I'll cop to that, although I prefer to think of it as passionate and reality-based.

Awesome website about the amount of $$ that the US spends on military funding. Absolutely ridiculous. Great read.

Ill give you passionate everytime Beeble, Its clear you care more then most even if I disagree about how you care

Now on to this bill, can somebody tell me why the Dems are trying to entice Reps to the bill? I mean Dems are in power why should the party in power care about the opposition?

Just boycott http://www.moserbrothers.com/ instead

I prefer my X-Men circa 1992 Fox Kids.

Because if doesn't work they will not be able to claim it was a bipartisan bill. Whether that is a good reason or not is irrelevant.

Like I said before, so that they all can share the blame when the stimulus fails

*sigh*

At this point, I will take universal health care AND free college education for everyone over the disaster that is the stimulus bill.

Had the Bush administration not fucked up the economy so bad, there would be no way in hell anyone would be considering this stimulus bill. But when you're at the bottom of a hole, you're not going to get out by wishing your way out

The stimulus won't fail if success is measured by the economy coming out of recession. I think Karl Popper would have fun with stimulus packages in general.

Did Bush push the magic "fuck the [worldwide] economy" button?

Going by this metaphor, the stimulus bill is like trying to dig your way out of a hole.

Apparently!

Oh sure, the economy will come out of a recession at some point. There's just no guarantee as to what the size of that economy will be.

It will be interesting to see what the defenders of the bill think the measure of success is.

Anyone?

I'd like to know instead what your solution is.

Seriously, every economist and just about every Republican agrees there has to be a stimulus bill and we have to spend money. The only difference is what to spend it on, really.

Strip clubs.

Beeble, you're going to continue throwing the mistakes of the Republican party back in every Republicans face for the next 8 years, hell for the rest of your existence. If over the next 8 years things don't go so rosy for Democrats, I hope I don't act the way you do, I hope I can discuss policy and opinion in a civilized manner.

In my opinion, Beeble personifies everything that is wrong with American politics. Endlessly pointing out mistakes, arguing, pompous smug personalities, never a wrong opinion ... it's just so tiring. Republicans made their share of mistakes, there is no doubt about it, but things here are so blown out of proportion, twisted and skewed from reality. Republicans still have ideas, values and philosophy that's important to the future of this nation. In a perfect world we could pick and choose the best of each party.

I'll address some points:

1) The WMDs were an intelligence failure, the real disaster was the lack of any foresight or plan to deal with the impending insurgency after the war ended. I fully supported the Iraq war, if we could do it again I would still go to war, but I'll be the first to tell you the strategy was an utter failure. It's been turned around over the past two years, turned around thanks to Republicans.

2) Military spending is not the rebuilding of Iraq, and it's more important than you seem to realize. One, it drives technology that trickles down for decades into the economy via the private sector and technological advances applied to everyday issues. Two, as globalization continues, our military force keeps the world stable, and that power is more important than I think you realize. We need to keep funding, we need to keep driving military innovation because it drives technology and keeps the world balanced.

3) Democrats who blame the housing bubble bursting on Republicans make me chuckle. This bubble was a complete failure of American policy, of American regulation, of American greed. Democrats, Republicans, the whole lot. Bush owns it, because it happened under his watch, but this was decades in the making and I'm not sure he could have avoided it regardless what he did. The entire world is enduring the same bubble because this was a financial mistake of global proportions, greed worldwide, greed across parties and ideologies.

4) You can support a free market, as I do, and still support government intervention in extreme instances. This is an extreme instance, the housing bubble and banking crisis required government intervention or else risked extreme deflation, a worthless currency and a total lack of faith in the banking system. As the market corrects, the government needs to, and will back out, allowing the free market to once again take effect. None of that runs counter to a fiscal conservative ideology.

First of all, it's intellectually dishonest to suggest that I need to offer an alternative (especially on the short notice that the administration is offering) to criticize the stimulus bill. If you see a man on fire on the street, are you not allowed to yell "STOP!" at the people who are pouring gasoline at him in order to put out the fire?

Second, I have suggested a solution in the other thread. It is simply not to pass the stimulus package. We have an economic crisis that is caused by over-borrowing; I don't think the solution to that is more borrowing.

I am interested in your view thou Dima.

Just fire out your view to this crisis I think as one of the smartest people on KJ we can all debate your view and work from it, at least thats how I would work.

The question you should be asking is this: is a $600 billion dollar per year investment into military technology and world police worth it?

It's the same thing as with the stimulus package: people make an argument that we need to spend a certain amount of money on certain things, but nobody is addressing the question of whether or not a trillion dollar is worth stimulating the economy to create a couple of million jobs.

I would obviously argue that it's invaluable.

I honestly believe going forward that the world's stability relies on democracy, global unity and the might of the USA to police and mitigate global crises. It's one of the reasons having a free and democratic Iraq is worth every penny of the money we've thrown away.

Sorry, I messed up the wording in my previous post

Anyway, like I said, I am a stimulus opponent. I don't see an obvious solution without a lot of analysis, so I am simply saying that we shouldn't pass the stimulus package.

In the long term, I think there are a few things that need to happen: 1) cut the military spending. Not to make the military in the U.S. insignificant, but to make a significant reduction in government spending a reality. I think Clinton was on the right track there. 2) Make significant visible efforts to balance the budget. The world's economy hinges on the health of the U.S. economy; if the U.S. shows that it is willing to make required sacrifices in order to stop the bleeding, I think the chance of the U.S. default will be significantly decreased.

Then why not spend every single penny of the budget on the military?

Also, why not ask the other countries to pitch in, for once? After all, they rely on democracy, unity, etc. just as much as we do.

Seriously though it is to try to avoid a filibuster. They had to get at least two republicans to do that.

Right. And doing nothing and hoping that wishing hard will fill it in is the sure fire way to success.

In this metaphor, we're being forced to pay for a very expensive shoveling machine since that's the only thing that will work for a hole this deep. You have to borrow the money and put off buying other equipment that you might need, but there's not a lot of choice since you can't do much from the bottom of a hole.