Congress doesn't get to "clarify" anything in the Constitution; that's strictly the purview of the Court.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Would you have problems with it if Jefferson didn't?
It would seem that then, like now, legislation like the Midnight Judges Act is objectionable depending on which party gets to control it.
But that's neither here nor there, BaLoney -- Obama's claiming it's "unprecedented" when it clearly isn't.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
If FDR couldn't do it, Obama surely can't.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Right before the 2010 midterm elections, Obama broadcast that he'd be doing more of the same, more caving to Republicans, even if Democrats remained the majority and in control of both Houses of 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 & goals of the WhiteHouse.
And despite the predictions that Democrats may relinquish a large degree of legislating power, including perhaps control of the House & 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, & so the strategy of just saying no to everything & sitting on the sidelines & 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 & work with me in a serious way."
DickDurbin says Obama's post-election agenda "will have to be limited & focused on the things that are achievable and high priorities for the American people." TomDaschle says Obama has to reach out more: "The keyword is inclusion. He's got to find ways to be inclusive."
Who and what Republicans are isn't news.
What is news is that Obama's 'most ardent supporters' never seem to learn.
In the summer of 2008, when Obama flip-flopped on FISA, people like you said, "If he had kept his promise, Republicans would have accused him of being weak on security and he would lose the independent voters in the general election. You'll see, once he's in office, he'll be a reliable liberal."
Now you're making wild and unsubstantiated claims about Obama's motives and intentions again when the best predictor of Obama's future behavior is Obama's past behavior. His record. He's flip-flopped as much if not more than Romney, and has given no indication of having "learned his lesson" when it comes to 'bipartisanship'.
As a matter of fact, right before the 2010 midterms, Obama and Democrats made it clear that no matter what the outcome of the election, they would still work in a bipartisan manner, watering down legislation, making it Republican-like.
Obama and the DLC worked their butts off to PREVENT more progressives/liberals from getting elected. Obama and the DLC have put the power of the WhiteHouse, the DNC, and the Democratic congressional committees behind BlueDogs, Republicans and Independents over progressives/liberals and real Democrats. Some, but not all, examples:
BlueDog BlancheLincoln over progressive Democrat Lt. Governor BillHalter.
Republican-turned-Independent ArlenSpecter over progressive Democrat JoeSestak.
Republican-turned-Independent LincolnChaffee over Democrat FrankCaprio (which, in turn, was an effective endorsement of the Republican JohnLoughlin over Democrat DavidCicilline for the congressional seat Democrat PatrickKennedy retired from, and all of the other seats up for grab in RhodeIsland).
Republican-turned-Independent CharlieCrist over liberal Democrat KendrickMeek.
Obama supports voting third parties, even when it risks Democratic turnout.
Blue Dogs took a beating (liberals lost only 3 seats) in the 2010 midterms and Obama took it as a mandate to move even farther to the right.
NObama 2012
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Between redistricting, and how seats have been gamed, and Citizens' United, what we got in 2008 was as Democratic as it's ever going to get in the lifetime of just about everyone alive today, and we saw what Obama did with it (p!ssed it away, intentionally).
People are, generally, satisfied with the job that their representatives are doing. What people want is the other guy'selected representative to get the boot, but not their own. That's not likely to change as redistricting has basically just affirmed or extended the status quo. Some on the left and the right have been redistricted out of their seats. Look at Dennis Kucinich.
Politics, with political parties, is a top-down proposition. You do what the party tells you to do, and that goes for Democrats, progressives, too. If the president is a blue dog (as Obama is), you do what he tells you to do. The idea that Congress is like herding cats is ridiculous -- If you don't do what your party tells you to do, you get no help from them come reelection. You don't get money for your district. You don't get plum committee assignments. You are dead in the water of politics.
But Obama isn't interested in doing that. He only cuts off liberals and progressives. He keeps them out of his administration and he uses the power of the White House and the Democratic Party to keep them out of office.
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
"Ultimately I am confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress,"
The Supremes met and took a preliminary vote yesterday.
Today, Obama is "confident" of the outcome.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
During the Bush years, Democrats said if people wanted change, they had to put Democrats in the majority in Congress. So in 2006, we did. Democrats took control of the House and gained 6 seats in the Senate.
Nothing changed.
