I completely forgot that the debate was on and haven't seen it.   Is it on line anywhere?  I don't even know what channel aired it.

@FalconBridge - Everything is online - youtube it, should find it in 2 seconds.  People are saying romney won, but every good point he made was just him lying through his teeth - literally.

Thanks.  I'll check it out tomorrow then.

The people who are most annoying are the "welfare state" conservatives who are obsessed with preventing "redistributions of wealth" when Republicans have been redistributing wealth from the lower and middle classes to the wealthiest citizens for decades. Like, how can a Reagan-loving conservative accuse Obama of being a socialist for suggesting we reinstate the tax rates that wealthy citizens had under Reagan (or Clinton, when the economy thrived)? Why is redistributing wealth to the ultra-wealthy for them to horde with investments better for the country than redistributing wealth to the lower and middle income Americans who need it to buy houses, pay for education, pay for health care, open small businesses, and whatnot? Cognitive dissonance abounds.

That really was an awesome closing line.  I think many folks who, like me, are concerned about having a welfare state fail to understand all the factors which contribute to the existence of the welfare state.  Conservatives often point to the laziness of the poor or a culture of dependency as the cause of the growing unemployment numbers and welfare recipients.  And it's certainly the case that there are poor people who are indeed not that interested in working and that there are people who are content to get by on welfare when they are quite capable of working.  It's also certainly the case that many people have lost their jobs because executives and shareholders thought that their extreme wealth wasn't extremely wealthy enough and profits need to increase.  It's also certainly the case that many people don't like working the low-wage dead-end jobs that are available because of the way the companies treat the workers and because those low part-time wages don't cover the necessities of life, like health insurance for their children.  And even where insurance is offered through those employers, it's often not very good coverage or prohibitively expensive for the wage earner.

Perhaps at some point, more of those folks at the top of the economic food chain will understand that the best way to keep their businesses sustainable is to make sure their workers are middle-class consumers who can actually afford to buy their products without mortgaging their children's futures.  Perhaps at some point it'll occur to more of them that it's better to be a symbiote than a parasite.  But I doubt it will so long as selfishness is a cultural virtue.