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The disconnect
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The17sss
I'm more dismayed each day with the Obama supporters who say that the American people just don't "get it" if they don't support his agenda. It's not because Americans don't want what's being pushed on them; no, it's because we just aren't getting the brilliance of government solutions being served up right now. Americans, once very smart and progressive for electing the current president, are now too dumb to really understand what's best for them. The solution? Why... more Washington of course!

One of the best examples of the disconnect is what Judicial Watch uncovered the other day via the Freedom of Information Act about Nancy Pelosi's use of military jets for her travel, plus friends and family. $2.1 BILLION tax dollars worth of use in the last 2 years, including over $100,000 for "in flight expenses". Military jets are being used to fly her grandchildren between San Francisco and D.C. without Congressional supervision... basically using it for shuttle service at $18,000/hour. Domestic flights for her friends and family members cost the taxpayer $35,000 each... but she is allowed to reimburse $400 of that per person. Copies of the actual receipts can be seen here: http://directorblue.blogspot.com/20...chauffeurs.html

This doesn't account for the delegation of 106 people, friends and family included, that she took to Copenhagen for the climate summit. That cost the taxpayer over $1.1 million. Congress doesn't negotiate treaties anyway... neverthless, according to CBS News, here is a partial list of who John Q Taxpayer ponied up for:
quote:
Nancy Pelosi’s husband
James Sensenbrenner’s wife
Ed Markey’s wife
Charlie Rangel (Ways and Means??)
Joe Barton’s daughter
Jay Inslee’s wife
Shelley Moore Capito’s husband
Gabrielle Giffords’ husband
31 “unnamed Senate staff” on top of dozens of named staffers

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010...in6140406.shtml
The economy is on the brink, we see things like this, and we are being lectured by the current administration about "the deficit of trust". No ing ! This segways into Mark Steyn's article, fantastically written as usual. For those like Lebezniatnikov who share in the disconnect from reality, I encourage you to read this article and point out where he's wrong.

quote:
More Washington by Mark Steyn

The world turns.

In Indonesia, the principal of a Muslim boarding school in Tangerang who is accused of impregnating a 15-year-old student says the DNA test will prove that a malevolent genie is the real father.

In New Zealand, a German tourist, Herr Hans Kurt Kubus, has been jailed for attempting to board a plane at Christchurch with 44 live lizards in his underpants.

In Britain, a research team at King’s College, London, has declared that the female “G-spot” does not, in fact, exist.

In France a group of top gynecologists led by M. Sylvain Mimoun has dismissed the findings, and said what do you expect if you ask a group of Englishmen to try to find a woman’s erogenous zone.

But in America Barack Obama is talking.

Talking, talking, talking. He talked for 70 minutes at the State of the Union. No matter how many geckos you shoveled down your briefs, you still lost all feeling in your legs. And still he talked. If you had an erogenous zone before he started, by the end it was undetectable even to Frenchmen. But on he talked. As respected poverty advocate Sen. John Edwards commented, “After the first hour, even my malevolent genie was back in the bottle.”

Like any gifted orator, the president knows how to vary the talk with a little light and shade. Sometimes he hectors, sometimes he whines, sometimes he demands. He hectored the Supreme Court. He whined about all the problems he inherited. He demanded Congress put a jobs bill on his desk. Or was it a desk job on his bill? No matter. He does Nixon impressions, too: “We do not quit,” he said.

Boy, you can say that again!

So he did: “We don’t quit. I don’t quit,” he said. Throughout the chamber, Democrats were quitting. “I quit,” says Rep. Marion Berry of Arkanas, declining to run this November. “I quit,” says Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, doing likewise. “I quit,” says Beau Biden of Delaware, son of Vice President Joe Biden, choosing not to succeed to his father’s seat in America’s House of Lords.

But not Barack Obama: “I don’t quit.” So on he went. As my colleague Rich Lowry put it after the Massachusetts vote, the public thinks Obama doesn’t get it, and Obama thinks the public doesn’t get it. And as he’s got the microphone, he’s gonna keep talking at you until you do get it.

The ever tinnier, more perfunctory sophomoric uplift at the start and finish can’t conceal the hope-killing, jobs-slaying, soul-sapping message in between, which is perfectly consistent, and has been for two years. As President Obama sees it, whatever the problem — from health care to education, banking to the environment — the solution is more Washington.

Simply as a matter of internal logic, this is somewhat perplexing. After all, when he isn’t blaming Bush, Obama blames “Washington” — a Washington mired in “partisanship” and “pettiness” and “the same tired battles” and “Washington gimmicks” that do nothing but ensure that our “problems have grown worse.” Washington, Obama tells us, is “unable or unwilling to solve any of our problems.”

So let’s have more Washington! In our schools, in our hospitals, in our cars, in everything!

Which raises the question: Does even Obama listen to Obama’s speeches? The public does — at least to this extent: They understand that, when he’s attacking the tired old Washington games, he’s just playing the tired old Washington games. But, when he’s proposing the tired old Washington solutions, he means it; that’s the real Obama, the only Obama on offer. And everything the president proposes means more debt, which at the level this guy’s spending means, at some point down the road, either higher taxes or total societal collapse.

Functioning societies depend on agreed rules. If you want to open a business, you do it in Singapore or Ireland, because the rules are known to all parties. You don’t go to Sudan or Zimbabwe, where the rules are whatever the state’s whims happen to be that morning.

That’s why Obama is such a job-killer. Why would a small business take on a new employee? The president’s proposing a soak-the-banks tax that could impact your access to credit. The House has passed a cap-and-trade bill that could impose potentially unlimited regulatory costs. The Senate is in favor of “health” “care” “reform” that will allow the IRS to seize your assets if you and your employees’ health arrangements do not meet the approval of the federal government. Some of these things will pass into law, some of them won’t. But all of them send a consistent, cumulative message: that there are no rules, that they’re being made up as they go along — and that some of them might even be retroactive, as happened this week with Oregon’s new corporate tax.

In such an environment, would you hire anyone? Or would you hunker down and sit things out? Obama can bury it in half a ton of leaden telepromptered sludge but the world has got the message: More Washington, more micro-regulation of every aspect of your life, more multi-trillion-dollar spending, and no agreed rules in a game ever more rigged against you.

Obama and the Democrats have decided, in the current cliché, to “double down.” That hardly does justice to what the president’s doing. In effect, he’s told embattled congressmen and senators to strap on the old suicide-bomber belt and self-detonate for the team this November.

That’s a lot of virgins to pass out, but with this administration, budget restraints aren’t exactly a problem: Untold pleasures will await every sacrificial incumbent in paradise, or at any rate the coming liberal utopia. What’s the end game here? President Obama gave it away in his student-loan “reform” proposals: If you choose to go into “public service,” any college-loan debts will be forgiven after ten years.

Because “public service” is more noble than the selfish, money-grubbing private sector. C’mon, everybody knows that. So we need to encourage more people to go into “public service.”

Why?

In the last 60 years, the size of America’s state and local workforce has increased five times faster than the general population. But the president says it’s still not enough: We have to incentivize even further the diversion of our human capital into the government machine. Like most lifelong politicians, Barack Obama has never created, manufactured, or marketed any product other than himself. So quite reasonably he sees government dependency as the natural order of things. And in his college-loan plan he’s explicitly telling you: If you start a business, invent something, provide a service, you’re a schmuck and a loser. In the America he’s building, you’ll be working 24/7 till you drop dead to fund an ever-swollen bureaucracy that takes six weeks off a year and retires at 53 on a pension you could never dream of. Obama’s proposals are bold only insofar as few men would offer such a transparent guarantee of disaster: It’s the audacity of hopelessness.

In Massachusetts, enough voters got the message. And the more speeches this one-note politician inflicts on the nation, the louder they’ll hear it.

http://article.nationalreview.com/4...rk-steyn?page=1

Quite interesting... especially the part about forgiving student loans if one works for the State rather than the private sector.
Lady Gaga
What exactly is your point in one sentence?
jerZ07002
Let's take a look at Judicial Watch's "about us" statement:

Judicial Watch, Inc., a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law.

How can you claim to be non-partisan and conservative? A true non-partisan organization would leave out the 'conservative' or 'liberal' tag from the mission statement.


Try the response from FactCheck, a true non-partisan organization:

http://www.factcheck.org/askfactche...a_200-seat.html

It's from last year, but it addresses your inaccuracies.



-------------------



In any event, what the hell does Nancy Pelosi have to do with Obama and his supporters? Most democrats probably don't like Pelosi. I'm surely one of them. I just can't stand your baseless claims supported by truly interested (and extremely biased) organizations.

As for specific Obama policies, I'm against just about every tax proposal he puts forth. His international tax proposals from early last year would be counter-productive (fortunately Health care reform took front-stage so pressure if off in that arena), and his bank tax proposal is simply awful policy. I hope it doesn't pass. It's kind of difficult to put forth universally acceptable policy when the goal of half of the country is simply to criticize and defeat his policy goals. I'd love to see a good republican plan on anything. Seriously! I don't care about the political party from which the plan originates so long as it is effective. perhaps you should tell your senators and congressmen to stop bitching and actually advance real policy. I'm so tired of american politics (e.g., claims by republicans that his policy hurts americans without providing real support) that i've almost completely tuned out all the bull. I'm wondering why republicans even run for government office if they think the government is so evil. Why are they trying to control the evil entity? It doesn't make much sense to me, but logic doesn't really hinder republican agenda.
The17sss
quote:
Originally posted by jerZ07002
Let's take a look at Judicial Watch's "about us" statement:

Judicial Watch, Inc., a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law.

How can you claim to be non-partisan and conservative? A true non-partisan organization would leave out the 'conservative' or 'liberal' tag from the mission statement.

Try the response from FactCheck, a true non-partisan organization:

http://www.factcheck.org/askfactche...a_200-seat.html

It's from last year, but it addresses your inaccuracies.


Right... if it's from last year than obviously it left several things out that took place this year. Did you not click the link? It shows copies of the real receipts. Try this link too... even more data that shows all the things your fact check leaves out. There is nothing inaccurate about what I posted:
http://www.judicialwatch.org/news/2...-force-aircraft

To answer your question, it is possible to be a Democrat with conservative principles much as it is possible for a Republican to hold liberal viewpoints. Judicial Watch reports corrupt happenings regardless of the D or the R next to someone's name.


quote:
In any event, what the hell does Nancy Pelosi have to do with Obama and his supporters? Most democrats probably don't like Pelosi. I'm surely one of them. I just can't stand your baseless claims supported by truly interested (and extremely biased) organizations.


She is 3rd in line to the presidency. She has a lot of power. She is at the top of the Democrat food chain crafting legislation and works hand in hand with Obama. This thread is about the disconnect between the so-called political royalty and the regular people in this country who they believe work to serve them, not the other way around. The level of backroom dealing, political bribery, rabid hypocricy, and corrupttion is worse now than I have ever seen it. The Pelosi example is merely the best, most recent one which is why I mentioned it. Try to shoot the messenger on the data all you want... it's factual. Read the links.

quote:
As for specific Obama policies, I'm against just about every tax proposal he puts forth. His international tax proposals from early last year would be counter-productive (fortunately Health care reform took front-stage so pressure if off in that arena), and his bank tax proposal is simply awful policy. I hope it doesn't pass. It's kind of difficult to put forth universally acceptable policy when the goal of half of the country is simply to criticize and defeat his policy goals. I'd love to see a good republican plan on anything. Seriously! I don't care about the political party from which the plan originates so long as it is effective. perhaps you should tell your senators and congressmen to stop bitching and actually advance real policy. I'm so tired of american politics (e.g., claims by republicans that his policy hurts americans without providing real support) that i've almost completely tuned out all the bull. I'm wondering why republicans even run for government office if they think the government is so evil. Why are they trying to control the evil entity? It doesn't make much sense to me, but logic doesn't really hinder republican agenda.


I'd love to see the Republican plans on something too... the only one I saw was the counter offer health care bill presented by Boener, which was thrown in the trash right before Reid, Pelosi, and Obama refused to let them into the policy shaping meetings about HR 3200. It was one of many though... we just don't see them because nothing they propose is considered. Publicly, they say "We await any and all suggestions...." and blah blah, but that's for show.

Republicans don't think government is evil, they just don't like the current one, which is desperately trying to govern against the wishes of the people they represent. I understand that, and so do the growing masses of people who are rejecting the far left agenda. I think the current administration vastly overreached on the "mandate" they thought they were given to remake the country in their chosen image. What's really illogical is trusting a massive government that is the primary source of information about itself and accepting irrevocable, unaccountable government programs on faith. I just can't find it reasonable to listen to lectures on economics from a political party that believes itself immune to the laws of supply and demand and a president who has no real experience running anything except one campaign after another.

But I hear you about tuning out the bull.
pkcRAISTLIN
quote:
Originally posted by The17sss
the far left agenda....

But I hear you about tuning out the bull.


Hahahhahaha.
jerZ07002
quote:
Originally posted by The17sss
Right... if it's from last year than obviously it left several things out that took place this year. Did you not click the link? It shows copies of the real receipts. Try this link too... even more data that shows all the things your fact check leaves out. There is nothing inaccurate about what I posted:
http://www.judicialwatch.org/news/2...-force-aircraft


as soon as i read, "conservative, nonpartisan" I clicked off of the site. Regardless of whether the information is accurate, it is probably out of context and therefore misleading. I'm sure the group didn't post the entire context surrounding the receipts, just the context that supports its conservative agenda. Unfortunately, that's the nature of a partisan organization. Given its conservative declaration, the group's self-serving statement about being nonpartisan is highly suspect and enough to discount the statement's veracity. As a result, I didn't search through everything.

Listen, the nature of the game is partisanship. I don't care if the group has an agenda becasue everyone does. I have a problem with the group veiling itself as non-partisan, which unfortunately misleads lazy and gullible americans. By calling itself non-partisan, the group gives misguided individuals the false appearance of propriety. Unfortunately, the trick is working on you; Although in your case i'm sure it's working because the site's content suits your political ends and not because your gullible.


quote:
Originally posted by The17sss
To answer your question, it is possible to be a Democrat with conservative principles much as it is possible for a Republican to hold liberal viewpoints. Judicial Watch reports corrupt happenings regardless of the D or the R next to someone's name.


Perhaps you could enlighten us on one such instance. After a brief search of the site I couldn't find one!

if a group is nonpartisan it shouldn't have a publicly stated political agenda. It's really that simple. Here's a pretty clear example of how the group is patently partisan:


Judicial Watch Sponsors National Tea Party Convention, February 4-6, 2010

http://www.judicialwatch.org/news/2...bruary-4-6-2010





quote:
Originally posted by The17sss
She is 3rd in line to the presidency. She has a lot of power. She is at the top of the Democrat food chain crafting legislation and works hand in hand with Obama. This thread is about the disconnect between the so-called political royalty and the regular people in this country who they believe work to serve them, not the other way around. The level of backroom dealing, political bribery, rabid hypocricy, and corrupttion is worse now than I have ever seen it. The Pelosi example is merely the best, most recent one which is why I mentioned it. Try to shoot the messenger on the data all you want... it's factual. Read the links.


really? your opening read a little differently: "I'm more dismayed each day with the Obama supporters who say that the American people just don't "get it" if they don't support his agenda."

Your apparent thesis was a little more directed.




quote:
Originally posted by The17sss
I'd love to see the Republican plans on something too... the only one I saw was the counter offer health care bill presented by Boener, which was thrown in the trash right before Reid, Pelosi, and Obama refused to let them into the policy shaping meetings about HR 3200. It was one of many though... we just don't see them because nothing they propose is considered. Publicly, they say "We await any and all suggestions...." and blah blah, but that's for show.


Well, if your suggestion is true, it seems like terrible strategy for republicans to sit aside and say nothing to the american people about their policies. I'm not sure anyone knows what republican policy is aside from defeating obama policy.



quote:
Originally posted by The17sss
Republicans don't think government is evil, they just don't like the current one, which is desperately trying to govern against the wishes of the people they represent. I understand that, and so do the growing masses of people who are rejecting the far left agenda. I think the current administration vastly overreached on the "mandate" they thought they were given to remake the country in their chosen image. What's really illogical is trusting a massive government that is the primary source of information about itself and accepting irrevocable, unaccountable government programs on faith. I just can't find it reasonable to listen to lectures on economics from a political party that believes itself immune to the laws of supply and demand and a president who has no real experience running anything except one campaign after another.

But I hear you about tuning out the bull.


Clearly republicans aren't going to say that government is evil, but your chairman makes a pretty clear suggestion to that end:

quote:


Chairmen’s Preamble
Index


This is a platform of enduring principle, not passing convenience – the product of the most open and transparent process in American political history. We offer it to our fellow Americans in the assurance that our Republican ideals are those that unify our country: Courage in the face of foreign foes. An optimistic patriotism, driven by a passion for freedom. Devotion to the inherent dignity and rights of every person. Faith in the virtues of self-reliance, civic commitment, and concern for one another. Distrust of government’s interference in people’s lives. Dedication to a rule of law that both protects and preserves liberty.

http://www.gop.com/2008Platform/Preamble.htm/


I actually agree with most of his opening paragraph, except the highlighted part. Government action, by it's very core nature, is an interference in peoples lives. I guarantee that you can't come up with a government action that doesn't interfere with peoples lives. The most simple explain is the fact that we allow government to impose laws. By prohibiting me to do whatever the hell I want, even if it is reasonable, government is interfering in my life. If you distrust what is really the true value of government (the ability to interfere in the lives of individuals to achieve a societal goal), then it seems that you simply don't trust the government, which isn't much different than saying it's evil.
Max Thomson
america is slowly realizing that believing in significant positive change through a broken system is a naive belief. the question is when will this truth become self evident in our society and culture, or if we won't realize it until its too late.
Krypton
What system would you tell us to aspire to?
Lebezniatnikov
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010...on-across-aisle
Spam
quote:
Originally posted by Krypton
What system would you tell us to aspire to?


I'm sure Comdrade Stalin has a few good ideas...

Capitalizt
There's no use complaining about either party. Enjoy the ride while it lasts folks. We are well beyond the point of no return.
Krypton
quote:
Originally posted by Capitalizt
There's no use complaining about either party. Enjoy the ride while it lasts folks. We are well beyond the point of no return.


Not saying it's a good thing, but Japan has a 192% public debt to GDP ratio, and they aren't running for the hills. Ours is 55%. This doesn't even include intra-governmental debt. Yes, we need to lower the deficits, but other countries have it way worse, and the apocalypse hasn't happened to them yet. So let's calm down.
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