Spintested: 12/01/10

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Bernanke: Long-Term Unemployment Has Severe 'Social Consequences'

Who is this really news to?

How does anyone who doesn't know this get into a position of power and authority in US institutions?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Democrats (and Bloggers) Asking the Wrong Questions

There is no way a "Progressive Party" could move more than a few Congressional seats on the coasts or liberal college districts.

======================================

That's certainly the DLC's rhetoric.

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 & 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 R0ve were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush & R0ve were just more ruthless in doing what politicians and the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks, don't take 'no' for an answer and never back away, you will wear the opposition down.

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

Democrats (and Bloggers) Asking the Wrong Questions

At the top of Big Businesses ' shopping lists to Democrats and Republican s is "Give us more money. And if you can't do that, if you can't fool the average American voter into going along with that, then let us be able to rake it in as we've been doing."

Obama, DLC-Democrats and Republicans have been gaming our government to deliver (and to receive, by way of contributions to their campaign war chests) more of the same. At a time when reregulating, nationalizing banks, businesses and industries (OIL) is obvious to everyone, politicians and corporate media are collaborating in Kabuki theater to drive it from the front pages and off of Americans' minds.

Obama was elected because more voters than ever in the history of the nation thought he was offering a new way. Beyond what we'd been doing for the past 30 years, and that goes for both Republicans and Democrats. And what had Democrats been doing?

KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Bailouts Are For Banks: Unemployed People Get Zilch

On Dylan Ratigan, Eliot Spitzer and Larry McDonald explain how banks paying back TARP monies doesn't begin to cover what's been stolen.

"Why Aren't We Demanding Restitution?"

About Unemployment
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Democrats (and Bloggers) Asking the Wrong Questions

Democratic voters have mistakenly believed that Obama and Democrats were for strong regulations on banks, Wall Street, investigations, prosecutions, restitution of what has been robbed from the middle class and poor for the past 30+ years, environmental clean-up, clean, sustainable renewable energy (and that isn't nuclear), putting an end to the wars and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, affordable, quality universal healthcare (which Obama's healthcare legislation is not), and more.

The DLC-controlled Democratic Party gives lip service to these and all populist issues, because 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.

If you go back and watch Candidate Obama's speeches, interviews and debates in 2008, and 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. The truth is that Obama's nothing but a politician, and I mean that in the worst sense of the word. In the 'used car salesman' sense. It turns out that doing what's right for transnational corporations is what Obama is about, and trying to sell it as good for Americans is what he does afterwards. He's the epitome of the 1950s Republican, "What's good for GM is good for America." He did a snow job on everybody.

KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Poll Watch -- November, 2010

Can we declare the debate over?:

Privately, Obama describes himself as a Blue Dog Democrat.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Administration Worked With Republicans To Kill Bush Torture Probe, WikiLeaks Cable Reveals

Can we declare the debate over?:

Privately, Obama describes himself as a Blue Dog Democrat.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Administration Worked With Republicans To Kill Bush Torture Probe, WikiLeaks Cable Reveals

Hillary Gets Wiki-Served
By Robert Scheer

Hillary Clinton should cut out the whining about what the Obama administration derides as “stolen cables” and confront the unpleasant truths they reveal about the contradictions of U.S. foreign policy and her own troubling performance. As with the earlier batch of WikiLeaks, in this latest release the corruption of our partners in Iraq and Afghanistan stands in full relief, and the net effect of nearly a decade of warfare is recognized as a strengthening of Iran’s influence throughout the region.

Do we as voters not have a need to know that our State Department says that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half brother of the Afghan leader we are backing and himself the head of government in the most contested province, “is widely understood to be corrupt and a narcotics trafficker”? Or that authorities working with our Drug Enforcement Administration discovered Afghanistan’s then-vice president smuggling $52 million in cash out of his country, a nation that U.S. taxpayers are bankrolling?

KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Administration Worked With Republicans To Kill Bush Torture Probe, WikiLeaks Cable Reveals

On Democracy Now!, Noam Chomsky: WikiLeaks Cables Reveal "Profound Hatred for Democracy on the Part of Our Political Leadership"
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Administration Worked With Republicans To Kill Bush Torture Probe, WikiLeaks Cable Reveals

Another Eric Holder investigation closed:

Despite a "prima facie case of a conspiracy to violate, and substantial violation of the revolving door statute,” said Stanley Brand, a Washington lawyer who specializes in defending clients investigated by the government, the DoJ has declined to prosecute Senate John Ensign.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

WikiLeaks' Amazon Servers Go Offline (LIVE UPDATES)

Psssst! People on the left:

Should Amazon have dropped Wikileaks?

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

WikiLeaks' Amazon Servers Go Offline (LIVE UPDATES)

zardinuk

"Second batch of leaks were pretty boring, military dispatches. Seems like the same stuff that the CENTCOM puts out daily, just in more detail."

============================================================

They're only boring if you don't recognize their significance, as you apparently don't.

Yes, they are what CENTCOM puts out daily, just in more detail, and the significance of them is that they verify what had been suspected for a long time (but what the military and our government had been denying): They confirm that many more civilians were k!lled, and identified, too, for the first time, than our government has been admitting. It shows that while the government was saying, "Oh we don't keep numbers, we don't know how many civilians we've k!lled", in fact the government did know, did keep track, and was actively deceiving American citizens for whom these government employees work.

While our government was lying to us about how many innocents it was k!lling in our names, it was actively engaged in trying to justify attacking a sovereign nation after no provocation, after Iy!ng us into the war in the first place.

AND WE'RE STILL IN THAT WAR!

We're still illegally occupying a sovereign nation. Two, as a matter of fact, going on five.

That's just one among many other points and l!es being told to us by our government.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

WikiLeaks' Amazon Servers Go Offline (LIVE UPDATES)

We, The People, are our government, and our government has been Iy!ng to us about what it's doing IN OUR NAMES.

You really need to get your head straightened up about who the 'bosses' are in a democracy.
About Wikileaks
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

WikiLeaks' Amazon Servers Go Offline (LIVE UPDATES)

Ok, what I will not be spending on gifts this holiday season at Amazon is now going to Wikileaks.

I'm also making some separate contributions to Wikileaks in the names of Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Joe Lieberman, Barack Obama, Robert Gibbs, Robert Gates, Mike Huckabee, and Sarah Palin. I'll be sending hard copy cards to them telling them that donations have been made in their names to Wikileaks.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

WikiLeaks' Amazon Servers Go Offline (LIVE UPDATES)

I swear, I was just about to place a large holiday order with Amazon.

That's not going to happen now.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Democrats Call GOP's Bluff With Vote To Extend Middle Class Tax Cuts

David Axelrod on Hardball yesterday, spewing the GOP'S talking points!:

"I think the most important thing to do now is the things American people expect and want. One is to make sure they don't wake up on January 1st with a very large tax increasebecause the tax cuts were scheduled to expire at that time and there's a great sense of urgency on the part of the president. I think that is shared on the part of the republicans to make sure that doesn't happen."

This is right out of the Republicans' playbook.

Republicans have been framing the expiration of Bush's tax cuts as a tax increase.

Tax cuts do NOT increase the national debt, and that's just what Bush's tax "cuts" did (and Bush's tax "cuts" should always have quotes around them, either actual or air quotes when talking about them, to suggest they were always phony).

Bush's tax "cuts" were all borrowed and spent. All gone, and they did nothing to stimulate our economy.

By ending Bush's tax "cuts", Democrats are stopping the flow of red ink.

Axelrod and Obama have embraced the Republicans' perspective.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Democrats Call GOP's Bluff With Vote To Extend Middle Class Tax Cuts

Republicans have been framing the expiration of Bush's tax cuts as a tax increase.

Tax cuts do NOT increase the national debt, and that's just what Bush's tax "cuts" did (and "cuts" should always have quotes around them, either actual or air quotes when talking about them, to suggest they were always phony).

Bush's tax "cuts" were all borrowed and spent. All gone, and they did nothing to stimulate our economy.

By ending Bush's tax "cuts", Democrats are stopping the flow of red ink.

