Bet you're sorry you voted for Obama now

[Cleo's Mom 257]

A job, is a job, is a job.

NO!!! A job is NOT a job is a job!! GOVERNMENT employees are being paid by all of us. Those jobs suck for us. Those jobs are on our payroll for life. Private sector jobs are what counts. None of us have to pay for a private sector job except for his own personal employer. The federal government spends $1,937,500,000 per work hour. That's about half a million per second! Adding more government jobs to the payroll is not the answer to helping the economy. Yes, it helps that one individual who was out of work, but the millions that it effects through tax increases to continue to forever pay his salary, it hurts. That doesn't help the economy. It only puts a burden on the rest of us to pay for his weekly paycheck. Multiply that by many thousands on the payroll, and we have nothing left to give.

What tax increases have you paid to pay for any government jobs under Obama? And the only jobs that count are not private sector jobs. We pay for all those in the defense industry, all those farm subsidies, all those government energy contracts, etc.. So, no not all private jobs are free from our tax dollars paying for them.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

by the end of this month, when joblessness will increase when another 339,000 temporary Census employees will hit the bricks, the recession will have lasted twice as long as the 1981-82 recession, which had been the longest since World War II. The Chris Dodd Recession already is three times longer than the average one since 1945. And the National Bureau of Economic Research, the arbiter of recessions, is reluctant to call the end of this one because most economic indicators are pointing down, a consequence of the administration's fixation on saving unionized government jobs at the ex- pense of private-sector job creation.

Nice try, but wrong again. The recession happened because of what wall street did. And wall street did what it did because of the republican de-regulations. And this happened on bush's watch. You can call it the Dodd recession or any other name, but you can't change the fact that it happened under bush's watch. And he was the one who started the bailouts - bush - TARP.

Today, businesses are afraid to hire because they fear a double-dip recession and are concerned about how they will pay for all the socialism Congress and the White House have been churning out.What socialism would that be? The healthcare is paid for, unlike the programs under bush that were/are unfunded. The bailouts are being repaid. BTW, the businesses you speak of like to be bailed out. So I doubt they'd refer to it as socialism. They like the cash for clunkers, they like the $8000 for first time home buyers. They like the GM and Cryshler bailouts. These have prevented more economic collapse and more unemployment and more economic downturn. Without them things would have been worse. Until businesses begin hiring, the economy won't grow. Moreover, consumers are afraid to spend, let alone make long-term financial commitments, because of their severe job insecurity and what portends to be the largest tax increase in U.S. history with the Jan. 1 expiration of the Bush tax cuts, which pulled the country out of the last recession.Bush's tax cuts during a time when he was borrowing from China to fund two wars (one totally unnecessary) was totally IRRESPONSIBLE. That was a time for the country and people to sacrifice to pay for these wars so that we wouldn't go further into debt. ISN'T THAT WHAT YOU PEOPLE KEEP YAPPING ABOUT - SPENDING AND GOING INTO DEBT??? Therefore, the tax rate should have stayed the same as it was during the Clinton era when we were all doing well. It never ceases to amaze me how the middle class will defend the tax cuts for the rich just to get the few crumbs while the rich laugh behind their backs at what fools they are. And how stupid they are. Until consumers' fears are assuaged, the economy won't grow and business won't hire.

Under Mr. Obama, the national debt has exploded to more than 60 percent of the value of all the goods and services the economy produces. The rate is 56 percent in Spain, where the debt-ridden government and economy are convulsing. Without an immediate and drastic course change, the United States will reach 109 percent by 2025, according to the latest Congressional Budget Office underestimate; a 124 percent rate has Greece teetering on insolvency. This is not the right direction; it's the left direction, and the opposite direction European governments are taking now that they've figured out the promise of socialism is a big fat lie.

I don't give a rat's ass what Europe is doing. The right certainly has historically rejected those European countries policies toward universal healthcare, which the people like.

Our economy has rebounded from the greatest economic disaster since the great depression. Job losses have turned into job gains. The GDP is up. Job growth is slow but at least it's positive. The only thing that will slow the economic recovery is if less spending is done to stimulate growth.

AND THAT IS WHAT THE REPUBLICANS WANT. THEY WOULD RATHER THIS COUNTRY CRASH AND BURN AND TAKE EVERY CITIZEN WITH IT THAN SUPPORT ONE THING OF THE PRESIDENT WHO HAS DONE THE BEST HE CAN TO CLEAN UP BUSH'S MESSES AND TURN THIS ECONOMY AROUND.

Edited July 12, 2010 by Cleo's Mom

[Cleo's Mom 257]

Obama Taxes, Debt, and Stimulus Worked, Trumping GOP Blather

By John Aloysius Farrell

By John A. Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

I suppose it is a mark of Democratic ineptness or complacency that, a year after Congress passed one of the biggest tax cuts in U.S. history, President Audacity still found the need to inform us of this fact in his State of the Union address. Republican partisans may have preferred an across-the-board tax cut, or a gift to corporations, or the Paris Hilton Honorary Tax Repeal Bill, rather than targeted tax cuts for working families. But there is no denying the fact: The Democratic stimulus bill gave middle-class families a huge tax break.

And there is more--much morerelief to come. It's getting lost in the cacophony again, but Obama's proposed budget has $2.7 trillion in tax cuts for middle-class families, working folks caring for children or elderly parents, college students, small businesses and investors, research and development--even cellphone users--over the next 10 years.

Another fact: That much-maligned stimulus bill, along with the hated bank bailout loans, also did what economists (including those who were advising the Bush administration, which initiated the stimulus process and the bailout loans months before Obama took office) said they would. They stabilized an economy in free fall. The banks have even begun to pay us back.

And yet another fact: This smart bit of pump-priming was no radical, loony, Democratic idea. With the exception of some Western European countries like Germany, where the social welfare system is already a perpetual stimulus machine, our international competitors (i.e., China) opted for a Keynesian fix to the worldwide depression as well. It has been a standard economic prescription for a century.

The great fourth quarter report that the U.S. economy got last week may not immediately translate into job growth or higher family incomes, which are always lagging indicators that a recession is over. But it was good news nevertheless. Remember where we were in the fourth quarter of 2008? We might actually have some money to buy those iPads when they're available this spring.

But, OK, the Obama tax cuts and stimulus package did exacerbate the debt problem that he inherited from the Tom DeLay generation of Republicans--which dropped the pay-as-you-go policies of the Clinton-Gingrich years to two wars and the biggest expansion of Medicare since LBJ with the government credit card. But of course their spending didn't and doesn't matter. They caused the debt and Obama gets blamed.

And, due to the failure of the Democratic message machine (from smugness, or maybe just exhaustion), the need for the new red ink that the Bush-Obama rescue packages added to the national debt was poorly explained, went undefended, and became an invitation for Republican demagoguery.

But it is not that the GOP has offered any better ideas. As I take it, from the Republican rhetoric of the last year, the party's proposed cure for the accumulating debt is to chop taxes for the rich, preserve wasteful Medicare spending, show up at the ribbon-cutting ceremonies for local pork projects, and increase the Pentagon budget--somehow, magically, without adding to the deficit.

And now, as my colleague Peter Roff warns, the Democrats have a not-so-secret plan to raise taxes!

Well, in this case, we can't fault the Democrats for hiding their light under a bushel. There is nothing remotely secret about what Democrats campaigning in 2004, 2006, and 2008 proposed to do with the expiring Bush tax cuts. You would have to have been traveling on the Starship Enterprise, visiting distant galaxies for the last eight years, to find it surprising that Obama wants to extend only those tax cuts that benefit families earning under $250,000 a year.

It's been Democratic Party policy for all that time, shouted from the rooftops, written into party platforms, loudly advocated at debates. The Democrats have been upfront, loud, and honest about their plan to close the gap between what the government takes in and what it spends: Tax the rich. IT'S ABOUT TIME.You may be rich, and not like it. You may have ideological problems with any form of taxation. You may just not like Barack Obama. But the choice has been clear, and in the 2006 and 2008 elections, the voters overwhelmingly endorsed the Democratic approach.

Final Fact: The federal debt that's been accumulated by the two parties is so stunningly huge that tax increases are inevitable. If you don't believe this, get Scotty to beam you up, and move to another planet. It is pick-your-poison time. The Democrats, for all their political ineptness, deserve a little credit for 1) recognizing this, 2) leveling with us, 3) aiming the first round of tax hikes at those who have most benefited from the accumulated debt, and 4) having the guts to actually do something, as opposed to just saying "No."

