Just because the so-called “conservative” and “liberal” punditry and politicos refuse to answer this question, doesn’t mean we should stop asking it.

In 2009 President Obama along with congress passed the roughly $900 billion stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
The “non-shovel ready” spending took place within fiscal year 2010/2011. The amount is significant because the injected stimulus was 30% more than the entire federal budget for the same year.

However, since Fiscal Year 2008 we’ve never had a federal budget, preferring instead to fund government via base-line budgeting, continuing resolutions, increased in the debt ceiling, and omnibus spending.
As a direct result of the “baseline-budgeting” part of that spending approach, the federal government re-spent the ’09 “Stimulus” (first spent in FY ’10) in all subsequent fiscal years: 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 (started last October), and 2017 (December’s Paul Ryan Omnibus bill).
That’s seven direct times the $900 billion “Stimulus” has been spent.
Seven times $900 billion equals $6.3 Trillion, or sixty three hundred billion.
Where is it?
What did we get for it?
What are we currently getting while continuing to spend it?
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Oregon Votes Today

In an effort to keep the Daily Open Thread a little more open topic we are going to start a new daily thread for “2016 Presidential Politics”. Please use this thread to post anything relating to the Presidential Race and/or any of the candidates therein.

This thread will refresh daily and appear above the Open Discussion Thread.

CINCINNATI, OH (WCMH/NBCNews) – An Ohio woman is in hot water after police said she called in a fake robbery to avoid paying her tab at a Gold Star Chili restaurant.
“Unbelievable” is one word workers at the Gold Star Chili in Mount Healthy used to describe Wednesday night, NBC affiliate WLWT-TV reports.
“She had came in, put her stuff at the table, went to the bathroom, came back, sat down as if she was going to dine in,” said Rubee Naser, the store’s manager.
Naser said Destiny Watson, 21, ordered two crispy chicken burritos, a big salad and a drink. The bill was a little more than $20. (more…)

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †

The preferred narrative is gaining increasing evidence. Those who gain benefit from leveraging a cultural shift of modern feminism are working earnestly to retain it.
The phrase:  “you cannot talk down to me because I’m a woman“, traditional -arguably appropriate- ERA feminism, demanded equality in opportunity.  However, that argument has now been dropped.
Modern feminism is leveraged: “you cannot criticize me, because I’m a woman“.
The traditional demands of equality are following a predictable pattern and now invoking leveraged benefit.
Ultimately, this is the modern version of feminism, and one currently being advanced by personalities like Fox News host Megyn Kelly.  Social justice memes demanding a higher position of consideration based on (fill_in_the_blank), where this specific blank is filled with gender.
The objective determinations of skill and competency are now being clouded by lowered expectations forced by the benefactors who gain by lowering the expectation.  It is a dangerous and slippery slope to bar critical evaluation based on lowered expectations due to gender.   Such well-intentioned pathways historically lead to soft-bigotry caused by lessened expectations.
However, if Hillary Clinton is to gain nation-wide elected office her incompetence and inability must be shielded.  This is the basic motive for a growing gender-based narrative as injected into the 2016 presidential race.   The latest attempts by the Washington Post and New York Times are ultimately evidence of this intention. (more…)

The trial of Officer Edward Nero continued today with devastating testimony from Garrett Miller in support of Nero.  Miller and Nero were the two bicycle officers who originally encountered Freddie Gray.
As unbelievable as this may sound, the prosecution had never interviewed Garrett Miller before he took the stand today and destroyed the prosecution case against Edward Nero.
Miller’s testimony was compelled by the prosecution, challenged by the defense attorneys, upheld by a Maryland court order, and such compulsion is the subject of considerable ongoing legal controversy.  Garrett Miller is also charged with identical charges as his partner Edward Nero.

Today, Miller took the stand and […] said he and Nero were on bicycle patrol in the Gilmor Homes area on April 12 last year when Lt. Brian Rice radioed that he was engaged in a foot chase from nearby.
Miller testified that he never sought to clarify the purpose for the chase. Prosecutors said in opening statements that by not seeking to determine the reason for the pursuit, the officers exceeded any legal authority to detain Gray and committed an assault. (more…)

Western liberal media is stuck between a rock and a hard place when discussing Venezuela.  A decade long economic devolution as a direct result of yet another attempt at socialism is ending the same way the socialist experiment has always ended, total misery.

Venezuela is struggling both economically and politically, facing massive food shortages, regular blackouts, skyrocketing inflation and an increasingly dire public health situation. Hospitals lack beds, antibiotics, medical equipment, doctors, even running water.

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What do Glenn Beck, Carly Fiorina, S.E. Cupp, Dana Perino, Zac Moffett (Romney Campaign), and Arther Brooks have in common?

They are all avowed members of the Never Trump coalition.  And according to recent media reports, they are also the names scheduled to meet with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to discuss Facebook’s ideological censorship of political views.

[…] “I want to have a direct conversation about what Facebook stands for and how we can be sure our platform stays as open as possible,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post last week. “The reason I care so much about this is that it gets to the core of everything Facebook is and everything I want it to be.” (link)

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Donald Trump was interviewed by Piers Morgan for his U.K news and morning talk show “Good Morning Britain”.   The primary topic was the conflict between London’s newly elected Muslim Mayor and Donald Trump…

It should come as no surprise to discover a recent New York Times article was written as a specifically intended and targeted hit piece against a candidate who is opposed to the liberal world-view preferred by the Times.  After all, the NYT is infamous for injecting their liberal ideological views into their publications, and even admissions by former editors of using the newspaper to target ideological opponents.
The most recent story outlining candidate Donald Trump was written to provide support for Hillary Clinton and to disparage the candidacy of Trump.   To show further evidence of this intention, the woman at the center of the NYT article, a former girlfriend of Mr. Trump, is stating today the Times article was fraught with lies and manipulations of her interview.
In her own words: