Spintested: 08/05/11

Nancy Pelosi: Dems Will Be Forceful On Super Committee But Won't Draw 'Lines In The Sand'

Friday, August 5, 2011

You actually can 'impeach' somebody who's out of office; you can't remove them from office. Impeachment is what the House does and it's similar to a grand jury's indictment, holding over for trial in the Senate.

Impeachment and removal from office could have happened after January 2007 when Democrats became the majority in the House and had control of the Senate. Impeachment of Bush and Cheney can happen anytime, even now, and leaves a stain on their legacy in perpetuity. When symbology is what they live by, then you use their symbology to bury what they believe are their good names. Because unless truths are told in courts of law, unless the narrative changes, unless the rule of law is restored, get ready for another (Jeb) Bush-Cheney (Liz) administration in the not so distant future.

Pelosi isn't helping real people -- No one in either party is, and it pains this old liberal Democrat to say it.
About Deficit Commission
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U.S. Credit Downgraded: S&P Reduces Rating To AA+ [UPDATE]

Next, Obama will be wanting to raise the debt ceiling AGAIN.

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

Spending is the only way out.

How do you think we got out of the Great Depression?

We have only one of two choices for spending:

Either we invest it in our people, by putting Americans to work on repairing roads, bridges, highways, infrastructure, building and installing clean and green energy or WAR.

Take your pick.
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Obama U.S. Attorney Nominee David Barlow Is Tea Party Senator's General Counsel

The DLC has morphed into The Third Way, No Labels, etc.
About Orrin Hatch
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Obama U.S. Attorney Nominee David Barlow Is Tea Party Senator's General Counsel

^ - Know whereof he speaks.

How have our paths not managed to cross before this?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Marcospinelli/obama-us-attorney-nominee-david-barlow_n_918989_101209611.html
About Orrin Hatch
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Obama U.S. Attorney Nominee David Barlow Is Tea Party Senator's General Counsel

I just don't know what to make of this man anymore. Is he a fraud? Just a poor leader? Limited non-orating skills? Stockholm Syndrome? I am dumbstruck watching him squander a historical mandate, and get so easily played and entrapped by a radical opposition party.

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

The DLC-controlled DemocraticParty counts on voter ignorance and gives lip service to all populist issues. Like the RepublicanParty, the DLC works for the benefit of transnational corporations. Each party uses high-priced public relations firms, with spinmeisters crafting sophisticated propaganda campaigns to con voters into believing what isn't true.

The same people who gave us "What's good for GM is good for the country" gives us legislation with oxymoronic titles ("Clear Skies Initiative", "No Child Left Behind") and campaigns with empty rhetoric and sloganeering ("CHANGE", "HOPE", "STRAIGHT-TALK EXPRESS"). All calculated to convince the left and the right within each party that their party's candidate shares their positions.

Democratic voters thought they were saying no to all that, corporate and lobbyist control when they chose Obama over Hillary (Hillary supporters are comprised of DLCers and those who don't know anything about the DLC and believe the Clintons are liberals).

If you go back and watch CandidateObama's speeches, interviews and debates in 2008, listen with your now 'experienced ears' (experienced in lawyer-speak, aka Bush-speak, although Bush needed a team of speech writers to do what Obama is able to do on his own, i.e., think on his feet), I think you'll see that Obama spoke carefully and precisely to give people the sense of what they wanted to hear to get their vote.

Obama got into office by misleading Democratic voters. He ran to the left of HillaryClinton. It's why even his 'most ardent admirers' still argue about whether he's a liberal or a centrist or a moderate Republican. He convinced centrists that he was a centrist. He convinced liberals he was a liberal posing as a centrist. [News Flash: Even BruceBartlett, domestic policy advisor to RonaldReagan and Treasury official in the George HWBush administration said the other day, "i think the dirty secret is that Obama is a moderate conservative. if i were a liberal democrat, i probably would be upset." And for those who won't accept that, "Privately, Obama describes himself as a Blue Dog Democrat"]

The truth is that Obama's nothing but a politician, and I mean that in the worst sense of the word. In the 'used car salesman' sense. It turns out that doing what's right for transnational corporations is what Obama is about, and trying to sell it as good for Americans is what he does afterwards. He's the epitome of the 1950s Republican, "What's good for GM is good for America." He did a snow job on everybody.
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Obama U.S. Attorney Nominee David Barlow Is Tea Party Senator's General Counsel

Read this, this and this.
About Orrin Hatch
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Paul Krugman: Economy Was Never 'On The Road To Recovery'

One of the earliest examples was during the healthcare debate, when the momentum for a public option had swelled and was reaching critical mass. The pressure on Democrats, on Congress, and on Obama had grown so strong that just about every show on every cable channel led with it.

