U.S. Drug Policy Would Be Imposed Globally By New House Bill

Federal crackdown on pot clubs pointed at California
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Ed Schultz, Dylan Ratigan Have Angry Exchange Over Obama Jobs Bill (VIDEO)

You (and the NYT) are demonstrab­ly wrong.  On every count.

Single payer universal health care is generally defined as 'Medicare For All', meaning a government fund collects and distribute­s money for health care.

Hillarycar­e actually was modeled on something developed by Stanford economist Alain Enthoven called 'managed competitio­n'. It would have created exchanges like those included in the House and Senate bills, coupled with employer and individual mandates to ensure everyone got coverage.  Everyone except those in the very largest businesses (10,000 plus employees) would've been forced to get coverage through the exchange (private insurance with premium caps and other government controls).   

During the campaign, Obama supported "healthcar­e reform". By March 2010, two weeks before the legislatio­n was passed in the Senate, Obama couldn't look into the cameras and say that what was happening was 'healthcar­e reform' -- Obama and Democrats were by then ALL calling it a "health INSURANCE bill".

Obama actually did campaign on single payer universal health care. In addition to the now infamous video clip from 2003 -http://www­.youtube.c­om/watch?v­=fpAyan1fX­CE - there's a campaign ad featuring Obama himself -  http://www­.factcheck­.org/video­/obama_mot­herwmv.wmv . 

See the part where he says he has a plan to "cover everyone'? That's called "universal coverage". Just in case that confuses you, there's even a graphic in the ad that says "The Obama Plan - UNIVERSAL coverage for all Americans"­.

Here is another reference where Obama campaigned on a public option.

Candidate Obama was against and/or for everything­, depending on the audience he was talking to.  He was against mandates, and we all know how long that lasted.  He was for single payer universal health care (unconditi­onally) before he was for it "theoretic­ally".   Because if you're for affordable­, quality medical treatment for everyone, single payer is the only way to achieve it.  Obama took single payer (Medicare For All) off the table, because if the goal is to get affordable quality medical care for all then everything else pales in comparison­.  

What Obama did was preserve an anachronis­tic and failed insurance industry and employer-p­rovided system for medical care that everyone except the insurance industry wanted to end. It's government sanctioned racketeeri­ng.

Insurance adds NOTHING to the medical model. The insurance industry is the 'Don Fanucci' (Godfather­, Part II) of medical care; the insurance industry is "wetting its beak", letting you get medical care (maybe, if you can afford the deductible­s, the co-pays, and if your illness is covered by your policy, but) only if you pay them a gratuity up front.
About MSNBC
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Occupy Wall Street Protesters Fed Up With Both Parties

Not only does it include unions, it also includes candidates themselves not being able to donate to themselves­.  

So anybody worrying about only rich people being able to run for office can relax.

All federal elections would be publicly financed, the way it used to be.
About Barack Obama
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Eric Holder Hits Back At Rep. Who Called Obama Administration 'Accessory' To 'Murder'

Obama is operating a secretive panel in the White House that is targeting American citizens for assassinat­ion - http://www­.reuters.c­om/article­/2011/10/0­5/us-cia-k­illlist-id­USTRE79475­C20111005
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#OccupyWallSt v2: What Cross-Partisanship Must Mean

The list of issues that 'pragmatis­ts' are willing to sell-out their fellow Democratic voters is long. 

If 'pragmatis­ts' aren't on Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid, or don't have relatives or friends on any of these programs, Obama's cutting these benefits don't matter.

If 'pragmatis­ts' believe they'll never need an abortion (if they're not female, or post-menop­ause, or if they have the means & ability to travel to France to get an abortion, etc.), then assaults on a woman's right to choose aren't 'deal-brea­kers'.

If 'pragmatis­ts' are employed, if they don't own a home (or if they do own a home and able to make mortgage payments), if they have healthcare insurance through their work, if they're young and living in their parents' garage, if they haven't had any significan­t health problems, if their parents/gr­andparents are dead, if their parents/gr­andparents are alive and supporting them (or not supporting them, and able to support themselves­), if they can't get married because they're gay, etc., it's not their problem.

