Spintested: 06/20/11

Luis Gutierrez: Latinos Won't Vote For Obama In 2012 Without Deportation Relief

Monday, June 20, 2011

“The Democrats and Republicans give the illusion that there are differences between them,” said Flowers. “This keeps the public divided. It weakens opposition. We fight over whether a Democrat or a Republican will get elected. We vote for the lesser evil, but meanwhile the policies the two parties enact aren't significantly different. There were no Democrats willing to hold the line on SinglePayer. Not one. I don’t see this changing until we radically shift the balance of power by creating a larger and broader social movement.”

The corporate control of every aspect of American life is mirrored in the corporate control of healthcare. And there are no barriers to prevent corporate domination of every sector of our lives.

“We're at a crisis,” Flowers said. “Healthcare providers, particularly those in primary care, are finding it very difficult to sustain an independent practice. We're seeing greater corporatization of our healthcare. Practices are being taken over by these large corporations. You have absolutely no voice when it comes to dealing with the InsuranceCompany. They tell you what your reimbursements will be. They make it incredibly difficult and complex to get reimbursed. The rules are arbitrary and change frequently.”

“This new legislation doesn't change any of that. It doesn't make it easier for doctors. It adds more administrative complexity. We're going to continue to have a shortage of doctors. As the new law rolls out they're giving waivers as the provisions kick in because corporations like McDonald’s say they can’t comply. Insurance companies such as WellPoint, UnitedHealth Group, Aetna, Cigna and Humana that were mandated to sell new policies to children with preexisting conditions announced they weren't going to do it. They said they were going to stop selling new policies to children. So they got waivers from the ObamaAdministration allowing them to charge higher premiums. Healthcare costs are going to rise faster.

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About Immigration
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Luis Gutierrez: Latinos Won't Vote For Obama In 2012 Without Deportation Relief

“You can’t effect change from the inside,” Flowers has concluded. “We have a huge imbalance of power. Until we have a shift in power we won’t get effective change in any area, whether financial, climate, you name it. With the wealth inequalities, with the road we are headed down, we face serious problems. Those who work and advocate for social and economic justice have to now join together. We have to be independent of political parties and the major funders. The revolution will not be funded. This is very true.”

“Those who are working for effective change are not going to get foundation dollars,” she stated. “Once a foundation or a wealthy individual agrees to give money they control how that money is used. You have to report to them how you spend that money. They control what you can and cannot do. Robert Wood Johnson [the foundation], for example, funds many public health departments. They fund groups that advocate for health care reform, but those groups are not allowed to pursue or talk about single-payer. Robert Wood Johnson only supports work that is done to create what they call public/private partnership. And we know this is totally ineffective. We tried this before. It is allowing private insurers to exist but developing programs to fill the gaps. Robert Wood Johnson actually works against a single-payer health care system. The Health Care for America Now coalition was another example. It only supported what the Democrats supported.

There are a lot of activist groups controlled by the Democratic Party, including Families USA and MoveOn. MoveOn is a very good example. If you look at polls of Democrats on single-payer, about 80 percent support it. But at MoveOn meetings, which is made up mostly of Democrats, when people raised the idea of working for single-payer they were told by MoveOn leaders that the organization was not doing that. And this took place while the Democrats were busy selling out women’s rights, immigrant rights to health care and abandoning the public option. Yet all these groups continued to work for the bill. They argued, in the end, that the health care bill had to be supported because it was not really about health care. It was about the viability of President Obama and the Democratic Party. This is why, in the end, we had to pass it.”

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About Immigration
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Luis Gutierrez: Latinos Won't Vote For Obama In 2012 Without Deportation Relief

Dr. Margaret Flowers, a pediatrician from Maryland who volunteers for Physicians for a National Health Program, knows what it is like to challenge the corporate leviathan. She was blacklisted by the corporate media. She was locked out of the debate on health care reform by the Democratic Party and liberal organizations such as MoveOn. She was abandoned by those in Congress who had once backed calls for a rational health care policy. And when she and seven other activists demanded that the argument for universal health care be considered at the hearings held by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, they were forcibly removed from the hearing room.

“The reform process exposed how broken our system is,” Flowers said when we spoke a few days ago. “The health reform debate was never an actual debate. Those in power were very reluctant to have single-payer advocates testify or come to the table. They would not seriously consider our proposal because it was based on evidence of what works. And they did not want this evidence placed before the public. They needed the reform to be based on what they thought was politically feasible and acceptable to the industries that fund their campaigns.”

