Spintested: 07/17/11

Radiation Concerns For Japan's Beef Supply

Sunday, July 17, 2011

The EPA under Obama has stopped monitoring radiation coming to the US from the meltdown in Japan.

Both parties stink.
About Japan
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

I wouldn't normally respond to such a dim-witted and vulgar comment, but I'm making an exception for you, kletus.

The American people I'm referring to are about 90 percent of Americans. That 90 percent's interests aren't being represented by neither Democrats or Republicans. Both parties are working on behalf of transnational corporations, the top 2 percent richest and the next 5 to 10 percent who may enjoy some of what may trickle down. But about 90 percent of Americans are getting sold out. Never was that more obvious than when he negotiated the ACA, acting as both the buying and selling agent of junk insurance policies for the American people.

We're in 'thin the herd' times and this president is helping to make that happen.
About 112th Congress
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Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

The People's Budget (read it here).

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.

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."
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

During the Bush years, Democrats said if the People wanted change, they had to put Democrats in the majority in Congress. So in 2006, we did.

Nothing changed.

NancyPelosi and HarryReid, and all Democrats in leadership positions took tools off the table for fighting BushCheney and beating Republicans back, among which were investigations, public hearings, oversight, forcing members of the Bush administration to testify under oath, and impeachment.

They said, "You have to give us more Democrats -- 60 in the Senate".

In 2008, we did. We gave them 60 for the Democratic Caucus. And we gave them the White House.

Obama came into office with the wind at his back. More people voted for him, a black man in good old raclst America than ever voted for any other presidential candidate in the history of the US. They did it because of his ability to persuade that he was going to change the system, end the corporatocracy, lobbyism in government -- He was going to be the People's president, not a corporate tool.

And no sooner did Obama get elected than he slammed the brakes on the momentum of his election & a filibuster-proof Senate (tentative yet, with 2 senators, Kennedy & Byrd, at death's door), Obama did a 180-degree turn on his promises & slooooowed everything down. To "work in a bipartisan manner with Republicans", after Republicans had already announced they were going to block everything Democrats wanted to do, vote no on everything, in lockstep.

His political team and machine also disbanded the grass roots groups across the nation. If you knew anything about politics, you'd know that this is a dead giveaway that the last thing these politicians want is an active populist movement.

Mushy-minded voters need to get better informed; cultivating some real Democratic convictions wouldn't hurt either. Because whether it's taking SinglePayerUniversalHealthcare, a PublicOption, investigations and prosecutions of BushCheney, etc., off the table, putting SocialSecurity and Medicare and Medicaid on the table, or continuing the BushCheney policies and going BushCheney one better (by asserting that presidents have the right to k!ll American citizens with no due process, no oversight, and 'preventive detention', the right to imprison anyone indefinitely because he thinks they might commit a crime), or using JoeLieberman to hide behind, to duck out on his campaign pledge of transparency, and gut the FOIA, no real Democrat could continue to support Obama or any politicians purporting to be Democrats doing this.
About 112th Congress
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

Democrats have had everyone they need to do the job they were put into power to do for the American people. They could have ended Bush's tax cuts during last year's lame duck session, but they didn't. Obama didn't even tie his caving to Republicans' demands to their agreeing to raise the debt ceiling. He let himself and all of us be held over a barrel, only for it to happen again as we all suspected it would when the debt ceiling came up just a few months later.

So here we are again, being betrayed by those we brung to this hoe-down, the Democrats.
About 112th Congress
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

During the 2000 election, when Gore was talking about a "lock box" & Bush was campaigning on tax cuts ("Got to get the money out of Washington"), I was writing about how Bush and Grover Norquist intended to bankrupt the country as a back door to ending the Great Society.

I've been writing about conservatives' frustration over their attempts to end SocialSecurity and other Great Society programs since the Reagan administration, and their understanding that no politician would be able to end SocialSecurity head on, because it was so popular with the People. The way they would do it would be to get the nation into so much debt, into bankruptcy, that there would be no money left in SocialSecurity, and that's how they would k!ll it.

When George W. Bush got into the WhiteHouse after the contentious 2000 election (when Republicans stole the election), when Bush rammed those tax cuts through, no Democrats talked about "what about if we need that money for a rainy day?" Or "should we find ourselves in a war". Or for shoring up the nation's crumbling infrastructure, i.e., the roads, highways, bridges, dams, railways, etc., etc., etc.

Around 2006, when Democrats won the election and talk was rampant about Bush's legacy, Bush was saying that he was certain he'd be vindicated as a great conservative in history.

Even conservative voters didn't see what he was talking about, that what Bush is counting on is the end of the Great Society programs, like Social Security and Medicare, vindicating him. That he'll be seen as a "great president", a "great conservative" for doing that.

FWIW, not one reporter asked Bush (nor did they on his recent book tour). Democratic politicians knew this, by the way, and they let it happen.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

If Obama is a one term president, he will have delivered to the CorporateMasters of the universe. He'll hand the baton off to Republicans for the fleecing to continue. He will not have reversed the course of the previous administration, just as the administration previous to Bush's (Clinton) didn't reverse the course of HWBush's 'Global Economy'/New World Order and the Reagan-Bush 'trickle down'/Saudi oil empire before that.

Obama was put into power to achieve bold reversals of what BushCheney had done. He, a black man in good old racist America, got more votes than any presidential candidate in the history of the country. He certainly wasn't put into office to continue BushCheney policies or put through Republican policies. Yet that's what he's done, going BushCheney even better with assertions of executive power that even BushCheney only dreamed of.

From his having the right to indefinitely imprison, torture, and kill anyone, even American citizens with no oversight, no due process and in secret (it really is pure Kafka), to prosecuting whistleblowers, award-winning journalists reporting leaks (selectively yet, and not those journalists like Bob Woodward who are reporting leaks approved by the White House), and gutting the Freedom of Information Act(and in such a sneaky, cowardly way), and now putting Social Security and Medicare cuts on the table (and in a sneaky cowardly way), Obama has never used his claims of unitary executive for good. He's chosen, instead, to get tough with the Democratic Party's base, and those Democrats like Dennis Kucinich and Howard Dean who have pushed the populist polices that Obama was put into office to achieve.

Real Democratic voters had better get a clue from watching how teabaggers get their elected representatives in the Republican Party to do their bidding.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

The Tea Party is an effective nemesis for Obama: A paper tiger.

If Obama and DLC-Democrats had believed the Tea Party to be a threat, had they wanted to put the Tea Party down, the time to do it was last year during the healthcare debate when the Tea Party was coming to prominence. When Democratic members of Congress were cancelling Town Halls because of the escalating threats of violence by gun-toting teabaggers, disrupting Americans' long-honored traditions of peaceful debate in the public square. Instead of taking to the bully pulpit, instead of increasing 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 he lie d about it, all the while that the Tea Party grew & bullied at Town Halls.

What Obama also did during the same Town Hall time period? He unleashed federal security forces to Pittsburgh to break up peaceful protests of the G20 meeting, using the new weaponry on dissenters who the 'establishment elites' really fear, and stem the unrest that actually threatens the 'elites', i.e., the American people taking back their government. -http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2009/sep/25/sonic-cannon-g20-pittsburgh

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 Republican Party that controls the Republican Party (far rightwing extremists) and the rest of the Republican Party (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 it 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, by the way; it's been on the drawing boards of the DLC for years.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

Nothing is going to change until moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans both stand up to the crazies in each party. I keep hoping the "silent majority" will show up to vote out the far right and the far left. I really do not care which party is in control of D.C., as long as they are sane.

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

There's no "extreme" or "far left" in the DemocraticParty. They left long ago, and can be found bombing animal testing labs and burning down suburban subdivision sites being built on land where ancient forest have been clear cut. If they vote at all anymore, it's as Independents and rarely for Democrats.

Obama's not a centrist; "Privately, Obama describes himself as a BlueDogDemocrat."

BlueDogDemocrat = Might as well re-register as a Republican

Real Democratic policies aren't that hard to sell to Americans. When most Americans want Medicare and other government programs which they've benefitted from to continue and teabaggers shout "No government control of healthcare; Get your hands off my Medicare", the answer is EDUCATION.

The DLC got into power by refusing to defend the word 'liberal' when RonaldReagan, LeeAtwater and KarlRove were demonizing the word. Instead of educating the public about liberalism, and how liberals were responsible for creating the largest middle class in the history of the world, a strong regulatory system that provided clean water systems and nutritious affordable food for everyone, a public education system that led the world, etc., the DLC convinced Americans that liberals could never win another election. The DLC attributed to ideology what is more accurately explained by lousy campaigns outgunned by election dirty tricks and fraud.

When informed of the issues, most Americans agree with liberal policies. Neither they (nor I) would characterize themselves as far-anything or extreme, but mainstream. For example, nobody likes the idea of abortion, but most Americans do not want the government involved if they find themselves in the predicament of an unwanted pregnancy. And if you frame it as, "You like to k!ll babies?!?! ?!?!", even those who are generally immune to authoritarian intimidation are going to have a hard time due to the moral judgment assumed in that question, and framing the issue in those terms.

If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch and tactics. It's not that Bush and Rove were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush and Rove were just more ruthless doing what politicians had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks, don't take 'no' for an answer and never back away, you will wear the opposition down.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Debt Ceiling Fight May Help Obama Win Independent Voters In 2012

Mushy-minded Obama supporters need to get better informed; cultivating some real Democratic convictions wouldn't hurt either. Because whether it's expanding the 'War on Terror', taking single payer universal health care, a public option, putting Social Security and Medicare on the table (for benefits' and other cuts which directly lead to the end of these programs), taking investigations and prosecutions of BushCheney, etc., off the table, or continuing the BushCheney policies and going BushCheney one better (by asserting that presidents have the right to kiII American citizens with no due process, no oversight, and 'preventive detention', the right to imprison anyone indefinitely because he thinks they might commit a crime), or using JoeLieberman to hide behind, to duck out on his campaign pledge of transparency, and gut the FOIA, no real Democrat could continue to support Obama or any politicians purporting to be Democrats doing this.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Debt Ceiling Fight May Help Obama Win Independent Voters In 2012

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 DemocraticParty 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 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

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

Obama's economic policies have been a collosal failure. After only 3 years not a single economic advisor remains on his staff. They failed -- he failed but that really doesn't faze him, because it's what he wanted-- the destruction of capitalism and the ushering in of socialism.

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

Obama's policies on just about everything is a continuation of BushCheney policies, and just about everyone he has running the economy is a holdover from BushCheney and Clinton administrations.

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

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

Already on the table are more than $1 trillion in discretionary 10-year spending cuts and hundreds of billions more in changes affecting farm subsidies, college aid and retirement benefits for federal workers. Additional savings from health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid are in the offing, as well as a potential $300 billion change in the government’s inflation calculator affecting Social Security benefits and some revenues.

What you call "a very good position" isn't good at all for the American people who rely on these programs to survive.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-debt-talks-obama-offers-social-security-cuts/2011/
About 112th Congress
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

Obama is proposing cutting Social Security and Medicare:

Two weeks ago, that first assumption proved true: Democrats proposed a few hundred billion in new tax revenues (a small fraction of the trillions of dollars in spending cuts Republicans are demanding) so GOP principals threw up their hands and abandoned the discussions. But the second assumption isn't built on bedrock. And in recent weeks, congressional aides, strategists, and advocates have been floating, or warning of, a stealth change to the Social Security benefit structure that has quietly been placed on the negotiating table.

The proposal wouldn't just impact Social Security benefits. It would also shave off yearly increases in federal pension payouts, and result in somewhat higher tax revenues. But the ratio would be skewed toward benefit cuts by a factor of about 2-to-1 and would represent a financial hit to even the poorest retirees unless they were exempted.

The idea is to change the way Cost of Living Adjustments (COLAs) are calculated across the federal government. Currently, the COLAs for tax brackets, pensions, and Social Security are tied to different measures of the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

Because spending habits change when living costs increase, some experts think these measures are too generous, and want to change all of the COLAs to a different, smaller measure of inflation: the so-called "chained-CPI."

On the tax side, this would likely draw more revenue: Tax brackets would rise more slowly than incomes, so people would get kicked into higher brackets more quickly and, voila, more income subject to taxation.

But on the benefits side, this means money out of people's pockets, even current retirees and pensioners. Responding to a letter of concern from House Democrats' top Social Security guy the program's chief actuary explained that moving to "chained-CPI" would constitute an immediate 0.3 percent benefit cut. That may sound small, but the effects would compound, and "[a]dditional annual COLAs thereafter would accumulate to larger total reductions in expected scheduled benefit levels of about 3.7 percent, 6.5 percent, and 9.2 percent for retirees at ages 75, 85, and 95, respectively."

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

Half the Fortune 500 companies pay no taxes.

They are in good company ,half of all Americans paid no income tax .

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

If you don't pay federal income tax, do you think that that means that you don't pay any taxes?

The Top 3 Lies About Taxes:

Lie Number 1) Poor people don't pay taxes.
Example: From The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

At a hearing last month, Senator Charles Grassley said, "According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, 49 percent of households are paying 100 percent of taxes coming in to the federal government." At the same hearing, Cato Institute Senior Fellow Alan Reynolds asserted, "Poor people don't pay taxes in this country." Last April, referring to a Tax Policy Center estimate of households with no federal income tax liability in 2009, Fox Business host Stuart Varney said on Fox and Friends, "Yes, 47 percent of households pay not a single dime in taxes."

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' Chuck Marr and Brian Highsmith provide the definitive takedown of this myth.

In 2009, Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation found that 51 percent of households owed no federal income tax. According to Marr and Highsmith, that figure was inflated by special recession-related factors -- In a more typical year, "35 to 40 percent of households pay no federal income tax."

But that does not mean that these households pay no federal taxes at all. Far from it: Nearly all working Americans pay payroll taxes to fund Medicare and Social Security. In 2007, the poorest Americans -- taxpayers in the bottom fifth of income -- paid 8.8 percent of their income as payroll taxes. The next fifth paid almost ten percent. The top 20 percent of earners paid only 5.7 percent.

And of course, these numbers don't include state and local taxes or excise fees like gas taxes, which tend to have a regressive impact that hits poorer Americans harder. Bottom line: only 14 percent of Americans don't pay either federal income taxes or payroll taxes -- and that group is made up primarily of "low-income people who are elderly, unable to work due to a serious disability, or students."

The rich have gotten rich off of the sweat and labor of others and then have taken those profits to buy politicians who've gamed the system so that they wouldn't have to pay taxes through all manner of tax schemes not available to the poor and middle classes. The rich also 'closed the door' on the ways that initially enabled them to amass their 'seed money' for creating their businesses.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

Nothing is going to change until and unless Obama and Democratic politicians take a stand to work for the People. Democratic voters thought Democratic politicians were going to do that so they voted them into power in 2006. In 2008 when they put Obama and Democrats into power in both legislative and executive branches, Democratic voters were putting a exclamation point on it. By 2010, Democratic voters realized that Obama and Democrats had no intention of doing it, and stayed home or voted incumbent Democrats AND Republicans out of office.

If the past history is prolog for the future, 2012 is going to be a bloodbath.
About 112th Congress
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

Those who keep urging "compromise", the left has done all of the compromising for the past 40 years. Deregulation and privatization are two core principles that the left has caved on that have gotten us to this point of destroying the middle class and the nation.

More recently, SinglePayer was a compromise. When that proved not enough for the CorporateMasters of the universe, a PublicOption was compromised. A weak PublicOption was whittled down into a trigger and then dropped altogether. There are no cost controls in Obama's healthcare legislation, but plenty of protections for continued gouging by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

By the way, SinglePayer wasn't our first, best proposal. We'd already been denied our first best proposal: A level playing field where we all could rise and share in the obscene corporate profits that come at the expense of so many people's lives. We've lost to a corporate mentality that it's a 'dog eat dog'-world, where making a living isn't enough (or even possible); only 'making a kiIIing'.

Had Republicans never been in power these past 35 years, had Democrats not crossed over to become the same bought-off corporate tools that Republicans are, free education through college, access to nutritious, clean and safe food and water, abundant clean and green and sustainable energy, and affordable housing and healthcare for everyone would've been the bare minimum standard of living for all Americans. But greedy OILy conservative politicians entered our lives and our government, and we're now on a fast track to the end.

In 2001, Bush's tax cuts for the rich promised to create jobs and wealth for all, and once again the left compromised and Democratic politicians caved. Since 2006, Democrats campaigned on ending Bush's tax cuts when they expired in 2011. And again, Obama gamed it and extended them.

The latest Democratic caving over the budget.

When the budget process began, Republican congressman PaulRyan came out with the first number that Republicans wanted to cut ($32 billion). Then there was a TeaParty revolt in the House, and Republicans in the House said "Fine, you win, $64 billion."

At $64 billion Democrats moved all the way over to where Paul Ryan was when the process began. So even if Democrats got that number (which in Washington would be considered a "win" for Democrats), Democrats went all the way over to where the Republican leadership thought their opening bid would be. Ultimately the cuts are going to be very dramatic, more so than anyone in either party thought was wise a few months ago -- NOBODY is representing the interests of the poor and middle classes.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Dr. Fluoride

And 26 percent of Americans don't know that we fought the British in the Revolutionary War.

Barry Levinson = great storyteller
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

"Plan B" does NOT stand for the "People's Budget".

There actually is a People's Budget (read it here).

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.

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.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

The left comes to the table already having compromised our positions. On everything. All the time. We have done the compromising for more than 30 years.

And even after we compromise, after we have deals, Republicans renege and Democrats still cave some more.

[One example is the CappsAmendment. That was the compromise AGREEMENT on abortion in Obama's healthcare legislation. After agreeing, Republicans reneged and Obama caved more, to where between the StupakAmendment and Obama's ExecutiveOrder, we're firmly on the path of ending all insurance coverage for abortions.

http://news.firedoglake.com/2009/11/17/gwu-study-yes-the-stupak-amendment-would-end-coverage-of-abortion-services-over-time/

Fairly soon, Roe and overturning it is going to be moot with all that Republicans have managed to get Democrats to "compromise" on, making getting an abortlon impossible. As it is now, you can't get an abortlon in 87 percent of the counties in the US. (It's now up to 92 percent.)]

Obama's got to go.

MichaelLerner's very powerful case for primarying Obama.

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

Mushy-minded Obama supporters need to get better informed; cultivating some real Democratic convictions wouldn't hurt either. Because whether it's expanding the 'War on Terror', taking single payer universal health care, a public option, putting Social Security and Medicare on the table (for benefits' and other cuts which directly lead to the end of these programs), investigations and prosecutions of BushCheney, etc., off the table, or continuing the BushCheney policies and going BushCheney one better (by asserting that presidents have the right to kiII American citizens with no due process, no oversight, and 'preventive detention', the right to imprison anyone indefinitely because he thinks they might commit a crime), or using JoeLieberman to hide behind, to duck out on his campaign pledge of transparency, and gut the FOIA, and put Social Security and Medicare on the table, no real Democrat could continue to support Obama or any politicians purporting to be Democrats doing this.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

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Radiation Concerns For Japan's Beef Supply

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

Debt Ceiling Fight May Help Obama Win Independent Voters In 2012

Debt Ceiling Fight May Help Obama Win Independent Voters In 2012

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

Dr. Fluoride

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

Cut, Cap And Balance Bill: Latest Republican Plan Could Lead To Debt Ceiling Compromise

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