Growing the Failure

Submitted by Jon Henke on Fri, 05/15/2009 - 16:46

In his inaugural address, President Obama said we should not worry about the size of government, but about whether we're spending money on things that work...

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works -- whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end.

And yet, in the few months since taking office, President Obama has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up companies that were not working. When, exactly, will the answer be "no"?

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my guess is at the earliest....

Submitted by Ironman on Fri, 05/15/2009 - 19:31.

it will be after the electoral college convenes in December 2012

When?

Submitted by Jim Dandy to th... on Fri, 05/15/2009 - 20:08.

When the absolute and total mess that GOP and Conservative policies made of America's economy and Government gets cleaned up.

The level of FAIL has been beyond belief: Financial, Energy, Healthcare, Defense, National Security, Climate Change, Disaster Management, Foreign Policy, Justice, Voting Rights, Credit Markets, SEC, the list goes on and on and on.

And the reason is always the same: Because the GOP prized loyalty and message disciplne and politics above competence and leadership.

The President is on the right track. You guys are not laying a glove on him, and we are beating you bloody.

Funny

Submitted by Lonestar Bill on Sat, 05/16/2009 - 07:24.

When does Obama take office? Its May and the "inherited" argument has grown as stale as your comments JD.

The level of FAIL has been

Submitted by Artruen on Sat, 05/16/2009 - 09:29.

Submitted by Jim Dandy to th... on Fri, 05/15/2009 - 20:08.

Yeah, the level of fail at socialism and fascism has been beyond belief. Keep fighting ole jim "Dandy", utopia can be acheived. Then when nothing worth fighting for is left to fight for, we can all sit around in our perfect world and reap the benefits of social justice for all. yeah. right.

and while you are at it, ask ole Nanny Botox how bloody the we are beating the you! Oh, did Holder just announce the firing of some AG's??? Gotta go, I won't be back for a while, speak loudly into the vacuum....

Its only been 100 million people

Submitted by Freedoms Truth on Sat, 05/16/2009 - 09:58.

Yeah, the level of fail at socialism and fascism has been beyond belief. Keep fighting ole jim "Dandy", utopia can be acheived. Then when nothing worth fighting for is left to fight for, we can all sit around in our perfect world and reap the benefits of social justice for all. yeah. right.

Oh come now, its only been 100 million people killed in the effort to build communism, fascism and totalitarian collectivism the past 100 years ... It needs another chance!

... hmmm, on second thoughts ...

No. What we saw was a level

Submitted by In between on Sat, 05/16/2009 - 10:36.

No. What we saw was a level of incompetence and ideology that ran this country into the ground. Putting Brown ahead of FEMA was a real joke. You had James Lee Witt under Clinton who understood crisis management. You had a Bush White House told by an expert that New Orleans levies were not that good and they ignored the situation. You just had a president for 8 years who ruled by social conservatism and by ideology, instead of pragmatism and listening to those who understood the word quagmire. The facts of having enough troops, paying for the war, and going after those that did 9/11 were ignored as well as so many other things. As long as you have people like Karl Rove who only cares about numbers and winning, who does not care who he puts in the White House, you are going to have problems. We have already seen the corporate and military fascism. We now know, how the far right will run this country with failed ideologies and religion in government. We saw the "guns and butter" economics, which is the same as what LBJ did. And that never works, and we got deficits and debt in return. We saw the lies, the deceit, the arrogance, the ignorance, and the blunders and incompetence all these years. And it all fell on deaf ears as Hannity and Limbaugh tried to shove it under the table.

And that is not to say the democrats are any better. People get positions in a political atmosphere who have no business running the country or being in high level positions. It is a process that needs to be cleaned up. No company hires a person off the street and expects him to be in a position of authority if he knows nothing about the job, but yet our government does this all the time. It is, for the most part, about winning and not doing the best for our country.

Barack Obama: Third Bush Term

Submitted by section9 on Sat, 05/16/2009 - 09:43.

Indeed!

There is no reform going on here. It's crony state capitalism of the worst sort. The UAW gives boatloads of cash to Obama and the DNC and Obama pays them back by threatening the creditors who are first in line at Chrysler and rewarding the UAW with ownership of Chrysler itself.

Meantime? Obama says he'll find 17 whole billion dollars in cuts while his party refuses to reform entitlements.

