Spintested: October 2011

White House Rejects Petition To Legalize Marijuana

Monday, October 31, 2011

Obama is not a progressive. "Privately, Obama describes himself as a Blue Dog Democrat" - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/us/politics/01bai.html Blue Dog = (might as well be registered as a) Republican.
About Marijuana
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

White House Rejects Petition To Legalize Marijuana

During the 2008 campaign, Obama said that his supporters can't just vote for him and go back to their apathetic lives. He said that very powerful interest were going to be at work, pressuring him not to deliver on his campaign promises, and that if his supporters expected Obama to deliver on his pledges, they would have to make him do it. I think a valid question that should dog Obama (and all Democrats) this campaign season is, "How?" Petitions aren't doing it. Peaceful protests aren't doing it. Civil disobedience isn't doing it. Must we march on the White House with torches and pitchforks?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

White House Rejects Petition To Legalize Marijuana

Kind of gives lie to this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/obama-administration-medical-marijuana-crackdown-california_n_1033482.html
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

White House Rejects Petition To Legalize Marijuana

Project Censored: U.S. Government Repressed Marijuana-Tumor Research http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/22-us-government-repressed-marijuana-tumor-research/
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American Medical Group Association Throws Support Behind New Obama Medicare Plan

When HP repairs my ability to post without it being one long run-on sentence, I'll rip the rest of your comment to shreds.
About Health Care
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

American Medical Group Association Throws Support Behind New Obama Medicare Plan

You are certain that the economy is going to collapse when the market has grown faster than it has is the last 12 years and the GDP growth went up 2.5% and we've had 19 straight months of private secotr employemen t. You didn't even notice the reduction in your credit card fees, did you. Dodd Frank is in place. The Bank of America will soon be involuntar ily broken into to smaller pieces that are not too big to fail. Fifteen investment bankers have been arrested and found guilty of securities fraud. ============================ Yes, you are a paid tool of the corporations. Only a 1%er or someone hoping to hit the lottery and become one (or getting paid by the blog post by the 1% to flood the blogosphere with such nonsense) would make such a ridiculous argument. Any increase in "private sector employment" is happening overseas. Off-shoring. Reduction in credit card fees? Are you insane? That's just what overextended Americans need right now, to buy on credit. Anyone who is relying on credit cards is setting themselves up to be in the next round of foreclosures/joblessness/poverty. Dodd-Frank is a cruel hoax. http://money.msn.com/investing/what-wall-street-protesters-have-right-brush.aspx?ucsort=2&page=2
About Health Care
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American Medical Group Association Throws Support Behind New Obama Medicare Plan

So you lost your house, your job, your savings, your future, your dreams, and you are just going to dry up and wither away from starvation because you believe what you hear on the right wing noise machines. =============================== I don't listen to "the right wing noise machines". If you do (and if you're the mindless zealot of Democratic politicians that you appear to be) then you're a Democratic Party/Corporate operative paid to spin BS.
About Health Care
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

American Medical Group Association Throws Support Behind New Obama Medicare Plan

Every single one of what you call my "hair on fire"-fears has happened. Everything from Obama's passing the Insurance and Pharmaceutical Great GiveAway Act, healthcare reform that doesn't do what Obama and Democrats were put into office to get (affordable, quality medical care for everyone), and continuing the economy-busting Bush tax cuts for the rich, expanding the wars and increasing military spending, and passing meaningless and useless banking reform legislation that didn't fix the problem and won't prevent another meltdown from occuring again. Then there's three years of Obama's failure to address the foreclosure meltdown, and the bottom is still falling out of the real estate market.

Obama has managed to do all of it ARTFULLY. I am impressed with how he's managed to get away with a record that would have had Democratic voters frothing at the mouth, tarring and feathering any Republican president doing what Obama's done. For example, if you're Obama and you were put into the White House to get affordable quality medical care for everyone and the obvious best course toward achieving that is single payer universal healthcare, Medicare for everyone and you're a corporate tool, you've got to get single payer off the table before it can be part of any discussion.

Obama has managed to achieve for the richest, the corporate elites, and he does it the same dogged way that BushCheney achieved their agenda. Whenever he is confronted with obstacles, whenever the People rise up and say, "Don't you dare even think about putting it on our backs, cutting our benefits", Obama and Democrats will release word to the media that "Democrats won't be cutting programs", or "Democrats won't be continuing Bush's tax cuts for the rich".

Then a few days and weeks go by, and there are hysterical hues and cries, the US's credit rating will decline, the economy will crash again, and "There's no other choice but to let Republicans have their way". Obama satisfies his corporate masters' wishes by letting it look like Republicans got the better of him.

Obama's in the Oval Office to mellow-talk us into accepting that which we'd never stand still for if we had contentious, fire-in-the-belly real Democratic leaders actually fighting on our behalf. Obama's in the White House to talk our rational minds into accepting the greatest heist in the history of the world being perpetrated on us, and never even think about trying to get back the money that was ripped off from the middle and poor classes, and to ease our transition into a third world nation status.

