What is going on in Europe?

[VT-Chicklit]

CJHames wrote:
Big Daddy wrote:
VT-Chicklit wrote:
The spending that has been done since Obama has been in office is larger than what was spent on those two wars and Katrina combined. Obama has only been in office about 6 weeks, just imagine how much he and the Congress can spend in the next two years, until we can get their attention with our votes! Our voices are certainly not being heard. What we are saying is being misunderstood. When people voted for hope and change they did not mean he should apoint familliar faces to the various cabinet posts. . .They did not mean he should have all kinds of tsars having power to make key changes and over see government agencies when these tsars are not veted by the Congress, like the cabinet is. . . We did not want more tax cheats and liars added to the large group we already pay in Washington. . . Change is not saying that there will be no lobbiests in my government (paraphrased) and then giving wavers to many that are "too knowledeable" to not be postd to key jobs. . . Change is not saying that legislation with earmarks will not be signed and then parseing the word "earmark" and parseing about when a piece of legislation was started in the Congressional process instead of when it will be signed into law! Many who were hopeing for "Hope and Change" are already seeing that the "Great One" is no better and no more truthful than those who came before him! It has only been about 6 weeks since he was sworn in and he has already put us in more debt than our government did during this countries first 200 years. I think that is quite an accomplishment. Unfortunatly, that accomplishment is not one that he should be proud of.

I may be wrong, but I think the war was at about 600 billion. The bailout for the wall street guys and the banks was 760 billion. That was before Obama took office. The stimulus plan is about 879 billion if I remember right. Might be off a few billion. The budget isn't passed yet. So far Bush is the leader.

It's really strange wearing the shoe on the other foot now.

We should get back to chickens.

Wrong board BD. No chickens here.

Techincally, Obama spent the last $350 billion of The No Bank Left Behind Act. Bush left it for him. He didn't have to spend it, but let the record show O spent it.

$350 billion for Wall Street
$470 billion for FY budget just passed
$879 billion for "stimulus" - lmbo - plan
= $1.7 trillion in 6 weeks.

Whew, that's gonna make all our children & grandchildren poor. And their grandchildren and ......

CJHames, Is the money that Obama has spent on bailing out the auto industry figured in that $1.7 trillion? With so many ways to spend our money I forgot if the auto bailout was seperate or combined with some other money that they have just piddled away.

 

[Big Daddy]

Nothings been taken away yet. The bills gonna get a lot lot bigger. The economy has gotten in such bad shape since Clinton left that it may never get better. Go to more than just right wing websites and read what the economists have to say. It's real bleak. China's going down too. Pretty soon the US won't be able to borrow because nobody will have money. They're talking about the European Union going down. Japan's been in a recession for years. Send your thank you letters to Bush. Send your prayers to Obama. This isn't going away on it's own. It sounds like what Obama is doing is too little too late, It needed to be done about a year ago.

Hey maybe they're all wrong. We can always hope.

Back to bullets.

 

[CJHames]

I guess we''l have to agree to disagree over George Bush and who is to blame over the current mess. I tend to believe Schumer, Dodd, Frank and the biggest idiot in Washington (Maxine Waters) are more to blame than anyone. Carter and Clinton to be sure, but I find it hard to blame Clinton - as much as I dislike him - for wanting Americans to own homes. He didn't make a single (god or bad) loan to anyone, didn't put a gun to anyone's head to make them lie about their income and didn't force a single lender to lower their lending standards and give huge sums of money to anyone who fogged a mirror.

For the record, Bush didn't either.

The difference between Bush and Dodd, Frank and Waters is that he and several GOP congressman went to the above mentioned Dems and told them "we have a problem brewing." Barney and Ms. Waters held hearings, noted the "outstanding leadership of Mr. Franklin Raines" at FannieMae, and basically said they were picking on Mr. Raines because he was a black man.

So, I guess we can blame Bush for not wanting to go down the "race card path." Who can blame him? Who would have come to his rescue? Who would have thrown a black leader of a business under the bus? CNBC and O-lberman? Chris "It's my job to make sure this Presidency is a success" Matthews? Katie "I will destroy Sarah Palin" Couric? Charlie Gibson? Gibson doesn't even gate the date right half the time. Brian Williams? Wolf Blizter? Charlie Rose? NPR? ....

No sir, picking a fight with Maxine Waters and Congress against Franklin Raines was a losing proposition, especially with a presidential campaign coming up. Looking back, knowing what we know now (the Repubs lost the election anyway) I guess Bush himself should have gone to Capitol Hill and started a race war. But it still begs the question: who would have listened to him? Your "fair and balanced" news agencies, who have made it their sole mission in life to destroy any Republican that doesn't toe the Dem party line? If we want to save America, atleast three things must happen:

We must demand the return of fair, unbiased, professional reporting.
We must regain control of our "higher institutions of learning."
We must eliminate the Fed Reserve system.

As long as the news media are nothing more than lap-dogs for the Democratic Party and our professors get their classical training from Marx and Mao Tse-tung, we are doomed. I absolutely welcome these bankruptcies newspapers are facing. It tickles me to no end. I grin from ear to ear when I hear of another leftist publication failing, and I still have friends who are in the industry. From 1977 to 1982 I wrote for the Hanford (CA) Sentinel and the Visalia (CA) Times Delta. I got out of the business because I was tired of the liberal slant our editors had back then. I was sick of listening to them and dealing with them. That was almost 30 years ago. The level of biased reporting has increased 1,000% since then. It's become laughable.

A high school classmate and fellow editor of our HS newspaper is now an editor for the Portland Oregonian (Alex Pulaski). He emailed me the other day and told me he was worried about his job. I told him it was his fault. Why? Because liberal policies have lowered academic standards, they've removed discipline from schools and their editorial staffs have defended (endorsed) incredibly liberal politicians who have allowed tens of millions of illegal immigrants to flood our country. This has created tens of millions of people who not only don't want to read, they can't read. And their biased reporting has caused millions of conservatives (who can read) to cancel their subscriptions.

Pure genius.

The irony is that no one is watching O-lberman. His ratings are lower than Sesame Street's (and his audience is half as smart). No one watches Couric. No one is reading newspapers. There is a reason more people watch and trust Fox News. There is a reason they are profitable and the others aren't. There is a reason Dems are trying to silence Rush, Hannity, Glenn Beck and Fox News. There is a reason no one listens to NPR. It's the left that's trying to indoctrinate, trying to brainwash, trying to use Hitler-esque tactics. Trying to force us to watch and listen to one train of thought.

So we are stuck in a nasty fight. The Constitution vs. socialist thought. Freedom of speech vs. forced speech (the "fairness" doctrine). Free market principles - which I'll be the first to admit shrunk terribly under Bush - vs. government created and regulated "markets."

The democrats are declaring war on investors and producers of income in this country and the stock market is crumbling because of it. In the last two years, ever since the Dems regained control of Congress, our economy has gone into the toilet. And since we can no longer count on the news media to report the truth and can't count on an educated, diligent electorate, we must start voting with our money. Every day.

Socialist/fascists like Obama have shown they can use the media to help win elections. They have them in their pocket. They will, eventually, silence conservative speech. But the current state of economic affairs show that producers still run the world. They will withdraw capital from the system as a way of showing their discontent with policy. They will protect their investments. So the next step is direct confiscation of their wealth. That's the last step. It's over at that point.

Producers are tired of paying for those who won't. Not those who can't, I have no problem helping those who can't, but there are too many who won't. Did you know that 40,000 (out of 8.3 million) New Yorkers pay 60% of the taxes in NY?

There's a sign that sits on the Baltimore Ravens desk on NFL draft day. It says "Those who won't are no better than those who can't."

I say they're worse.

 

[me&thegals]

CJHames--You're obviously a very intelligent, well-read person. I don't suppose some on this thread will ever see eye to eye with your view of the world. I think I understand your frustration, having suffered it at times intensely myself the last 8 years.

I've not seen you contributing in other parts of Sufficient Self besides the political threads. I think your keen mind would really be quite a wonderful help in some of the other threads where folks are working on specific ways of being more self sufficient.

 

[CJHames]

CJHames--You're obviously a very intelligent, well-read person. I don't suppose some on this thread will ever see eye to eye with your view of the world. I think I understand your frustration, having suffered it at times intensely myself the last 8 years.

I've not seen you contributing in other parts of Sufficient Self besides the political threads. I think your keen mind would really be quite a wonderful help in some of the other threads where folks are working on specific ways of being more self sufficient.

Thanks. I don't mind them not agreeing with me. That's their prerogative and right as an American. I just get tired of them telling me I can't disagree with them and trying to stop conservative speech and thought.

 

[me&thegals]

I haven't seen anybody shutting down speech on this site, only when it gets really rude, which unfortunately has been happening and from a conservative contributor. I just think it starts to feel like this after a while: Anyway, I guess I will try to leave these threads alone and go back to merrily gathering SS tips

 

[Big Daddy]

Newspapers are failing because of the internet. Newspapers make their money off of advertising. Classified advertising in newspapers is all but gone. People advertise on Craigslist now for free. The advertising for department stores and such has been cut back drastically by the recession and the fact that younger people get their news from the internet. It has nothing to do with their so called leftist leanings. Incone from subscriptions barely pays for the delivery cost much less staff and overhead. I'm amused when people say that the paper had viewpoints other than my own "So I quit subscribing, I'll teach them a lesson". That's the problem now. There are so many sources that you can get the news you want to hear. You don't have to listen to the other side. You can just live in your own world the way you wish to see it. So when someone has a different opinion they are attacked.

JMO

Now back to the important stuff.

 

[Wifezilla]

Newspapers are failing because of the internet

Newspapers are failing because they no longer cover NEWS! They just regurgitate stories off of the AP wire or something they found on yahoo.

One local paper just keeps getting smaller and smaller. The stories are ones I read days earlier online. There are 300,000 people in the area and all the write about is crap I can get a million other places about celebrities, politicians, or other self important tools.

What about the people who work, live and breathe right here in Colorado Springs? You can't tell me that in a newspaper for a town that size there were only 3 things that happened locally.

Newspapers fail because they suck and are failing to adapt to new technologies.

 

[Beekissed]

That must be why our local rag does so well! No reporting on anything nationwide, only local....and I mean very local stuff. Like who went to whose home for dinner last Sunday......

 

[Wifezilla]

Exactly...LOL

My husband and I have a monthly publication and we do pretty well with our paper, but it is very specific and targeted. We just cover the local business community with an emphasis on small, independent business owners.

My girlfriend lives in Moab Utah and she loves reading her local paper. God forbid don't take a vacation or it will make the front page!

"Mrs. Smith motored to Grand Junction yesterday..."