That's what i'm talking about. I think to these men, the "group who lives on minimum wage" is imaginary. They don't really exist! These "working poor" that Bush has claimed he "just doesn't understand" are nothing but a device invented by the Devious Left. So why truly consider their lives and what it's like to wish you had money to buy your children the things they long for and need?

Disgusting.

"Representatives."

Golly Moses, naturally they're punks!

When Jonathan writes

this is just a hollow jesture that should not buttress Republicans from the attack that they do not care one lick about working class Americans, particularly those who have to live on the minimum wage.

(And, perhaps, There really ought to be a word 'jesture'.

Kidding.)

With all the experience we have of pols in general, and the current Congressional majority in particular, last night's shenanigans can surely come as a surprise to no one around here.

Dem should be rejoicing at what looks like a nasty knife-fight between the House and Senate GOP, with more to come.

And at the prospect that the monstrous estate tax giveaway won't be happening this Congress.

As for the minimum wage hike - no one was expecting that to be enacted, were they?

Plus - we still, at last count, have the Hoyer Amendment in the text of the Labor appropriations bill. Not much hope there, but some.

I wonder at times whether some lefties have altogether too short a planning horizon: failing a 1994-scale earthquake, nothing very much is going to happen for a long time.

Not in 07, or 09, or 11; perhaps after the 2010 Census redistricting - providing that the Dems' prep (including necessary victories in lege and gov races) has been first class - perhaps not even then.

My understanding of American political history is that reform comes in spurts after disasters; between times, things are pretty much fallow.

Which is paradoxical: if things are going OK (as they have been under Clinton and, for many, even under Bush), there's just not the pressure on pols to take the risks which radical reform entails.

If the shit hits the fan (with a deep recession, say), the folks that liberals want to help with reforms are the ones who get it in the neck first and most.

Politics, like life, is something of a bitch.

this is just a hollow jesture

I think that one of the few positive outcomes of having today's GOP in control of government for so long (and of course so egregiously)--in addition to almost singlehandedly causing the rebirth of the progressive movement (and by extension the Democratic party)--is that it is slowly forcing everyday Americans to finally wake up out of their 25+ year political apathy (and simultaneous retreat into their own sheltered little Reageanesque worlds), and actually start paying attention to, thinking and caring about politics--because, duh, it actually affects their lives in serious and profound ways. This is still very much a process in the making--Americans are still far from being as politically engaged as they once were or need to be again. But I think that it's finally happening, and that we have today's GOP to thank for it. You can only trust someone blindly or be oblivious to them for so long before you finally realize that they've been robbing you blind all these years.

American is finally getting its wakeup call. It's called today's GOP.