The purpose of waterboarding was not to get real or accurate information: It was to get false information.
The tapes would have shown that.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
This is what Obama's failing to investigate and prosecute the Bush administration has done. It leaves these issues open, and waterboarding a plausible technique to be used in the future.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
You're implying that she's faking it. How integritous is that? If she's faking being a hawk, how do you know she's not faking her populist talk?
About Iran
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
February 27, 2012
Progressive Democratic Hero Elizabeth Warren Enlists to Serve AIPAC's Pro-War Agenda
by Max Blumenthal
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
She's been saying it for months now.
About Iran
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Lastly, democrats are fighters for women's right's. It's not democrats pushing to overturn/limit abortion rights.
Lastly, democrats are fighters for women's right's. It's not democrats pushing to overturn/limit abortion rights.
At the end of the healthcare debate, when Obama was desperate to get the final bill passed in the House, he agreed to make a deal with BartStupak (D-MI) on the issue of abortion, by offering an ExecutiveOrder that restricted the availability of insurance coverage for reproductive health. The right to abortion for many in need was traded away as a bargaining chip to get that final bill passed.
Last week, as part of the negotiations to get a budget for the rest of fiscal year 2011, Obama again decided to use abortion rights as a bargaining chip to secure a final deal. To get Republicans to agree to a compromise, Obama promised to support a legislative rider which would prevent the District of Colombia from using its own tax revenue to fund abortion, despite the opposition of the District’s locally elected government.
Dealing like this only once to pass what the president considered his hallmark legislative achievement would seem unusual, but could be rationalized as an isolated incident. But doing it again, and to get agreement on something as mundane as a few months of stopgap funding for the federal government seems to indicate a pattern–a pattern I’m sure abortion opponents have noticed and are already working to exploit further in the upcoming legislative fights.
Lastly, democrats are fighters for women's right's. It's not democrats pushing to overturn/limit abortion rights.
Lastly, democrats are fighters for women's right's. It's not democrats pushing to overturn/limit abortion rights.
Ledbetter allows women to sue when they find out male coworkers doing the same job are paid more. We will never be able to force corporations to do what they should do unless we have the ability to take them to court for violating the law.
Congress makes legislation. It doesn't matter what Obama initiates (Buffet rule), if the republican congress is going to ignore and/or filibuster it.
EVERYONE must pay in order for the plan to work. Otherwise, only sick people who can't get insurance thru their employer will enroll. ACA will cover over 30 million current uninsured Americans. Is ACA perfect? No. But it's a start.
The DLC-controlled Democratic Party counts on voter ignorance and gives lip service to all populist issues. Like the Republican Party, the DLC works for the benefit of transnational corporations. Each party uses high-priced public relations firms, with spinmeisters crafting sophisticated propaganda campaigns to con voters into believing what isn't true. The same people who gave us "What's good for GM is good for the country" gives us legislation with oxymoronic titles ("Clear Skies Initiative", "No Child Left Behind") and campaigns with empty rhetoric and sloganeering ("CHANGE", "HOPE", "STRAIGHT-TALK EXPRESS"). All calculated to convince the left and the right within each party that their party's candidate shares their positions.
Democratic voters thought they were saying no to all that, corporate and lobbyist control when they chose Obama over Hillary (Hillary supporters are comprised of DLCers and those who don't know anything about the DLC and believe the Clintons are liberals).
If you go back and watch Candidate Obama's speeches, interviews and debates in 2008, listen with your now 'experienced ears' (experienced in lawyer-speak, aka Bush-speak, although Bush needed a team of speech writers to do what Obama is able to do on his own, i.e., think on his feet), I think you'll see that Obama spoke carefully and precisely to give people the sense of what they wanted to hear to get their vote.
Obama got into office by misleading Democratic voters. He ran to the left of Hillary Clinton. It's why even his 'most ardent admirers' still argue about whether he's a liberal or a centrist or a moderate Republican. He convinced centrists that he was a centrist. He convinced liberals he was a liberal posing as a centrist. [News Flash: The debate is over: "Privately, Obama describes himself as a Blue Dog Democrat"]
BlueDogDemocrat = Might as well re-register as a Republican
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Your argument about more people being in medicaid supports the notion of most Americans wanting government run insurance.====================
ACA in its current form is all the president could get thru congress. You and I both know he wanted a single payer system.
i will vote for the president, as he is the only candidate being offered, isn't he?
