phil, you may not fall into this camp apparently due to your age, but for many people, "conservatives" and Republicans both discredited themselves as a group by their long-term support of George W. Bush. I realize that there are some smart conservatives who are and were on the outside of that group... that identified the neo-cons/Bushites as dangerous and irresponsible... But the smart conservatives who didn't drink the koolaid are seen as a very small almost irrelevant group compared to the current utterly corrupted Republican establishment.

These are people like Chris Buckley - tossed from his father's paper because he dared to fall out of step with the orthodox Republican position of the time. People like Ron Paul - who offers a fresh and honest attempt at Libertarian policy - but is laughed at by most as a fringe nut - akin to a right-wing version of Ralph Nader. This is not to say that these people are irrelevant to the debate... far from it. It's just that they will have a long climb to rise above the putrid swamp that the neo-cons and theo-cons created... both organizationally (in taking back the GOP or forming a viable alternative) and perceptually (in overcoming people's current disgust in the Republicans).

@ invictus - the pre-FDR era lead to the Great Depression. not to mention that this was also the era of child labor, 100-hour work weeks, untenable factory conditions, wide economic disparity, low life-spans... and those union-busting private thugs (they had a name). also are you not concerned with trying to emulate century old political and economic policies for the modern globalized economic order? does that not make your view seem about 100 years out of touch?

as for comparisons to communism. I could not agree with you more. thats exactly why none of us here advocate for communism. same reason Dexter and I disagree with libertarianism. this is the type of cookie-cutter attacks that I hate seeing - like when Palin and McCain succumbed to calling Obama a "socialist"... yet they could not even define what they were accusing him of.

@ phil - lol.... well played. and maybe I should use the term I used above "cookie-cutter labels". the point I was trying to make - and maybe I did not do a good job of it - is to say I greatly dislike when people say stuff like "liberals just want to increase spending" that sort of thing... I'll go back and find specific examples of what I mean later - but you are right - it was a minor part of my overall concern.

on your jobs point - 600k * 2.4 mil is 1.4 tril not 14 tril ;) but more substantively - it is a "stimulus AND re-investment" package... Obama and the Democrats have been clear that they intended to 'invest' in America's future - not JUST creat jobs for the next 12 months. so you are making a straw-man argument. there is no 'hidden' spending.

by the way - here is a quote I take extreme exception to "surely money better spent than providing aid to OTHER countries to subsidize abortions!" that is such a distortion (I'll say it - 'lie') and intentional characterization of the global-gag rule that Republicans continually insist on. that foreign aid money goes to health clinics. not JUST for abortions. it includes sex-ed. AIDS-ed. condoms. and many many many many other health-related needs of absolutely deprived areas of the world. in fact - we should do another thread just on how lacking our foreign-aid budget is and how every dollar spent on GOOD foreign aid could probably save us 2 or 3 on defense spending. but another thread - another day.

on Bush: mostly agreed. its not like he personally destroyed the market. but HIS appointments to the regulatory bodies like Harvey Pitt at the SEC and Paulson at Treasury (not to mention Brownie at FEMA, the mining execs at the mining regulatory agency, or the EPA guys, or the curmudgeons over at interior who slept and had cocaine with employees of the oil companies they were 'regulating'). it was Bush and his entire philosophy and his entire 'team' (the Republican team) that had an outlook of "Government should get out of the way" that caused this mess.

I delineated above somewhere the 3 main causes of the capital market crash. any one of which, if handled appropriately, would have kept us from this dark day. No one. not a single soul in the Bush administration (team) or in the Congress that he controlled in lock-step with him lifted one finger to stop this from happening when they could have.

as for Bush - he is not 'evil' incarnate. just incompetence and ignorance incarnate. one of the worst 5 Presidents out of the 42 men who have occupied the WH (yes, 42, not 43 - someone tell us why :-)


@ Dexter - exactly. very erudite and far more concise than what I write. one thing to add for you 'deficit and debt hawks'. post WWII debt in the US stood at 125% of GDP. we are at about 75% right now.


@ phil - maybe I am not understanding the definition of ad-hominum - but I dont see how those are so ad-hominum. do you want me to go in and spell out how my description of conservative in those statements are true. I'll go through and individually show it. I didnt say "conservatives are idiots"... that would be ad-hominum. I essentialy said "conservatives championed deregulation" and "cons. believe in self-reliance" etc etc. now if you think 'championing deregulation' or 'self-reliance' (boot-straps) are insults.... well - I wont stop you ;-)


@ phil 2:52 comment - pretty much agreed as well. some minor quibbles not worth your wasted time to read 8-p one I will mention. added to your list of culprits (CEOs, business bosses, etc) I add the entire Republican leadership of the past 8 years for reasons I enumerated in some detail just above.


@ nick - didnt read the article - but your points are exactly salient and your reading of why we had the mortgage bubble is dead on. and Greenspan added fuel to the fire with his 'exuberance' in cutting the Fed rate.

@ phil on the incentivization (is that a word?) issue...

very apt points - and let me be clear that my 80/20 is pulled out of you know where. just to make a point. as for your points - I agree... that margin on how-to is where politics is played... ie. welfare vs workfare in the 90s. or 10 month vs 20 month unemployment benefits etc.

but my contention is that the social democracy model is more effective AND more just/fair. so basically that the pendulum has swung too far in the 'incentive intensive' model vs the protect-the-weak model. (since Nixon - but really Reagan).

furthermore - I would take umbridge at the idea that the only incentives are monetary. we discussed earlier the role of 'idealism' or even 'altruism' as an incentive model - hell - thats why the non-profit sector pays like 2/3rds of the private sector for similar jobs - the incentive is something other than money.

as for your foray into the dictatorships - that was just weird and I didnt really follow what you were trying to say - sorry... just didnt get your point there....

on incentivizing the 15% - in my opinion - its provide them with opportunity. give them an education. give them healthcare. give them child care from an early age. most of this 20% does not suffer from lazyness - they suffer from poverty.... a child who grows up is the result of both nature AND nurture - and if the parents are poor and have no parenting skills, it benefits ALL society for those kids to get that type of care from somewhere...

yeah - it is the 'nanny state'... but many kids - here in our own cities and rural towns - NEED a nanny REALLY badly... they really do.

thats how you bring the 15% into the fold as productive adults.


I'd even argue that before federally mandated national education and various FDR-era programs - that 15% number was much higher... maybe as high as half the country... another words... underutalization of potential.

maybe what I'm really asking for is a more fair playing field when it comes to 'opportunity' and ONLY the government can provide that.

Babak, your response about pre-FDR America was spot on and saved me writing a similar post.

I have to wonder what the size limit is to a post... I believe you might be breaking some kind of record... :-) No wasted verbiage - that's the amazing thing. Good posts.

Indeed - good posts by each of you. How refreshing to have a debate... rather than a flame war.

@ Dexter -

the fact is - the Republican party of today (which has taken over the word 'conservative') is represented by reactionaries like Rush Limbaugh, Eric Cantor, and Sarah Palin. this faction in the Republican party constitutes well over 60% of the party and is currently running the show and to me (ad-hominum coming up) they represent a special breed of ignorance-adoring, science-hating, supply-side-economic-ideology driven, religiously orthodox zealots who are statist in their view points (follow the leader mentality).

until the control of these people is not wrested away from them - the Republican party and 'conservatism' will be defined by them.

Dexter - I'm saving this thread for myself. Never before have I so thoroughly enjoyed writing so much that so few will read.

Regarding the "nanny state" comment made somewhere up-thread (and countless times in countless other blogs and commentaries by countless conservatives)... First of all, as Babak points out, some of us need a nanny... but beyond that - the idea that the government is something external that's doing things to us is flawed. Realize that the government IS us. It is there for us... and it is by us that the government gets it's authority. Government is simply an organized way for us to do useful things for ourselves and each other... no different than a church or a club. Obviously we need to keep active and participate in the running of our democracy so it doesn't slip into the hands of a tyrant in some future time... but right now it is there for us.