Maddow was one of the first, if not the first at MSNBC, to begin talking about it in the past tense. "Not going to happen". I recall at the time the phrase "I felt like I was bltch-slapped" was the exact right response.

After that broadcast, Ed Schultz followed, along with the rest of the line-up (Olbermann was last).

It helps to understand how all of these shows work, and Cenk Uygur's situation recently with MSNBC can amplify this point. You're nothing but your rolodex. Your access is all important, and if those in the government freeze you out, if they won't come on your show, you have no career. That's another reason why today's news (Obama U.S. Attorney Nominee David Barlow Is Tea Party) Senator's General Counsel) is another blow to progressives. If real Democrats, real progressives, aren't in positions making policy and news, they won't be in the media either.

So understanding that, we came to learn afterwards that the White House was hosting people like Maddow in secret, granting them high-caliber interviews inside the White House, after which all of a sudden the media personalities would change their tunes and repeat the White House's talking points as if it was fact, a done deal, etc.

At some point we need to realize that even Mother Teresa wasn't Mother Teresa. What do I mean? She wasn't dressed in tie dye and raised in a commune by anti-war picketing hippies who knocked around from one liberal cause to another until she turned around one day and found herself spreading passionately personally held convictions to millions for millions. She grew up in a conservative community in an establishment family, went to the ultimate in establishment schools (Stanford and Oxford).

Maddow, et al, pay are susceptible to the same temptations that have corrupted those in our government. To pay her mortgages, etc., she has to keep her job, and to keep her job she has to make accommodations. To get interviews with the Treasury Secretary and Obama when nobody else is getting them (especially nobody on the left), it's not going to happen unless you play ball. Whether you would say she's toning it down or selling out, in the end it's the same result.

I think she does it well, by the way, but make no mistake, she does it.
About Ben Bernanke
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Obama U.S. Attorney Nominee David Barlow Is Tea Party Senator's General Counsel

Daniel Ellsberg: All the crimes Richard Nixon committed against me are now legal

;-)
About Orrin Hatch
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Obama U.S. Attorney Nominee David Barlow Is Tea Party Senator's General Counsel

Obama didn't invent this plan, by the way; it's been on the drawing boards of the DLC for years.

And if Obama loses reelection, he and those he really works for aren't going to lose -- They'll have another Corporate stooge running government and Obama will enjoy life on the Corporate-board train.

The only solution is to vote both parties out. I know that seems daunting, but the sooner American citizens realize it, the faster we can rebound and repair this once great nation.
About Orrin Hatch
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Obama U.S. Attorney Nominee David Barlow Is Tea Party Senator's General Counsel

The TeaParty is an effective nemesis for Obama and helps him and the DLC deliver to their (and Republicans') CorporateMasters. The TeaParty is a paper tiger, a scapegoat, and not the real problem. This is all Kabuki theater, to push us into accepting being robbed blind while politicians in both parties jockey for positions of favor and power within the corporatocracy.

If Obama and DLC-Democrats 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 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 BigInsurance, PhRma, hospitals, the AMA, etc., and then he lied about it, all the while that the TeaParty grew and bullied at TownHalls.

What Obama also did during the same TownHall 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.

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 Republican Party (far rightwing extremists that'll never vote for him or any Democrat because to the rightwing all Democrats are 'commie libruls') 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 DemocraticParty. To make the DemocraticParty 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 TeaParty 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.
About Orrin Hatch
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Obama U.S. Attorney Nominee David Barlow Is Tea Party Senator's General Counsel

Longer version of ladybug7's comment:

You know, really...

