Negotiating with Lunatics

[marshabar1]

By Carol Peracchio

One of the benefits of having been a nurse for over thirty years is that people will occasionally allow me to be brutally honest. For example, I can get away with telling an acquaintance, "God did not create gastric reflux medication just so you can eat an entire pizza and then go lie on the couch like a beached whale."

Until recently, I was willing to believe that President Obama and his party were merely way-out-leftists, even Marxists. But after listening to their response to last week's horrific economic news, I can only conclude that today's Democratic Party has lost its collective mind. In this nurse's expert opinion, Obama and the Democrats are crazy.

By "crazy," I mean looney, batty, daft, bonkers, and nutty as a fruitcake, to put it in medical terms.

And here's why she says it . . . www.americanthinker.com/2011/07/negotiating_with_lunatics.html


Expresses my thoughts exactly. This administration routinely says up is down, red is green, bad it good. It's nuts.

[thyme4change]

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[marshabar1]

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[mmhmm]

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[thyme4change]

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[mmhmm]

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[Deleted]

Right now, there are over a million construction workers out of work after the housing boom went bust, just as a lot of America needs rebuilding. We connect the two by investing in rebuilding our roads and our bridges and our railways and our infrastructure. And we could put back to work right now some of those construction workers that lost their jobs when the housing market went bust.

Now I don't know much about building roads or bridges for that matter but I have sat beside both being built in traffic jams. Oddly, not once have I ever seen a "carpenter" build a road. I've never seen any saws, hammers, nails, or lumber of any kinds being used (except for making a frame & anybody can do that it's minimum wage work). So it comes down to it (unless I'm wrong here) that the only crossover workers would be the concrete people. They usually work 1 days pouring a foundation out of the 45 days or so that a house is being built. So I guess that President Obama is right....We could put people to work building roads. On the other hand if your aim is to stimulate the economy by putting workers in the building industry to work, this seems like another shotgun approach. Spending huge amounts of money to put a few people to work.

(God I get a thrill out of the spell checker here. Every time I use it I get to click "Ignore all when Obama's name comes up. Well Ok sometimes I'm in the mood & just click Ignore on every single Obama word. .

[marshabar1]

Well, Tex, Not all construction is hammer and nails. Heavy equipment is usually used for road construction even though in Obama's mind it is shovel work. Different kind of construction.

(God I get a thrill out of the spell checker here. Every time I use it I get to click "Ignore all when Obama's name comes up. Well Ok sometimes I'm in the mood & just click Ignore on every single Obama word. .

A couple years ago a few people on boards were thinking his name coming up as a misspell all the time was a Republican plot perpetrated by MSN. ;D

[mmhmm]

I'm going to remove the off-topic posts from your thread, marsha. I apologize for the derailing. It's a good thread to discuss and deserves the chance to be discussed.

I'll leave this post here to explain the deletions.

mmhmm, P&M Moderator

[djAdvocate]

Jul 15, 2011 10:05:42 GMT -5 @marshabar1 said:

By Carol Peracchio

One of the benefits of having been a nurse for over thirty years is that people will occasionally allow me to be brutally honest. For example, I can get away with telling an acquaintance, "God did not create gastric reflux medication just so you can eat an entire pizza and then go lie on the couch like a beached whale."

Until recently, I was willing to believe that President Obama and his party were merely way-out-leftists, even Marxists. But after listening to their response to last week's horrific economic news, I can only conclude that today's Democratic Party has lost its collective mind. In this nurse's expert opinion, Obama and the Democrats are crazy.

By "crazy," I mean looney, batty, daft, bonkers, and nutty as a fruitcake, to put it in medical terms.

And here's why she says it . . . www.americanthinker.com/2011/07/negotiating_with_lunatics.html


Expresses my thoughts exactly. This administration routinely says up is down, red is green, bad it good. It's nuts.

Cantor and his tea partiers are the insane ones, imo. they have lost their collective minds.

[Angel!]

oldtex - you are forgetting about all the people that have to work on paving the roads for new housing developments, the people that pave parking lots for new offices. You are forgetting about the people that run the large equipment for foundation prep & building basements that would be equally qualified to run heavy equipment to prep roads for paving. You are also missing the jobs that require very little skill - like being a flagger.

You are also forgetting all the secondary jobs related to roadway construction - people that design the bridges, design the roadway, put together the construction plans & the city related jobs that have to approve/oversee all the work, the engineers that have to oversee the construction & verify everything is being built per the plans, etc.

I can see that there isn't a huge overlap, but I think there is more than people realize & it helped people in a lot of these professions. I also think it was one of the better solutions - it wasn't like paying for new housing developments to keep these specific people employed would be a good idea since then no one would buy the houses & the nations transportation infrastructure is in dire need of repair.

[marshabar1]

It's a gigantic overlap, Angel.

The middle and working-classes have been hammered by the Great Recession and no industry has taken it more on the chin than construction. Nationally, unemployment fell to 9.7% in January, but in construction it jumped to 24.7% from 18.7% in October. In many regions, union officials report 30% of their members are unemployed or “riding the bench.”

www.infrastructurist.com/2010/02/09/the-jobs-crisis-just-how-bad-is-it-in-the-construction-business/

This is referring to heavy construction. Roads.

TARP money was supposedly used to create shovel ready jobs but went instead to keep chosen crony union workers employed.

President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness met today in Durham, NC at Cree Inc., a company that manufactures energy-efficient LED lighting. One of the Council’s recommendations to President Obama was to streamline the federal permit process for construction and infrastructure projects. It was explained to Obama that the permitting process can delay projects for “months to years … and in many cases even cause projects to be abandoned … I’m sure that when you implemented the Recovery Act your staff briefed you on many of these challenges.” At this point, Obama smiled and interjected, “Shovel-ready was not as … uh .. shovel-ready as we expected.” The Council, led by GE’s Jeffrey Immelt, erupted in laughter.The Obama administration promised the Recovery Act (“the stimulus”) would prevent the jobless rate from going over 8%. It now stands at 9.1%.

nation.foxnews.com/president-obama/2011/06/13/obama-jokes-jobs-council-shovel-ready-was-not-shovel-ready-we-expected


Now he wants more money to work more of his magic.


Just say NO, Republicans.

[marshabar1]

If President Obama's decidedly un-presidential explosion at House Majority Leader Eric Cantor during a White House meeting on Wednesday suggests anything, it's that the stress is getting to the man.

Everything that we've ever seen suggests that the president is fairly thin-skinned. As someone who had virtually everything in his life handed to him -- and who made it nearly to the age of fifty living in isolated realms (Hawaii prep schools, Ivy League universities, Chicago Democratic politics) where he'd never have to even speak to, let alone deal seriously with, a genuine conservative -- he's not someone used to dealing with those who disagree with his premises. This gives the GOP an opening.

Politically, the Democrats still hold more power. Control of the White House and the Senate ensures that Republicans will not be able to get the sort of genuine reforms -- serious changes to entitlements, pro-growth tax reform, broad spending cuts, government reorganization -- that will genuinely end the debt crisis.

Even assuming that the president is reelected in 2012, the contours of the 2012 political battlefield make it at least a 50/50 proposition that the Republicans will control the Senate as well come January 3, 2013.

Therefore, there is little political incentive for Republicans to strike a "Grand Bargain" at the present time -- especially in light of the fact that one can be certain that, whatever its details, the media will credit such a deal to Obama and use it to kick-start the sort of "shift-to-the-center" narrative that he'll need in order to win another term. With these considerations in mind, the correct Republican strategy for the debt ceiling is to play the man, not the ball.

Gee Whiz. . . why not play the man and the ball??

[handyman2]

Except for building a house, most major construction projects are somewhere around a ten year cycle from design to start.
Lets take a new road for example. First financing, then a survey, then soil samples, then engineering plans, then right-of -way acquisition, then bid process, then the job starts, then the weather etc etc. not a fast process.
Much of this process is true of large buildings also.
The only thing that can be a short term job on roads is repaving.
The term shovel ready means all of the above has been done first.

[marshabar1]

True that handyman. Don't forget the environmental hurdles. The bigger the government the more expensive everything becomes.

And this basketball aficionado wants more money to grow government and fundamentally change US into Venezuela. What'll that do, put shovel ready 15 years out? But lots of government employees working away complicating our lives. Oy!

[jkapp]

Jul 15, 2011 11:27:26 GMT -5 handyman2 said:

Except for building a house, most major construction projects are somewhere around a ten year cycle from design to start.
Lets take a new road for example. First financing, then a survey, then soil samples, then engineering plans, then right-of -way acquisition, then bid process, then the job starts, then the weather etc etc. not a fast process.
Much of this process is true of large buildings also.
The only thing that can be a short term job on roads is repaving.
The term shovel ready means all of the above has been done first.

