Spintested: 04/17/11

House Democrats Punk Republicans On Budget Vote (VIDEO)

Sunday, April 17, 2011

No, this is Obama's "compromise" 2011 budget deal, voted and passed by both Houses of Congress last week.
About Paul Ryan
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The 2012 Speculatron Weekly Roundup

This isn't spin; these are facts.

In reality, neither you nor I know how Democratic voters are going to cast their votes in 2012.

I can't tell people what to do; I can only give them information and what they choose to do with that information is up to them. I can advise (and have advised) people to become active in many ways. But continuing to vote for Democrats who legislate and govern as Republicans is that old definition of insanity (Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different outcome).

Until it sinks in that Obama and the DLC-controlled Democratic Party is not a populist party but the same old Republican Party of Nixon & Reagan, people are going to continue getting swept up by very high-priced focus group tested rhetoric.

Perhaps you would like it if I did it in ad-speak? The Democratic Party, just like the Republican Party, only kinder, gentler, softer, with more diverse faces. "Same great taste, but with fewer calories!" As you're losing your home, living in your car (until it's repossessed) and scrounging your next meal in a dumpster, Democrats tell you that they're "really trying, but those mean Republicans", and give you a sympathetic face.

Don't you think it's odd that Obama's fiscal speech, advertised 2 days before to be a nighttime address, with huge build-up, said nothing except "everything is on the table" (meaning Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security), and the speech was delivered at 11 am PDT?

Obama's off on the same track as when he took kiIIed single payer/public option and extending Bush's tax cuts for the rich. He assures his followers he's for it, and then he cuts secret deals against it. The people find out about it when it's all too late, a done deal.

He's not an honest broker. And no Democrats in office are. And just because you've heard me say it before doesn't mean others have. So I'm going to keep saying it until I no longer have to. If you don't like it, get out there, organize a progressive or populist movement.
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Let's say that all that is true. Let's say that Soros and unions are spending on par with the Koch brothers: American people/workers have lost huge ground over the past 40 years to the interests on the Koch brothers' side and the issues that the Koch brothers are pushing. Do American citizens want to be broke, hungry and homeless? Do American citizens want 2% to hoard the wealth of the nation?
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Japan Nuclear Crisis: Fukushima Plant Operator Announces Plan To End Crisis

I asked you how you come to believe it, and you tell me it's on the basis of 2 men's opinions. You can believe as Hansen and Lovelock do if you put blinders on and deIude yourself into believing that the only nuclear accident that's ever taken place was Chernobyl, and then dismiss that as "human error, the kind that can only take place in Soviet Union".

"Three Mile Island not even close to being only nuclear accident in USA!"

"Can the US Produce Safe Nuclear Energy & Prevent The Kind of Crisis We're Seeing in Japan? No."

Gore does NOT support nuclear, by the way. That was even before the catastrophe in Japan.

The fact about nuclear is that it's NOT cheap, it's NOT clean, and it's NOT safe.

If you're looking for a solution for the problem of abundant energy that is NOT coal or oil, yes, nuclear is an alternative. And that is all that Hansen and Lovelock are addressing. But it's like that old story, "The surgery to remove the tumor was a success, but the patient died on the table from complications during the surgery."

There are solutions, and the solutions may not allow for the continued squandering of the earth's resources, growth/development/paving over the surface of the planet for unlimited human population, or a worldwide economy that exploits the most to live in abject squalor and poverty for the lavish lifestyles of a few.

The gas and oil industries have been buying up patents for alternatives for years and burying them to eliminate competition. See here.

That's got to end. And the thinking that even debates the efficacy of it has to stop.

A lot of people worldwide are going to dle in the coming years either way, but the conditions for those remaining won't have to include a toxic, poisoned environment which makes their few years on the planet one of sickness and deformity.
About Japan Earthquake
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Japan Nuclear Crisis: Fukushima Plant Operator Announces Plan To End Crisis

And remember our choice is not solar/wind or coal, it's coal or nuclear, with a little solar and wind.

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

How do you come to believe that?

It's not true, but I'm interested in why, of all the many possibilities, you have managed to buy into the one which doesn't solve our problems, spells out d00m, and makes the transnational energy corporations richer.
About Japan Earthquake
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Tim Geithner Confident Congress Will Raise Debt Ceiling: Not Doing So Would Be 'Catastrophic' (VIDEO)

"Not Raising Debt Ceiling Would Be 'Catastrophic'"

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

As will raising the debt ceiling.

Obama and Democratic leadership have already indicated they're on board with Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security cuts, privatizing, etc. Obama's already announced that if 14 of the 18 on the Bowles-Simpson Commision can agree on a plan, he's on board, and there are already more than 14 on the commission that support privatization.