“There was nobody in the House or the Senate who held fast on universal health care,” she lamented. “Sen. [Bernie] Sanders from Vermont introduced a single-payer bill, S 703. He introduced an amendment that would have substituted S 703 for what the Senate was putting together. We had to push pretty hard to get that to the Senate floor, but in the end he was forced by the leadership to withdraw it. He was our strongest person. In the House we saw Chairman John Conyers, who is the lead sponsor for the House single-payer bill, give up pushing for single-payer very early in the process in 2009. Dennis Kucinich pushed to get an amendment that would help give states the ability to pass single-payer. He was not successful in getting that kept in the final House bill. He held out for the longest, but in the end he caved.”

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About Immigration
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Luis Gutierrez: Latinos Won't Vote For Obama In 2012 Without Deportation Relief

Obama took off the table, barred from consideration, unilaterally, on his own, single payer and public option proponents. Obama did it because if the goal is to get affordable quality medical care for all then everything else pales in comparison.

Do you remember when we were all told, "Relaaaaaaax, it's a first step...We'll put a public option in..Real soon"?:

A couple of months ago on C-Span, Richard Wolffe (the journalist with an inside line to Obama and his White House) said, "There Won't Be Any Public Option--Obama Never Was For It".

And Obama's legislation leads to eliminating insurance coverage for all ab0rt!ons.

Then once the legislation passed, Obama then appointed former WellPoint executive Liz Fowler to write and enforce the regulations. A fox in charge of this chicken coop. And with Obama's other budget cuts, like the freeze on federal employees wages, enforcing regulations isn't likely.

As of early November, 2010, 111 corporations were issued waivers.

Obama's a real piece of work -- A Republican-in-Democrats'-clothing.

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About Immigration
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Luis Gutierrez: Latinos Won't Vote For Obama In 2012 Without Deportation Relief

So you don't believe me and don't want to take my word for it? You don't have to.

Meet Wendell Potter.

On Countdown with Keith Olbermann, whistleblower Wendell Potter talks with Lawrence O'Donnell about where the con game (medical loss ratio, the amount of money insurers must spend on health care) is in the legislation, and how it will enable insurance companies to continue to price gauge and keep obscene profits instead of delivering affordable and quality medical care to policy-holders.

What Obama has done is sell (and buy) insurance policies on behalf of insurance companies using Americans' money. Over-priced, lousy insurance policies, at that. That's a pretty neat trick, by the way -- To sell and buy. It's like playing chess with yourself.

Having insurance doesn't mean getting health care. BIG DIFFERENCE.

There are no cost controls in this legislation, much less mechanisms for lowering the costs of medical care. No controls over co-pays, no controls on deductibles.

Obama's legislation not universal, it has no chance of expanding to cover everyone, and it leads to the end of all public healthcare programs (Medicaid, Medicare, SCHIP, CHAMPUS, veterans care, etc.). That's a fact.

Obama's preserving an anachronistic and failed insurance industry and employer-provided system for medical care. It's government sanctioned racketeering. Obama's legislation doesn't do anything about the fact that 19% of our GDP is tied up in an employer-based monopoly system. Ending employment-based insurance was what everybody wanted.

"Covering the kids up to age 26" is a cruel farcical joke. To begin with, how many people do you think were bought off with that? To have insurance, to pay for it, you need to have a job. To keep a job in this economy. To get a job in this economy.

Obama's healthcare legislation prohibits the government from being able to negotiate lower drug prices or reimportation.

The insurance mandate is, indeed, a tax. Contrary to what Obama claimed, the IRS will be the enforcer, which means compounded fines and prison.

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About Immigration
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Luis Gutierrez: Latinos Won't Vote For Obama In 2012 Without Deportation Relief

I'll be glad to, but first, if that's how you determine whether Democrats are on your side (by how Republicans aren't), we're in big trouble.

Democratic and Republican 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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About Immigration
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Luis Gutierrez: Latinos Won't Vote For Obama In 2012 Without Deportation Relief

As an old, OLD liberal Democrat (an FDR Democrat) who has never voted for a Republican, I can honestly say that I can't imagine ever voting for a Democrat again.

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.

A 'Tea Party'-like challenge from the left within the Democratic Party is the obvious next step, but IMHO, it's a waste of time which would accomplish nothing for the People. To begin with, no one in the Democratic Party will do it. It would be su!cide for any professional politician in the Democratic Party 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 Democratic Party (Republicans or Independents). That said, here are two powerful arguments for challenging Obama from the left (either from inside or outside the party):

Michael Lerner's very powerful case for primarying Obama.