I repeat:
I've already posted several replies, only to see comments that comply with HP's standards scrubbed for no apparent reason. You should know that by now, that the reason for silence to a query here can't be presumed.
It's ironic that you threaten Romney, given how ACA originated in the Heritage Foundation and is the federal equivalent of RomneyCare.
Obama and Democrats were put into power to get affordable, quality medical treatment for everyone. ACA isn't it.
What ACA is is insurance, not affordable quality medical treatment. There is no mechanism for lowering the costs of treatment. Obama put a fox in charge of this chicken coop (former WellPoint executive Liz Fowler) to write both the legislation and the regulations, and enforce the regulations. Fowler's most notable actions to date have been issuing waivers to businesses that don't want to have to provide insurance to their employees.
Obama's healthcare legislation prohibits the very thing that was the top issue in the 2008 election: The government being able to negotiate lower drug prices or reimportation.
Obama's healthcare legislation is Bush's Medicare Reform Act of 2003 (which was a $700 billion + giveaway to Big Insurance & PhRma), Part 2.
Not only doesn't Obama's healthcare legislation accomplish what Obama and Democrats were put into power to get (affordable quality medical treatment for everyone, lower drug prices), it is, in fact, a giant leap toward ending all public healthcare (Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, CHAMPUS, veterans care, etc.).
Obama's healthcare legislation puts more people into Medicaid, which the states are required to co-pay along with the federal government. The states are already going bankrupt, and moving toward eliminating Medicaid services as a result. States' options are limited, especially those states with constitutional requirements to balance their budgets. So while people may find themselves covered by Medicaid, if you're thinking that should all else fail you've got Medicaid as your safety net, guess again: Medicaid won't cover c/hit.
Having insurance (which is all that Obama's legislation does, and not even for everyone, just for a few million more) doesn't mean getting necessary medical care or that you will be able to afford medical care. All that Obama's healthcare legislation does is require money to go from here (my pockets/taxpayers' pockets) to there (into insurance companies' pockets).
There is no limitation on insurance companies' charging and increasing co-pays and deductibles and eliminating services. There is no requirement for insurance companies to have to provide services not paid for.
Insurance companies have already figured out the way around the restrictions in the bill. The con game in the legislation -- Medical loss ratio. The amount of money insurers must spend on healthcare, and how it will enable insurance companies to continue to price gauge and keep obscene profits instead of delivering affordable and quality medical care to policy-holders.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Nothing really has been done to address the pay gap that exists between male and female employees. Since the Equal Pay Act of 1963 was signed into law, the pay gap has closed at less than half-a-cent per year. That trend is continuing, as the pay gap barely closed from 2009 to 2010:
Women made 77 percent of men’s earnings in 2009, the year the law passed. In 2010, that was virtually unchanged, as women’s wages rose to 77.4 percent of men’s. The gap is even larger for African Americans and Latinos: black women made 67.5 percent of all men’s earnings in 2009, while Latino women made 57.7 percent. In 2010, those figures ticked up to 67.7 percent and 58.7 percent, respectively.
Women make up half of the American workforce, and in two-thirds of American families, the mother is the primary breadwinner or a co-breadwinner. But they make less than their male counterparts in all 50 states, though the size of each state’s wage gap varies. While the gap continues to close in places like Washington, D.C., where women make 91.8 percent of men’s earnings, it is growing in others, like Wyoming, where women’s earnings dropped from 65.5 percent of men’s in 2009 to just 63.8 percent in 2010.
Because of the gender pay gap, women with the same education doing the same job as men earn far less over their working lifetimes. The wage gap costs $723,000 over a 40-year career for women with college degrees. In some industries, the gap can cost women close to a million dollars.
In November 2010, Senate Republicans killed efforts to close the pay gap when they unanimously voted to block the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would have updated the Equal Pay Act, closed many of its loopholes, and strengthened incentives to prevent pay discrimination.