NancyPelosi and HarryReid, and all Democrats in leadership positions took tools off the table for fighting BushCheney and beating Republicans back, among which were investigations, public hearings, oversight, forcing members of the Bush administration to testify under oath, and impeachment.
They said, "You have to give us more Democrats -- 60 in the Senate".
In 2008, we did. We gave them 60 for the DemocraticCaucus. And we gave them the WhiteHouse.
Obama came into office with the wind at his back. More people voted for him, a black man in good old raclst America than ever voted for any other presidential candidate in the history of the US. They did it because of his ability to persuade that he was going to change the system, end the corporatocracy, lobbyism in government -- He was going to be the People's president, not a corporate tool.
And no sooner did Obama get elected than he slammed the brakes on the momentum of his election, Obama did a 180-degree turn on his promises and slowed everything down. To "work in a bipartisan manner with Republicans" (Republicans had already announced they were going to block everything Democrats wanted to do, vote no on everything, in lockstep). BlueDogs joined Republicans, except when it was something that Obama really wanted, then Obama bought them off ($100 million to MaryLandrieu, extras for BenNelson, etc.).
Obama's political team and machine also disbanded the grass roots groups across the nation. This was a dead giveaway that the last thing these politicians want is an active populist movement. Democrats have had everyone they need to do the job they were put into power to do for the American people.
Obama's 'most ardent supporters' need to get better informed; cultivating some real Democratic convictions wouldn't hurt either. Because whether it's taking SinglePayerUniversalHealthcare, a PublicOption, investigations and prosecutions of BushCheney, etc., off the table, putting SocialSecurity and Medicare on the table, or continuing the BushCheney policies (and going BushCheney one better by asserting that presidents can k!ll American citizens with no due process, no oversight, and 'preventive detention', the right to imprison anyone indefinitely because he thinks they might commit a crime), using JoeLieberman to hide behind and duck out on his campaign pledge of transparency and gut the FOIA, no real Democrat could continue to support any Democratic politician doing this.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama's not only not for any kind of universal public health care, he'll do everything within his power to prevent it as long as he's in the White House. Because that was the deal that he made.
Not long ago on C-Span's Washington Journal, Richard Wolffe (the journalist with an inside line to Obama and his White House) said, "There Won't Be Any Public Option--Obama Never Was For It".
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
While Obama publicly supported a public option and single payer, even ran on them, privately he had and has no intention of any kind of real reform, on healthcare or financial.
Obama was completely against mandates. He criticized Hillary's support of them -- Here is Candidate Obama on mandates.
Before the healthcare debate even began, Obama made sure that there would be no public option, no single payer universal healthcare, no means for Americans to choose a public healthcare system, no means for containing costs through public healthcare programs. He took single payer off the table and blocked all efforts to get a public option in the final legislation due to the secret deal he made (and then lied about, and then had to own up to when the memo was leaked).
A caller on CSpan just a few months ago asked Richard Wolffe, who was out plugging his latest book written from his special access to the Obama White House, if we're ever going to get a public option to keep costs down.
Wolffe makes it clear that Obama and the DLC-controlled Democrats never had any intention of going with a public option or expanding public healthcare in any way (although Wolffe is mistaken when he says that Obama never ran on supporting a public option).
If only Obama had kept his campaign promises.
Obama campaigned on reregulating businesses and banks. He campaigned on ending tax breaks and subsidies to companies moving their factories and jobs overseas.
Now? Not so much.
You get the regulations first and THEN you give them the money. You put a whole healthcare program together BEFORE you get money for healthcare IT that, heaven only knows how it can comply with HIPAA. You keep your entire shopping list of needs and wants ON THE TABLE (SinglePayerUniversal healthcare) BEFORE you concede it away. Anyone who has ever written a contract, negotiated a deal of any kind knows this.
Obama has done everything @$-backwards. What he does only makes sense if he's NOT a populist, NOT a liberal (we knew he wasn't, but Obama's 'most ardent supporters' implored people to believe that "once he gets into the Oval Office, you'll see!"), and IS a continuation of the same failed policies of the transnational corporations that have destroyed the middle class.
What Obama is doing ONLY makes sense if what he wants is NOT what Obama's most ardent followers claims that they want. The only way to get Obama to do the people's bidding, get him to champion We The People and not the Corporations is for Obama's 'most ardent supporters' to stop defending him; they work against their own best interests when they do that.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
ACA was passed through reconciliation. 50 +1.
Republicans weren't needed.