F**k it.

The horse is out of the barn and we should just let the radical right have its way. It's not like Obama and the gutless Dems are going to stop them.

It would be carnage for a few years, people eating other people (though that really only happens in the southern tier of states), old people dying (why are we so eager to keep them alive, anyway?) and cats and dogs living together...

Let it all come crashing down--but let's make sure to kill Soc Sec and Medicaid/Medicare. These Tea Partiers should be allowed to pay what the market will bear, right?

By the way, while our Tea-Party/Real Men (or whatever those guys who wouldn't pay taxes a few years ago are called) friends talk about how they'd like to keep more of their hard earned money and give less to the idiots who "gave us Vietnam and Iraq," perhaps they'd like to pick up the bill for the grading and paving of the road that leads from their home to their office--can't be what, more than $60K a year. While they're at it, maybe they'd like to cut a check for the police and fire people they'd have to employ to protect their home and valuables from damage. If they could get one guy for another $30K, they'd be lucky. Oh, and then there's that water and waste service, if you've got that.

Really, just let these f**kers get what they want.

About Orrin Hatch
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Obama U.S. Attorney Nominee David Barlow Is Tea Party Senator's General Counsel

Yes, in order to suppress the Democratic base vote turnout.
About Orrin Hatch
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Obama U.S. Attorney Nominee David Barlow Is Tea Party Senator's General Counsel

Just so we are all on the same page, you support presidents having the right to k!ll American citizens with no due process, no oversight, and 'indefinite preventive detention' and no transparency of anything a president asserts should be his secret, and Obama's continuing to torture as well as decriminalizing torture, along with creating all new black sites (Prison Ships, Ghost Prisoners and Obama's Interrogation Program), and cutting Social Security and Medicare, etc., etc. etc., etc. etc.

Just so we're clear.
About Orrin Hatch
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Obama U.S. Attorney Nominee David Barlow Is Tea Party Senator's General Counsel

Actually, it has us, the People, looking like that.

Just as Congress isn't bound to abide by the legislation it passes, these politicians whose lives are spent switchbacking between government offices and lobbying firms and corporate boards are not negatively impacted.

The simplest most expedient fix, the only solution to this, is campaign finance reform. Publicly funded campaigns, and getting the money out of politics. But neither party has that as their agenda.
About Orrin Hatch
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Obama U.S. Attorney Nominee David Barlow Is Tea Party Senator's General Counsel

Obama is an honorable man. He's an honorable man that keeps turning the other cheek and thinks that eventually we can all come together. We never will, and that is his weakness.

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

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? Pure Kafka.

And while most of Obama's supporters believe that Obama ended the torture practices of the BushCheney regime and closed down the CIA black sites, Obama's continuing to tortureand has decriminalized it, along with creating all new black sites (Prison Ships, Ghost Prisoners and Obama's Interrogation Program).

And with Obama's continuing Bush's tax cuts for the rich and putting SocialSecurity and Medicare and Medicaid up for cuts, as a Democrat I don't know how any Democrat can get behind this. How do Obama's 'most ardent supporters' explain all that to themselves?
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Obama U.S. Attorney Nominee David Barlow Is Tea Party Senator's General Counsel

I happen to agree with you, which is one of the many reasons I've said that I think Maddow has sold out, by attributing to naivete or ineptness what can really only be explained by deceit and corruption.
About Orrin Hatch
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Paul Krugman: Economy Was Never 'On The Road To Recovery'

The PRESIDENT needs to introduce a plan, a massive stimulus bill that includes jobs' programs that would affect every sector of our economy EXCEPT war. Then he can go on a bus tour of the nation selling it.

Democrats need to go to out of work red states and expose what conservative policies have done to the nation and the people.

That's how you coordinate getting your plan through Congress.

There's nothing that Republicans are doing that Democrats haven't signed on to, in spite of what they say.

Politico and the LA Times both reported that Joe Biden told the Democratic Caucus that Obama was prepared to invoke the 14th amendment should there be no deal. The Democratic leadership drove this bad deal -- John Boehner did not have the votes for it and it was Pelosi who saved his butt, as was reported yesterday in an interview with her in Mother Jones. Meaning, we could have had the debt ceiling raised without these massive cuts (now) and more massive cuts coming up when the new (double secret) 'Super Congress' winds up gutting Social Security and Medicare.
About Ben Bernanke
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Obama U.S. Attorney Nominee David Barlow Is Tea Party Senator's General Counsel

How does a Democratic president, on the heels of the most criminally 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 BushAdministration). Instead of returning the democracy to the American people, Obama's AttorneyGeneral has US attorneys going after legalized medicinal marijuana in the states and Bush-style obscenity prosecutions:

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

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? Pure Kafka.

And while most of Obama's supporters believe that Obama ended the torture practices of the BushCheney regime and closed down the CIA black sites, Obama's continuing to torture and has decriminalized it, along with creating all new black sites (Prison Ships, Ghost Prisoners and Obama's Interrogation Program).

And with Obama's continuing Bush's tax cuts for the rich and putting SocialSecurity and Medicare and Medicaid up for cuts, as a Democrat I don't know how any Democrat can get behind this. How do Obama's 'most ardent supporters' explain all that to themselves?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama U.S. Attorney Nominee David Barlow Is Tea Party Senator's General Counsel

Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.
About Orrin Hatch
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Obama U.S. Attorney Nominee David Barlow Is Tea Party Senator's General Counsel

Rachel Maddow: "Obama has become the very definition of insanity" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju_qmIGI4Cs
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Paul Krugman: Economy Was Never 'On The Road To Recovery'

Then we have to get even louder.
About Ben Bernanke
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Paul Krugman: Economy Was Never 'On The Road To Recovery'

Seriously, what do you attribute getting us out of the Great Depression if not massive spending by the government?
About Ben Bernanke
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Paul Krugman: Economy Was Never 'On The Road To Recovery'

Restitution. ;-)
About Ben Bernanke
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Obama Pushing Jobs For Unemployed Military Veterans

Both parties say one thing and do another.
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Paul Krugman: Economy Was Never 'On The Road To Recovery'

He and many others, me included, saw it coming years ago. Each year the warning went unheeded, each year there were more tax cuts, more spending, more borrowing, more war on a credit card, the odds increased exponentially until we are where we are now -- This is a DEPRESSION.

And it's going to get much, much worse.

Why?

Why is this Depression going to be even worse than the last Great Depression?

Because we really can't grow our way out of it as we did the last one -- WE HAVE LIMITED RESOURCES. Limited water, limited food, limited oil, limited forests, etc. What we don't have is limited numbers of people.

We on the left told you so, and I don't think that any of us take any delight at all in saying it.

On a tangential subject, I think you might get some value out of reading Malcolm Gladwell's book, "Blink".
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Nancy Pelosi: Dems Will Be Forceful On Super Committee But Won't Draw 'Lines In The Sand'

Hmm. First I'm hearing of that concept. Thank you for pointing that out.

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

You're welcome and thank you for the feedback.
About Deficit Commission
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Paul Krugman: Economy Was Never 'On The Road To Recovery'

Until we have hosts of cable programs who are less 'expert' and less interested in the politics of Washington (Chris Matthews and MSNBC and CNN and FOX, I'm talking to you) and more expert and interested in the actual dynamics of policy, the American people are always going to be on the losing end.

Even Rachel Maddow has sold out, and tragically I predict that the bulk, if not all, of the reactions to this comment will be a pile-on that Maddow hasn't (sold out).
About Ben Bernanke
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Paul Krugman: Economy Was Never 'On The Road To Recovery'

What do you believe got us out of the Depression?
About Ben Bernanke
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Paul Krugman: Economy Was Never 'On The Road To Recovery'

What really happened was politics and cowardice, and that enabled the greatest heist in the history of the world. And that is why investigations, hearings, prosecutions and incarceration are necessary.

And unless there are investigations, hearings, prosecutions, incarceration and RESTITUTION, I'm going to amend that to "What really happened was wholesale corruption by BOTH political parties to rob the American people blind for their own personal gain. Their moral depravity killed the goose that laid the golden egg, America".
About Ben Bernanke
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Paul Krugman: Economy Was Never 'On The Road To Recovery'

Reich replied:

Well, it is surprising. I mean, we do have - Howard is absolutely right. The data - capacity of the government is not nearly as good as it was before. But you got all of Wall Street, all of the private sector looking at whatever data they have, and everybody basically called it wrong. A lot of people who should have known better and still should know better have said that all along - well, everything will be fine if we just cut the government and cut government spending. Well, the fact of the matter is - state and local governments are cutting like mad. Have been cutting and now we have tied the hands of the federal government with regards to any kind of an expansionary stimulus boost to the economy. We've actually generated a fiscal drag at the federal level, at the state level, while consumers are not and will not spend. This is the worst of all worlds. And I think that we've got to go back to the drawing boards. And when Congress comes back, the president has got to say, "Here is a jobs bill. This is the most important thing in the country right now to Americans. And I'm going to fight for it."

The fact of the matter is that everybody didn't get it wrong.

How is it that the decision-makers didn't know when so many others (the left) did? Krugman didn't get it wrong. Even non-economists (like me) didn't get it wrong. The political and media establishment can't have it both ways, by blaming it on inadequate and faulty data, when the data was available and evident for others to see and evaluate.

What really happened was politics and cowardice, and that enabled the greatest heist in the history of the world. And that is why investigations, hearings, prosecutions and incarceration are necessary.
About Ben Bernanke
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Paul Krugman: Economy Was Never 'On The Road To Recovery'

Why there needs to be investigations, hearings and prosecutions should become clear after you watch this.

In that clip, Dylan Ratigan said:

Last week we learned that the recession at the end of Bush's 2nd term was worse than initially measured. Revised numbers show a shocking 8.9 percent loss of GDP, which provoked this analysis in "The Economist" -

"Had the new Obama administration seen that the economy was shrinking at close to 9 percent per year, it might well have pushed for a much larger stimulus plan, and might reasonably have expected Congress to agree to it. If government was too thrifty before, it looks downright stingy in the light of new information. Against this backdrop, fiscal policy is tight and growing tighter. Government consumption and investment has dragged growth down in five of the last seven quarters, thanks to the cuts at the state and local level and falling defense spending. More cuts are coming."

Howard Fineman said:

Over the years, spending cuts have cut back on the ability of the government to collect data and do research about what's actually going on in the economy. And I dare say there will be more cuts as a result of the deal that they just made. The fact that we knew so little about what really had been going on in the economy at the time when Barack Obama was making fateful decisions even before he became president is shocking. And we need real time information about what's going on in what is still the largest economy in the world. If you cut government, and if your attitude is you want to cut government, you blind government to the realities that it needs to understand in order to help lead the country and the world.

Lawrence O'Donnell then asked Robert Reich, former labor secretary in the Clinton administration and economics professor at UC Berkeley:

As a former labor secretary, you got an early look at all of these government statistics on the economy, the Bureau of Labor Statistics. How surprised are you that these revisions that have been done lately have shown that things were so much worse than we thought?

KEEP READING
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Rick Santorum In Iowa Ahead Of 2012: 'Schools Indoctrinate Our Children'

Public schools educate children by presenting them with facts and exposing them differing perspectives, to challenge them into thinking and reasoning.

Anyone talking in such terms as "indoctrination" is, himself, fixated on indoctrinating children with a biased perspective, limiting facts to only those that support his point of view.
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Rick Santorum In Iowa Ahead Of 2012: 'Schools Indoctrinate Our Children'

If Rick Santorum were to become president, would Democrats coalesce to block and obstruct everything he tried to do?

Would Democratic voters come together and be as effective at getting their elected representatives to do their bidding as the teabaggers have been?

There is nothing that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney did that couldn't have been done without Democrats in Congress signing on.

Both Politico and the LA Times reported that Joe Biden told the Democratic Caucus that Obama was prepared to invoke the 14th amendment should there be no deal. The Democratic leadership drove that bad deal with no revenue increases, and that will inevitably lead to Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid/SCHIP/Veterans' Care-cuts and making the Bush-Obama Tax Cuts For The Rich permanent; John Boehner did not have the votes for it and it was Pelosi who saved his butt, (reported the day before yesterday in an interview with her in Mother Jones).

