will greatly enrich well-connected people both in government and in corporations.

Their explanation: he is unable to overcome the deep corruption of Washington politiciians at the hands of big business.

This phenomenon is known as “regulatory capture” and is very much a symbiotic relationship. The more that government regulates business, the more business lobbies government to write regulations favorable to themselves and not to their competitors.

Big corporations benefit the most from this. They have entire departments devoted to compliance with tax laws, environmental regulations, OSHA, EEOC, you name it. They can pony up big bucks for lobbyists and campaign contributions, too.

Small businesses simply don’t have the wherewithal to compete on that level. When buried under the weight of tons of complicated regulations and tax laws, a small business owner is more likely to just throw up his hands in despair and close up shop. Needless to say, this is a feature, not a bug, to big corporations.

To expand on my last comment, ‘fascism’ is what you get when the biggest, most powerful capitalists in the private sector compromise with socialists in the government.

I’m not saying this is going to become the universal liberal mantra to explain Obama’s failures. I am intrigued though by the delusional mental gymnastics of some of his supporters to explain away his failures.

No, I don’t think another civil war would be a good thing, but I do believe that it is a near certainty. I made my earlier comment because I figure that arresting and prosecuting leftists is preferable to simply hunting them down and killing them. For now. Although we would be a lot better off today if we had executed more Communists in the 50s and 60s. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were only the tip of the iceberg.

This country has not been so deeply divided since 1861. Roughly half the population believes in limited Constitutional government and free-market capitalism, while the other half supports command-and-control socialism combined with big-city machine politics and a racial spoils system. The two sides are irreconcilable. No compromise is possible, and compromise would not be desirable even if it were possible.

As Ayn Rand said, “When good compromises with evil, only evil benefits.”

I said above that I think civil war is a near certainty. Is it inevitable? No, but we need a lot more ‘changers’ and we need them in a hurry.

Look, imagine what would happen if we were to enact some sort of potty training Equalization of Opportunity Act in which we regularized the distribution all of Johanna’s and Aiden’s potty chart stickers. Suddenly it would seem as if Aiden had earned the right to wear big-boy underpants, and within minutes you’d have a Taggart Tunnel-esque catastrophe on your hands, if you follow me.

LOL!

Blog readers/net surfers check out blogs and usually spend more time on those they find more compatible. Post Liberals – AVI’s term- quickly find out that this is a Post Liberal blog. It is not “strange convergence,” but filtering/selecting for compatibility.

“Our Daughter Isn’t a Selfish Brat; Your Son Just Hasn’t Read Atlas Shrugged.”

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2010/8/12hague.html

In the real world studies have shown that conservatives give to charities a lot more freely than do those on the left.

On another note, rickl’s statement, “If the Republicans win in November, they need to get serious. No more “reaching across the aisle” to their “esteemed colleagues”. They have to take the gloves off, and publicly call out Progressives as enemies of America. There must be investigations and criminal prosecutions.” requires a response.

Be careful what you wish for and advocate, the ‘law of unintended consequences’ never rests.

Consider this statement, [Obama]”granted full-scale legal immunity to those who committed serious crimes in the last administration.” a statement of dissatisfaction with Obama on the left, many of whom want to prosecute most of the top leadership of the Bush administration for ‘war crimes’…so unless you think another civil war is a good thing, you might think twice knowing that in such a war, many of our loved ones will die.

Perhaps it shall come to that but lets not unnecessarily and unwisely contribute to that eventuality manifesting.

There are lots of ways to take it to the left without getting into legal conflict. Defunding the left, exposing the left’s networks and real goals is an excellent place to start.