By levying higher taxes on the wealthy, and at banks, and multinational corporations that ship U.S. jobs overseas, Obama would raise $1.5 trillion in new revenue in his budget to close the deficits over the next decade--even after cutting middle-class taxes and taxes on small businesses by $2.7 trillion.

Level with yourself. Are you really worried about the national debt? Then put your money on the table: Call your Democratic senator or representative and ask them to reduce the size of your expected tax cut, and use the money to close the deficit instead. Yeah, like any of those hypocrites would really do that.

Edited July 12, 2010 by Cleo's Mom

[pattygreen 5]

What tax increases have you paid to pay for any government jobs under Obama? And the only jobs that count are not private sector jobs. We pay for all those in the defense industry, all those farm subsidies, all those government energy contracts, etc.. So, no not all private jobs are free from our tax dollars paying for them.

You seem to think that if I am not paying direct taxes to the government, that I am not 'paying' towards the expenses of government jobs. WE are all paying in one way or another through higher costs of living (food price increases, higher utility bills, gasoline prices, etc.) for the bills the federal government makes.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

You seem to think that if I am not paying direct taxes to the government, that I am not 'paying' towards the expenses of government jobs. WE are all paying in one way or another through higher costs of living (food price increases, higher utility bills, gasoline prices, etc.) for the bills the federal government makes.

Typical conservative, right wing answer - blame the government and still not answer my question about what higher taxes are you paying since Obama took office to pay for all these government jobs you claim have been added. I assume you paid direct taxes to the government under bush, too. Did he add any jobs. Let me think for a millisecond. Yes, the largest expanse of the federal government took place under him with the Dept of Homeland Security.

[MsMackieLee 0]

You seem to think that if I am not paying direct taxes to the government, that I am not 'paying' towards the expenses of government jobs. WE are all paying in one way or another through higher costs of living (food price increases, higher utility bills, gasoline prices, etc.) for the bills the federal government makes.

Again I will ask...did you self pay?

I will say this...I wish the British had won. Maybe shit wouldnt suck so much, and maybe we wouldnt be in this situation. Down with the USA, up with the states.

Edited July 12, 2010 by MsMackieLee

[pattygreen 5]

Typical conservative, right wing answer - blame the government and still not answer my question about what higher taxes are you paying since Obama took office to pay for all these government jobs you claim have been added. I assume you paid direct taxes to the government under bush, too. Did he add any jobs. Let me think for a millisecond. Yes, the largest expanse of the federal government took place under him with the Dept of Homeland Security.

Why do you think the cost of living has been so high? Why is it that at one time, you could afford to pay your rent with just one of the 4 paychecks you got each month and now it takes 2 of them? Why is it that gasoline, electricity, groceries, Water, etc. is killing us to pay each month? Do you think that the government has anything to do with it? It does. Just HOW do you think that the federal employees get their paychecks each week? The money does not appear out of nowhere. Taxes have to be collected in some way from someone and then given to them. When those people who make alot of money pay their taxes to the government, they have to get the money from someone else. They are businessmen, and when their taxes go up, the product or service that they sell increses in price and the consumer (you and me) pay more. You and I, the little man, do not "directly" pay taxes to the government. The money is still taken from us in other ways. Either way WE pay! Yes, the government must get their money out of the community one way or another to pay these federal employees salaries. Directly from big businesses and the wealthy, which means you and I are paying for their salaries through higher cost of living. These big businesses are not going to take a loss. They will just pass their loss onto the consumer. The little people who don't pay any taxes directly to the government, they pay higher prices for EVERYTHING instead. (same thing, IMO)

[pattygreen 5]

The average federal employee earns an annual salary almost 60% higher than the average private-sector employee — $79,000 vs. $50,000. Federal employees do have more education (on average) than private-sector workers. Their unions argue that this justifies their higher pay. But it doesn't. Even after controlling for education and experience, federal employees get paid significantly better — 22% more per hour, on average — than private-sector workers.

Not all federal workers earn above-market pay. The government bases raises on seniority, not performance, so the most skilled and hardest-working federal employees are actually underpaid. Overall, though, government workers earn well above what their private-sector counterparts make, even before you consider benefits.

Oh, the benefits

Those benefits include more than one type of retirement plan. Federal employees can enroll in a Thrift Savings Plan that works like a 401(k). But they also get a "defined contribution" plan, which lets a worker with 30 years of experience retire at 56 with full benefits.