There was another bill out there that would not only have made the technical fix of Ledbetter, but updated the Equal Pay Act of 1963, closed loopholes and made a much bigger difference in closing the pay gap. There was no reason why the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act could not have been combined with the Paycheck Fairness Act back at the beginning of the first term, in 2009. But while the bill passed the House quickly, Democrats in the Senate didn’t get around to taking up the Paycheck Fairness Act until the lame duck session of 2010, and it predictably failed 58-41, with all Republicans opposing. There’s obviously no guarantee that the Paycheck Fairness Act could have passed earlier in the term. But it’s plausible to argue that leveraging Lilly Ledbetter, which was a campaign issue, into a real advance on equal pay could have paid off. As it is, the Senate quickly got filibustered with little fanfare in the lame duck.
The point is there were other options. But the legislation that could have made a difference was left behind. And it severely damages the credibility of the Administration and its allies to keep waving the bloody shirt of Lilly Ledbetter when it actually did pretty much nothing for the larger cause of equal pay and equal work.
KEEP READING
Lily Ledbetter has been at the top of Obama's 'most ardent supporters' lists of his "accomplishments" and has gone unchallenged because to explain the ridiculousness of it as an "Obama accomplishment" can't be done in a 10-word sound byte.
To begin with, claiming Lily Ledbetter as Obama's achievement is like the driver of the winning car in this year's Le Mans race (Mike Rockenfeller) picking up a hitch-hiking Obama right before he crossed the finish line and saying Obama won the Le Mans. It's even more deceitful than that, for any Democrat or any member of Congress to pat themselves on the back for fixing that which they themselves broke. But even that doesn't quite explain it.
Obama and Democrats got into power on a pledge to change the way Washington works. Little is ever said or explained about what that really means. I'm going to attempt it:
By the time that elected officials manage to enact legislation, the problem the legislation is to address has usually grown and morphed into something beyond what the legislation would affect or change, making it either irrelevant or creating a boondoggle that gridlocks later congressional efforts. Or, something else.
With Lily Ledbetter, it took 45 years to have the legislature address a problem (statute of limitations for filing equal pay discrimination lawsuits in the Civil Rights Act of 1964) in what never should've been agreed to by Democrats in the first place in 1964. Lily Ledbetter really had nothing to do with "landmark sex discrimination". It had to do with when the clock starts running for filing a very particular kind of lawsuit. It doesn't affect statutes of limitation for any other kind of lawsuit. It doesn't apply to the filing of all lawsuits. It's just for a particular class of lawsuits - For the filing of an equal-pay lawsuit.
And it wasn't 45 years of Congresses trying to fix it. It was a year and a half. It was in response to the Supreme Court's decision in 2007 in one woman's lawsuit. It's not going to affect millions, or thousands or even hundreds of others - Ironically, if it were to affect more women, it never would have passed, no matter what party held the Congress (because it would have meant more money paid out from corporations to women, and Democrats work for corporations just as Republicans do).
If you want to tout passage of Lily Ledbetter then you're going to have to take the blame for not following it up immediately with legislation for transparency in pay. Being able to find out what everyone else is getting paid. It's a joke without it. It's like taking you to a Michelin star restaurant, blowing the aromas from the kitchen in your face, but not letting you eat anything at all.
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Moderate Republicans, in general. Like Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. Lisa Murkowski. Former governors Christine Todd Whitman, William Weld, George Pataki, Jon Huntsman. Republicans-turned-Independents Lincoln Chaffee, Michael Bloomberg. Rudy Guiliani. Colin Powell. Joseph Cao. Amo Houghton.
Even Dick Lugar. There are even conservative Republicans who could be considered 'normal'. Being fiscally conservative, socially libertarian and for small/limited government doesn't make them extremist or crazy. Just wrong. Remember that real conservatives opposed Bush-Cheney on going into Iraq.
There are "normal" conservatives, in front of and 'behind the camera', including those who pander to the Tea Party, adopting extreme positions in order to keep in the Tea Party's favor and keep their jobs. I don't like any of them or their politics, but they're not fanatical extremists in the Bellvue (mental) Hospital sense.
