I’m not pleased with Congressional Democrats. If you have been reading my blog you know I’ve been railing at the hypocrisy and obstructionism of the House Republicans with regard to their obstruction of the Stimulus Bill. But as I started to learn more of the details, I began to realize that Pelosi and crew have managed to put us in a position where Republicans appear to be winning the spin game by “claiming” to be safeguarding the tax payers. How, in God’s name, could House Republicans manage to make themselves appear to be fiscally responsible while unanimously voting against a Bill we obviously need? Especially when America is losing over 100,000 jobs a week? How did the Democrats allow Republicans to have any kind of wiggle room when it’s the Republicans who created the problem and offer no solutions?
By loading up the Bill with Democrat-only pork, the House Democrats may have rescued defeat from the jaws of victory. When Republicans started to point at millions for condoms and subsidies for over-budget Hollywood movies, the Bill became a pork-barrel instead of a job stimulus. Democrats should have sectioned the bill into infrastructure, investment in new industries, and preservation of existing jobs. And then, justified each expenditure. Republicans would have had a much harder time attacking increasing Medicare funding to States to preserve health care services (and jobs) if they didn’t have money for condoms to belittle.
Now, if Obama wants a bipartisan bill he has to alter it. The Republicans will then claim more concessions and a political victory. After what the House Republicans did (i.e. get concessions and then vote unanimously against the Bill), some people argue “screw them”, take out the concessions and ram the Bill through. That’s old school. I guess the name of the game is triangulation. Republicans praise the President for trying to be bi-partisan and “claim” that they are trying to help him. Maybe Obama is playing a smart game in the Senate by cutting House pork but holding the line on Republican tax breaks. Cut the pork, but don’t give them anything significant. Now, Mr. President… that would be smart.
FiegerTime - Geoffrey Fieger's Blog 
I just wanted to say that we need more people like you that are willing to stick up for what you beleivein. My family is one of those unemployed who are loosing everything we worked hard for. The president needs to put his foot down on high
fuel cost,lowering interest rates. To me I would not have given any one of these mortgage companies or auto companies any bail out money. I heard what there wages were for 1 year and that is a shame when your company is going under. Then the bank was going to take there employee’s to Vegas. Wall Srteet employee’s got big raises and bounuses. The money needs to be spent on bring back jobs, helping are economy and somekind of medical for everyone. I pray that Obama can do this.
Yes, you’re right about the condoms, but if people, either Democrat OR Republican, were smart, they’d realize from the jump that the $360 million for condoms in the Stimulus Bill, as it was initially proposed, is small potatoes.
Check this out:
http://projects.publicintegrity.org/rx/report.aspx?aid=723
Now, Viagra and drugs like that are where the BIG money is.
It always did amaze me when so many of my female co-workers could not get their health insurance to cover their birth control pills, but their boyfriends’ viagra was all taken care of by the insurance company.
And the stuff sells, too.
This whole thing reminds me of that old internet joke about how as our population ages, and people keep taking viagra but no money is spent on research on diseases like Alzheimer’s, the world will soon be overrun with elderly people who all have hard-ons but no idea what to do with them (sorry for the unladylike language).
It seems to me like the Republicans are always overstimulated and always have a hard-on, as well as some interesting memory problems…but then, that’s just me, boring old me.
I’m just one of those party poopers who worries sometimes about stuff like undernourished and abused kids dying too young, how I will survive as I get older and whether or not I will be able to work or get any medical care at all.
@Patricia Jankowski:
“It always did amaze me when so many of my female co-workers could not get their health insurance to cover their birth control pills, but their boyfriends’ viagra was all taken care of by the insurance company.”
In this country we don’t seem to care about the end result, just an immediate result. Without easy access to affordable birth control, the population will continue to explode more than it already is. We have over 6 billion people and WE DO NOT NEED MORE! So please, people, if you’re going to have kids, make sure you actually want them and are prepared to make sacrifices for them!
Then again, the people who are thinking like that are the ones that have the fewest children and thus the only thing that natural selection has to work on these days is forgetting to use birth control or condoms. Not that I advocate eugenics, but this world’s collective IQ is going to plummet. And please don’t my words around. Like it or not, this is a profound issue and people need to start thinking about it. Really, do you want our future to look like this?:
Julie