Axelrod and Obama have embraced the Republicans' perspective.
About Bush Tax Cuts
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Democrats Call GOP's Bluff With Vote To Extend Middle Class Tax Cuts

The problem is with the Democratic Party as a whole; primarying Obama (and/or running liberal candidates against imcumbent Democrats in primaries) isn't going to solve the problem, if it's even possible to solve it and save us all (if they haven't managed to game the entire system to keep them in place until we descend into banana republicanism). I suppose if there are any real and true Democrats left in the DLC-controlled Democratic Party, they might stage a rebellion and a revolution within the party itself, but there's no role for the People in that (unless Democratic voters are willing to get active, join and participate in the Democratic Party en masse now).

It's more likely that an internal purge (without the outside new blood of Democratic voters joining the party and becoming active internally within the party) would just be a bloodbath, leaving the Democratic Party in ruins.

There's something to be said for that, but it would revitalize the Republican Party, by driving the DLC Democrats to the Republican Party, swamping and taking over the GOP from the extreme rightwingers controlling it now. That may be the only way for a third party, encompassing the values and ideology of the left, to emerge and become viable.
About Bush Tax Cuts
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Democrats Call GOP's Bluff With Vote To Extend Middle Class Tax Cuts

Here's an example of how they tag team us:

Lynn Woolsey, head of the Progressive Caucus, 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 haven't done it. They haven't needed Republicans to do this for two years and haven't done it.

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. 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

Democrats 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.

Democrats have abdicated their Constitutionally-required role of oversight of the executive branch; they failed to perform it during the Bush-Cheney administration, and still don't with one of their own in the White House.

KEEP READING
About Bush Tax Cuts
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Democrats Call GOP's Bluff With Vote To Extend Middle Class Tax Cuts

I just wrote that "One of them is mine, it's not abusive and it's not pro-Obama or Democrats, and that my non-abusive comments critical of Obama and Democrats are regularly scrubbed on HP". I hit the 'Post Comment" and out came "undefined".

Let's see if this one goes through.
About Bush Tax Cuts
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Democrats Call GOP's Bluff With Vote To Extend Middle Class Tax Cuts

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About Bush Tax Cuts
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Democrats Call GOP's Bluff With Vote To Extend Middle Class Tax Cuts

Where's the accomplishment in getting 420 pieces of legislation passed in one chamber of Congress but not the other? It only becomes law when both chambers pass it and a president signs it.

I know most of you know this, but for those who don't:

Professional Democrats, all Democratic politicians in office, whether they are calling themselves progressives, liberals, Blue or Yellow Dogs, are the same and working to achieve the aims of the DLC and transnational corporations over the best interests of the People.

If they are a professional political and member of the Democratic Party, and in Washington, they have bought into and are supporting the culture of transnational corporations as their real constituents. Their only problem with this is that corporations don't vote, and politicians need votes to get into office. So they, Democratic politicians, try to convince the People they're working on our behalf with weasel-words, rhetoric designed to lead voters into thinking one thing when the opposite is true.

Obama can say, "I got health insurance for the People", but having health insurance isn't what Americans wanted and isn't what Democratic voters put Obama and Democrats into power to get for them. Having health insurance isn't the same thing as everyone being able to get affordable, quality medical treatment.

Democrats in both chambers of Congress work as a team. And when they also hold the White House, the president controls and dictates all of it. They identify what they hope to achieve (pro-corporate legislation) and then strategize how to get it while saving each other's hides with constituents come election time.

Those in liberal districts get to talk a good game about being champions for the People, but when push comes to shove, if their votes are needed to cross over and k!ll liberal legislation (like a public option or access to abortion), 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.

Here's an example of how they tag-team us:

KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Democrats Call GOP's Bluff With Vote To Extend Middle Class Tax Cuts

David Axelrod on Hardball yesterday, spewing the GOP'S talking points!:

"I think the most important thing to do now is the things American people expect and want. One is to make sure they don't wake up on January 1st with a very large tax increasebecause the tax cuts were scheduled to expire at that time and there's a great sense of urgency on the part of the president. I think that is shared on the part of the republicans to make sure that doesn't happen."

This is right out of the Republicans' playbook.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Democrats Call GOP's Bluff With Vote To Extend Middle Class Tax Cuts

If Bush's tax cuts are allowed to expire as they are set to on December 31st, the deficit would be cut in half, instantly.

If the tax cuts are continued for the rich, we would have to borrow $700 billion to pay for it.

If the tax cuts are continued for everyone, we would have to borrow $3 trillion to pay for it.

