Next Time, Don’t Elect A Black Man!

WHAT!?!  HOW CAN YOU SAY SUCH A THING!???!  RACIST!!  HATER!!!1!1!

Wait.  It get’s better.  DON’T ELECT A WHITE MAN EITHER!  Don’t elect a woman.  Don’t elect a hispanic, or a lesbian, or Jew.  Don’t elect a Mormon or a Christian or a Buddhist.

Next time…Elect. A. PRESIDENT.

The criteria used to select the qualifications of those who serve in the highest offices of our lands, of those who will help frame and craft our laws, who we elect to guide the country forward and make the difficult decisions required of leaders in this day and age should have NOTHING to do with their skin color, their gender, their religion or their “cultural heritage.”

I propose that we are in the mess we are in right now because we elected a black man. Not because Barack Obama is black, but because we as a voting populace became so enamored of the idea of electing an African-American as President, became soooo fixated on the sense of accomplishment we could collectively feel at breaking through this cultural barrier into a new, undiscovered “enlightenment” that we allowed ourselves to be swayed.  We turned a blind eye to what should have been some very real concerns about this individual’s (lack of) qualifications, experiences, questionable associations and storied background, and allowed ourselves to be swept along on a carefully manipulated wave of euphoric idealism.

And so we elected a black man.  Because it made us feel good to do it.  Not because he was in any way the most qualified, not because he had any demonstrated talent or ability for the position, not because he would best be able to represent the interests of the United States on the global stage…but because he was an icon we wanted.  More than anything, I think voting for Barack Obama became a sort of social statement about our ability to somehow atone for a shameful past. {Cue Music: “We are marching to Pre-torrrria….}

There aren’t enough of any one particular minority demographic in the United States to elect a President.  Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Amerian Indians, Asians, young, old, rich, poor…we aaaalll had to play a part.  It became part of a collective social consciousness.  For some it was a chance to speak out, to elect someone they hoped would “represent their interests” better than an establishment white guy might.  For some it was, I think, a chance to show how enlightened, how tolerant, how progressive they were in bucking the existing paradigm.  Many perhaps voted for Barack Obama out of some vague sense of racial or social guilt which they felt might be assuaged or expunged if they participated in this great social awakening.  Of course, many just bought into the class warfare schtick he was selling and wanted the free stuff he was offering.

NONE of which is a very solid foundation for picking a candidate for the office of the President of the United States.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’ve got absolutely no problem with either the idea or the practical reality of someone who is black becoming president.  You put a Herman Cain, Clarence Thomas or an Alan West or maybe even a a Condolleza Rice in there and hey, they’ve got my vote.  Why?  Because I like their politics.  Their personal philosophy resonates with me. I can look at a record of accomplishments which suggest to me a level of overall professional competence which grants me a sense of confidence in their ability to handle the demands of the position.

Not because of, or in spite of their skin color.  Or their gender.  Or their religious beliefs.  Because I think they are the most qualified, and so that other stuff SHOULDN’T MATTER. Right?  Isn’t that what true equality is really all about?  Shouldn’t THAT be considered the truly “enlightened” approach?

So, I hope we’ve learned our lesson.  As we sit mired in double digit unemployment, as our national debt continues to skyrocket, after six years with no signed federal budget and a sequestration which imposes daily pain on the infrastructure of this nation while the President golfs and vacations, I hope our euphoria has faded.  I hope our guilt-motivated idealism has moderated a bit.  I hope that when the times comes again, whether on the local or national stage, we don’t elect a black man, or a white man, or a woman, or a {fill in the blank}.

I hope we wise up and elect the people MOST QUALIFIED to lead this country, regardless of how their chormosomes are configured.

Things you aren’t hearing from CNN & MSNBC

Via Drudge…

IG: White House ‘Made it Impossible’ to Pursue Lead in Fast and Furious Probe

IG report on Fast And Furious directly implicated the White House, and open wonders why more people aren’t being prosecuted for malfeasance.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ig-white-house-made-it-impossible-pursue-lead-fast-and-furious-probe

 

Median Income in Ohio Hits 27 year low

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2011/09/14/median-income-in-ohio-hits-27-year-low.html

Ohio households were poorer last year than they’ve been in more than 25 years, and the number of people living in poverty is higher than it’s been in more than 30 years, according to a census report released yesterday

 

The Myth of the Rock Star Professor

http://washingtonexaminer.com/chapter-ii-the-myth-of-the-rock-star-professor/article/2508418

And, unlike others on the Chicago Law School faculty who published numerous articles in legal journals, Obama’s byline did not appear in a single legal journal while he taught there.

