Besides, democrats control the Senate.

Actually Ice King, You have It wrong, Democrats control the House, In the Senate Democrats have only 58 out of 100 seats.

Doesn't that give it the majority, thus some would say a controlling interest?

No, As You need 60 votes to keep a filibuster from happening(non stop talking). :D

Even if you cannot stop a filibuster, I would still call that a majority control, which I would also call a controlling interest.

But if 41 Senators decide to filibuster, then whatever legislation the 59 Senators want to pass will not make progress. It really takes a super majority to pass anything in the Senate. In a few cases you will have people vote to cut off debate (break off the filibuster) and then vote against the bill, but that is happening less and less frequently.

You need to have at least 60 votes to be filibuster proof and they did have 60, the other side only had 38.

The Democrats only have 59 votes from their party. One short of a fillibuster proof majority. So they need at least one Republican on every vote.

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BOINC WIKI

Obie rewards political doners with fat contracts in stimulus bill, go figure...

FEBRUARY 12, 2009, 3:22 P.M.ET
GE, Tech Win Big in Stimulus Bill

WASHINGTON -- High technology and diversified conglomerates that helped shape the contours of the stimulus plan emerged as big winners in the draft bill scheduled for a vote Friday.

General Electric Co., whose CEO Jeff Immelt serves as a White House adviser, will likely benefit from a dozen different provisions in the bill, from appliance rebates to water treatment spending and wind energy tax breaks. Big donors to President Barack Obama's campaign, such as Google Corp. and Microsoft Corp., stand to benefit from billions of dollars slated for technology infrastructure, environmental and educational projects aimed at improving U.S. competitiveness.

Wow, so apparently the high tech companies are getting government money because they gave money to the Democrats and Obama. I'm kinda confused now though because I was apparently under the mistaken impression that the high tech corporations like M$, Google, GE (and no doubt Boeing and a few others) were the only things keeping the US on top and had been important to US supremacy since the early 1900s... (I understand that not all of them were around, but the point still stands!)

"2008: We're rich enough that we can afford to be stupid. 2009: We're not so rich so let's be even more stupid. The Obama narrative as packaged by the American media (another all-but-bankrupt industry, not coincidentally) is very appealing. Wouldn't it be so much nicer if a benign paternalist sovereign could take care of all the beastly grown-up stuff like mortgages and health care, like he's gonna do for Henrietta Hughes, while simultaneously blowing gazillions on 'green' initiatives and other touchyfeely things? America has a choice: It can reacquaint itself with socioeconomic reality. Or it can buckle its mandatory seat belt for the same decline most of the rest of the West embraced a couple of generations back. In 1897, troops from the greatest empire the world had ever seen marched down London's Mall for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. Seventy years later, Britain had government health care, a government-owned car industry, massive government housing, and it was a shriveled high-unemployment socialist basket-case living off the dwindling cultural capital of its glorious past. In 1945, America emerged from the Second World War as the preeminent power on Earth. Seventy years later... Let's not go there." --columnist Mark Steyn

Looks like the usual politics and science still gets hit:

Now you see it… now you don’t

... a US senate committee has suggested significant cuts to Barack Obama’s $825bn economic stimulus package.

And it doesn’t look good for science — with all the extra money for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy Office of Science included in the cuts.

Well, looks like all-abouts-turn in the usual politics!

Big gains for physics as Obama signs stimulus bill

Science fared well in the $787bn package to stimulate the US economy that President Barack Obama signed into law today


Here's hoping...


Keep searchin',
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Hope 'n' Change: Third time's a charm

Didn't we do this already? Twice? President Obama has now tapped former Washington Governor Gary Locke as commerce secretary. Obama's first pick, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, bowed out due to his ties to an ethics scandal in his state, and the second pick, New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg, withdrew because of fundamental ideological differences with the administration. Locke, the nation's first American governor of Chinese descent, handily won election and re-election in 2000 and 2004 in Washington, and he's been a high-profile member of the Democrat Party throughout that time. Despite his popularity in the Evergreen State, Locke has had his share of controversy: for starters, his association with convicted Demo fundraiser John Huang, and accusations of kickbacks to family members and campaign contributors. However, Locke supports free trade, and he appears to be independent from the control of Big Labor, a rarity in the new administration.

Obama's "change" is a bear market

"Been paying your mortgage for the last 15 months -- or 15 years? Stupid. Your taxes are going to go to help pay for the guy who can't, or doesn't want to, pay his. Why should you live in a house free of fear of foreclosure if your neighbor down the block can't? By the way, as I understand it, nothing in the housing plan deals with second or third or fourth mortgages which are part and parcel of this mess. People used their house as a piggy bank and mortgage brokers kept refinancing to build the new pool, the playroom, or the home theater because the overall value of the house kept going up. What about leaving the value of your house IN your house? Nah. If you wanted a new car you redid the second on your house, used that money to buy a new Mercedes and you could drop your kids off at school in style. ... Now the repo guys have come for your car and the bank is coming for your house and Obama wants me to give up what I've earned, to pay for something you haven't, but want to keep. This is the world view of the Community Organizer: There are poor people in this neighborhood who have less than they want. There are rich people in the next neighborhood who have more than they need. If you are a Community Organizer you try and even things out. If you are the Community Organizer-in-Chief you get to do this on a national scale and that is exactly what Barack Obama is planning to do. Who is John Galt?" --political analyst Rich Galen

Listening to President Double Talk

Robert J. Samuelson
Newsweek

March 9, 2009

To those who believe that Barack Obama is a different kind of politician – more honest, more courageous – please don't examine his administration's budget. If you do, you may sadly conclude that he resembles presidents stretching back to John Kennedy in one crucial respect. He won't tax voters for all the government services they want. That's the main reason we've run budget deficits in 43 of the past 48 years.