:-)

About the economic stimulus package, it is seriuosly flawed because there are a lot of programs contained in the bill that are completely wasteful. But it does have a great amount of potential and I am not just saying that because I am an independent.

dexter - strong point about 'government IS us'... I'm going to remember that as a very solid response to the 'nanny state' nonsense. ;)

Steven - two questions:
what does "a lot of programs" mean to you? what percentage would be 'a lot'? or how many dollars?

second - what does 'completely wasteful' mean to you? what is a wasteful program?

of course there are the 4-5 you hear on the TV talked about - most of which were removed in the house version already and constituted less than 1% of the total. but I truly am curious where this idea of 'a lot of' and 'wasteful programs' comes from and what it actually means.

I dont mean to berate you or demean your point - i honestly want to know what your standard is on those questions.

You criticize philcore for ad hominem attacks and then call 60% of Republicans reactionaries?

@babak: ad-hominum simply means "against the person" it's when you dismiss or attack a persons argument for who they are, rather than what they are arguing. A very clear sign of an impending AH is "of course as a conservative, you think that ...". You're dimissing whatever the person TRULY thinks by your generalizaiont that he is a conservative. The other examples weren't as clear cut but the "YOUR fellow conservatives ... YOUR Republican President ..." that is trying to dismiss the arguer by classifying them, rather than argue the points the arguer has made, regardless of the various ways they can be classified.

It's understandable if you didn't fully understand the meaning, but then to clarify you went on to say:
"maybe I should use the term I used above "cookie-cutter labels". the point I was trying to make - and maybe I did not do a good job of it - is to say I greatly dislike when people say stuff like "liberals just want to increase spending" that sort of thing"

OK fair enough. But there were about 10 of those exact types of classifications from you that I deliberately ignored, because while they were unfair "cookie cutter labels" of the type that I now know you despise, they weren't strictly speaking ad-hominum, so I didn't put them in there. BUT since you clarified that that's what realy bugs you ;-) enjoy:

"its amazing to me how after conservatives have destroyed this country's economy, foreign policy, doubled the debt in 8 years, and not solved a single social ill - still want to continue the same counterproductive and discredited plans."

"KNOWING that the Rush Limbaugh-conservatives would slap it away along with any legitimacy they would want for the 2010 elections."

"I also want to make a point to all the conservatives who always complain about paying higher taxes"

"it includes the credit default swaps that your fellow conservatives came up with in NY"

@babak - as for Bush - he is not 'evil' incarnate. just incompetence and ignorance incarnate. one of the worst 5 Presidents out of the 42 men who have occupied the WH (yes, 42, not 43 - someone tell us why :-)

I will never convince a vitriolic bush hater that he was actuall a good man and in my opinion will be looked at by history as a good president - so I won't even comment on him being "one of the worst 5".

I really just wanted to answer your riddle - but first I think there might have been a problem with it considering BO is the 44th president, not the 43rd. So unless you are assuming that most people will get one of the two presidencies that didn't add someone to the white house, then maybe you only know of one?

Because you are right that only 42 men have occupied, but you should have said 42 - not 44. Because there are two tricks to this riddle not one.

phil, your riddle is easy - Grover Cleveland was president #22 and #24... and George Washington never occupied the White House (because it wasn't built yet).

well it was babak's riddle, to be fair - but you are right. congratulations!

Dexter +1

philcore - thank you for that primer on Ad-hominum... I should not have used a word I did not fully understand...

on the wider point - about "liberals are"... "conservatives are..." or more appropriately "conservatives are responsible for..." I guess what it comes down to is on each of those individual issues, our differences are on 'facts' and 'reality'.

for example - I said "its amazing to me how after conservatives have destroyed this country's economy, foreign policy, doubled the debt in 8 years, and not solved a single social ill - still want to continue the same counterproductive and discredited plans."

to me - that is an objective statement of reality. exaggerated sure - but very relevant and appropriate. now we can debate the numerical details of why these things are true - but the election (one measure of that) along with a vast majority of books, articles, journals, and research (you know - facts) agree with my perception of 'reality' than someone (like Cheney) who thinks that torturing people, invading Iraq, and bungling Afghanistan made America safer. on the economy - even more so.

see - you just said "vitriolic Bush hater". The reason I think the guy was 'ignorant and incompetent' and one of the 'worst' is not because I hate HIM - the man. but because his Presidency was horrendous. I'm not going to repeat all the reasons why that is true.