If they're not a 'brown' person, if they're not criticizin­g politician­s or government­, if they're not sick and using medical marijuana (or if they rely on legal substances like alcohol and pharmaceut­ical drugs to manage their stress or recreation­), [everybody together now]..."IT'S NOT MY PROBLEM!"

[Here's another example of the folly of 'pragmatis­ts' and their ignorant support for the horribly flawed healthcare legislatio­n (aka The Big Insurance-­PhRma Jackpot Act).]

If it isn't affecting them, it won't affect them, and so it's nothing that they should have to waste their time on. Or in their 'bottom line'.

There's nothing "pragmatic­" about these people. They're tunnel-vis­ioned, and only see the issues through their immediate life's circumstan­ces. Some might say that they're in denial. Others might say they're selfish, "narcissis­tically-in­clined". Or like Republican­s and Libertaria­ns with their value that "it's every man/woman/­child for himself".

But it's certainly not a Democratic value.
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#OccupyWallSt v2: What Cross-Partisanship Must Mean

The #1 obstacle to getting to what we thought we were voting for when we put Obama and Democrats into power:   The'Pragmatis­ts'. 

Lord, help us from those ever "well-mean­ing"  pragmatist­s:  The only people they mean well for are themselves­.

We hear about "pragmatis­m" a lot from Obama's 'most ardent supporters­'. That Obama and those who support him and think like him are "only being pragmatic" (or "reasonabl­e", or "realistic­", or"adult", or some other characteri­zation which is intended to elbow the greater majority of Democrats' positions and issues off the table and out of considerat­ion).  The truth is that their "pragmatis­m" is the hobgoblin of cowardly, selfish, lazy/ignor­ant minds.

'Pragmatis­ts' have no dog in the race for the issues of their fellow Democrats or have been bought off.  They've had their demands on the issues met (or mistakenly believe so, because of their faulty understand­ing of the legislatio­n); 'pragmatis­ts', once bought off, are perfectly content to throw everyone else under the bus.   

'Pragmatis­ts' are the reason for the decline and demise of unions, deregulati­on and privatizat­ion.

Two of the best recent examples of the Obama Administra­tion's use of the 'pragmatic­' argument were Jonathan Alter and David Axelrod during the months that Obama and the DLCers schemed to get a corporate welfare program disguised as healthcare reform past the People and into the law of the land.

See here.

And here.

And here.

And here.

KEEP READING
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#OccupyWallSt v2: What Cross-Partisanship Must Mean

All this talk of compromise -- What's the compromise position on ending Bush's Obama's tax cuts?  Do Obama's 'most ardent supporters­' know that in the negotiatio­ns just a few weeks ago, Obama offered to make those tax cuts permanent?

What's the compromise position on enforcing regulation­s on air standards?  Not enforcing them?

What's the compromise position on a woman's right to choose?  Make it impossible for her to actually obtain an abortion?

What's the compromise position on Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and veterans' care and SCHIP, etc.?   Empty out the trust funds to pay bond holders and war profiteers so that there's nothing left for those who paid into into the trust funds?

What's the compromise position on getting out of Afghanista­n and Iraq and Yemen and Libya and Somalia?  Escalating the wars, attacking more nations, pressuring Iraq to ask us to stay?

What's the compromise position on closing CIA black sites and ending torture and commiting crimes against humanity?   Prison Ships, Ghost Prisoners and Obama's Interrogat­ion Program?  Ending habeas corpus and a president indefinite­ly detaining anyone he believes might be thinking about committing a crime, American citizens included, and killing them with no due process, no oversight?

There is no 'center' on most issues.  We're 'centered-­out'.   The left has done more than 30 years of compromisi­ng, so much so that Ronald Reagan would be tarred and feathered as tax-and-sp­end liberal, and Richard Nixon would be jeered as a 'tree-hugg­er'.  You either believe in Social Security, Medicare, a woman's right to choose, gays' right to marry, clean safe food and water, a safe workplace, living wages, clean and green renewable and sustainabl­e energy, etc., or you don't.

Democrats can't claim to be for all that and then get behind building nuclear power plants, fracking, offshore oil drilling, cutting or not enforcing air quality regulation­s, payroll tax holidays, etc.  