Obama is the grifter leading off the second half of the con game, which is to squeeze the rest of the dimes from the poor and middle classes, and keep us 'manageable' and not tearing up the joint.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

American Medical Group Association Throws Support Behind New Obama Medicare Plan

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Yes, it is the Democrats. Obama and they put Social Security and Medicare on the table for cuts, and in the 'Super Congress' it is Democrats who are proposing significant cuts to Medicare and Medicaid as an early offering. The panel's Democrats weakened their party’s negotiating position as Republicans, who have ceded no ground on their central anti-tax message, sat back and watched. "My fear is that this is déjà vu all over again,” said Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), one of the dozens of liberals who thought the White House cornered itself in the summer debt-ceiling talks by floating similar entitlement cuts to the GOP in negotiations led by Vice President Biden. “This is essentially what happened in the Biden talks,” Welch said. “The Democrats were putting concrete proposals on the table [including entitlement cuts] and the Republicans never came forward with concrete revenues to match it. “The Democratic side was negotiating against itself,” Welch added. “As a strategy, that won’t work.” http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/10/28-1
About Health Care
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Hillary for President Talk Is Just Another Nasty Way to Slam Obama

Racism? Really, Earl? The one thing Obama has done exceedingly well is prove that Kool-Aid comes in both red AND blue.
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GOP's War on Working Americans: Our Best Path to Victory

Thursday, October 27, 2011

As an old OLD liberal Democrat, active within the Democratic Party for decades, I'm here to tell you that the Democratic Party is controlled by corporations just as the Republican Party is.

A vote for any registered Democrat is a vote for the status quo, more of the same, of Democratic politicians working in the interests of corporations over the people's interests. Even progressive candidates get their orders from the party elites -- Progressive candidates may talk a good game, but if their votes are needed or wanted to pass pro-corporate legislation, they will abandon their alleged convictions and fall in lockstep with the party. Remember Dennis Kucinich and the public option. His vote wasn't even needed, but Obama wanted the issue crushed.

We're not limited to voting for just Democrats and Republicans. There are other alternatives besides sitting out the election or voting for Republicans. There are other candidates running as independents, from Green to Libertarian, in just about every race. If for no other reason than to get the 5 percent that is necessary for getting a seat at the table, I think that may be enough for great numbers of Democratic voters this time around.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

GOP's War on Working Americans: Our Best Path to Victory

In his book The Audacity of Hope, Obama presented himself as the latest in a long line of corporate, Democrats, interested in tinkering with the system but largely agreeing with the consensus on free markets, free trade, and US. military power. As the February 2011 cover story in TIME explains, Obama even agrees with many of the fundamentals of Reaganism, telling reporters, "What Reagan ushered in was a skepticism toward government solutions to every problem. I don't think that has changed." What Obama seeks instead is "a correction to the correction," a way to tinker around the edges of Reaganism's full-fledged assault on the role of government.

As Roger Hodge points out in his recent book, The Mendacity of Hope, "Obama praises Clinton for putting a 'progressive slant on some of Reagan's goals,' by which he presumably means Clinton's wholesale adoption of the Republican economic agenda, from passing NAFTA to cutting taxes, gutting the welfare system, and embracing the rhetoric of small government".
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GOP's War on Working Americans: Our Best Path to Victory

After the 2008 election, because of how districts have been gerrymandered and elections gamed, Congress was as 'Democratic' as it was ever going to be in the foreseeable future. The most who would ever (in my lifetime) vote for Democrats turned out (10 million more voters), and you see what Obama did with that: Continuing just about all BushCheney policies, Republican-like legislation.

Obama's 'most ardent supporters' presume he'd really like to be FDR and put through liberal legislation if it wasn't for those "mean, corrupt Republicans", but that's not who Obama is or what the DLC-controlled Democratic Party is all about. Until you and the rest of the 'ardent supporters' get it, confront Obama and demand some straight answers (which you will then realize that Obama's idol is Ronald Reagan), we are all screwed.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

GOP's War on Working Americans: Our Best Path to Victory

Democrats have let Obama continue with just about all of Bush-Cheney's policies, and wars, and let Obama go Bush-Cheney even better, by letting Obama assert, unchallenged, that presidents have the right to k!ll Americans with no due process or oversight, push for 'preventive detention' and no transparency of anything a president asserts should be his secret.

Democrats have abdicated their Constitutionally-required role of oversight of the executive branch; they failed to perform it during the BushCheney administration, and still don't with one of their own in the WhiteHouse.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

GOP's War on Working Americans: Our Best Path to Victory

You cannot run for public office, you do not rise within a political party or get support from a political party's machine either locally or nationally unless you surrender to the hierarchy of power. It's the only reason there are political parties.

Democrats in both chambers of Congress work as a team. And when your party also holds the White House, all party members do what the president wants. They identify what they hope to achieve (pro-corporate legislation) and then strategize how to get it while saving each other's hides with constituents come election time.

Those in liberal districts get to talk a good game about being champions of the People, but when push comes to shove, if their votes are needed to cross over and k!ll liberal legislation (like a public option or access to ab0rtion), the DNC will make sure they are covered come election time, with massive infusions of money into their campaign war chests and crushing any principled challenges to them from the left in their primaries.

How they tag team us:

Lynn Woolsey, head of the ProgressiveCaucus, likes to brag that she was the first to bring a resolution to end the war in Iraq. She, and congressional Democrats, and Obama, ran on ending the practice of paying for the wars through supplemental emergency spending bills, and putting the wars on budget. See why that is significant here.

Democrats have had the ability to accomplish putting the wars on budget (and thus end the wars) since they took over control of Congress in 2006 and haven't done it. They didn't need Republicans to do it.

