(Obama)’s as far from Bobby Kennedy as he is from Chester A. Arthur. It is impossible to imagine Obama, forty years after it happened, wading into the Indianapolis ghetto, unannounced and unprepared, to tell a crowd that Martin Luther King had been shot, and to drop Aeschylus on them into the bargain.

Jonathan Rauch writes: 

"John McCain hasn’t betrayed conservatism; his party has."

“Why should Fossella resign?  We in the private sector have standards. It is only in the public sector where greed, avarice, stupidity, corruption, lying, cheating and stealing are tolerated.” 

    - Craig Shirley, Republican strategist and President of Shirley & Banister Public affairs.  He is also the author of the forthcoming book “Rendezvous with Destiny.”

Many observers expected the collapse of the two-party system in 2008. Lou Dobbs of CNN wrote a bestseller called “Independents Day,” predicting an “independent populist” would win the presidency.  

There’s scant prospect of any viable third party, however, when potential fringe contenders have an air of “round-up-the-usual suspects”—Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, Mike Gravel, Bob Barr, and Chuck Baldwin. Soaring turnout in primaries shows no mass desertion from the two-party system, and the Gallup Poll of under-30 voters notes a scant 8%—unchanged from four years ago—who consider themselves “independents.”  

The predicted “independents day” never materialized because likely nominees McCain and Obama, both of them once considered underdogs, give a fresh flavor to each party and show  the best way to work for change is within—not outside—the system that served us reasonably well for the last 150 years.

"Tax revenues would skyrocket if the tax cuts expire, due to "bracket creep." Average incomes are higher today than in the 1990s, but income-tax brackets aren't adjusted for the growth of earnings. As a result, Americans will shift into higher tax brackets and pay a greater share of their incomes in taxes.

Going back to the tax rates of the 1990s doesn't mean that households will pay 1990s taxes. Because the tax brackets haven't risen along with incomes, average taxes would be significantly higher, and grow each year.

... So even if the tax cuts are made permanent, future Americans will pay a greater share of their incomes to the government than in the past. But for some in Washington, that's not enough."