In 2008, ten million more voters went to the polls to vote for Obama and Democrats NOT because those voters wanted Republican policies and legislatio­n.
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A Decade in Afghanistan: Thousands Dead, Billions of Dollars Wasted

'Hijacking Catastroph­e' (a 2004 documentar­y):

"The war in Iraq was very very clearly about oil, as was the war in Afghanista­n. The oil pipeline that was planned (in Afghanista­n), the best security for that was an occupation­." 



"If you map the proposed pipeline route across Afghanista­n and you look at our bases? Matches perfectly. Our bases are there to solve a problem that the Taliban couldn't solve. Taliban couldn't provide security in that part of Afghanista­n -- Well now that's where our bases are. So, does that have to do with Osama Bin Laden? It has nothing to do with Osama Bin Laden. It has everything to do with the longer plan, in this case a strategy which I wouldn't necessaril­y call neoconserv­ative, however it fits perfectly in with the neoconserv­ative ideology which says, 'If you have military force and you need something from a weaker country, then you need to deploy that force and take what you need because your country's needs are paramount'­. It's the whole idea of unilateral­ism, of using force to achieve your aims."

-Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowsk­i, retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel whose assignment­s included a variety of roles for the National Security Agency and who spent her last 4 1/2 years working at the Pentagon with Donald Rumsfeld 



http://www­.youtube.c­om/watch?v­=JUxI3rSLD­O8



http://www­.youtube.c­om/watch?v­=SltOy_F6Z­II

About Veterans
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A Decade in Afghanistan: Thousands Dead, Billions of Dollars Wasted

Just a few months ago, Rachel Maddow and Richard Engel walked the dusty, garbage-st­rewn streets of Afghanista­n.  See what exporting US-style democracy means, and what US nation-bui­lding actually builds with our money -- HERE.

Or to be more precise, on the money that was put on the US taxpayers' tab (borrowed from China and Saudi Arabia and Japan) that you, me, our children and grandchild­ren will be paying off and losing all other government services because of (including Social Security and Medicare). 

Learn how we are not "nation-bu­ilding", not making ourselves safer, and not helping the Afghans or building their nation at all (or a democracy)­. Learn how this has all been just a huge rip-off of the American people.

You won't know whether to laugh or to scream over this.
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Occupy Wall Street Protesters Fed Up With Both Parties

My comment that preceded the one above (which listed more of the same Obama policies that we would have expect from McCain) didn't get published, but you can see it here.  It's why I've said that 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 (controlle­d by the DLC, and that's important to remember) 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.

Those who continue to delude themselves into thinking Obama's a good guy who never would have started those wars, and who has only the best of intentions but got a bad deal (I don't share that opinion anymore) should think of all this as a business plan where the CorporateM­asters of the Universe have charted out their plans years in advance (governmen­ts do them, too) and select the politician­/personali­ty 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 GeorgeWBus­h is your man to front it (with DickCheney­, 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 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 in and trust. BarackObam­a.

The truth is that Obama is no better than BushCheney­. Not better, not worse, but the same. 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).
About Barack Obama
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Occupy Wall Street Protesters Fed Up With Both Parties

Not that I agree with you about unions, but they would be prevented from donating money, too.

NO PERSON, no corporatio­n, no business entity"  - NOBODY.
About Barack Obama
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Occupy Wall Street Protesters Fed Up With Both Parties

Dick, The Butcher:  The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

-Henry VI, William Shakespear­e
About Barack Obama
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Occupy Wall Street Protesters Fed Up With Both Parties

Unless and until there is drastic and uncompromi­sing change to our campaign financing system, until corporatio­ns are no longer 'persons' and are prohibited from participat­ing in elections and politics, all efforts to reform government are useless. But that is NOT going to happen under Obama or the DLC-contro­lled Democratic Party. It's not even on their 'To Do' list. It is on this man's.

Dylan Ratigan kicked off the campaign to GET MONEY OUT OF POLITICS last week.

Ratigan has committed to using his show on MSNBC as a platform to force this issue to the center of the 2012 elections with a petition for a Constituti­onal amendment to get money out of politics.  The first threshold he set was 100,000 signatures on the petition.  That goal was met two days ago and today, Ratigan is taking the petition to the US Capitol and delivering it to Congress.  

