This fun and thought provoking little quiz will help you find your true political identity. Here's my result:

My Liberal Identity

You are a Peace Patroller, also known as an anti-war liberal or neo-hippie. You believe in putting an end to American imperial conquest, stopping wars that have already been lost, and supporting our troops by bringing them home.

Take the quiz at
About.com Political Humor

I'm sure it's merely coincidence, but shortly after the passage of the Jobs Bill by the Senate today, the DowJones spiked forty points. Or is it? Maybe one of the most deleterious effects of all the Republican stonewalling of the last year is on the economic front. They would like to think that they are making life difficult for Obama and the Democrats, but the rest of us are suffering, too.

After all, we're talking about health benefit reform, fianancial system reform, tax incentives for hiring, investing in the Green economy, and more; all subjects that have enormous impacts on businesses and their planning for the near future. So if you are a business, what are you going to do? You'll wait and see what comes out all these discussions. Unfortunately, this "wait and see" attitude slows down the economy, making it harder for regular people to find jobs, rearrange their retirement funds, and plan their own futures, which just exacerbates the situation.

I hope the electorate will remember this when the Roadblock Republicans come around in the Fall, asking for votes and trying to convince people that it is the Democrats are who are making their futures appear bleak.

When they talk about Freedom®, Senate Republicans must have a different meaning than the rest of us. It seems Freedom® to them means the ability of selected corporations to be free of the laws that govern the rest of us. It certainly doesn't mean the freedom of association as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. To wit:

This week, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) slammed the brakes on a Senate bill reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), objecting to a change in the House version of the bill that fixes an inequity in labor law that makes it more difficult for truck drivers at Memphis-based Federal Express to unionize than drivers at other shipping companies. Fellow Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander (R) applauded Corker's effort, pledging to "use every right or privilege I have as a senator to make sure that in the end of the process, the legislation does not include the unfair provisions singling out FedEx that's in the House bill." The senators' effort to prevent what they call an "unfair" provision singling out FedEx labor workers is itself a contradiction because, as Jim Berard, a spokesman for House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) noted, the House language seeks to "treat people who have the same type of job equally under federal labor laws." FedEx has successfully lobbied for years to remain classified as an airline subject to Railway Labor Act (RLA), a law that is technically supposed to apply only to airlines and railroad companies and stipulates that workers can't form local unions. CEO Fred Smith -- "who raised more than $100,000 for 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain and was George W. Bush's fraternity brother" -- defends this exception, adding, "I don't intend to recognize any unions at Federal Express." The language that Corker objects to would bring FedEx under the National Labor Relations Act like other shipping companies, such as UPS. Corker announced Wednesday that he will release his hold on the bill after receiving assurances from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) that the FedEx provisions would not appear in the Senate bill. - CAP's Progress Report

It would seem that to their minds, the greatest threat to Freedom® is a group of workers standing together for their family's economic security and their rights as Americans. Canada is looking better all the time.

In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, even as the first stories were breaking in the media outlets, a call went out in the media to not start-up the inevitable discussion of gun control.

In today's NYTimes, we find an article describing the weapons Cho Seung-Hui used to wreak havoc and how he obtained them through legal means. Here's one part of the article that confuses me:

But Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who is also running for president, said, “This brutal attack was not caused by nor should it lead to restrictions on the Second Amendment, which guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms.”

Some commentators who oppose what they see as unconstitutional limits on gun ownership said they feared gun control advocates would successfully use the Virginia tragedy to bolster their position, especially with Democrats’ new power in Washington. “We see calls for gun control but we may not see as much empathy for calls for armed self-defense,” said David Codrea, a blogger and a columnist for Guns Magazine.

What confuses me is why these same people that will not budge on the defense of their second amendment rights, seem to be able to sleep through the suspension of habeus corpus included in the Military Commissions Act and the dilution of the Bill of Rights by the PATRIOT Act and continue to support the politicians that recommend, pass, and enact into law such legislation. Of what possible use is a basement full of assault weapons without the right to peaceable assembly or freedom from warrantless searches? Where is their righteous indignation when rights cherished by all Americans are infinged.

It also never seems to occur to these second amendment supporters that it's very difficult to find anyone who has been victimized by someone using a firearm that is equally as adamant in their support for gun-rights. In the same NYTimes article we find:

In Congress, perhaps the strongest response to the Virginia shootings came from Representative Carolyn McCarthy, a New York Democrat whose husband was killed and son was seriously wounded by a gunman on the Long Island Rail Road more than a decade ago. Ms. McCarthy pushed House leaders on Tuesday to move quickly on a bill, stalled in previous Congresses that would improve databases used to conduct criminal background checks on gun purchaser.

And, of course, the strongest Federal legislation ever passed to control trafficking in firearms is the Brady Bill, inspired and fought for by James Brady, another shooting victim. Is this what has to happen? Tens of thousands of people have to be shot with a legal firearm until all the gun-rights folks have a family member that's been killed? All this death and misery just to keep a few manufacturers of products the single purpose of which is to kill human beings rolling in profits? Is empathy so impossible for them?