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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bread Upon The Water who wrote (50170)	2/7/2009 10:55:27 PM
From: geode00	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

Stimulus is a broad term for government spending in one way or another. As the spender of last resort, the crafters of the bill have huge leeway to decide what is the most useful way to spend the money. Since everyone is hurting, everyone in Congress wants money to flow their way and wants it to flow immediately. There is always pork because there are representatives trying to get their way for their interests. It is pretty much a capitalist system whose more or less reasonable intentions - everyone fight for your own self interests and may the best idea win (sorta) - are corrupted by campaign financing. If you live in Miami, you want your guys and gals fighting for Miami interests and not those of, say, Michigan. I don't think of Medicaid as pork because I believe we must have single payer national health insurance for both moral and economic reasons. I don't think family planning is pork either but it is a hot button issue. I want family planning because unplanned families are unnecessary in this day and age. We want people to be responsible so let's provide the info and tools to help them be responsible. I also think there are too many human beings on this planet so I don't have a problem with family planning. The planning for the invasion of Iraq, mostly the replacing of Saddam with a more 'friendly' government, took place long before 911. 911 just baked it into the cake. The fear in the country was so strong that Bush could probably have invaded France and gotten away with it (joke). Remember how inane things became? Remember freedom fries (not a joke). People who were talking against the invasion were treated like terrorists. There was no possibility of rational debate. We ended up with pretty much the same thing after the big nosedive in the stock market after Paulson's original bailout was voted down. Fear is amazing. Scare us enough and the public will put up with anything. I'm hoping (not really a joke) that we are so scared that Obama can push through single payer national health care even if he doesn't really want to do it. As for the stimulus, we have had big tax breaks and we are in this mess. We have had much higher marginal tax rates in the past and have been in much better economic shape. The tax break argument simply doesn't hold water. People and corporations are hoarding money so the spender of last resort, the federal government, has to SPEND. We can argue about what to spend it on but time is really short. The economy has been deteriorating for over a year but it fell off a cliff about 3 months ago. We need to do something really big really soon and I don't think (a guess based on what China is doing) the plan as it is is enough especially with tax breaks sucking up much of the spending.

To: Bread Upon The Water who wrote (50170)	2/8/2009 9:17:30 PM
From: ChinuSFO	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 149317

I guess, Obama is in a hurry to turn his attention overseas. After all he has a very strong foreign policy team which includes Bill Clinton. I suppose he needs to engage Russia before he begins to engage Iran. ================================== US reaches out to Iran Published: 7/02/2009 at 10:16 PM MUNICH, Germany (AFP) - The United States cautiously reached out to Iran Saturday offering talks on Teheran's controversial nuclear programme, as Germany warned of tougher sanctions should diplomacy fail. At a major security conference in Munich, Germany, US Vice President Joe Biden said Washington was prepared to offer the Islamic republic incentives to stop uranium enrichment but stressed it faced isolation if it did not comply. Joe Biden says the new US administration is reviewing its Iran policy "We will be willing to talk to Iran, and to offer a very clear choice: continue down the current course and there will be continued pressure and isolation; abandon the illicit nuclear programme and your support for terrorism and there will be meaningful incentives," he said. The new US administration of President Barack Obama is "reviewing" Iran policy, Biden told an audience of world leaders and decision-makers in a major foreign policy address. "The Iranian people are a great people, and Persian civilisation is a great civilisation," he said. "But Iran has acted in ways that are not conducive to peace in the region or to the prosperity of its own people; its illicit nuclear programme is but one of those manifestations." The United States and its Western allies believe Teheran is aiming to develop atomic weapons under the guise of a civilian nuclear energy programme. Iran denies its nuclear programme is military in nature and has pressed on with uranium enrichment, insisting that it will be used solely for peaceful purposes geared toward electricity generation. To convince Iran to suspend enrichment, which at highly refined levels can be used to make an atomic bomb, major powers have offered it a package of political and economic incentives. Iran insists it is not trying to develop a nuclear weapon Biden's comments marked a break between Obama and his predecessor, former president George W. Bush, who once labelled Iran a member of the "Axis of Evil". US-Iran relations have been frozen for three decades. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country has joined the five permanent UN Security Council members in trying to resolve the standoff, warned Iran that diplomacy could not drag on as it has for several years. "We need to be ready for tougher sanctions," she said. "It is a must to stop Iran having nuclear weapons." But sanctions require the agreement of all five security council veto-holders, and Russia and China have proved difficult to bring on board. Russia, notably, has been building a nuclear power plant in Iran and has resisted calls for tougher sanctions, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged Moscow to help mediate with Teheran. "It's up to Russia to demonstrate what face it wants to show the world. If it wants peace, it should show it. If it wants to be a major world player, then it should help us resolve the crisis with Iran," he said. On Friday, Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani -- once Teheran's top nuclear negotiator -- railed here against past US policy but left the door ajar to the Obama administration. "If there were a change in strategy by the United States ... and they would come to the chess game, it would be in their interests and the interests of the whole region," he said. Larijani held talks Saturday with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who has been negotiating with Teheran on behalf of the major world powers. An EU diplomat said it was important to "keep the lines of communication open" with Iran, particularly as presidential elections approach. "What we need to do now is work out how we boost the sanctions, and the carrots" in the package of incentives, the diplomat told AFP, on condition of anonymity. bangkokpost.com