Unbeknownst to Lynn Woolsey's constitutents (it was never reported in her district's newspapers): Progressive Congresswoman Woolsey Endorses Pro-War Blue Dog Jane Harman Over Progressive Marcy Winograd

As the head of the ProgressiveCaucus, LynnWoolsey led 79 of the 82 members of the caucus to pledge that they would not vote for any healthcare reform legislation that didn't include a public option.
Woolsey then led the 79 to renege on the pledge. Even when Obama didn't need Kucinich, the last hold-out of the caucus, Obama wanted and needed to break the back of public optioners so it wouldn't be revisited during his term in office -- He put the screws to Kucinich until he caved.

KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

GOP's War on Working Americans: Our Best Path to Victory

Make sure you know who the liberals are. If they're running as Democrats, they do what the party hierarchy dictates and are just as compromised as Blue Dogs.
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Campaign Finance Reformers Launch Progressive Effort To Remove Money From Politics

"Sarcasm the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded."

Simpler version: Sarcasm is the last refuge of those with no real argument.

The democratic republic exists as a careful balance between 3 branches of government, each looking over the other shoulders to keep everything on the up and up.

In 1978, the FISA court was established, over my (and many others) objections and warnings. It was specifically for the purpose of hearing information that the government claimed was too sensitive to be known publicly and had to remain secret. Information so secret that even a defendant's lawyer couldn't be clued in, but the FISA judge would make sure that the government wasn't blowing smoke up everyone's ___.

What the Obama administration wants is to lie not just to the American people, but to the courts, too. Obama wants to eliminate the courts from the equation, to lie to the courts and say "No such evidence exists for you to even evaluate whether it should be public". That's more of the same 'unitary executive' that Obama's 'most ardent supporters' railed against when it was Bush and Cheney asserting it.

We on the left saw where such a precedent and departure from the Constitution the creating of the FISA law could and would lead. But due to those like you (cognitively challenged), we were shouted down. Just as you're trying to do now.

What you trust is a facade, a persona of no substance, a fakir, created specifically to appeal to the weak-minded and ignorant. Obama is a product that was marketed, nothing more. You really have no business offering opinions when, in fact, you don't know what you're talking about and should be asking questions of power, and demanding they answer. And if you don't know what questions to ask, then you'd better get the heck out of the way and leave it to those who do know.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

GOP's War on Working Americans: Our Best Path to Victory

Without a doubt focus group-tested to target particular interest groups within the Democratic Party.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Campaign Finance Reformers Launch Progressive Effort To Remove Money From Politics

Did you not read that the Obama administration seeks to codify (make legal) an existing practice initiated by Ronald Reagan's AG by way of a memo that allows federal agencies to deny Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by falsely claiming that documents that do exist don't? And Obama's rule goes further than Meese's memo mentions, including the courts in who can be lied to about the existence of documents.

Obama's was to be the most transparent administration in history, bent on correcting the wrongs of the previous administrations that have gotten us to this point where more of our government operates in secret than ever before in its history.

How can any Constitution loing citizen defend this effort by Obama?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Campaign Finance Reformers Launch Progressive Effort To Remove Money From Politics

Obama, in his own words:

"Meetings where laws are written will be more open to the public, no more secrecy.....No more secrecy.....":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQbQTrm_pSA

Transparency Will Be Touchstone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72g7qmeP1dE

"Clintons did health care the wrong way, behind closed doors":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvyharXBI0Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU0m6Rxm9vU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBtIKgGHYPQ

"On transparency", "About inviting the people back into their government again", & "Part of the job of the next American president is making Americans believe that our government is working for them, because right now they don't feel like it's working for them. They feel like it's working for special interests & it's working for corporations:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K97hvOOdy_I

"We need a president who sees the government not as a tool to enrich well connected friends & high-priced lobbyists, but as a defender of fairness & opportunity for every single American. That's what this country's been about and that's the kind of president I intend to be:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEMxfme7OQI

"The American people are the answer":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2cvru2TH-s

Obama's Transparency Problem:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IODbwOhZYEM

Obama's campaign rhetoric was just that -- Rhetoric.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Campaign Finance Reformers Launch Progressive Effort To Remove Money From Politics

Obama's Justice Department wants to codify a repulsive existing practice that allows federal agencies to deny Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by falsely claiming that documents that do exist don't.

Genuine government transparency is fundamental to all Americans, which is why this twisted take on transparency has struck nerves across the political spectrum. Both the liberal ACLU and the conservative Judicial Watch oppose the warped proposal.

Justice already can legitimately deny FOIA requests to protect information about ongoing investigations. But falsely claiming documents don't exist would discourage FOIA filers -- who'd have no way to know such claims were false -- from suing over rejected requests.

Yet court challenges will be Americans' best hope for ultimately derailing this attempt at disingenuous deception, should Justice implement it. Bolstering that hope, The Daily Caller reports, is a federal judge's ruling in a case involving FBI records: "Government cannot, under any circumstance, affirmatively mislead the court."

Government must not "affirmatively mislead" the American people, either. Justice's bid to do so reveals Obama administration "transparency" as the travesty it is. If not much more.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Campaign Finance Reformers Launch Progressive Effort To Remove Money From Politics

Click on "More Obama treachery:". Or here. Or here. Or here. Or here.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Campaign Finance Reformers Launch Progressive Effort To Remove Money From Politics

More Obama treachery:

The Obama administration wants a new rule to the Freedom of Information Act which would allow federal agencies to tell people requesting certain law-enforcement or national security documents that records don’t exist – even when they do.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

How to Achieve Transparency for the Super Committee

The Obama administration wants to make it more difficult for the public to determine if secret documents exist by allowing agencies to lie about them.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

GOP's War on Working Americans: Our Best Path to Victory

And the proof of what I'm saying was evident for all to see in the 2010 midterm elections, when Obama and the DLC worked their butts off preventing progressive/liberal Democrats getting into office. Read about that here.

To add insult to the injury, before the 2010 midterms, Obama broadcast that he would be doing more of the same, more caving by Obama & Democrats, to Republicans, even if Democrats remained the majority and in control of both Houses of Congress:

Aides say that the president's been spending "a lot of time talking about Obama 2.0," brainstorming with administration officials about the best way to revamp the strategies & goals of the White House.

And despite the predictions that Democrats may relinquish a large degree of legislating power, including perhaps control of the House & even Senate, Obama isn't thinking of the next two years as a period that'll be marked with the same obstructive nature from the GOP.

"It may be that regardless of what happens after this election, [Republicans] feel more responsible, either because they didn't do as well as they anticipated, & so the strategy of just saying no to everything & sitting on the sidelines & throwing bombs didn't work for them," Obama says. "Or they did reasonably well, in which case the American people are going to be looking to them to offer serious proposals & work with me in a serious way."

Dick Durbin says Obama's post-election agenda "will have to be limited & focused on the things that are achievable and high priorities for the American people." Tom Daschle says Obama has to reach out more: "The keyword is inclusion. He's got to find ways to be inclusive."

Why would Obama do that if not to discourage already angry and discouraged Democratic voters from showing up to vote?

Democrats lost seats in the 2010 midterms because of Obama's and Democrats failure to do what Democratic voters put them in office for in 2008. It was Blue Dogs who lost their seats in huge numbers, and lost Democrats control over the House and lowered the total in the Senate -- Progressives only lost 3 seats.

Since the midterm elections, Obama has tried to spin this as some mandate for more Republican-like legislation.
About Herman Cain
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GOP's War on Working Americans: Our Best Path to Victory

Obama never pressured BenNelson (or BlancheLincoln, or any BlueDog). The Democratic leadership could've taken away committee chairs (BlancheLincoln's, too) of members in their caucus that filibustered a PublicOption for healthcare. They didn't.

The DNC could've taken away reelection funds. They didn't.

Reid could've actually forced Republicans and turncoat Democratic senators to filibuster. He didn't (and doesn't).

The ProgressiveCaucus could have kept their pledge about not voting for a bill that didn't include a robust PublicOption. They didn't.

Obama DID unleash the attack dogs to go after HowardDean when Dean said it was a lousy bill. Dean was then forced to get back into line. Obama went after Kucinich, the last remaining holdout on the ProgressiveCaucus, for threatening to vote no on the healthcare bill, and we all know how that ended.

There is nothing that Lieberman (or Nelson or Lincoln) is doing that Obama hasn't ordered. Obama and the DLC-Democrats want Lieberman there, doing what he's doing, which is to take the heat off of Democrats.

And the proof of this is that (since you mention Nelson), when Obama needed Nelson re: StupakAmendment, he 'bought' his support. That's what Obama could've done for Nelson's or Lincoln's vote at any time, on any legislation.

There could be 100 "progressives" in the Senate and 435 in the House, and they and Obama would still find a way to deliver to corporations instead of the People and blame it on Republicans. Because they're DLC, aka Republicans-in-Democrats'-clothing.

Republicans, with the smallest minority, have managed to thwart Democrats, who've had the greatest majority in decades. You would think that with Republicans controlling the House, Democrats would've turned the tables and thwarted Republicans' continuing legislation like Bush's tax cuts for the rich? Are Democrats just stupld?
About Herman Cain
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

GOP's War on Working Americans: Our Best Path to Victory

Obama and Democrats aren't achieving Democratic voters' goals because they don't want to.

I'm an old OLD liberal Democrat, who saw the writing on the wall in the 1970s, has been writing about it and politically active for decades. Reform isn't on the agenda of either party. Republicans don't have to bother trying to keep progressives out of office -- Obama and the DLC worked their butts off to PREVENT more progressives/liberals from getting elected. Obama and the DLC put the power of the White House, the DNC, and the Democratic congressional committees behind Blue Dogs, Republicans and Independents over progressives/liberals and real Democrats. Some, but not all, examples:

Blue Dog Blanche Lincoln over progressive Democrat Lt. Governor Bill Halter.

Republican-turned-Independent Arlen Specter over progressive Democrat Joe Sestak.

Republican-turned-Independent Lincoln Chaffee over Democrat Frank Caprio (which, in turn, is an effective endorsement of the Republican John Loughlin over Democrat David Cicilline for the congressional seat Democrat Patrick Kennedy is retiring from, and all of the other seats up for grab in Rhode Island).

Republican-turned-Independent Charlie Crist over liberal Democrat Kendrick Meek.

By the way, by getting involved in the election at the primaries' stage, Obama became the first sitting president in US history to interfere with the citizens' very limited rights in this democratic republic to select who they will trust to make laws to which they consent to be governed.

Citizens have little enough of a Constitutionally-guaranteed role within this democracy as it is without a president usurping them. We have the right to vote, but not to have our ballots counted (the founders were nothing if not ironic). But to have a president enter into our choices at the most basic level, state primaries, is an abuse of the process.

Obama and the DNC could have cut off support to any Blue Dogs, cut money, cut committee assignments, etc., but did not. Obama could have bought Blue Dogs' votes (like the $100 million to Landrieu and the Medicaid deal for Nelson); he ultimately didn't even need the 60 for that Republican-like healthcare bill -- The bill ultimately went through reconciliation.