Obama's entire campaign was a scam: ramp up the supply of fiat money to unsustainable levels in the hopes that something called "health care reform" would solve the entitlements problem. Only there is no incentive for the Democratic Party, which is built on the principle of robbing Peter to pay Paul to buy Paul's vote, to solve the entitlements crisis.

The answer of the Democrat hacks who post here? Pretend Obama isn't in power and blame Bush, who has been back in Texas for six months.

As we descend in to Weimar courtesy of the Democratic Party, I want you to understand that no amount of blaming Bush will wear well with registered voters over time. Eventually, my Democrat friend, voters figure out that Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress.

I like to think of Obama the same way I think of Lyndon Johnson after the 1965 elections. Massive victory against Goldwater, sending the Republicans to the Four Winds. Johnson, for his part, invested his capital in a protracted land war in Asia and massive, inflationary government spending on social programs here at home. The internal contradictions of his decision tore the New Deal Coalition apart. Nixon was elected President in 1968 as a result of the Democrats' disastrous war policy in Vietnam and the violence on the home front.

Obama is at his zenith now, and in a similar position to Lyndon. He has made almost a mirror image of Lyndon's decision-making with Westmoreland, MacNamara, and Bundy in regards to Vietnam in 1965. Our saving grace is that instead of a Westmoreland, we have a Creighton Abrams in command over there in the person of David Petreaus. I would hope the Petraeus and McChrystal can win the war for us in Afghanistan and Iraq, but they are saddled with an Administration that, like Lyndon Baines' before it, is playing not to lose, and really doesn't have its heart in the War on Terror.

The Talib and AQ know this. They have no incentive to negotiate peace, much less surrender.

So go ahead. Keep "Blaming Bush". See how long that dog keeps hunting. Clue? Americans want results from the guy in office!

What are they getting? A buck-passer.

Barack Obama is many things. One thing he is not. He is no Harry S. Truman.

I would relate the LBJ "guns

Submitted by In between on Sat, 05/16/2009 - 10:52.

I would relate the LBJ "guns and butter" spending to that of Bush. LBJ needed to pay for the Vietnam war and for his Great Society programs and he had the fed print the money and we suffered 20 years of inflation, higher interest rates, and higher unemployment because of that.

Bush did the same for Iraq and the tax cuts. And to pay for that Bush went to deficit spending, in which he had a surplus to begin with. Bush borrowed for the war and borrowed for his tax cuts. Nothing was paid for. And we will suffer from these deficits and debt from many years. LBJ ran a false economy with inflation, and Bush ran a false economy on tax cuts which was borrowed money.

Now add to that the neglect of all this failed ideology. Our middle class jobs went overseas as Bush glorified free trade, our money went to Iraq, Bush expanded Medicare part D which will cost 8 trillion dollars in the future, cities and states going broke as factories close, and we also have the neglect of our infrastructure in which we are behind 2.2 trillion dollars.

As far as your rant on Obama and the war. Bush went to Iraq as a convenience and not as a necessity. Our war was supposed to be in Afghanistan with bordering Pakistan. It was Bush who did not have enough troops and did not pay for the war. It was Bush who wanted to fight two wars and ignored the quagmire and ignored Afghanistan. Obama only inherited a bad situation both economically and with foreign policy. Obama may spend zillions, I don't know, but he inherited it. A mess we haven't seen for some 80 years.

More successes like what we're having

Submitted by Ironman on Fri, 05/15/2009 - 20:58.

and people will insist on being paid in yuan

Both sides are correct in their portion

Submitted by Progressive Tra... on Fri, 05/15/2009 - 21:19.

It would be more appropriate to say that Americans are still willing to invest, but demand a return on their investment.

The irony is that government is the only entity that can protect us from the government.

That's what was clear under GIngrich, that government had a definite purpose.

Expectations are so diffuse these days.

Need Obama's Answer - What is the ROI for the spending?

Submitted by Freedoms Truth on Fri, 05/15/2009 - 23:39.

It would be more appropriate to say that Americans are still willing to invest, but demand a return on their investment.

These are the questions that the WH press corps needs to ask Obama and his flunkies:

What was our return on the $25 billion sent to GM and Chrysler?

What's the return on the $900 billion spent on the stimulus in January?

What's the return on the $10 TRILLION in additional debt the GAO predicts will occur on Obama's watch?

I'm aware of that

Submitted by Progressive Tra... on Sat, 05/16/2009 - 17:02.

...but I was referring to particularly American traits of character-- optimistic and industrious.