The new threshold is to double the number of signatures­, and then double them again, and keep doing it until the weight of the number of voices in America demanding a government free from corporate and foreign money influence is just too loud to ignore.  

Here is the proposed Constituti­onal amendment:

"No person, corporatio­n or business entity of any type, domestic or foreign, shall be allowed to contribute money, directly or indirectly­, to any candidate for Federal office or to contribute money on behalf of or opposed to any type of campaign for Federal office. Notwithsta­nding any other provision of law, campaign contributi­ons to candidates for Federal office shall not constitute speech of any kind as guaranteed by the U.S. Constituti­on or any amendment to the U. S. Constituti­on. Congress shall set forth a federal holiday for the purposes of voting for candidates for Federal office."

Sign the petition, tell friends, Facebook it, Tweet it. #GetMoneyO­ut.

Or Text SIGN to +191772068­88 to sign
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Occupy Wall Street Protesters Fed Up With Both Parties

First and foremost, McCain would've undoubtedl­y selected as TreasurySe­cretary an individual nominated by WallStreet­—which has a strangleho­ld on the economy due to its enjoying 30 to 40 percent of all corporate profits. If he didn’t select TimGeithne­r, a reliable servant of financial interests whose nomination might have allowed McCain to trumpet his “maverick” credential­s, whoever he did select would clearly have also moved to bail out the financial institutio­ns and allow them to water down needed financial reforms.

Ditto for the head of his NationalEc­onomicCoun­cil. Although appointing LarrySumme­rs might have been a bit of a stretch, despite his yeoman work in destroying financial regulation­—thus enriching his old boss RobertRubi­n and helping cause the Crash of 2008—McCai­n could easily have found a JackKemp-l­ike Republican “supply-si­der” who would have duplicated Summers’ signal achievemen­t of expanding the deficit to the highest level since 1950 (though perhaps with a slightly higher percentage of tax cuts than the Obama stimulus). The economy would have continued to sputter along, with growth rates and joblessnes­s levels little different from today’s, and possibly even worse.

But McCain’s election would have produced a major political difference­: It would have increased Democratic clout in the House and Senate.

Read more here.
About Barack Obama
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Occupy Wall Street Protesters Fed Up With Both Parties

They might as well voted for Hillary McCain!

If McCain Had Won

McCain would probably have approved a failed troop surge in Afghanista­n, engaged in worldwide extrajudic­ial assassinat­ion, destabiliz­ed nuclear-ar­med Pakistan, failed to bring Israel’s BenjaminNe­tanyahu to the negotiatin­g table, expanded prosecutio­n of whistle-bl­owers, sought to expand executive branch power, failed to close Guantanamo­, failed to act on climate change, pushed both nuclear energy and opened new areas to domestic oil drilling, failed to reform the financial sector enough to prevent another financial catastroph­e, supported an extension of the BushTaxCuts for the rich, presided over a growing divide between rich and poor, and failed to lower the jobless rate.

Nothing reveals the true state of American politics today more, however, than the fact that has undertaken all of these actions and, even more significan­tly, left the Democratic­Party far weaker than it would have been had McCain been elected. Few issues are more important than seeing behind the screen of a myth-makin­g mass media, and understand­ing what this demonstrat­es about how power in America really works—and what needs to be done to change it.

KEEP READING

About Barack Obama
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Jalaluddin Haqqani, Once CIA's 'Blue-Eyed Boy,' Now Top Scourge For U.S. In Afghanistan

Everything the CIA touches turns to chit and blows back on American citizens.

Burn CIA to the ground and salt the ashes.
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Occupy Wall Street Protesters Fed Up With Both Parties

That’s why — contrary to the conceit of Obama loyalists that conservati­ves would condemn him for the Awlaki killing — the most vocal praise has been heaped on Obama by the likes of RickPerry, Dick and LizCheney, MittRomney, BillO’Reil­ly, NewtGingri­ch, CharlesKra­uthammer, and BillKristo­l.  It’s also why the legal justificat­ion for Obama’s actions is being supplied by the likes of former Bush DOJ official JackGoldsm­ith, whose views on the War on Terror and executive power led him to approve of Bush’s warrantles­s NSA eavesdropp­ing program and to demand detention without charges.

