It is the nature of the political beast, to use our money to get themselves elected. It's as if I took our mortgage money and spent it on dinners and diamonds to make my wife happy, on a much grander scale.

The problem, of course, is it has to be repaid, or the charade ends. A small deficit in a growing economy for temporary reasons is OK. If my furnace died today, I might not have the cash to replace it, but I could tap into credit cards, a home equity loan, or my credit union.

I can do that only because I spend less than I make, religiously.

The guys running for office don't think that way. I'm fairly pessimistic, so I'd say it's highly likely this mess ends like the Weimar Republic, hopefully with the bodies of most of those responsible decorating the lamp post of Washington DC. When something can't continue, it ends. Just like the unaffordable mortgages, somebody gets left holding the bag. I fear it is us.

w spent money. truth.

he is being far outpaced by obama. truth.

in 2 years we will all be wishing for the spending policies of bush.

the worst part of that is that it heralds a return to republican bipartisanship.

i too wish for a third fiscally responsible party. but i'm not holding my breath.

Michelle Malkin's been all over this. She's been referring to the "Stimulus" bill as The Generational Theft act of 2009. Her blog is worth reading.

> w spent money. truth.
> he is being far outpaced by
> obama. truth.

You should visit more often, mlah.

"The Libertarians need to stop putting up ridiculous, uncharismatic, unelectable candidates"

The next time you wonder why the Libertarian Party can't find a better class of candidate, just think about all the reasons why YOU don't want to run for office, and you'll have answered your own question.

"Republicans also need to stop pandering to the religious nutters"

Don't know offhand how much of the Republicans fund-raising & grass-roots support comes from the oogedy-boogedy branch of the Party, but I'd bet it's more than the share from the libertarian branch. So they'll stop pandering to them when the Democrats stop pandering to econazis, feminazis, gun controllers, Big Labor, teachers, trial lawyers, the NAACP, La Raza, every ethnic group with a grievance, and every one who wants all speech that isn't progressive enough banned as hate speech.

On the bright side, just look at all the "Tea Party" protests that have been sprouting up all over the place lately (Instapundit & Malkin have been providing great coverage). Don't you think that's a beautiful sight? Maybe this could be the start of something big - a massive , nationwide, conservative grass-roots movement that has nothing to do with religion.

Well, just because they are guilty of it as well-in an admittedly lesser scale-doesn't make it less true.

The next time you wonder why the Libertarian Party can't find a better class of candidate, just think about all the reasons why YOU don't want to run for office, and you'll have answered your own question.

I don't run because political office really sucks, because I don't like to compromise, and because my day job pays better. I would probably enjoy being a dictator, at least at first. I haven't ruled out running for some local office in the future (if only to provide an alternative to spend-friendly candidates) but I'm about to move halfway across the country so it'll have to wait a few years.

The people who are best qualified to run things are qualified enough to realize what a bad job it is, and to find something better to do; the people who want to run things can't be trusted with power. The only solution I see is to decentralize government power, so that 1) most megalomaniac power-mongers go into other fields, and 2) those remaining are limited in how much harm they can do.

We aren't going to get a viable third party. The error is in thinking we have two parties now.

Any politician, after election, becomes a member of the Permanent Incumbent Party and is only concerned with keeping his/her hand on the pork faucet.

Since most elections are fairly close, we can effect change by simply voting for whoever is NOT the incumbent. There really isn't any measurable difference between Republicrats and Democans anyway.

Re-Elect Nobody!