Obama never pressured Lieberman or Ben Nelson (or Blanche Lincoln, or any Blue Dog). When he's wanted Blue Dogs' support, like Nelson's, he's bought it (a sweetheart deal on Medicaid for Nebraska).
Obama DID unleash the attack dogs to go after Howard Dean when Dean said it was a lousy bill. Dean was then forced to get back into line. Obama did go after Kucinich for threatening to vote no on the healthcare bill, and we all know how that ended.
Anyone who still thinks Obama and the DLC-controlled Democratic party is on the People's side is an id-jit, and k!IIing us all with their continued loyalty to politicians who are all working for the side of corporations.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Reid lets Republicans merely threaten to filibuster. Still. All that talk about changing filibuster rules after Obama's first 2 years in office, that changing the rules had to wait for a new Congress in 2010, and nothing came of it. It was a stall tactic by Reid and Democrats anyway as Senate rules can be changed at any time, and not just at the start of a new Congress - It can be done at any time (see page 6 - http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/45448.pdf ).
Nor is there just one way (or even two or three or more ways) for Democrats to get bills passed despite Republicans' obstructionistic tactics. But first they have to want to do it, with the fierce urgency of now (don't click on that link, don't watch it, if you aren't prepared and can't bear to have your cherished illusions about Obama destroyed).
The DLC-controlled Democrats aren't forcing filibusters, and Obama isn't taking to the bully pulpit 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 DLC-controlled Democrats are there for. They are there to do the work of the transnational corporations, and preventing that are the liberals.
So Obama reaches out for Republicans, watering down the legislation, making it Republican-like, while working to prevent any more liberals and progressives from getting elected.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
The old "Republicans are the problem" and "the GOP filibuster everything" excuse, so Obama's solution is to gut his own party's positions, get tough on Democratic representatives in Congress?
Obama and the DLC-controlled Democrat would love for their supporters to believe it's all the Republicans' fault.
Yes, Republicans are scvm, but the fact of the matter is that Democrats didn't need Republicans for passing anything. Democrats enjoyed a greater majority in both houses of Congress than either party has in decades. Even without 60 (but the Democratic Caucus in the Senate had 60). But one example is that Obama didn't need 60 to pass real healthcare reform. All Democrats needed was 50 plus Biden (reconciliation), which is what they did in the end anyway, but for a corporate-pork-laden bill with no cost constraints that doesn't provide affordable quality medical treatment for everyone.
But Democrats didn't do that.
Democrats also have refused to exercise the discretion that Rule 22 allows: Making Republicans actually filibuster, instead of just threatening to do it.
Rule 22 gives the SenateMajorityLeader the discretion to actually make the call. Filibustering is hard on those soft, pampered bodies. HarryReid has refused to make them do it, letting them merely threaten. He should. Americans love reality TV. 'Survivor-Washington, DC'. The few times Reid has forced Republicans to actually filibuster, when Democrats have really needed whatever the issue was (like when Jim Bunning threatened to filibuster over extending unemployment benefits), Republicans caved.
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Whatever gives you the idea that Democrats would impeach Supreme Court justices when they've refused to investigate and prosecute Bybee-Yoo-Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rove-Wolfowitz-et al, much less impeach Bush-Cheney?
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
There is no "stepping stone" to Medicare for all.
ACA is not universal, it has no chance of expanding to cover everyone, and it leads to the end of all public healthcare programs (Medicaid, Medicare, SCHIP, CHAMPUS, veterans care, etc.).
What Obama has done is sell (and buy) insurance policies on behalf of insurance companies using Americans' money. Over-priced, lousy insurance policies, at that. That's a pretty neat trick, by the way -- To sell and buy. It's like playing chess with yourself.
Having insurance doesn't mean getting health care. BIG DIFFERENCE.
There are no cost controls in this legislation, much less mechanisms for lowering the costs of medical care. No controls over co-pays, no controls on deductibles.
