Do as I say, not as I do!

[over9five]

Remember when the auto execs all flew their corporate jets to Washington to beg for money? Remember the outrage?

Why then, is it OK for Obama to fly to Denver for the sole purpose of signing the Stimulus Bill? Couldn't he have done it in a Rose Garden ceremony saving the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars?

Lead by example, Mr Obama!

 

[stevetheupsguy]

Remember when the auto execs all flew their corporate jets to Washington to beg for money? Remember the outrage?

Why then, is it OK for Obama to fly to Denver for the sole purpose of signing the Stimulus Bill? Couldn't he have done it in a Rose Garden ceremony saving the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars?

Lead by example, Mr Obama!

We are one big happy, OBAMANATION!

 

[wkmac]

Remember when the auto execs all flew their corporate jets to Washington to beg for money? Remember the outrage?

Why then, is it OK for Obama to fly to Denver for the sole purpose of signing the Stimulus Bill? Couldn't he have done it in a Rose Garden ceremony saving the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars?

Lead by example, Mr Obama!

Hundreds of thousands? You gone cheapo on us Over! I'll bet when the whole thing was all said and done, add in Colorado and local Denver costs too, this thing was way more than a few hundred thousand.

But then to be fair on excessive cost, what was the bill to fly Bush to an aircraft carrier to make a speech to the nation?

It goes go both ways and both sides are equally guilty in their own over excessive fiscally irresponsive ways!

Regardless, nice job pointing this out!

 

[stevetheupsguy]

Hundreds of thousands? You gone cheapo on us Over! I'll bet when the whole thing was all said and done, add in Colorado and local Denver costs too, this thing was way more than a few hundred thousand.

But then to be fair on excessive cost, what was the bill to fly Bush to an aircraft carrier to make a speech to the nation?

It goes go both ways and both sides are equally guilty in their own over excessive fiscally irresponsive ways!

Regardless, nice job pointing this out!

Au contraire,
Your post fairly and objectively showed the folly of them both. Touche`!

 

[Jones]

Did someone mention wasted money?

 

[stevetheupsguy]

Did someone mention wasted money?

Maybe I can prevent this from becoming one of those threads, with humor.

 

[Jones]

Maybe I can prevent this from becoming one of those threads, with humor.

I wish you luck in your quest

 

[Sammie]

Remember when the auto execs all flew their corporate jets to Washington to beg for money? Remember the outrage?

Why then, is it OK for Obama to fly to Denver for the sole purpose of signing the Stimulus Bill? Couldn't he have done it in a Rose Garden ceremony saving the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars?

Lead by example, Mr Obama!

Obama 101...

He came here because our Museum of Natural History has solar panels on it's roof, which provides about 3% of the building's power. And part of this stimulus provides tax credits for solar investments.

O. had to visit my fair city and sign the Economic Slavery Bill because everyone knows there's not a solar panel to be found in Washington, D.C.


I'm also wondering why he and family went to the trouble and expense
of spending one night at Camp David already, after less than 60 days in office. Wow. One minute this country is on the verge of the worst disaster since the Great Depression and the next minute man, I'm beat to he** and need a vacation.

This On The Job Training and dealing with the Repubs must be a bogger and his other recent vacations in the Caribbean, Hawaii and Chicago just weren't enough. And he needs the rest. Like he recently said, he's done more for this country in the past month than anyone else accomplished in a decade...

He will make good use of AF1, Marine One, the perks, and the taxpayers $. This Kind Of Change has got to feel awfully fine; just never mind our troops who need updated equipment, or our recession, or the people losing jobs and homes every day.

But on the plus side - - - this Stimulus Package is working like a charm...

Marbleton, Wyoming, population 700, is getting a $30 million dollar rec center! All they had to do was ask!

 

[wkmac]

I'm also wondering why he and family went to the trouble and expense
of spending one night at Camp David already, after less than 60 days in office. Wow. One minute this country is on the verge of the worst disaster since the Great Depression and the next minute man, I'm beat to he** and need a vacation.

This On The Job Training and dealing with the Repubs must be a bogger and his other recent vacations in the Caribbean, Hawaii and Chicago just weren't enough. And he needs the rest. Like he recently said, he's done more for this country in the past month than anyone else accomplished in a decade...

He will make good use of AF1, Marine One, the perks, and the taxpayers $. This Kind Of Change has got to feel awfully fine; just never mind our troops who need updated equipment, or our recession, or the people losing jobs and homes every day.

But on the plus side - - - this Stimulus Package is working like a charm...

Marbleton, Wyoming, population 700, is getting a $30 million dollar rec center! All they had to do was ask!

Seems President Obama is not the only one in Washington working on those frequent flyer miles.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-02-19-fundraising_N.htm

I wonder if PT Barnum had democrat and republican voters in mind when he uttered that most famous saying, "There's a sucker born every day!"

As to Mableton Wyoming, population 700, why would a $30mil rec center be such an important need to such a small population base. I guess you could argue this one time construction project would create jobs but then consider this. Take the $30mil and divide it up between the 700 residents and that's $42k plus each. Now imagine that $42k each paying down debt for the residents of Mableton and then this frees up discretionary income to spent out in the local economy. If given the choice, I wonder what the residents would choose?

Long term, I'd contend this a better stimulus than a $30 mil one time construction project of a rec center but then I know I'm just not thinking right.

To quote from one of my favorite movies:

"Luke, ya just have to git ya mind right!"


Between Bush and Obama, why is it that I feel like I'd being told to move the dirt out and move the dirt back in to Boss Cain's ditch?

 

[Catatonic]

I wonder if PT Barnum had democrat and republican voters in mind when he uttered that most famous saying, "There's a sucker born every day!"

Wondered where WC Fields stole that saying from.

 

[wkmac]

Wondered where WC Fields stole that saying from.

Actually PT Barnum didn't say it, it was a competitor who was also a banker by the name of David Hannum who said it. The correct quote is also: "There's a sucker born every minute" not born every day but either way, the point was made.

As many votes as get cast to these low down, no good democrat and republican politicians, maybe the truth is the suckers are born every minute.

 

[Babagounj]

How about the $200,000 spent to sent all those Dems to Italy to see the Pope ? Of course that cost is for only going over, not for the visit nor for the cost of them coming back.

 

[wkmac]

How about the $200,000 spent to sent all those Dems to Italy to see the Pope ? Of course that cost is for only going over, not for the visit nor for the cost of them coming back.

Well come on Baba, I mean if they stay here, using the stimulus bill as a guide, there's no telling how much further havoc they might create. That $200k in truth is money well spent in cost savings to the taxpayer. Now if we could just hook the republicans into going as well and then once the plane takes off, plow up the airport runway so they couldn't come back, that alone would probably fix the economy, most ills that effect us across the board would start getting better on their own and over all, people in general would start having a much better life.

And with the republicans and democrats gone, the lobbyist, special interests and the well connected who bought those connections would have nowhere to go other than just leave and then people themselves could come and work together to actually solve real problems for once instead of using issues to create growth industries for job security! Why solve poverty when it gives you a 30 year career and nice pension to boot!


And you wonder why gov't never really solves anything even with more gov't.

Get the Big Picture Dude!

 

[chev]

How about the $200,000 spent to sent all those Dems to Italy to see the Pope ? Of course that cost is for only going over, not for the visit nor for the cost of them coming back.

Hell, I will gladly pay out of my own pocket, for them to fly to Rome. As long as it's a one way trip.

 

[Jones]

[FONT=times new roman, times, serif]Bill Clinton's election in 1992 gave rise to the American "militia movement": hordes of overwhelmingly white, middle-aged men from suburban and rural areas who convinced themselves they were defending the American way of life from the "liberals" and "leftists" running the country by dressing up in military costumes on weekends, wobbling around together with guns, and play-acting the role of patriot-warriors. Those theater groups -- the cultural precursor to George Bush's prancing 2003 performance dressed in a fighter pilot outfit on Mission Accomplished Day -- spawned the decade of the so-called "Angry White Male," the movement behind the 1994 takeover of the U.S. Congress by Newt Gingrich and his band of federal-government-cursing, play-acting-tough-guy, pseudo-revolutionaries.

What was most remarkable about this allegedly "anti-government" movement was that -- with some isolated and principled exceptions -- it completely vanished upon the election of Republican George Bush, and it stayed invisible even as Bush presided over the most extreme and invasive expansion of federal government power in memory. Even as Bush seized and used all of the powers which that movement claimed in the 1990s to find so tyrannical and unconstitutional -- limitless, unchecked surveillance activities, detention powers with no oversight, expanding federal police powers, secret prison camps, even massively exploding and debt-financed domestic spending -- they meekly submitted to all of it, even enthusiastically cheered it all on.

They're the same people who embraced and justified full-scale, impenetrable federal government secrecy and comprehensive domestic spying databases conducted in the dark and against the law when perpetrated by a Republican President -- but have spent the last week flamboyantly pretending to be scandalized and outraged by the snooping which Bill Moyers did 45 years ago (literally) as part of a Democratic administration. They're the people who relentlessly opposed and impugned Clinton's military deployments and then turned around and insisted that only those who are anti-American would question or oppose Bush's decision to start wars.

They're the same people who believed that Bill Clinton's use of the FISA court to obtain warrants to eavesdrop on Americans was a grave threat to liberty, but believed that George Bush's warrantless eavesdropping on Americans in violation of the law was a profound defense of freedom. In sum, they dressed up in warrior clothing to fight against Bill Clinton's supposed tyranny, and then underwent a major costume change on January 20, 2001, thereafter dressing up in cheerleader costumes to glorify George Bush's far more extreme acquisitions of federal power.

In doing so, they revealed themselves as motivated by no ideological principles or political values of any kind. It was a purely tribalistic movement motivated by fear of losing its cultural and demographic supremacy. In that sense -- the only sense that mattered -- George Bush was one of them, even though, with his actions, he did everything they long claimed to fear and despise. Nonetheless, his mere occupancy of the White House was sufficient to pacify them and convert them almost overnight from limited-government militants into foot soldiers supporting the endless expansion of federal government power.

But now, only four weeks into the presidency of Barack Obama, they are back -- angrier and more chest-beating than ever. Actually, the mere threat of an Obama presidency was enough to revitalize them from their eight-year slumber, awaken them from their camouflaged, well-armed suburban caves. The disturbingly ugly atmosphere that marked virtually every Sarah Palin rally had its roots in this cultural resentment, which is why her fear-mongering cultural warnings about his exotic, threatening otherness -- he's a Muslim-loving, Terrorist-embracing, Rev.-Wright-following Marxist: who is the real Barack Obama? -- resonated so stingingly with the rabid lynch mobs that cheered her on.

With Obama now actually in the Oval Office -- and a financial crisis in full force that is generating the exact type of widespread, intense anxiety that typically inflames these cultural resentments -- their mask is dropping, has dropped, and they've suddenly re-discovered their righteous "principles." The week-long CNBC Revolt of the Traders led by McCain voter Rick Santelli and the fledgling little Tea Party movement promoted by the Michelle Malkins of the world are obvious outgrowths of this 1990s mentality, now fortified by the most powerful fuel: deep economic fear.
There is nothing inherently wrong or illegitimate with citizens expressing extreme anger towards the Government and the ruling political class. There isn't even anything wrong or illegitimate with citizens organizing themselves into a movement that -- whether by design or effect -- is threatening to entrenched elites. If anything, we've had too little of that. In fact, it's only a complete lack of fear of a meek, passive and impotent citizenry on the part of political and financial rulers -- a certainty that there will be no consequences no matter what they do -- that could have given rise to the endless corruption, deceit, lawbreaking, destruction, and outright thievery of the last eight years. A political and financial elite that perceives itself as invulnerable from threat or consequence will inevitably vest itself with more power and more riches. That's what we've had and, largely, still have.

But this Rush-Limbaugh/Fox-News/nationalistic movement isn't driven by anything noble or principled or even really anything political. If it were, they would have been extra angry and threatening and rebellious during the Bush years instead of complicit and meek and supportive to the point of cult-like adoration. Instead, they're just basically Republican dead-enders (at least what remains of the regional/extremist GOP), grounded in tribal allegiances that are fueled by their cultural, ethnic and religious identities and by perceived threats to past prerogatives -- now spiced with legitimate economic anxiety and an African-American President who, they were continuously warned for the last two years, is a Marxist, Terrorist-sympathizing black nationalist radical who wants to re-distribute their hard-earned money to welfare queens and illegal immigrants (and is now doing exactly that).
I[FONT=times new roman, times, serif]n one sense, all of this drooling rage is nothing more than the familiar face of extreme right-wing paranoia, as Richard Hofstadter famously described 45 years ago:

The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms—he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point. Like religious millenialists he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date fort the apocalypse. (“Time is running out,” said Welch in 1951. “Evidence is piling up on many sides and from many sources that October 1952 is the fatal month when Stalin will attack.”)
​

But it's now inflamed by declining imperial power, genuine economic crises, an exotic Other occupying the White House, and potent technology harnessed by right-wing corporations such as Fox News to broadcast and disseminate it widely and continuously. At the very least, it's worth taking note of. [/FONT]
[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] -- Glenn Greenwald[/FONT]​

 

[JimJimmyJames]

George W. forever changed my view of the Republican party. What the Republicans did under his leadership broke my heart. But than, I never voted for him and unlike the drones Greenwald describes, I actually see through my own eyes and not that of the party.

What makes me laugh now is, as Obama backs away from the ideals of his party's base, how the liberal apologists are coming out of the woodwork stating he has no choice. Typical tribal mentality.

 

[chev]

George W. forever changed my view of the Republican party. What the Republicans did under his leadership broke my heart. But than, I never voted for him and unlike the drones Greenwald describes, I actually see through my own eyes and not that of the party.

What makes me laugh now is, as Obama backs away from the ideals of his party's base, how the liberal apologists are coming out of the woodwork stating he has no choice. Typical tribal mentality.

Typical of a president who hasn't got a clue what he has really gotten himself into. Reminds me of the new "gung ho" managers that sweep in thinking they are going to change the world, only to come to the logical conclusion that they're not changing crap.
Empty promises on the campaign trail end in empty action in the office.