Anyone with a license to prescribe runs the risk of losing that license should he or she do as you're accusing, i.e., frivolously writing prescriptions for schedule 1 drugs.
About Video
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
There are no "quack" doctors who can write prescriptions for any drug.
Would you get liquor stores shut down because one a few blocks from your house sold to two guys who broke into your home?
FWIW, I don't partake, but there are others who do who can't get marijuana without the risk of running afoul of the law, resulting in everything from incarceration to fines, all costly. The cost to me as a citizen (diverted law enforcement from real crimes, violent and other, court resourses, prison costs) is huge.
Legalizing marijuana isn't my #1 concern either, but all of these issues are interconnected with the top issue we are constantly being told by the media is the only concern of the electorate, and determinant of the outcome of the election (the economy). I won't be voting for anyone who has been part of this crusade against marijuana, beginning with Obama and going down to local jurisdictions that are closing down dispensaries.
About Video
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Not hardly. If you believe it to be, please explain.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Here's another example:
Why aren't Obama and Democrats talking about the Progressive Caucus's budget and plan to balance the budget (reduces the deficit by $5.1 trillion)? It beats Obama's AND Republicans' plans.
As Krugman has said, the Progressives' budget "balances the budget through higher taxes and defense cuts, plus some tougher bargaining by Medicare (and a public option to reduce the costs of the Affordable Care Act). The proposed tax hikes would fall on higher incomes, raising the cap on payroll taxes (takes care of Social Security's solvency forever)... and unlike the Ryan plan, it actually makes sense."
But Obama takes solutions that work for the People, the vast majority of Americans, off the table. Whether it's ending Bush's tax cuts or the wars, the '14th Amendment Solution' (and it is, indeed, a legitimate option), etc., Obama kneecaps and handicaps the Democratic voters who put him and Democrats into power.
That's Obama's style, taking solutions that work for the People off the table and out of consideration when we're discussing how we want to proceed. That's what he did during the healthcare debate -- He took single payer off the table before negotiations ever began. Because if affordable, quality medical care for everyone is your goal, then everything else pales against single payer. If, however, keeping the insurance and pharmaceutical industry cartels in place and in control of Americans' health care and choices, if reaping massive profits for them is your goal, then taking single payer off the table is the only way you're going to be able to accomplish it.
If Obama is reelected, what do you think he's going to say that the election gave him a mandate to do? More of the same bipartisanship, caving, watering down Democratic legislation and policies and turning them into Republican policies and legislation?
It's what he did after the 2010 midterms. A "shellacking", in spite of the fact that it was incumbent conservative Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats who were turned out of office big time. Liberals lost only 3 seats. But Obama took that as an opportunity to spin, "I must then turn even farther to the right."
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Forcing filibusters is a great thing, and could take the place of Americans' fascination with reality TV. Rich, fat, pasty men standing for hours on end, resorting to reading from phone books - Filibustering is hard on soft pampered bodies. 'Survivor, Washington DC.'
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
It's not my intention to dissemble or digress.
Democrats didn't need to do anything but let Bush's tax cuts expire. All of them. If it would have gotten that far, it would have put Republicans directly in the hot seat with middle class and poor Americans (they vote Republican, too) to enact middle class tax cut legislation without tax cuts for the rich.
And here's the most important point to recall, what Obama said about the deal:
OBAMA: And, as I said, there are a whole bunch of things that they [Republicans] are giving up. I mean, the truth of the matter is, from the Republican perspective, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the college tuition tax credit, the Child Tax Credit -- all those things that are so important for so many families across the country -- those are things they really opposed. And so temporarily, they are willing to go along with that, presumably because they think they can beat me on that over the course of the next two years.
'U.S. House Republican Leader John Boehner said he would vote for middle-class tax cuts sought by the Democratic Obama administration even if it means eliminating reductions for wealthier Americans'.
Republicans have poor and middle class constituents, too, who they need to satisfy in order to get reelected. Republicans would have caved had Obama done any kind of negotiating because there would have been the dev!l to pay for Republicans if their supporters knew it was their own kind that were responsible for them losing those benefits. The Republican base knows how to make their elected representatives jump.