Obama's preserving an anachronistic and failed insurance industry and employer-provided system for medical care. It's government sanctioned racketeering. Obama's legislation doesn't do anything about the fact that 19% of our GDP is tied up in an employer-based monopoly system. Ending employment-based insurance was what everybody wanted.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
If Obama and DLC-Democrats had believed that the Koch Brothers, Dick Armey and the Tea Party to be a threat, had they wanted to put the Tea Party down, the time to do it was last year during the healthcare debate when the Tea Party was coming to prominence. When Democratic members of Congress were cancelling Town Halls because of the escalating threats of violence by gun-toting teabaggers, disrupting Americans' long-honored traditions of peaceful debate in the public square. Instead of taking to the bully pulpit, instead of increasing security on government properties hosting these events, Obama disappeared from the healthcare debate to cut secret deals with Big Insurance, PhRma, hospitals, the AMA, etc., and then he 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. -http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2009/sep/25/sonic-cannon-g20-pittsburgh
Obama had no problem quelling dissent or inspiring our better angels when he wanted or needed to.
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.
The Tea Party serves this end it several ways. Chiefly though it lets both parties 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.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
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.
Obama came into the WhiteHouse with BushCheneyRepublicans not just on the ropes, but on the mat, down for the count. Obama issued a pardon and let them rise again.
After just one month in the WhiteHouse, instead of going after Republicans and how their failed policies have brought us to the brink of destruction, instead of hammering BushCheneyRepublicans for our economic woes and wars of choice, Obama and RahmEmanuel went after SarahPalin and RushLimbaugh, two people with no role in the RepublicanParty.
Obama and Emanuel never mentioned MitchMcConnell, JohnBoehner, EricCanter, KarlRove, GeorgeW, H.W., JebBush, Cheney, nobody who is actually in the RepublicanParty as the problem. Obama still doesn't.
The KochBrothers and DickArmey get a lot of press for their role in the TeaParty's rise, but the truth is that they got a lot of help from Obama, RahmEmanuel and the DLC machine.
As the healthcare debate was getting underway and proponents of a PublicOption were bringing pressure to bear on proposed legislation (after Obama arbitrarily snuffed out single payer all on his own initiative), Obama declared it was Congress's job to write the legislation (even though the WhiteHouse was dictating what would be in it through MaxBaucus's committee) and disappeared from the public discussion.
While Teabaggers were punching the fear card by strutting around Townhalls, breaking up the discussions with outrage over 'DeathPanels', and carrying guns openly, members of Congress called off their Townhalls back home, and that was the end of any kind of real, meaningful healthcare for Americans.
Obama could've sent out federal marshals to the Townhalls, used the bully pulpit to issue order and talk about our great American practice of talking through our differences without gunplay. Instead, Obama unleashed federal security forces to Pittsburgh to break up peaceful protests of the G20 meeting, test out the new weaponry to use on the growing disquieted masses.
Obama and the DLC-controlled DemocraticParty needs the TeaParty. It lets Democrats keep a legislative agenda to the right of center. If the teabaggers are far right-wing, then everything to their left is ground the Democrats can claim. And that's a lot of corporate-money ground.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama didn't need Republicans to pass a healthcare reform bill. As a matter of fact, he used reconciliation (50 +1 or Biden) to get ACA passed.
Of course single payer is do-able. When teabaggers say "No government healthcare, and get your hands off my Medicare", the answer is EDUCATION.
Another fact: It was Obama who put Social Security and Medicare on the table for cuts.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Having health insurance ≠ medical treatment.
Obama's healthcare legislation doesn't control costs and doesn't deliver medical treatment to everyone (not even those who think they're going to get it).
People who voted for Obama and Democrats voted to get affordable, quality medical treatment. That was NOT a vote to protect and further enrich the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Voters did NOT send Obama and Democrats into power to entrench the insurance industry as the gatekeepers to being able to get medical treatment. Voters did NOT send Obama and Democrats to Washington to continue tying insurance benefits to their employment.
Yet that is precisely what Obama and the DLC-controlled Democrats did.
Meet The New 1%: - Healthcare CEOs replace bankers as America's best paid:
Pity Wall Street's bankers. Once the highest-paid bosses in the land, they are now also-rans. The real money is in healthcare and drugs, according to the latest survey of executive pay. One example is Joel Gemunder, CEO Omnicare, who had a total pay package in 2010 worth $98 million.
They didn't. They spent millions to influence it. They WROTE it.
http://www.theithacajournal.com/article/20120310/VIEWPOINTS02/203100307/Guest-Viewpoint-Health-care-reform-doesn-t-solve-deep-seated-problems
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
If the SupremeCourt doesn't overturn ACA, Obama will have delivered to the CorporateMasters of the universe big time. Whether a one- or two-term president, he'll hand the baton off to the next corporately-bought president, Democrat or Republican, for the fleecing to continue and go on to reap the benefits from his treacherous betrayal of the People, i.e., the same sort of corporate payoffs that presidents since Gerald Ford have enjoyed: Paid seats on corporate boards.
