^^^after rereading my post, it sounds extremely selfish to say it like that, but in the system that this country is supposed to operate under, is that not how things are supposed to work?
Which is my exact beef with the system. There’s gotta be a way we can get stuff done WITH regard to one another.
See, I feel selfishly when it comes to foreign policy too. Spending billions around the world in the name of humanity in terms of helping under-developed countries with education, food and shelter, and disease prevention. Sending our soldiers overseas to fight wars in the name of human rights and removing evil dictators from ruling their homelands…and what does it get us in the end? Answer: huge debt!
Most of these under-privileged countries we help can in no way compensate us back that would make it a worthwhile trade, but yet in the name of humanity it is right to help starving children correct? In the meantime as a national country we go even more into bankruptcy? What about fighting wars that make the citizens of each nation in the war suffer, while only the defense corps. etc. benefit from the bloodshed? Go in and destroy a country and then spend money to rebuild it? -all in the name of removing some ruler who slaughters portions of his citizens? -and the thing is, most of these evil dictators and their countries have different beliefs and values that are very different from our own, so in a way, we are trying to fix a problem that we don’t truly understand. You can’t help people who don’t want to be helped. You disrespect people when you go in and try and change their societies. How would we, America, like it if Putin or the Chinese came into America with their forces and overthrew us and changed our society? Answer: we would HATE them for it!
These are exactly the kinds of problems that America has brought amongst ourselves. We want to police the whole world. We choose sides in foreign affairs that deeply angers the side we don’t support. Can someone honestly answer me as to why we decide to ‘help out’ Israel, and condemn the Muslims? The national news always reports the Palestinians firing the first shots, does anyone else find that really suspect? It’s no wonder that Muslims are willing to kill themselves to kill us when we openly support their hated enemy. Now we all know that Muslims can be religious nuts, but truth be told they are very sacred to their religion more than most. The point is, why do we support and supply weapons to one side over the other. Why not let them settle their differences however they want to amongst themselves and we stay the hell out of it is what I say!
The bullshit about Muslims hating us for our freedom is just that, BULLSHIT! They hate us because we support their mortal enemy, and try and control their lands. We try and change their societies that are different from ours, and all it ever gets us in the end is our soldiers killed and our wallets emptied. If we ‘selfishly’ minded our own fucking business then we would be in much better shape economically and worldly.
Anyways, sometimes being selfish while it has it’s flaws, is still the proven better way to handle affairs. Helping out homeland fuckups and foreign nations has proven to be the wrong way to handle things in terms of our economic status, our homeland security, and our reputation from the rest of the world.
Lucy, you have a lot of splainin to do… already.
WASHINGTON (CNN) – Members of Congress won’t be allowed to slip earmarks into the economic recovery package Congress will soon take up, President-elect Barack Obama said Tuesday.
“We are going to ban all earmarks, the process by which individual members insert pet projects without review,” Obama told reporters after a meeting with his economic advisers. Obama said that getting a handle on the country’s skyrocketing budget deficit must begin with the economic stimulus plan, and that the plan must include changes in the way Congress does business.
“We’re going to be investing an extraordinary amount of money to jump-start our economy, save or create 3 million new jobs, mostly in the private sector, and lay a solid foundation for future growth,” he said. “But we’re not going to be able to expect the American people to support this critical effort unless we take extraordinary steps to ensure that the investments are made wisely and managed well.”
AP. January 29.
When Congress opens up a gusher of money, every special interest in the country reaches for a bucket. And as lawmakers negotiate an economic stimulus bill that so far is expected to cost more than $800 billion, the scenario is no different.
The House passed its version of the bill Wednesday evening, and a host of oddball recipients from ATV riders to TV viewers preparing for the digital conversion stand to benefit.
But critics question why such narrowly tailored add-ons – which have little, if any, prospect of creating large numbers of new jobs – are in an emergency bill aimed at stimulating the economy and creating jobs.
“The stimulus bill delivers on a lot of promises that Democrats have made over the past decade to special interest groups,” said William Beach, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis. “This is their time to kind of bring home the bacon.”
Among the funding measures included in the proposal are $25 million for new ATV trails; $400 million for the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global warming research; $335 million for the Centers for Disease Control to combat sexually-transmitted diseases; and $650 million coupons to subsidize TV viewers for digital television conversion.