Myrddnn,
I can't really disagree with the rest of your comments. I have spoken on some of the questions you pose in other of my comments. I think if you view what's happening through the lens of a crowded planet with limited resources, what's going on in our government and political system starts to make more sense. You might be interested in this. And this.
There is nothing humanitarian about what the US and other western nations are up to. Our leaders are not trying to bring democracy to other nations. Democracy is the last thing our leaders want to see, not in other nations and certainly not in the US.
I think that what's happening politically now is that the world leaders are arranging for the time when chaos will be the order of the day. The loss of civil liberties, setting up for martial law, endless wars, etc. I think they're giving the 'haves' one last bite at the apple, to amass as much wealth as they can, to move their families to high ground for the coming bad times. The US is positioning itself much like the Roman Empire did, and will take what it wants through military might - Not for we ordinary mortals, mind you, but for the survival of the elites.
I think it's obvious that the decision was made some time ago, like several decades ago, that the US wasn't going to respond and try to avert the catastrophe. Too many people to get on board, too much work, and altruistic work at that. It was a cynical and corrupt decision, with greed controlling it, with the likes of Jim Baker and the Bushes making fortunes by the decision (in oil). War industries were another venue for amassing great wealth, and that's the path that Cheney took. Clinton went the way of setting up and using a real estate bubble and hedge funds to make his fortune.
In the late 1990s, when the bubbles were taking shape, I estimated that those who didn't have a net worth of, at least, $250,000 wouldn't stand a chance, but I'm revising that upwards to $5 million. That's just bare bones, to keep from dying from an inability to purchase food and water, and keep a roof over your head that you don't have to trade watch duty with family and friends to keep marauders out.
Bleak? You bet. But we have to start talking about it and demanding politicians address it.
Watch "After The Warming" with your families and friends. It's somewhere to begin.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
I am also convinced that he was given the same warning JFK received and knows that if he doesn't cave where it is demanded of him, he will suffer the same fate as the last president who tried to audit the federal reserve and shine some light on this very real problem. Fear for ones self and ones family can make a person do a lot of things they might not otherwise do.
Lie number 3) U.S. corporations are over-taxed.
Example: Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty
We have the highest corporate tax rate, or one of them, in the OECD nations.Actually, as measured in terms of share of GDP, the U.S. has the lowest corporate tax burden of any OECD nation. While the official tax bracket may seems high -- 35 percent -- if one takes into account various loopholes and tax dodges, the effective tax rate is considerably lower, or around 27 percent, which comes in as slightly higher than average for OECD members. And according to ace tax report David Cay Johnston, the bigger you are, the less you pay -- the effective tax rate for the biggest U.S. corporations is only about 15 percent.
Lie number 2) The U.S. suffers from high taxes.
Example: The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore:
What all this means is that in the late 1980s, the U.S. was nearly the lowest taxed nation in the world, and a quarter century later we're nearly the highest.Totally untrue. As measured in terms of total tax revenue as a share of overall GDP the average tax burden for countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2008 was 44.8 percent. The U.S. -- 26.1 percent. The U.S. pays less taxes, as a share of GDP, than Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Austria, France, Netherlands, Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, Switzerland and Japan.
You need to get an education..You faiI to mention that 1% of the people are paying 40% OF THE TAXES AND 50% of the people pay nothing...who has the stranglehold?===========================
At a hearing last month, SenatorCharlesGrassley said, "According to the JointCommittee on Taxation, 49 percent of households are paying 100 percent of taxes coming in to the federal government." At the same hearing, CatoInstitute Senior Fellow AlanReynolds asserted, "Poor people don't pay taxes in this country." Last April, referring to a TaxPolicyCenter estimate of households with no federal income tax liability in 2009, Fox Business host Stuart Varney said on Fox and Friends, "Yes, 47 percent of households pay not a single dime in taxes."The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' Chuck Marr and Brian Highsmith provide the definitive takedown of this myth.