Obama wasn’t a professor; he was a lecturer, a position that the Chicago Law School said in 2008 “signifies adjunct status.” He was elevated to a “senior lecturer” in 1996, the year he was first elected to the Illinois Senate in Springfield.

 

The United States of Obama?

There is a disturbing trends in Obama’s cult of personality, a trend started as far back as his first campaign for President.  His use of the ol’ Red, White and Blue to evoke a sense patriotism along with personal logo.  Unfortunately, more and more, his campaign has felt free to adopt imagery and slogan clearly copied wholesale from many of histories failed Marxist experiments.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I honestly have to wonder if he gets re-elected, if we can expect a bid to have his face on stamps and currency before the year is out.  He clearly sees himself as this visionary, the revolutionary who will right the wrongs of capitalist excesses….as his forebearers attempted to do.

Thanks, but no thanks, there B.O.

 

 

The Oppulent Lifestyles of the 1%

Michelle’s ski trip marks 16 Obama vacations (costing millions of dollars)

You know, I think we’re all grown-ups here, and I don’t think any of us begrudge the leader of the free world and his family a little time off now and then.  I’m even willing to suggest that, despite our rough-n-tumble anti-aristocratic roots, we are more than willing to allow the Commander In Chief to engage in a certain amount of pomp and ceremony as part of the Presidential milieu.

The problem comes when you have a man so completely devoted to fomenting class warfare, so completely dedicated to painting the current socio-political/economic environment as a case of “Us v. Them”, clearly painting himself with an “Us” colored brush, who then turns around and flagrantly engages in such oppulent self-indulgence.  There’s taking some well-deserved time off (time which fewer and fewer of us can afford to take these days), and then there’s soaking the US Taxpayer for millions of dollars to support your whimsical flights of fancy for you and 24 of your family and friends on a junket to Rio, or Hawaii, or Indonesia or Vail or…shall I continue?

You can’t point to G.W. Bush and say, “Yes, but HE did it too, and worse!” if you ran on a platform of being everything Bush wasn’t, and not being everything he WAS.  If Obama made his case to the American people as being their advocate, by promising to “Change” all the selfish, destructive and wastefully expensive things G.W. is supposed to have done, then HOW does B.O. justify the lavish, jet-setting lifestyle he and his family are maintaining?

He doesn’t justify it.  Because he doesn’t think he needs to.  He thinks he’s entitled to it because he’s the President, and the “Magical Negro” who can be both the voice of the downtrodden minority AND the darling of the gilded Hollywood millionaires, all with no appearance of contradiction or cognitive dissonance.  Why? Just because, that’s why.  And don’t ask me again. Hater.

There is a strange sort of fugue or delirium which seems to have dropped across the eyes of so many of America’s voters, who seem fundamentally unable to ascribe anything but the noblest of intentions to Mr. Obama, forgiving any misstep or mistake, chuckling with a smirkish disregard and a dismissive, “Oh that silly thing?  Pshaa.  He gave us Health Care, didn’t he?!”  This guy is more President Teflon than Bill Clinton was.

Even as we head into the meat of the 2012 election season, there is almost no talk of any Democrat trying to run against him.  He’s the presumptive nominee, who apparently still enjoys the annointing  of the media and political elites who can envision nothing more ideal than four more years of his regal beneficence and royal patronage.  Despite all the actual evidence of policies and conduct bordering on malfeasance, Obama still seems surrounded by this glimmering shield which protects him from any criticism, stigma, or potential responsibility for the calamaties he is surely bringing about. 

Pres. Obama is quoted as saying, “I think at some point, you’ve made enough money.”  Well perhaps, Mr. President, we should amend this to say, “I think at some point, you’ve gone on enough vacations.”

Or, you know, fundraisers sandwiched conviently between a couple of meet-and-greets so that he can justify using taxpayer funds to support his campaining, in likely violation of campaign finance laws. 

But hey.  It’s good to be King.

Obama “willing to work” with Congress. Mostly. Ish.

White House: When Congress Won’t Cooperate, Obama Will Take ‘Small, Medium and Large’ Executive Actions

Carney said the president wants to work with Congress, but if the House and Senate don’t, Obama will.

“He’s going to take the actions that he can take using his executive authority to help the cause here, to help Americans deal with this challenging economy. And they can be small, medium or large actions and they don’t have to be just executive authority actions,” Carney continued. “They can be things we can do working with the private sector. So he’ll pursue all tracks.”