“I think it’s a real problem that things that are not genuinely related to stimulus are being pushed into the stimulus bill, which is then being put on a fast track that has to be done by February,” said Alan D. Viard, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.
“We have hundreds of billions of dollars shoved into this package without taking the time to deliberately consider what amounts we need and what the effective way would be to spend it,” he said.
The White House, though, argues that the stimulus package is indeed aimed at creating jobs.
“I think that you have a hard economic argument to make that paving a road, or fixing a bridge, or building a wind turbine, or laying a power grid doesn’t create jobs,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
Those kinds of projects do create job, but critics argue there is relatively little for those kinds of projects in there: Of the $819 billion package, $30 billion has been set aside for infrastructure spending.
“If there’s going to be a stimulus part to this whole effort, it’s going to be in the shovel-ready construction projects on our nation’s highways and byways,” Beach said. “But that’s just a ridiculously small number.”
House Democratic leaders reluctantly removed two programs that had drawn fire: $200 million for new contraceptive service and $20 million to renovate the National Mall. But another problem exists. Even money directed at infrastructure can face delays.
For example, a proposal to spend $2.9 billion for new military hospitals says the money couldn’t be spent for years – unless Congress sets aside obstacles of its own creation.
And throwing money at problems, no matter how pressing, does have a downside. The Congressional Budget Office says borrowing $820 billion will cost $347 billion more in interest, which of course pushes the total cost of the stimulus package to more than $1 trillion.
Most of the non-partisan economic experts agree that there is little in this stimulus package to resolve the real issues that created the crisis in the first place, ie, the bad mortgage debt, and the people in this country who could really use the help.
But politicians LOVE a good crisis because it allows them almost carte blanche availability of taxpayer funds to solve them without scrutiny. As young people just beginning to earn decent wages you should be incensed by this stimulus package because it will devalue everything you earn for the next ten to twenty years. This is a great big TAX on your income that will be levied by devaluation of what you earn instead of your seeing it as a dollar amount on your pay stub. Pretty underhanded tactics
Bush used the 911 attacks to route money to his friends and Obama is using the “economic crisis” to do the same. And he has all of those millions from his campaign to pay back to the special interest groups who supported him. Bet you didn’t think that the money would come from YOUR pocket.
Time for a change my ass. Business as usual I’d say.
^Wow. That article says it all doesn’t it…
A friend of mine said, before the election, that the American people are going to have “buyer’s remorse” pretty quick after electing Obama… didn’t take long did it…
This is freaking DANGEROUS stuff that’s going on here. These people don’t want a two party system anymore. Obama doesn’t want debate on his ripoff earmark bill, and believes this country gave him carte blanch to do whatever the f he feels like doing. He has the same attitude that Nixon had when he won the presidency. History is repeating itself only this time the mainstream media wouldn’t blow the whistle on this guy if he had blood dripping from his hands.
We could be heading for civil war if this continues this way…
Foxnews:
Utah’s congressional delegation is calling President Obama’s decision to move the U.S. census into the White House a purely partisan move and potentially dangerous to congressional redistricting around the country.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told FOX News on Monday that he finds it hard to believe the Obama administration felt the need to place re-evaluation of the inner workings of the census so high on his to-do list, just three weeks into his presidency.
“This is nothing more than a political land grab,” Chaffetz said.
Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, told the Salt Lake Tribune that the move “shouldn’t happen.” He and Chaffetz are trying to rally Republicans “before its too late.”
“It takes something that is supposedly apolitical like the census, and gives it to a guy who is infamously political,” Bishop said of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who would be tasked with overseeing the census at the White House.
The U.S. census – a counting of the U.S. population – is conducted every 10 years by the Commerce Department. Its results determine the decennial redrawing of congressional districts
As a matter of impact, the census has tremendous political significance. Political parties are always eager to have a hand in redrawing districts so that they can maximize their own party’s clout while minimizing the opposition, often through gerrymandering.
The census also determines the composition of the Electoral College, which chooses the president. If one party were to control the census, it could arguably try to perpetuate its hold on political power.
The results of the census are also enormously important in another way – the allocation of federal funds. Theoretically, a political party could disproportionately steer federal funding to areas dominated by its own members through a skewing of census numbers.