I'm not sure how the former link supports your point (it states clearly that Obama is undercutting the people), but as far as the latter link goes, when it serves something that the DLC-controlled Democrats want, Harry Reid can (and has) require the GOP to actually filibuster instead of merely threatening one.
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
No. 99ers were cut off.
Of the 6 million people who were then 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 in the following months 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":
Then there's the payroll tax 'holiday' in the deal - It sets SocialSecurity up for its end, and keeps getting extended by Obama.
"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."
The bare minimum we should be doing is voting third party. What's needed is different on any day or week or month given the time it is in the election cycle. It doesn't have to be the equivalent of an 80-hour work week, but pinpoint action at the time when they do the most good can be as little as dedicating one day every few months. Some different things, from volunteering to register new voters and driving voters to the polling booths on election day to working for a candidate or a party.
Right now in the election cycle, these few months before an election, is when the deals are being made between candidates and those most important to getting them elected. When voters are resigned to voting the "lesser of two evils", then candidates are making their deals with those who can give them the money they need for commercials. Meaning, as long as you're silent, as long as Obama knows he's got you no matter what, you are on the menu. One example: Obama needed the Hispanic vote so he announced he would stop being the 'deporting-est president' of all time. For now. It got him some press on the subject and an immediate bump in the polls among Hispanic voters. That drove money his way.
Make your demands known and stick to them. Go attend an OWS event. Volunteer to work for a party or candidate you believe in. Network and keep active and in the loop.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
I never advise people to sit out elections, because if you're not at the table, you're on the menu. What p!sses me off about Obama (and one of many reasons I know him to be a treacherous con man, "betraying them that brung 'im") is that by shutting out liberals 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.
Citizens have an almost irrelevant and non-existent role in this democratic republic. We have the right to vote, but no right to have those votes counted. The founders were nothing if not ironic. Up until Obama, presidents stayed out of primaries. There's no law against it, but there was a general understanding that primaries are when the People decide who it is that they want representing them within political parties, so presidents rose above politics and let the people have their turn.
But Obama broke that 'rule', making deals with candidates, throwing the White House's support behind Blue Dog Candidates over Liberal/progressive Candidates, Republicans and even Independents over Democratic candidates (Arlen Specter, Lincoln Chaffee, etc.). Think about that: Obama would vote Republican and Independent over a real Democrat, a populist candidate.
Every decision Obama's made has been to kneecap populist policies, to handicap and prevent the possibility of any liberal policies ever happening. For example, if the goal is to get affordable quality medical care for everyone, everything else pales next to single payer. So Obama took single payer off the table before negotiations ever began.
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
ElenaKagan is the GoldmanSacks 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 couple of weeks ago.
Obama's spin when trying to get both Kagan and Sotomayor (a lackluster intellect if ever there was one) confirmed was that they'd be effective at countering the conservatives arguments when it came to trying to pull Kennedy over. It hasn't happened; Roberts, Alito, and Scalia wield far greater political warfare skills. And it was Kennedy who worked on Roberts for weeks, to bring Roberts over to the conservative side on ACA??
In claims against big business, Sotomayor (herself a former corporate lawyer) wrote the dissent in a 2-1 decision that ultimately favored victims' families. This was concerning the 1996 crash of TWA flight 800 off of LongIsland. Sotomayor wrote, "The crash hadn't occurred in US territorial waters, therefore victims' families shouldn't have had the right to sue for extra damages." She wrote that the judges who disagreed with her were ignoring legislative history and earlier case law," saying "their decision was a legislative policy choice which shouldn't be made by the courts".
That's conservative talk.
In 2002, on the issue of abortion, Sotomayor upheld Bush's 'Global Gag Rule' (the policy of withholding funds for international groups that offer family planning information and services, including abortion).
On the issue of discrimination, she frequently rules against plaintiffs. For example, in 2004, she ruled against African-American corrections' officers who said they were retaliated against for filing discrimination complaints.