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

Michael Lerner'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 anymore. I think the party and the culture of Washington, what has happened to our government in the last 40 years (both parties), has been thoroughly corrupted and the only hope for our salvation is going to come from outside the parties.

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.

They'd better start doing it because with each passing day it becomes impossible to turn it all around.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Luis Gutierrez: Latinos Won't Vote For Obama In 2012 Without Deportation Relief

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Marcospinelli/luis-gutierrez-lays-out-plans-for-deportation-relief_n_880643_93455653.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Marcospinelli/luis-gutierrez-lays-out-plans-for-deportation-relief_n_880643_93456411.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Marcospinelli/luis-gutierrez-lays-out-plans-for-deportation-relief_n_880643_93456593.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Marcospinelli/luis-gutierrez-lays-out-plans-for-deportation-relief_n_880643_93458483.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Marcospinelli/luis-gutierrez-lays-out-plans-for-deportation-relief_n_880643_93457202.html
About Immigration
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Netroots Nation Bloggers Consistently Disappointed With Obama (VIDEO)

Among others, but "deadenders"?

WTF are you talking about?

Try to stay on point, discuss the issues, and argue the issues with facts, billy.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Luis Gutierrez: Latinos Won't Vote For Obama In 2012 Without Deportation Relief

Treat the online undermining of Obama as you would from any teabagger...

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...or any real Democrat who has had it with the DLC-controlled Democratic Party.

The TeaParty is an effective nemesis for Obama & the DLC-controlled (corporate, neoliberal) DemocraticParty -- The TeaParty is a paper tiger, this is all kabuki theater, and that's why Axelrod is going after the two candidates farthest to the left (Romney and Huntsman).

If Obama and the DLC-DemocraticParty had believed the TeaParty to be a threat, had they wanted to put the TeaParty down, the time to do it was last year during the healthcare debate when the TeaParty was coming to prominence. When Democratic members of Congress were cancelling TownHalls because of the escalating threats of violence by gvn-toting teabaggers, disrupting Americans' long-honored traditions of peaceful debate in the public square.

Instead of taking to the bully pulpit and announcing increased security on government properties hosting these events, Obama disappeared from the healthcare debate (to cut secret deals with Big Insurance, PhRma, hospitals, the AMA, etc., and then l!e about it) as the TeaParty grew & bullied at TownHalls.

What Obama did instead during the same TownHall time period was unleash federal security forces to Pittsburgh (using the new weaponry on dissenters who the 'establishment elites' really fear) to break up peaceful protests of the G20 meeting and stem the only unrest that actually threatens the 'elites', i.e., the American people taking back their government.

Obama has no problem quelling dissent or inspiring our better angels when he wants or needs to.

Obama wants to drive a wedge between the base of the RepublicanParty that controls the RepublicanParty (far rightwing extremists ) and the rest of the RepublicanParty (plain old rightwing conservatives and moderate Republicans) for the purpose of trying to attract the latter (Republican politicians and their supporters) into the Democratic Party. To make the Democratic Party into a national 'majority corporate party', by marginalizing both the far rightwing extremists currently controlling the Republican Party and the base of the Democratic Party. In order "to govern, from the center, for 100 years".

The Tea Party serves this end in several ways. Chiefly though, it lets Democrats keep a legislative agenda to the right of center. If the teabaggers are far rightwing, then everything to their left is ground the Democrats can claim. And that's a lot of corporate-money ground.

Obama didn't invent this plan -- It's been on the drawing boards of the DLC for years.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Luis Gutierrez: Latinos Won't Vote For Obama In 2012 Without Deportation Relief

The other candidate wins and you no longer have to be dissappointed by Obama... And then what? And then see HCR repealed, finanical reform repealed, DADT reinstated etc...

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Finance reform? You're kidding, right?

What Obama has done with that finance reform - Meet Obama's regulator of the finance reform legislation, Gary Gensler.

One Year After Dodd-Frank, More Rules Get Delayed Or Weakened

If you can't openly stop the move for reform, then put up as many roadblocks as possible, stall as long as you can to keep the status of no regulations going. Until your replacement, either through a new administration or the usual 2nd term shuffling of players, can "study it all again before implementing", i.e., never. Ever try to put mittens on a kid who doesn't want to wear them? Think OJ and the glove.