At this point the White House doesn’t seem willing to say what Emanuel’s role will be in overseeing the census, and White House officials say census managers will work closely with top-level White House staffers, but will technically remain part of the Commerce Department.
But critics say the White House chief of staff can’t be expected to handle the census in a neutral manner. Emanuel ran the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the 2006 election, and he was instrumental in getting Democrats elected into the majority.
“The last thing the census needs is for any hard-bitten partisan (either a Karl Rove or a Rahm Emanuel) to manipulate these critical numbers. Many federal funding formulas depend on them, as well as the whole fabric of federal and state representation. Partisans have a natural impulse to tilt the playing field in their favor, and this has to be resisted,” Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, told FOX News in an e-mail.
Critics note that the method of counting can skew the census. Democrats have long advocated using mathematical estimates, a practice known as “sampling,” to count urban residents and immigrants. Republicans say the Constitution requires a physical head count, which entails going door-to-door.
In 2000, Utah, which has three congressmen, was extremely close to landing a fourth House seat based on U.S. Census numbers, but the nation’s most conservative state fell short by a few hundred votes because the Census Bureau wouldn’t count Mormon missionaries from Utah serving temporarily overseas.
The GOP took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, but was ultimately unsuccessful. Utah leaders had hoped the 2010 census would rectify the problem, but now worry that they will lose again if the census is managed by partisans.
When Obama nominated New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to be commerce secretary – he was later forced to withdraw – he indicated that Richardson would be in charge of the census.
The decision to move the census into the White House was announced just days after Obama named New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, a Republican, to be his commerce secretary. Gregg has long opposed “sampling” by the census and has voted against funding increases for the bureau.
Sabato said moving the census “in-house” will likely set up a situation where neither the Commerce Department nor the White House will know exactly what is going on in the Census Bureau. He said the process is “too critical to politics for both parties not to pay close attention.”
“I’ve always remembered what Joseph Stalin said: ‘Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.’ The same principle applies to the census. Since one or the other party will always be in power at the time of the census, it is vital that the out-of-power party at least be able to observe the process to make sure it isn’t being stacked in favor of the party in power. This will be difficult for the GOP since I suspect Democrats will control both houses of Congress for the entire Obama first term,” Sabato said.
Good lord…
Well, I think Obama’s been a major disappointment so far, to say the least. He promised “change”, and we haven’t gotten any of it. He’s just using scare tactics, the same thing Bush did , to push his agenda.
People say he’s the next FDR, but FDR said “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. Obama, on the other hand, just says that if we don’t pass this train wreck of a stimulus bill immediately, we’re headed for a major catastrophe.
Way to inspire hope and confidence, Barry.
Seriously though…
Governments don’t change things. They struggle to maintain order in a changing universe. If you expect something different, you might be better served looking within yourself and your own community to find it.
Productivity creates wealth.
The 1930’s are over.
The American Dream is built on slavery.
Don’t panic.
hope, change, bullshit…
yes on patriot act II
yes on FISA
YES ON BAILOUT and MORE BAILOUTS
YES ON WAR FUNDING AND MORE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN
fear mongering to push his bullshit SPEND MORE agenda
YES ON RENDITION (secret arrests)
BULLSHIT, NO CHANGE ok DEMS? NOW WAKE UP AND SMELL THE NEW WORLD ORDER ALREADY JEEZ!!!
FALSE LEFT/RIGHT PARADIGM is a stage show starring Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olberman
BUSH SUCKS donkey balls
OBAMA SUCKS MONKEY DICK
BUT THEY BOTH SUCK BANKER DICK. FOR SURE
and Congress SUCKS EVEN MORE THAN BOTH OF THEM, maybe equal, but STILL!!! (Except for Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul)
sorry everyone but I’m pissed today about this BS “stimulus” deal that the media is pushing like “we have to pass this” type thing without any REAL debate…
aaarrrggghhhhhh!!!
Ohhh… Now I see.
haha… fookin’ classic…
ARRGG BLAHH SON OF A ASS BANKER OBAMA BUSH BITCH ARRGGG ASSHOLES STIMULATE THE CLIT BITCH ARRGGG UP THE ASS WITH YER FEAR ARGGG WAR FUCKERS ROOORAR BAILOUT THE DICKHEADS FUCK RRRRR!!! 