Sotomayor certainly doesn't look at the law through the prism of how it serves the interests of the People.
And Sotomayor was with the Scalia-Thomas-Alito faction that boycotted the SOTU - Sotomayor was in Guam, addressing a group of students and swearing in new members of the Guam Bar Association, a first for a US Supreme Court Justice (are you kidding, Sonia, missing the most public showing of US democracy and the 3 branches of government by leaving the US for a 5 day trip to Guam?).
We need more Earl Warrens. What we don't need are politicians looking to avoid a fight, and want to work "in a bipartisan manner". Republicans declared war on Democrats years and years ago, while Democrats keep trying to "make nice". Democratic politicians have gotten fat and lazy, feathering their own nests while Republicans have made long inroads into furthering corporate interests.
Whether Democrats are inept or corrupt, the result is the same: They have failed to protect the interests of the 99%. And all that they're putting out this campaign season is warmed-over Republican-like policies when drastic populist steps need to be taken.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
I don't see Obama second term appointing SCOTUS judges cast in the image and likeness of Alito, but I expect Romney would do so without hesitation.
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.
What we do know is that his instincts and efforts on how to go up against the powers-that-be were either for show or lame and inept. And his efforts continue to be (Current-TV). The same powers-that-be that got us into that war also took his lawfully elected presidency from him. And after running one of the worst, tone deaf campaigns in modern history. The outcome of that election is the only thing keeping Gore's campaign from being placed in the 'Ridicule'-file with Dukakis's (dressing him up as a soldier and putting him in the tank, his answer to the 'rape-of -his-wife'-question in the debate, etc.) and Romney's.
See here, here and here. And here - WTF was Gore thinking?
Gore picked the wrong man (Warren Christopher) to face off with Jim Baker in the post-election Florida fight. While Gore, Christopher and Democrats were playing baseball, Bush, Baker and Republicans were playing football. How did Gore not see that?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
I look back and do not see a President Gore invading Iraq - 9/11 or not - let alone doing so on a credit card, after emptying the treasury coffers with a "Reagan proved deficits don't matter" tax cut skewed to the wealthy.=============================
Not Ike. REAGAN.
In February 2008, Obama expressed his admiration for Reagan, who “brought stability” to the country after those years of unrest. Think about that. The years that ensured equality and civil rights when people stood up to the insanity of our involvement in Vietnam. Obama would have to make a hard left turn to qualify as a moderate Republican of the 20th century.
The two parties have been working in concert, in tandem, while giving the impression that they're diametrically opposed.
People forget that Clinton set up much of what BushCheney managed to do with legislation like the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Welfare Reform Act, assaults on civil liberties, etc.
And just as Republicans paralyzed any Clinton in the last years of his term from being able to deliver to the People, it would be deja vu all over again given the schemes that Bill Clinton has been involved in since leaving the White House.
In his book The Audacity of Hope, Obama presented himself as the latest in a long line of corporate, Democrats, interested in tinkering with the system but largely agreeing with the consensus on free markets, free trade, and US. military power.
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 Roger Hodge 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".
There really isn't any difference between the parties, only in their style and how they go about achieving the same ends.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
It's clear how much you love to hear yourself talk, but I'll pass. And just like the Republicans, you have zero interest, none, in the fact that the ACA makes it possible for people to see the doctor where once they could not. I say that makes you no better than the Republicans who fought tooth-and-nail, and continue to fight, against any sort of health care reform.
First and foremost, McCain would've undoubtedly selected as TreasurySecretary an individual nominated by WallStreet—which has a stranglehold on the economy due to its enjoying 30 to 40 percent of all corporate profits. If he didn’t select TimGeithner, a reliable servant of financial interests whose nomination might have allowed McCain to trumpet his “maverick” credentials, whoever he did select would clearly have also moved to bail out the financial institutions and allow them to water down needed financial reforms.
Ditto for the head of his NationalEconomicCouncil. Although appointing LarrySummers might have been a bit of a stretch, despite his yeoman work in destroying financial regulation—thus enriching his old boss RobertRubin and helping cause the Crash of 2008—McCain could easily have found a JackKemp-like Republican “supply-sider” who would have duplicated Summers’ signal achievement of expanding the deficit to the highest level since 1950 (though perhaps with a slightly higher percentage of tax cuts than the Obama stimulus). The economy would have continued to sputter along, with growth rates and joblessness levels little different from today’s, and possibly even worse.
But McCain’s election would have produced a major political difference: It would have increased Democratic clout in the House and Senate.
I see the same fearful hysteria over the possibility of a Romney presidency as in 2008 over a John McCain presidency.
Who would have thought that when John McCain lost the 2008 election that we'd still be contending with his plans for governing?
If McCain Had Won
McCain would probably have approved a failed troop surge in Afghanistan, engaged in worldwide extrajudicial assassination, destabilized nuclear-armed Pakistan, failed to bring Israel’s BenjaminNetanyahu to the negotiating table, expanded prosecution of whistle-blowers, sought to expand executive branch power, failed to close Guantanamo, failed to act on climate change, pushed both nuclear energy and opened new areas to domestic oil drilling, failed to reform the financial sector enough to prevent another financial catastrophe, supported an extension of the BushTaxCuts for the rich, presided over a growing divide between rich and poor, and failed to lower the jobless rate.
Nothing reveals the true state of American politics today more, however, than the fact that has undertaken all of these actions and, even more significantly, left the DemocraticParty far weaker than it would have been had McCain been elected. Few issues are more important than seeing behind the screen of a myth-making mass media, and understanding what this demonstrates about how power in America really works—and what needs to be done to change it.
What's coming of this election that should be blowing people's minds is a meme being pushed by the DemocraticParty and its operatives (you hear it on all of the cable news channels): That Reagan's tax policies were good, but today's party of Reagan has become too conservative for even Reagan and reject those policies.
Imagine that -- Obama and the Democratic Party is trying to align themselves with REAGAN. And we further see it with Nancy Pelosi announcing a few weeks ago that she can get on board with Simpson-Bowles, the Catfood Commission's recommendations in the lame duck session.
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.
Of the Democratic voters that I know, none are voting for Obama. In point of fact, the only people I know who are voting for Obama are Republicans; they get that he's really a Republican.
About Elections 2012
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
The fact is, real Democratic policies aren't that hard to sell to Americans. When most Americans want Medicare and other government programs which they've benefitted from to continue and teabaggers shout "No government control of healthcare; Get your hands off my Medicare", the answer is EDUCATION.
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.
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 AmericanDream, not to mention getting electricity and clean drinking water running to every home.
If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch and tactics. It's not that Bush and Rove were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush and Rove were just more ruthless doing what politicians had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks, don't take 'no' for an answer and never back away, you will wear the opposition down.
But Obama only does that to progressives.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
If Obama loses, it will be because of irresponsible people on the left who either didn't vote or wasted their vote on Stein.====================
And then there was Obama's sidelining of Democratic grassroots groups:
Friday, December 17, 2010
Why is Obama leaving the grass roots on the sidelines?
By Sam Graham-Felsen
But there's a larger problem looming.
Obama needs twice as much grass-roots support in the next election - and he's not going to get it by sidelining his supporters. If he continues to play politics as usual, Obama risks alienating not just the left but anyone who believed in the promise of bringing change to Washington.
Obama needs this list in 2012 - and he needs its members to dig much deeper than in the last election. The CitizensUnited ruling has allowed campaigns to become an unprecedented corporate cash free-for-all - and Obama will likely need to raise far more than $500 million from the grass roots to be competitive.
While Obama's political team intensely focuses on independents, the grassroots list seems like an afterthought. Every time Obama chooses to compromise behind closed doors, & keeps OFA quiet, he might win over a few independents. But he's also conveying a message that the grassroots doesn't really matter, that the bottom-up ethos of his candidacy doesn't apply to his presidency.
On Thursday, Obama and WhiteHouse staff met with a group of OFA volunteers who presented survey data and anecdotes on the state of the grass-roots base since the midterm elections. This is a positive sign, but the White House should move beyond gestures. Obama needs a senior adviser whose job is to be a liaison to the movement that elected him. This person needs to be in the room in senior-level strategy meetings, asking: How is this going to impact the list? What message will this send to the grass roots?
The argument you're trying to make is that Obama is really a populist, a liberal, and that there was nothing he could do. And that's WRONG.
Read this.
And after you read it, remember that Obama did what he could to discourage Democratic turnout in 2010.
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:
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.
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. “
If Republicans are such scvm (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 and Democrats continuing the war crimes of Bush & Cheney, and blocking investigations and prosecutions into their crimes?
How does a Democratic president, on the heels of the most criminal and corrupt administration in the nation's history, not replace Bush-era US attorneys? Presidents may fire US attorneys, and they do so routinely at the beginning of a new administration. It is unusual to fire US attorneys in midterm (as Bush did) except in cases of gross misconduct (which wasn’t the case during the Bush administration). This is what Obama's US attorneys do instead of returning the democracy to the American people -- Instead we get Bush-style obscenity prosecutions. And closing down medical marijuana dispensaries?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
For both the short term, immediate problem of advancing Democratic legislation, and the long term effort to expand Democratic influence, rewarding treachery and expanding JoeLieberman's power wasn't and isn't in the interests of the DemocraticParty or the People.
Do you really believe that Obama got nothing for that concession? No agreement that Lieberman would vote as Obama told him to vote? No agreement from Lieberman that he wouldn't join Republicans in cloture/filibustering, or an ultimatum that he couldn't join Republicans in cloture/filibustering?? No agreement that he would sign on to a public option?
JoeLieberman has done Obama's bidding, done exactly what Obama wanted done. Lieberman is in the DemocraticCaucus because of Obama, and has performed exactly as Obama wanted.
And during the healthcare reform debate, Obama never once pressured Lieberman for threatening to filibuster any legislation that had a public option in it - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/21/lieberman-obama-never-pre_n_399355.html
Obama did pressure Dennis Kucinich, crushed him, when his vote wasn't even needed. Obama went after Kucinich, the last remaining holdout on the Progressive Caucus, for threatening to vote no on the healthcare bill, and we all know how that ended. Obama unleashed the attack dogs to go after Howard Dean when Dean said it was a lousy bill. Dean was forced to get back into line.
But not Joe Lieberman. Not Blanche Lincoln. Not Mary Landrieu. Not Ben Nelson.
When Obama needed Blue Dogs like Landrieu and Nelson, he bought them. Sweetened the pot in legislation for their states. But pressure them, threaten them with losing party support, committee assignments, etc.? No.
And then let me remind you that ultimately Obama didn't even need 60 - He passed ACA through reconciliation. 50 +1.
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
And after July 7, 2009?
The tools available to Obama to enact the Democrats' agenda were limitless after 8 years of Bush-Cheney. Obama has refused to use them.
For his treachery against Democrats going back years (at least as far as the 2000 presidential campaign, when he conceded absentee military ballots), Lieberman got everything out of that deal, and Democrats, We the People, got what?
Do you really believe that Obama got nothing for that concession? No agreement that Lieberman would vote as Obama told him to vote? Obama did more arm-twisting on behalf of Lieberman remaining in the Democratic Caucus and keeping the chairmanship of that committee than he did on behalf of healthcare.
Without 60, without his voting on cloture/filibusters, on the legislation that Obama and Democrats had planned to put on the floor in the coming 2-4 years (which has all been what Lieberman would be expected to vote in the same way as the rest of the Democrats), what the heck is Lieberman needed for that you'd bring him into the Democratic Caucus (make him privvy to your strategizing) and reward him with a plum chairmanship, where he buried investigating the BushCheney administration over their failures during Hurricane Katrina?
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
health insurance ≠ medical treatment
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.
Al Franken. There couldn't be a less effective, more disingenuous, Democratic senator around.
