Spintested: October 2012

Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

Sunday, October 7, 2012

According to Forbes Magazine Health Insurance spent
over 100 million to defeat this reform they supposedly love. They're not spending as much against it now because the PPACA does not allow it.

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And according to Forbes, a flat tax is the fairest of all tax schemes.

What the insurance industry spent $109 million on was to prevent a public option.

And FWIW, the industry spent much more than that to get the legislation they wanted - In 2008, Obama received almost 3 times the amount of contributions from the insurance industry as McCain.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

FDR was a Wall-street lawyer. Lincoln and Clarence Darrow were both "big money" lawyers for the Railroads (the most evil and powerful industry of that day). Legislation is bad or good based on the legislation, not who was involved in writing it (and to claim that ONE person created the whole thing is just hyperbole).

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I agree with you about evaluating legislation (on its own merits).

With ACA, it's lousy legislation in so far as providing affordable quality medical treatment for everyone, written by the insurance industry's Liz Fowler and Steve Larsen.

Also FWIW, FDR was a corporate lawyer for about a minute and a half (less than 2 years) - Then he went into public service. As lawyers, FDR, Lincoln and Darrow were "for hire". In public service, the hat one wears is different than the hat one wears as a corporate lawyer and some do it better than others.

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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

First off, i'm sick and tired of this guilt by association nonsense that you FDL types love to engage in.

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No sicker or tireder than I am with the bullshit talking points political operatives spread on websites all around the internet like Monsanto fertilizer.

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Obama, Democrats' Fundraising Raised $181 Million In September

When "lesser of two evils" no longer works, we get the "better the deviI you know than the deviI you don't" rationale.

We've been doing it your way, putting the deviI we know, the lesser of two evils, into office for 20 years now, and the government and the Democratic Party keeps moving farther to the right. Your way is getting us abuses like this, by those we know - Warrantless Electronic Surveillance Surges Under Obama Justice Department

That's because your way is to lie to the American people and put Republicans-in-Democrats'-clothing into office. At the rate this is going, Republicans won't have to bother getting Roe overturned (why bother outlawing abortion when you've made it virtually impossible to obtain one?).

Regulating banks and Wall Street won't be necessary because the top 1 percent will have ALL of the money. The disabled and elderly will be dead, so privatizing Social Security won't be much of an issue. Schools will be all privatized under Democrats -- PBS has had its funding slashed under Democrats so children will have no commercial-free children's programming and will be rank-and-file locksteppers.

And the wars, expanded under Obama and Democrats (beyond what BushCheney did) will still be going on when your children have children.

If you are a liberal, if you and I are on the same side and want real Democratic policies, and going about getting them your way (protecting Obama, reelecting DLC Democrats) is getting Republican policies, NOT Democratic policies, when do you realize that maybe you don't know what you're talking about?

When do you realize that you've become that classic definition for 'insan!ty' ("Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results")?

Do you ever realize it?

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

Your vote for Obama is a vote for cutting Social Security. And for NDAA.

How does any Democratic voter defend Obama after he asserts he has the right to kill any American citizen without due process or oversight? And Obama's claims of 'state secrets' to deny courts even look at his assassination program? And 'indefinite preventive detention'?

An argument can be made, quite convincingly, that Obama and DLC Democrats are the worse evil. Bush and Cheney made no excuses or bones about who they were and what they stood for. Obama and DLC Democrats ran on doing different, because they knew better.

Two articles that speak that I think are must reads for Democratic voters are John Cusack's Interview of Law Professor Jonathan Turley About the Obama Administration's War on the Constitution and journalist Russell Mokhiber's Ten Reasons I'm Not With Barack Obama.

The Fate of Humanity Is at Stake -- Why Are Romney and Obama Too Cowardly to Talk About What Really Matters?

Just as Obama has expanded and increased the wars, Iran will be bombed no matter who is in the White House. When it comes to our foreign policy, both parties share the same goals - A destabilized Middle East where the US's ambitions of empire and controlling the world's resources are realized.

The only difference is in how enthusiastically the lemmings should march toward the cliff.
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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

Nader again?

Nader didn't do anything to Gore that HarryBrowne, PatBuchanan, HowardPhillips, et al (other party candidates) didn't also do, yet you don't hear them being blamed. Gore and Bush weren't owed other party's voters, and studies have shown that Nader pulled more votes from Bush than from Gore.

You presume that Nader voters would've voted for Gore (or voted at all) when studies and exit polling have indicated that's not the case.

You blame Nader voters when, had Nader not even run, had he not be in the race, Bush still would've won. Because Republicans had gamed that election more ways than we're ever going to know about. You might as well blame Pat Buchanan with the same vigor and vitriole.

AlGore won. Gore got more votes in Florida. Any way it was counted (and the biggest point that people seem to forget is that there were 179,000 perfectly readable ballots that never got counted), Gore got more votes than Bush.

Whatever the means necessary to get BushCheney into the WhiteHouse would've happened. Had Nader been in the race, had he not in the race, whatever. Had Nader not run, the outcome would've been the same. The powers that be were not going to let Gore win, no matter what, and gamed it innumerable ways.

If the means for getting BushCheney into the WhiteHouse required a close election and Nader not been running, some other means would've been used.

For pity's sake, the CIA was working on GOP absentee ballots in the weeks leading up to election day in Florida. That was the most amazing revelation from the televised court hearings in the post-election days in Florida -- 'CharlesKane' testified to altering absentee ballots in the MartinCounty's Registrar's office in the two week period prior to election day (it's against the law and should render the ballots null and void). When Kane was sworn in, he had to identify himself and give his occupation and employer. Retired CIA. The judge asked him why he was altering the absentee ballots, and he answered "I go where I'm told." Verbatim quote. The judge didn't follow up. There was next to no news coverage of this, and none by the networks.

