The Tea Party should demand the same respect from Waters and the CBC as black Americans expect to receive from their political opponents. Nothing less. If she thinks the Tea Party should go to Hell and wants to help to send them there, then the Tea Party should tell the Congressional Black Caucus that it can go straight to Hell, and that it will help to send them there. Goose. Gander.

Perhaps instead of acting like whipped dogs and asking this witch to act civilly, the Tea Party leaders issue a statement which declares the following: That until the Congressional Black Caucus ceases and desists its verbal assaults on peaceful American protestors, the Tea Party will oppose and work to undermine and eliminate every program, every grant and every policy that the Congressional Black Caucus supports for black Americans. And that the Tea Party will continue to smash Waters and her ilk politically until they stop their noxious slanders and apologize to their fellow Americans. You do not stop a bully by asking him/her to be nice. You stop a bully by making him/her pay for his actions.

The statistics are interesting and the charts are nice, but here's the bottom line: THE RECESSION WILL END IN THE USA WHEN THE RECESSION BEGINS IN THE BELTWAY. As soon as the weight of obese government is reduced on the American economy and the shackles of kudzu-like and arbitrary regulations are removed, business activity will accelerate nationwide. The only acceptable evidence will be the slashed budgets of Washington DC departrments and bureaucracies, and massive layoffs of federal government employees who live in Maryland and Virginia. No "triggers." No constitutional amendments. No budgetary "trip-wires." Budget cuts, pink slips and new locks on closed buildings are what is called for now. But as I said, the charts are nice,...

Week in and week out I agree with most of what Mike Shedlock has to say, but could someone please hire a person fluent in English prose to re-write his articles for publication? I guarantee you that more people leave his essays half-finished than follow them to their conclusions. I also guarantee you that by now many TownHall visitors avoid his pieces. What is the sense of writing articles for a popular web-site if not to be persuasive? And how can Mish persuade people who are not already in his camp with a writing style that a high school English teacher would mark "fragment," "incomplete thought," "unclear," "syntax" and "try again"?

The simple solution, folks, is for the Republicans to do nothing. Forget the Ryan Plan or any other well-meaning legislative attempt to pull Democrat chestnuts from the fire. Let Medicare go bankrupt, the sooner the better. Republicans must merely mouth pieties about how unsustainable Medicare is and demand that Democrats do something about THEIR wonderful Great Society program. Democrats will of course propose tax increases. Republicans should publicize that Democrats want to raise taxes and then vote each and every tax increase proposal down unanimously. And after every vote, Republicans should demand that Democrats do something before Medicare goes bankrupt. When Democrats propose benefit cuts, Republicans should announce to the...

Jonah and readers: Criticizing Democrats for their failures is not the same as cheap demagoguery and fear-mongering. They are not even equivalent. Reasoned arguments will persuade the reasonable. But the next election will be a general election, with 60%, not 40%, turnout. Many of those additional voters are ill-informed and not very interested in politics. They will, by and large, make their choices for "reasons" that are more emotional than rational. If Jonah is right and the GOP has to fight the Democrats on the battlefield and with the weapons that the Democrats have chosen, then the Republicans cannot shy away from appeals to the resentments and fears of the enlarged, apolitical electorate. Someone has to be scapegoated....

I assume from his writing style that Mr. Shedlock is a numbers man. The charts are nice, though. They give a patina of science to the speculation.

The search for perfection is a project for totalitarians, cranks and absolutists. Let's be Americans and stick to doing what works - like enhanced interrogations. And while we're at it, let's drop the stupid political cases against the CIA personnel who followed the law. It's rather hypocritical for Obama and Holder to say that the tree is poisonous when they are simultaneously smacking their lips over how delicious the tree's fruit is.

Tony, get out of DC a little more. It's a big country out here. There are lots of more interesting things to write about than the entrails of dead newspapers and the arts of media haruspicy.

You are expecting more from Democrats than they are capable of giving.