Spintested: 12/22/10

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Where Do Obama and Progressives Go From Here: Year-End Report

^ - This is the problem we're dealing with: Voters who are ig.nor.ant and swallow spin whole.

MerryW here thinks that Obama's getting "it" done, but she has no idea what "it" is.

Let's ask MerryW:

What is "it"?
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Where Do Obama and Progressives Go From Here: Year-End Report

There was no way that START wasn't going to get passed. That was a no brainer. There was no way that Republicans were going to let themselves get caught on the other side of that issue.

What the passage of 9/11 Responders, DADT tells us is that when Obama and Democrats want to get something passed, they do (and we're going to have to wait to see just how and when Obama's going to let that be inplemented). So talk of Democratic politicians having no spines is greatly exaggerated, just like Obama's timidity is myth: He's plenty tough when it comes to standing up to the Democratic base. Also exaggerated is that there's no way to get the Democratic and Republican votes needed to pass legislation.

Getting Democratic voters (and Obama's 'most ardent supporters') to understand that Democratic politicians have been taking us all for suckers and patsies is the most immediate problem and the challenge.

And shouting down Obama's 'most ardent supporters', his apologists who blame everyone but Obama and Democrats for failing to achieve what Democratic voters put Obama and Democrats into office for, what Democratic politicians claim are our shared objectives and goals, needs to be the first order of every day from now on.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

START Treaty Passed By Senate

And then there's Obama's finance reform legislation -- It wouldn't have prevented the economic meltdown and does NOTHING to prevent future ones.
About START Treaty
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

START Treaty Passed By Senate

Health Care reform? You really are clueless, dearie. Democratic voters put Obama and Democrats into office to get affordable, quality medical treatment for all. Obama and Democrats didn't do that. They didn't get health care for all Americans. Obama sold insurance policies on behalf of insurance companies using Americans' money. Over-priced, lousy insurance policies, at that. Having insurance doesn't mean getting health care. BIG DIFFERENCE.

And there are no cost controls in what Obama got. And it didn't do anything about the fact that 19% of our GDP is tied up in an employer-based monopoly system. Ending employment-based insurance was what everybody wanted.

Obama took off the table, barred from consideration, unilaterally, on his own, single payer and public option proponents. Do you remember when we were all told, "Relaaaaaaax, it's a first step...We'll put a public option in..Real soon"?:

Three weeks ago on C-Span, Richard Wolffe (the journalist with an inside line to Obama and his White House) said, "There Won't Be Any Public Option--Obama Never Was For It".

And Obama's legislation sells women and 'choice' down the river -- Obama's legislation leads to eliminating insurance coverage for all ab0rt!ons.

And once the legislation passed, Obama then appointed former WellPoint executive Liz Fowler to write and enforce the regulations. A fox in charge of this chicken coop. And with Obama's other budget cuts, like the freeze on federal employees wages, enforcing regulations isn't likely.

So far Obama has given waivers to 110 companies -- They don't have to comply with any regulations.

Just when you think Obama's 'most ardent supporters' couldn't be any more ridiculous, they break all records.
About START Treaty
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

START Treaty Passed By Senate

What you should be feeling good about are the people who held Obama's feet to the fire, who weren't deterred by the criticism of Obama's 'most ardent supporters' (like you) and were willing to let him and Democrats renege on their campaign promises.

I'm not talking about START, by the way -- There was no way that it wasn't going to get passed. That was a no brainer. There was no way that Republicans were going to let themselves get caught on the other side of that issue. I'm talking about legislation like 9/11 Responders, and DADT, although we're going to have to wait to see just how and when Obama's going to let that be implemented.

From your list of Obama's 'accomplishments', it's clear that you don't read legislation and listen only to his very high priced public relations' spinners' rhetoric. For example, when 50,000 combat-trained troops remain (plus untolled numbers of private contractors, specifically to hide American military presence and involvement), when key Iraq government posts are empty, the war in Iraq is far from over.

And we're in the 10th year of the Afghanistan war, no end in sight, expansion on the horizon, with an undefined and free-floating 'mission'.