Have you forgotten JebBush's vote purging scheme?

Have people really forgotten all the different ways that that election was gamed by the GOP? And that's just in Florida. And just the ways that we learned about because of legal proceedings in the post-election days.

There was a coup d'etat in America in 2000. A bIoodless coup, but a coup nonetheless.

And Democrats suppressed investigations, and then screwed over the CongressionalBlackCaucus's attempts to expose that stolen election.
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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

Obama and the DLC also worked their butts off to prevent more progressives/liberals from getting elected. Obama and the DLC put the power of the White House, the DNC, and the Democratic congressional committees behind Blue Dogs, Republicans and Independents over progressives/liberals and real Democrats. Some, but not all, examples:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is exactly the bunch that Obama and the puppet-masters who control him want in office. On both sides of the aisle. Obama, Democrats and Republicans in office, working on behalf of transnational corporations.

Reform isn't on the agenda of either party.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

Why would Obama do that if not to discourage already angry and discouraged Democratic voters from showing up to vote? That was the effect. Discouraging and suppressing Democratic vote turnout in the midterms (from Obama's flip-flopping on just about every pledge and continuing Bush-Cheney policies and putting Republican-like legislation through Congress) was predictable, and had been predicted.

And why would Obama do that if not to set up some sort of rationale for moving to the right, some reason for continuing to cave to Republicans?

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

Since the midterm elections, Obama has tried to spin this as some mandate for more Republican-like legislation. Do you know what Obama said he'd do if re-elected to a second term?:

Explaining this spring how he would manage to enact his agenda in a second term, Obama was still looking forward to sitting down and cutting deals. This time, he said, Republicans would be nicer because he’s not running for re-election.

Obama's either corrupt or he's the very definition of 'insanity', "doing the same thing over and over again hoping for a different outcome". Or his supporters are.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

What's upside-down is the fact that so many "liberals" are working so hard to do Karl Rove's job- depress Democratic turnout with the kinnard that "they're both the same". That belief is ignorant of the facts and destructive to any liberal cause.

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Obama did everything he could to discourage Democratic voter turnout in 2010. From flip-flopping and breaking campaign promises and pushing through Republican-like legislation to Obama's broadcasting in the weeks before the 2010 midterms that he was going to continue to "work in a bipartisan manner" with Republicans, no matter what the outcome of the elections. Whether Democrats gained seats or lost control of the Congress:

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

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

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

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

KEEP READING
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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

The trade deals that President Obama has signed have included rights for workers.

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These trade deals are union busting and job outsourcers.

These AFTA treaties expand the rights that corporations received under NAFTA to challenge any laws they perceive as barriers to trade and foreign investment. For instance, when California banned a carcinogenic gasoline additive called MTBE because it was seeping into the state's drinking water, the chemical manufacturer, Methanex, sued California for infringing on its trade rights under NAFTA and demanded $970 million in compensation. Such suits are a direct threat to democracy because they prioritize the profits of foreign corporations over a country's own environmental, social and labor laws.

Already corporations are planning more such lawsuits. A subsidiary of Harken Energy (on whose board

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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

The trade deals that President Obama has signed have included rights for workers. Far from being "union busting" President Obama has done more to save unions, including the auto union and the union workers at Boeing then any president in decades.

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The NLRB enforcing labor law. Hold the presses.

What's significant about Obama's behavior with regard to labor is that, like everything else that a Democratic president should be doing, if he does it at all it's as cover to his stalling and sabotaging. His appointments are one example - Way too little, way too late, and way too conservative.

Did you know that 2/3rds of GM's labor force is outsourced? FWIW, it was Bush who authorized the initial loans to GM and Chrysler (about $17.5 billion), and later under Obama, another $6.36 billion.

Then there's EFCA.

Obama's chief advisor on union matters was SEIU's Andy Stern. The short story is that Stern ran SEIU the way Bush-Cheney (and now Obama) ran the government: Unitary executive. Unlimited power.

Stern had a rubber-stamped, hand-picked board with members who never went against him. He ran SEIU like a corporation with him at the top. That's not democratic -- That's not the way unions ought to be run.

A union really is its members and I think Stern's lost sight of that. He treated members more like pawns in a chess game. He appointed cronies to positions as presidents of locals and he got into trouble several times because his personal choices have been indicted as corrupt, stealing hundreds of thousands from the local unions. And anybody who challenged Stern didn't stay long at SEIU.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

The insurance mandate is, indeed, a tax, and the IRS will be the enforcer, which means compounded fines and prison. That's something that the prison industrial complex is celebrating.

Why put the insurance industry into the equation of Americans' medical treatment at all? Insurance adds nothing to the medical model. The way that the insurance industry makes its profits is by taking a cut of money that can be spent on medical care. And in reality the insurance industry profits like Wall Street and all other corporations that have crashed our economy have profited: By denying claims and preventing treatment (Wall Street and corporations do it by offshoring manufacturing, outsourcing jobs, eliminating jobs in spite of record profits for short term windfalls to shareholders and bonuses for CEOs, etc.).

The insurance industry is the 'Don Fanucci' (Godfather, Part II) of medical care; the insurance industry is "wetting its beak", letting you get medical care (maybe, if you can afford the deductibles, the co-pays, and if your illness is covered by your policy, but) only if you pay them a gratuity up front.

Americans have had it with political spin, and specifically political double-talk. Americans didn't like it when it came at them as Bush-speak and Americans really don't like it when it's Obama's lawyer-speak. He said that he supported single payer, and if "it's the best for the people" (as he communicated clearly), it's the best whenever.

Obama insisted that it was up to Congress to write the legislation, that he wasn't going to be involved in doing it. After promising transparency in his administration, he prevented transparency and kept hidden secret negotiations and deals he was making with PhRma, Hospitals and the AMA. After the secret deals came to light, Obama lied both to the American people and to Congress which had several committees working on legislation that Obama's secret deals undermined.

From day one, Obama conceded positions of the left, of the People, that weren't his to concede. Obama took single payer off the table because everything else pales against it. Obama unilaterally made the decision to forever tie Americans' getting healthcare through employer-subsidized insurance, in spite of the fact that employers don't want to do that and employees don't want it. (Dylan Ratigan nailed it on his show -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwyV59HyI-k )

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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

[ACA] mandates that they HAVE to take everyone and it also mandates that their overhead, including profits, be no more than 20%.

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health insurance ≠ medical treatment

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. Between increased premium costs, deductibles and co-pays, ACA Unlikely to Stem Medical Bankruptcies.

And 'medical loss ratio' is what you're talking about.

And the insurance industry has already figured out the way around it.

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.

Before the Supreme Court struck down the Medicaid provision in ACA, ACA put 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 have found themselves covered by Medicaid, if you're thinking that "should all else fail I've got Medicaid" as your safety net, guess again: Medicaid won't cover c/hit.
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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

ACA it is no "gift" to the insurance companies which is evidenced by the fact that they're so desperate to kill it.

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Then there's the pharmaceutical industry. ACA prohibits the government from being able to negotiate lower drug prices (or reimportation), contrary to the clear mandate of the 2008 election.

The American taxpayer has been subsidizing pharmaceutical companies for decades with the promise that the R&D we were paying for would result in lower prices and breakthrough cures. Instead, we've been stuck with higher prices (twice as much as other industrialized countries) while the pharmaceutical companies try to snag new markets overseas with what were to be our discounts.

Not only did Obama break his campaign pledge (of the government, PhRma biggest customer, negotiating for lower priced drugs, and reimporting pharmaceuticals), he gave PhRma a huge gift. The deal that Obama made with PhRma wasn't for PhRma to go up against Big Insurance; it was for PhRma to help sell a plan that makes more profits for Big Insurance.

PhRma paid chump change ($80 billion over 10 years, plus $150 million for ads to support a plan that had NO public option) so that they could keep massive profits and k!II public healthcare. Obama (who had dropped the public option and the universal requirement) let the pharmaceutical industry continue to make obscene profits, and gave the insurance industry a clear field and new customers, all paid for with taxpayers' money.

$80 billion over 10 years is less than 1% of the profits PhRma makes in one year.

Obama, who dropped the public option and the universal requirement, let the pharmaceutical industry continue to make obscene profits, and gave the insurance industry a clear field and new customers, all paid for with taxpayers' money.

How Obama and the DLC-controlled Democrats have tried to defend and sell ACA with regard to their pledge on pharmaceutical costs (that ACA closes the "donut hole" in Medicare) is particularly galling.

To begin with, the "donut-hole" never should have existed in the first place, and that the DLC-controlled Democrats created as a "compromise" for Bush's Medicare Reform Act of 2003 (another massive corporate giveaway package) is that the whole of Medicare Part D was a scam and a scheme, a "first step" (as Obama's 'most ardent supporters' like to say) towards privatizing public healthcare.

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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

ACA it is no "gift" to the insurance companies which is evidenced by the fact that they're so desperate to kill it.

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The insurance and pharmaceutical industries aren't trying to kill ACA - They love it. They wrote it.
ACA was written by Liz Fowler, former executive at WellPoint (Max Baucus hired her as senior counsel to him as the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee - so much for Candidate Obama's pledge on restricting lobbyists from writing our laws).

The regulations were created by the insurance industry and the regulations and legislation is being implemented and overseen by the insurance industry. Obama put the foxes in charge of this chicken coop (former WellPoint executives Liz Fowler and Steve Larsen) to write both the legislation and the regulations, and enforce the regulations. Fowler's most notable actions to date has been issuing waivers to businesses that don't want to have to provide insurance to their employees.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Campaigns In The Rain, A Long Way From 2008

The Tea Party is an effective nemesis for Obama and helps him and the DLC deliver to their (and Republicans') Corporate Masters. The Tea Party 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-controlled 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 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 lied about it, all the while that the Tea Party grew and 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.

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". Only "the center" is pro-corporate, anti-populist, i.e., the Reagan Republican Party.

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.
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Obama Campaigns In The Rain, A Long Way From 2008

Nader bashing again?

Nader didn't do anything to Gore that Harry Browne, Pat Buchanan, Howard Phillips, et al (other party candidates) didn't also do, yet you don't hear them being blamed. Gore and Bush weren't owed other party's voters, and studies have shown that Nader pulled more votes from Bush than from Gore.

You presume that Nader voters would've voted for Gore (or at all) when studies and exit polling have indicated that's not the case.

You blame Nader voters when, had Nader not even run, had he not be in the race, Bush still would've won. Because Republicans had gamed that election more ways than we're ever going to know about. You might as well blame Pat Buchanan with the same vigor and vitriole.

Al Gore won. Gore got more votes in Florida. Any way it was counted (and the biggest point that people seem to forget is that there were 179,000 perfectly readable ballots that never got counted), Gore got more votes than Bush.

Whatever the means necessary to get Bush-Cheney into the White House would've happened. Had Nader been in the race, had he not in the race, whatever. Had Nader not run, the outcome would've been the same. The powers that be were not going to let Gore win, no matter what, and gamed it innumerable ways.

