It may be my masochism, but I actually watched the Presidential
debates. I also regularly watch the news over here in the UK. Cameron
and his cronies constantly spout this argument that governments cannot
create economic growth. During the Presidential debates, Mitt Romney
even went a step further; he argued that governments cannot create
employment. The Tory argument is a bit more sophisticated, but both
arguments have their roots in the fantasies of neoliberal economics of
which both the Tories and the Republicans have adopted in its most

First let me say this.

I was in group therapy for quite a few years. Not some nicey happy joy
joy mind you, this was a therapy based on unvarnished, in your face,
harsh reality. It had to be. For this particular center dealt with late
stage substance abuse, alcoholism and eating disorders. They ripped the
rose colored glasses off of your face, threw them on the floor and
proceeded to stomp them in to bits. And if you continued to come in with
a new pair, you had the same thing done.

The Roman Republic fell, not because of the ambition of Caesar or Augustus, but because it had already long ceased to be in any real sense a republic at all. When the sturdy Roman plebeian, who lived by his own labor, who voted without reward according to his own convictions, and who with his fellows formed in war the terrible Roman legion, had been changed into an idle creature who craved nothing in life save the gratification of a thirst for vapid excitement, who was fed by the state, and who directly or indirectly sold his vote to the highest bidder, then the end of the republic was at hand, and nothing could save it. The laws were the same as they had been, but the people behind the laws had changed, and so the laws counted for nothing. - Teddy Roosevelt

According to an interview with William Black by The Real News, Obama in an off the record conversation with the local newspaper in Des Moines, Iowa has said that he is willing to increase taxes $1 for every $2 in budget reductions, the so-called Grand Bargain.