I respect you, but disagree with a lot here. The disagreement we are going to have is that the mission in Iraq was not necessary. History will prove it was exactly the right thing to do. So many say we should have finished the job in Afghanistan, without ever considering what that would have meant. If we go into Afghanistan and all the terrorists who hate America go there to fight us then it is a very different battle. Drawing them to Iraq where the terrain favors us is a brilliant tactical move. On top of that we get rid of one of the worst dictators in history. I can’t see how that is a bad thing. Iraq is succeeding, terrorists are dying and American is safe.

I do think you are right that these tea parties are about what the government is doing with the money. By the time the overwhelming majority of stimulus money gets spent the recession will be over, at least for a short while until the inflation caused by the reckless spending puts us right back into a recession.

There is also a healthy distrust for government. How can you seriously trust someone who says he is going to cut the deficit in half by the end of his term when he is first doubling it for several years and then halving it will still be a larger deficit than any year under Bush. Not to mention that the debt will at least double or triple under the Obama Administration. I disagreed with Bush bailing out companies, and I disagree with Obama not only making the same mistakes, but making them in far grander fashion.

You are also right about our neighborhoods. Everyone knows this mess was created by banks lending money to people who could never pay it back. They ran up prices and the housing market collapsed. Spending more and more money without fixing the housing crisis is just plain wasting money that we will eventually have to pay back. Check that… no one believes we will ever pay back the $10 trillion projected debt. We will inflate our way out of that, which is going to lead to prolonged economic crisis.

-Gene

So it has to be what we’re doing with the money. For 6+ years, we’ve been spending billions a day on military missions to Afghanistan (probably necessary) and Iraq (probably not). The plan is to reduce this expenditure (not overnight but in an orderly way according to the wisdom of our military commanders), so THAT can’t be what they’re protesting.

What else? Oh, yes, the bailout and the stimulus. As I understand it, bailout money is repayable – I was just reading a story about how some financial company that had gotten bailout money had paid some of it back when things went better than expected. And the stimulus is to put “the people” back to work. So what is the beef – do “the people” object to contributing so that the guy down the street has a job until the economy gets better? Would you rather that he be unemployed for months on end? Are neighborhoods full of empty houses a good idea for the rest of us fortunate enough to be able to keep ours?

This is America – we should help each other. No one did teabag parties when we were pouring our money into Iraq instead of spending it to make our ports and borders safer, or to develop new technologies to detect chemical, biological or nuclear threats more quickly. I think the reason the mainstream media has been dismissive of these “events” is that they have been stimulated by people with a political agenda opposite to the Obama administration – the same ones that want him to fail not for the good of the country but for their own political ends.

Count me out. We have enough challenges, caused in some part by neglecting to be focused on what’s important for the last 8 years. I’d like us to succeed