And if there is a 2-year extension "compromise", we would still have to borrow $70-140 billion for the rich's portion and $383 billion for the middle class's portion.

Obama is expanding the wars into Yemen.

Obama's broken yet another promise (to begin ending the Afghanistan war in 2011), putting Americans off now until 2014, at least.

Obama wants to expand drone strikes in Pakistan.

The costs for reconnaissance drones in Iraq and Afghanistan are rising dramatically. One predator drone costs $4.5 million. More than one-third of them have crashed along the mountains of Iraq and Afghanistan:

Pilots, who fly them from trailers halfway around the world using joysticks and computer screens, say some of the controls are clunky. For example, the missile-firing button sits dangerously close to the switch that shuts off the plane’s engines. Pilots are also in such short supply that the service recently put out a call for retirees to help.

What's the Pentagon's solution? Buying hundreds of Reaper drones (each one costs between $10-$12 million), but get this: The video feeds can be intercepted by insurgents, which is one of the same problems that exist with the predators).

Where's all the money coming from?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

WikiLeaks Cablegate LIVE Updates

FWIW, and not that it makes any difference to the facts of what our country has been doing in our names and hiding from us, but:

Julian Assange hasn't been charged with any s3x crimes. There are all of these secondary filings of paperwork (like a 'red notice' by Interpol) that have no force of law on their own without any actual criminal charges being filed against Assange and what you would typically do AFTER someone is charged with a crime in order to arrest and extradite the person back to the country where the alleged crimes occurred.

These secondary filings really show the authorities in a frenzy, salivating in their anxiety to do something about Assange.

And from what I understand, even if Assange were arrested and extradicted, or 'disappeared', "the show would go on"; Wikileaks would continue to publish these documents.

So all of this drama around Assange is distraction.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

WikiLeaks Cablegate LIVE Updates

Ecuador offered Assange residency, and then retracted the invitation.

Our government's elected representatives seem to be putting shoulder to the muscle being exerted on governments around the world. They're really angry that we're learning what they've been doing in our names.
About Wikileaks
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Federal Reserve Documents: LIVE Updates

"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."

Alot of the families being forclosed on shouldn't of had a house in the first place.

=============================================

Keep in mind three very important facts, IMHO:

#1 - Many people who have been foreclosed on or who are about to be foreclosed on have lost their jobs, making it impossible for them to make mortgage payments. When they were employed, they could make the mortgage, and that leads to the next really important consideration...

#2 - Those people who you are blaming are no different than those who were bailed out with TARP monies for having taken a risk. In the past decade, since Gramm Bliley Leach overturned Glass Steagle, the People, who have been losing economic ground for decades and have no knowledge or expertise in stock trading turned to the one investment venue left to them -- Real estate. Home buying. First time buyers were encouraged to purchase, and way above their means, because "real estate prices are rising faster than inflation", and "if you don't buy now, you'll be priced out of the market and will never be able to afford to purchase in your lifetime", and, "As the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, and as the price of homes has been rising so fast, you'll be able to refinance your home in 2-5 years when that balloon payment is due, or you'll have gotten a COL raise in your wages, so this loan won't pose any problems for you".

The government not only made this possible, the government WANTED this to happen. Why? Because with the People being robbed blind by Bush-Cheney (wars not paid for, Social Security & Medicare and all social programs being set up for gutting due to Bush's tax cuts for the rich which require borrowing from China and Saudi Arabia and Japan), to keep them thinking that they're also getting a piece of the action, they saw their homes appreciating in value and were able to take money out of them through refinancing (for keeping up with rising living costs, or remodeling, etc.).

#3 - You somehow think that you're immune if these homes are foreclosed on. You're going down, too. We all are if what's in the pipeline happens. It's like a trickle-down, only not really -- it'll be a BLOWOUT.

Go to that link.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Federal Reserve Documents: LIVE Updates

"Alot of the families being forclosed on shouldn't of had a house in the first place."

=============================================

You need to click on that link.

In addition to what you learn there, keep in mind three very important facts IMHO:

#1 - Many people who have been foreclosed on or who are about to be foreclosed on have lost their jobs, making it impossible for them to make mortgage payments. When they were employed, they could make the mortgage, and that leads to the next really important consideration...

#2 - Those people who you are blaming are no different than those who were bailed out with TARP monies for having taken a risk. In the past decade, since Gramm Bliley Leach overturned Glass Steagle, the People, who have been losing economic ground for decades and have no knowledge or expertise in stock trading turned to the one investment venue left to them -- Real estate. Home buying. First time buyers were encouraged to purchase, and way above their means, because "real estate prices are rising faster than inflation", and "if you don't buy now, you'll be priced out of the market and will never be able to afford to purchase in your lifetime", and, "As the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, and as the price of homes has been rising so fast, you'll be able to refinance your home in 2-5 years when that balloon payment is due, or you'll have gotten a COL raise in your wages, so this loan won't pose any problems for you".

The government not only made this possible, the government WANTED this to happen. Why? Because with the People being robbed blind by Bush-Cheney (wars not paid for, Social Security & Medicare and all social programs being set up for gutting due to Bush's tax cuts for the rich which require borrowing from China and Saudi Arabia and Japan), to keep them thinking that they're also getting a piece of the action, they saw their homes appreciating in value and were able to take money out of them through refinancing (for keeping up with rising living costs, or remodeling, etc.).

#3 - You somehow think that you're immune if these homes are foreclosed on. You're going down, too. We all are if what's in the pipeline happens. It's like a trickle-down, only not really -- it'll be a BLOWOUT.

Go to that link.
About Ben Bernanke
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Federal Reserve Documents: LIVE Updates

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.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Federal Reserve Documents: LIVE Updates

G0d bless Julian Assange and Wikileaks.

Does anyone actually doubt that the Fed released these in advance of the next Wikileaks dump?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama, Republicans Agree To Hold More Meetings On Bush Tax Cuts

"Dean was a possible in 2004 till he went off half cocked with the cameras rolling. He's the only one on the horizon and I would love to see him run in the 2012 primaries."

=================================================
By the way and in his defense, Dean didn't go off "half-cocked" or do anything that any other presidential candidate hasn't done with the cameras rolling. He picked up a directional microphone, which is designed to screen out background noise, and that's the recording that you heard and that the media played incessantly. If you'd heard the other recordings, you'd have noticed nothing odd.

Read the 'Introduction' of this for more.

In the 'old days' of television news (when the news divisions at television networks weren't part of the entertainment divisions), sound engineers would have caught it instantly and managing editors wouldn't have let it go out (or unexplained for several days as an anomaly due to the sound equipment). There's something to be said against a high school dropout becoming a network news division's managing editor (Peter Jennings) when he doesn't catch that and launches the ridicule.

As far as Dean as a candidate in 2012, I believe that nothing's impossible in politics (even overcoming 'The Scream"), frequently reminding people that:

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 R0ve were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush & R0ve were just more ruthless in doing what politician s and the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks, don't take 'no' for an answer and never back away, you will wear the opposition down.

However, what happened to Dean is a bell that's hard to unring, because it exposed a hostility between the political and media establishment elites and a populist candidate. In order for Howard Dean to get past it he would have to make some deals that wouldn't make his candidacy worthwhile to the People (not only is Dean of the same bad 'compromise' mentality as Obama, he's been 'compromised' himself). It's why any candidate who is worthwhile to the People has to come from outside the extant political party system.

I think there's much more that can be said about Dean and this subject (because it affects how we select candidates), but I don't think you really want to know.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Administration: No Offshore Drilling In Eastern Gulf Of Mexico For Seven Years Because Of BP Oil Spill

You mean that there are fish around oil rig platforms? That doesn't mean that the oil rigs are good for the fish. It's not as if the fish can divine toxic dangers to them and would shun the platforms. As a matter of fact, an argument can be made that there has been die-off around the platforms, and it causes the fish to sink to the bottom around the platforms, attracting more fish to the area (to be killed, etc.).

By the way, your comment is a twisting of the argument made by oil companies that were ordered to remove oil platforms once they stop producing. The oil companies didn't want to pay to remove them, and argued that they were "essential habitat" because fish swam around them. They're no more "essential habitat" than shipwrecks:

"Just because fish are there doesn't mean the platform constitutes habitat," said Linda Krop, a lawyer for the Environmental Defense Center. "That's like taking a picture of birds on a telephone wire and saying it's essential habitat."

About Gulf Oil Spill
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama, Republicans Agree To Hold More Meetings On Bush Tax Cuts

Dean is a hope. I would like to see him run.
===========================

Howard Dean isn't any prize. He talks a good populist game, but he's as much a corporate Democrat when push comes to shove as any DLCer. Dean wants desperately to be in with the DLC insiders, to play with the big boys so badly, but they don't want him.

Most voters judge politicians by their personalities and mistakenly assume politicians' ideological positions for their own when they've decided they personally like the politician. That's certainly true of Howard Dean. He's a nice guy, but he's not a liberal and definitely not married to what I would say are sacrosanct Democratic Party positions, like pro-choice and public health care.
Just about all professional Democratic politicians want to make the Democratic party hospitable to anti-choice people, as noted in this article from 12/04 - http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/washington/wnb121504.htm

The only way to do that is for the party to not take a stance on abortion, to remove any reference to 'choice'. During Dean's tenure as chairman of the DNC, he indicated in several interviews that the intent was to move the DemocraticParty from referring to abortion at all in its platform. Here's one of those interviews, from 11/1/05:

Video - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/9882255#9882255

Transcript - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9883824/

Dems May Waver on Choice, Repro Rights 01/14/05 http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2144/context/archive

In addition to Howard Dean working on the DLC's behalf to move the Democratic Party to the right, and to change the Democratic Party's pro-woman's health policies and protect a woman's right to choose, Dean is not for single payer. He never has been. He has repeatedly snatched defeat from the jaws of history every time the left begins to get any traction on an issue (the public option in healthcare reform was just the latest example). As soon as the DLCers get what they want, they cast Dean aside and leave him to the scrap heap of obscurity (again). They get him to do heavy lifting for them (keeping us liberals on the hook), but in the end they slam the door in his face and break his heart every time. And even then, he still carries their water, as he did yesterday on Rachel Maddow's show -- That was Dean trying to have it both ways -- As a populist, disappointed with Obama and Congress, but not enough to really call them all out and start talking turkey.

Professional Democrats have bought into and are loyal to the system that supports them.
About Mitch McConnell
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama, Republicans Agree To Hold More Meetings On Bush Tax Cuts

There is no way a "Progressive Party" could move more than a few Congressional seats on the coasts or liberal college districts.

======================================
That's certainly the DLC's rhetoric.

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 & 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 R0ve were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush & R0ve were just more ruthless in doing what politicians and the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks, don't take 'no' for an answer and never back away, you will wear the opposition down.

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.

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At the top of Big Businesses' shopping lists to Democrats and Republicans is "Give us more money. And if you can't do that, if you can't fool the average American voter into going along with that, then let us be able to rake it in as we've been doing."

Obama, DLC-Democrats and Republicans have been gaming our government to deliver (and to receive, by way of contributions to their campaign war chests) more of the same. At a time when reregulating, nationalizing banks, businesses and industries (OIL) is obvious to everyone, politicians and corporate media are collaborating in Kabuki theater to drive it from the front pages and off of Americans' minds.

Obama was elected because more voters than ever in the history of the nation thought he was offering a new way. Beyond what we'd been doing for the past 30 years, and that goes for both Republicans and Democrats. And what had Democrats been doing?

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Obama, Republicans Agree To Hold More Meetings On Bush Tax Cuts

Democratic voters have mistakenly believed that Obama and Democrats were for strong regulations on banks, Wall Street, investigations, prosecutions, restitution of what has been robbed from the middle class and poor for the past 30+ years, environmental clean-up, clean, sustainable renewable energy (and that isn't nuclear), putting an end to the wars and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, affordable, quality universal healthcare (which Obama's healthcare legislation is not), and more.

The DLC-controlled Democratic Party gives lip service to these and all populist issues, because 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.

If you go back and watch Candidate Obama's speeches, interviews and debates in 2008, and 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. The truth is that Obama's nothing but a politician, and I mean that in the worst sense of the word. In the 'used car salesman' sense. It turns out that doing what's right for transnational corporations is what Obama is about, and trying to sell it as good for Americans is what he does afterwards. He's the epitome of the 1950s Republican, "What's good for GM is good for America." He did a snow job on everybody.

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Obama, Republicans Agree To Hold More Meetings On Bush Tax Cuts

You're stuck in old politics, and look where it's gotten us.
As a very old liberal Democrat, I tell you that the seeds for a complete financial meltdown and wars for oil and other resources were planted before Bush-Cheney & during each administration going back to Reagan. And actually, before that, back to Nixon, when today's Republicans got their start (but if you really want to be precise, we can go back to the beginning of last century, and the discovery of oil in the Middle East).

We were put on this path by a push for unrestrained & unregulated capitalism and privatization of Americans' resources, and all of the politicians of the last 40+ years, on both sides of the aisle, knew it and did nothing about it. Worse, they signed on to the false narratives spun to l!e the American people into voting for that which is NOT in their best interests, but in the interests of the very rich and powerful.

They allowed corporations to game our political system, & corporations have managed to game 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 (WeThePeople)".

Democrats (controlled by the DLC, which is important to remember) and Republicans are corporate t00Is. 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, transnational corporations. The trick for them has been to make it seem as if they were really working on behalf of We, The People.

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This is actually pretty moot to begin with, useless to even bother arguing about.

But if you insist on deluding yourself, then consider our elections as a business plan where the 'Corporate Masters of the Universe' have charted out their plans years in advance (governments do them, too) and then they select the politician with the personality that's best able to achieve those plans in 4 year increments.
If you want to l!e the country into war for oil & war-profiteering, then George W. Bush is your man to front it, with Dick Cheney, the former Secretary of Defense who initiated the privatizing of the military a decade earlier, actually running the operation from the shadows.

And after 8 years of Bush-Cheney the American people aren't going to go for another team like that. They're going to want HOPE & CHANGE, with a persona they can believe in & trust. Barack Obama. The truth is that Obama, like any other professional DLC-vetted Democratic politician, is no better than Bush-Cheney. Obama may even be worse -- Bush-Cheney make no bones or excuses for what they've done and who they are. Obama and Democrats ran on knowing better, and are continuing just about all of Bush's policies, and even going Bush better.
Obama's 'most ardent admirers' just like the packaging better. I'm not talking skin color, although that may be a factor for some of them; I'm talking about how a 'D' after the name is a brand they trust believe and trust in, despite the fact that it's the same 'soap' (product).

Unless and until there is drastic and uncompromising change to our campaign financing system, until corporations are no longer 'persons' and are prohibited from participating in elections and politics, all efforts to reform government are useless.

Once campaigns are publicly financed (if it's not already too late), then reforming our system, repairing the damage that's been done & returning the government to the People can begin. But neither party is interested in doing that because it would mean they would lose their hold on money and power.

So, as I said, this is all moot.

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Obama, Republicans Agree To Hold More Meetings On Bush Tax Cuts

But to your main point, that someone should challenge from outside the Party, I think you are totally off your rocker.

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So we're going to be uncivil in this conversation, are we?

I know where you're coming from; I used to think like you. I've been falling for that old canard and voting for the lesser of two ev!ls (DLC Democrats) since the DLC took over the Democratic Party in the late 1980s. And I was an old liberal then. The days of Democratic voters falling for the threats, & voting for Democrats because they're the lesser of two ev!ls are fast coming to an end. Americans are realizing that Democrats & Republicans are the same ev!l.

Obama, himself, (and Bill Clinton, too) had no trouble risking the loss of the Senate (and contributed to the loss of the House) when he worked to undermine the Democrats running in Florida & Rhode Island in the midterms.

I have watched the DLC take the Democratic Party farther to the right each election cycle, promising change & reform, blaming the lack of it on voters for not electing enough Democrats liberals progressives, all the while the party leaders are bankrolling pro-corporate DINOs over true liberals & cooperating with Republicans in Congress.

Never are the party leaders using the bully pulpit of their offices to educate or inform the American people as to the great traditions of liberal Democracy & how the People have prospered under liberal Democrats.

Currently, this DINO of a president has continued just about all of the Bush-Cheney policies & gone Bush-Cheney one better in several areas. Civil rights abuses that Bush & Cheney could only fantasize about, never dare try, Obama's doing.

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

You really have to lose that "lesser of two ev!ls" argument because proponents of it are starting to look no better than the Sonderkommandos in WWII.

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