Carney added the president still would like to work with Congress (emphasis mine).

 “But it is not accurate to suggest that he doesn’t want to engage with Congress and that he won’t engage with Congress,” Carney said. “He wants to continue to work with Congress. He and his advisors believe there will be opportunities to cooperate with Congress this year. We believe, as a purely political matter, that some members of Congress that have pursued an obstructionist path may begin to see it in their political interest to actually demonstrate to their constituents that they can get some things done.”

To me, the two bolded passages reflect a strange perception on the part of our current President that working “with” the Senate and the House of Representatives is somehow optional.  That it’s sort of the preferred method, but by no means the only method of getting legislation passed and implementing national, federal policy in this country.

In other words, Congress has relevance only as long as the Emperor deigns to give it such.  If it gets in his way, gets inconvenient, slows down his agenda, well then it’s time to shoulder the thing aside and get down to the real business of running this country the way HE thinks it oughta.

Folks, anywhere else, that’s called either a monarchy, or a dictatorship.  And for all their talk about George Bush and his “imperial” presidency, I see President Obama showing a much more overt, fundamental, and arrogant disregard for the rule of law and the concept of separation of powers than any previous member of the White House.

Congress is explicity empowered and mandated BY THE CONSTITUTION as the body which make the laws in our country.  NOT THE PRESIDENT.  If the President is only willing to work with the Congress when they are doing what he wants, then they are no longer “of the people, by the people, for the people,” but rather, merely the steno pool for the CEO.

Scary, scary stuff.

via Protein Wisdom.

How much is a trillion dollars? – Updated

If you haven’t seen it already, the UK Sun does a great job of breaking down how much actual money is a “trillion” dollars:

72 years to print a trillion dollars

The US Bureau Of Engraving And Printing produces 38million notes a day, so printing one trillion new notes from scratch and working seven days a week would take just over 72 years.

If the world’s leaders spent the one trillion dollars at the rate of a dollar a second, they would still be spending it in 31,689 years. On the other hand, if they want to get through it all within ten years, they would need to spend 3,169 dollars a second.

It also costs 6.4 cents to print each note – so it’s a good job the massive sum will be passed on electronically.

Otherwise there would be a 64billion dollar black hole in the leaders’ historic bailout package, which would rather defeat the point.

Pretty disturbing, all in all.  How many tons of paper, gallons of ink?  In a way it’s too bad that most of these transactions take place electronically.  If Obama had to print it all off, the environmentalists never would have let the thing pass.  It would have killed too many trees!

UPDATE:

A trillion dollars in $1 bills would weigh approximately 1.1 Million TONS!

A Nimitz-class aircraft carrier weighs in at around 97 thousand tons.

So, doing the math, $1 Trillion dollars in $1 dollar bills would weigh more than 11 aircraft carriers!

Keep in mind that Obama’s Spendulous deficit is forecast to be as much as 7 TRILLION or higher.  So, 77 aircraft carriers stacked up.

That’s a helluva lot of money.

Or, how about this:

If we figure that 1 ton of uncoated virgin (non-recycled) printing and office paper uses 24 trees, and figuring that since money is printed on some pretty high-end paper that this is probably a fair equivalent, that means that, printing off 1 trillion dollars in $1 dollar bills would require 26,400,000 trees!

Cap and Trade Passes

This is what a Democratically controlled congress gets you.

Cap and Trade in all it’s glory. Hello $5 a gallon for gas, and double or triple your electricity bill in the next 10 years.

Bastards.  We are so phuq’d.

Media Coverage of TEA Party Protests – Compare and Contrast

Well, on CNN, the Tea Party protests got only one link, but amazingly enough, the article was balanced, fair, and by no means a hit piece.  I encourage you to read it.  It lays out the basics of what the protests are about, and even seems to paint them in if not a positive light, then at least in neutral terms.

Nationwide ‘tea party’ protests blast spending

However.

Let us compare that article to this one from that bastion of journalistic objectivity, MSNBC.

 Anti-tax ‘tea parties’ being held across U.S.
Obama aims to ease dread of deadline day, vowing ‘simpler tax code’

Notice how they manage to toss a puff for Obama into the Headline?

Also notice that the Page Title in the HTML actually says, “Anti-tax ‘tea parties’ vent anger across U.S.”  The anger part becomes important pretty quickly. I’ll just highlight in bold all the fun, inflammatory terms and polarizing language:

Whipped up by conservative commentators and bloggers, tens of thousands of protesters staged “tea parties” across the nation

Whipped up. As in, into a frenzy.  At least they didn’t downplay the numbers, got to give them that.