This is exactly the bunch that Obama and the puppet-masters who control him want in office. On both sides of the aisle. Obama, Ds and Rs in office, working on behalf of transnational corporations.
About Herman Cain
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Obama's Efforts To Aid Homeowners, Boost Housing Market Fall Far Short Of Goals

Sunday, October 23, 2011

This has nothing to do with Congress. This is pure Obama:

Obama has spent just $2.4 billion of the $50 billion he promised.

About Barack Obama
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Dear Mr. President: Get Out of Your Funk

Friday, October 21, 2011

Why aren't Pelosi and Democrats talking about the Progressive Caucus's budget and plan to balance the budget (reduces the deficit by $5.1 trillion)? It beats Obama's AND Republicans' plans. The People's Budget (read it here).

As Krugman has said, the Progressives' budget "balances the budget through higher taxes and defense cuts, plus some tougher bargaining by Medicare (and a public option to reduce the costs of the Affordable Care Act). The proposed tax hikes would fall on higher incomes, raising the cap on payroll taxes (takes care of Social Security's solvency forever)... and unlike the Ryan plan, it actually makes sense."

But Obama takes solutions that work for the People, the vast majority of Americans, off the table. Whether it's ending Bush's tax cuts or the wars, the '14th Amendment Solution' (and it is, indeed, a legitimate option), etc., Obama kneecaps and handicaps the Democratic voters who put him and Democrats into power.

That's Obama's style, taking solutions that work for the People off the table and out of consideration when we're discussing how we want to proceed. That's what he did during the healthcare debate -- He took single payer off the table before negotiations ever began. Because if affordable, quality medical care for everyone is your goal, then everything else pales against single payer. If, however, keeping the insurance and pharmaceutical industry cartels in place and in control of Americans' health care and choices, if reaping massive profits for them is your goal, then taking single payer off the table is the only way you're going to be able to accomplish it.

If Republicans are going to turn down anything Obama and Democrats put forth, why then aren't Obama and Democrats fighting for the BEST plan out there?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Dear Mr. President: Get Out of Your Funk

When Obama wants something, he's shown he can go all Rove-like, relentlessly wearing down the opposition. The problem is that he and the DLC-controlled Democratic Party don't want what the Democratic voters put them into power to get.

We already know that cutting taxes does not create jobs and creating jobs is what is needed and what will solve our fiscal problems. Yet Obama has already capitulated to Republicans, caving to (at minimum) a $1 trillion plan that cuts SocialSecurity, Medicare and Medicare and (his ideal plan) a 5-to-1 (program cuts to increasing revenues) scheme.

Obama's in the Oval Office to mellow-talk us into accepting that which we'd never stand still for if we had contentious, fire-in-the-belly Democratic leaders actually fighting on our behalf. Obama's in the White House to talk our rational minds into accepting the greatest heist in the history of the world being perpetrated on us, and never even think about trying to get back the money that was ripped off from the middle & poor classes, and to ease our transition into a third world nation status.

Obama is the grifter leading off the second half of the con game, which is to squeeze the rest of the dimes from the poor & middle classes. It's been going on since Reagan, but It began in earnest, for all to actually see, with part 2 of Bush's Medicare Reform Act of 2003 (high-priced junk health insurance that has no cost controls), and has continued with his push for more *AFTA treaties (outsourcing more Americans' jobs) and the Deficit (Simpson-Bowles' 'Cat Food' Commission.

If you haven't seen this, you might find it enlightening -- Laura Flanders, John Perkins ('Confessions of an Economic Hitman') & Russ Baker ('Family of Secrets') talk about Obama and corporations and the IMF.

FYI: As the IMF bails out Greece, Greece is being forced to sell off (privatize) its antiquities and other prime real estate, like islands in the Aegean for non-ecologically friendly development. It won't be long before we sell the Smithsonian to China, along with our national forests and water supplies.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Dear Mr. President: Get Out of Your Funk

If you're so worried about the SC, then you'd better urge Obama not to run for reelection, so a real Democrat can run and balance the court out instead of running from the L-word.

It's apparent that young Obama supporters don't really know what a real Democrat is.
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Dear Mr. President: Get Out of Your Funk

The only ones who have stabbed us in the back are Obama and DLC-controlled Democrats who collaborated with Republicans these past 30 years.

If you're so worried about the SC and you think Obama is going to replace Ginsburg with a liberal (Clinton played to the center by choosing Ginsburg, not the left), then you'd think that Ginsburg would leave the court now to let Obama pick her successor, just as O'Connor did by waiting for Clinton to leave office.

You and those like you keep us saddled with these DLC-controlled Democrats who have helped Republicans, collaborated with Republicans, in destroying the middle class.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Can the President Ignore Supreme Court Rulings?

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

This article hits upon one of my favorite subjects: Constitutional crises, Republicans' utter contempt for the Constitution and callous disregard for creating them caused by Democrats' cowering response. That's what underpins all of this and what's destroying the country.

As president, you've got to really want the US to work, to exist, to not exploit the loopholes in the Constitution that keep our three-branches of government precariously balancing the democracy. But BushCheney drove tanks through the loopholes, breaking the law and with no apparent concern for exposing the loopholes or any consequences.

Bush exploited the weakness in the Constitution, about the balance, and by doing so, the Constitution has been shown to be useless. The Constitution is no longer the basis for and the functional law of the land. The Constitution is no longer much respected in Congress, the Executive Branch, the SupremeCourt, nor in law or business.