Over the course of US history, corporations have managed to game our political system, and done it so effectively that the two-party system competes to serve corporate interests while defending that service as, "What's good for GM (corporations) is good for America (the People)".
Democrats (controlled by the DLC, and that's important to remember) and Republicans are corporate tools. Like siblings competing for the attention and approval (campaign contributions) of a parent, Republicans and DLC-controlled Democrats try to outdo each other in delivering for their real constituent, BigCorporations. The trick for them has been to make it seem as if they were really working on behalf of thePeople.
If you must continue to delude yourself into thinking Obama's a good guy who never would have started those wars, and who has only the best of intentions but got a bad deal (I don't share that opinion anymore), then think of all this as a business plan where the CorporateMasters have charted out their plans years in advance (governments do them, too) and select the politician/personality best able to achieve those plans in 4 year increments. If you want to l!e the country into war for oil and war-profiteering, then GeorgeWBush is your man to front it (with DickCheney, the former Secretary of Defense who initiated the privatizing of the military a decade earlier, actually running the operation from the shadows).
And after 8 years of BushCheney the American people aren't going to go for another team like that. They're going to want HOPE and CHANGE, with a persona they can believe in and trust. BarackObama.
The truth is that Obama is no better than BushCheney. Not better, not worse, but the same. His 'most ardent admirers' just like the packaging better. I'm not talking skin color, although that may be a factor for some of them; I'm talking about how a 'D' after the name is a brand they trust believe and trust in, despite the fact that it's the same 'soap' (product).
Unless and until there is drastic and uncompromising change to our campaign financing system, until corporations are no longer 'persons' and are prohibited from participating in elections and politics, all efforts to reform government are useless. But that is NOT going to happen under Obama or the DLC-controlled Democratic Party as we'd hoped when we put them in power in 2008; it's not even on their 'To Do' list.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Talk of Democratic politicians having no spines are greatly exaggerated, just like Obama's timidity is myth: He's plenty tough when it comes to standing up to the Democratic base, proponents of single payer and a public option. Obama's 'most ardent supporters'' error is in believing they know what Obama's intent is and their assumption now (if Supreme Court overturns ACA): That Obama failed in achieving it.
Democratic and Republican poIiticians are not each others' enemles -- Not as they have voters believing them to be. Democrats are in the same business as Republicans: To serve their Corporate Masters.
Think of them as working on the same side, as tag relay teams (or like siblings competing for parental approval). 'Good cop/bad cop'. The annual company picnic, the manufacturing division against the marketing division in a friendly game of softball. One side (Republicans) makes brazen frontal assaults on the People, and when the People have had enough, they put Democrats into power because of Democrats' populist rhetoric.
Once in power, Democrats consolidate Republicans' gains from previous years, continue on with Republican policies but renamed, with new advertising campaigns. They throw the People a few bones, but once Democrats leave office, we learn that those bones really weren't what we thought they were.
Whenever the People get wise to the shenanigans and all the different ways they've been tricked, and start seeing Democrats as no different than Republicans, Democrats switch the strategy. They invent new reasons for failing to achieve the People's business.
Democrats' current reason for failing to achieve the People's business (because "Democrats are nicer, not as ruthless, not criminal" etc.) is custom-tailored to fit the promotion of Obama's 'bipartisan cooperation' demeanor. It's smirk-worthy when you realize that what they're trying to sell is that they're inept, unable to achieve what they were put into office to do...And their ineptitude, like that's somehow "a good thing".
The "thinning of the herd" is what's happening. Obama was put into power by the CorporateMastersOfTheUniverse to try to ease the panic, soften the blows, keep the People from marching on state and federal capitols (and into gated communities) with torches and pitchforks. To keep us 'frogs' in the pot until it boils us to death.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
They are AFRAID OF REPUBLICANS. Listen to a Democrat talk about Republicans - Dems have the psychological profile of an abused child hiding in a closest afraid of its abusive parents.
There is no sense that Dems want to fight or take revenge - They just love to whine. Grow a spine.
Health insurance ≠ medical treatment.
People need medical care. Affordable, quality medical treatment. Nobody needs to have health insurance.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
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