Republicans have been critical of President Obama since before he initially took office. As Congress bickers and gets little done, they - and in particular House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) - have tried to paint the president as an ineffectual leader. During the Libya crisis, they castigated him for "leading from behind". As we go through the same and sadly familiar yearly exercise of trying to get a spending bill enacted, Boehner has declared that the president should act like an adult and show some leadership on budget negotiations.
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74 comments (Latest Comment: 12/22/2012 02:10:02 by TriSec)

After the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School this past Friday, I wrote a blog decrying the nation's romantic attachment to firearms. Velveeta followed on Sunday discussing mental health care and the morons who blame "lack of God in the classroom". Raine tied it together on Monday describing the problem this nation has with proactively dealing with the kind of mental health problems that lead to these nightmares.

As the president said in his address to the residents of Newtown, CT, the causes are complex, and the solutions will be as well. It will likely be a combination of training school personnel to be proactive in dealing with children that are on the path to a mental breakdown, ensuring that mental health treatments are covered by insurance, educating the public that mental health problems are just that - not weakness, and yes - stricter gun regulations.
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87 comments (Latest Comment: 12/20/2012 01:28:37 by Raine)

Good Morning.

Today is our 4,090th day in Afghanistan.

We'll start this morning as we always do; with the latest casualty figures from our ongoing war, courtesy of Antiwar.com:

US Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 2,168
Other Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 1,072

We find this morning's cost of war passing through:

$ 1, 404, 143, 700, 000. 00
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70 comments (Latest Comment: 12/19/2012 08:01:56 by livingonli)

I can't answer that question, I doubt anyone can. Obviously this kid needed mental health and, judging from the pictures of the home he lived in, it appears that money was not a problem. Usually the one factor that ties these horrendous events together is the fact that mental health problems have not been addressed and the killer has been able to find access to a gun(s).

In my opinion the discussion we should be having right along with stronger gun laws is this: UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE. And when we discuss care for everyone in this country, we should talk about leaving the drug companies out of the discussion. Too many people are over-medicated. In fact, I won't be surprised one bit if we find out this shooter was on various medications. Let's face it, we live in a "throw some drugs at the problem" society.
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13 comments (Latest Comment: 12/17/2012 02:23:32 by Will in Chicago)

I've really got nothing to say here, folks.

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12 comments (Latest Comment: 12/15/2012 23:13:28 by velveeta jones)