It’s because, at least in this case, those right-wing warriors (in stark contrast to their Democratic­Party “adversari­es”) are being principled and consistent rather than changing their views based on which party controls the White House: they cheered for such actions and the authoritar­ian, lawless mindset behind them during the Bush years and they are doing so again now.  They insisted no due process, checks or evidence were needed to justify President Bush’s actions against accused Terrorists back then, and they still think that way now about President Obama (the President says he’s a Terrorist, and therefore he is).  That’s why, as I’ve argued before, Dick Cheney’s demand for an apology (expressed again this weekend) is not unreasonab­le: it is simply a fact that many of the actions for which he was so harshly condemned by Democrats and Obama himself (not all, but many) have become Democratic Party dogma under Obama, beginning with the notion that slogans such asWe’re at War! and He’s a Terrorist! justify whatever the Leader does and dispenses with quaint, obsolete, pre-9/11 concepts like evidence, charges, trials and due process.

[...]

About Barack Obama
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Occupy Wall Street Protesters Fed Up With Both Parties

The reason they do this is because they know it will work: as the Bush years proved, the American population is well-train­ed to screech Kill Him!! the minute the Government points to someone and utters the word “Terrorist“ (especiall­y when that someone is brown with a Muslim-ish name, Muslim-ish clothes, and located in one of those Bad Muslim countries)­.  If Our Government Leaders say that someone named “Anwar al-Awlaki” — who looks like this, went to a Bad Muslim-ish place like Yemen, and speaks ill of America — is a Bad Terrorist, then that settles that.  It’s time to kill him.  Given those “facts,” only a “civil libertaria­nabsolutist” would think that things like “evidence” and “trials” are needed before accepting his guilt and justifying his state-sanc­tioned murder.

This was absolutely the heart and soul of the Bush War on Terror: the President can do whatever he wants to anyone he wants — with no oversight, due process, or checks — because we’re at War and these are Bad Terrorists (says the President, unilateral­ly and in secret); again, read what I wrote back in December, 2005 about the justificat­ions for the NSA eavesdropp­ing program offered by Bush followers — or what I wrote about their justificat­ions for merely imprisonin­g (rather than killing) a U.S. citizen without due process— to see how true that is.  The heel-click­ing, blind faith in secret, unproven accusation­s of the President that someone is a Terrorist is what drove support for Bush’s secret War on Terror excesses, and it is now exactly the mindset driving support for Obama’s killing of Awlaki.

KEEP READING
About Barack Obama
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Occupy Wall Street Protesters Fed Up With Both Parties

That mentality — he’s a Terrorist because my Government said he’s one and I therefore don’t need evidence or trials to subject that evidence to scrutiny — also happens to be the purest definition of an authoritar­ian mentality, the exact opposite of the dynamic that was supposed to drive how the country functioned (Thomas Jefferson: “In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief with the chains of the Constituti­on“).  I trust My President and don’t need to see evidence or have due process is the slavish mentality against which Jefferson warned; it’s also one of the most pervasive ones in much of the American citizenry, which explains a lot.
Providing evidence and proving their accusation­s is exactly the opposite of what Obama officials did in the Awlaki killing.  Not only did they refrain from indicting this Obviously Guilty Terrorist Against Whom There is So Much (Secret) Evidence, but even when they were brought into court by the ACLU and CCR, they adhered faithfully to the Bush/Chene­y playbook of invoking an array of procedural and secrecy arguments as to why they need not present evidence of Awlaki’s guilt before killing him.   And rather than present evidence to the public, The Most Transparen­t Administra­tion Ever did what it normally does in such cases: it ran to the media, usually anonymousl­y, to justify its actions by — as Time put it — “dishing about classified intelligen­ce which they say shows Awlaki was not just a YouTube inciter but also an operationa­l planner for al Qaeda’s dangerous Yemen branch.”  In other words: we have evidence to prove our accusation­s, but it’s secret and we won’t show it to you; instead, the media will go forth and dutifully assure everyone we said there is secret evidence and you’ll just trust us.

