Thanks for your blog, fellow liberal! If nothing else, I wish conservatives would understand that Obama, far from being a socialist, is a moderate liberal. The actual American socialists have disavowed him, and even democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders have taken Obama to task for his moderate stances. The truth is that the Republican party has been co-opted by the extreme right wing, and therefore a moderate liberal looks like a socialist to them.

WOW. A liberal in Gwinnett? I've never heard of such a curious creature.

I read the Bill Moyers' article and now understand the Libor scandal. It is sad that I've mostly ignored it so far since i considered it to be just another in a long line of ways in which the world's financial leadership fleeced the public. I figured who cares about the gory details (this time). Another scandal will come out in a year or two.

David Brooks had an interesting column in the NYT last week about the leadership strata of 30-40 years ago vs. today. He opined that in the past leaders were determined at birth and were raised with a sense of propriety and ethics about their lofty status. Today it is meritocracy that determines leaders and this new breed lacks the moral backbone of those that were legacies.

Well it is good to see you turned off Rush and Fox and saw the light. You know they say people who listen to talk radio ate looking for affirmation rather than information so I keep my AM dial set to sports talk.

As you can see Michael, we're all inclusive here at Patch. Even such a minority as a liberal in Gwinnett has a forum on our pages. We love Brian - he keeps our conversations interesting. :)

I read the first link, to the article by Gen. Blunt in The Hill...curiously, a nearly verbatim quote about regulations on iPods and fruit appears in an article in Newsday, written in part by a retired Admiral. (http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/opinion-world-needs-an-arms-treaty-1.3834297) Even more curiously, they were both published on the same day. What was that you said about 'talking points' in your first paragraph?

As an aside, if this treaty was already in effect, how would that have affected the Fast and Furious scandal?

Brian - MSNBC is the most bias unprofessional news network in the history of news broadcasting which explains why Microsoft announced today they are divorcing MSNBC.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-bozell/2012/07/16/bozell-statement-nbc-news-recognizes-msnbc-brand-malignant-tumor

Add this one: Woman panhandles for breast implants (from an NBC affiliate): http://cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2012/07/16/vonat-oh-breast-implant-panhandler.wkyc.html

Shout out from a Gwinnett progressively liberal, gay, left handed, vegan, medicare for all loving, business owner!

I'll have another glass of your Kool-aid, it is soooo refreshing, and they say you become more conservative as you age, well, I find it the opposite.

It's not Mr. Obama that has made a bad situation much worse. It's the lock step obstructionism of the GOP that has prevented even the most (formerly) bi-partisan of bills from passing.

Obstructionism has long been the name of the game in Washington you say? This is true. The way our government is set up, obstructionism is one of the only ways that the minority party can keep the majority party from doing everything that they want.

This new era of politics as moral absolutes has raised the stakes to such a degree, though, that our government has ceased to function.

How can anybody that has the best interests of the country in mind stand behind a party that put their leader from the Senate (McConnell R-KY) in front of cameras shortly after Obama was elected to say "Republicans single most important goal is to make Obama a one-term president".?

Making Obama a one-term president (for republicans is more important than this country defaulting on it's debt obligations, it's more important than funding national infrastructure and it's more important than making sure that 30 million Americans can get health insurance.

This tendency to demonize the opposition, the tendency to cast political disagreements in moral terms has ruined our political system - a system that used to be about compromise is now completely ineffective.

Shame on all of us. On the democrats and the republicans for playing this zero sum game.

Absolutely Brian; total agreement. This nasty new vein of moral politics has come along just since President Obama took office.

The filibuster problem is a thorny issue. But remember, the filibuster is one of the only things that can stop a bill if you don't have 51 votes .... and stopping a bill is going to be in the interest of the dems one of these days and we'll be glad that we have it. That being said, the steep escalation of the use of the filibuster is a blight on our political system - but more a symptom than a cause.

I remember Democrats literally demonizing Bush for the damned weather during Hurricane Katrina, and calling him a racist who hated black people even though the Democrats at every level from the state Governor down to Mayor Ray Nagin – who let 2,000 school busses that could have saved lives get flooded - were far more to blame for the disaster than Bush was. I remember George Bush trying to get a debt ceiling increase and a Democrat Senator named Barack Hussein Obama decried it a “failure of leadership” while Senate Majority Leader Reid demanded that Republicans explain “why they think more debt is good for the economy.” I remember the Democrats when they forced Reagan to come hat-in-hand begging for a debt ceiling every five months, and laughed hysterically that Barack Obama had the balls to demand he get the most massive debt ceiling increases in history that would last past the 2012 election as if that was “reasonable.” I remember Democrats and Barack Obama demonizing George Bush over Iraq and Afghanistan. I remember Obama demonizing the surge strategy and predicting it would lead to more sectarian violence. You know, before the same Obama’s administration actually took credit for Iraq as “one of the great achievements of this administration.” I also remember Obama demonizing Bush in Afghanistan where Obama claimed Bush was just “air-raiding villages and killing people.”

My comment was regarding Mike Hipp's comment above which was totally inaccurate. Also, I will take the Bush presidency ANY day over the damage Obama has done in 3.5 years and to characterize the Bush presidency as an unmitigated disaster is comical considering the disaster the current buffoon in chief has been.

Tim - if you will take the time to read up a couple of comments from the one that you tried to tear down - I explicitly said:

"shame on the republicans and te democrats for playing this zero sum game".

Your zeal for the right and hatred for the left is showing through - Tim who isn't confident enough to give his full name.

Oh excuse me ... I misquoted myself. I actually said:

"Shame on all of us. On the democrats and the republicans for playing this zero sum game."

Still, the disability rolls have continued to swell and threaten the program's fiscal future.
A new Congressional Budget Office underscored the troubled finances of the growing Social Security Disability Insurance program. The report showed $119 billion in benefits were paid last year to 8.3 million disabled workers. That represents almost 18 percent of all Social Security spending.
According to Sessions' office, the program has been running a deficit since 2009.
"Consequently, the trust fund is shrinking and will be depleted by 2016 -- just four years from now," his office said.