Obama has been in office for 6 years, moving with regular consistency in contradiction to ideals of Reganomics, but our current citizen opportunities are Reagan's fault?

At what point can you be intellectually honest enough to recognize that our current economic policies are disastrous.

We're $18Trillion in debt. We have roughly 1/2 a trillion in deficit per year. This President (and the one before him, easily as culpable), are bankrupting our nation, and setting policies that have failed -every- -single- -time- they have been implemented globally throughout history. No nation has ever spent their way out of debt, not matter how hard they've tried.

Please, I beg you. Look up Thomas Sowell and Milton Friedman. They are both very respected and accomplished economists, and there are hundreds of recorded lectures from them available on YouTube. They can demonstrate these ideas for you in no uncertain terms.

Ok, the observable evidence over the past decade suggests that at the least the impact of the prevailing theory is highly overstated, and potentially flat out wrong.

Now what?

As a middle-aged person who had some college both right out of high school and again just a couple of years ago, I wholly agree. When I returned recently I was in classes with people that truly didn't know what the basic structure of a paper should look like; thesis, argument, conclusion. They could reason through simple assignments and complete work that was even marginally acceptable. Yet they not only passed the classes, they received B's and C's. And this wasn't a community college. This was a nationally known and respected institution. It was horrible. I spent as much time on my own classwork as I did in writing detailed tutorials for my classmates on how to do theirs.

The quality of college education has declined as rapidly as the tuitions have climbed. We shouldn't need to send our kids to any college to learn how to research, or how to do algebra. This is material that they should have mastered before leaving high school. Allowing the lower educational standards to nose-dive to the lowest common denominators is not evidence for the need for free college educations. These kids are more interested in tonight's episode of reality TV crap than they are in what they will do with the rest of their lives. They can't name the vice president. They cant tell you the co-equal branches of government. They cant describe the events that led up to the Civil War or the Revolutionary War, and they have no concept of budgeting their finances. But we're going to provide for more free education? How about if we actually require that they learn something from the free education they already get first and then, maybe, talk about more.

Except that France is insolvent, and is proposing (or implemented?) tax rates as high as 75%. No small part of those problems are rooted in the entitlements promised to labor groups and retirees which they now know they cannot actually pay for.

I don't support an overtime exemption for anyone, but I cant fathom how anyone would recommend France as a beacon of accomplishment in labor or finance.

Our government's intended function is mostly to stay the hell out of our way. In your example, not only should that Congressman stand in the way of action by others that is not critical to the very limited intended purpose of government, but also every other Congressman should stand in his way to ensure that he isn't using strong-arm tactics, coercion and back-room deals to foist more crap on We The People.

I disagree. There are some people that think that some laws are necessary, and when they don't see those laws being fast-tracked thru Congress they equate that to dysfunction. What should be evident is that if the law doesn't pass, it really isn't that necessary and not favored heavily enough by enough people.

If a congressman refuses to vote in favor of a thing that his or her electorate feels is critical, he will be removed upon the next election. If his electorate is so intellectually bankrupt (as oh so many Americans are), then they will leave that person in Congress to continue failing to do things that are critical. The former is a check on the system; those failing to represent those who elected him is removed. The latter is not a symptom of dysfunction in Congress. It's a symptom of the dysfunction of the voters.

We were never supposed to have a government that built an ever-growing catalogue of all things we citizens cannot do. They were never intended to prevent us from being offended, or uncomfortable. They were meant to defend our borders, settle disputes between states, and very little else. They (and the plethora of activists) have taken it upon themselves to try to govern how we think, act, drive, read, are entertained, eat, sleep, breath... They have changed the foundation of our system from innocent until proven guilty at which time you'll be punished, to attempting to prevent us from ever becoming guilty by forcing the behavior they desire.

"Political Gridlock" is a fabricated phrase coined by petulant children who are actually saying "Do it my way, damnit!"

It is not the job of Congress to ensure that laws get passed. It is not the intent of our government's structure to ensure that compromises are met and new rules are enacted. It is structured so that unless there is a majority in agreement, not one god damn thing is forced upon the people.

Somehow we've lost sight of that fact, and now we measure the effectiveness of Congress on an abundant tally of their bloated, incongruous and often self-contradicting and self-serving laws, rather than on how intelligently and efficiently they structure the few laws that should be actually enacted.

Wow. Did you overdose on your conspiracy pills this morning? Seriously dude, turn off MSNBC and get help. Right Now.

Or just make a law against interfering with access. Apply that both to tripods, and to bureaucratic knobs that want to regulate pictures on public land.

Thank you grammar police.

From Wiktionary (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dyed-in-the-wool):

Ezekiel (like his brother, the mayor of Chicago) is from a family with a history of liberal political activism. In a very direct way he was raised with liberal, and arguably progressive leanings. His formative years (the dying of his wool) developed the philosophies he now holds as a mature adult. He is the product of the dyed wool being utilized to create a product, as opposed to raw wool being used to create a thing that is later dyed.

The application of that phrase is precisely correct.

This is the evil that Emanuel is describing from Bernard Shaw, a Fabian Socialist who defended the actions of the Nazi's.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WBRjU9P5eo

Who determines when that time comes? Maybe it's 65. Maybe it's 55. Hell, for some it's in their 30's when they start getting fat and lazy.

Basically what this dickhead is saying is that if you're not valuable to someone for some tangible product, you should just die. He's probably also of the opinion that if you get Muscular Dystrophy in your 30's you should just check out. If you're born with Downs Syndrome, and will always have to be cared for you should just be aborted at birth (murdered). It's not like a severe mental handicap provides the ability to make a "rational" decision to take yourself out of everyone worries about you.

This philosophy relies on the premise that if you aren't providing money, or food, or talent in some field of productivity, that you are also unable to provide (and receive) love, joy and positive experiences. The philosophy is callous and inhuman, ironically coming from a man who will tell you all about how we should behave exactly in a specific way if it can "save just one life".

Emanuel is a dyed in the wool liberal progressive the likes of which Bernard Shaw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3lBdyFvPps) would be quite proud of.

Then by your definitions, the current federal hiring practices are discriminatory. If you're applying for a position in federal govt you get additional preference for that position if you are female and/or a member of a minority. All else being equal, a woman, or a member of a minority, or a minority woman will be hired for a position that an exactly equally qualified white male also applied to. (Veteran status is another factor, which I actually happen to agree with. But that's a different discussion.)

In point of fact, it does. Destroying evidence is a crime.

Obviously! And it's a good thing that 3D printed firearms are the only way to kill someone. It's not like a computer and an internet connection canprovide you a few 100 other cheap and easy ways to do so.