Counterinsurgents thrust nation into full blown depression.

• Stimulus package -- what the pubs want..(sm) - Just the big bad
  • In reading what Obama and Pelosi want, anything - is better. They are whacko. nm
    • Counterinsurgents thrust nation into full blown depression. - Campaign strategy even worse than 2008?
    • Wow! Yu musd bee reely smort! - sm

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Obama is your man.

regardless of which idea they go with.  I really don't think there is anyway out of this. 

You know what really bugs me....and this is kind along the lines of the topic of equal pay........

If a caucasian male is making more money for doing the same job as an african american, by law the african american has the right to sue for legal pay.  I'm cool with that.  If you do the same job and think you deserve the same pay....more power to you.  If an african american is making more money for doing the same job as a caucasian, the caucasian has no legal rights to sue for equal pay.  I'm sorry, but that doesn't sound equal to me.

has anything to do with it?  Hey, that's what republicans want, big business to grow fast--no regulation--me, me, me...

How about all those families that are going to suffer from this.  Did they ask for it too?

This sounds familiar:

http://eh.net/Clio/Publications/unemployment.html

I am paying off debt.  Made my garden bigger.  Planted some fruit trees.  Stocked my pantry.  But I don't want to take in any relatives......I would rather pass out free zuchini.

Gee, and when was the last time this country saw tent cities like this? The Great Depression.

The unemployment rate in California is over 10% and has risen to 15% in some of the hardest hit states in the country. To say that this has been fabricated and that there is no crisis is just more of the republican elitist socially darwinistic pile of horse @!$%# that has been pervading the GOP.

It's time for all of you hard right conservatives to pull your head out of the sand and take a really good look at what YOUR republican president did to this country in the course of 8 years. Obama inherited one of the biggest messes in this country's history, and you are pssed off that he hasn't "fixed" it yet?!! Are you kidding!? He's been in office for not even two months. It took the Great Depression over a decade to be resolved, and your screaming over 2 MONTHS!!!!!!????

There are a lot of people hurting. And guess what, the CEO @!$%#s that helped cause the mess are laughing all the way to their bank accounts in Grand Cayman and couldn't give a @!$%# about the rest of the country. And who helped them get their egregious bonuses and compensation? Hmmmm, couldn't be the republicans that were in power for HOW LONG!!?? I'll tell you: from 1994-2006. Hmmmm, just long enough to deregulate the banks and lower the taxes on the wealthy enough to create the largest income gap in this country since the Industrial revolution.

The republicans f'd up big time. That is why they lost control. And they are continuing on that same wretched path with NO IDEAS on how to fix the mess they are mostly responsible for creating. Except tax cuts for the wealthy. The GOP mantra. It's BS and you all need to stop buying into the rhetoric.

I am hoping with all my heart that Obama is a successful president and is doing what needs to be done to rectify this nation. Yes, he may fail. That is a risk you take with ANY president. But if any of you have even half a functioning brain you would wish for success as well. His failure will mean the failure of our country. And I don't know about you, but I certainly hope I never see that day.

and additionally says that we are a nation of "whiners.' McCains top economic advisor is Phil Gramm.

How do you feel about these remarks? Additionally have you or someone you know been experiencing tough times in the last year?

BOOK:  The Crisis Of The Old Order  By:  Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

In 1928 and 1929, the nation had reached, it seemed, a permanent plateau of prosperity.  Businesses expanding.  Foreign trade growing.  The stock market was continuing to rise.  And national leadership could not now be in more expert or safer hands.  "I have no fears for the future of our country," said Herbert Hoover in his inaugural address in March 1929.  "It is bright with hope."

There remained a few discordant voices, anxious in the main over the stock market boom.  In spring 1929, Hoover summoned a special session of Congress to deal with these issues.  The session was not a success.  The Board's purpose was to control the flow of commodities to the market; one provision was to control temporary surpluses.  The session adjourned from April to November without taking action on the tariff.  Hoover wanted state public lands and reclamatin projects and related irrigation matters be withdrawn from national control and states to manage these affairs then Federal Government.  President's attitude toward utilities regulation was similar. 