Just curious: Did you vote/Would you vote, for Ronald Reagan? At this point, Barack Obama is farther to the right than Reagan and Richard Nixon.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
I agree with most of what you said, except the part about Obama's most ardent supporters settling for a Democratic party that is really Nixon's or even Reagan's Republican party. Some will, but a lot of us who worked hard for Obama in 2008 will not. We will work to get him re-elected but we'll put unrelenting pressure on him after that.
As the February 2011 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.
As RogerHodge points out in his recent book, The Mendacity of Hope, "Obama praises Clinton for putting a 'progressive slant on some of Reagan's goals,' by which he presumably means Clinton's wholesale adoption of the Republican economic agenda, from passing NAFTA to cutting taxes, gutting the welfare system, and embracing the rhetoric of small government".
In Audacity Of Hope, Obama said of his political appeal: “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
Obama got into office by misleading Democratic voters. He ran to the left of HillaryClinton. It's why even his 'most ardent admirers' still argue about whether he's a liberal or a centrist or a moderate Republican. He convinced centrists that he was a centrist. He convinced liberals he was a liberal posing as a centrist. The truth is that he's nothing but a politician, and I mean that in the used-car saleman sense.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
It was way to premature for that type of approach... it would have split the country right down the middle!!!
What?????
Only people who vote as if they're sports fans, wanting their team to live for another day, for the next **SHOWDOWN** on ESPN.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama's "accomplishments"??
Obama's accomplishments:
Guantanamo is now a permanent facility from which detainees convicted of nothing will never leave.
You or I could be next, as Obama has declared that a president can imprison, even kiII anyone, even an American citizen, with no due process. For having done NOTHING. Because Obama thinks that person might.
Torture statutes of limitation have been allowed to run, and passed, while investigations into torture and torture lawyers have been stifled, scripted, and microfocused to deliberately prevent focus on easily proven lapses. Torture has become openly and thoroughly bipartisan; there is no party of opposition to Executive branch power.
As a consequence to Obama’s election, evidence of presidential wrongdoing and war crimes are forever buried.
As a consequence of Obama’s election and other Democrats' elections, unconstitutional surveillance of citizens has been enshrined as bipartisan.
The Democrats have pushed the envelope on Executive power and have now openly endorsed Executive branch assassination.
More are impoverished.
The last best chance of reinstituting Glass-Stegall protections failed.
The public option has been killed more thoroughly than any Republicans could have pulled off. The same goes for drug reimportation. All so that Obama and the Democrats could hand over a public mandate that doesn't provide affordable, quality medical treatment for everybody.
The Department of Justice, an executive branch agency which is supposed to be above the fray of politics and independent of the White House has become an arm and the muscle for Obama. Whistleblowers and the truth have been attacked with a viciousness not possessed by the Bushies, as have journalists.
Those are just a few of Obama's "accomplishments".
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Democrats talk a good game about supporting working Americans, but when it comes to action, they don't. The stimulus was weak tea, and we on the left knew it, warned that it was, and were flipped off, not just by Republicans but by Democrats who continue to take our votes for granted.
A couple of months ago, Democrats (including Nancy Pelosi) voted to approve the American job-killing, manufacturing outsourcing free trade agreements with S. Korea, Panama and Colombia:
The Senate approved free-trade deals between the U.S. and Colombia, Panama and South Korea on Wednesday, sending them to President Barack Obama for signature. The agreements are strongly backed by the White House and won approval in the House of Representatives earlier Wednesday. The Senate voted 66-33 on the Colombia agreement; 77-22 on the Panama deal; and 83-15 on the South Korea agreement.
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
Kind of full of yourself, BaLoney.
In this place, you're not the only person I'm interacting with. And I've already posted several replies, only to see comments that comply with HP's standards scrubbed for no apparent reason. You should know that by now, that the reason for silence to a query here can't be presumed.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
There are other ways to get stimulus money to the poor and middle classes, but if you support payroll tax "holidays", you're also for ending Social Security and Medicare.
When politicians say that "Social Security is the third rail of politics", they mean it with a hostility that should be reserved for their Corporate Masters.
You don't see politicians putting campaign finance and election reform on their agenda from year to year as you do their continuing assaults on social safety net programs for the People.