If the means for getting Bush-Cheney into the White House required a close election and Nader not been running, some other means would've been used.

For pity's sake, the CIA was working on GOP absentee ballots in the weeks leading up to election day in Florida. That was the most amazing revelation from the televised court hearings in the post-election days in Florida -- 'Charles Kane' testified to altering absentee ballots in the MartinCounty's Registrar's office in the two week period prior to election day (it's against the law and should render the ballots null and void). When Kane was sworn in, he had to identify himself and give his occupation and employer. Retired CIA. The judge asked him why he was altering the absentee ballots, and he answered "I go where I'm told." Verbatim quote. The judge didn't follow up. There was next to no news coverage of this, and none by the networks.

Have you forgotten Jeb Bush's vote purging scheme?

Have people really forgotten all the different ways that that election was gamed by the GOP? And that's just in Florida. And just the ways that we learned about because of legal proceedings in the post-election days.

There was a coup d'etat in America in 2000. A bIoodless coup, but a coup nonetheless.

And Democrats suppressed investigations, and then screwed over the Congressional Black Caucus's attempts to expose that stolen election.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama, Democrats' Fundraising Raised $181 Million In September

As an old old liberal Democrat, an FDR Democrat, my positions on issues are in line with the platform of the Democratic Party; it's the politicians in the Democratic Party who are ignoring the platform of the party.

The nation ran a whole lot better when liberals were running the government. Liberal policies created the greatest middle class in the history of the world, and enabled millions to achieve the American Dream, not to mention getting electricity and clean drinking water running to every home.

Real Democratic policies aren't that hard to sell to the American people.

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 kill 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 in doing what politicians and the parties 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.
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Obama, Democrats' Fundraising Raised $181 Million In September

The courts are expected to be above politics. That is the only reason why these justices are appointed to a LIFETIME position - they never have to pander to a party or public opinion. Their ONLY job is to make constitutional ruling.

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Theoretically, that's true.

In practice, both parties put up candidates for the federal bench who interpret the Constitution through the ideological prism of their party. As the Democratic Party has moved farther to the right over the past 35 years in order to both grow the party (by attracting Republicans and Independents into the party) and compete for corporate dollars, its nominees are ever more corporate-friendly/anti-populist.

Alito, Roberts, and Thomas made it through a Democratically-controlled Judiciary Committee and Senate. And Democrats voted to confirm Thomas (52-48), Alito (58-42) and Roberts (78-22) and Scalia (98-0). There is nothing that Bush-Cheney, and Reagan-Bush for that matter, did that Democrats couldn't have blocked. Democrats signed on to all of it.

The real problem we're facing is a president and a Democratic Party that, for whatever reason (naivete or a convenient cover for their own corruption), stubbornly clings to the 'bipartisanship model' ("Can't we all get along?") style of legislating and governing that hasn't worked for decades, if ever. I don't know how many ways Republicans can say "Go fuck yourselves" before Obama and Democrats play to win -- Probably as long as there are people who give Obama and Democrats a pass.

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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

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

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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

Obama's been trying to sell himself as Reagan's standard bearer since the 2008 campaign. Not long ago, Obama actually said, "I admired Ronald Reagan". A Democrat who governs as a Republican, continuing just about all of the Bush-Cheney policies and getting Republican legislation through Congress isn't "better".

With Obama, we're getting Republican policies sold to us as if they're what we wanted. Just because the Republican Party's base is too stupid to know they should be thrilled to have Obama in the White House doesn't mean the Democratic Party's base is.

Back during the campaign in 2008, Democratic voters refused to press Obama when he said this:

"I don't want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what is different is the times. I do think that, for example, the 1980 election was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. They felt like with all the excesses of the 60s and the 70s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think he tapped into what people were already feeling. Which is we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing."

He admires and wants to emulate Reagan.

KEEP READING

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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

Saturday, October 6, 2012

President Obama has passed more liberal legislation than any president in the past 50 years

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Only if "up = down" and "liberal = conservative".

NDAA isn't liberal, by any measure of the word.

None of the union-busting, job outsourcing AFTAs are liberal.

ACA was part 2 of Bush's Medicare Reform Act of 2003, and a product of the right-wing think tank, the Heritage Foundation. It's a massive corporate gift-package to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Corporate welfare.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

Climate change is real, we know the cause, and we know at least part of the solution. Alternative energy. What prohibits a Manhattan Project-style response is a world-wide energy policy controlled by oil and other greenhouse gas producing industries.
There's no more time to screw around, yet Obama has wasted the one resource he and only he has at his disposal - The Bully Pulpit. What he does instead is sneak around and make secret deals that don't address the problems we're dealing with.

Obama was elected because he implied he was a bigger man, a bigger personality, to accomplish the change we desperately need. Instead, he keeps up with this "bipartisanship" that nobody is interested in and what won't fix our problems. I think what we used to say about George W. Bush is true also for Obama - All hat, no cattle.

I think Obama was put into power by the establishment elites to achieve what Bush couldn't: Democratic voters' approval of a continued push to the right. Like "only Nixon could go to China," "only Obama could put Social Security on the road to ruin."

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Obama, Democrats' Fundraising Raised $181 Million In September

Obama and the DLC worked their butts off to PREVENT more progressives/liberals from getting elected and suppress Democratic voter turnout in the 2010 midterms.

Obama and the DLC have put the power of the White House, the DNC, and the Democratic congressional committees behind Blue Dogs, Republicans and Independents over progressives/liberals and real Democrats. Some, but not all, examples:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Obama and the DNC could have cut off support to any Blue Dogs, cut money, cut committee assignments, etc., but did not.