Yet most Americans remained more interested in teh stock market than economic question and the few interest as now beginning to turn into concern. 

Early 1929, Federal Reserve Board under pressures of NY Federal Reserve Bank, finally consented to warn member banks that they should not lend money for speculative purposes.  But did not work.  Some argued that a restrictive policy might well induce deflation.  The board felt it created "a state of mind which breeds depression."  It was certainly true that reducing the interest rate was a clumsy way of combatting THE BOOM.  As long as the stock market offered highest returns, it was bound to have first call on funds.  Higher interest rate would have slowed down investment, cause capitalization process and bring down prices of ALL CAPITAL ASSETS and thus discourage investment.  President Hoover did nothing as he was preoccupied with his own mind and watched the Board run the course.

CHECK THIS OUT!!!  Finally by summer 1929, some danger signs were apparent, STARTLING DECLINE IN BULIDING CONTRACTS.  Residential construction for the entire year SANK.  CONSUMER SPENDING WAS SLACKENING.  By midsummer 1929, building began to fall off, wholesale commodity prices dropped.  In August, Federal Reserve Board finally agreed to raise to 6 percent. In September Stock Exchange price were at the highest.  On October 23, PRICES STARTED FALLING.  WALL STREET WAS SHAKEN.  Anxiety was suddenly infectious.  As panic spread, stocks dropped.  Hoover stated, "The fundamental business of the country, that is production and distribution of commodities is a sound and prosperous basis."  As prices held for a week, bankers QUIETLY fed back into the stock market that they had bought on Black Thursday for further future storms.  

Banks protected themselves against their customers.  On Monday, new explosion of gloom and panic happend.  General Motors stock lost nearly 2 million.  It soon was an avalanche, vast numbers rushing to get out of the market.  By noon, 8 million shares traded hands and by closing time, Exchange had broken all records with 16 million shares.  By mid November the financial community began to survey the wreckage.  New York Stock Exchange had fallen 40 percent in value. 

CAUSE OF THE CRASH:  Management's disposition to maintain prices and inflate profits while holding down wages and raw material prices meant that workers and farmers were denied benefits of increases in their own productivity.  Decline of mass purchasing power (like our real estate in 2005?) as goods flowed out of expanding capital plant in ever greater quantities, less and less cash in the hands of buyers to carry goods off the market.  Seven years of fixed capital investment at high rates had overbuilt productive capacity and had thus saturated the economy.  The slackening of the automotive and building industries.  Businessmen trying TO SAVE THEMSELVES COULD ONLY WRECK THEIR SYSTEM.  Representing the financiers, it had ignored irresponsible practices in the securities of the markets.  Ignored the weight of private debt.  Result was both class and national disaster. 

As an outsider, I could give you another perspective and one not nearly so dire as yours.  However, I also realise that my view is slanted as I simply adore this country and Americans in general.  In short, given the information at his disposal, George Bush’s decision to oust Saddam looks altogether reasonable--though, again, not necessarily right. To argue otherwise demonstrates both ignorance and bad faith. So what are we to make of the downward spiral of sectarian mayhem that is currently drawing Iraq into the abyss? The violence seems senseless to us . . . but perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps our enemies recognize that the great exploitable weakness of the American military is that, in the wake of Vietnam, the American public’s grasp of geo-politics runs only as deep as the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind.” This is a weakness every bit as real, and every bit as deadly, as a missile with a faulty guidance system or a tank that stalls in its tracks--and it will remain a real weakness until the American public is knocked upside the head a sufficient number of times to outgrow it. What the degeneration of the mission in Iraq indicates most profoundly is that one 9/11 was not enough to crack through the platitudes of the late 1960s--which are deeply embedded in the universities, television networks and editorial pages of major newspapers. There remains, in such circles, the delusion that the jihadists are ultimately live and let live types, that totalitarian Islam will eventually just peter out, that the principles of the European Enlightenment will simply dawn on a billion Muslims without us cramming them down their throats.This may in the end prove the deadliest error in geo-political judgment Americans have ever made. Members of the genocidally well-meaning baby-boom generation will likely go to their graves believing they “gave peace a chance,” having spared themselves the anguish of killing hundreds of thousand Muslims . . .  and likely bequeathed to their children and grandchildren the anguish of killing scores of millions. 

It's just a device used by the neocons to keep the attention of the stifled.  They know that the repressed loonies in the county slobber over anything pertaining to sex.  Just look at O'Reilly.  Nearly every night he has some story about prostitutes, strip clubs, girls gone wild -- he is complaining how horrible it is, yet they always have tapes behind him of half-naked coeds grinding away.  If it is so horrible, must we see the tapes over and over?

Tillman didn't talk about why he went into the service to anyone.  We will have to assume that what his mother is saying is true.  Has the wife spoken out?  I would think if he told his deepest heart's secrets, it would be to her.  She was his high school sweetheart.  Here's a snippet from a Newsweek article. 

He joined the service just after a honeymoon to Bora Bora with his high-school sweetheart, Marie. He and a younger brother, Kevin, slipped off to enlist in Denver, where they could avoid publicity. Kevin, who gave up a budding minor-league baseball career, remains in the Army. Pat Tillman wanted no attention, no glory, for joining the rank and file. He didn't want to be singled out from his brothers and sisters in the military, says former Cardinals coach Dave McGinnis. Tillman apparently had made a pact with his family to stay silent about his service, a promise they have kept. They have gathered to grieve inside the comfortable family home in a leafy enclave of San Jose.

His was no simple case of patriotism; Tillman was never known as a flag-waver. His agent, Frank Bauer, told reporters he had suspected that Tillman might quit to teach or to practice law like his father, Patrick Sr., but not to join the military. Snyder, his college coach, said Tillman never used the word patriotism when he explained his plans to enlist. He just seemed to think something had to be done. When players asked why he enlisted, he didn't want to talk about it. McGinnis says there were reasons Pat said he had that he didn't want to divulge, and the coach respected his view and his right to make his own path. Tillman had always been different. When he joined the pros, he rode a bicycle to practice because he didn't own a car. He refused to buy a cell phone. A sports publicist at Arizona State once described him as a surfer dude.

It seems his mother decided the pact no longer had any merit.  Personally, I see another Cindy Sheehan, disobeying her son's wishes. 

Obama was VOTED in, not 'given' the job as President...You know, I cannot believe some of the things tht come from the brains and out of the miouths oif some indivuduals.  This is indeed a historic moment; that I am in agreement with, and I also agree that 170M for the Inaguration was excessive but I will tell you what I find even more excessive - the lying, stealing criminal former administration who ripped of the American people (regardless of political affilation) and basically thummed their noses at us because they felt and still feel they are above the law.  The former president  and his administration didn't give a durn about the economy and reputation of this country  do you truly believe that they cared whether you, your  husbands, sons and other relatives lost their jobs and homes?  Do you really think they were concerned about whether YOU have enough to retire on after dutifully putting away funds in your 401k?  I don't think so.  They gutted us and left us twisting in the wind; and while we worry about how we are going to pay the light bill and have enough to buy grioceries let alone our mortgage - they dine well and live like kings, their families and frineds in their inner circles do not have to concern themselves with such mundane issues...why would they?  Their gods are Franklin, Harrison, Grant, et al.WE PAID FOR IT and will be for years to come.

Now that would be an improvement.  This country was not founded on christianity or any other relgion.  I agree that Obama was downplaying religion, but I also believe that that is exactly what he needed to do.  Bush turned this whole mess into a big "us against them" mentality...."us" meaning christians.  I believe Obama had to negate this idea by downplaying religion, thus deflating the whole notion that we are in a religious war (which is exactly what Bush wanted and subsequently turned it into.)

What I find really interesting is the idea that you insinuate that we MUST be identified as a nation by a specific religion.  Since we are talking about this in the context of politics, exactly why is it you feel we MUST be seen by the world as a "god-fearing" nation?  What would be the benefits of that?

homes, natural disasters unattended to, collapsing bridges, earmark bridges. Address those first, save flag for later.