Before the midterms of 2010, I asked if Obama's 'most ardent supporters' believed that if Democrats lost control of Congress, would they be as effective at preventing the Republicans' agenda from moving forward as Republicans have been at stymieing Democrats. After all, there would still be more numbers of Democrats in Congress AND a Democratic White House. Not one of Obama's 'most ardent fans' replied.

Are Obama and Democratic politicians inept, less able than Republicans, or are they corrupt and Democratic voters mistaken about what Obama and Democrats in Congress true intentions are?
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Rick Perry's College Transcript: A Lot Of Cs And Ds

What George W. Bush proved to me: Anyone can become the president of the US.
About Rick Perry
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Obama Pushing Jobs For Unemployed Military Veterans

Yemen (still there), Somalia (still there), and the more than 760 military bases we maintain around the world.
About Veterans
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Obama Pushing Jobs For Unemployed Military Veterans

On this day 49 years ago, Marilyn Monroe was found dead of a barbiturate overdose.

This has as much to do with putting Americans back to work as another Obama speech about jobs. This Obama story, however, has more to do with politics than Monroe's.

Carry on.
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Nancy Pelosi: Dems Will Be Forceful On Super Committee But Won't Draw 'Lines In The Sand'

Should millionaires and billionaires be required to pay into Social Security?

What if they lose all their money at some point in their lifetime?

Got me there.
Nothing about my answers to your questions, huh?

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

Your answers are your answers. This wasn't a test. I asked the questions as a means to dialogue, to discuss the issues of what our paid representatives are doing (or supposed to be doing) on behalf of the People. And getting clear as to what Democrats aren't doing about what it is you say that you want.

As far as your comment that Social Security and Medicare shouldn't be available to millionaires and billionaires, the reason that real Democrats fight for inclusion of the rich (both in contributions and receiving benefits) is something you may want to think about: The "veil of ignorance".

The "veil of ignorance" is an economic and philosophical concept introduced and developed by economist John Harsanyi and philosopher John Rawls. It's a method of determining the morality or fairness or justice of a certain issue (e.g. torture, taxation, slavery) based upon the following principle: Imagine that societal roles were completely re-fashioned and redistributed, and that from behind the "veil of ignorance", one does not know what role they will be reassigned. Only then can one truly consider the morality or fairness or justice of an issue.

Imagine before you're born you don't know anything about who you'll be, your abilities, or your position. Now design a tax system.

It's why the rich should accept a greater tax burden in spite of the fact that their success may be well earned. It's why we don't torture (except we do, and even under Obama). It's why ended slavery. It's why we provide free education (or did up until conservatives hijacked our government).

The "veil of ignorance" underpins our democracy, of justice and fairness for all and equal opportunity, that made America once great.

And millionaires and billionaires paying into Social Security and receiving benefits has another impact on the greatness that was America - The innovation that comes when you know there's a safety net beneath you. The chances you take when you know that you won't lose everything, won't be forced to having to spend your time scrounging for a meal and a bed, feeding your children, is what led to American invention.
About Deficit Commission
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Debt Ceiling Deal A Political Setback For Barack Obama

Me, too.

You have no idea how much I wish I were wrong.
About Bush Tax Cuts
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Arianna Talks About The Debt Ceiling Agreement With Lawrence O'Donnell (VIDEO)

No ma'm.

AARP's latest statement, released after the chitstorm of cancellations that their first statement caused (that they were open to reform) does not say they are against reform. It's the very model of weasel-speak. As a matter of fact, this statement could easily be something that even Paul Ryan and Republicans would and could say about Ryan's plan for reform (and actually have said).

Sharpen those ears, Carolab -- They're talking about those currently receiving Social Security and Medicare benefits, not those in the pipeline.
About Debt Ceiling
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Nancy Pelosi: Dems Will Be Forceful On Super Committee But Won't Draw 'Lines In The Sand'

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112s365eah/pdf/BILLS-112s365eah.pdf
About Deficit Commission
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