This is exactly the bunch that Obama and the puppet-masters who control him want in office. On both sides of the aisle. Obama, Democrats and Republicans in office, working on behalf of transnational corporations.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama, Democrats' Fundraising Raised $181 Million In September

Obama did what he could to discourage Democratic turnout in 2010, thus preventing getting more progressives.

Just before the 2010 midterms, Obama broadcast that he would be doing more of the same, even if Democrats remained the majority and in control of both Houses of Congress. More caving by Obama and Democrats, to Republicans:

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

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

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

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

This after Republicans couldn’t have been clearer, from even before Obama got into the White House, that they had no intention of working with him or Democrats.

This and broadcasting "more of the same seeking of bipartisanship" and Republican-like legislation is before the 2010 midterms is exactly like what Nancy Pelosi did prior to the 2006 midterms -- She announced that if Democrats took control over Congress, impeaching Bush was "off the table." The reason to do that is to be able to spin after the election, "We told you what we were going to do before the election, so our success in retaining our seats means you were voting for what we broadcast."

KEEP READING

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Obama, Democrats' Fundraising Raised $181 Million In September

Here's a list of all of the candidates running for president.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama, Democrats' Fundraising Raised $181 Million In September

I'm not suggesting that anyone vote for Romney. Here's a list of all of the candidates running for president.

The old "lesser of two eviIs" argument reeks of denial. Obama's continuing just about all of the Bush-Cheney 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 kill 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.

If Republicans are such scum (and I believe they are) and "so dangerous", why isn't Obama investigating and prosecuting them?

Why isn't Obama investigating and prosecuting the greatest heist on the People in all history?

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

How does a Democratic president, on the heels of the most criminally corrupt administration in the nation's history, not replace Bush-era U.S. attorneys? Presidents may fire U.S. attorneys, and they do so routinely at the beginning of a new administration. It is unusual to fire U.S. attorneys in mid-term (as Bush did) except in cases of gross misconduct (which wasn’t the case during the Bush Administration). Instead of returning the democracy to the American people, Obama's Attorney General 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

How do Obama's 'most ardent supporters' explain his putting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans' care, et al, on the table for benefits' cuts?

And then there's the escalation of wars, continued occupation of Afghanistan, NDAA, and Obama's atrocious environmental record.

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?

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama, Democrats' Fundraising Raised $181 Million In September

Obama's picks for the SupremeCourt are nothing to crow about. Both Sotomayor and Kagan are to the right of the justices that they replaced (Souter and Stevens).

See here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Elena Kagan is the Goldman Sachs seat, not to mention that she was the 5th vote in rolling back Miranda a few weeks ago, and she joined the conservatives on the Medicare portion of ACA (that states may opt out) a few weeks ago.

If you're voting for Obama out of fear over what Romney would do if elected, Romney's record as governor isn't all that dissimilar from Obama's in the White House. There were even moments of liberalism to Romney's record (gun control, state co-pays for abortion, etc.) - Certainly more progressive than Obama. Even the Boston Globe admitted Romney's judicial picks "have generally not been is overtly partisan".

The Boston Globe on Romney’s judicial appointments:

Governor Mitt Romney, who touts his conservative credentials to out-of-state Republicans, has passed over GOP lawyers for three-quarters (75%) of the 36 judicial vacancies he has faced, instead tapping registered Democrats or independents – including two gay lawyers who have supported expanded same-sex rights.

Of the 36 people Romney named to be judges or clerk magistrates, 23 are either registered Democrats or unenrolled voters who have made multiple contributions to Democratic politicians or who voted in Democratic primaries, state and local records show. In all, he has nominated nine registered Republicans, 13 unenrolled voters, and 14 registered Democrats.

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Obama, Democrats' Fundraising Raised $181 Million In September

I never advise people to sit out elections because the first rule of politics is, "If you're not at the table, you're on the menu." It's what pisses 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 Democratic base, from his administration, by taking single payer, a public option, off the table, by putting Social Security and Medicare on the table, by eliminating regulatory oversight from finance reform legislation, 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 much less a seat at the table.

KEEP READING

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Obama: Congress Should Act On Tax Cut, Housing

Bowles-Simpson (Catfood Commission) plan cuts Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security (Social Security wasn't even on their plate to be considered) and puts the burden on the poor and middle classes, and lets the rich keep their ill-gotten booty.

France has announced a massive redistributive tax program which would send the top tax rate soaring and increase taxes broadly on the top 10% of society:

French Prime Minister Ayrault has said that nine out of 10 citizens will not see their income taxes rise in the new budget and has confirmed that there is to be a new 75% tax rate for people earning more than 1m euros (£800,000; $1.3m) a year.

The 75% rate would be on income earnings, but there will also be a wealth tax on holdings above 1.31 million euros, and a cap on tax deductions, as well as a reduction on the tax burden at low incomes.

There should be tax HIKES on corporations and the rich. There should be massive cuts to the military. Banks should be threatened with nationalization unless they begin lending to small businesses. There have been more than 3.5 million home foreclosures but there are 11 million more in the pipeline — There must be principal write-downs.

Democratic politicians should be beating this drum and pushing the People’s Budget instead of working off of a set of corporate lobbyists’ plans. It reduces the deficit by $5.1 trillion and 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 off the table. Obama kneecaps and handicaps the Democratic voters who put him and Democrats into power. He’s the grifter leading off the second half of the con game, which is to squeeze the rest of the dimes from the poor and middle classes. It began with part 2 of Bush’s Medicare ReformAct of 2003 (high-priced junk health insurance that has no cost controls), continues with more *AFTA treaties (outsourcing more Americans’ jobs) and “payroll tax ‘holidays’” that lead to the end of Social Security.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Campaigns In The Rain, A Long Way From 2008

The forces governing this country, under our system of Inverted Totalitarianism, aren’t afraid of elections, speeches, petitions on Facebook, and certainly not the media they control. They’re only afraid of what the American people could do if enough of us rise up and just plain refuse to work within the system any more. General strikes, peaceful civil disobedience in large numbers, removal of funds from major banks, filling the streets, that’s what might get their attention, not voting for a “green” candidate or one of the duopoly.

This election is merely a distraction. They’re counting on American’s propensity for magical thinking, and that most of us will vote and carry-on because we believe in the idea of America, and don’t look deeply enough to see the reality of what it’s become.

About Barack Obama

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Campaigns In The Rain, A Long Way From 2008

I’m tired of hearing the argument that “Romney would be a disaster,” or “the Supreme Court would be more conservative.” Actually, if it were possible for Romney to win this election, it would probably be the best thing for the country in the long run. Why? Obama can get away with doing anything, as far as the left is concerned. After the election, he will “make a deal” on Social Security, lowering benefits and increasing the retirement age, in fact, he’s already said he supports it. The left will go along with it, because he’ll sell it as the “best deal he could get,” just like he sold the insurance company bonanza that is Obamacare. The left will go along with his approval of the northern half of the sludgepipe, and probably the bombing of Iran as well. Actually, there’s almost nothing he won’t be able to get away with.

Romney, on the other hand, won’t be able to get away with anything. He’ll do the exact same things Obama would have done, but the left won’t stand for it. Not for a moment! Romney doing the same things, might even put hundreds-of-thousands of people in the streets, which will be the only way this country might have a chance of surviving.

The system we’re living under is rotten to the core. Our government, all three branches, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of our banks and major corporations. We’ve run out of time for incremental changes and tweaks to the system, it must be replaced. The effects of climate change: the food and water shortages, relocations, and increasingly violent weather, are going to be combined with another major economic crash, and coming energy shortages due to the effects of peak oil, and upsets in the Middle East.

Our government is fully aware of these facts. Why, for goodness sake, has Homeland Security purchased and distributed millions of rounds of .40 hollow point ammunition, which is illegal under the Geneva Convention? Why have police forces all across the land been equipped to the point where some of them could defeat most countries armies? Why has our society become the most heavily surveiled in the entire world? Do you really think that voting for one candidate or the other is going to change where all this is headed? If you do, I’m afraid that you’re just engaging in more of that magical thinking I mentioned.

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About Barack Obama

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Campaigns In The Rain, A Long Way From 2008

Obamapoligists insist that those of us who see him for what he is are comparing our expectations to his performance, and ignoring the Republican obstructionism that seemingly thwarted his every effort. What they fail to realize is that, in most cases, Obama either capitulated to Republican demands, or compromised before negotiations even began, such as during the health care debate. We are not judging him upon the basis of his performance; we are weighing him by what should be universally accepted standards of truth, justice, and human decency, and finding him seriously wanting.

Running as the “peace” candidate, then increasing our commitment in Afghanistan, trying to extend our occupation of Iraq, increasing murderous, illegal drone warfare, and extending it to additional countries, these things are deal-breakers for some of us, and should be for all progressives. He campaigned as an environmentalist and then sold us out to big oil at every turn. He made a show of “vetoing” the Canadian sludgepipe, then turned around and approved the southern half. He allowed drilling and fracking everywhere, and did virtually nothing to further the development of renewable resources. A Constitutional lawyer, he signed the NDAA with the provision allowing the indefinite detention of American citizens without due process. Even though he assured us that he would never use it, his Justice Department is vigorously appealing the decision of a Federal judge which declared the provision unconstitutional. This, coupled with his insistence that he can murder Americans without due process, so long as he declares them “enemies of the state” is another one of those pesky deal-breakers for some of us.

If you support Obama as a candidate, you are saying that you are in favor of these actions, and want these policies to continue. To believe he’s going to do anything differently in his second term is engaging in more of that magical thinking that got us into this mess in the first place.

KEEP READING
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Campaigns In The Rain, A Long Way From 2008

I only wish Obama was a liberal instead of the DINO we on the left know him to be - "Privately, Obama describes himself as a Blue Dog Democrat" - Blue Dog = might as well re-register as a Republican.

It was liberal policies and legislation that created the middle class, built post-war Europe, built the Hoover Dam, brought electricity to every house in America, wiped out smallpox, increased longevity, decreased infant mortality, built the infrastructure across the nation, clean potable water to every home, etc.

Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, all liberal policies, and responsible for lifting more Americans out of poverty and providing opportunities for an improved quality of life.

And then there's the 40-hour work week, humane and safe working conditions, ending to child labor, all liberal policies.

That's what Obama should have talked about in the debate, and what every Democratic politician running should be beating their drums about.

About Barack Obama

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama, Democrats' Fundraising Raised $181 Million In September

Changing the filibuster rules will not happen.

And Republicans haven't been filibustering; they've been threatening to filibuster. Harry Reid could have forced them to actually do it, filibuster, at any time. That is at the discretion of the Senate Majority Leader (Democrat Harry Reid). Senate Rule 22. When it serves something that the DLC-controlled Democrats want, Harry Reid can (and has) require the GOP to actually filibuster (stand and talk without end).