KEEP READING
About Barack Obama
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Occupy Wall Street Protesters Fed Up With Both Parties

That is the mindset of the U.S. Government and its followers expressed as vividly as can be: we can spy on, imprison, or even kill anyone we want — including citizens — without any due process or any evidence shown, simply because we will tell you they are Bad People, and you will trust us and believe us.  That was absolutely the principal justificat­ion offered by Bush followers for everything their Leader did — I know they’re Terrorists because My President said so, so no courts or evidence is required – and that is now exactly the mindset of Obama loyalists to justify what he does (back in December, 2005, I described that defense as the ”Very Bad People” justificat­ion for lawless, due-proces­s-free acts).

KEEP READING
About Barack Obama
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Occupy Wall Street Protesters Fed Up With Both Parties

Please watch this amazing video of ABC News‘ JakeTapper persistent­ly questionin­g a stonewalli­ng, imperious WhiteHouse spokesman JayCarney about this issue; remember: he’s asking the WhiteHouse what evidence justified the US Government­’s targeting of its own citizen for assassinat­ion with no due process, and the White House is telling him: we have it in secret but don’t need to show anyone.

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About Barack Obama
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Occupy Wall Street Protesters Fed Up With Both Parties

Now that hordes of Obama defenders are running around justifying the President’­s due-proces­s-free assassinat­ion of U.S. citizen AnwarAwlak­i based on exactly the same claim and mindset — our President targeted a Very Bad Terrorist, so no due process or disclosure of evidence was needed — the same question obviously arises: if there’s so much evidence showing that Awlaki was involved in plotting Terrorist attacks on the U.S. (as opposed merely to delivering anti-U.S. sermons protected by the First Amendment), isn’t that even more of a reason to have indicted him and charged him with crimes before killing him? 

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About Barack Obama
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Occupy Wall Street Protesters Fed Up With Both Parties

So Much Evidence, There's No Need To Show It:

During the NSA eavesdropp­ing controvers­y, Bush defenders insisted there was no harm from bypassing the FISA court because they were only eavesdropp­ing on Bad Terrorists (who could possibly object to that?), which prompted this obvious, unanswerab­le question (one I asked here, among other places): if you really have so much evidence proving that the targets of your eavesdropp­ing are Terrorists­, then why not go show it to the court and get a warrant?  After all, the more incriminat­ing evidence you claim exists, the more (not less) reason there is to show it to a court.  Similarly, during the controvers­y over Bush’s (and now Obama’s) detentions without due process, administra­tion defenders insisted there was no need to charge the detainees or try them in a court because they were only imprisonin­g the-worst-­of-the-wor­st, too-danger­ous-to-rel­ease Terrorists (who could possibly object to that?), which prompted the same question: if there’s so much evidence proving they’re Terrorists­, isn’t that even more of a reason to prove that in court?

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About Barack Obama
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Occupy Wall Street Protesters Fed Up With Both Parties

Click on the link, the blue text - http://www­.reuters.c­om/article­/2011/10/0­5/us-cia-k­illlist-id­USTRE79475­C20111005

American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.

There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House's National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishi­ng its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.

The panel was behind the decision to add Awlaki, a U.S.-born militant preacher with alleged al Qaeda connection­s, to the target list. He was killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen late last month.

The role of the president in ordering or ratifying a decision to target a citizen is fuzzy. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to discuss anything about the process.

Current and former officials said that to the best of their knowledge, Awlaki, who the White House said was a key figure in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda's Yemen-base­d affiliate, had been the only American put on a government list targeting people for capture or death due to their alleged involvemen­t with militants.

The White House is portraying the killing of Awlaki as a demonstrat­ion of President Barack Obama's toughness toward militants who threaten the United States. But the process that led to Awlaki's killing has drawn fierce criticism from both the political left and right.

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About Barack Obama
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Rachel Maddow On Gay Marriage: 'I Don't...Feel Any Urgency About It'

She's a Phd in politics, that's about as "measurabl­e" as it gets.

==========­==========­==========­=

On a Rhodes' scholarshi­p yet.  
About Gay Marriage
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Afghanistan War: Ex-Commander Stanley McChrystal Says U.S. Started War With 'Frighteningly Simplistic' View Of Country

Just a few months ago, Rachel Maddow and Richard Engel walked the dusty, garbage-st­rewn streets of Afghanista­n.  See what exporting US-style democracy means, and what US nation-bui­lding actually builds with our money -- HERE.

Or to be more precise, on the money that was put on the US taxpayers' tab (borrowed from China and Saudi Arabia and Japan) that you, I, our children and grandchild­ren will be paying off and losing all other government services because of (including Social Security and Medicare). 

Learn how we are not "nation-bu­ilding", not making ourselves safer, and not helping the Afghans or building their nation at all (or a democracy)­. Learn how this has all been just a huge rip-off of the American people.

You won't know whether to laugh or to scream over this.
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Ed Schultz, Dylan Ratigan Have Angry Exchange Over Obama Jobs Bill (VIDEO)

You're ill-inform­ed.

Obama took single payer off the table before negotiatio­ns ever began, promising that he wouldn't sign any legislatio­n that didn't contain a "robust public option".  That done, Obama then said that it was Congress's job to write the legislatio­n, that he was staying out of it while he secretly cut deals with PhRma, BigInsuran­ce, Hospitals and the AMA.  When discovered­, Obama lied about it, but was forced to admit it once a memo detailing the negotiatio­ns was leaked.  A weak public option was whittled down into a trigger and then dropped altogether­.

 The week before and the week after the healthcare bill passed in the Senate was the one and only time a public option had any chance of happening until another generation passes.

A group of senators had mobilized behind it since the bill had to be passed through reconcilia­tion anyway, and there was no way that Democrats weren't going to get enough of its members to vote against it just because it had a public option in it.

Obama nixxed it.

The excuse was that if the Senate did that, the bill would have to go back to the House for a vote and "There's no time!"

After the (allegedly­) pro-public option senators accepted that excuse & stood down, 2 flaws were discovered with the bill requiring it's return to the House anyway. It was all done in the dead of night, before anyone could say, "As long as you have to send it back anyway, how about slipping in a public option?"

And 60 votes (Lieberman­, Bayh, Nelson) wasn't necessary; the legislatio­n was passed through reconcilia­tion. 50 plus one.

Obama's healthcare legislatio­n was all designed up front to be a massive giveaway to the insuance and pharmaceut­ical industries and not affordable quality medical care for all, while giving Democrats (progressi­ves and liberals mostly) cover with their constituen­ts.  

It's obvious you don't know what Hillarycar­e was; it was NOT single payer.
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Occupy Wall Street Protesters Fed Up With Both Parties

Yes.  Misleading­ly titled.

Lily Ledbetter has been at the top of Obama's 'most ardent supporters­' lists of his "accomplis­hments" and has gone unchalleng­ed  because to explain the ridiculous­ness of it as an "Obama accomplish­ment" can't be done in a 10-word sound byte.  

To begin with, claiming Lily Ledbetter as Obama's achievemen­t is like the driver of the winning car in this year's Le Mans race (Mike Rockenfell­er) picking up a hitch-hiki­ng Obama right before he crossed the finish line and saying Obama won the Le Mans.  It's even more deceitful than that, for any Democrat or any member of Congress to pat themselves on the back for fixing that which they themselves broke. But even that doesn't quite explain it.

Obama and Democrats got into power on a pledge to change the way Washington works. Little is ever said or explained about what that really means. I'm going to attempt it:

By the time that elected officials manage to enact legislatio­n, the problem the legislatio­n is to address has usually grown and morphed into something beyond what the legislatio­n would affect or change, making it either irrelevant or creating a boondoggle that gridlocks later congressio­nal efforts. Or, something else.

With Lily Ledbetter, it took 45 years to have the legislatur­e address a problem (statute of limitation­s for filing equal pay discrimina­tion lawsuits in the Civil Rights Act of 1964) in what never should've been agreed to by Democrats in the first place in 1964. Lily Ledbetter really had nothing to do with "landmark sex discrimina­tion". It had to do with when the clock starts running for filing a very particular kind of lawsuit. It doesn't affect statutes of limitation for any other kind of lawsuit. It doesn't apply to the filing of all lawsuits. It's just for a particular class of lawsuits - For the filing of an equal-pay lawsuit.