Protesters even threw what appeared to be a box of tea bags over the fence onto the White House grounds, causing a brief lockdown at the compound before the package was declared not dangerous.

The assumption being, of course, that something the protestors threw over the fence would be dangerous.  Which, if it “appeared to be tea bags”  would, I propose, be a bit of stretch, wouldn’t you think?  Unless of course it fits your narrative.

Shouts rang out from Kentucky,

Looks a bit like “shots rang out,” doesn’t it?

“Frankly, I’m mad as hell,” said businessman Doug Burnett at a rally at the Iowa Capitol, where many of the about 1,000 people wore red shirts declaring “revolution is brewing.”

That’s right.  Angry, red-shirted Iowans warning of revolution.  Hey, maybe that DHS report was right!?

Texas Gov. Rick Perry fired up a tea party at Austin City Hall with his stance against the federal government, as some in his U.S. flag-waving audience shouted, “Secede!”

Not just revolutionists, but successionist as well!  The way this is worded, does it not give the impression that Texas Gov. Rick Perry might tacitly approve this sentiment, as it is “HIS” flag-waving audience?  Not THE audience, but HIS audience.  A subtle but grammatically significant difference.

Other protesters also took direct aim at Obama. One sign in the crowd in Madison, Wis., compared him to the anti-Christ.

Don’t forget rabid, fundie Christians.   “Taking direct aim” at Obama.  I believe they use to call this sort of thing “yellow journalism.”  Now they just call it, well, MSNBC.

Jim Adams of Selma carried a sign that showed the president with Hitler-style hair and mustache and said, “Sieg Heil Herr Obama.”

Must have changed the name on one of the Code Pink signs, I guess.

To be honest, I can’t tell if the penner of this AP piece was simply trying to present a sense of the moral outrage of the participants, but I doubt it.    The use of such charged terms as “whipped up” and “shouts rang out” do more than convey intensity…the suggest a frenzy, the possibility of violence.  Which is at odds with the vast majority of other reporting on the events out there.

The movement attracted some Republicans considering 2012 presidential bids.

Really?  Like who?

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich planned to address a tea party in a New York City park Wednesday night. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal sent an e-mail to his supporters, letting them know about tea parties throughout the state. South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford attended two tea parties.

These three have all expressed interest in running in 2012?  Who knew?

To me, giving cherry-picked statements from isolated firebrands equal time with the more common tone of frustrated but motivated political activism in the name of “balance” really isn’t.  It makes it appear that this undercurrent of revolutionary fervor was a common theme, which it is not.

The TEA Parties are really just about getting the government back on track, under control, and accountable to the people again.  Rather than the other way around.

Folks, all you have to do is look at the pictures from the various Tea Party rallies, and then compare and contrast the pictures over at ZombieTime from a series of Lefty proteests, to see what a fallacy it is to be so cautionary against “conservative” activism.  The Radical Left long ago cornered the market on crazy.

The Rise of the Obamessiah.

Throughout his ascendency to the presumptive nominee for President during the recent campaign, Obama, or perhaps more accurately, Obama’s crack media and PR machine, built a groundswell of enthusiasm which soon bordered on euphoria.  Through deft manipulation of images and soundbites, along with the willing collusion of the media, seasoned liberally with generous dashes of Bush-bashing, Barack Obama was propelled to almost rock-star status in a very short period of time.

He came from essentially nowhere…an ill-recognized first-term Senator with a mediocre voting record and no significant achievements to single him out from the crowd.  Suddenly, he was riding a wave of popularity and fervent adulation so broad, so deep, and so completely unexpected that it left many an observer stunned, bemused, and more than a little suspicious.  The meteoric rise to fame, especially one so completely at odds with anything in his background to justify such fervent devotion, lent more than one conservative commentator to draw parallels to the equally sudden and similarly inconceivable rise to national fame of an unkown corporal in 1930’s Germany.

The detractors on the political Left poo-poo’d such comparisons, invoked Godwin’s law, and surmised that after eight years of Pres. Bush’s “failed policies,” people were just refreshed by a fresh face and fresh ideas.   But’s it’s gone far beyond that now.  Has for quite a while in fact.

In a Jan. 21st CNN article entitled, “Black first family ‘changes everything’,” we see the Obamas painted as a sudden and convincing role model for black families, where before there were none.  Until now, it asserts, black families have been woefully misrepresented, or at best, suffered under their own, self-imposed mediocrity.

America has often viewed the black family through the prism of its pathologies: single-family homes, absentee fathers, out of wedlock children, they say. Or they’ve turned to the black family for comic relief in television shows such as “Good Times” in the ’70s or today’s “House of Payne.”

But a black first family changes that script, some say. A global audience will now be fed images of a highly educated, loving and photogenic black family living in the White House for the next four years — and it can’t go off the air like “The Cosby Show.”

The essence of this sentiment is apparently that, until now, black families have only risen to the level of that portrayed of them in the media. That they’ve suffered under a global stigma of poverty, broken homes, and eubonics.  Now, with this new, “positive” portrayal of a loving, solid, black nuclear family, black families are now free to strive for a greater standard.  Or something.

The relationship between Obama and his wife may help untangle some of that pathology, some black commentators say.

Because only now, now that the Obamas are, can decades of afro-american family dysfunction be truly addressed.

Several black women actually sighed as they talked about how much Obama seems to touch his wife and exchange soulful glances with her in public. They said Obama will show young black men how to treat women — and young black women how they should be treated.

Morgan Freeman couldn’t do it.  Bill Cosby couldn’t do it.  Scores of other black thinkers and philosophers who exhorted their culutral brethren to stay married, to turn away from drugs or gang violence, to build a strong self-identity that didn’t revolve around racial guilt or some nebulous “legacy” of slavery have now all been marginalized in favor of a new, true example for the black demographic to emulate.  Barack and Michelle Obama {{swoon}}.

Brea, the writer for EbonyJet.com, is the daughter of a white mother and a Haitian-American father. She says she felt pressure to claim one race growing up. She never quite felt like a full citizen.

Obama’s biracial background and his “exotic” upbringing relieves her of that pressure. Obama will help other blacks who come from multiracial backgrounds and immigrant communities to be comfortable in their own skin, she says.

Again, we see this strange sentiment at play such that only through the example and influence of Barack Obama can mixed-race Americans truly feel acccepted.  Nothing else has worked until now.  They struggled with their self-image and self-acceptance until BARACK came along.  Now it’s suddently “okay” to be black, or bi-racial, and you don’t have to feel like a second-class citizen anymore.

Again, in this fawning review of “Slumdog Millionaire” by the British Telegraph, every good and noble and refreshing element in the film is somehow tied to the new idealism which has sprung up around Barack Obama.

And in that single word {love} lie the key qualities of Slumdog Millionaire. It does not have an ironic moment. It is utterly devoid of cynicism. Instead, it is bright-eyed, optimistic – idealistic, even. To generations reared on a drip-feed of corrosive cynicism, the elevation of greed for greed’s sake and weary disillusion with our leaders and our institutions it feels almost shocking.

Yet maybe we’re ready for it. We saw these laudable qualities in the hundreds of thousands of people (most of them young) who toiled to elect Obama. Those whose work limits them to poring over the minutiae of life in Washington’s Beltway and the Westminster village have already been murmuring that this idealism looks like naïveté. Yet look where our defensive cynicism has landed us: maybe we do need to look at the world anew.

Next week, millions of Americans – and no doubt hundreds of thousands of Britons – will cluster around television sets to watch the inauguration of Barack Obama, whose election victory is rooted in the notion that while the world may be troubled, complex, and even ugly, our best instincts can help make it better. Slumdog Millionaire – a truly remarkable film – is rooted in that same idealism.

As Christians, we should be leery of such sentiments.  Putting all our faith in one man, depending on one man for our provision, our faith in the world, or emotional sustenance or our hope for the future is idolatry unless that man is Jesus Christ.  In Proverbs 3:5-6, we are told:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart And do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight.

The “He” in this passage is clearly God, not Barack Obama.  There is a very real and present danger in putting your faith and hope for your future and well-being in the hands of one man.  Not only does this give one man more power over your life than you should be willing to give up, but you will inevitably be disappointed when that man proves himself to be all too human.

The moment we give the man who is President the power to be our Savior, we elevate him beyong a mere elected official, and make him our spiritual stand-in.  We give him undo power to speak into and control our lives.  We credit his judgement to be superior to our own, his values worthy to supplant our own, his demands sufficient to supercede our desires.

The strange, almost reverent way in which many people seem to describe Barack Obama, the assumption of some implicit goodness and the idealistic fervor with which many seem to follow him suggests an almost cult-like obsession. 

A Cult can be defined as: “…any group of persons devoted to a charismatic leader(s) who changes their outlook and behavior by transmitting his/her values and views and perhaps a kind of “energy,” spiritual or otherwise. ” *  Hmmm.

Before you dismiss the “cult” label out of hand, first examine some of the “warning signs” of cult behavior:

• Adherents who become increasingly dependent on the movement for their view on reality (!!!)
• Important decisions in the lives of the adherents are made by others
• Making sharp distinctions between us and them, divine and Satanic, good and evil, etc. that are not open for discussion (Bush evil, Obama gooood)*
• The spiritual group uses a special set of rules that you must obey or be cast out (Oppose Obama?  RACIST!)*
• The spiritual group demands that you give up as much of your assests and your yearly income to it as possible. (kinda funny, but not…”spreading the wealth around”)
• The spiritual group demands that you accept its teachings without reservation, even when those teachings are in direct conflict with your understanding of basic scientific knowledge (global warming, stimulous package).
• Provide an authority figure that everyone seems to acknowledge as having some special skill or awareness  (!!!)
• Provide a philosophy that seems logical and appears to answer all or the most important questions in life
• Promise instant or imminent solutions to deep or long-term problems (!!!)
• The leader sets forth ethical guidelines members must follow but from which the leader is exempt (72 in the White House?  Sure….no prob.  I’ve got the carbon offsets to back it up)

Barack Obama is not the savior of this nation.  He is not the Moses who will lead us to a promised land, or a Savior who will redeem us from our collective national sins.  He is just a man.  One third of the triad making up our separation of powers.  To grant him any more power or authority – legal, spiritual, or otherwise – than that is to set ourselves on a very dangerous path towards the kind of oligarchical centralization of power so many accused George Bush of attempting, and against which our Founding Fathers spoke so stridently.

Ah may naht be thu smahtest mahn….

..but Iz hasta wonder just how exactly gifting 3.4 Billion dollars of tax money to non-profit organizations…who by law pay little to no taxes…stimulates the economy.  The E-C-O-N-O-M-Y.

Once more, for the learning impaired:  Giving money to NON–profit organizations to stimulate the ECONOMY.

Profit.  Economy.  See what I did there?  Groups which are forbidden by law from making a profit, stimulating the economy.  Do I need to break it down any farther for anyone?

IDIOCY!

Oh, but wait.  We’re also apparently spending four billion to: 

be used for neighborhood stabilization activities related to emergency assistance for the redevelopment of abandoned and foreclosed homes.

How do you put “emergency” and “redevelopment of abandoned homes” in the same sentence?  Is this some sop to the Katrina folks, who after three and a half years haven’t fixed their own homes?  If so, how is it now suddenly an “emergency?”  If a house is abandoned, just who exactly are we renovating it for?  Next question:  Once it is renovated/restored/remodeled, WHO GET’S THE MONEY FROM ITS SALE?  The bank who holds the paper on it?  So we are taking tax money and giving it to banks?  To stimulate the economy.

Let me break this one down for you, too.   If a house is in a neighborhood or area where the people cannot afford to fix or maintain it, or in such a shitty area that the previous owners said screw this, and moved out, HOW IN THE HELL DO WE EXPECT ANYONE TO BUY IT ONCE WE FIX IT UP?  If they can’t afford it now, will they be able to afford it once we remodel it and increase it’s market value by 30-50%?

Foreclosed homes can be purchased from the banks for pennies on the dollar, if you know what you’re doing.  Many people make quite a living “turning” these kinds of homes.  The fact that there are homes out there NOT being snatched up, means that they aren’t in a marketable area.  Which means that they will sit empty, beautiful, but empty, until the locals break in, steal all the new fixtures and paint graffiti all over the new paint job.  And then it’ll look just like everything else in the neighborhood, again, but you’ll have spent millions feeling better about yourself because you “did something.”

Once more, for the brain-damaged:  If you rebuild a crack house in a dead-end neighborhood, all you’re going to do is give the crack heads a nicer place to crash.  Which is nice.  But ultimately unproductive.  And just how much of this money goes for the “administration” of the program, and how much, ultimately, will ever make it into the pockets of people actually swinging hammers and hanging sheet rock? 

Yeah, I think you and I both know the answer to that one.

Oh, and the millions of this “stimulus” package that will pay for abortions and birth control?  Now you know how the Dems are going to pay for this “universal health care for children.”

By reducing the number of children they have to cover!  INGENIUS!  People this smart should CLEARLY be running the world.  I’m so happy that Obama won, I may just spontaneously evolve into a higher life form.

You know, a progressive.