An Uncle Sam buying spree can help in the short run - and all that infrastructure will be nice. However, what about the long term economy? How do we create an economy that works without infinite growth of consumtion? How do we employ everybody when so much of what we actually need has been mechanized?

This guy should be Secreatry of State, but they had to give it to a woman who is married to a former president.

Ah, orthodox Jews and their absurd ways to violate the spirit of the Sabbath by making it stressful with all their crazy rules. If there is a God, he probably gets a real kick out of these nuts.

These poor teens probably can't afford drugs because they lost their allowances and their part time jobs. Plus all those teenaged mothers - 2008 was the first increase in teen pregnancy since 1991. Thanks abstinace education!

Do any current UAW wmployees make more than the Wall St. whizards who got us into this mes,m and got a bailout? Didn't think so. How long can we keep cutting labor costs on production before nobody is making enogh to buy the products?

This country does not need any new houses. It's not like they wear out (although my 92-year-old one could use some insulation - brrr). In fact, as the Baby Boomers move into retirement homes, we will need fewer houses.

While we do in fact need massive infrasturcture improvments in this country, this kind of economic stimulus will not fix our economy. We need a major economic resturcturing, starting with confiscatory levels of taxation for earnings over a few million bucks, to ensure that excess pay - the real drag on the real economy - at least comes back into our public coffers.

She's right. If the key roadblock to gay marriage is the word you call it, or the assurance that no church will be required to perform them, then make those compromises and get rights for people who need them. The first generation of out-and-proud gays and lesbians is now entering retirement, and their partnerships need the protections afforded by civil unions now.

Surely that was the case in Prop 8 because California still has civil unions on the books and the overwhelming majority approves. People don't like when you change the meaning of words.

Because I don't like the coffee in my office kitchen, I use $2 a plastic cone with a #2 filter to make one cup at a time. Many coworkers have been amazed that one can make coffee without a coffeemaker, as if a device that pours heated water over coffee grounds was some sort of magic box

The magic box - the idea that everything in life is too complicated to be done by amateurs - pervades everything in American life, from cooking to the financial system, with similar results. If you want something done right, you ought to do it yourself (and be willing to make mistakes).

There are enough existing bridges, overpasses and highways in serious need of repair to keep us busy for the next four years.

Still, even spending on public transit is not always spent wisely. The federal gov't kicked in millions to rebuild a mile of cobblestone and install new trolley tracks on the main drag near my house, despite the transit agency having zero interest in running trolleys ever again and cobblestones being a stupid road surface.

There is no more right and wrong between Israel and Palestine, only us and them. Each side has completely in/valid claims. Therefore, the only solution is for Israel, with it's greater power, to choose a final solution: either comlete, unconditional independence of the occupied territories, or their complete and total destruction. Their call.

This may be a time of urgency but I'm getting sick of hearing how we must spend a bazillion dollars in the next five minutes or the universe blows up. We heard it from Busin about Iraq, then from everybody with the bailout and now Obama wants to spend a trillion bucks in his first hour as president. Shoot, what's he gonna do for an encore?

I pray that Philadelphia does not get to the Stupidbowl. When the Phillies won the resulting parade paralyzed the city. Hate to see what a football win would do.

Professional sports are stupid - I don't see how a locally-owned team with millionaire players recruited from around the country represents a city or state more than any other team.

There are no civilians in a democracy. The Gazans elected Hamas, so they have to live with the consequences of their goverment's actions. This goes for Americans too, but thankfully we have no militarily superior neighbors to shell.

There is never enough money for anything in the crappy country of ours. You know why? Because money does not exist. Production is a lie, because most of what we produce also does not exist. Actual items are made in China, and we don't need any of them. Our economy is a big waste of time.

We need farms, hospitals, water treatment plants and research labs to advance their work. We need schools to educate the people who run them. Contractors to keep our houses standing up, grocers, railroad operators, cops, firefighters, garbage collectors are also on the list, but that's about it.

Everybody else's job is useless. Finance analysts, automotive mechanics, secretaries, copier salesmen, etc. serve no purpose besides supporting other purposeless activities and wasting resources. But what the heck are we supposed to do?

For years I have been frustrated by the fact that all the books of suppoded literary merit are written by adjunct creative writing professors and mainly concern... the lives of adjunct creativw writing professors.

If you must write wht you know, you need to know something more interesting. Hemmingway screwed around in war zones and bullfighting rings. Jonathan Franzen... not so much.