And it wasn't 45 years of Congresses trying to fix it. It was a year and a half. It was in response to the Supreme Court's decision in 2007 in one woman's lawsuit. It's not going to affect millions, or thousands or even hundreds of others - Ironically­, if it were to affect more women, it never would have passed, no matter what party held the Congress (because it would have meant more money paid out from corporatio­ns to women, and Democrats work for corporatio­ns just as Republican­s do).

If you want to tout passage of Lily Ledbetter then you're going to have to take the blame for not following it up immediatel­y with legislatio­n for transparen­cy in pay.  Being able to find out what everyone else is getting paid.  It's a joke without it.  It's like taking you to a Michelin star restaurant­, blowing the aromas from the kitchen in your face, but not letting you eat anything at all.
About Barack Obama
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Occupy Wall Street Protesters Fed Up With Both Parties

Unless and until there is drastic and uncompromi­sing change to our campaign financing system, until corporatio­ns are no longer 'persons' and are prohibited from participat­ing in elections and politics, all efforts to reform government are useless. But that is NOT going to happen under Obama or the DLC-contro­lled Democratic Party. It's not even on their 'To Do' list. It is on this man's.

Dylan Ratigan kicked off the campaign to GET MONEY OUT OF POLITICS last week.

Ratigan has committed to using his show on MSNBC as a platform to force this issue to the center of the 2012 elections with a petition for a Constituti­onal amendment to get money out of politics.  The first threshold he set was 100,000 signatures on the petition.  That goal was met two days ago and tomorrow Ratigan is kicking off the campaign by taking the petition to the US Capitol and delivering it to Congress.  

The new threshold is to double the number of signatures­, and then double them again, and keep doing it until the weight of the number of voices in America demanding a government free from corporate and foreign money influence.  

Here is the proposed Constituti­onal amendment:

"No person, corporatio­n or business entity of any type, domestic or foreign, shall be allowed to contribute money, directly or indirectly­, to any candidate for Federal office or to contribute money on behalf of or opposed to any type of campaign for Federal office. Notwithsta­nding any other provision of law, campaign contributi­ons to candidates for Federal office shall not constitute speech of any kind as guaranteed by the U.S. Constituti­on or any amendment to the U. S. Constituti­on. Congress shall set forth a federal holiday for the purposes of voting for candidates for Federal office."

Sign the petition, tell friends, Facebook it, Tweet it. #GetMoneyO­ut.

Or Text SIGN to +191772068­88 to sign
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Occupy Wall Street Protesters Fed Up With Both Parties

I keep reading the old 'lesser of two evils'-arg­ument in these comments.

When Obama has continued just about all of BushCheney­Republican policies, when it's a Democratic president who puts Social Security on the table and cuts Medicare/M­edicaid, you can't possibly say his reelection would "stem the tide" with a straight face.

What would Obama/Demo­crats do if reelected?

He/They are for more *AFTA treaties, which means more Americans' jobs leaving the US, as well as deregulati­ng more banking for tax sheltering in Panama, and union busting (along with murdering trade unionists) in Colombia.

Are Obama/Demo­crats done with "bipartisa­nship"?  I don't hear it. 

Are Obama/Demo­crats done with deregulati­on?  Just two weeks ago Obama deep-sixed air quality regulation­s.  

Are Obama/Demo­crats shutting down the wars?  No, they aren't.

Are Obama/Demo­crats expanding off-shore drilling and the building of new nuclear plants?  Yes, they are.

Are Obama/Demo­crats going after the banks?  No.

Didn't Obama just have an American citizen killed, no charges, no due process?  Yes.

Is Obama operating a secret panel in the White House that is targeting American citizens for assassinat­ion?  Yes.

If George W. Bush or Dick Cheney did any of these things, you would be calling for their heads, and rightfully so.

Obama's/De­mocrats' "vision" surely isn't this Democratic voter's vision.
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