GaryGensler spent 18 years at GoldmanSachs, making partner when he was 30. Gensler was UndersecretaryOfTheTreasury (1999-2001) and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury (1997-1999) in the UnitedStates. BarackObama selected him to lead the CommodityFuturesTradingCommission, which has jurisdiction over $5 trillion in trades. Gensler was sworn in on May 26, 2009. Gensler was also a senior adviser to the HillaryClinton campaign and, after the DemocraticPrimary, the Obama campaign.

Questions as to whether there are conflicts of interests relating to Gensler's former employment have been raised, as has been the case in any number of former Goldman employees that go on to hold pivotal positions in the US Treasury, FederalReserve, or as regulators. Gensler has the reputation in the market though as a politically ambitious man who is more likely to squash than accommodate speculation.

As the TreasuryDepartment’s undersecretary for domestic finance in the last two years of the ClintonAdministration, Gensler found himself in the position of overseeing policies in the areas of US financial markets, debt management, financial services, and community development. Gensler advocated the passage of the CommodityFuturesModernizationAct of 2000, which exempted credit default swaps and other derivatives from regulation. The Senate was expected to examine his views on derivatives regulation during the Senate confirmation hearings.

In March 2009, SenatorBernieSanders attempted to block his nomination to head the CommodityFuturesTradingCommission. A statement from Sanders’ office said that Gensler “had worked with Sen. PhilGramm and AlanGreenspan to exempt credit default swaps from regulation, which led to the collapse of AIG and has resulted in the largest taxpayer bailout in US history.” He also accused Gensler of working to deregulate electronic energy trading, which led to the downfall of Enron, and supporting the GrammLeachBlileyAct, which allowed American banks to become “too big to fail.”

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Luis Gutierrez: Latinos Won't Vote For Obama In 2012 Without Deportation Relief

OK then.. More than likely, you will not get your issues addressed to your satisfaction so then what? You withhold your vote or vote for the other candidate? The other candidate wins and you no longer have to be dissappointed by Obama... And then what? And then see HCR repealed, finanical reform repealed, DADT reinstated etc...

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DADT is still operational. Congress, not Obama, repealed it, but in the most spectacularly cowardly way (and hasn't actually yet) -- Congress left it up to the Pentagon to do. It's like when a presidential candidate states that he's for withdrawing troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., "depending on the conditions on the ground." The conditions are never right. All it takes is a few IEDs going off and troop withdrawal is off the table.

Obama could have and should have issued an executive order along with the legislation.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Luis Gutierrez: Latinos Won't Vote For Obama In 2012 Without Deportation Relief

Why 'For Profit', market-driven healthcare is never going to work. Why it's never going to get affordable quality medical treatment for all.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Luis Gutierrez: Latinos Won't Vote For Obama In 2012 Without Deportation Relief

OK then.. More than likely, you will not get your issues addressed to your satisfaction so then what? You withhold your vote or vote for the other candidate? The other candidate wins and you no longer have to be dissappointed by Obama... And then what? And then see HCR repealed, finanical reform repealed, DADT reinstated etc...

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

Obama's healthcare legislation IS Republican healthcare legislation.

There is no mechanism for lowering the costs of treatment. Obama put a fox in charge of this chicken coop (former WellPoint executive Liz Fowler) to write and enforce the regulations. Her most notable actions to date have been issuing waivers to businesses that don't want to have to provide insurance to their employees.

Obama's healthcare legislation prohibits the very thing that was the top issue in the 2008 election: The government being able to negotiate lower drug prices or reimportation.

Obama's healthcare legislation is Bush's Medicare Reform Act of 2003 (which was a $700 billion + giveaway to Big Insurance & PhRma), Part 2.

Not only doesn't Obama's healthcare legislation accomplish what Obama and Democrats were put into power to get (affordable quality medical treatment for everyone, lower drug prices), it is, in fact, a giant leap toward ending all public healthcare (Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, CHAMPUS, veterans care, etc.).
Obama's healthcare legislation puts more people into Medicaid, which the states are required to co-pay along with the federal government. The states are already going bankrupt, and moving toward eliminating Medicaid services as a result. States' options are limited, especially those states with constitutional requirements to balance their budgets. So while people may find themselves covered by Medicaid, if you're thinking that should all else fail you've got Medicaid as your safety net, guess again: Medicaid won't cover c/hit.

Having insurance (which is all that Obama's legislation does, and not even for everyone, just for a few million more) doesn't mean getting necessary medical care or that you will be able to afford medical care. All that Obama's healthcare legislation does is require money to go from here (my pockets/taxpayers' pockets) to there (into insurance companies' pockets).

There is no limitation on insurance companies' charging and increasing co-pays and deductibles and eliminating services. There is no requirement for insurance companies to have to provide services not paid for.

Insurance companies have already figured out the way around the restrictions in the bill. The con game in the legislation -- Medical loss ratio. The amount of money insurers must spend on healthcare, and how it will enable insurance companies to continue to price gauge and keep obscene profits instead of delivering affordable and quality medical care to policy-holders.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Luis Gutierrez: Latinos Won't Vote For Obama In 2012 Without Deportation Relief

If you don't get what you want (Obama keeping his campaign promises) and you withhold your vote or vote for the other guy and the other guy wins, THEN WHAT?

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

We don't just have 2 choices -- There's likely to be a third (party).
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Mulls Afghanistan Troop Reductions, Taliban Negotiations

'Hijacking Catastrophe' (a 2004 documentary):

"The war in Iraq was very very clearly about oil, as was the war in Afghanistan. The oil pipeline that was planned (in Afghanistan), the best security for that was an occupation."

"If you map the proposed pipeline route across Afghanistan and you look at our bases? Matches perfectly. Our bases are there to solve a problem that the Taliban couldn't solve. Taliban couldn't provide security in that part of Afghanistan -- Well now that's where our bases are. So, does that have to do with Osama Bin Laden? It has nothing to do with Osama Bin Laden. It has everything to do with the longer plan, in this case a strategy which I wouldn't necessarily call neoconservative, however it fits perfectly in with the neoconservative ideology which says, 'If you have military force and you need something from a weaker country, then you need to deploy that force and take what you need because your country's needs are paramount'. It's the whole idea of unilateralism, of using force to achieve your aims."

-Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel whose assignments included a variety of roles for the National Security Agency and who spent her last 4 1/2 years working at the Pentagon with Donald Rumsfeld

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUxI3rSLDO8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SltOy_F6ZII
About Taliban
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Netroots Nation Bloggers Consistently Disappointed With Obama (VIDEO)

Here you go, princess: PolitiFact Embraces Equivocati on, the Truth Gets Squeezed - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/politifact-embraces-equiv_b_635651.html Politifact Is Wrong About Nita Lowey: Abortion Coverage Could Become Rare With Stupak Amendment http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2009/11/11/politifact-is-wrong-about-nita-lowey-abortion-coverage-could-become-rare-with-stupak-amendment/ PolitiFact gets it wrong on Jones - http://southdekalb.wordpress.com/2010/07/01/ajc-politifact-gets-it-wrong-on-jones/
About Barack Obama
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Keith Olbermann 'Countdown' Returns On Current TV: LIVE Updates Of The Premiere

Michael Moore is too naive for words.

He infers nobler motives for Obama's actions (than Bush's) when no evidence supports it.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Mulls Afghanistan Troop Reductions, Taliban Negotiations

It's the government doing it. It's being done with taxpayer dollars. If you read the references, you'd know that.
About Taliban
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Luis Gutierrez: Latinos Won't Vote For Obama In 2012 Without Deportation Relief

Grow a pair, Dave.

You're the reason We the People keep getting shafted.
About Immigration
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Luis Gutierrez: Latinos Won't Vote For Obama In 2012 Without Deportation Relief

The old "lesser of two eviIs" argument. In spite of the fact that Obama's continuing just about all of 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?

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

You defend Obama 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 and 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 Immigration
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Luis Gutierrez: Latinos Won't Vote For Obama In 2012 Without Deportation Relief

Treat the online support for Obama with suspicion - Learn about HB Gary Trolls here.
About Immigration
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Netroots Nation Bloggers Consistently Disappointed With Obama (VIDEO)

I see the HB Gary trolls are here defending Obama.

As Jane Hamsher mentioned about the NetRoots Convention this past weekend:

Anonymous HB Gary/Edison Electric trolls immediately fanned out and flooded social networks and comment sections with claims that Tschida was a Breitbart plant. But in fact he was with OFA, as many media outlets reported.

The entire event was very symptomatic of the problem that the WhiteHouse will have engaging progressives in the next election and rallying them behind the President. On the same day that SamStein of the HuffingtonPost reported that “Obama’s Relationship With Gay Rights Advocates Thaws In Time For 2012,” the Obama Justice Department was scheduling a date to put DanChoi on trial for protesting in front of the White House — the first person since AlicePaul in 1917 to be brought up on federal charges for doing so, according to Choi’s attorney.

Coddling donors doesn’t equate with meaningful action, but the White House consistently conflates the two.

DanPfieffer was dispatched to scold the DailyKos community for not being supportive enough of the President, and to let them know that if they don’t get in line, they’ll be responsible for putting a Republican in office. It was a weak and petty message that did not even come close to addressing the concerns that all Americans share right now. It isn’t only the NetrootsNation attendees who have serious questions about the economy, jobs, civil liberties, social security, medicare, taxes, accountability and a host of other critical issues that the President seems to have reversed himself on since the 2008 campaign.

The anonymous trolls who flood social media channels with blind obedience to the WhiteHouse were almost nowhere to be found at Netroots Nation 2011, while the people who were willing to match their faces to their names don’t seem willing to accept “better than SarahPalin” as a sufficient response to the problems the country faces right now. It might behoove some enterprising journalists to start asking why these mysterious people who spend all day long cheering the President and attacking his critics on social networking sites apparently don’t want to show their faces.

Treat online support for Obama with suspicion - Learn who these paid trolls are.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Netroots Nation Bloggers Consistently Disappointed With Obama (VIDEO)

Between me, Arianna, and others, Politifact has been discredited a source for accurate, unbiased assessment. Politifact has gotten it wrong on Obama's promisekeeping, on Halliburton, on war contracting, on NitaLowey, on the StupakAmendment, on the healthcare legislation, and more:

PolitiFact 's Truth-O-Meter in Need of Tune-Up

PolitiFact Embraces Equivocation, the Truth Gets Squeezed

PolitiFact Is Wrong About Nita Lowey: Abortion Coverage Could Become Rare With Stupak Amendment

PolitiFact gets it wrong on Jones

http://southdekalb.wordpress.com/2010/07/01/ajc-politifact-gets-it-wrong-on-jones/

Politifact only recognizes 42 broken promises & cuts Obama much slack.

Politifact has gamed its way of measuring Obama's "promisekeeping"; its categories ('NO ACTION', 'IN THE WORKS', 'STALLED' or 'NOT YET RATED) are misleading. Many a campaign promise or pledge (hundreds of them) has been generously placed in these categories to languish.

As Politifact claims, "Once we find action is completed, we rate them 'PROMISE KEPT' 'COMPROMISE' or 'PROMISE BROKEN'". By Politifact's own definition, it enables Obama to keep these issues in limbo for 4 years.

One of many examples of Politifact's gaming its list is that Politifact doesn't even list in its "Promises Broken" category Obama's campaign promise to impose 'Windfall Profits Taxes on the Oil & Gas Industry" - Obama immediately reneged on it once in office, saying, "The prices have now dropped - We'll see about doing that if or when they rise again."

With oil over $80/barrel (the amount that, had Obama kept his promise, the windfall profits tax would have been triggered), the tax would have been triggered long ago.
About Video
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Obama Mulls Afghanistan Troop Reductions, Taliban Negotiations

Treat the online support for Obama with suspicion:

[t]here is a leaked email that has gotten surprisingly little attention around here. It's the one where AaronBarr discusses his intention to post at DailyKos - presumably something negative about Anonymous, the hacking group. But that's not the email I'm talking about here.

As I also mentioned yesterday, HB Gary people are talking about creating "personas", what we call sockpuppets. This isn't new. PR firms have been using fake "people" to promote products and other things for a while now, both online and even in bars & coffee houses.

But for a defense contractor with ties to the federal government, Hunton & Williams, DOD, NSA, and the CIA - whose enemies are labor unions, progressive organizations, journalists, and progressive bloggers, a persona apparently goes far beyond creating a mere sockpuppet.

According to an embedded MS Word document found in one of the HB Gary emails, it involves creating an army of sockpuppets, with sophisticated "persona management" software that allows a small team of only a few people to appear to be many, while keeping the personas from accidentally cross-contaminating each other. Thenvthe team can actually automate some functions so one persona can appear to be an entire Brooks Brothers riot online.

In another Word document, one of the team spells out how automation can work so one person can be many personas:

Using the assigned social media accounts we can automate the posting of content that is relevant to the persona. In this case there are specific social media strategy website RSS feeds we can subscribe to and then repost content on twitter with the appropriate hashtags. In fact using hashtags and gaming some location based check-in services we can make it appear as if a persona was actually at a conference and introduce himself/herself to key individuals as part of the exercise, as one example. There are a variety of social media tricks we can use to add a level of realness to all fictitious personas

It goes far beyond the mere ability for a government stooge, corporation or PR firm to hire people to post on sites like this one. They're talking about creating the illusion of consensus. And consensus is a powerful persuader. What has more effect, one guy saying BP isn't at fault? Or 20 people saying it? For the weakminded, the number can make all the difference in the world.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Mulls Afghanistan Troop Reductions, Taliban Negotiations

Charlie Brown. Lucy. Football.

Nope, not gonna do it...Fool me once, blah blah.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

State Of The Ocean: 'Shocking' Report Warns Of Mass Extinction From Current Rate Of Marine Distress

James Burke's "After The Warming" -- Must see.
About Climate Change
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Ron Paul Adviser Criticizes Mitt Romney For Declining Abortion Pledge

Rights are conferred at birth. That's when we legally recognize people as citizens with rights.

What you're talking about is no different than if you removed a blood cell from your body (it has the same genetic material as a fetus) and said that it had rights to be kept alive.

Even already born, fully formed citizens have no right to be kept alive through artificial means (life support machines).
About Mitt Romney
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Ron Paul Adviser Criticizes Mitt Romney For Declining Abortion Pledge

I would argue, and do, that it's actually a parasite.

If women are forced to provide their bodies as life-support systems to fetuses until the fetus is able to survive on its own, how long before people are forced to donate portions of their liver and other body parts to others?

If fetuses aren't potential human life but citizens with rights, then shouldn't there be death certificates when a woman has a miscarriage?
About Mitt Romney
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Rep. Luis Gutierrez: Latinos Shouldn't Vote For Obama In 2012 Without Deportation Relief

Nobody should vote for Obama if their issues aren't dealt with.

As Jane Hamsher mentioned about the NetRoots Convention this past weekend:

Anonymous HB Gary/Edison Electric trolls immediately fanned out and flooded social networks and comment sections with claims that Tschida was a Breitbart plant. But in fact he was with OFA, as many media outlets reported.

The entire event was very symptomatic of the problem that the White House will have engaging progressives in the next election and rallying them behind the President. On the same day that Sam Stein of the Huffington Post reported that “Obama’s Relationship With Gay Rights Advocates Thaws In Time For 2012,” the Obama Justice Department was scheduling a date to put Dan Choi on trial for protesting in front of the White House — the first person since Alice Paul in 1917 to be brought up on federal charges for doing so, according to Choi’s attorney.

Coddling donors doesn’t equate with meaningful action, but the White House consistently conflates the two.

Dan Pfieffer was dispatched to scold the Daily Kos community for not being supportive enough of the President, and to let them know that if they don’t get in line, they’ll be responsible for putting a Republican in office. It was a weak and petty message that did not even come close to addressing the concerns that all Americans share right now. It isn’t only the Netroots Nation attendees who have serious questions about the economy, jobs, civil liberties, social security, medicare, taxes, accountability and a host of other critical issues that the President seems to have reversed himself on since the 2008 campaign.

The anonymous trolls who flood social media channels with blind obedience to the White House were almost nowhere to be found at Netroots Nation 2011, while the people who were willing to match their faces to their names don’t seem willing to accept “better than Sarah Palin” as a sufficient response to the problems the country faces right now. It might behoove some enterprising journalists to start asking why these mysterious people who spend all day long cheering the President and attacking his critics on social networking sites apparently don’t want to show their faces.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Ron Paul Adviser Criticizes Mitt Romney For Declining Abortion Pledge

Democratic voters:

If Ron Paul dropped his anti-abortion pledge, if he recognized a woman's right to choose, would you vote for him for the rest of his positions on the issues?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Missing Iraq Money As High As $18 Billion: Iraqi Parliament Speaker

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The Federal Reserve sent record payouts of more than $4 billion in cash to Baghdad on giant pallets aboard military planes shortly before the United States gave control back to Iraqis, lawmakers said Tuesday.

The money, which had been held by the United States, came from Iraqi oil exports, surplus dollars from the U.N.-run oil-for-food program and frozen assets belonging to the ousted Saddam Hussein regime.