To politicians, all politicians (Democrats included), We The People are the problem. If only they didn't have to deal with making us happy to get our votes that keep them employed. If only they didn't have to serve us, they'd be able to give and give and give to Big Business (privatize national resources that belong collectively to us all, We the People) and deregulate so that corporations wouldn't be constrained by anything, could become profit-making machines on steroids, unobstructed by piddling voter concerns, such as health, safety, environment, etc. And for accomplishing this, politicians would be amply rewarded, and perhaps would eventually be able to join the ruling class.
You can choose to believe what you will about Democratic politicians, but the fact is that the DLC controls the DemocraticParty, Democrats in Congress and in the White House, and they've signed on to privatize public resources and utilities and deregulate. Democrats in Congress, despite all their campaign promises, have refused to regulate or perform their Constitutionally-required role of oversight, both in the Bush and Obama administrations -- What little regulating they've put in legislation the last 2 years is ineffective for a whole array of very sneaky moves. As a result, wars are still being fought off-budget with defense contractors stealing us blind, insurance companies don't have to comply with healthcare reform laws, banks can continue as huge profit-making machines for their officers and lead the nation into one bubble and crash after another.
You can choose to think of Obama and his intentions in whatever way makes you happy. What you can't do is explain how any of what Obama's done these past two years has been in the People's and not the Corporations' interests.
What's gotten lost in the news cycles these past months is Obama's new NAFTA-like treaties that means more Americans' jobs will be outsourced overseas. And then there's Obama's Deficit Commission, Simpson-Bowles (and its plan for gutting Social Security and Medicare), along with the renewed push on the Dream Act, which means a flood of immigrants working for slave wages.
We The People are being transformed, from sheep to sacrificial lambs.
And what's coming no matter who wins in 2012 is the privatization of Social Security.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Why are we running away from the policies that built this country?
I've made no secret of my "goal": To elect representatives who will do the people's bidding. The 99%'s, not the 1%'s. Real Democrats, committed to the Democratic Party's platform -- The current crop isn't.
Read this thread.
But we've talked about this before BaLoney; sincerity isn't your strong suit.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
The bottom 45 million households in the US are going to see their taxes go up. That's because Obama's 'making work pay'-credit ($400/person, $200/couple), even if you're retired or disabled, it's going to go away. And it's going to be replaced by the 'temporary' (heh, sure) 2% reduction in the payroll tax (Social Security tax). For 45 million households who make less than $20k a year, this is a tax increase of $150-$200 each.
On the other end, if you're a two income couple and you make over $100k each and you pay the maximum Social Security tax, you didn't get Obama's 'making work pay'-credit (you're regarded as too well off). But that Social Security payroll tax decrease is going to mean about a $4200 tax cut for you.
So we can see that the scheme of this is that the better off you are, the more help you get from the government. The worse off you are, your taxes go up.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
When Obama Obama first openly put cuts on Medicare and Social Security benefits on the table during the debt ceiling negotiations many of his defenders went full 11th dimensional chess. They claimed Obama wasn’t so much putting these on the table because he wanted them cut right now, but to prove he was the more sensible adult in the room when Republican rejected this grand bargain. On this one point I agree with David Brooks and think we all just need to take Obama at his word. From David Brooks:
According to widespread reports, White House officials talked about raising the Medicare eligibility age, cutting Social Security by changing the inflation index, freezing domestic discretionary spending and offering to pre-empt the end of the Bush tax cuts in exchange for a broad tax-reform process.
The Democratic offers were slippery, and President Obama didn’t put them in writing. But John Boehner, the House speaker, thought they were serious. The liberal activists thought they were alarmingly serious. I can tell you from my reporting that White House officials took them seriously.
What he does need to do is get busy fullfilling as many of his campaign promises as he possibly can.
I think that Democratic voters need to reflect on their elected representatives in all offices over the past few decades and consider this: 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 Ronald Reagan, Lee Atwater and Karl Rove 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 outgvnned by election dirty tricks and fraud.