Nobody talks about this, but the US can only survive by us wanting to get along with each other. You've got to want the country to work more than you want your way over other Americans getting their way. Or some of their way. You've got to be willing to compromise.

Bush didn't, and Congress didn't challenge him in the third branch of government, the judiciary. Bush created one Constitutional crisis after another. There's been real concern that if the judiciary ruled against him, he wouldn't abide. Then what? Nobody can force him. Three co-equal branches of government.

KEEP READING
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'The View' Hosts Bash Herman Cain For Immigration Comments (VIDEO)

Like "the circle of life" and "the food chain", just about all of our problems are interrelated and could be solved by addressing one culprit: Reining in/regulating corporations/Big Business/Banking/Wall Street.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

'The View' Hosts Bash Hermain Cain For Immigration Comments (VIDEO)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18788333/ns/us_news-environment/t/immigration-fence-seen-dead-end-wildlife/

Turning the US into a fort isn't the solution. It's that kind of thinking that is the problem.
About Herman Cain
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Hillary Clinton Receiving Donations Of $20.12 From Voters Who Want Her To Challenge President Obama

Obama will become a more effective leader in his second term, when there will be no need for him to tip-toe around independents and conservative democrats for future votes.

=======================

The author of the above can offer no reason for his belief other than wishful thinking. It's not unlike after Obama flip-flopped on FISA in July 2008, and supporters said that he only did it to fool the independents and moderates into voting for him, and once elected we would see Obama's "true liberal colors".

When Obama keeps Tim Geithner and the architects of the economic meltdown in his administration and shuts out liberals and progressives from his White House, anyone who makes comments like Gbawd49 either still believes in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus or is a political operative paid to spread disinformation and confuse would-be voters.
About Hillary Clinton
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Hillary Clinton Receiving Donations Of $20.12 From Voters Who Want Her To Challenge President Obama

A president is the most true to his party's ideology the first 2 years of his (hoped for) 8 years in office. Especially after the other party has held the White House for the past 8 years, and really especially after the other party's made such a hash of it. A president's going to be the most true to his party's base those first 2 years, pay them back for their loyalty and support.

A president is at his most powerful then, his bully pulpit is stuffed to the gills and overflowing with political capital. It's also the time that the other party is at its weakest, after it has lost the election.

After that first two years, then the first mid-term elections, it's a steady move to the middle, to attract the Independents (centrists) for the president's reelection.

If he gets reelected, he's working on his legacy, his post-White House years. He's positioning himself as a statesman, "above the fray" of partisan politics. He's looking for his place on the world stage.

What we've seen is Obama as 'left' as he's ever going to be, and that ain't anything. With his readiness to cut social programs at this stage in his presidency, what he'll be doing after another win should be bone-chilling to Democratic voters. Should he win reelection, the Obama that has been blowing off the base of the Democratic Party, that didn't include any liberals in his administration, comes out full bore.
About Hillary Clinton
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'Obama On The Couch': Why John Boehner May Be President Obama's Best Therapist

JUSTIN FRANK, M.D.: One is that in this country there is a long-standing hatred of dependency. Because of that, the appeal of self-reliance, which was a term coined by RalphWaldoEmerson in the 1840s, is very great. Presidents Reagan and Bush, and other people, have found that that has struck a chord with many Americans -- the idea of self-reliance. The concept of being like WoodyAllen and relying on an analyst is a misinterpretation, in my view, of what analysis is and what it does, because analysis facilitates self-reliance. However, people feel that it causes and invites dependency. What it invites is for people to look at the dependency aspects that exist in all of us, because we were all once dependent on our parents for survival, really. I think that those things persist in the child parts of each of us, usually repressed.

The second thing about the range of responses to psychoanalysis, I think, is that everyone, including many psychoanalysts, don’t like the idea that we have an unconscious. Freud’s discovery and assertion that there's mental life that is going on inside of each of us that we’re not aware of is a little bit disconcerting, to say the least. I think that we have evidence of an unconscious, like we dream when we’re asleep. We know that we’re able to think when we’re asleep, in fact. We know that things go on mentally inside of us. But if we stop and really pay attention to those things and don’t dismiss them, I think it can cause a lot of anxiety and discomfort. People don’t want to look inside.

But to me, the world is as vast inside as it is outside. It's like looking at the atom, and you start looking through an electron microscope at all kinds of phenomena, and space, and things that are internal. I think that psychoanalysis is a tool for doing that psychologically.

About Barack Obama
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'Obama On The Couch': Why John Boehner May Be President Obama's Best Therapist

In a 2007 interview:

QUESTION: A general question about the range of emotions that Americans have toward the whole issue of psychoanalysis -- what might be considered psychological impediments, mental health, and so forth. On the one hand, there’s a stereotype we have -- the WoodyAllen-type figure who can never get enough of self-analysis and psychoanalysis, and is constantly monitoring himself. On the other hand, you have someone like Bush, who doesn't want any psychoanalysis, isn’t interested in self-exploration, not a wit, because he is "normal." He’s as solid as is the granite on his ranch in Crawford, Texas. As we know, a large segment of the American society has disdain for the concept of psychological problems and they consider that a weakness. They don’t see the need for self-exploration. People are what they are. They don’t look inward. They just look forward. What's your view of that range? Is it safe to say that’s the range of American views?

JUSTIN FRANK, M.D.: I think it’s very safe to say it. For me to really respond properly to your question would require another book, because it’s such a good question and so important, and so many ways to think about it. So maybe a couple of thoughts about it.

KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

'Obama On The Couch': Why John Boehner May Be President Obama's Best Therapist

Dr. Frank responded to a comment similar to yours back in 2007 -

QUESTION: You're a psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst. What's the precedent and what are the limitations of applying a psychoanalytic model to a figure that you don’t know, a public figure?

JUSTIN FRANK, M.D.: There’s a long tradition of what’s called applied psychoanalysis. There’s an actual discipline of it. And what that is is the intense study of a historical figure or even of a fictional character in a novel, but an intense study of everything you can find when you can’t have that person in your consulting room, and then applying psychoanalytic principles to an understanding of their life history. One looks for patterns of behavior. One looks for congruencies in their life story that you can begin to see from different sources. And with the case of Bush, or in studying any historical figure, one looks at their own writings and their own behavior that’s available to the public at large. The other thing that makes it very useful to be able to study someone like Bush is the tremendous number of press conferences and public appearances that he’s made. There’s a lot of chance to observe him in public arenas.

The limitations, however, of doing it without knowing the person personally is that I don’t get to use a firsthand relationship with the patient, which is really essential to a good psychoanalysis. Also, I don’t get to use my own counter-transference directly, meaning my feelings towards the patient that get evoked throughout the time of the sessions. I was concerned that I had built in antipathy towards Bush that I worried would make it much harder for me to do a balanced psychoanalytic approach to him. So I was worried about being a prisoner of my counter-transference, if you will.

That proved to be a very interesting experience intellectually and psychologically for me. As I got to know him better, and as I saw different pictures of him -- including a movie of his 2000 campaign made by Alexandra Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi’s daughter -- he became much more alive to me as an affable, charming person who really was good at making people feel happy, good, and well-cared-for. I learned a lot by watching him and getting to know him.

In terms of psychoanalysis, the classical approach of looking at transference and counter-transference was denied me. But the other side of it was that I had a tremendous amount of material to pay attention to. And there’s a long tradition of doing this in my field. Freud did it. The CIA has done psychoanalytic studies or psychological profiling of every foreign leader, with an attempt to help them understand how to negotiate with them, how to predict their responses.

About Barack Obama
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'Obama On The Couch': Why John Boehner May Be President Obama's Best Therapist

That's mighty flattering; thank you.

Did you see the Chris Hedges article about Obama and Wright a couple of weeks ago? Your comment about Wright reminded me of it.
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'Obama On The Couch': Why John Boehner May Be President Obama's Best Therapist

Or Teddy Roosevelt. Those are the 3 names that popped up in my mind, too. Had JFK lived, I think he might have grown into that sort of leader.

I think that where we are now in our history, and with what Obama has turned out to be, is tragic. I think Justin Frank is being generous to Obama, and giving him the benefit of doubt -- I have no doubt anymore about Obama. I've examined and reexamined every speech, interview, debate, his legislative record, etc., and the most generous that I'm willing to go in describing Obama's actions since taking office is that he's turned cynical (I think the truth is that he always was cynical, politically conservative and the 2008 campaign was a world class con job on Democratic voters).

Reverend Jeremiah Wright had him pegged when he said that Obama was "just a politician".
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

'Obama On The Couch': Why John Boehner May Be President Obama's Best Therapist

Justin Frank at Cody's Books talking about the Mind of George W. Bush.

Here is Dr. Frank on CSpan talking about Bush.
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'Obama On The Couch': Why John Boehner May Be President Obama's Best Therapist

The old "lesser of two eviIs" argument.

In spite of the fact that Obama's continuing just about all the BushCheney policies, even going BushCo one better: How do any of Obama's 'most ardent supporters' explain Obama's doctrine that presidents have the right to k!ll American citizens with no due process, no oversight, and his push for 'indefinite preventive detention' and no transparency of anything a president asserts should be his secret? Pure Kafka.

As a Democrat, I don't know how any Democrat can get behind this.

At this point, I'd argue that Obama-Democrats are worse. BushCheney make no bones or excuses for what they've done and who they are, whereas Obama-Democrats ran on knowing better.

Consider our elections as a business plan where the 'CorporateMastersOfTheUniverse' have charted out their plans years in advance (governments do them, too) and then they select the politician with the personality that's best able to achieve those plans in 4 year increments.

If you want to l!e the country into war for oil and profiteering, then GeorgeWBush is your man to front it, with DickCheney, the former SecretaryOfDefense who initiated the privatizing of the military a decade earlier, actually running the operation from the shadows.

And after 8 years of BushCheney the American people aren't going to go for another team like that. They're going to want HOPE and CHANGE, with a persona they can believe in and trust. BarackObama.

Obama's 'most ardent admirers' just like the packaging better. I'm not talking skin color, although that may be a factor for some of them; I'm talking about how a 'D' after the name is a brand they trust believe and trust in, despite the fact that it's the same 'soap' (product).

You continue to support Obama-Democrats at the expense of your own best interests. As long as his numbers remain high, he does the bidding of corporations and establishment elites.

Why should Obama-Democrats do anything for you if they know they've got you over a barrel, that you're going to vote for them no matter what, because you're terrified of Republicans?
About Barack Obama
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'Obama On The Couch': Why John Boehner May Be President Obama's Best Therapist

Ditto for the head of his NationalEconomicCouncil. Although appointing LarrySummers might have been a bit of a stretch, despite his yeoman work in destroying financial regulation—thus enriching his old boss RobertRubin and helping cause the Crash of 2008—McCain could easily have found a JackKemp-like Republican “supply-sider” who would have duplicated Summers’ signal achievement of expanding the deficit to the highest level since 1950 (though perhaps with a slightly higher percentage of tax cuts than the Obama stimulus). The economy would have continued to sputter along, with growth rates and joblessness levels little different from today’s, and possibly even worse.