Iike I said phil - you and I seem to have a different view on reality and on facts. I wont assume what you think of him - but the few people left who continue to defend his Presidency (or call him a 'god president') simply have not done enough reading or learning.. in fact - I'd posit - they are going by their 'gut' more than their 'head' and are the emotional ones.

anyways - you are obviously an intelligent person and quite well informed and in no way stupid or ignorant - but I do think you are wrong. ;-)

as for the riddle - quite right. I meant 44... :-P

* (.... I do think you are wrong) on the facts, evidence, and your analysis.

Ok, any of you familiar with football? (soccer to you guys I guess)

Well there's a thing in football called the offside trap, where the defensive line steps forward to catch an attacking player offside. To do this they must all look down the line and see that they are lined up with their fellow defenders.

I always think that this visualisation, of looking across a playing field at who you are lined up with, is an interesting way of examining ones own political position.

@ Invictus - When you look across the pitch, who do you see yourself lined up with?

Your views on the stimulus package place you out of line with a Reaganist position, go further than even the most right-wing European politicans, and fly in the face of generally accepted economic wisdom.

As far as I can determine, your belief is that Government's are only really necessary to protect your money. That's not capitalism friend, that's despotism.

@babak - "to me - that is an objective statement of reality."

huh?

If it were truly an "objective statement of reality" - you would not need to qualify it with "to me" that's sort of the point of objectivity, it takes the subject - you in this case - out of the equation.

only one of the following 5 statements could be considered objective:

conservatives:
1) have destroyed this country's economy.
2) have destroyed this country's foreign policy
3) have doubled the debt in 8 years
4) have not solved a single social ill
5) still want to continue the same counterproductive and discredited plans

and that is number 3 - it is objective because it doesn't MATTER who the subject is giving the opinion. It either is or it isn't true. It happens to NOT be true, but at least it is objectively not true. What is objectively true is that the debt HAS doubled over the last 8 years, from about $5T to $10T. No argument there. But to say that conservatives doubled it would mean that conservatives at the objection of liberals were solely responsible for it. Clearly not "Objectively" true.

There are many holes in that - first that to really be clear, "conservatives" does not equate to "Republicans" Republicans have NOT been very conservative fiscally over the last 8 years. Bill Clinton was more fiscally conservative.

So I would say that this would be the only truly "objective statement of reality" that could come from that one sentence that I took apart into 5 different things you blame conservatives for"

"With Republicans in control of congress and a Republican president, the national debt has doubled"

There is no way to say that that statement depends on your perspective (in other words is subjective). And that statement is a statement of fact according to the sources I looked at. Therefore it is an objective statement of reality.

All the rest though? Not even close: Just to take a look at the social ills one - first of all right out of the gate, "social ill" is subjective. Peta thinks that it is a social ill that we kill animals for food, I like hamburgers. I would be willing to bet that a majority of PETA members are pro-choice (kind of ironic, don't you think?) though, and don't consider abortion a social ill - clearly, many do. The list goes on - I think welfare is a social ill, you think people living in poverty is - we both have differing perspective - therefore it's subjective! If we ended poverty by increasing welfare - you would consider a social ill solved, while I would consider a social ill just got iller (hahaha - I was determined to use "iller" there cause it just sounds cool)

And "destroyed" - while it can be an objective statement in extreme cases, is clearly being used as hyperbole in your sentence and is therefore automatically subjective. Hiroshima was DESTROYED by by the first atom bomb used in warfare.
The WTC was DESTROYED when it collapsed to the ground after being hit by airplanes. But our economy? hmmm, we're still both typing on computers from our jobs ... I'd say that's a clear indication that it hasn't been "destroyed". No one would argue though that it certainly took a very bad turn for the worse about 8 months ago, but once you start laying blame - you are automatically back in the realm subjectivity.

@babak:
"the few people left who continue to defend his Presidency (or call him a 'god president') simply have not done enough reading or learning.. in fact - I'd posit - they are going by their 'gut' more than their 'head' and are the emotional ones."

wow - and here I thought it was EXACTLY the opposite, that the ones who fail to see anything good he did, were the ones acting on emotion!

Let's test this theory - I voted for Bush both times because I felt he was better than the alternative. Overall, I think he was a good president - top10? no. Bottom 10? no. but he was good. I base that not on emotion - because I have very little of that when it comes to politics - but on reading and learning.
I guess it just depends on WHAT you are reading and learning and more specifically, the perspective from which the writer is coming.

So that's me - and we know you are on the complete opposite end - I'm not going to defend why I think he's good and you are not going to defend why you think he's bad. Instead to test our relative "emotional vs rational" evaluation of this president, let's each give an example of how he doesn't fit our first-order assessment.

I think he was a good president BUT the things I strongly disagree with him are:
1) He never vetoed a single spending bill no matter where it came from or what it was about
2) His stance on illegal immigration was weak
3) His stance on stem-cell research was emotional and based on religious views, rather than science and medicine.

I can list more - but I want to see if you can even list 3

You think he was a bad president BUT the things you strongly agree with him are:

If you folks want somewhere to carry on this discussion, I host a discussion forum with politics and economics.
www.discussionworldforum.com
I'd be happy to debate anyone on this topic. I'm generally opposed to the stimulus plan.

DWFMicheal - I appreciate that you are trying to promote DiscussionWorld ... but we already HAVE a place to carry on this discussion. It is the place where we HAVE been carrying it on. It's right here. Feel free to post your opinions here though - unlike DWF, there is at least a common interest in everyone who posts here and that is Diplomacy.

I think we have to be careful not to base our opinions completely on whatever line of thought is in-style. It is regrettable that hating on Bush has become somewhat of a trendy thing. The jokes on Bush's intelligence went stale years ago. My hope is that our new president won't have to face the same tragedy.
So thanks philcore, it's just refreshing to hear an informed, original thought now and then.

phil -

the truth is sometimes colored by different perspectives - but when you have a series of truths, you can reach a more objective conclusion

the reason I said objective 'to me' is that we are talking about philosophy and politics here... at the core of my philosophical views, (root if you will) is almost post-modernism - there are no complete truths in politics - there is only evidence of results and affect on human beings and society.

but i will throw another ad-hominum out there ... this argument by you on symantics is a perfect illustration of (in my opinion) conservative's strategy of jumping off on tanential issues or rhetoriacl flurishes to obfiscate the larger far more important 'objective realities in politics' ...


for example - take a 100mil funding for prophylactic distribution (which by the way saves 400mil for the gvnt in wasted health care costs - thus a sound fiscal policy). for 2 media cycles, the conservatives (eric cantor, rush lim, and your bohner) made this the focal point of political discourse. I concede, we Dems and Libs have a LOOOOng way to go to catch up with you all on 'framing' and being media-savvy - but we learned how to be more organized from the republican's successes in the 80s and 90s, we learned to have our own media and investigative forces - the netroots (to respond to your 'talk radio')... and we'll learn to better frame the macro level ideas in micro terms they ways you guys do.

also - i might add - for two decades, your side (and we are adversarial in the american political context) dragged the word liberal through the mud by connecting it to 'bad' actions and thoughts... rostenkowski, dukakis in a tank, carter... without delineating it with specific democrats... so dont cry foul now that we are doing the same with conservatism as a philosophy of governance.

As for your limitted utility exercise...

1) he didnt kill anyone
2) he would walk an old lady across the street if he had the chance
3) he didnt start a civil war (though he got close in 2000)

no more seriously - I dont hate the guy (I do pity and dislike him) but I do HATE his administration and his presidency.

just to play along - he did do a few things right

1) he increased funding to fight AIDS - not perfect, but pretty well
2) he gave a good speech on ground zero - wish there was substance after that rhetoric though
3) he did open the way for more racial healing in this country by appointing two competent African Americans to significant posts in his cabinet - Colin Powell and Condi Rice... this did open the door (conceptually) for Obama in a way. although, neither submitted job performances deserving of praise - they were certainly qualified. (though one could argue that Gonzo was quite counter productive)

4) most important of all - he proved in practice the bankruptcy of conservative free-market and neo-conservative ideology.

@ MM - very good example. goes to the idea brushing conservatives together from rush to palin to philcore to invictus... if 'real' conservatives disowned these leaders (in numbers not just one here one there) then maybe they could revive the 'good name' of conservatism... until then... you lay in the bed you made.

@Babak haha - thanks for playing my "limited utility exercise". I think it proved my point. It digusted you so deeply to say anything good about him, that each of your good points, were immediately countered with a negative. I countered non of my negatives with a positive, because I'm unemotional about the issue. I like some things he did, and I don't like some things he did. That's all. I think that most conservatives are more like me than you think. None of us love the guy. We just thought he was better than Gore in 2000 and better than Kerry in 04. Pretty simple actually. Yet you have this very misguided impression about the people who make up the group "conservatives" or those who support conservative ideals.

As far as the tangent I went down, regarding the use of the phrase "objective statement of reality" ... so you just wanted to make the claim that it was as factual as say 2 rocks of different sizes falling at the same pace, or that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, that conservatives have done those 5 bad things - and mind you that was just one sentence among many that you made. I respect that we have differing opinions, at least we can both communicate them calmly and intelligently. But you wanted to state yours as a FACT. You Explicitly said it was an objective statement of reality! And if I challenge that, then I (like ALL conservatives) am really just playing on symantics to obfuscate the issue? That is complete Nonsense!

You can't say the things that you said THEN claim they were FACT, rather than opinion, and not expect someone to challenge you on it.

@Babak - "Iike I said phil - you and I seem to have a different view on reality and on facts."

I think that we actually have different views on what the words "fact" and "reality" mean.

Maybe this is really at the heart of the matter. See I don't really think that people can have a different view on something if it is "reality" or "fact" taking those terms literally. A fact is something that can't be seen two different ways. It can be used in two different ways to try to prove two different theories or to support two different ideas. But a fact is a fact. Reality - hmmm , I guess there's some room for some kind of philisophical interpretation that reality is the combination of the facts as we percieve them and the analysis we use to assemble them ... but I don't really like philosophy. I like science. So to me the word "reality" means that which is real and can be observed, either directly or indirectly.

Everything else is theory, opinion, speculation, superstition, interpretation, value judgements, etc.

We start off with different value judgements - that's what shapes how we interpret facts. We invaded Iraq and removed Sadam Huessain from power. That is a fact. That is Reality. Neither of us could argue for or against that.

"It was an illegal war and Bush should be tried for war crimes", is no longer fact or reality, but an interpretation along with a value jusdgement. The same applies with "The Iraq war was a necessary and justified war to remove a ruthless dictator from power and bring democracy to the Middle East".

Sorry if you view this as another tangent - but I think it clears some things up as far as why I went on the last tangent.

@ phil - fair enough.

you have indeed run circles around me on this point of 'objectivity'...

none-the-less - you still have not brought forth the evidence on the main point of this thread - the stimulus.

the secondary point - that of the validity of the 'conservative' philosophy - the only real explanation you have offered is that you are a conservative, that I can not possibly understand what conservatives really believe and that I'm just generalizing, and that the Republicans of the last 8 years are not real conservatives. but those same Republicans who now oppose the stimulus are.

anyways - we are going in circles - but I do still believe that the evidence of conservative principles being applied has resulted in an economic crisis - two long and incompetently run wars - and hundreds of other ills ranging from the environment to Katrina to lead in toys to torture and Guantanamo to a broken justice department to our relations with Russia (and on and on).

that is the legacy of 8 years of Republican rule. and the rest of us will have to clean up after your team ;-)


as for Bush - you can keep claiming its hate that motivates me if it makes you feel better. but the fact that even his few relatively good policies still require caveats is not my problem. apparently 70+% of Americans agreed with me.