Bills weighing a total of 363 tons were loaded onto military aircraft in the largest cash shipments ever made by the Federal Reserve, said Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

"Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone? But that's exactly what our government did," the California Democrat said during a hearing reviewing possible waste, fraud and abuse of funds in Iraq.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/02/06/iraq.cash.reut/index.html

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Missing Iraq Money As High As $18 Billion: Iraqi Parliament Speaker

The pallets of cash weren't to be turned over to any government -- They were literally to be handed out to Iraqi citizens, $100 here, $100 there. Like when an armored car's backdoor opens and sacks of cash fall out onto the highway and break open.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/feb/08/usa.iraq1
About Iraq
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Missing Iraq Money As High As $18 Billion: Iraqi Parliament Speaker

California Death Penalty Costs State $184 Million A Year, Study Finds

No, the death penalty was NOT designed to offer justice to the victims and their families. As a matter of fact, up until relatively recently with victim protection legislation, victims and their families were excluded from the process entirely because of their extreme bias.

Some victims' families want revenge and others don't. How would you then remedy that disparity? Leave it up to the individual cases? That's overwhelmingly unfair, unAmerican, unjust.

Prosecutors don't represent families of victims; they represent the community and the community's need for protection and satisfaction.
About Death Penalty
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

California Death Penalty Costs State $184 Million A Year, Study Finds

The death penalty stopped being an effective crime deterent when they stopped executing people in the town square.

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

It wasn't effective then either.
About Death Penalty
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

California Death Penalty Costs State $184 Million A Year, Study Finds

Do you even bother reading the articles or do you just read the headlines and assume you know what's in them?

Read this book.
About Death Penalty
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

California Death Penalty Costs State $184 Million A Year, Study Finds

Now this is deterrence:

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/06/20/south.africa.female.condom/index.html?hpt=C2
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

California Death Penalty Costs State $184 Million A Year, Study Finds

South African doctor invents female condoms with 'teeth' to fight rape.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

California Death Penalty Costs State $184 Million A Year, Study Finds

How do you figure that?
About Death Penalty
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

California Death Penalty Costs State $184 Million A Year, Study Finds

I knew what it meant without having to read the article.

How would you rewrite the headline?
About Death Penalty
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

California Death Penalty Costs State $184 Million A Year, Study Finds

Unless it's you, of course, who is appealing.

http://www.innocenceproject.org/
About Death Penalty
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

California Death Penalty Costs State $184 Million A Year, Study Finds

And still, with all of the appeals, INNOCENT people are executed.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

California Death Penalty Costs State $184 Million A Year, Study Finds

American supporters of capital punishment horrify American opponents of capital punishment.
About Death Penalty
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

California Death Penalty Costs State $184 Million A Year, Study Finds

Other states have already begun to phase out the death penalty due to budget issues: New Mexico repealed it in 2009, Illinois lawmakers voted to ban it in March of this year, and lawmakers in Maryland and Connecticut are currently considering doing the same.

About Death Penalty
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Supreme Court Sides With Wal-Mart In Sex Bias Case

I yearn for leadership in all branches of government that protects and defends living, breathing human beings' needs and interests instead of legal fictions (corporations) that, if they were people, would be diagnosed as sociopathic character disorders.

Back at the founding of the the US, a corporation's charter was required to be dissolved after 40 years, so suspicious and cautious were the earliest Americans about corporations.

Now, corporations are immortal, which is another abzurdity about their being considered 'persons' under the law.

Following the reducto ad absurdum of corporations as people, if you look at them as people, the vast majority of them could be diagnosed as sociopaths. They're completely self-absorbed, their only motivation is profit and destroying competition (other corporations or by the same legal definition other people), they have no conscience, no capacity for empathy. The only time they do something that could be construed as generous or for the greater good is when their consultants tell them it's good for business. It's like they display all of the lower qualities of human beings - greed avarice predatory nature. The same behavior in a flesh and blood human being would elicit cries of shame in the community and considered appalling, but somehow it's just fine for a corporation to behave that way. And they can't be criminally prosecuted.

We're not going to get the kind of leadership to end this travesty from either the Democratic or Republican parties.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Supreme Court Sides With Wal-Mart In Sex Bias Case

It already is lost.
About Supreme Court
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Libya War Powers Debate: Obama's Lawyers Are Worse Than Bush's, Glenn Greenwald Says

I suppose it could be put that way, but that's the party system in the US. No Republican ran against Bush in the 2004 primaries/caucuses. We're talking about career politicians and a hierarchy that rewards obedience and punishes disloyalty, and a process requiring massive amounts of money.
About Barack Obama
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Monday, June 20, 2011

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