When informed of the issues, most Americans agree with liberal policies. Neither they (nor I) would characterize themselves as far-anything or extreme, but mainstream. For example, nobody likes the idea of abortion, but most Americans do not want the government involved if they find themselves in the predicament of an unwanted pregnancy. And if you frame it as, "You like to k!ll babies?!?!?!?!", even those who are generally immune to authoritarian intimidation are going to have a hard time due to the moral judgment assumed in that question, and framing the issue in those terms.
If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch and tactics. It's not that Bush and Rove were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew. Bush and Rove were just more ruthless in doing what politicians and the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans: That 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.
Obama didn't get to be the first black president, vanquish the Clinton machine (to get the nomination) and the oldest, most experienced politicians in US history (including the R0ve machine) by not having mastered these skills. Nor do Democratic politicians (more incumbents than ever, in office longer) not know how to do it. How do you think Democrats managed to keep impeaching Bush and Cheney off the table, have us still reelecting them and not marching on Washington with torches and pitchforks?
Obama and Democrats know how to do it -- They don't want to do it.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
All that Obama's been doing is trying to save unregulated capitalism and the lock that the 1% has on the other 99%.
With Obama's deal to preserve Bush's tax cuts for the rich (making it Obama's tax cuts for the rich), 99ers were cut off. Of the 6 million people who were then currently receiving unemployment benefits, Obama's deal covered only 2 million, and many of them got crumbs from his deal because, in spite of the 13-month extension, benefits were cut off for many of those when they reached 99-weeks. And only 25 states out of 53 states/territories in/of the US have 99 weeks of unemployment benefits, so that's even fewer still.
David Cay Johnston on Democracy Now! on Obama's deal to extend Bush's tax cuts "The worse off you are, your taxes increase":
The payroll tax 'holiday' in the deal sets SocialSecurity up for its end. That's what Bush and GroverNorquist planned and why Bush believes he'll be vindicated as a great conservative in history: For ending the GreatSociety programs, by having bankrupted the nation so there's no way to pay out those benefits. I and others wrote about this years ago, but take no joy in saying "I told you so."
"The bottom roughly 45 million families in America or households in America—and there are a little over 100 million households—they’re going to actually see their taxes go up. Republicans got an extraordinarily good deal, that raises, I think, basic questions about the negotiating skills of the President."
#6 - Continue the Insanity, meaning we keep doing the same thing* over and over again hoping for a different outcome.
[* - Same thing = Continue to refuse to believe our own 'lyin' eyes', keep doing what we've been doing for the past 20 years, continue voting for DLC-controlled Democrats, vote again for Obama in the hopes that he's a closet liberal playing 12-dimensional chess, believing that he's got a plan, a strategy, that nobody can see or figure out, but because he's the smartest, grown-uppiest in the room, in all of Washington (on the whole planet, even) his scheme eludes and confounds us, so we just need to be like Republican voters and have blind faith in our political leaders.
Clue: There aren't any grown-ups to save us; we're 'it'.]
What happens when millions are out of work, no jobs, no money, no hope. London, Philadelphia, where next?
"Quickly Brad, there are thousands of lives at stake... Brad any answer..." - Roy Neary, 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
#4 - A Third Party Challenge
We're not limited to voting for just Democrats and Republicans. There are other alternatives besides sitting out the election or voting for Republicans. There are other candidates running as independents, from Green to Libertarian, in just about every race. If for no other reason than to get the 5 percent that is necessary for getting a seat at the table, I think that may be enough for great numbers of Democratic voters this time around.
#5 - The "Oh, F R I C K it, let's get it over with - Vote for Republicans"-plan
The horse is out of the barn and we should just let the radical right have its way. It's not like Obama and the gutless Dems are going to stop them.KEEP READING
It would be carnage for a few years, people eating other people (though that really only happens in the southern tier of states), old people dying (why are we so eager to keep them alive, anyway?) and cats and dogs living together...
Let it all come crashing down--but let's make sure to kill Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare. These Tea Partiers should be allowed to pay what the market will bear, right?
By the way, while our Tea-Party/Real Men (or whatever those guys who wouldn't pay taxes a few years ago are called) friends talk about how they'd like to keep more of their hard earned money and give less to the idiots who "gave us Vietnam and Iraq," perhaps they'd like to pick up the bill for the grading and paving of the road that leads from their home to their office--can't be what, more than $60K a year.