Obama is a great pretender. He repeatedly says he's doing things that he isn't, trusting his powerful rhetoric to obscure the difference. He has made “responsibility” a personal theme; the budget's cover line is “A New Era of Responsibility.” He says the budget begins “making the tough choices necessary to restore fiscal discipline.” It doesn't.

With today's depressed economy, big deficits are unavoidable for some years. But let's assume that Obama wins re-election. By his last year, 2016, the economy presumably will have long recovered. What does his final budget look like? Well, it runs a $637 billion deficit, equal to 3.2 percent of the economy (gross domestic product), projects Obama's Office of Management and Budget. That would match Ronald Reagan's last deficit, 3.1 percent of GDP in 1988, so fiercely criticized by Democrats.

As a society, we should pay in taxes what it costs government to provide desired services. If benefits don't seem equal to burdens, then the spending isn't worth having (exceptions: deficits in wartime and economic slumps).

If Obama were “responsible,” he would conduct a candid conversation about the role of government. Who deserves support and why? How big can government grow before higher taxes and deficits harm economic growth? Although Obama claims to be doing this, he hasn't confronted entitlement psychology – the belief that government benefits once conferred should never be revoked.

Is it in the public interest for the well-off elderly (say, a couple with $125,000 of income) to be subsidized, through Social Security and Medicare, by poorer young and middle-aged workers? Are any farm subsidies justified when they aren't essential for food production? We wouldn't starve without them.

Given an aging America, government faces huge conflicts between spending on the elderly and spending on everything else. But even before most of the baby boomers retire (in 2016, only a quarter will have reached 65), Obama's government would have grown. In 2016, federal spending is projected to be 22.4 percent of GDP, up from 21 percent in 2008; federal taxes, 19.2 percent of GDP, up from 17.7 percent.

It would also be “responsible” for Obama to acknowledge the big gamble in his budget. National security has long been government's first job. In his budget, defense spending drops from 20 percent of the total in 2008 to 14 percent in 2016, the smallest share since the 1930s. The decline presumes a much safer world. If the world doesn't cooperate, deficits would grow.

The gap between Obama rhetoric and Obama reality transcends the budget, as do the consequences. In 2009, the stock market has declined 23.78 percent (through March 5), says Wilshire Associates. The Wall Street Journal's editorial page blames Obama's policies for all the fall. That's unfair; the economy's deterioration was a big cause. Still, Obama isn't blameless.

Confidence (too little) and uncertainty (too much) define this crisis. Obama's double talk reduces the first and raises the second. He says he's focused on reviving the economy, but he's also using the crisis to advance an ambitious long-term agenda. The two sometimes collide. The $787 billion “stimulus” is weaker than necessary, because almost $200 billion for extended projects (high-speed rail, computerized medical records) take effect after 2010. When Congress debates Obama's sweeping health care and energy proposals, industries, regions and governmental philosophies will clash. Will this improve confidence? Reduce uncertainty? A prudent president would have made a “tough choice” – concentrated on the economy; deferred his more contentious agenda.

Obama thinks he can ignore these blatant inconsistencies. Like many smart people, he believes he can talk his way around problems. Maybe. He's helped by much of the media, who seem so enthralled with him that they don't see glaring contradictions. During the campaign, Obama said he would change Washington's petty partisanship; he also advocated a highly partisan agenda. Both claims could not be true. The media barely noticed; the same obliviousness persists. But Obama still runs a risk: that his overworked rhetoric loses its power and boomerangs on him.

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me@rescam.org

Way to go...

"British prime minister Gordon Brown thought long and hard about what gift to bring on his visit to the White House last week. Barack Obama is the first African-American president, so the prime minister gave him an ornamental desk-pen holder hewn from the timbers of one of the Royal Navy's anti-slaving ships of the 19th century, HMS Gannet. Even more appropriate, in 1909 the Gannet was renamed HMS President. The president's guest also presented him with the framed commission for HMS Resolute, the lost British ship retrieved from the Arctic and returned by America to London, and whose timbers were used for a thank-you gift Queen Victoria sent to Rutherford Hayes: the handsome desk that now sits in the Oval Office.And, just to round things out, as a little stocking stuffer, Gordon Brown gave President Obama a first edition of Sir Martin Gilbert's seven-volume biography of Winston Churchill. In return, America's head of state gave the prime minister 25 DVDs of 'classic American movies.' Evidently, the White House gift shop was all out of 'MY GOVERNMENT DELEGATION WENT TO WASHINGTON AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT' T-shirts. Still, the 'classic American movies' set is a pretty good substitute, and it can set you back as much as $38.99 at Wal-Mart." --columnist Mark Steyn

