first things first: rest in peace, Steve Jobs, and may God bless you. this a terrible and sad loss. we all knew it was coming but it's still hard to accept. i saw a picture of him a few weeks ago and there wasn't an ounce of flesh on him. he was the thomas edison of our time and he cannot be replaced. if you're looking for a trigger event, i would say this could be it. were it not for him we wouldn't have had the internet for another 10 or 15 years. my sympathies and condolences to his family.

grond:

well you seem to handle your money very well. i wish you were in congress.

yes, my delivery tends to piss people off. i don't post unless i'm cranked up, since it's a total waste of time.

i think we agree on a number of points. it's not my goal to stir people up; that would be a total waste of time too. but they definitely seem to get stirred up. all i do is point out mistakes and fallacies, with a little color added because it's fun expressing myself without restraint. i post for what i get out of it, not what other people get out of it. in other words, i just don't give a s**t.

as to your above post:

Foreign aid cuts…a drop in the bucket, you say? Well, that is a rather large drop if you consider that 38% of our budget goes to “develop/humanitarian/emergency food, foreign military, economic, multilateral and international organizations — but also money for operation and administration of embassies and consulates and various State Department programs such as the drug “war.”

the figures i've seen for foreign aid are about 1% of the budget. your # would mean over a THIRD of the u.s. federal budget would be going to foreign aid. i doubt even the american taxpayers, as stupid as they are, would put up with that. but here's a link:  http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brunitedstatescanadara/670.php. and i invite ALL forum members to do their own research on the percentage of foreign aid in the budget. in any case, in your initial post you only used the term "foreign aid". in your secondary post you have dramatically expanded the definition of that term to a point most people would not agree with.

you can't count embassies and consulates and the state department as foreign aid. they fall under the category of the cost of doing business with the rest of the world and act as a safety mechanism for u.s. citizens traveling abroad. and although i agree with you that most military bases in foreign countries should be abandoned, you're still not talking much money. and not all of them can be shut down and all naval and air force operations terminated. the  somali pirates are giving us a small reminder of that, and you have to keep a close proximity force near the straits of hormuz, for example. you do have to keep an eye on things for the sake of your own security.

the drug war, we're in complete agreement. i believe ALL DRUGS should be immediately legalized and available over the counter, including to kids. prior to 1914 any mother could (and did) send her 10 year old son to the corner pharmacy to purchase morphine (called laudanum then), codeine, dexedrine, cocaine etc., without giving it a second thought. one of the original ingredients of coca cola was cocaine (from which the name was derived) and it was perfectly legal. but again, you're talking a small amount of money. 

As far as what our country needs to do to get back on our feet, and to do it quickly, the answer is so shockingly simple that my mom has been doing it in one way or another for the last 40 years: STOP SPENDING MONEY. 

sorry, but it's NOT that simple. if you're a capitalist and believe in the rule of law and the sanctity of contracts, then you can't just stop spending money because the federal govt. (read american people) has contracted with millions of entities and legislated payments to millions of entities so they are obligated. the #1 largest item in the budget is DOD. 2/3 of a trillion $$$. even if you shut down the entire defense department and all branches of the military, leaving us totally defensless, the fiscal deficit for 2011 would still be over half a trillion for just that ONE YEAR. and to address someone else's comment, i don't remember who, borrowing and spending are the same thing. they both go on the debit side of the ledger. grond, you just don't grasp the magnitude of the problem. i'm going to address one more point and that's it for today.

We have plenty of fuel.  We have a lot of food.  We have a LOT of people working because there is more infrastructure work that needs to be done than there are people to do the work.

food, yes.  but fuel? no fuckin' way. and even on the food part, forget fresh fruit and vegetables for most of the year.

are you aware that we IMPORT over 60% of our oil? i know that in your scenario we would be using corn ethanol but still we would have to import. and growing corn to be processed into fuel is probably one of the stupidest things this country has ever done. for a few reasons: 1) good top soil  is easily worth a thousand times as much as oil. you can substitute other substances for fuel, but there's no f***ing substitute for food. and that requires lots of good ground. and once it's depleted, you're f***ed. also, you can use land over and over with proper care, but you can only burn a gallon of gas once and then it's gone forever. 2) it requires MORE energy to grow and convert corn to ethanol than you get FROM the ethanol. so it's a net energy loss. and everybody fuckin' knows it. so why do we do it? because iowa's primary income is from the whole corn/ethanol business and the iowa caucuses are the first voting event in the presidential campaigns. it's total insanity. 3) we couldn't grow enough corn to replace our imported oil. it's only a small percentage additive. 

the smart play would be to import all the cheap brazilian sugar cane ethanol that they can put out. let them deplete THEIR topsoil. and sugar cane yields almost twice as much energy as corn. but guess what the only product our shitfuck congress places a prohibitive tariff on? exactly; brazilian ethanol.

i'm happy to debate you, grond, but you're going to have to use pullquotes so as not to paraphrase and distort my  posts. and no more changing definitions in subsequent posts. in other words, you have to abide by the same  rules that  i place on myself. otherwise i don't reply.

i haven't listened to rush limbaugh in 20 years, but i always did think he was a little on the timid side.