While they're at it, maybe they'd like to cut a check for the police and fire people they'd have to employ to protect their home and valuables from damage. If they could get one guy for another $30K, they'd be lucky. Oh, and then there's that water and waste service, if you've got that.
Really, just let these frickers get what they want and we'll pick up the pieces afterwards.
#3 - Primary Obama
Two powerful arguments for challenging Obama from the left:
MichaelLerner's very powerful case for primarying Obama.
RalphNader's very powerful case for primarying Obama (and no, he's not running again).
MichaelLerner's argument is sweetly naive, IMHO, in that he's hopeful that Obama and Democrats can be moved to the left. I don't think that's true anymore. I think the party and the culture of Washington, what's happened to our government in the last 40 years (both parties), has been thoroughly corrupted.
Up until recently I was saying that, to begin with, no one in the DemocraticParty would do it. Due to the hierarchical system of party government, it would be suicide for any professional politician in the DemocraticParty to run against the party's sitting president.
Liberals/progressives within the DemocraticParty, no matter what their rhetoric, no matter what they say, they march to Obama's/Reid's/Pelosi's tune. They vote as they're told to from up top or else they risk the full weight and power and tools of the office of the president, the DNC and the CorporateMasters controlling them. The Party will cover them as best it can, get as many votes as it needs from Democrats in safe districts first, and will only call upon liberals/progressives to betray their constituents from safe districts if it needs them, accompanied by threats/promises of national party help when it comes time for their reelection bid (AlanGrayson, DennisKucinich, 2 examples).
The DLC has gotten too powerful, what with a Democrat in the WhiteHouse and a Democratically-controlled Senate overseeing an NSA with today's eavesdropping abilities (I say that somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but it's really impossible to deny in light of things like this).
As I said, that was up until a few months ago. Word had it that a challenge was coming, but it's really not a serious one, not intended for anyone to get the nomination from Obama. But that would only happen if Obama's numbers went down, and like the idea of the Republicans having a brokered convention, Obama's 'most ardent supporters' would have to wake up and realize that he's sold the people out again and has made more deals with corporations in order to keep any 'normal', moderate Republican from getting into the election.
So unless Obama drops out (in which case another corporate tool will take his place), the only legitimate challenges to him will come from outside the Democratic Party (Republicans or Independents). And the most likely way that Obama would drop out is if his numbers plummet.
So what's left?
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
I get this question regularly so bear with me for a moment as I explain the situation as I see it, the options available, possible solutions, etc.
#1 - Sitting Out The Election
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 p!sses me off about Obama (and one of many reasons I know him to be a con man betraying "them that brung 'im") because by shutting out liberals, the 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 legislations, he's given pro-corporate, Republican-like policies an inside line. The People's advocates can't even get in the door of this government much less a seat at the table.
#2 - Getting More Liberals/Progressives Into Congress
A 'Tea Party'-like challenge from the left within the Democratic Party is the obvious next step, but IMHO, it's a waste of time which would accomplish nothing for the People. Obama and the DNC have been working their butts off to prevent real Democrats, real progressives, from getting into office - Their strategy for getting more Democrats into office has been to run Democratic candidates who believe in Republican ideology and support Republican policies and legislation.
One variation on this is if, A) Obama doesn't pull an LBJ (drop out) or, B) another Democrat or third party candidate doesn't challenge him, then take the money and shoe leather that you were planning on spending for Obama and use it to make both Houses of Congress overwhelmingly 'blue' and let the chips fall where they may (Obama sinks or swims on his own, or a Republican gets into the White House) and we go to work immediately finding a real Democrat for 2016.
Given how effective Republicans (with the smallest minority in decades) have been at stymieing Democratic legislation and policies, you would think Democrats could do the same for any Perry/Bachman/Romney/Palin/etc. administration.
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama's and the DLC-controlled Democrats insist that what they're doing is "good compromising".
It's not a good compromise when it's going in the wrong direction. Not when the finances are coming from my pocket and going into yours. That's the direction it's been going for years, decades, and that pocket has been tapped out. It's empty. Your pockets, on the other hand, are DEEP and STUFFED.