Government workers also can enroll in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. There are no age, health, or pre-existing condition restrictions.

Paid leave? Check. Federal employees with just three years of experience get 20 days annually, and those who have logged more than 15 years get 26 paid days off. Group life insurance? Check. And many federal buildings even offer on-site child care. To be sure, many large private employers offer two or three of these benefits, but very few offer them all.

Job security

Once you add up these benefits, the gap in total compensation rises even higher — 30% to 40% above comparable private-sector workers.

Federal civil servants enjoy another perk: near-absolute job security. Private businesses cut hiring and increase layoffs when sales drops. From 2007 through 2009, the adult unemployment rate in the private sector more than doubled, from 4.2% to 9.4%. Not in government. The percentage of federal employees who lost jobs barely budged, going from 2.0% to 2.9%.

This is largely because of civil service rules. It's virtually impossible to fire federal employees for bad performance once they've passed a one-year probationary period.

Not surprisingly, federal employees rarely quit. In good economic times, they voluntarily leave at roughly a third the private-sector rate. And that disparity has only grown since the recession began.

Why should taxpayers care? Because it's costing them money. If Congress were to set up a payment system like the private sector's, it would save about $47 billion a year. That's serious money.

Lawmakers can take other steps: reducing benefits, contracting more non-essential tasks to private-sector companies, and making it easier to dismiss underperforming employees.

"Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for," Will Rogers once said. Indeed. With a little effort, we could even pay less for the government we have.

James Sherk

[pattygreen 5]

Again I will ask...did you self pay?

I will say this...I wish the British had won. Maybe shit wouldnt suck so much, and maybe we wouldnt be in this situation. Down with the USA, up with the states.

Who are you directing this question to? And, self pay for what?

[pattygreen 5]

The selective modesty of Barack Obama

By Charles Krauthammer

Friday, July 9, 2010

Remember NASA? It once represented to the world the apogee of American scientific and technological achievement. Here is President Obama's vision of NASA's mission,

:

"One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and math and engineering."

Apart from the psychobabble -- farcically turning a space-faring enterprise into a self-esteem enhancer -- what's the sentiment behind this charge? Sure America has put a man on the moon, led the information revolution, won more Nobel Prizes than any other nation by far -- but, on the other hand, a thousand years ago al-Khwarizmi gave us algebra.

Bolden seems quite intent on driving home this message of achievement equivalence -- lauding, for example, Russia's contribution to the space station. Russia? In the 1990s, the Russian space program fell apart, leaving the United States to pick up the slack and the tab for the missing Russian contributions to get the space station built.

For good measure, Bolden added that the United States cannot get to Mars without international assistance. Beside the fact that this is not true, contrast this with the elan and self-confidence of President John Kennedy's 1961 pledge that America would land on the moon within the decade.

There was no finer expression of belief in American exceptionalism than Kennedy's. Obama has a different take. As he said last year in France, "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." Which of course means: If we're all exceptional, no one is.

Take human rights. After Obama's April meeting with the president of Kazakhstan, Mike McFaul of the National Security Council reported that Obama actually explained to the leader of that thuggish kleptocracy that we, too, are working on perfecting our own democracy.

Nor is this the only example of an implied moral equivalence that diminishes and devalues America. Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner reported that in discussions with China about human rights, the U.S. side brought up Arizona's immigration law -- "early and often." As if there is the remotest connection between that and the persecution of dissidents, jailing of opponents and suppression of religion routinely practiced by the Chinese dictatorship.

Nothing new here. In his major addresses, Obama's modesty about his own country has been repeatedly on display as, in one venue after another, he has gratuitously confessed America's alleged failing -- from disrespecting foreigners to having lost its way morally after 9/11.

It's fine to recognize the achievements of others and be non-chauvinistic about one's country. But Obama's modesty is curiously selective. When it comes to himself, modesty is in short supply.

It began with the almost comical self-inflation of his presidential campaign, from the still inexplicable mass rally in Berlin in front of a Prussian victory column to the Greek columns framing him at the Democratic convention. And it carried into his presidency, from his posture of philosopher-king adjudicating between America's sins and the world's to his speeches marked by a spectacularly promiscuous use of the word "I."