Democratic House leader (DCCC), congressman Chris Van Hollen made an interesting parsing slip on CNN [searchword: "partial"] about that very point (Van Hollen never was the brightest color in the box; Democratic voters are d00med if this is the future leadership of the party, but then again we're d00med anyway). We're being set up to accept that which they're saying is inevitable.

When Obama wants something, he's shown he can go all R0ve-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.

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 began 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 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.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Joe Walsh Claims Every Time The U.S. Has Cut Taxes, Revenue Has Gone Up (VIDEO)

In his speech this past week, Obama left EVERYTHING on the table. That includes Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Just as Obama said he wouldn't sign any legislation that didn't include a public option and then reneged, I'm sure that in the weeks ahead he's going to be cutting another secret deal with Republicans, just like the lousy health insurance legislation and tax cuts for the rich, that ends Great Society programs. It's Obama's MO. It's how he operates.

Obama is not a man of the People; he's a tool of the Corporations.
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Joe Walsh Claims Every Time The U.S. Has Cut Taxes, Revenue Has Gone Up (VIDEO)

Obama and Democratic leadership have already indicated they're on board with Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security cuts, privatizing, etc. Obama's already announced that if 14 of the 18 can agree on a plan, he's on board, and there are already more than 14 on the commission that support privatization.

Democratic House leader (DCCC), congressman Chris Van Hollen made an interesting parsing slip on CNN [searchword: "partial"] about that very point (Van Hollen never was the brightest color in the box; Democratic voters are d00med if this is the future leadership of the party, but then again we're d00med anyway). We're being set up to accept that which they're saying is inevitable.

When Obama wants something, he's shown he can go all R0ve-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.

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 began 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 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.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

House Democrats Punk Republicans On Budget Vote (VIDEO)

Included in the bill:

$414 million in cuts to grants for state and local police departments.

A whopping $1.6 billion cut in the EnvironmentalProtectionAgency's budget, of which nearly $1 billion comes from grants for clean water and other projects by local governments and Indian tribes.

$600 million in cuts to community health centers.

Cuts to homeland security programs for the first time ever, though much of the agency's two percent decrease stems from a $786 million cut in first responder grants to state and local governments.

A $7 million cut to the Bureau of Public Debt, which accounts for and provides reports on the debt.

A $1 billion cut to HIV and disease-prevention funds.

A $3 billion cut to agriculture programs, the biggest portion of which comes from the Women Infants and Children fund, which loses $504 million.

A $390 million cut to low-income heating assistance; Community Development Funds are cut by $942 million.

A $650 million cut to federal highway investments.

Contributions to the United Nations and other international institutions are cut by $377 million.

$45 million pulled from nuclear nonproliferation funds.

A rider tucked in by lawmakers from Western states that allows states to remove wolves from the endangered species list.

Why would Democratic voters support any of this?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Japan Nuclear Crisis: Fukushima Plant Operator Announces Plan To End Crisis

Young environmentalists met with Obama at the White House on Friday. This is what occurred:

Hight told CNN that the advocates expressed their concern about White House support for nuclear energy. “The president said it's something he's going to continue to support, so we have a difference of opinion on that,” she told the news service.

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

U.S. Nuclear Regulator Lets Industry Write Rules

"Three Mile Island not even close to being only nuclear accident in USA!"

"Can the US Produce Safe Nuclear Energy & Prevent The Kind of Crisis We're Seeing in Japan? No."

Should Obama Be Trusted To Do Nuclear Better? If How He's Handled Drilling is Any Indication of How He'd Do Nuclear,The Answer is No.

Do you remember when Obama appointed a new director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement to clean up the agency after BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster? Meet this weasel, Michael Bromwich, as Rachel Maddow gets to the heart of the matter:

Part 1 here.

Part 2 here.

Obama is a disaster for the environment, no better than Bush and Republicans. I'd argue Obama's even worse because we presume that, as a Democrat, he's more conscious of and committed to environmental issues. He's obviously not and is in bed with Big Business.

There are clean, green, sustainable solutions, but the gas and oil industries have been buying up patents for alternatives for years and burying them to eliminate competition.