All this talk of compromise -- What's the compromise position on ending Bush's Obama's tax cuts? Do Obama's 'most ardent supporters' know that Obama offered in these negotiations to make those tax cuts permanent?
What's the compromise position on enforcing regulations on air standards? Not enforcing them?
What's the compromise position on a woman's right to choose? Make it impossible for her to actually obtain an abortion?
What's the compromise position on Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and veterans' care and SCHIP, etc.? Empty out the trust funds to pay bond holders and war profiteers so that there's nothing left for those who paid into into the trust funds?
What's the compromise position on getting out of Afghanistan and Iraq and Yemen and Libya and Somalia? Escalating the wars, attacking more nations, pressuring Iraq and Afghanistan to ask us to stay?
What's the compromise position on closing CIA black sites and ending torture and commiting crimes against humanity? Prison Ships, Ghost Prisoners and Obama's Interrogation Program? Ending habeas corpus and a president indefinitely detaining anyone he believes might be thinking about committing a crime, American citizens included, and killing them with no due process, no oversight?
There is no 'center' on most issues. We're 'centered-out'. The left has done more than 30 years of compromising. You either believe in Social Security and Medicare and a woman's right to choose and gays' right to marry and clean safe food and water, and a safe workplace, and living wages, etc., or you don't.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
If Democrats manage to regain the House and retain the Senate, do you think it means that voters like the job that Obama and the DLC-controlled Democratic Congress are doing, or that voters were afraid of Teabaggers setting the agenda?
Do you think a win for Democrats would push Obama to the left? Would it get Obama to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and not just pull out a few troops), or would it spur Obama to expand the wars, into Iran, and Syria, and elsewhere?
Do you think that if Democrats manage to retain control over Congress, that it would spur Obama on to take to the bully pulpit, pump real money into job stimulus, get Reid to push real populist bills (like those that the House passed in 2008 and 2009), through to passage in the Senate through reconciliation, and force Republicans to actually filibuster instead of just threatening to?
What, substantively, would you expect out of Obama and Democrats if Democrats were to regain control over Congress after November?
Specifically, what would that look like? Obama making speeches kicking Republicans' collective butts? What about actions?
How do you think Obama would spin a win by Democrats? As a referendum that the voters like his "bipartisan approach to Republicans", and want him to do more of the same? Move even more to the right? Do you expect Obama and Democrats to put through Simpson-Bowles or the People's budget?
Or do you think Obama would acknowledge his own party's displeasure with him and Democrats, and the only reason they kept Congress in Democrats' hands is because they bought the 'fear' campaign of Tea Partiers controlling the government?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Try thinking of the two political parties as working on the same side, towards the same goal, with one of the parties (GOP) willing to pull out all of the stops to achieve the goal and the other party (Democrats) consolidating the gains made by the GOP when the GOP has been turned out of office when the People have had enough of them and become wise to their ways.
The trick then for the Democratic Party is to make themselves seem like the good guys, like they're working on the side of the People. But the rhetoric doesn't match their actions.
Obama and Democrats do not turn back the tide on Republican misdeeds. Democrats don't pass legislation to undo what has enabled the GOP to effect the greatest transfer of wealth from the most to the fewest. As a matter of fact, Obama and Democrats manage to shift more power to the police and military and executive branch, and eliminate more of the People's Constitutional civil rights and protections.
And worse, Obama and Democrats block investigations and prosecutions into Bush and the GOP.
If stopping the redistribution of wealth is your issue, you're only helping to continue it by your unconditional support for Obama and the DLC-controlled Democratic Party.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
And it was Obama who put Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid on the table.
Obama also offered to make the Bush tax cuts permanent.
Republicans couldn't have achieved their agenda the past 30 years without Democrats signing on.
About Elections 2012
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
You're not limited to voting for just Democrats and Republicans. There are other alternatives besides sitting out the election or voting for Republicans. There are other candidates running as independents, from Green to Libertarian, in just about every race. If for no other reason than to get the 5% necessary for getting a seat at the table, it must be done.
Democratic voters had better start doing it because with each passing day it becomes impossible to turn it all around, and Democratic politicians have shown no interest in doing it.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
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