But McCain’s election would have produced a major political difference: It would have increased Democratic clout in the House and Senate.

Read more here.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

'Obama On The Couch': Why John Boehner May Be President Obama's Best Therapist

Who thought that when John McCain lost the 2008 election that we'd still be contending with his plans for governing?

If McCain Had Won

McCain would probably have approved a failed troop surge in Afghanistan, engaged in worldwide extrajudicial assassination, destabilized nuclear-armed Pakistan, failed to bring Israel’s BenjaminNetanyahu to the negotiating table, expanded prosecution of whistle-blowers, sought to expand executive branch power, failed to close Guantanamo, failed to act on climate change, pushed both nuclear energy and opened new areas to domestic oil drilling, failed to reform the financial sector enough to prevent another financial catastrophe, supported an extension of the BushTaxCuts for the rich, presided over a growing divide between rich and poor, and failed to lower the jobless rate.

Nothing reveals the true state of American politics today more, however, than the fact that has undertaken all of these actions and, even more significantly, left the DemocraticParty far weaker than it would have been had McCain been elected. Few issues are more important than seeing behind the screen of a myth-making mass media, and understanding what this demonstrates about how power in America really works—and what needs to be done to change it.

KEEP READING
About Barack Obama
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'Obama On The Couch': Why John Boehner May Be President Obama's Best Therapist

Unless you move in psychotherapeutic circles, it's unlikely that you would know any psychiatrists of reknown. Justin Frank has solid credentials. Frank completed his psychiatric residency at Harvard Medical School and was chief resident at the Cambridge Hospital. He was awarded the DuPont-Warren Fellowship by Massachusetts General Hospital. He practices and teaches psychoanalysis in Washington, DC where he is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the George Washington University Medical Center. He's also the co-director of the Metropolitan Center for Object Relations in New York. A clinician with more than thirty year's experience, Dr. Frank has been a former columnist for Salon.com, DailyBeast.com, and continues to be a frequent contributor to HuffingtonPost.com on topics as diverse as politics, film, and theater. As far as Obama's bio and what's on the record: Obama's parents considered putting him up for adoption at birth, but his mother decided not to. Obama Sr. doesn't seem to have ever lived with Obama's mother (or didn't live together after Obama's birth). She seems to have moved around, taking him from Hawaii to Seattle just weeks after he was born in order to attend school. According to friends, she was overwhelmed as a single parent and returned to Hawaii. Obama's parents officially divorced when Obama was 3 or 4 years old. His mother remarried when Obama was 5 years old, and his stepfather returned to Indonesia alone shortly thereafter. When Obama was 6 years old he and his mother moved to Indonesia. When Obama was 9 years old his mother had a daughter. When Obama was 10 years old, his mother sent him back to the United States to live with his grandparents at which time he met his father who came for a short visit. Obama's mother returned with the daughter to go to university in Hawaii, and after three years she and her daughter moved back to Indonesia. Obama's mother died when he was 34. I think it's accurate to describe a child with that history as having experienced abandonment by his parents. Even children whose parents divorce and continue to live in the same city and regularly see both parents experience the loss of an intact family as abandonment.
About Barack Obama
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'Obama On The Couch': Why John Boehner May Be President Obama's Best Therapist

Monday, October 17, 2011

To begin with, Bush was no patrician and I am an OLD liberal Democrat who has never voted for a Republican in my many years of voting.

I suggest that you and Obama's other 'most ardent supporters' have no idea who he really is and what he's about. As Obama said himself in 'Audacity Of Hope', “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”

That's the nature of the modern election process -- It's all about deception and duplicity. Public relations' firms are paid huge sums to design sophisticated campaigns to trick voters into believing a candidate is someone that he's not.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

'Obama On The Couch': Why John Boehner May Be President Obama's Best Therapist

There's something to be said for a patrician as president. Someone with a strong sense of where he fits in to the social structure, who doesn't have to prove anything. A patrician with a highly developed sense of equality, secure enough in his place in the social order that he can focus on leading the country.
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Democrats Planning Major Capitol Hill Rally To Push Obama's Jobs Bill

There is nothing that has happened the past 30 years that Democrats didn't sign onto.

Three American job-killing, factory offshoring, free trade agreements were passed by both houses of Congress last week. It wasn't just the Ben Nelsons that voted for them -- Nancy Pelosi voted yea, as did many other Democratic politicians.
About Teachers
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Democrats Planning Major Capitol Hill Rally To Push Obama's Jobs Bill

Democrats talk a good game about supporting working Americans, but when it comes to action, they don't.

Last week, Democrats (including Nancy Pelosi) voted to approve the American job-killing, manufacturing outsourcing free trade agreements with S. Korea, Panama and Colombia:

The Senate approved free-trade deals between the U.S. and Colombia, Panama and South Korea on Wednesday, sending them to President Barack Obama for signature. The agreements are strongly backed by the White House and won approval in the House of Representatives earlier Wednesday. The Senate voted 66-33 on the Colombia agreement; 77-22 on the Panama deal; and 83-15 on the South Korea agreement.

How did your senators and representatives vote?
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