State of The Union Address 2011
I want everyone to pay very close attention to the use of the words "invest" and "spend". I went over this two years ago, take a peek...
Here are some of the examples of Obama’s use of the word SPEND.
Obama:
But given the problems that the financial bailout program has had so far -- banks not wanting to talk about how they're spending the money, the AIG bonuses that you mentioned -- why do you think the public should sign on for another new sweeping authority for the government to take over companies, essentially?
And -- and so what we're trying to emphasize is, let's make sure that we're making the investments that we need to grow to meet those growth targets, at the same time we're still reducing the deficit by a couple of trillion dollars, we are cutting out wasteful spending in areas like Medicare, we're changing procurement practices when it comes to the Pentagon budget, we are looking at social service programs and education programs that don't work and eliminate them.
Now observe Obama’s use of the word INVEST.
Obama:
It's with a budget that leads to broad economic growth by moving from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest.
We invest in reform that will bring down the cost of health care for families, businesses and our government.
But it is -- it is going to be an impossible task for us to balance our budget if we're not taking on rising health care costs, and it's going to be an impossible task to balance our budget or even approximate it if we are not boosting our growth rates. And -- and that's why our budget focuses on the investments we need to make that happen.
And so what we've said is, look, let's invest in health information technologies.
See the difference? The truth, on the other hand, is the only way for any government to “invest” is to spend money. Funny how that works, isn’t it? We are currently borrowing and spending. Show me where the government is saving anything!
Polling data shows that people have a negative reaction to the word spend. People have a much more positive reaction to the word invest.
On a side note. I played a drinking game a few years back during a presidential debate between Bush and Kerry. Every time Kerry would say, "I have a plan" you had to take a shot. Needless to say, I couldn't really continue on the path I had set out. I beleive that the use of the word "invest" is going to be the "I have a plan" equivalent during this State of The Union Address.
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Social Networking Can Result in Loneliness
I find this to be an interesting subject. I find this screen shot of this website to me much funnier.

"A behaviour that has become typical may still express the problems that once caused us to see it as pathological," MIT professor Sherry Turkle writes in her new book, Alone Together, which is leading an attack on the information age.
Turkle's book, published in the UK next month, has caused a sensation in America, which is usually more obsessed with the merits of social networking. She appeared last week on Stephen Colbert's late-night comedy show, The Colbert Report. When Turkle said she had been at funerals where people checked their iPhones, Colbert quipped: "We all say goodbye in our own way."
Turkle's thesis is simple: technology is threatening to dominate our lives and make us less human. Under the illusion of allowing us to communicate better, it is actually isolating us from real human interactions in a cyber-reality that is a poor imitation of the real world.
Of course you are reading about this on the internet. And if you notice in the screen shot, you can send your friends links to this article on Twitter, Facebook or by email! It might just be too late for them though.
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Is Mark Udall Really The Next Mr. Rogers?
This is another transparent attempt to confuse people.
Traditionally, Democrats and Republicans sit on opposite sides of the House Chamber for the speech, but this past week, Colorado's Sen. Mark Udall suggested the parties integrate the seating.
It's not a rule that parties have separate seating arrangements, Udall tells Weekend Edition's Liane Hansen, it's just a custom.
"It's a custom that's in some ways understandable," he says. But given the tragedy in Tucson and the elevated rhetoric of the last couple years, Udall thinks it's time for lawmakers to come together — at least symbolically.
First of all, no Republican should sit next to a Democrat based on the terms stated. Doing so would lend credence to the false allegations about political rhetoric being the cause of the Tucson shooting. The Tucson shooting had nothing to do with political rhetoric.
Aside from Democrats trying to make something out of nothing; none of this makes any sense at all. Unless you consider this; Obama is going to have to talk about health care during his State of The Union Address. Why, you might ask? The White House has said that the speech is going to focus on jobs and the economy right? Well Obama's entire pitch for health care reform was based on health care bankrupting the country. health care is going to be mentioned in the speech. The democrats don't want to go on record (in any way) when it comes to health care. We know that no democrats ran in support of health care during the most recent November elections.
Democrats want the seating to be staggered so that people tuning in to the speech won't be able to tell who is standing and who is sitting, Democrat or Republican. The obvious idea is to skew any response related to health care so that it appears that more people are in favor of it than really are. It will also blur the line so that most people won't know which side is for or against any particular subject.
If you ask me; this seating idea is so easy to see through that no Republican should fall for it.
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All This Talk of Civility Makes Me Angry
There are many on the left who are using the Tucson shooting as an opening to debate civility in political discourse. The only problem is that there is no political connection to the shooting. Jared Loughner is obviously mentally ill, he didn’t' commit mass murder with any particular political ideology in mind. That being said there are other problems with this this ridiculous civility debate.
There have been many polls since the November elections. These polls seem to show that there is growing discontent amongst Americans when it comes to partisan politics. I don't buy it. If Americans were simple disgusted with partisan politics there wouldn't have been landslide Republican victories. It's obvious by the election results that there was growing discontent for the way things are conducted in Washington. This opposition had little if nothing to do with political affiliation, but more to do with accountability. Washington ignored the will of the people multiple times. Some were even rude and arrogant about it.
I look at it like this. I'm going to use an auto repair shop as an analogy here. If you took your car in for repair and found out that two of the mechanics working on your car didn't get along too well, would you really care? If you take your car to the shop you want to get it fixed right? Does it really worry you that two of the employees don't get along? Of course not. You might be worried that you are going to get swindled, but that has nothing to do with shop squabbles. As a matter fact you might never know that there are any problems between employees at all.
I look at politics the same way. Most people I have spoken with are not worried about Democrats and Republicans getting along. As a matter of fact most people don't even know what's going on in Washington. Most people would assume that the people who are sent to Washington have American's best interest in mind, but that's not always the case. When it becomes evident that politicians are making decisions based on something other than their constituent's best interest; you have elections like the one in November.
All the noise coming from the news media is just that, noise. There never really was any debate about political discourse amongst the American people. They just went out on election day and voted for those who seemed the most likely to represent their beliefs.
Those on the left can't seem to come to grips with this, so they have to fabricate some irrelevant debate in an obvious attempt to silence their opposition. Have you heard any mention of “Progressive Talk Radio” or any progressive / liberal media outlet in the "debate"?
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Analysis of The Response to Gabrielle Giffords' Shooting
Before I get into why I think those on the left are quick to blame the right for acts of violence; I have to get into why I think that those on the left come to these conclusions.
I obviously can't speak for everyone in any particular group, I can only point out my observations.
There are a few key differences between how those on the left think and those on the right think. Generally those on the left express a belief that individuals are a product of their environment completely. By completely I mean that it's as if there are no “individuals”. It seems that whenever someone commits a negative act, it is because they were influenced to do so. Those on the left tend to believe that man, humans in general, are inherently good. This thinking leaves people only to blame instances and circumstances rather than the individual who knowingly committed the act. The logical conclusion to this line of thinking is that nobody is ever guilty as an individual. There are never ending accomplices. This line of thinking is contrary to all of human history.
Most on the right tend to think that individuals make their own decisions; while those decisions are in large part effected by an individual's upbringing, they are still their decisions. When someone commits a negative act, those on the right tend to blame the individual. Christianity teaches that man is flawed. Man is not inherently good. It is for this reason that most right thinking people are aware that people are capable of committing acts of evil without outside influences. In the end people all make conscious decisions to do whatever it is they do.
I remember when I was a kid I crossed the street when I was told not to do so. My father told me that I shouldn't let other people influence me to do such things. The thing was, nobody had influenced me, nobody tricked me into crossing the street. I crossed the street because I wanted to. What my father said made me feel as if he didn't think I was capable of making my own decisions, good or bad. I told my father that I crossed the street because I wanted to. Of course I got in trouble, but it was worth it to me. I sometimes wonder how left thinking people would have responded to such an incident. Would they just sit back and blame some outside force?
On January 8, 2011 in Tucson, Arizona, a 22 year-old man named Jared Lee Loughner attacked several people outside a Safeway store. He shot 19 people including Gabrielle Giffords. He killed 6 and wounded 13.
Jared Loughner left messages on MySpace alluding to his pending death, and even produced Youtube videos explaining his way of thinking. It is clear after watching just one of the videos that Jared Loughner is insane. Jared Loughner had no political motivation. He's just crazy. And as history has proven; people can go crazy without outside influences.
This article in The Washington Examiner sheds light on exactly what I was talking about.
In the hours after the attack, little was known about Loughner beyond some bizarre and largely incomprehensible YouTube postings that, if anything, suggested he was mentally ill. Yet the network that had shown such caution in discussing the Ft. Hood shootings openly discussed the possibility that Loughner was inspired to violence by…Sarah Palin. Although there is no evidence that Loughner was in any way influenced by Palin, CNN was filled with speculation about the former Alaska governor.
After reporting that Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik had condemned what Dupnik called "the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government," CNN's Wolf Blitzer turned to congressional reporter Jessica Yellin for analysis.
"It certainly is," Blitzer agreed. "But the question is, is there any evidence that the suspected shooter in this particular case was a Sarah Palin fan, read Sarah Palin's website, was a member on Facebook, watched her tweets, or anything like that?"
"None at all," Yellin responded. "And there is no evidence that this was even inspired by rage over health care, broadly. So there is no overt connection between Sarah Palin, health care, and the [shootings]."
Indeed, there is no "overt" or any other sort of connection between Loughner and Palin. If such evidence came to light, it would certainly be news. But without that evidence, and after a brief caveat, the CNN group went back to discussing the theory that Loughner acted out of rage inspired by Palin and other Republicans. Conclusions were jumped to all around.
It would seem as if Wolf Blitzer is trying to link Jared Loughner with Sarah Palin. There is nothing to suggest that anything Jared Loughner did was politically motivated. Wolf Blitzer must be delusional.
The idea here is that if they can put the name "Sarah Palin" together with "Jared Loughner" enough, have it said in the same sentence enough, people will start to relate the two. I don't really think that Wolf Blitzer believes that Sarah Palin was an influence on Loughner. Wolf Blitzer must think that his audience will make a connection between Loughner and Palin; why else would he say such baseless things on cable news? Blitzer must believe that other left thinking people will blame someone other than the actual shooter. In my experience they will.
The surreal allegations of Conservative involvement in Jared Loughner's attack continue even today! Check out this ABC News article.
The Arizona sheriff investigating the Tucson shooting that left U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords critically wounded had harsh words today for those engaging in political rhetoric, calling conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh "irresponsible" for continuing the vitriol.
"The kind of rhetoric that flows from people like Rush Limbaugh, in my judgment he is irresponsible, uses partial information, sometimes wrong information," Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said today. "[Limbaugh] attacks people, angers them against government, angers them against elected officials and that kind of behavior in my opinion is not without consequences."
Limbaugh today railed against the media and Dupnik for trying to draw a link between the heated political climate and the shooting rampage, calling the sheriff a "fool." But Dupnik stood by his assertions.
"The vitriol affects the [unstable] personality that we are talking about," he said. "You can say, 'Oh no, it doesn't,' but my opinion is that it does."
Investigators have yet to determine what motivated 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, described by some as appearing to be mentally unstable, to allegedly open fire on the crowd outside the Tucson Safeway. However, so far there is no evidence that he has any ties to any political group.
In contrast I thought I would post a screen shot of this Daily Kos post by someone who claims to have worked on the Gabrielle Giffords campaign. This post has since been scrubbed from the Daily Kos website.

Just another example of the "well-rounded" individuals writing for the Daily Kos.
With people like "BoyBlue" posting articles like the one above; you can see that it is impossible to stop or predict something like the Arizona shooting.
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