I'd say the same about you. Completely ignoring everything that your party does, all the waste, all the spending, while harping tirelessly on it now that Democrats are in charge. Did you EVER post any objections to the spending or waste in the Iraq funding? On the contrary, that was "worth every penny." It is, btw, quite a few goddamn pennies.

And yet when it comes to the stimulus, you're quibbling like you actually care about waste. It's disingenuous and dishonest and lacks any credibility at all.

And no, I don't feel particularly civilized when the opposition party blows a $6 trillion hole in the budget, destroys our global reputation, craters the economy, and turns American into a torture regime, and then they conveniently FORGET all of that when they start complaining about "waste" in the Democrats' spending bill.

And if the Democrats fail to solve the problem, I'll hold them accountable. I'm interested in policy, not parties. I think Reid should be booted out of his position. He's a joke. Pelosi isn't that much better.

But at this point, while Dems have tons of bad ideas, Republican ideas are almost ALL bad. They are not even a serious party. And the public doesn't take them seriously for good reason.



Only to the extent that there is no such thing as fiscal conservative ideology, not really. I mean, there's what they say, and then what they do. As Jon Stewart said better than I could, if you only have your principles in the good times, and abandon them when the going gets tough, then they aren't really principles. Republicans have proven their paper-thin devotion to conservatism time and time again. It's not a principle if you're only against spending, waste or intervention when Democrats are in charge, and then turn around and go fiscally apeshit nuts when your party controls everything.

And that's even if you do NOT count Republican attempts to regulate movies, video games, web content, TV shows, the adult film industry, Medicare, marijuana, etc. There's nothing free market about any of that.

Since the spending is designed to be counter-cyclical, I'd classify a reverse in the recession losses and a positive job growth would be some measure of success.

A growth of 2-3 million jobs over 18-24 months is the stated goal of the package, I believe.

You know what's funny about that, is that 9 years ago, Republicans were AGAINST this very thing. Bush ran his campaign on it. They were against nation building. They were against America as the global police force. This re-iterates your party's total lack of principle rather than re-enforces it.

Now it's worth every penny, even though the value of the occupation of Iraq is dubious AT BEST. As a humanitarian effort, it was disproportional to say the least. There is no way Republicans even today would support a trillion dollar effort to "democratize" any other nation, not even Iran. As a military effort, it was miscalculated and unnecessary, since Iraq posed no strategic threat to America whatsoever. By any Republican rationale, the country that would have made sense to invade would have been Saudi Arabia. They finance and support terror. They're a brutal dictatorship. And almost all of the 9-11 terrorists were Saudis. But they're our "friends" for some reason. So we invaded Iraq.

The whole republicans now for nation building really is disappointing. bush's foreign policy was one of the things that pissed me off the most.

Obama today:

“It’s a little hard for me to take criticism from folks about this recovery package after they presided over a doubling of the national debt. I’m not sure they have a lot of credibility when it comes to fiscal responsibility.”

Amen, brother.

I'm not against nation building per se. What bothered me was that they basically lied about it, then chose to violate their "principle" in the biggest boondoggle and unending quagmire of death and waste imaginable.

They took a relatively stable country, destabilized it, radicalized the population, created an al Queda stronghold where none existed before, and made the security situation for Iraqis a lot worse than it was before. And this is all good for America some how.

They sent too few troops, then when things were at their lowest, finally at long last rectified that situation with an escalation. And Eagle wants to give them credit for "turning it around," as if they're not the ones who created the clusterfuck in the first place. I guess that's what counts for a success among Republicans these days. Fucking destroy an entire country, then spend a trillion dollars of our money to sort of fix it five years later, then wait for applause.

Oh, and did I mention the torture? That's one of this administration's great "military decisions" too I guess. According to Dick Cheney, if we don't torture detainees, terrorists will set off a nuclear bomb in an American city. Yeah, these guys are military geniuses.

They created the mess through an utter lack of foresight, you're right, but they did turn it around as well. What was the Democratic philosophy when things went south? Take your ball and run home? I mean, lets not forget just how many Democrats supported the war originally, support based on the same faulty intelligence the president acted on.

To your other point: For the most part, I don't support nation building. In the case of Iraq, I supported removal of a murderous and unstable tyrant from power, a man who sponsored a regime of terror, war and death. Because of that, I believe that because we destabilized Iraq in removing their leader, we owe them some semblance of stability or 'nation building'. When they have it, they should be free to choose their own direction again, and their stability will be their responsibility. I do not support entering every country that destabilizes and using the power of the state to bring it stability. Nation building to me is when a coup results in a civil war, a deadly and ongoing civil war, and we go into stabilize the country. I consider Iraq the exception, not the rule.