Harry Reid has had no problem forcing the GOP to actually filibuster when it's something that the DLC wants and perceives it needs. For example, when Democrats needed unemployment benefits to continue because the masses were becoming 'critical', Reid had no problem calling Republican Jim Bunning's bluff to filibuster. Reid said, "Bring in the cots, do it" and Bunning and the GOP caved. Benefits for unemployed workers continued.

Democrats could even have changed the supermajority rule (it does NOT have to be done at the beginning of a new Congress, as some argued). It can be done at any time (see page 6 - http://fpc .state.gov/documents/organization/45448. pdf ].

But Democrats put off their critics for not forcing the Republicans to actually filibuster and changing Senate Rule 22 during the session by assuring fed-up Democratic voters, "We'll change the rule come the beginning of the next Congress".

They didn't.

There's not just one way (or even two or three) for Democrats to get bills passed without Republican votes.

But Obama and the DLC-controlled DemocraticParty didn't and aren't doing that. Because it might actually work to get Democratic voters' legislative agenda made into the law of the land and do good for the People. And that's not what Obama and Company are there for.

Obama and Company are there to do the work of the transnational corporations. Along with the Republicans, as was clearly evidenced the time that Harry Reid kept the Senate open (pro forma) so that Obama couldn't make recess appointments, collaborating with Republicans to keep progressives and liberals out of government. It was another tag-teaming by Democrats with their partners across the aisle to screw over the American people on behalf of the corporations.

Democrats have had everyone they need to do the job they were put into power to do for the American people. They don't want to do it.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Campaigns In The Rain, A Long Way From 2008

re you supporting the real Obama or the idea of Obama?

A large number of Democratic voters (most of whom call themselves Liberals) want so much for the idea of Obama to be true that they are willing to forget or ignore most of his actions over the last four years. In a likewise manner, they want so much for theidea of America to be true that they still believe that elections can make a difference, and somehow, if Obama has another four years, he will stop the killing, bring the jobs back, restore the Bill of Rights, lessen the inequity in wealth distribution, take steps to mitigate the effects of global warming, and restore the “American Dream.” They can engage in such magical thinking because they have developed the skill of ignoring not only the current political reality, but also the reality of who Obama is, and who he’s working for. Their magical thinking allows them to accept behavior from Obama for which they would excoriate a Republican, such as murdering women and children by the hundreds in an illegal drone war waged over an entire region, and approving any scheme by the oil companies, no matter the cost to the environment.

They can see the reality of the Republican slate and platform well enough, and react with the appropriate disdain but then, like an addict comparing their own insides to other people’s outsides, they compare that regressive platform with the idea of Obama, not the reality. If they were looking at the reality of Obama, they would see a President who toed the Wall Street, big oil, multi-national corporation line throughout his presidency, doing their bidding at every opportunity. They would see the man who appointed Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, signaling Wall Street that his administration would be conducting business as usual. They would see the man who cut a deal with the health insurers precluding single-payer, or even a public option before the negotiations even started in the House. They would see the man who abandoned card-check, and the union workers in Wisconsin, after running as pro-union.

A realistic look at the Nobel Peace Prize winner would reveal the man who tried every diplomatic trick in the book to keep us in Iraq past the expiration of the Status of Forces agreement, until we were finally thrown out kicking and screaming. And then there’s the escalation in Afghanistan, and the drones, always the drones. Without a doubt, they’re the finest creator of terrorists ever devised. I don’t intend to go into the whole extended litany of Obama’s actions; I think you get my drift.

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Obama, Democrats' Fundraising Raised $181 Million In September

No, he actually hasn't.

What he's said (and it's been a one-time comment so I wouldn't take it to the bank) is so typically 'Obamaesque' - “I think we need to seriously consider mobilizing a constitutional amendment process to overturn Citizens United, even if the amendment process falls short, it can shine a spotlight of the super PAC phenomenon and help apply pressure for change".

There's nothing serious or determined in that. It's like, "We should think about getting around to painting the house one of these days".
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

In so far as forming a "true Progressive Party", I say this as an old, OLD liberal Democrat with decades of experience working in government and politics, the best and surest way to achieve real populist governance is voting third party now.

There are a number of reasons, but specifically it's the surest way to either wrench the Democratic Party out of the hands of the corporatists or to actually form a third competing party.
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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

You're talking about Democratic Party and legislation enacted 50+ years ago. A Republican president freed the slaves -- 150 years ago!

Republicans couldn't have done anything in the last ten years without Democrats signing on. On everything from the Patriot Act to extending Bush's tax cuts for the rich, Democrats, not just Blue Dogs, piled on to support.

Just to show you where Obama's and the DLC's real heart lies, there are so many things he and the DLC/DNC could have done, could be doing, to get real Democratic legislation through, but don't.

Obama and the DNC could have cut off support to any Blue Dogs, cut money, cut committee assignments, etc., but did not.

There is plenty that a President and a Speaker of the House and a Senate Majority Leader can do to pressure representatives and senators into voting as you want them to vote. We saw that Obama had no problem doing it when he wanted and needed Blue Dogs like Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu's votes -- He literally bought them.

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, 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.

Obama and Democrats in Congress continuing BushCheneyRepublican policies and legislation winds up kneecapping Democratic policies and legislation by converting right-wing dogma into bipartisan consensus.

There is nothing that the Blue Dogs are doing that Obama and the DLC doesn't want them to do.

Before the midterms of 2010, I asked, facetiously, 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.

How much evidence do you need before you realize that Obama isn't any kind of Democrat?
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Obama, Democrats' Fundraising Raised $181 Million In September

Allow me to end with an example of how, when you don't rectify the mistakes of the past, they not only continue, but get worse: "Obama killed Osama Bin Laden".