Very true...you can just lookup Hwy 41 in Wisconsin. When I moved back to the area in 2008 about a 5 mile stretch of Hwy 41 was under construction. Today, that same stretch is STILL under construction (with no real change in how it looks from when it was first ripped up) and the construction has grown to about 20+ miles.

Ripping up roads seems to be the only action taking place on the whole project. And now they have torn down a bridge on the northern end this year and who knows when that will be rebuilt...

Of course the construction crews are really good at driving back and forth on the ripped up sections and standing around in groups of 5 drinking coffee...union work at its best!

[chiver78]

Jul 15, 2011 11:54:25 GMT -5 jkapp said:

Jul 15, 2011 11:27:26 GMT -5 handyman2 said:

Except for building a house, most major construction projects are somewhere around a ten year cycle from design to start.
Lets take a new road for example. First financing, then a survey, then soil samples, then engineering plans, then right-of -way acquisition, then bid process, then the job starts, then the weather etc etc. not a fast process.
Much of this process is true of large buildings also.
The only thing that can be a short term job on roads is repaving.
The term shovel ready means all of the above has been done first.

Very true...you can just lookup Hwy 41 in Wisconsin. When I moved back to the area in 2008 about a 5 mile stretch of Hwy 41 was under construction. Today, that same stretch is STILL under construction (with no real change in how it looks from when it was first ripped up) and the construction has grown to about 20+ miles.

Ripping up roads seems to be the only action taking place on the whole project. And now they have torn down a bridge on the northern end this year and who knows when that will be rebuilt...

Of course the construction crews are really good at driving back and forth on the ripped up sections and standing around in groups of 5 drinking coffee...union work at its best!

um, the Big Dig. need I say more?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig
www.bigdighighwayrobbery.com/

I'm 32. I don't remember Boston before the Big Dig.

[Deleted]

Until recently, I was willing to believe that President Obama and his party were merely way-out-leftists, even Marxists.

Marxists, socialist, communist, I don't know which term is really the correct one to use because it's so early in the conversion process. I do know that I wouldn't argue with any of them being applied to the agenda being pushed through.

As for the time requirement to build road, I never thought of that. I doubt that it would bring us out of the recession any time soon (like the next 5 years). Again poor planning on a stimulus package (but I didn't think of it either). Also:

Angel your right in that it would put people to work & God know we do desperately need our interstate roads expanded & improved. Most that I have been on were 2 lanes & definitely need to be expanded to at least 3 lanes. I would just point out that carpenters are the main "workers" who work in the housing industry & that job doesn't really transfer over.

[marshabar1]

One thing is for sure, Crazy doesn't work in Washington. We need real world solutions and this isn't the guy to deliver those. He obviously doesn't even know where to start.

[djAdvocate]

Jul 15, 2011 11:07:21 GMT -5 @marshabar1 said:

The Obama administration promised the Recovery Act (“the stimulus”) would prevent the jobless rate from going over 8%. It now stands at 9.1%.

[/size][/quote]

nation.foxnews.com/president-obama/2011/06/13/obama-jokes-jobs-council-shovel-ready-was-not-shovel-ready-we-expected


Now he wants more money to work more of his magic.

Just say NO, Republicans.

[/quote]

do you realize that the unemployment rate stood at 7.6% BEFORE the first dollar of the ERA was spent?

i don't think it was a very bright thing for Obama to say. but promising 8% when unemployment was 7.6% is not something i really expect ANY president to hold to.

if you do, then that is just ducky.

[djAdvocate]

Jul 15, 2011 12:10:50 GMT -5 @oldtex said:

Until recently, I was willing to believe that President Obama and his party were merely way-out-leftists, even Marxists.

Marxists, socialist, communist, I don't know which term is really the correct one

how about "moderate republican"? unless you think Bush was a communist, of course.

[Deleted]

Now he wants more money to work more of his magic.

He DOES do magic. He can make a large amount of money disappear in a short period of time & then have nothing to show for it. I would like him a lot more though if he could figure out how to saw himself in two.

[marshabar1]

Jul 15, 2011 15:03:29 GMT -5 @oldtex said:

Now he wants more money to work more of his magic.

He DOES do magic. He can make a large amount of money disappear in a short period of time & then have nothing to show for it. I would like him a lot more though if he could figure out how to saw himself in two.

You're funny, Tex. ;D K