In closing, I don't ignore my parties failures. I pay attention and I notice them all, I voted Democratic this election for a reason. We are a broken and misguided party, a party with far too many blunders in the past decade, but we still have invaluable ideas. I'd be the first to discuss our failures with anyone who wasn't throwing them in my face like an obnoxious prick.

That's a little underwhelming, to say the least. I don't really see why you need to spend $800 billion on it.

Even then, what about the rest of the macroeconomic indicators? GDP growth? Inflation? Spreads on the treasuries?

Im happy with the bill since I work in the construction field. I'll enjoy this gravy train for 4 and probably 8 years

Just curious and some of you are a lot smarter in these issues than I, what exactly happens if the Stimulus Plan doesn't work?

That's the beauty of it - nobody will ever tell you that it didn't work.

you will be left feeling unstimulated.

well......when the house bubble in Japanese made "blob" they had had a time of stagnation between 1990 and 2000 and their economy is still fragile (ok between 2000 and now also a lot of shit happend that attacked their fragile economy).

What I want to say: All countries that have now to save their banks and economy better prepare for and ugly 2009 and 2010 and a more or less hard recovery time between 2010-2020. When we are lucky the recovery time will be shorter...well we will see. Just dont think this bill is already recovery.....its a "hopefully we can stop the drop" plan.
Iceland: Well they will have recovery the next uhmmm 50 years maybe? (more likely 20-25 years).

I didn't support for that reason. If that was the reason to topple Saddam then we should have marched in Burma, North Korea, Zimbambea, the Congo, etc. We would spend a long time toppling murderous regimes.

Nobody knows but this gives us a hint.

1990 is as far back as Pelosi's graph goes?

Well this is the second longest in modern history. Have to go back to the depression for anything longer.

The unemployment rate is a better indicator than the pure job loss numbers. Either way, we're getting to bad territory and it's only going to get worse, especially when you consider job losses lag the economy. This year is going to be ugly, we're going to average around 300 to 400k in job losses per month.

I actually just got back from covering a job fair for my company and there a lot of qualified, capable people who simply don't have a job right now, people willing to take anything, desperate people. The good news is, I think the economy is a few months from bottoming out, I think by the end of this year we should be close to the end of the actual recession. Unfortunately, as I said above, jobs lag the economy, and for the next two years it won't be a fun job market.

That wasn't Pelosi's graph I posted. The info was from the Bureau of Labor Statistics which is a part of the Department of Labor, which for much of the time shown on the graph was run by Bush's people.

Here's another graph:

So, the graph suggest we are nearing job recovery. That is, of course, if this recession follows the same pattern as the prior ones.

Just scanning the last page.

But is this BS. All I heard was everything was put out in a rushed manner with no hard details/information which pissed off and scared alot of people.

Also, FYI, the unemployment % is misleading as that is only for new claims. It doesn't take into account how many are off unemployment as it ran out for them or if you worked as a consultant and not an employee, you aren't in those numbers either.

PS. I know plenty of consultants that have no work but can't claim unemployment and aren't being counted in any of these numbers.

You mean the fault intelligence that the president cherry-picked to support his case.

Those who supported the war, supported a LOT more troops and repeatedly warned the Bush administration about that. Bush finally did that about four years later and then things finally stabilized. And you want to credit Republicans with that? By the time, Bush did get around to increasing troop strength, most of the Democrats who supported the war had turned against it and felt that withdrawal was a better course of action. That more troops finally stabilized the country was not a question, it was whether or not continued occupation furthered American interests or was worth the cost.

And those who opposed the war, continue to oppose it.



So your "exception" to the rule of no nation-building is to spend a trillion dollars to invade and occupy a country that was no threat or strategic interest at all to the United States, create an Al Queda terrorist stronghold where none existed, engaging in torture of detainees, and guarantee a virtually perpetual American troop presence in that country? Gotcha.



I keep asking about these invaluable ideas, and the ones you've mentioned have been laughable given your party's abhorrent track record, and not just by me.

I'll actually spot you one. I think the one area I can think of in which they are better than Dems is gun rights.

I would count on the Republicans telling us this 24 hours a day for the next two years.

Btw, did anyone notice that Obama passed probably the biggest tax cut in history?

And all but 3 Republicans voted against it.

$282 billion in tax cuts compared to Bush's $174 billion. But unlike those tax cuts which mostly benefited the wealthy, these tax cuts are targeted at the middle and lower class.

Obama did what he promised he would do, even though almost every Republican during the campaign said he was going to raise them. And he did without their help.