Whether it's extending Bush's tax cuts or voting for COICA, Franken is one of the DLC Democrats that Democratic voters need to get rid of if we're to restore the Constitution and undo the damage that the corporatocracy has done to the nation.
What the FCC is doing doesn't happen without Obama and the plutocratic Congress (enough Democrats and Republicans) on board. They're provided cover for Franken.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Let me exemplify the problem that I, as an old liberal Democrat, have with the state of our government and elections.
You would think that Democratic politicians would be for the same things that I, as a liberal Democrat, am for -- Smart, progressive policies. Even just the basics, what might be called "compromises", like leaving marijuana illegal, but just rescheduling it. Or leaving it illegal for recreational use, but leaving medical marijuana dispensaries alone. Like (on another topic), forget about stopping GMOs from getting into the food supply (oh how I wish), but at least allowing states to permit the labeling of GMOs on food so that I can make a choice whether I want to put GMOs into my body and my children's and grandchildren's bodies.
Here is the roll call vote on the 6/21/2012 US Senate vote on a bill to permit states to require any food, beverage or other edible product offered for sale have a label on it indicating that it contains a genetically engineered ingredient.
Guess who else voted against this?
Democratic senators Al Franken, Sherrod Brown, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Ben Cardin, Jeff Bingaman, Tom Harkin, Debbie Stabenow, among other Democrats. Monsanto has bought and paid for them. I'm told they're referred to as "The Monsanto Senators".
Al Franken, fercrissakes.
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. Both parties are corrupt to the bone.
This liberal Democrat is done with the Democratic Party.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Democratic politicians in liberal districts get to talk a good game about being champions of the People, but when push comes to shove, if their votes are needed to cross over and kill liberal legislation (like a public option or access to ab0rtion), the DNC will make sure they are covered come election time, with massive infusions of money into their campaign war chests and crushing any principled challenges to them from the left in their primaries.
The Kabuki theater that Democrats performed over promises like a public option and ending the wars (they're not ended; they're expanded and being fought with mercenaries paid for by you and me) are two great cases in point.
Let's look more closely at the Progressive Caucus, what charlatans they are, and how they tag-team us.
As the head of the Progressive Caucus, Lynn Woolsey led 79 of the 82 members of the caucus to pledge that they would not vote for any healthcare reform legislation that didn't include a public option.
Woolsey then led the 79 to renege on the pledge.
Lynn Woolsey likes to brag that she was the first to bring a resolution to end the war in Iraq. She, and congressional Democrats (and Obama) ran on ending the practice of paying for the wars through supplemental emergency spending bills, and putting the wars on budget (see why that is significant here).
Democrats have had the ability to accomplish putting the wars on budget (and thus end the wars) since they took over control of Congress in 2006 and didn't it. They didn't need Republicans to do it.
Unbeknownst to Lynn Woolsey's constitutents (it was never reported in her district's newspapers): Progressive Congresswoman Woolsey Endorses Pro-War Blue Dog Jane Harman Over Progressive Marcy Winograd
'Progressives' like Woolsey have let Obama continue with just about all of Bush-Cheney's policies, and wars, and let Obama go Bush-Cheney even better, by letting Obama assert, unchallenged, that presidents have the right to kill Americans with no due process or oversight, push for 'preventive detention' and no transparency of anything a president asserts should be his secret.
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
"Why do you believe that Democrats are opposed to Citizens' United?"=============================
Uh, because I seem to recall Obama taking time out of his State of the Union address to rebuke the Supreme Court. And a large number of Democratic candidate E-Mails I receive tell me they're opposed to Citizens United. And the four non-Reagan/Bush Supreme Court justices took the minority position in Citizens United (i.e. the position opposing it). So yeah, my simple mind sees all that as evidence that the Democrats are opposed to Citizens United, but what do I know, I'm not an ideologue.
Congress is as Democratic as it's going to be for the next generation. Everybody complains about Congress, but it's the other guys' elected representatives that they're complaining about, not their own.