People are still-- even after all of that-- willing to invest, but they're getting a bit tired of throwing good money after bad.

From which can be inferred another particular Americanism-- pragmatism. Meaning: Find something that works, and we'll figure out the philosophical angle later.

If President Obama said these words in his inaugural address...

Submitted by davidfarrar on Sat, 05/16/2009 - 07:07.

..."We should not worry about the size of government, but about whether we're spending money on things that work"...

He should ponder, and inwardly digest, the words of the founder of the Democratic Party, Thomas Jefferson:

"A Government Big Enough to Give You Everything You Want, Is Strong Enough to Take Everything You Have"

If you are thinking about using this for your Tea Party poster come this 4th of July -- forget it. I already called dibs on it!

ex animo

davidfarrar

Yeah, but he lied, didn't he?

Submitted by section9 on Sat, 05/16/2009 - 09:51.

The currency of the Obama Administration is the care and maitenance of its own power. Nothing more, nothing less. The suckers who post here in support of this carnival barker will have a nice, hangdog look in three years' time. Like we did in 2006.

But for now, they need to enjoy their 65% poll ratings. Americans want to give this guy a chance.

You can't print money like its 1922 and expect there to be a Happy Ending. Although we don't have Beer Hall Putsch's in this country, we do have elections in which we throw the Bums Out.

Obama's problem is that he will, in the fullness of time, become the Bum.

The Democrats' answer to our ails: "Look! Bush is Hitler!"

Jefferson quotes

Submitted by Freedoms Truth on Sat, 05/16/2009 - 10:00.

He should ponder, and inwardly digest, the words of the founder of the Democratic Party, Thomas Jefferson:

"A Government Big Enough to Give You Everything You Want, Is Strong Enough to Take Everything You Have"

That sounds like an apocryphal quote that Jefferson is attributed with but didnt actually say. President Ford used it. Check your sources.

Still, a good quote, I agree.

Same BS, different day part 2

Submitted by skayne on Sat, 05/16/2009 - 10:02.

Pathetic conservatives that can't get over Obama's election.

All I ever see is the same BS arguments that had voters flocking to the polls for Obama.

I hope you're still preaching the same BS when the mid-terms roll around.

One word: Katrina. A party

Submitted by molotov on Sat, 05/16/2009 - 15:25.

One word: Katrina.

A party that does not believe in government cannot run government.

Katrina, real and imaginary

Submitted by Freedoms Truth on Sat, 05/16/2009 - 16:06.

Ah, the Katrina of Democrat mythological lore, where Bush the do-nothing did nothing.

Bravo to the Dems for constructing a narrative around Katrina and getting away with it, but it was always a fictional one. they blamed Bush and FEMA for failures at the state and local level in Louisiana/New Orleans and go away with it. They took a strawman ("does not believe in government") and a slanted view of what went down in New Orleans and turned it into a rallying call.

Meanwhile in the real world the folks close the real action who saw beyond the MSM narrative:

Louisiana voters replaced a failed Democrat governor with a dynamic reforming conservative Republican Governor.
Here in Texas, Katrina was a stellar example of neighbor helping neighbor, as Governor Rick Perry, cities in Texas, and people, church groups and agencies and organizations pulled together to help the many thousands who were displaced. Hundreds of thousands of Katrina victims found temporary shelter in Texas.

Me ... I just remember the flooded schoolbusses:

While they whined about lack of help from the Federal govt and the rest of the country, and demanded busses, here is what the city of New Orleans let happen to their own busses:

After letting this happen, losing 300 busses in the process, Mayor Nagin says: "I need 500 buses, man. We ain't talking about -- you know, one of the briefings we had, they were talking about getting public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out here. I'm like, “You got to be kidding me. This is a national disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans."

It gets worse: the New Orleans disaster recovery plan directed that municipal buses would be available for those without private transportation. So much for the plan.

Let me guess the answer from the Bush haters- Flooded school buses a quarter mile from the Astrodome that nobody thought to drive to higher ground? Bush's fault!

Keep running against the phony and false impression of Bush and you'll get a come-uppance in 2010.

http://travismonitor.blogspot.com/2009/05/katrina-real-and-imaginary.html

Well, let's see. Certainly

Submitted by In between on Sat, 05/16/2009 - 16:20.

Well, let's see. Certainly everyone involved is to blame. The mayor, the governor, and the president. What is interesting is that Bush had a teleconference just 2 or 3 days before the hurricane struck. They went through every detail on this hurricane. I think it struck over the weekend and it was a Wednesday morning that Bush shows up in Louisiana saying " Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." Now all of us sat in front of the TV for some 2 or 3 days waiting for a response and we had none. It was truly amazing that the federal government was nowhere to be found. Some of this was the governors fault too. However, we should have had some response by the president well before then, but got nothing. Instead of saying "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job", he should have kicked some ass.

This was a case where government puts in a political appointee with no experience in charge of FEMA. James Lee Witt was in charge of FEMA before Brown. James Lee Witt had experience with crisis management. And in this case as well as others, he would have had agents in the area before, during, and after the event. The agents, if they were there before, would have seen the empty buses and anything else beforehand. They would have had constant contact with Washington. Well, none of this happened. Bush, by trying to save money, dismantled FEMA and put it in Homeland Security. In any case, you get what you pay for. Just another fine mess in which we will pay billions. We could have had government work right, but like always politics gets in the way, short cuts were made, and we saw failure.

Blanco, Nagin and the myth of Bush-did-nothing

Submitted by Freedoms Truth on Sat, 05/16/2009 - 21:06.

Well, let's see. Certainly everyone involved is to blame. The mayor, the governor, and the president.

And certaintly that balanced view that local and state Democrats shared blame for errors in the response has never been the Democrat talking point line on this. It's all "Bush's fault." Nor is it often acknowledged in the Bush-bashing that having a cat 5 storm land on top of a major city and having an entire city flood will inevitably cause suffering even with perfection from emergency responders.

Most importantly, the state and local officials are the first line on defense on this - they screwed up bigtime in 2 particular respects:

1. Failure to order evacuation properly. Nagin initially made the evacuation a voluntary evacuation, made it mandatory too late (Sunday), and did not implement many of the steps laid out in emergency response plans. (including using city busses to help in evacuation.) He and other local officials also are the ones who created the superdome fiasco, by telling people to go there but not being prepared to handle the large numbers of people for more than 24 hours.

http://www.greatestjeneration.com/archives/002331.php

The primary responsibility for dealing with emergencies does not belong to the federal government. It belongs to local and state officials who are charged by law with the management of the crucial first response to disasters. First response should be carried out by local and state emergency personnel under the supervision of the state governor and his emergency operations center. The actions and inactions of Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin are a national disgrace due to their failure to implement the previously established evacuation plans of the state and city.

You mention:

What is interesting is that Bush had a teleconference just 2 or 3 days before the hurricane struck. They went through every detail on this hurricane.

What you dont mention is that Bush called Blanco and Nagin personally to get them to order an evacuation. Nagin waited until the last moment to to do that, waiting until Sunday to order mandatory evacuation. One source notes:

apparently took a personal call from the president to urge the governor to order the mandatory evacuation.

One shudders to think how worse it would have been if Bush HAD done nothing.

2. Failure by Gov Blanco to call the national guard out sooner and to manage to control looting in New Orleans. Nagin himself complained that Bush met with Blanco offered to help and Blanco asked for 24 hours to make a decision. She was too worried about political ramifications to make quick decisions; these folks were more interested in CYA than in 'get 'er done' action.

I think it struck over the weekend and it was a Wednesday morning that Bush shows up in Louisiana saying " Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." Now all of us sat in front of the TV for some 2 or 3 days waiting for a response and we had none.

Bush is blamed for 'slow response' but in fact in practically all cases it takes a number of days (3-5) to be on the scene from the Federal level. As one source noted:

For instance, it took five days for National Guard troops to arrive in strength on the scene in Homestead, Fla. after Hurricane Andrew hit in 2002. But after Katrina, there was a significant National Guard presence in the afflicted region in three.

You state:

It was truly amazing that the federal government was nowhere to be found.

Which is untrue - Coast Guard, Navy and FEMA pulled thousands from rooftops ... As Bush put it ... "- 30,000 people were pulled off roofs right after the storm moved through. That's a pretty quick response."

They were there, they just werent where the TV cameras were (eg at Superdome). A comment from 9 days after the storm on what WAS done in just that short term:

http://www.greatestjeneration.com/archives/002332.php

I write this column a week and a day after the main levee protecting New Orleans breached. In the course of that week:

*More than 32,000 people have been rescued, many plucked from rooftops by Coast Guard helicopters.

*The Army Corps of Engineers has all but repaired the breaches and begun pumping water out of New Orleans.

*Shelter, food and medical care have been provided to more than 180,000 refugees.

You say:

Instead of saying "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job", he should have kicked some ass.

Bush and the Feds /DHS had their eyes off the ball initially in first 1-2 days. But by Day 4 after the flooding, Bush met with Nagin and Blanco and toured the area and said 'The response is not acceptable'. Bush himself, not happy with the response in the first week, put Gen Honore in charge of coordinating the response. Within 2 weeks, Brownie was fired. Ass was kicked. And Bush supported pouring $100+ billion in aid for recovery of NOLA area.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-09/03/content_474781.htm

You state:

Some of this was the governors fault too. However, we should have had some response by the president well before then, but got nothing.

"Nothing" is false. Maybe Bush/FEMA/Feds should have done more faster. But "Nothing" is precisely the mythical strawman pretend-Katrina that the Democrat and liberal MSM allies created. The FEMA response may have been slow and disjointed in the first week, with too much red tape out of DHS/Chertoff, and with the overall response much hampered by incompetence by Nagin wrt evacuation and superdome etc. and indecisive non-leadership by Gov Blanco. But there was never "Nothing" to the response. Not when thousands of Coast Guard missions and hundreds of FEMA agents were ongoing in the first week, and not when an entire city of people was eventually housed in cities in many neighboring states.

Somehow that same Bush FEMA managed to adequately help with Katrina in Miss., Rita in Texas, a number of hurricanes in 2004 and other disasters before and since, and get good to great reviews in most instances. But then in these other disasters, it befell cities and states less prone to blame-gaming and more able to take initiative at the local / state level to do what needed to be done.

Bush, by trying to save money, dismantled FEMA and put it in Homeland Security.

Another canard. It was not dismantled. It existed. Being under DHS did not make FEMA go away or lose any funding. the reponse may not have been what it should have been, but it was there. I will leave you with yet another response from one who was there, I found while researching this just now:

Hey Rhettswife...let me congratulate you on your smart comment. I am a democrat and have been my entire life but to blame Bush for Katrina is absolutely ridiculous. All of us that lived thru it should remember how we were warned that this was the big one...that we needed to leave Nola. The people that stayed should not blame the government...they should blame themselves for being ignorant and stupid. If there is anyone that should have been blamed as well for this fiasco should be Car 54 where are you? This moron that was elected as our mayor was as dumb as the people that stayed. This city will never prosper because we have nothing but whiners that are use to handouts.

katrina was the beginning of

Submitted by molotov on Sat, 05/16/2009 - 22:10.

katrina was the beginning of the republican slide. it crystalized what was bubbling under the surface, that the bush administration in particular and perhaps republicans in general were not very competent.

iraq was going badly, sure. but people were still willing to give the admin the benefit of the doubt. katrina married the incompetence of the iraq with the immediacy of television.

there is enough blame to go all the way around twice for the federal state and local authorities. but at the federal level, katrina sync-ed up very nicely with how out of touch the public was begining to feel the bush folks were. and that bled and continues to bleed onto the republican party.

had bush behaved 180 degrees differently, things would not have collapsed so quickly in the 2006 and 2008 elections.

Another canard. It was not

Submitted by In between on Sat, 05/16/2009 - 22:12.

Another canard. It was not dismantled. It existed. Being under DHS did not make FEMA go away or lose any funding. the reponse may not have been what it should have been, but it was there. I will leave you with yet another response from one who was there, I found while researching this just now:

And here is a Hoover Institution report:

Hoover Institution - Policy Review - FEMA After Katrina

The agency had lost many of the elements essential to its turnaround of a decade earlier. Politically appointed emergency managers, including Witt, were replaced by appointees with little disaster experience, including, most famously, director Michael Brown, whose previous position had been with the International Arabian Horse Association. By 2003, departures, early retirement, and job dissatisfaction had sapped the agency’s career force.14The all-hazards, all-phases idea, too, was weakened when preparedness granting programs were moved out ofFEMA into a separate office in the Department of Homeland Security. Turf wars put distance between the preparedness, response, and recovery offices.

Though FEMA could have used an infusion of experienced professionals, simply repeating the Witt recipe for reorganization would not have addressed the challenges of the twenty-first century. Career FEMA employees, like civil servants across government, began to retire in droves. At the same time, oversight committees began to worry that programs for mitigation and recovery lacked proper procedures to ensure that money was being spent wisely. Terrorism posed the greatest challenge. Witt initially had refused to take on more responsibility for terrorism preparedness because he thought the threat was too unpredictable for the agency to be able to address effectively. After 9–11, the country had no choice but to consider terrorism.

Most attempts to assign blame for Katrina focus on the Bush administration or poor state and local government response. While there is plenty of blame to go around, such a focus is misdirected. Reformers must attempt to understand FEMA’s shortcomings in an effort to retool for the future.

The agency dug its own hole in the decade leading up to Katrina because of ever-greater public expectations for disaster relief, ever-greater specialization of preparedness and mitigation programs, and confusion about how terrorism fit into the all-hazards model. People had not always looked to the federal government for help during disasters, but during the twentieth century the level of assistance expected from the federal government before and after a disaster ratcheted upwards. The media broadcast images of FEMA agents rushing to disaster sites and FEMArelief workers helping communities rebuild, all of which reinforced the public’s belief that the federal government owed the disaster-stricken public. Stories of federal relief were far more widespread than stories of investors and local governments choosing to invest in hurricane- or flood-prone areas, gambling that the federal government would bear the cost of rebuilding.

Terrorism complicated FEMA’s efforts to respond to natural disasters, not by seizing resources formerly directed to natural disasters, but by adding new considerations to preparedness efforts. The numbers and amounts of grants devoted to emergency preparedness and natural disasters increased slightly from 2001 to 2005.15 Authoritative federal response plans invoked the all-hazards language, but the language was not reflected in organizational structures at lower levels of government. Enough resources flowed to natural disaster preparedness, but not enough attention was devoted to reconciling the different threats posed by terrorism and natural disasters, especially at the state and local levels. In a terrorist attack the FBI and law enforcement agencies take the lead because the disaster is a crime scene. In a natural disaster, however, the sole focus is rescue and recovery, tasks best left to emergency managers. When Katrina struck, states and localities had been crafting plans and procedures for terrorist attacks but in many cases had failed to refine plans for natural disaster response.

You might be right....

Submitted by Progressive Tra... on Sat, 05/16/2009 - 22:28.

... but you bore the fuck out of me.

I already know well enough to skip over In Between's comments, thank God.

Symptomatic of GOP lack of interest in governance?

Submitted by acinphx on Sun, 05/17/2009 - 01:20.

The GOP lives by the mantra that government is the problem. So it's not surprising that GOP pols aren't particularly motivated to govern well (as opposed to campaigning well or articulating a list of principles).

The hard truth is ... governing effectively requires taking the time to understand the issues, challenges, successes, headaches, etc., of a particular topic or bureaucracy. But who wants to spend any time on something that they view as nothing but a problem? Very few, actually.

Inbetween's post dealt with the, yes, mind-numbing minutae of competent management of FEMA. It's not surprising that Pres. Bush, steeped in the lore that government is always a problem, wasn't particularly interested in dealing with the particular expectations of FEMA or felt that Michael Brown's paper-thin qualifications for the director post were an impediment.

And you dismiss inbetween's post because it bores you. I wouldn't expect many to be interested in those details; but in acknowledging that his information may be right, but should be dismissed out-of-hand because it's boring, brought to mind that maybe it's not just GOP pols who don't want to be bothered with the demands of governance; perhaps some in the party are no longer interested in taking the time to to demand competent governance as well as principles?

Newsflash

Submitted by Progressive Tra... on Sun, 05/17/2009 - 02:08.

If you want to consider me to be your representative, well, I am flattered.

However, I am truly not a member of congress.

Bet you didn't guess that. It looks as if you really thought I was by that comment.

No, if you feel like speaking to your representative about what some guy on a blog said, be my guest. My advice is to not confuse which one is which when you're doing your high-horse speakership thing.

What might have been

Submitted by lgm on Sat, 05/16/2009 - 16:04.

You have to compare what happened to what might have happened if Bush bumbling had continued. Chrysler is closing a quarter of its dealerships because of government intervention rather than all of them. Think of the fire department (Obama administration) arriving at a previously unattended fire. They start spraying water and the building keeps burning. Maybe they don't save it, but they keep the neighborhood from going with it.

You can't call the Obama effort a failure without knowing how much worse things would have been without doing anything.

Freedoms Truth:

Submitted by davidfarrar on Sun, 05/17/2009 - 06:20.

I stand corrected. Thank you.

ex animo

davidfarrar