And as far as "keeping the nation from going into a Depression", you really don't want to go there. You really don't want to put Obama in that seat. It wasn't any trick or great feat; all that was needed was opening up Americans' veins (US Treasury) and bleeding us all out into the criminal banks' back pockets. And it was Bush that did that (TARP). What Obama was responsible for was an anemic stimulus and HAMP that has this Depression (yes, we're in a Depression, not a recession) poised to meltdown yet again:

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.
About START Treaty
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

START Treaty Passed By Senate

What do you think that could possibly mean?
About START Treaty
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

START Treaty Passed By Senate

You're all turned around, dearie.

What you should be feeling good about are the people who held Obama's feet to the fire, who weren't deterred by the criticism of Obama's 'most ardent supporters' (like you) and were willing to let him and Democrats renege on their campaign promises.

I'm not talking about START, by the way -- There was no way that it wasn't going to get passed. That was a no brainer. There was no way that Republicans were going to let themselves get caught on the other side of that issue. I'm talking about legislation like DADT, although we're going to have to wait to see just how and when Obama's going to let that be inplemented.
About START Treaty
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

START Treaty Passed By Senate

That's my mirror site, you id-jit.
About START Treaty
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

How Don't Ask, Don't Tell Was Like Catch-22

All that passage of DADT tells us is that when Obama and Democrats want to get something passed, they do. So talk of Democratic politicians having no spines is greatly exaggerated, just like Obama's timidity is myth: He's plenty tough when it comes to standing up to the Democratic base.

Getting Democratic voters (and Obama's 'most ardent supporters') to understand that Democratic politicians have been taking us all for suckers and patsies is the most immediate problem and the challenge.

And shouting down Obama's 'most ardent supporters', his apologists who blame everyone but Obama and Democrats for failing to achieve what Democratic politicians claim are our shared objectives and goals, needs to be the first order of every day from now on.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

START Treaty Passed By Senate

See? When Obama and Democrats want to get something passed, they do. So talk of Democratic politicians having no spines is greatly exaggerated, just like Obama's timidity is myth: He's plenty tough when it comes to standing up to the Democratic base.

Democratic voters have mistakenly believed that Obama and Democrats want what they want. The DLC-controlled Democratic Party gives lip service to all populist issues (like civil rights protections, restoring habeas corpus, ending the wars, public healthcare, Wall Street reform, environmental & energy issues, etc.).

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. If you keep at it, escalate your attacks, don't take 'no' for an answer, never back away, you will wear the opposition down. By the way, Bush-Cheney-R0ve weren't geniuses, they didn't invent this strategy, nor was it something that political operatives didn't know or that political science students don't learn in poli sci 101. Bush & R0ve were just more ruthless in doing what politicians and the political parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans, be more subtle about.

What Bush-Cheney-Rove showed Democrats, though, was that there was no need to be subtle. It doesn't matter how you get the rhetoric, the spin, on the table, just get it on the table. You don't have to go to great lengths to set up a logical or legitimate premise for it. The shock&awe tactics of having surrogates fan out all over the air waves, with other diversionary news stories competing for air time, will prevent opponents challenging you with logical analyses getting any air time, much less any traction.

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.

The trick for them has been to keep the many different populist groups believing that they really do support our issues, but they're merely inept. And to get us to keep voting for them despite their failure to achieve our alleged shared objectives.

Getting Democratic voters (and Obama's 'most ardent supporters') to understand that Democratic politicians have been taking us all for suckers and patsies is the most immediate problem and the challenge.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Fabricated Myths About War

Great book, I agree.

Speaking Chris Hedges, the most important read of the day...perhaps of the year:

Power and the Tiny Acts of Rebellion
By Chris Hedges

For those who aren't familiar with Chris Hedges, he's one of the most interesting, thoughtful, intelligent (in addition to being well educated), complex journalists in our history. 'War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning' (which should be required reading in every high school, before any young American is of age to join the military or vote) is but one of several of Hedges's books.
About Military
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Where Do Obama and Progressives Go From Here: Year-End Report

Personally, I am very liberal, BUT I am also, VERY realistic about what CAN be accomplished. Unlike YOU...I live in reality...and am not a ideologue. I'm practical."

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

No, you're one of those people who stands for nothing and falls for anything.

We could forget about values and positions altogether, rename the Democratic Party, hang a '~~DEMOCRATIC~~ REPUBLICAN PARTY' sign on the door of the DNC, and all members of Congress would be Democrats? But do you think that's going to do anything about our core differences on issues?