Anyone who says that, I ask, "How do you know?"

The greatest terrorist attack on the US and the alleged perpetrator, ill with kidney disease and blind in one eye, a towering figure of 6'4" living and traveling among 5 and-a-half-foot people, eludes apprehension for a decade, and when we ultimately get him we quickly dispose of the body where it can never be exhumed, refuse to release photographs or anything confirming the death ("Take our word for it") and hide the SEAL team and let conflicting accounts of what happened remain.

It's as likely to be true as the official account of 9/11, where the US sent all of the steel from the WTC to China, untested, to be recycled.

We don't do that in the US. We salvage downed air planes from the bottom of the ocean and reconstruct them in hangars to find out what happened. It's why we are a nation run by rule of law and not rule of man. Where we examine evidence in courtrooms to get to the truth.

But all that is over.

The situation might have been remedied had Democrats and Obama come into office investigating and prosecuting the Bush administertion, Wall Street, defense contractors, and restoring the 'rule of law'. BushCheney exploited the inherent weaknesses in the Constitution: A precarious balance of power between the three branches of government. But Obama refused, and has continued the BushCheney disregard of the Constitution, even going beyond BushCheney abuses.

Do you know that the Pentagon has no photos of the dead OBL, and no DNA analysis was done on OBL. Nor does any video exist of the raid, either at the scene, at the Pentagon, in the WH Situation Room.

If you want to talk about OBL, then let's throw the windows open and get a real investigation. Starting with what actually happened on 9/11 (the 911 Commission was a cruel joke), the policies that led to 9/11, our response to it, the post-9/11 policies which have us in a perpetual state of war with Americans being no safer.

Until we examine and evaluate the past, we're just continuing with the failed policies of the neocons and neolibs, no matter which party controls the White House or the Congress.
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Obama, Democrats' Fundraising Raised $181 Million In September

That fact alone casts suspicion on Obama's good intentions after his failure to investigate and prosecute, and his continuing Bush's "unitary executive" practices (and expanding them, with "indefinite preventive detention" of American citizens and Obama's doctrine that presidents have the right to kill American citizens with no due process, no oversight, and his push for and no transparency of anything a president asserts should be his secret). It is pure Kafka.

Most of Obama's supporters believe that Obama ended the torture practices of the Bush-Cheney regime and closed down the CIA black sites, but apparently that's not true: 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).

There was a coup d'etat in this nation, a bloodless one, but a coup nonetheless. And both parties are in on it and we're "flying without a net" (Constitution).

The U.S. can only survive by everyone (not just the liberals) wanting to get along with each other. You've got to want the country to work more than you want your way over other Americans getting their way. Or some of their way. You've got to be willing to compromise.

But 'compromising' isn't "capitulating." "Compromise" requires getting something you want in return, and Democratic voters aren't getting that with the deals that Obama makes with Republicans.

Bush wasn't into compromising, and got everything he wanted from Congress. And when he didn't get what he wanted, when members of Congress learned they had been lied to, tricked, Congress didn't challenge him in the third branch of government, the judiciary. Bush created one Constitutional crisis after another. There's been real concern that if the judiciary ruled against him, he wouldn't abide. Then what? Nobody can force him. Three co-equal branches of government.

So Congress turned the other cheek. And the incoming administration "looks forward, not back." So that future administrations know they have nothing to fear, no one to harness and restrain them from imperial ambitions. From "Unitary Executive." From becoming king.

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Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama, Democrats' Fundraising Raised $181 Million In September

At the very root of our problems are Constitutional crises created by, first, Republican presidents and now under a Democratic president. Republicans' utter contempt for the Constitution and callous disregard for it by creating these crises (and Democrats' cowering response) is what underpins all of our problems and what's destroying the country.

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

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

Bush wasn't the first to create Constitutional crises, but he created more of them, eviscerating the Constitution for all time. How do you go forward with it when its Achilles' heel has been laid bare for any BushCheney wannabe waiting in the weeds to exploit? What's now happened in the aftermath of BushCheney is that what Nixon did has been made legal. Once BushCheney happened, once they exploited those loopholes for everyone to see, you can't just go on as if it never happened. You can't "look forward, not back".

The situation might have been remedied had Obama come into office investigating and prosecuting the Bush administration and restoring the 'rule of law'. BushCheney exploited the inherent weaknesses in the Constitution: A precarious balance of power between the three branches of government. But Obama refused, and has continued the BushCheney disregard of the Constitution, even going beyond BushCheney abuses.

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Obama, Democrats' Fundraising Raised $181 Million In September

If you're talking about freedoms, how does any Democratic voter defend Obama after he asserts he has the right to kill any American citizen without due process or oversight? And Obama's claims of 'state secrets' to deny courts even look at his assassination program? And 'indefinite preventive detention'?

An argument can be made, quite convincingly, that Obama and DLC Democrats are the worse evil. Bush and Cheney made no excuses or bones about who they were and what they stood for. Obama and DLC Democrats ran on doing different, because they knew better.

Two articles that speak that I think are must reads for Democratic voters are John Cusack's Interview of Law Professor Jonathan Turley About the Obama Administration's War on the Constitution and journalist Russell Mokhiber's Ten Reasons I'm Not With Barack Obama.

The Fate of Humanity Is at Stake -- Why Are Romney and Obama Too Cowardly to Talk About What Really Matters?

Just as Obama has expanded and increased the wars, Iran will be bombed no matter who is in the White House. When it comes to our foreign policy, both parties share the same goals - A destabilized Middle East where the US's ambitions of empire and controlling the world's resources are realized.

The only difference is in how enthusiastically the lemmings should march toward the cliff.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

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