See here.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Japan Nuclear Crisis: Fukushima Plant Operator Announces Plan To End Crisis

In yesterday's news:

Radioactivity Spikes Sharply In Sea Off Crippled Japan Nuke Plant

And environmentalists met with Obama at the White House on Friday:

Hight told CNN that the advocates expressed their concern about White House support for nuclear energy. “The president said it's something he's going to continue to support, so we have a difference of opinion on that,” she told the news service.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Tim Geithner Confident Congress Will Raise Debt Ceiling: Not Doing So Would Be 'Catastrophic' (VIDEO)

And in other news.
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And in other news.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

TV SoundOff: Sunday Talking Heads

And in other news.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Japan Nuclear Crisis: Fukushima Plant Operator Announces Plan To End Crisis

And in other news.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Drug-Resistant Bacteria in <em>Half</em> Your Meat? Time for Congress to Act

And in other news.
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College Graduates Scramble For Full-Time Jobs

And in other news.
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Obama and the Budget Civil War

When Obama wants something, he's shown he can go all R0ve-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.

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 began 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 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.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

College Graduates Scramble For Full-Time Jobs

College Graduates Scramble For Full-Time Jobs

Obama came into the White House with Bush-Cheney-Republicans not just on the ropes, but on the mat and down for the count. Obama issued a pardon and let them rise again.

After just one month in the White House, instead of going after Republicans and how their failed policies have brought us to the brink of destruction, instead of hammering Bush-Cheney-GOP for our economic woes and wars of choice, Obama and Rahm Emanuel went after Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, two people with no role in the Republican Party.

Obama and Emanuel never mentioned Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Eric Canter, Karl R0ve, George W, H.W., Jeb Bush, Cheney, NOBODY who is actually IN the Republican Party as the problem. They still don't.

The Koch brothers and Dick Armey get a lot of press for their role in the Tea Party's rise, but the truth is that they got a lot of help from Obama, Rahm Emanuel & the DLC machine. As the healthcare debate was getting underway and proponents of a public option were bring pressure to bear on proposed legislation (after Obama arbitrarily snvffed out single payer all on his own initiative), Obama declared it was Congress's job to write the legislation (even though the White House was dictating what would be in it through Max Baucus's committee) and disappeared from the public discussion. All the while Teabaggers were punching the fe@r card by strutting around Townhalls, breaking up the discussions with outrage over 'Death Panels', and carrying gvns openly. Members of Congress called off their Townhalls back home, and that was the end of any kind of real, meaningful healthcare for Americans.

Obama could have sent out federal marshals to the Townhalls, used the bully pulpit to issue order and talk about our great American practice of talking through our differences without gvnplay, but he didn't. What Obama did instead during the same time period was unleash federal security forces to Pittsburgh to break up peaceful protests of the G20 meeting, test out the new weaponry to use on the growing disquieted masses - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2009/sep/25/sonic-cannon-g20-pittsburgh

Obama and the DLC-controlled Democratic Party needs Sarah Palin and the Tea Party. The Tea Party serves Obama and the DLC-controlled Democratic Party in several ways. If they could choose any Republican to run against in 2012, it would be Palin, and elevating the Tea Party makes that more of a possibility.

It also lets Democrats keep a legislative agenda to the right of center. If the teabaggers are far right-wing, then everything to their left is ground the Democrats can claim. And that's a lot of corporate-money ground.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Open-Mic Slip: President Reveals Details On Budget Deal Talks (AUDIO)

Tea Party Turns Two And Tests Its Ability To Maintain Momentum

The 2012 Speculatron Weekly Roundup

The 2012 Speculatron Weekly Roundup

The 2012 Speculatron Weekly Roundup

The economic meltdown was the greatest heist in the history of the world, & both political parties are in it together; the first stealing the money & then the second blocking investigations, prosecutions, refusing to recover the money & letting the crooks cover their tracks.

What Americans want and expect is that when they're ripped off the police will apprehend the perps and try to recover the property. Obama and Democrats are NOT doing that.

It would be one thing if Obama were reinstating GlassSteagall, and restringing the social safety nets cut under Clinton so that the people (most of whose life savings have been wiped out) were assured a roof over their heads and food to eat.

But Obama and Democrats are not.

Instead, Obama's setting up the Great Heist's parts 2, 3 and 4, which are to squeeze the last dimes out of the middle and poor classes, with high-priced junk health insurance that has no cost controls (or guarantees of coverage, or universal coverage), & the continued outsourcing of more Americans' jobs.

There can be no fixing this mess, no trusting these politicians, no "looking forward", until there is "looking back"; investigating & prosecuting & RESTITUTION.

Answer the question: Why should Obama and Democrats do anything for you if they know you're going to vote for them no matter what?
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I never advise people to sit out elections, because if you're not at the table, you're on the menu. It's what p!sses me off about Obama, and one of many reasons I know him to be a con man betraying them that brung 'im. Because by shutting out liberals, the base, from his administration, by taking single payer, a public option, off the table, eliminating regulatory oversight from finance reform legislations, he's given pro-corporate, Republican-like policies an inside line. The People's advocates can't even get in the door of this government.

Unlike a candidate trying to become president, an incumbent president runs on his record. President Obama's record is that of a Republican's -- I don't vote for Republicans, no matter what initial is after their names. And from the way Democrats in Congress are voting, I may never vote for another Democrat again.

I tell people that they'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.

A 'TeaParty'-like challenge from the left within the DemocraticParty would have been the obvious next step, but it's a waste of time which would accomplish nothing for the People. To begin with, no one in the DemocraticParty will do it. It would be su!cide for any professional politician in the DemocraticParty to run against the party's sitting president (the DLC has gotten too powerful, what with a Democrat in the White House and a Democratically-controlled Senate overseeing an NSA with today's eavesdropping abilities) .

Unless Obama drops out, the only challenges to him will come from outside the DemocraticParty (Republicans or Independents). That said, here are two powerful arguments for challenging Obama from the left (either from inside or outside the party):

MichaelLerner's very powerful case for primarying Obama.

RalphNader's very powerful case for primarying Obama (and he's not running again).

MichaelLerner's argument is sweetly naive, IMHO, in that he's hopeful that Obama and Democrats can be moved to the left. I don't think that's true. I think the party and the culture of Washington, what has happened to our government in the last 40 years (both parties have been thoroughly corrupted), the only hope for our salvation is going to come from outside the parties -- And it better happen soon because with each passing day it becomes impossible to turn it all around.

Obama's 'most ardent supporters' need to get on the correct side, the real Democratic side of these issues, or join the RepublicanParty (and take the DLC and Obama with them).
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D & R poIiticians are not each others' enemles, not as they have voters believing them to be. Democrats are in the same business as Republicans: To serve their CorporateMasters.

Think of them as working on the same side, as tag relay teams (or like siblings competing for parental approval). 'Good cop/bad cop'. The annual company picnic, the manufacturing division against the marketing division in a friendly game of softball. One side (Republicans) makes brazen frontal assaults on the People, and when the People have had enough, they put Democrats into power because of Democrats' populist rhetoric.

Once in power, Democrats consolidate Republicans' gains from previous years, then continue on with Republican policies but renamed, with new advertising campaigns. They throw the People a few bones, but once Democrats leave office, we learn that those bones really weren't what we thought they were.

Whenever the People get wise to the shenanigans and all the different ways they've been tricked, when the People start seeing Democrats as no different than Republicans, Democrats switch the strategy. They invent new reasons for failing to achieve the People's business.

Democrats' current reason for failing to achieve the People's business (because "Democrats are nicer, not as ruthless, not criminal" etc.) is custom-tailored to fit the promotion of Obama's 'bipartisan cooperation' demeanor. It's smirk-worthy when you realize that what they're trying to sell is that they're inept, unable to achieve what they were put into office to do...And their ineptitude, like that's somehow "a good thing".
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If Republicans are such scvm (and I believe they are and you purport them to be) and "so dangerous", why isn't Obama investigating and prosecuting them? Why isn't Obama investigating and prosecuting the greatest heist on the People in all history?

Why are Obama and Democrats continuing the war crimes of Bush & Cheney, and blocking investigations and prosecutions into their crimes?

How does a Democratic president, on the heels of the most criminal and corrupt administration in the nation's history, not replace Bush-era US attorneys? Presidents may fire US attorneys, and they do so routinely at the beginning of a new administration. It is unusual to fire US attorneys in mid-term (as Bush did) except in cases of gross misconduct (which wasn’t the case during the Bush administration). This is what Obama's US attorneys do instead of returning the democracy to the American people -- Instead we get Bush-style obscenity prosecutions:

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_691667.html

We need a real Democrat in the Oval Office, and real Democrats in Congress, instead of these DINOs. With fire in their bellies to go after those who obstruct the People's business (Republicans), and not fire in their bellies to go after the Democratic Party's base.

We have Obama and Democrats to thank for the resurrection of Republicans. The GOP & Bush were down for the count after the 2008, and Obama gave them all pardon.

How do Obama's 'most ardent supporters' explain all that to themselves?
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The 2012 Speculatron Weekly Roundup

In yesterday's news (obliterated in the news cycle by a 1 PM speech by Obama on his fiscal policy):

Obama Administration to Spanish Judge: We Won’t Investigate Bush Lawyers’ Role in Torture

This was after stalling and stonewalling the Spanish court for 2 years.

Why (if Bush and Republicans are such scvm, "criminals", and so dangerous as I believe they are and as you claim to believe them to be)?
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Sunday, April 17, 2011

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