It doesn't bother me to see the flame! If it did, I'd stay away. What I hate is all the partisan bickering going nowhere, accomplishing nothing. I like results, purpose. Of course, there are flames that just to flame and that's OK but these are not those kinds of threads.

The Dems wrote the bill without requesting input from their Repoob counterparts. THAT I do have a problem with. All they had to do was say, "We're writing it. Want your input. Give us several suggestions to incoporate." They could have done this and discussed in one day and gotten SOME Repoob ideas in there. They do have some ideas that are not bad. They sure as hell represent part of the US so their ideas NEED to be incorporated.

Now, I'm sorry, but this bitching about the commmittee process doesn't cut it with me. You set limits and stick by them. I was President of BPW (Business and Professional Women's Club) in my county one year. I had noted how all discussions, meetings got sabotaged and wandered all over the place. Bad leadership. When I took the gavel, we went by Roberts Rules of Order and I had no hesitation about telling my fellow members they were out of order. I kept them ON topic and then later during the general discussion time, I addressed their former topics. My meeting ran like clockwork and all the business got done and all their other topics got addressed, too. They wanted me to take another year of the Presidency. If someone knows how to run a meeting, even a Congressional Committee meeting, it stays on track and gets business done. If they don't, it's bad leadership, pure and simple. They could have and should have talked to their Republican colleagues but Pelosi's too damn drunk with power. If she isn't careful, she's gonig to get canned by her constituents.

Had they forced the Repubs to put some of their ideas in, they'd have had leverage but they chose to go with the Dem version of the bill without anything incorporated from the Repoobs. There is fault on both sides and don't think I don't know the Repoobs are playing this to the hilt.

At this point, I don't care what started this crisis; I just know that we need to get onto the business of fixing it! It's urgent. We need both sides of the aisle if we're going to make this work. As I understand it, the Dems bill have a lot in the bill which will be permanent spending rather than a fixit for the economy over the short term. They have no business funding into higher deficits over the long-term. Not right now. Fix the fucking economy, worry about the long term after we're on the road to recovery.

Steve and Tom are mostly full of shit (Repoob shit to be sure) but it profits us nothing to retread old ground and point fingers. We need to come up with solutions.

I'm just damned impatient lately with stupidity of all kinds. Running around the same mulberry bush isn't going to do a thing.