I love the national budget/tax return analogy. Oy.

I think you prob remember we're military. Daily up close views of families already drowning in the underlayers of fiscal gov't mismanagement… I remain hopeful and hands on. But, I see the headlight.

Just a mention: I note too, because military brings servicepeople together from many different economic backgrounds, one of the other under-reported stories in big media is how very much well off people and their families help others in need. So very much, in my experience. And in so many different ways. I've also been researching how much corporate gives in program support to others; was just talking to a Coor's exec. It is huge. The facts of the Ken Lays and the Chainsaw Als of the world are despicable. But, I also see the immense good done by many corporations, regardless of whether 'red or blue' or neither, or both.

I find I'm drifting way off original topic of Jill's post, so I'll end here

thanks
dr.e

Get ready to see New York join Michigan and other places in exporting jobs and people. (See New York news below.)

If we hear Obama say New York or the city should get “help” from Washington, he doesn't deserve to be elected. Not the Big Three, not self-destructive Blue Nation. But of course many in New York would demand a bailout (”rescue” if you want to be dramatic, or “meeting the nation's responsibilities” if you want to be silly as well as dishonest) as many believe this is when government growth is needed most of all.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/nyregion/29pa...

My underlying critique of this is based in one irrefutable fact. We are going to have close to a 600 billion dollar deficit come next year. Taxing the crap out of the rich and then just giving it back to the poor in the form of these policy proposals will not solve the budget deficit.

Therefore I refuse to even give this the time of day. Good or bad is not relevant given a 10 trillion dollar national debt and a 600 billion one year deficit.

dr.e

So – what would yours look like?

Then this. He could not sway from his socialist roots for longer then a few weeks before diving headlong into the far left/socialist agenda and bathing himself in the warm fuzzies that welfare provides.

Actually, Obama in practice has been more pragmatic than that, just as he has shown a more moderate than insane stance on Iraq, FISA, etc. — at least he has made reassuring statements (who cares if it offends Move On, ANSWER, and the real Commies and other equivalents in this country).

What Michelle Obama did reveal is retarded, retrograde thinking and recycling of stuff going back to the stupidity of the Sixties, which not only featured radicalism and strife and degeneracy of liberalism, but also excess ambition and conceit as well as naivete and typical business-and-industry-bashing (and expecting lifetime employers to be paternalistic or materialistic in addition to having government be that way).

Do we want a retreat to more regulation and economically punitive and destructive ways, a revisitation of the Carter era economy, a problem-ridden economy made much worse, stupidly by intention?

As for Realist, within only a few years of Great Society generosity, we saw in New York City, crown jewel of liberalism (led to bankruptcy from liberalism eventually), the following:

“Each of these [five] children has a different daddy. It's my job to have them, Mr. Mayor, and it's yours to care for them!”

Childishness personified.
My grandchildren outgrow it.

Why is the left so logic-challenged?

What was on this list of goodies of Obama's, in addition to constituting regurgitated old nonsense, is a set of items that would be propitious only if you wanted to harm an economy that already is suffering and ideas that would be bad and be rejected (as they wisely have been before) under normal, sane circumstances?

“Do nothing is hardly an unidiotic plan to improve one darmed thing on the gripe list. “

“Do something” is not rigidly and instictively (and childishly) defined as offering more entitlements to buy votes that are paid for at least initially by economically destructive and unsound policies, or from the potential recipients: “GIMME, NOW!”

What more is needed to know then to look at your point of View Chris. You want welfare and you want to punish the corporations and rejoice when they go bankrupt?

Is that not communism?

A vote for Obama is a vote for Socialism in America. What more evidence do we need then this??

Obama is a commie!!!!! And he's black!!!! And probably gay!!! And he doesn't wear a flag pin!!!

You're just being absurd. Again, I've noticed that you don't seem to mind when our government SOCIALIZES the dangers of big business, Fannie Mae, Bear Stearns, AT&T, etc. But god forbid we ever try to give a helping hand to poor people. No, we should save our largess for Wall Street investors and CEOs.

Nothing government in this country is going to do will stop poverty. However it is clear the the far left wants socialism and this proposal by Barak Obama and his good wife Michelle wants this country to be like his Buddies in Germany.

Socialist. Perhaps he should form his own party. The Socialist Progressive Party and run on the platform we all know is lurking behind that moderate, lets all get along mentality.

A vote for Obama is a vote for Socialism in America. What more evidence do we need then this??

I do also remark, how little concern is displayed for the opposite end of the scale: what can only be called corporate welfare, without a shred of a responsibility or self reliance requirement.
More grist for that psychologist, I would say.

You say Michelle Obama's pan is idiotic.
And your plan is what – shout from a mountain top: ' Okay, people, everyone be responsible!” ????
IThat's hardly realstic, realist.

Here is the gem: “Decrease the number of children needing assistance, and reverse the current dependency mess the country has.”
A wonderfu idea, begging the question: How? Forced sterilization? Infanticide?
Incarcerating young, poor women in men-fee nunneries? Remember, all those programs will cost, as well.

That there have been poorly executed programs in the past , there is no doubt.
There have been poorly executed wars. There have been porly executed contracting mechanisms. There are poorly concieved criminal laws, by which a minor crime can result in a long prison sentence, removing a potentially responsible father from the scene. There have been poorly executed everything.
Listing all gripes is a satisfying experience, perhaps, but what, REALISTICALLY, speaking, is the solution?

Do nothing is hardly an unidiotic plan to improve one darmed thing on the gripe list.
it's a prescription for continuing, exponentially, on the status-quo trajectory.