Notice, too, how Obama habitually refers to Cabinet members and other high government officials as "my" -- "my secretary of homeland security," "my national security team," "my ambassador." The more normal -- and respectful -- usage is to say "the," as in "the secretary of state." These are, after all, public officials sworn to serve the nation and the Constitution -- not just the man who appointed them.

It's a stylistic detail, but quite revealing of Obama's exalted view of himself. Not surprising, perhaps, in a man whose major achievement before acceding to the presidency was writing two biographies -- both about himself.

Obama is not the first president with a large streak of narcissism. But the others had equally expansive feelings about their country. Obama's modesty about America would be more understandable if he treated himself with the same reserve. What is odd is to have a president so convinced of his own magnificence -- yet not of his own country's.

Edited July 13, 2010 by pattygreen

[pattygreen 5]

Living in a fiscal dream world

Here is a little fairy tale: Imagine it's the end of the year. A man sorts through his checkbook and other financial records, then announces to his family: "Hey, we're in pretty good shape. We had more money come in than we paid out during the last 12 months, so we finished the year in the black."

The man's wife exclaims, "Great! I enjoyed our Caribbean cruise last year, and this year I want to vacation in Cancun."

The man smiles and replies, "Sounds good, dear."

The man's daughter says, "The 42-inch flat screen TV we bought last year is nice, but I think we need a 56-inch. Let's buy a new one."

"Great idea," the man says. "We'll go to the appliance store this afternoon."

Finally, the teenage son chimes in: "I'm sick of driving Mom's old Buick. I want a new BMW."

"OK," the man says, "we'll stop by the BMW dealership right after we go to the appliance store."

Sounds like a very prosperous family, doesn't it? But what if during the just-concluded year, to make ends meet, the man had to borrow $30,000 from his elderly parents; then he took out a home equity loan for $50,000; then he stopped paying the family's health-insurance premiums; and then he did not bother to pay his property taxes? Would you still think this family is in good financial shape? Of course not. You'd have to be living in a dream world to claim the family's budget is "in the black."

The state recently made just such a dream-world announcement. On July 1, state officials proudly announced a budget surplus of $243 million for the fiscal year just ended. The Nutmeg State, they proclaimed, finished the year "in the black."

But wait a minute. To show a $243 million surplus, the state had to employ short-term budget gimmicks similar to those used by my hypothetical, fairy-tale family. The state received a huge chunk of federal "stimulus" money last year, hot off of Washington's money-making printing press, meaning it added to the nation's crushing level of debt.

Also, the state raided the Rainy Day Fund, did not make scheduled payments to the state employee pension fund, and borrowed about $1 billion by selling long-term bonds to pay short-term expenses.

Even a sixth-grader with a C-minus in math can understand the hypothetical, fairy-tale family will soon be in big trouble unless it immediately cuts spending, especially on the frivolous stuff.

Does anyone at the Capitol understand big trouble is just around the corner if immediate spending reductions are not implemented?

Apparently not. Oh, sure, lawmakers and the government have offered some cost-cutting proposals. State agencies now will recycle paper clips, and future state employees may be unable to retire at 48 with a full and immediate pension. That will help — a quarter-century from now. (Visit the Yankee Institute's Web site, www.yankeeinstitute.org, for more examples of the state's unwillingness to make even modest spending cuts.)

When individuals and businesses use outrageous accounting gimmicks, they often go bankrupt, or they get charged with fraud. When government officials use the same gimmicks, there's not only no penalty, but there's often re-election.

I guess if you make the laws, you don't have to follow the laws.

It must be nice to live in a fairy-tale world. It must be nice to be a politician in the Nutmeg State.

Bill Dunn

[Cleo's Mom 257]

Here's a better story. Once upon a time there was a president, bush, and he inherits a surplus in the federal budget. He is warned that Bin Laden is going to attack inside the united states but he is busy clearing brush in crawford county, texas pretending to be a cowboy.

At this point the unemployment rate is 4%. :grouphug:

When bin laden does attack and kills 3000 people, this president is reading a my pet goat to school children. He doesn't react until the second tower is hit.

Using the horror of this episode to get the country to support him and through fear, he convinces everyone that the patriotic thing to do is do a pre-emptive strike on Iraq to search for phantom WMD's. He borrows the money from China to do this. Call it his war credit card.

But he does not ask the american people to sacrifice for this unnecessary war. Instead, while still borrowing from China on his credit card, he gives not one, but two tax cuts to the rich (and a few crumbs to the middle class). This is unheard of in any time of war. During times of war, taxes have been raised to pay for it. But bush, the president, continues to borrow from China for the war but now there is even less money coming in due to the tax cuts.

So guess what happens? Why, the deficit goes up. Who knew???

Now, nearly a trillion dollars later and no WMD's and 4000 soldiers dead, well Iraq can be seen as the wrong war at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. Just plain wrong.

Then this president bush makes a deal with big pharma and allows them to develop a medicare drug program that isn't paid for. But that's okay. Just more spending and debt. Cheney said deficits don't matter. He said saint ronnie proved that.

Katrina came through and once again bush was away - literally eating cake with mccain while people were dying. Oh, well, just more collateral damage.

So, now the surplus is a deficit. But we're not done. Due to the cozy relationship with wall street and the de-regulations, wall street, under bush, is playing russian roulette with our money. It causes near economic collapse so he decides to bail out the banks in a move termed TARP. mccain is tripping over himself to get back to DC to help the banks.

The unemployment reaches 8.1%. Guess those two tax cuts didn't create any jobs.

By January 2009 when Obama takes office over 8 million jobs have been lost.

Obama turns the economy around and we go from losing 700,000 jobs a month to 6 months of positive job growth. He passed health care, financial reform is on the horizon and clean energy and immigration will be addressed (bush just kicked these problems down the road).

But guess what? There are people who live in the state of selective amnesia. This is a state where people selectively forget who caused the mess and who's cleaning it up. It is caused by drinking too much of the kool aid. And it also causes them to think that electing more of the people who got us in the mess is the solution. Isn't that hilarious??

This time under bush is known as the lost decade. Our homes lost value, our paychecks lost value, our retirement savings lost value.

Well, I wish I could say they all lived happily ever after but the tea partiers would call that some socialist plot.

Edited July 13, 2010 by Cleo's Mom

[Cleo's Mom 257]

Why do you think the cost of living has been so high? Why is it that at one time, you could afford to pay your rent with just one of the 4 paychecks you got each month and now it takes 2 of them? Why is it that gasoline, electricity, groceries, Water, etc. is killing us to pay each month? Do you think that the government has anything to do with it? It does. Just HOW do you think that the federal employees get their paychecks each week? The money does not appear out of nowhere. Taxes have to be collected in some way from someone and then given to them. When those people who make alot of money pay their taxes to the government, they have to get the money from someone else. They are businessmen, and when their taxes go up, the product or service that they sell increses in price and the consumer (you and me) pay more. You and I, the little man, do not "directly" pay taxes to the government. The money is still taken from us in other ways. Either way WE pay! Yes, the government must get their money out of the community one way or another to pay these federal employees salaries. Directly from big businesses and the wealthy, which means you and I are paying for their salaries through higher cost of living. These big businesses are not going to take a loss. They will just pass their loss onto the consumer. The little people who don't pay any taxes directly to the government, they pay higher prices for EVERYTHING instead. (same thing, IMO)

All this is because for 30 years, starting with saint ronnie, the biggest heist in history has been going on right under our noses; and unprecedented transfer of wealth from the American middle class into the pockets of the super wealthy. In Eisenhower's day the super rich paid 90% of income in taxes (THIS WAS WHEN IT ONLY TOOK ONE MIDDLE CLASS PAYCHECK TO LIVE ON). Under saint ronnie he lowered the top tax rate from 70% to 28%. WOW!!! In 1976 the top 1% of Americans earned 8.9% of the income, by 2005 they earned 21.5%. From 1979 to 2005, incomes for the top 5% increased 81% while the incomes for the bottom 20%, the american workers, declined 1%.

So, you see pattygreen, the reason for all this is the republican agenda of the rich getting richer and the middle class getting screwed. It has nothing to do with federal employees or their salaries or the taxes businesses pay, blah, blah, blah, it's because america's wealth is going to line the pockets of the rich. But hey, greed is good is the wall street motto and those who support it.

Edited July 13, 2010 by Cleo's Mom

[Cleo's Mom 257]

The selective modesty of Barack Obama

By Charles Krauthammer

Friday, July 9, 2010

Remember NASA? It once represented to the world the apogee of American scientific and technological achievement. Here is President Obama's vision of NASA's mission,

:

"One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and math and engineering."