Seriously tho thnkfst I enjoy your perspective and objectivity…
I think people were so excited about electing a black man as president for the first time they neglected to actually see that he was a big fraud. I give no small blame to the media for the ensuing disaster.
On the other hand McCain ran such a shitty campaign that there was no way he was getting elected.
I haven’t seen the numbers for myself but was told Obama’s approval rating is 42%… it took Bush 5 years to hit that low. Way to go Obama. :-/
Nah, I think his approval numbers are still higher than that, above 50% at least.
What’s amazing to me, is I that the majority of people oppose the stimulus package, yet the same people say they approve of Obama’s handling of this and disapprove of the Republicans handling of it. Huh? How could you oppose the stimulus, and yet support Obama on the same issue?
Ach! No f’ing surprise those criminals in the Senate passed that bill. Even the republicans will make out from the pork in that disgraceful legislation. Don’t they know they’ve all signed their own demise?
And the market dropped nearly 400 points right after. No surprise there. And there will be more layoffs than you could ever imagine coming next. Just playing into Obama and the banker’s hands. MORE GOVERNMENT CONTROL of EVERYTHING. This craphead has managed to wrest more control from the citizens in this country in twenty days than it took Bush to do in twenty months with an outside attack to help him.
you guys are over-reacting.
its very clear that when the entire economy is in turmoil because the people with money and power have no idea what to do with money and power, the only thing you can do to fix that is to give the same people more money and power that they don’t know what to do with.
am i the only one here that took an economics class at a public high school during the Bush administration?
common sense, people!
Hopefully Spector, Collins, and Snowe lose their senate seats next time they’re up for re-election.
Everybody on the news networks is talking about how eloquent Obama was during his press conference last night. Am I the only one who thinks otherwise? Once he started answering questions, I thought his answers were long-winded, rambling, and disjointed.
^everyone I talk to hated that speech last night even the Obamanoids. So I think we’re making some progress.
What a stage show this whole thing was,…the republicrats dragging their feet saying spending is out of hand when all they did was spend the last eight years, and the Demublicans grimacing and Obama like yelling at us on the TV…fuckin aye what a SHOW…
they were all on the same side the whole time folks,…the whole fuckin process has been hijacked and is now staged blatantly.
The people are waking up and when this knowledge reaches critical mass…THE FUCKIN CROOKS ARE GOIN DOWN!!!.
Yeah, everyone got so energized in their hate for Bush, that they rebounded for anything that even remotely “looked” like something different, not realizing that what he was saying all along was pretty much worse than the status quo. No one really questioned Obama, no one was willing to accept that he had absolutely no qualifications to become president except an appearance. Like lemings running into the sea, this country voted for a shyster lawyer, a snake oil salesman par excellance.
But it’s part of the great plan, the great awakening of 2012, armegeddon of sorts, when all the breakers are turned off and on, and the real meaning of the age of Aquarius has us all on our knees.
^unfortunately fone there were plenty of whistle blowers before the election but everyone had their hands over their ears screaming “lalalalalalalalala… I can’t hear you… lalalalalalalala.” :-/
Again everyone had their proverbial willies wet over the fact that we could actually vote a black man in office… it didn’t matter that the man himself was a sham, an empty shell, just that he was black and we were making “progress”… just an illusion…
Thomas Sowell said it best… I paraphrase… “Whether we have a black president or not is not a matter of “if” but “when”… not this black man and not now.”
Again, no one listened.
Of course it was not all about race… people were convinced Bush was the worst thing ever… and Obama played that emotion like a fiddle, superimposing Bush over McCain… as if Obama was running against Bush.
I got disgusted by the fall… I stopped coming to this sight for all the shortsighted Obama supporters, you all had made up your mind, your minds were closed to hearing anything else.
People neglected to actually see the wood for the trees… now America will pay the price. Way to go voters.
Meh… whatever, don’t take offense to what I said… people actually thought Obama was sincere. Took his words as truth.
I mean there were “hope, change” speeches that Obama took straight from his buddy Duval Patrick in Mass… word for word! Governor Patrick is trying to sign into law a gas tax that will make Mass have the highest gas tax in the country… at this time! During this recession! You don’t think that’s the last damn thing people need right now! What do you think Obama will do?
All I can say is I hope you are secure in your job. For many of you you are too young to be affected… in college or something… hell when I was 25 I ended up living out a tent for a while… can’t do that now…