Not that it will make much difference to you, since you’ve already made up your minds that Republicans are evil baby-raping goat-felching double-parking poopy-heads, but…
My point is that there are gazillions of eminently reasonable things out there that could mitigate very foreseeable events that should be funded but aren’t. We don’t know which ones we should have funded until the aforementioned event occurs. Remember when that freeway bridge collapsed and the news people were wringing their hands about how we’ve cut funding for infrastructure? No one cared until the collapse. Similarly, although we’ve been aware of the possibility of pandemic flu (and have actually done quite a bit to prepare, truth be told), it’s not until it (or something that looks something like it) appears that we get the weeping and wailing about how we should have spent more on it.
Oh, I never said Democrats couldn’t be assholes too, there are plenty in Congress (I believe they’re called Blue Dogs, or DINOS-Democrats In Name Only), it’s just that Republicans, especially right-wingers, are more consistent more often about opposing more things that benefit average Americans. And unlike those few loony tunes liberals who go on about stupid loony tunes things like ‘9/11 was an inside job’ or crap like that, Republicans actually elect their loony tunes to public office (see: Michelle Bachmann) where they can possibly actually do real damage. There are Republicans who hold public office who actually believe that President Obama is a Muslim/Kenyan! Can you believe it? Well, actually, I’m sure you could.
Edit to add that this is in response to ivylass, but Smeghead got between us.
I’ll disagree with this. There are a couple of things that make this a more serious problem than the normal flu season.
First the mortality rate of this flu is 7% versus the 1% mortality rate of the normal flu season.
Secondly, there is a higher than normal mortality rate in the 20-40 age range. Normally, influenza deaths tend to occur in the very young and very old. This suggests a much more virulent form of the flu than normal.
Also, there have been nearly 150 deaths in the two weeks since the first confirmed death, and they have all been in Mexico, where the flu first started. It currently looks like a good 80% of these have been in Mexico City.
If the U.S. has 40,000 deaths per year due to flu, that’s ~ 770 deaths per week. There are three times as many people in the US as in Mexico (303 million vs. 109 million), which means an equivalent number of deaths in Mexico total would be ~255. That, however, is not factoring in that it’s probably not spread that much outside of Mexico city, and it is not “flu season”, when most flu deaths are going to occur. If I factor in that 80% of the deaths have (possibly) occurred in Mexico City, which has a population of ~8 million, then there should be only about 20 deaths per week in Mexico City, and (again by my estimate), there have been over 100.
Map1: 2009 H1N1 Flu Outbreak Map - Google My Maps
Map2: http://www.pigflumap.com/
Interesting story about how WOW managed to simulate a pandemic: FEATURE-Online 'blood plague' offers lessons for pandemics | Reuters
No, they’re the ones who accused the Republicans of a “culture of corruption” and do nothing about the at least equal corruption in their own party. Other examples too numerous to mention.
And if you believe the Huffington Post is unbiased and reliable, let alone when they publish information from The Nation, I have this bridge I can get you a real good price on.
The Republican corruption has been far, far worse than Democratic corruption.
Except people did care, and there were numerous warnings beforehand that the bridge system was in bad shape. But other than that, sure.
I don’t want it. The US infrastructure has been so neglected that who knows when it will fall down?
Thank goodness for President Obama’s Stimulus Bill (at least the parts that Republicans didn’t gut) so we can get some new and properly repaired bridges in this country.
No one ever, has ever, claimed that Huffington Post was unbiased, or even reliable (unlike some news sites I could name), though they do always link to their original cites and let you decided if the cites are reliable or not. In the case of Politico, they’re generally not. As far as I know though, The Nation is both biased (on the side of truth though) AND reliable.
Btw, by a vote of 65-31, Kathleen Sebelius Confirmed As Health And Human Services Secretary. She was sworn in in the Oval Office and then immediately went downstairs to the Situation Room to be briefed on the latest regarding the flu.
Photos of her swearing-in.
The question isn’t whether money should be spent on flu prevention. The question is whether or not authorization to spend money on flu prevention should be in the stimulus bill. I probably would have voted to strip it too, because it’s not stimulus, but I also would have voted for increased funding if a bill came up seperately.
My impression is the authorities think this is not just a regular flu and that it might evolve into something even worse . I was watching German news and they are preparing for fighting the swine flu over there.
I agree. All non-stimulus items should have been stripped from the bill. The stimulus should have been a stimulus. Call me crazy. Other spending should be proposed and debated on their own merits in a different bill. One of the few times I agree with Chuck Shumer.
This seems to be a reasonable and popular notion:
Now, this was mocked in the link in the OP, and Rep. David Obey’s statement was held up as if it was the model of wisdom. Hogwash. You cannot define every worthwhile thing you want to spend money on as economic stimulus - at least you shouldn’t if you still want that word to retain any meaning. The stimulus bill should have been used to stimulate the economy directly. Period.
And yes, that means taking out the volcano monitoring as well - how many geologists can you fund? Pay for that with a normal appropriation - nobody will have an issue with that.
Ok, you’re crazy. 
If we could prevent the government from attaching unrelated amendments to any bill, there would be a lot less “pork” in the government.
Since Sibelius was confirmed and I’ve found out that pandemic preparation funds were included in the Omnibus bill (something I didn’t know when I wrote the OP) I have no more issues to glare at and be huffy over, but
It seems to me that a project doesn’t have to employ hundreds of people to be stimulative. Anybody employed will do their part, and that includes geologists and biologists and graph analysts and lab workers and their support staffs, and the goods they buy with their paychecks, helping the people who supply those goods, and helping the people who supply the goods those people buy. Every little bit helps many someones. The benefits to the country via enhanced safety are side benefits. There were a lot of BIG! BOLD! initiatives in the Stimulus Bill, but there were thousands of smaller initiatives too.
I don’t have a cite to a specific person who said it, but I heard “the Stimulus Bill won’t help anybody” said several different times in several different ways over and over again both before and after the bill passed.
Well, here are some people it helped. We don’t know how much any of this will help the overall economy, we can’t know that yet, but it IS helping people, average Americans, and that always good, right?
If someone doesn’t want to register, or the article goes to the paid archives, here’s a post with pictures and big chunks of the text.
Always?
They’re rebuilding a playground and expanding a medical center in that town. That’s all there is right now - and once those get build the ongoing benefits will be limited to the additional jobs from the medical center expansion - which isn’t very much.
That’s what we’re getting for this massive outlay of funds.
Now, I’m actually in favor of infrastructure, and I think it could have been funded through normal appropriations pretty easily - though not to this degree, in this massive orgy of spending on it. A moderate rise in spending could have been justified too because of the massive deflation going on right now.
But the spending should have been focused on the economic sector - on taxpayers and on stabilizing troubled assets. We have funded now a massive public works plan but haven’t fixed the underlying problem that caused this mess. And don’t give me 100-day bullshit - Congress was able to cobble together a public works package because that’s what they wanted. If they really wanted to fix banking and mortgages it could have been done.
But hey - you have your playground. Have fun on the slide.