Here he comes to save the day: "There are a lot of people out there who are desperate. There's a lot of desperation out there. Today I want them and the people like them across this country to know that I have not forgotten them." --the Almighty Barack Obama

Troubles with the media: "It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question." --Barack Obama to New York Times reporters who dared ask such a thing about his policies

The BIG Lie: "[W]e've actually been operating in a way that has been entirely consistent with free-market principles. ... The fact that we've had to take these extraordinary measures and intervene is not an indication of my ideological preference, but an indication of the degree to which lax regulation and extravagant risk taking has precipitated a crisis." --Barack Obama

Please do leave it alone: "[I]f coming in [to office] the market was doing fine, nobody would be happier than me to stay out of it. You know, I have more than enough to do without having to worry about the financial system." --Barack Obama **We'd be more than happy for you leave the financial system alone, too.

News from the Swamp: Just keep spending

This week the Senate passed and President Barack Obama signed the $410 billion omnibus bill that funds the federal government through fiscal 2009. Despite approving nearly $2 trillion in spending since October, all Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) could say was, "This has taken far too long." And it will take far too long to pay for, too.

Obama signed the "imperfect" bill, despite its 9,000 pork projects, which he himself criticized. He declared that he has a plan to curb, but not end, earmarks, though Congress understands that, as Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) put it, without a veto "he's just spittin' in the wind."

While earmarks account for only about two percent of federal spending, they are a symptom of a larger disease. Current federal spending is beyond the point of irresponsibility and corruption; much of it is patently unconstitutional. We don't have much hope that this will change for the better, either -- at least not during this administration.

One such unconstitutional expenditure, Obama's plan for re-making the American health care system, is going to cost more than first estimated. According to White House Budget Director Peter Orszag, the forecasted $634 billion over 10 years is a "significant down payment" on the plan. If that doesn't make you sick, nothing will.

we celebrated( the rest of a world), if at all, only cause now you have new much better president.

Is that opinion or fact? I forgot the difference between them.

there is no such thing as difference.

Obama signed the "imperfect" bill, despite its 9,000 pork projects, which he himself criticized.

I heard on american radio that the pork you are so concerned about was almost entirely republican pork. That should make you happier.

I love the way those guys work.
Load a bill with pork, then criticize the bill for containing that same pork.

Obama signed the "imperfect" bill, despite its 9,000 pork projects, which he himself criticized.

I heard on american radio that the pork you are so concerned about was almost entirely republican pork. That should make you happier.

I love the way those guys work.
Load a bill with pork, then criticize the bill for containing that same pork.

Yeah, it's pretty funny that a Democrat president, that has control over both houses of Congress, because they're both Democrat too, nonetheless just signed the bill.

You know. Instead of just taking all that out.

Why? Because it's all just status quo. "Yep, I hate these earmarks. They are eeeevil! Here, lemme get this signed."

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Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

Obama signed the "imperfect" bill, despite its 9,000 pork projects, which he himself criticized.

I heard on american radio that the pork you are so concerned about was almost entirely republican pork. That should make you happier.

I love the way those guys work.
Load a bill with pork, then criticize the bill for containing that same pork.

Pork is pork, doesn't matter who proposed it. The fact is Obie promised to cut "pork barrel spending". What does he do? He passes a bill with 9,000 pork projects!! He does the opposite of what he says!

Rahm Emanuel the ballerina says, "Never allow a crisis to go to waste."

"I'm trying to come to terms with Rule No. 1 of the Obama administration. 'Rule 1: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,' White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told the New York Times right after the election. 'They are opportunities to do big things.' Over the weekend, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told an audience at the European Parliament, 'Never waste a good crisis.' Then President Obama explained in his Saturday radio and Internet address that there is 'great opportunity in the midst of' the 'great crisis' befalling America. Numerous commentators, including me, have pointed to this never-waste-a-crisis mantra as ideological evidence that Obama's budget priorities are a great bait-and-switch. He says he wants to fix the financial crisis, but he's focusing on selling his long-standing liberal agenda on health care, energy and education as the way to do it, even though his proposals have absolutely nothing to do with addressing the housing and toxic-debt problems that are the direct causes of our predicament. Indeed, some -- particularly on Wall Street -- would argue that his policies are making the crisis worse. But those policies aren't the real scandal, even though they're bad enough. The real scandal is that this administration thinks crises are opportunities for governmental power-grabs." --National Review editor Jonah Goldberg

Isnt that the bush doctrine. If theirs a crisis blindly attack a country then spend like there's no tomorrow?

For those that don't know
FROM Wikipedia

National Review (NR) is a biweekly magazine and web site, founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr. in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for Republican/conservative news, commentary, and opinion."[1] It is usually considered the center of intellectual activity for the American Conservative movement in the twentieth century.

This, of course, does not answer the charges brought just informing all as to the direction the accusations are being fired. If you don't find yourself being invited to teh Conservative movements House parties then you may not actually like their way of thinking

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope