The Inaugural address of President Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States.
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Bill Manzi.com 
Your Honor,
Now his performance will be judged on his earthly results.
Jules
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Jules,
The Almighty is never judged by earthly achievements. Welcome back! We have all missed you.
Bill
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Your Honor,
Felt it was better to move to the high ground to avoid the political tsunami that was to come with the Obama inauguration.
I was correct in view of the blizzard of entries by his fawning blog people.
Now he enters a different world as he drives his socialist agenda, I will comment.
Jules
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Mr. Speaker:
Don’t you remember that there’s an old saying:
“Everyone’s a capitalist on the way up and a socialist on the way down.”?
Nice to see you again. Trust you’ve slept well over the last few days!
-FM
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Fred,
I lived in a “News Free” Zone.
I now will watch this fellow and comment as he drives a socialist, racist agenda. Check out Robert Reich’s testimony on the WPA project.
I’ll find the URL and post it below. It’s scary.
Jules
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Fred,
watch this video. Listen to his words. The future is explained.
Jules
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Mr. Speaker:
I’ve now watched the video, and the added annotations, but I think they are an extreme reading of what’s being said.
I think the gist of the testimony by Mr. Reich is that stimulus should be going to the places where people are hurting the most, which serves to keep them in houses with food on the table. You may agree or disagree, but I think the point he’s trying to make is that stimulus money shouldn’t be going to people who are still doing OK, if hanging on.
Mr. Reich does make an unfortunate allusion to “white construction workers”, which I find somewhat offensive. Having read a lot of his stuff directly, however, I really do not believe his motivation is racist in nature. I’ll be very surprised if he doesn’t move to clarify his statements in the coming days.
Note also two things:
1) It appears that the stimulus package that Obama is proposing IS heavy in science, not just in physical infrastructure. DOE / National Labs getting chunks to begin to solve the energy infrastructure problem. Good news on the science front, and we’re not just building bridges.
2) Mr. Reich does not belong to the administration, he is acting as an external advisor. You can accuse him of many, many things, but from his days as a labor secretary, never that he is not on the side of the American worker (and sometimes fanatically so).
Certainly the future is uncertain, and actions are being taken to avoid issues that were blamed for making the 1929 crash worse. I’m not yet sure how ugly the future may get, but I think so far, what I’ve heard and seen seems reasonable.
BTW: if you haven’t already, pick up a copy of Galbraith’s “Crash of 1929”. It’s a worthwhile read in these troubled times, and it’s pretty short.
And, if you want to directly read Mr. Reich’s writings …
http://robertreich.blogspot.com/
-FM
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Fred,
I am very familiar with Mr Reich’s opinions. That you find nothing in what he says that does not smack of racial and class agendas, is indicative of your left leaning politics.
As a conservative I find these comments socialistic, and dangerous to our freedom considering the politics of our new president. I believe his politics nicely jibes with yours.
Mr Reich does have the ear of the president, but maybe he’s just too radical to be considered for his staff.
Why Mr Reich would have to moderate his opinion, which even you find “somewhat offensive”, when he has been building these ideas all his liberal life. These are his core beliefs.
As far as Mr.Galbraith’s scholarship is concerned it is too tainted by his politics for unbiased truth. And in turn I won’t quote or recommend any conservatives with similar opinions.
Money dumped into long term research will not resolve the financial situation. That is politically motivated to satisfy that part of the Democratic party who thinks Government can invent. I have worked on federally sponsored energy problems and can tell you it cannot resolve anything. Can you name a government invention of note that has not been developed by the military?
The energy problems will be solved in the free market (if we ever have one again) between competing interests who wish to stay alive for the future. You cannot develop concepts that are more expensive than existing systems. Right now gasoline is the cheapest energy around.
Look at what happened to the alternative energy research when the price of gasoline fell to $2.00. Investment dried up.
Money is needed to resolve the financial crisis we now face, not to satisfy the political goals of moonbats or right wing zealots.
Other than that how are you doing, Fred?
Jules
Jules
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Ah, Mr. Speaker, don’t you know that ad hominem attacks are always invalid? I have noticed how prevalent this type of argument is in neo-con discourse, though, so I forgive you, for you truly do not know what you do. I wear my left leaning politics proudly (sad to say, I don’t think I fit one convenient label, so I cannot oblige you by giving one).
Please do feel free to quote from any conservative you know or have read, or of any other scholarship you deem worthy of further thought. I certainly have no problem investigating and drawing my own conclusions.
I did read the rest of your post, and I have to say, just when I think you’ve reached bottom, you prove me wrong. I thought, is it remotely possible for a gentlemen brought up as a professional engineer does not understand the relationship between federally funded research, research universities and private industry? Or of literally thousands of inventions, patents, and fundamental research on government money that have been transferred to industry? Or how much the death of the large corporate labs (IBM, AT&T, Xerox PARC come immediately to mind) make federal funding even more important?
But then, I saw your restriction leaving out the military (which, parenthetically, may be one of the most socialistic things the US government does by your definition, I’m sure you would agree), so that would leave out fundamental inventions such as the first computer (ENIAC, built for computing artillery trajectories), the Internet (from the DOD’s ARPANET), to nuclear fission / fusion (atomic and hydrogen bombs, respectively), or GPS (for the Navy to perform navigational fixes). Leaving those out, even when the obvious transfer to private industry and subsequent free market exploitation made great examples, I decided to stick to your rules. I mean, you really, really made me strain.
Well, not really. I tried to cull out the dozens of inventions that first came to mind, and it was really a toss up between the Atomic Clock (I mean, such precise compartmentalization of the infinite: on a philosophical level, that still gets me), and the Saturn V rocket that first carried three men to the Moon and back (hey, I grew up in the 60’s).
I too have worked in private industry as a beneficiary of Federal research dollars. I can remember standing in one of our DOE National Labs, looking at a laser driven fusion reactor (that was starving for funding due to oil company lobbyists). Without federal dollars, there would be no hope of private industry ever even sniffing at this technology, never mind commercializing it.
I won’t bore you with the rest of my work history, but suffice it to say that I’ve been in a number of private industry jobs that directly benefited from your tax dollars, and leave it at that.
You have such faith in the free market, God love you. And the free market is a good thing. But the degree to which you pay no attention to the man behind the curtain on larger, fundamental issues is sometimes breathtaking. But, sad to say, you’re not alone.
Tell me more about alternative energy research, and how the money has dried up. I think you’re about to see a huge influx of money starting this year, and continuing until we get off of middle eastern oil. Because the adults in the room just decided that burning that oil is getting expensive. In cost, in politics, for the environment, and in human life. Make sure you burn all that 2.00/gas you can. This year, anyway.
My turn for a pithy ad hominem …
You can always tell a neo-con. You just can’t tell him much.
Your Proudly Left Leaning Friend,
-FM
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