Apart from the psychobabble -- farcically turning a space-faring enterprise into a self-esteem enhancer -- what's the sentiment behind this charge? Sure America has put a man on the moon, led the information revolution, won more Nobel Prizes than any other nation by far -- but, on the other hand, a thousand years ago al-Khwarizmi gave us algebra.

Bolden seems quite intent on driving home this message of achievement equivalence -- lauding, for example, Russia's contribution to the space station. Russia? In the 1990s, the Russian space program fell apart, leaving the United States to pick up the slack and the tab for the missing Russian contributions to get the space station built.

For good measure, Bolden added that the United States cannot get to Mars without international assistance. Beside the fact that this is not true, contrast this with the elan and self-confidence of President John Kennedy's 1961 pledge that America would land on the moon within the decade.

There was no finer expression of belief in American exceptionalism than Kennedy's. Obama has a different take. As he said last year in France, "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." Which of course means: If we're all exceptional, no one is.

Take human rights. After Obama's April meeting with the president of Kazakhstan, Mike McFaul of the National Security Council reported that Obama actually explained to the leader of that thuggish kleptocracy that we, too, are working on perfecting our own democracy.

Nor is this the only example of an implied moral equivalence that diminishes and devalues America. Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner reported that in discussions with China about human rights, the U.S. side brought up Arizona's immigration law -- "early and often." As if there is the remotest connection between that and the persecution of dissidents, jailing of opponents and suppression of religion routinely practiced by the Chinese dictatorship.

Nothing new here. In his major addresses, Obama's modesty about his own country has been repeatedly on display as, in one venue after another, he has gratuitously confessed America's alleged failing -- from disrespecting foreigners to having lost its way morally after 9/11.

It's fine to recognize the achievements of others and be non-chauvinistic about one's country. But Obama's modesty is curiously selective. When it comes to himself, modesty is in short supply.

It began with the almost comical self-inflation of his presidential campaign, from the still inexplicable mass rally in Berlin in front of a Prussian victory column to the Greek columns framing him at the Democratic convention. And it carried into his presidency, from his posture of philosopher-king adjudicating between America's sins and the world's to his speeches marked by a spectacularly promiscuous use of the word "I."

Notice, too, how Obama habitually refers to Cabinet members and other high government officials as "my" -- "my secretary of homeland security," "my national security team," "my ambassador." The more normal -- and respectful -- usage is to say "the," as in "the secretary of state." These are, after all, public officials sworn to serve the nation and the Constitution -- not just the man who appointed them.

It's a stylistic detail, but quite revealing of Obama's exalted view of himself. Not surprising, perhaps, in a man whose major achievement before acceding to the presidency was writing two biographies -- both about himself.

Obama is not the first president with a large streak of narcissism. But the others had equally expansive feelings about their country. Obama's modesty about America would be more understandable if he treated himself with the same reserve. What is odd is to have a president so convinced of his own magnificence -- yet not of his own country's.

You talk about modesty? What a hypocrite. This coming from the person who claims/brags to have the one and only correct interpretation of the bible while the pope's is wrong! You could use a major dose of modesty youself. You know glass houses and stones and all that.

And Krauthammer is just another Obama hating neocon. His opinions are irrelevant.

Edited July 13, 2010 by Cleo's Mom

[Will_B_Healthy 0]

You talk about modesty? What a hypocrite. This coming from the person who claims/brags to have the one and only correct interpretation of the bible while the pope's is wrong! You could use a major dose of modesty youself. You know glass houses and stones and all that.

And Krauthammer is just another Obama hating neocon. His opinions are irrelevant.

Cleo's Mom:

You go girl. PG has too much time on her hands. I can't quite figure out if it is hypocricy or insecurity though. I left the Born-Agains forum -- I'd had one too many ladles of her BS. Now I discover she infects this forum, too, offering up the pre-chewed rather than the original; PG lets others do the heavy lifting and simply parrots. Is independent thinking so hard? (That is rhetorical question, PG. I can sense she is poised to extract that quote, ready to launch another sortie of FauxNews wit)

Looking forward to other postings, some of which may actually offer up something new and different.:grouphug:

Edited July 13, 2010 by Will_B_Healthy
Gremlins stole two words