I assume that as a liberal, you're pro-choice. Are you willing to bear the child of your r@p!st when those 'new' Democrats insist that ab0rt!0n be outlawed? When do you finally fight, for anything that you purport to believe in and want?

I suspect you don't fight because we haven't come to anything of 'yours' yet. You're perfectly ok with compromising away other Democrats' issues because they don't impact you. But I'm sure that when we get to one of your issues that Obama trades away, we'll see the hellfire come out. You'd better hope there's someone left to give a d@mn.

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.

What we are dealing with is a corporate takeover of the US government. And Obama is a DINO - A Democrat-In-Name-Only. He's not a "centrist" as has been sold to us from his entry onto the national stage -- "Privately, Obama describes himself as a Blue Dog Democrat."

Blue Dog Democrat = REPUBLICAN

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, changing its name to 'bee' isn't going to get you any honey.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Where Do Obama and Progressives Go From Here: Year-End Report

"Privately, Obama describes himself as a Blue Dog Democrat."
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Where Do Obama and Progressives Go From Here: Year-End Report

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. But neither party is interested in doing that because it would mean they would lose their hold on money and power (and look at the fortunes of politicians once they leave office -- Obama is going to make Bill Clinton look like a piker in the 'after-office' money grab; enough to keep Michelle in diamonds and pearls that she told him to keep sending her way on the Oprah Show last year).

So where does that leave us?
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Where Do Obama and Progressives Go From Here: Year-End Report

Passing Republican-like legislation isn't what Democratic voters put Obama and Democratic politicians into Congress to achieve.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

9/11 First Responders Storm Tom Coburn's Office To Protest Block On Their Health Care Bill (VIDEO)

See? When Democrats want to get something passed, they do. So talk of Democratic politicians having no spines are greatly exaggerated, just like Obama's timidity is myth: He's plenty tough when it comes to standing up to the Democratic base.

Democratic voters have mistakenly believed that Obama and Democrats want what they want. The DLC-controlled Democratic Party gives lip service to all populist issues (like civil rights protections, restoring habeas corpus, ending the wars, public healthcare, Wall Street reform, environmental & energy issues, etc.).

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. If you keep at it, escalate your attacks, don't take 'no' for an answer, never back away, you will wear the opposition down. By the way, Bush-Cheney-R0ve weren't geniuses, they didn't invent this strategy, nor was it something that political operatives didn't know or that political science students don't learn in poli sci 101. Bush & R0ve were just more ruthless in doing what politicians and the political parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans, be more subtle about.

What Bush-Cheney-Rove showed Democrats, though, was that there was no need to be subtle. It doesn't matter how you get the rhetoric, the spin, on the table, just get it on the table. You don't have to go to great lengths to set up a logical or legitimate premise for it. The shock&awe tactics of having surrogates fan out all over the air waves, with other diversionary news stories competing for air time, will prevent opponents challenging you with logical analyses getting any air time, much less any traction.

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.

The trick for them has been to keep the many different populist groups believing that they really do support our issues, but they're merely inept. And to get us to keep voting for them despite their failure to achieve our alleged shared objectives.

Getting Democratic voters (and Obama's 'most ardent supporters') to understand that Democratic politicians have been taking us all for suckers and patsies is the most immediate problem and the challenge.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Where Do Obama and Progressives Go From Here: Year-End Report

Who is "the average American" in your opinion?

Are you?

Describe yourself, your life, your "average American" lifestyle.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Where Do Obama and Progressives Go From Here: Year-End Report

Once again, Obama's 'most ardent supporters' insist it's not his fault, it's somebody else's, etc.
Those who just can't believe they were duped, who insist that he's really a good man, ok: This one's for you (Lawrence Davidson provides a less diabolical view of Obama, but I think there's far too much evidence that Davidson ignores to support the stronger assessment).

A Democratic president (an alleged "Constitutional law scholar" yet) with a Democratically-controlled Congress behind him, behaving as Obama's behaved and governing the way he has after what Bush-Cheney did to the US was finally explained a couple of weeks ago in the NYT: "Privately, Obama describes himself as a Blue Dog Democrat".

Blue Dog = Republican.

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 and war-profiteering, then George W. Bush is the 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 (neither one seems to care if they're caught in l!es, are h8ted, and if history judges them harshly).

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 and 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-Cheney one better (Obama is asserting that a president can k!ll American citizens with no due process, no oversight whatsoever, and indefinite preventive detention? !?! Pure Kafka).

KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Where Do Obama and Progressives Go From Here: Year-End Report

While the DLC-controlled Democratic Party tells constituents, "If you want liberal/progressive policies from Obama and Democrats in Congress, you have to get liberals/progressives into Congress", in fact, Obama and the Democratic Party's machine have worked to prevent liberals/progressives getting into office on a broad-based scale and with a scheme that has included:

Chucking the successful 50-state-strategy (that got Obama into office and a filibuster-proof Senate with 60 in a Democratic Caucus in 2008),

Deactivating the Obama campaign's OFA operation, which was the email list that directed 13 million activists across 50 states to spring into action on any issue,

Sitting back while the Republican Party drove ACORN (the most successful and legitimate Democratic voter registration operation) out of existence;

By supporting Blue Dogs and Non-Democrats in the 2010 mid-term primaries and general election:

* Blue Dog Blanche Lincoln over progressive Democrat Lt. Governor Bill Halter.

* Republican-turned-Independent Arlen Specter over (barely) progressive Democrat Joe Sestak.

* Republican-turned-Independent Lincoln Chaffee over (not progressive) Democrat Frank Caprio (which, in turn, is an effective endorsement of the Republican John Loughlin over Democrat David Cicilline for the congressional seat Democrat Patrick Kennedy is retiring from, and all of the other seats up for grab in Rhode Island).

* Republican-turned-Independent Charlie Crist over liberal Democrat Kendrick Meek.

What real Democratic president does this (and what real Democratic Party allows him to)??

By getting involved in the election at the primaries' stage, Obama became the first sitting president in US history to interfere with the citizens' very limited rights in this democratic republic to select who they will trust to make laws to which they consent to be governed.

Citizens have little enough of a Constitutionally-guaranteed role within this democracy as it is without a president usurping it. Citizens have the right to vote, but not to have our ballots counted (the founders were nothing if not ironic). But to have a president enter into our participation in this democracy at this most basic level, state primaries, and supercede our choice for his own, is an abuse of the process and a powerful message about Obama's contempt for the People's role in a democratic government, our voices and our choices.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Where Do Obama and Progressives Go From Here: Year-End Report

Could you retire without Social Security?

Could you survive without your Social Security check? What about your parents/grandparents/aunts/uncles/cousins/friends/children?

Could you work in your seventies, eighties, nineties?

Could you find a job in your fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties?

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Apocalypse 2012: How Will The World End?

Senate Republicans Explain Their Vote Against 9/11 First Responder Health Care

Obama's Enablers, Obama's Adversaries, and the Fight to Save the New Deal

Politicians love when citizens sign petitions; there's nothing they can ignore more.

Don't believe it?

How many petitions did you sign to impeach Bush-Cheney? I can count seven right off the top of my head, excluding the two times I signed Florida congressman Bob Wexlers's IMPEACH CHENEY petition. Wexler announced that if he got 50,000 signatures he'd begin hearings into impeaching Cheney. Within 8 hours, the petition had more than 100,000 signatures. Wexler backtracked, raised the ante to 500,000 signatures and the petition, the hearings, and impeaching Bush-Cheney were never heard about again.

Then there was Pat Leahy's petition to establish a Truth & Reconciliation Commission to investigate the abuses by the Bush-Cheney administration.

Oh yeah, Obama's going to be moved by a petition. We already handed Obama a 'petition', 'signed' by more citizens than ever in the history of the country. His election to the presidency. Not a day passes when I'm not filled with the same dread as when Bush and Cheney were office, powerless to prevent the mistakes they were making, that Obama is making.

There is no appealing to Obama. There is only appealing to his 'most ardent supporters', to try to get them to take off the blinders, and get Obama and the DLC out of power in 2012.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Administration Preparing Order For Indefinite Detention Of Some Guantanamo Detainees

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.

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 and how the People have prospered under liberal Democrats.

Currently, this DINO of a president has continued just about all of the Bush-Cheney policies and 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 claims of 'state secrets' to deny courts even look at his a$a$ination program? And this 'indefinite preventive detention'?

An argument can be made, quite convincingly, that Obama and DLC Democrats are the worse ev!l. Bush and Cheney made no excuses or bones about who they were and what they stood for. Obama and DLC Democrats ran on doing different, because they knew better.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost