John Edwards has hammered down some pretty good points about the state of America nowadays. There are indeed "Two Americas" but I'd like to examine this issue a little more.

IT’S the COMMIES, stoopid!  

I received this email yesterday (from a Republic) circulating a (typical) straw man smear on Democratic policy.  It reinforces the claim that kos pointed out in his post today, that Republics (and Libertarians) MUST kill the notion that

"...Democrats [are] the generous protector of middle-class [working family] interests."

Follow me down the rabid hole (and yes, they attack Al Gore too)

Guns don't kill people, people kill people right? So why are conservatives against programs that would remove a violent offender's reason to kill? If the pro-gun lobby wants a right to defend themselves against "crazies" with guns, then they need to do all they can to remove the social roots of violence, namely the problems associated with poverty.

Cross posted at The Seminal

I know this sounds overly dramatic but I'd like to tell you why Liberalism and the works accomplished by liberals literally saved my life and more importantly why they've given me one worth living

Scientific American runs a monthly column called "Sustainable Developments" written by Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

This month's column takes a look at the effect of higher taxes and social welfare spending on the overall prosperity of the nation.    
The whole article is here

Does social spending and the higher taxation required to support it strangle the economy, as supply siders suggest?

Most of the debate in the U.S. is clouded by vested interests and by ideology. Yet there is by now a rich empirical record to judge these issues scientifically. The evidence may be found by comparing a group of relatively free-market economies that have low to moderate rates of taxation and social outlays with a group of social-welfare states that have high rates of taxation and social outlays.

Find out the results on the flip

A bit more below the fold.

What's your story?

Budget Favors Defense: 141 Programs to Be Cut or Halted

President Bush plans to propose a $2.7 trillion budget tomorrow that would shrink most parts of the government unrelated to the nation's security while slowing spending on Medicare by $36 billion during the next five years, according to White House documents.

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President to send Congress
$439.3 billion defense budget

February 3, 2006
WASHINGTON - President Bush's 2007 budget seeks a nearly 5 percent increase in Defense Department spending, to $439.3 billion, with significantly more money for weapons programs, according to senior Pentagon officials and documents obtained by The Associated Press.

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Republicans believe in personal responsibility? That always makes me want to laugh so hard that my orange juice comes out my nose (and if you were wondering, no that's not where the name OrangeClouds came from... it was a Tori Amos lyric).

Before you start pointing to the white collar criminals we have running our country and "self regulating" our largest businesses - wait. I don't think these Republicans next to me on the airplanes are lying...exactly. Read on and I'll explain...

I usually look for a column by the paper's one columnist, Herb Field to see what has him stirred up lately.

More below the fold.......

Today was an unforgettable experience dealing with vocational rehabilitiation/voc rehab, or, as I refer to it joke rehab.

The logic behind joke rehab appears to make sense--provide training to a person w/a disabilitiy and assist w/job placement so that he/she will succeed in an employment setting and no longer be a recipient of entitlement programs, such as Social Security Disability, Food Stamps, and the like.

In return for this supposed investment in a person's abilities, as opposed to focusing on a persons disabilities, the individual receiving services will become a productive member of society.  

more below