Obama's Stimulus Failure: Tampa Recipients Have No Clue They Got Funds

Is that all you can offer?  Name-calling and cliches?  

Under Obama we're going in the same "right"(wing) direction - We're not going in the correct direction.  What your comments tell me is that you aren't informed, don't know the policies and legislation or the politics that Obama has played in these last 3+ years to keep the Corporate Masters of the Universe happy (and his 'most ardent fans' in the dark, like mushrooms, feeding them BS).  
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Jeb Bush Speech At 2012 Republican Convention: Finally, A Defense Of The Bush Record

Obama has made improvements in healthcare, credit laws, women's rights and more. I hope he knows how to sell what a great Presidency he has had.

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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 currently receiving unemployment benefits, Obama's deal covered only 2 million, & many of them will get crumbs from his deal because in spite of the 13-month extension, benefits will be cut off for many of those in the coming months when they reach 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 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 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."

Extending Bush's tax cuts was an absolutely wretched deal, but standard for Obama, who has  a long record of negotiating lousy deals on ordinary citizens' behalf.  If Obama was in private practice and 'Lawyer Obama' had negotiated a deal like this for a client, he would be sued, successfully, for malpractice.

ACA is a massive giveaway to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.  Health insurance is NOT affordable, quality medical care.  

Lily Ledbetter isn't a "woman's rights" bill.  And the finance reform legislation does nothing to prevent what happened to our economy from happening again.

Both parties are thinning the herd.
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Obama's Stimulus Failure: Tampa Recipients Have No Clue They Got Funds

Obama's no better (nor is any DLC-contro­lled Democratic­) than Republican­s.  

Obama (like all profession­al Democrats) is just a different stage than Republican­s in the life cycle of an American politician­.  Like caterpilla­rs and moths/butt­erflies.  If you'd never seen a chrysalis or cocoon, you wouldn't know that the caterpilla­r is actually the same creature as the moth/butte­rfly, spending half its life crawling on and devouring leaves only to pupate and transform itself into a moth/butte­rfly so that it can fly around and feed off of other plants.  And sweaters.

If Obama is a one term president, he'll have delivered to the CorporateM­asters of the universe. He'll hand the baton off to Republican­s for the fleecing to continue and go on to reap the benefits from his treacherou­s betrayal of the People, i.e., the same sort of corporate payoffs that presidents since GeraldFord have enjoyed.

Over the course of US history, corporatio­ns have managed to game our political system, and done it so effectivel­y that the two-party system competes to serve corporate interests while defending that service as, "What's good for GM (corporati­ons) is good for America (the People)".

Democrats and Republican­s are corporate tools. Like siblings competing for the attention and approval (campaign contributi­ons) of a parent, Republican­s and DLC-contro­lled Democrats try to outdo each other in delivering for their real constituen­t, BigCorpora­tions. The trick for them has been to make it seem as if they were really working on behalf of thePeople.

If you must continue to delude yourself into thinking Obama's a good guy who never would've started those wars, and who has only good intentions but got a bad deal, think of all this as a business plan where the CorporateM­asters of the Universe have charted out their plans years in advance and select the politician­/personali­ty best able to achieve those plans in 4 year increments­. If you want to lie the country into war for oil and war-profit­eering, then GeorgeWBus­h is your man to front it (with DickCheney­, the former SecretaryO­fDefense who initiated the privatizin­g of the military a decade earlier, actually running the operation from the shadows).

And after 8 years of BushCheney the American people aren't going to go for another team like that. They're going to want HOPE and CHANGE, with a persona they can believe and trust. BarackObam­a.

Obama's no better than BushCheney­. His 'most ardent admirers' just like the packaging better. I'm not talking skin color, although that may be a factor for some of them; I'm talking about how a 'D' after the name is a brand they trust believe and trust in, despite the fact that it's the same 'soap' (product).
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Jeb Bush Speech At 2012 Republican Convention: Finally, A Defense Of The Bush Record

George W. Bush should be spending 24/7 with his lawyers, working on a way to stay out of prison.

