A good part of what kept republicans in office in my opinion has been prosperity. A lot of people in the exurbs and suburbs got a big ass house, a big ass TV, two porsche SUVs and a trip to Mexico. That prosperity has been largely financed by cheap credit. People that make a household income of $70k have been buying $600,000 houses. But it looks like the party might be over.

I don’t know enough about this to know what comes next, but one has to imagine that an entire nation this deep in debt is not in a sustainable situation.

Check out this video of a direct action at the meeting of the Board of Regents of the University of Minnesota today. And more pictures here. I wrote up the following press releases about it:
STUDENTS TO ADMINISTRATION: WE STAND WITH THE UNION! GO BACK TO THE TABLE IN GOOD FAITH!

In their first major show of support for striking AFSCME workers at the U of M, students will join strikers at a rally on Friday morning at 9:00 in front of the McNamara Alumni Center, where the University Board of Regents will be meeting. Eli, a grad student at the U, said, “We will demand of the Regents – the leaders of our university – that they use their power to get the University administration back to the bargaining table with the union, to negotiate in good faith to reach an agreement that is fair, equitable, and respectful to the workers, without whom this place wouldn’t work!”
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Every once and a while I sit and wonder to myself: why the hell are we still in Iraq? As we eagerly await the Petreus White House Report Testimony on the status of the troop surge it is becoming clear that this Iraq thing has been a complete failure on every level. They can’t move the goal posts any further to declare it a success. There were no WMDs, we haven’t brought democracy, we haven’t been able to create a national police force that works, we haven’t been able to train a security force.

Are we really just “staying the course” because of the pig-headedness of Bush and Cheney? Because that is so insane.