In 2010, when Obama and Democrats had refused to use the political capital given by them when 10 million more voters voted for them, voters used their votes to dump incumbents -- On both sides of the aisle. Democratic voters dumped BlueDog incumbents big time; liberals only lost 3 seats.
The real problem is that Big Money/Big Business controls the political process, which includes high-priced propaganda campaigns that spin policy and candidates as things they're not. Corporations have been able to control politicians, candidates, the primary process, so that populist candidates can't get a seat at the table.
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.
Republicans, with the smallest minority, have managed to thwart Democrats, who've had the greatest majority in decades. You would think that with Republicans controlling the House, Democrats would've turned the tables and thwarted Republicans' continuing legislation like Bush's tax cuts for the rich? Are Democrats just stupld?
Obama never pressured BenNelson (or BlancheLincoln, or any BlueDog). The Democratic leadership could've taken away committee chairs (BlancheLincoln's, too) of members in their caucus that filibustered a PublicOption for healthcare. They didn't.
The DNC could've taken away reelection funds. They didn't.
Reid could've actually forced Republicans and turncoat Democratic senators to filibuster. He didn't (and doesn't).
The ProgressiveCaucus could have kept their pledge about not voting for a bill that didn't include a robust PublicOption. They didn't.
Obama DID unleash the attack dogs to go after HowardDean when Dean said it was a lousy bill. Dean was then forced to get back into line. Obama went after Kucinich, the last remaining holdout on the ProgressiveCaucus, for threatening to vote no on the healthcare bill, and we all know how that ended.
About Elections 2012
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Republicans haven't been filibustering anything; they've only been threatening to filibuster.
Harry Reid could've actually forced Republicans and turncoat Democratic senators to filibuster. He didn't and doesn't.
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) for Democrats to get bills passed without Republican votes.
http://www.senate.gov/CRSReports/crs-publish.cfm?pid='0E%2C*P%2C%3B%3F %22%20%20%20%0A
http://yglesias.thinkprogress. org/2009/08/hertzberg-on-the-constitutionality-of- the-filibuster/
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. They're 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 scr3w 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.
About Elections 2012
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
When it comes to achieving corporations' business, Democrats are remarkably competent. Obama is even more competent in that he's been able to give himself some distance from policies that displease Democratic voters ('plausible deniability') in a variety of ways that keep his favorable ratings high.
Whether it's renaming Republican legislation ("Romney healthcare " to "Affordable Health Insurance Act") to getting other legislators like Joe Lieberman to actually do the heavy lifting legislatively, Obama's 'most ardent admirers' lay themselves on the line for him out of their ignorance of what he's actually doing. One of the more cowardly of Obama's act was his leaving the country as he launched a war against Libya without authorization by the Congress of the United States.
It is in retrospect that Obama's corruptness, his treachery, should be obvious for any willing to open their eyes.
Obama never wanted a public option or single payer. But to get both off the table, he had to do it in stages. Single payer first, with big talk about "I will not sign any legislation that doesn't include a robust public option". That had to happen right off the bat, before negotiations even began.
To make sure that there wouldn't be a public option in any final legislation (and that there really wouldn't be any reform of the system, that the insurance and pharmaceutical industries would continue to be able to make massive profits), single payer had to be taken off the table before negotiations ever began. Out of sight, out of mind. And that's exactly what Obama did.
Once that happened, then a public option was used as a bargaining chip, to be given up, and we know that from several sources, including Tom Daschle and Richard Kirsch.
A caller on CSpan not long 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.
KEEP READING
About Elections 2012
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
A vote for Obama is a vote for the DLC-controlled Democratic Party, i.e., the corporate Republican wing of the Democratic Party.
About Elections 2012
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
I have to advocate this position: this time around, reelect President Obama and give him not only Democratic majorites in both houses of Congress but FILIBUSTER-PROOF majorities, throwing out all the so-called "blue-dog" Democrats who sided with the Republicans to kill the public option during the health care reform debate.======================================
The Green Party and Ms. Stein are definitely on the right road, but I have to advocate this position: this time around, reelect President Obama============================
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