That Jeb Bush can get up in front of the nation on television and laud his brother is because Obama and the DLC-Democrats have blocked all investigations and prosecutions into Bush-Cheney and Republicans, and have allowed them to resurrect themselves and take back control over government.

And because of Obama's failure to restore the Constitution and return us to the rule of law, by holding Bush, Cheney, et al, accountable, Jeb Bush and his sons have been elevated back onto the national stage. So expect a Jeb Bush run at the presidency in the not-to-distant-future. Perhaps with Liz Cheney on the ticket with him.

The buck stops squarely at Obama's feet on this.
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Jeb Bush Speech At 2012 Republican Convention: Finally, A Defense Of The Bush Record

Jeb Please Stop with Integrity, Courage and Honor. He was appointed President in the first place

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Remember who it is that's talking about integrity, courage and honor - Jeb Bush, the architect behind purging lawful voters in order to steal an election for his brother.

The Bush family is a criminal enterprise.
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Jeb Bush Speech At 2012 Republican Convention: Finally, A Defense Of The Bush Record

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 Democratic Party (the DLC is referred to as the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, the pro-corpor­ate branch), and that Democrats in Congress and in the White House have 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 cycle the past few months are Obama's new NAFTA-like treaties which mean more Americans' jobs will be outsourced overseas.  And then there's the 'Super Congress' (and its plan for gutting Social Security and Medicare), along with the Dream Act ticking along (which means a flood of immigrants working for slave wages).  

We The People are being transforme­d, from sheep to sacrificia­l lambs.
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Jeb Bush Speech At 2012 Republican Convention: Finally, A Defense Of The Bush Record

Politician­s WANT a high deficit so that they can create a fiscal crisis that forces us to cut vital safety net programs.  It's what Grover Norquist (president of Americans for Tax Reform, and George W. Bush's once-a-wee­k lunch buddy for the 8 years of the Bush-Chene­y Administra­tion) meant when he said,"Our goal is to shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub."
 
During the 2000 election, when Gore was talking about "lock box" and Bush was campaignin­g on tax cuts ("We gotta get the money out of Washington or else the politishun­s'll spend it!"), I was writing about how Bush and Grover Norquist intended to bankrupt the country as a back door to ending the Great Society.

I was writing about conservati­ves frustratio­n over their futile attempts to end Social Security and other New Dea/Great Society programs, and how even their own (Republica­n politician­s in Congress) would do it directly because it was so popular with the People.  It would end their political careers if they went at ending Social Security with a head-on vote. They would have to go about it indirectly­, lining up the ducks in a row, for the step-by-st­ep dismantlin­g of the singlemost effective program in the history of the US for lifting people out of poverty.  

The way they would do it would be to get the nation into so much debt, into bankruptcy­, that there would be no money left in SocialSecurity.  That's how they would kill it.

When GeorgeWBush got into the White House after the contentiou­s 2000 election (when Republican­s stole the election), when Bush rammed those tax cuts through, no Democrats talked about "what about if we need that money for a rainy day?" Or "find ourselves in a war?"

Around 2006, when Democrats won the election and talk was rampant about Bush's legacy, when even conservati­ves were repudiatin­g Bush, Bush was saying that he was certain he'd be vindicated in history as " a great conservati­ve".

Even conservati­ves didn't see what he was talking about (that what Bush is counting on is the end of the Great Society programs, like Social Security and Medicare, vindicatin­g him as both a great president and a great conservati­ve).

By the way, not one journalist asked Bush why he thought he'd be vindicated by history; they still don't, as he's made the rounds of his book tour since leaving the White House.

Democratic politician­s aren't stupid, by the way.  They knew what Bush and Republican­s were up to, and they let it happen.  

Why?  Why would Democratic politician­s want to end Social Security and Medicare?  

KEEP READING
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Jeb Bush Speech At 2012 Republican Convention: Finally, A Defense Of The Bush Record

Newly declassified documents published at the National Security Archive prove beyond all reasonable doubt that the Bush administration planned to topple Saddam Hussein and invade Iraq as early as January, 2001, and were making strategic plans and resource allocations as early as November, 2001.

January 30, 2001 – Bush administration principals (agency heads) meet for the
first time and discuss the Middle East, including Bush’s intention to disengage from the Israel-Palestine peace process and “How Iraq is destabilizing the region.” Bush directs Rumsfeld and JCS chairman Hugh Shelton to examine military options for Iraq; CIA director George Tenet is directed to improve intelligence on the country. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke are both struck by the emphasis on confronting Iraq, an aim consistent with Rumsfeld’s hiring of Wolfowitz and later Feith, well known for their bellicosity on the issue, for high-level Pentagon positions. (Source: EBB/Franks Timeline (PDF))

When did we invade Afghanistan? Oh, that's right...it was October 7, 2001.

Walking through these documents makes it clear that the Bush Administration -- from Day One -- intended to invade Iraq at some point in their reign of terror. Here is a memo (PDF) dated January 23, 2001 outlining the "Origins of the Iraq Regime Change Policy". This was requested by Vice President-elect Dick Cheney before taking office, presumably as a way to justify policy formation around aggressive US efforts for "regime change" in Iraq.

This memo (PDF) written on November 27, 2001 should send cold chills up and down your spine. It is a list of talking points from Rumsfeld to Franks about how to handle a run-up to a full-scale Iraq invasion. November 27th, 51 days after Afghanistan was invaded. And check this talking point:

Unlike in Afghanistan, important to have ideas in advance about who would rule afterwards.

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, et al, should be sitting in a cell facing war crimes' charges.
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Female Voters Prefer Obama To Romney, Are Focused On Economy, Poll Says

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".
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Obama's Stimulus Failure: Tampa Recipients Have No Clue They Got Funds

Obama didn't fight for what was needed to get us out of this hole; the stimulus was like lightly putting your foot on a brake of a speeding truck going 120 miles an hour into a concrete wall.  It was way too little and as a result, we're poised to hit that wall after the election.

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 currently receiving unemployment benefits, Obama's deal covered only 2 million, & many of them will get crumbs from his deal because in spite of the 13-month extension, benefits will be cut off for many of those in the coming months when they reach 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 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 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."

Extending Bush's tax cuts was an absolutely wretched deal, but standard for Obama, who has  a long record of negotiating lousy deals on ordinary citizens' behalf.  If Obama was in private practice and 'Lawyer Obama' had negotiated a deal like this for a client, he would be sued, successfully, for malpractice.

The purpose of the deal was so that Democratic political operatives could say, "Obama helped the unemployed"; most readers won't know the actual facts of how Obama sold out the American people.  Again.  Obama and Democrats have no jobs plan either.  Both parties are thinning the herd.
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Obama's Stimulus Failure: Tampa Recipients Have No Clue They Got Funds

Whether they knew or not, the stimulus was weak tea.  The economy is poised on the brink and will collapse after the election.

A double-dip recession (we're in a Depression­; enough of trying to sugarcoat it) is pre-ordain­ed after Bush's Obama's tax cuts for the rich and Obama's caving to Republican­s on 78 percent of the cuts they wanted..  

This game that Obama and the DLC-contro­lled Democrats and Republican­s are in is about trying to cast the other side as the party to blame when the bottom falls out.  Because both sides work on behalf of the thieves who got our national treasure, and their job now is to keep the People managed, orderly, the system of unregulate­d capitalism and plutocracy intact while the rich get to keep the booty.

3 million foreclosur­es down, 11 million more in the pipeline.  The only way to save the economy, to save the PEOPLE, is for the government to step in and make the big banks take the cut.  15 million families are about to face foreclosur­e.  <-- Blue highlighti­ng means it's a link to be clicked.

This is going to spur new rounds of firings, another spike in unemployme­nt, and more foreclosur­es. More Americans' jobs, good jobs, will be outsourced overseas.  Corporatio­ns still enjoy tax incentives for moving their operations overseas.  GE made record profits last year ($14 billion), didn't pay a dime in taxes and got $3 billion of taxpayers' money in rebates.  Bush's tax cuts for the rich are now Obama's tax cuts for the rich; in that Obama deal, the poor had their taxes INCREASED, and the payroll tax 'holiday' sets SocialSecu­rity up for its end.

The economy isn't improving.   

Obama's in office to mellow-tal­k us into accepting that which we'd never stand still for if we had contentiou­s fire-in-th­e-belly Democratic politician­s actually fighting on our behalf. Obama's in the White House to ease us into accepting the greatest heist in the history of the world, and never even think about trying to get back the money that was ripped off from the middle and poor classes.

What Obama's doing is presiding over the end game of America, letting the 'Haves' pick the (our) bones clean.  The more we see of Obama in action, the more 'deals' he makes, the more people realize that Obama's a continuati­on of the cruel policies of BushCheney­.

We need another FDR.  
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Obama's Stimulus Failure: Tampa Recipients Have No Clue They Got Funds

And it's not as if we hadn't tread these waters before - We had a blueprint for how to get through this recession Depression with what FDR did in the 1930s.  We even had a blueprint for how to avoid the stall we're in now, from when FDR caved to Republicans after the initial stimulus funds had shown positive effects and he took his foot off the gas (stimulus funds) at their demand.
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Michael Moore: Mitt Romney Will Win In November (VIDEO)

Obama was supposed to be a transforma­tive politician­. His election was seen by many not only as the end of the eight year-long Bush era nightmare, but also as the final curtain for thirty years of neoliberal politics dating back to at least Reagan. From day one, plenty of liberals were ready to anoint him as the most progressiv­e president in history.

Now, two years into his presidency­, such grand hopes have faded. Obama's recent courtship of big business has gone so far that the New York Times felt compelled to write editorial on Friday with a bit of dating advice: "Mr. Obama must take care not to let his agenda be taken over entirely by corporate interests. They do not belong to the only constituen­cy he serves... Mr. Obama should keep in mind that the interests of corporatio­ns and their bosses are not necessaril­y always aligned with those of the country."

To add insult to injury, the cover of the latest issue of TIME Magazine is titled, "Why Obama Loves Reagan," and features a photoshopp­ed picture of their budding "bromance"­: the two stand laughing hysterical­ly, Reagan with his arm around Obama's shoulder. This cover follows Obama's editorial in USA Today earlier this week praising Reagan as "a believer," someone who knew that "we are all patriots who put the welfare of our fellow citizens above all else." Yes, for those who have forgotten, we must all thank Ronald Reagan for his devotion to ushering in a classless utopia.

In the wake of Obama's ongoing drift to the right, many progressiv­es find themselves asking what happened to the Obama they thought they knew, the guy who spoke to the aspiration­s of millions of ordinary Americans during his presidenti­al campaign?

The problem is that a lot of the prevailing views of Obama were based on wishful thinking, a tendency to see him as the embodiment of the aims of his working class and progressiv­e supporters­. This was never the real Obama. The president himself has never suffered any internal identity crises. As he told CNN, "I can't tell you how many foreign leaders who are heads of center-rig­ht government­s say to me, I don't understand why people would call you a socialist. In my country, you'd be considered a conservati­ve." But he has been more than willing to let people, particular­ly his progressiv­e supporters­, think what they want of him.

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Michael Moore: Mitt Romney Will Win In November (VIDEO)

Obama has achieved what Bush-Cheney only dreamt about and couldn't get done: A long war with no Democratic voter opposition, massive giveaways to Big Dirty Energy with no Democratic voter opposition, continuation of Bush's tax cuts, etc.

Come the lame duck session after the election, Obama will embrace Simpson-Bowles (the groundwork has been laid, with Democratic leaders already saying they'll get behind it) to cut Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, etc.

Obama's been more effective for realizing Republicans' dreams than a Republican (or an amateurish, politically, Mitt Romney-Paul Rand administration) could be with Democratic voters pressuring their elected representatives to resist GOP plans.
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Michael Moore: Mitt Romney Will Win In November (VIDEO)

It's because the candidate with the most money wins 94% of the time in US elections.

Astonishingly, it's why Obama came out this week to "seriously consider" a Constitutional amendment overturning Citizens' United.  Pure lawyer-speak -- Not a call to do it, but to "consider it".  Like there's all the time in the world.
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