and of course this is politics - this is philosophy and ideology. so we may never bridge our fundamental differences... but one thing I'm positive we do have in common is that we both want what is best for America (and more importantly for our fellow citizens) - so we should be able to judge the actions of our government (bush or obama) by how it has achieved that broad ambition that we both share. whether you call that reality or objective fact - the Bush presidency (and yes, by extension the Republican party and its conservative ideology) have been discredited in the eyes of a majority of Americans.

and the un-debatable facts are:
* 5 trillion national debt to 10 trillion
* 125 bil surplus to 500 bil deficit
* higher percentage of world population that dislikes and distrusts the US
* higher level of income disparity
* more deregulation
* less oversight
* more partisan justice department
* horrible response to Katrina (maybe you think this is subjective too)
* higher percentage of GDP spent on health care
* more americans out of work
* more americans losing their homes to forclosure

the 'results' or 'evidence' or 'reality' of unimpeded conservative rule.


the longer you and your fellow teammates disregard these 'realities' or 'facts' the longer your party and your political philosophy will remain outside of the halls of power.

anyways - I think we have both made our own points pretty clearly - and I thank you (and invictus and dexter along with the others) for a civil and enlightening conversation.

but I do want to give you the last word ;-) go ahead.

Cool - I love getting the last word ;-)

Thank you also for good discussion, by the way.

OK, so Here's my last word: I'm in favor of stimulus, I think the economy needs it. Without going into specific problems with the bill let me generalize and say that anything that is in it - whether or not it makes good financial sense or not - should be directly related to stimulating the economy and providing immediate relief and jobs. Anything else should wait.

You meantioned the profylactics - $100M investment to save $400M. Well first of all, where are the facts that that kind of savings would result? I've only heard Nancy Pelosi site those numbers, and let's face it, that lady is dumb! But lets say that it IS accurate. Fine, let's definitely do that ... some day. Not now - it's not stimulus. Let it go through the normal process and get it approved in the normal way, not just slammed through in a time of crisis, hurry hurry hurry, the time for talk is over, pass it now or we'll lose 500 million jobs per month kind of hysteria.

If we need to pass something immediate (and I agree that we do) then it should not contain a bunch of stuff that normally would be debated, negotiated, ammended and so on. If it needs to be done immediately - make it simple enough to understand quickly. Then pass the absolutely most pressing items the top 5 lets say could have passed in a day. Move on to the next 5 -if they're a bit more sticky, and not everyone agrees, then they deserve debate.

Doesn't this just make sense?

If you're broke you need to do the necessities first - keep the lights on and food on the table. AFTER that, you can decide whether to pay the mortgage or the car - both important, but which one will get repoed first? After thatn you decide which credit card to pay.

WAY down on the list is Roth IRA contributions - even though it makes good financial sense. You can't afford it now. You have other more pressing priorities.

I'll bet you they could have passed the top 5 to 10 items no problem. But instead, they are throwing on the bottom 750 items and using the top 10 as the URGENT message to slip the other stuff in. It's devious, deceptive, and corrupt, in my not so humble opinion. And Obama is at the head of the whole thing crying that the Republicans are impeeding progress. No, the democrats are by trying to pass every damn piece of spending that would be a tough sell on its own as part of something necessary for the turn around of the economy.

it's digusting and infuriating,

ok - if I'm truly going to get the last word, then I want it to be this instead:

You know the guy from Saturday Night Live who annoys his coworkers by going through this list of nicknames for everyone that walks by?

"Hey Jim ... Jimbo ... Jimster ... the Jiminator ... Jimorama ... Jimmeister"

well I've developed this quirky little habit of doing that in my head when I'm responding to someone.

figglemeister ... Invictinator ... Dextorama ... and so on. (I know, I'm seeking treatment for it)

So I was responding to Babak in this thread a lot, and I was doing that quirky little mental thing I do

Babakinator ... babakmeister ... Babakorama ... SAYWHAT???

Babak Orama ... hmmmm no wonder he's so liberal!!

Then I laughed to myself for about 10 minutes! (I know, that's going to be part of the treatment too)

just figured we'd take this thread out on a lighter note ... cheers ;-)