I’ve absolutely had it with this site becoming a completely one issue debate!!!!!  Argh!!!!!  Now, before the lawyers attack me for not being able to adequately appreciate this affront to the constitution let me just say that it’s just not a priority for me.  My god, someone who actually cares about other issues besides fisa, what a concept???  Call it ignorance, intellectual ineptitude, whatever comes to mind, I’m ok with it.  There have been some really great diaries over the last several weeks about the politicide in Zimbabwe, absolutely great dairies on torture (as always) but they have gotten even less of the usual miniscule attention they normally get.  

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.

As a disabled veteran on Social Security Disability and Veterans Disability this number has a huge impact on my life, it is my families raise for the year, most years it does not keep up with inflation, it seems as if the electric bills, gas bills, insurance, and food all keep rising faster, but I am grateful for all that I do get.

Without it, I would really be in trouble, to be honest I don't know how people make it just on Social Security, getting the disabled veteran benefits allows me to live a "normal" life.

Or how I ended up having my monthly less-than-sustenance income cut almost in half.

I am an attorney, but I cannot practice as such, because I am unwell.  Today, I awaken at four in the morning, completely un-rested and thinking intensely, compelled now to write about these emotional depths of hell.   I fell asleep just two hours ago, imagining ways to die.  Now, I awaken with these same thoughts playing in my head like an endless commercial advertisement:  "Kill yourself!  You'll feel much better!"  This makes sense to me, so I know I am deeply depressed.

The tax code has been skewed to favor the super rich.

An example: Capital Gains.

Capital gains are capped at 15% - the lowest tax bracket, even for those in the highest tax brackers, for securities held over one year. This makes cap gains effectively a regressive tax, as the most affluent get to make money off their investments and are taxed at a much lower rate porportionately to their income. It's not fair.  

With only one college level course in economics, I'm no expert, but one would think that encouragement of investment and specualtion tends to increase volatility in prices of certain commodities, such as gas and oil, too.

So, I've noted here before about being a reformed whore - I don't want to belabor it, and it's getting to the point where it feels that way - still, some introduction is called for.

As others have noted on this site and elsewhere, David Broder of the WaPo has increasingly appeared to be a 'friend of the neo-cons.'  I'm not really sure the economic interests of the Republican party are really ruled by the neo-cons - a bunch more interested in foreign policy.  However, of late, even as the evidence of Bush's incompetence at governing, on a whole host of policies, Broder, a formerly 'moderate' voice, has continued to be increasingly critical of Democrats.  Today's column no less so.  More below the fold...