Not to me it isn't.
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Friday, March 9, 2012
Fukushima Anniversary: How Climate Change Endangers Nuclear Safety
The Bipartisan Nuclear Fall-Out
by Amy Goodman
Super Tuesday demonstrated the rancor rife in Republican ranks, as the four remaining major candidates slug it out to see how far to the right of President Barack Obama they can go. While attacking him daily for the high cost of gasoline, both sides are traveling down the same perilous road in their support of nuclear power. This is mind-boggling, on the first anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, with the chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission warning that lessons from Fukushima have not been implemented in this country. Nevertheless, Democrats and Republicans agree on one thing: They’re going to force nuclear power on the public, despite the astronomically high risks, both financial and environmental.
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Banks Repaid Fed Bailout With Other Fed Money: Government Report
I think you're living under a rock; Obama put Social Security and Medicare on the table.
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Banks Repaid Fed Bailout With Other Fed Money: Government Report
When people go into politics as a career instead of as a public service that one does for a limited times, servicing the democracy, this is the result.
These are ambitious people who see government as a means to stake themselves to fortunes, power and glory. And that's really the weakest loophole in the Constitution. It wasn't anything that the founders intended, but couldn't address in the document without the whole game falling apart. They'd hoped that common sense, wanting the country with a government where everyone is born with equal opportunity, fair and just, to work out, prevail, so much that Americans wouldn't exploit the loopholes for their own selfish personal gain.
The switchbacking of politicians between government and business is one of the biggest contributors to our nation's failure. IMHO, once you finish your term in office, you should have to go home, or anywhere else, but not remain in politics. Get a real job, with a real life!
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Martin Sheen Has Harsh Words For Progressives Critical Of Obama
A vote for Obama is a vote for Republican policies. You're preventing a real 'change' candidate from getting into office.
With your "move to another country" bullying, how are you any different than a Bushie? And as a very very old liberal Democrat, I'd hazard the guess that I was here first. So if anybody should be moving to another country it should be you, with your shallower roots and fewer ties.
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Banks Repaid Fed Bailout With Other Fed Money: Government Report
In the aftermath of the 2008 meltdown, way back at the beginning of Obama's administration, financial reform had strong bipartisan support. The original DoddFrank Bill contained a provision for regular audits to the end the secrecy of the Federal Reserve, introduced in the House by Grayson andRonPaul with strong support from BernieSanders and JimDeMint on the Senate side. However, the amendment was opposed not only by WallStreet and the FederalReserve, but by Obama so strenuously that he threatened to veto the entire DoddFrank bill if the audit was included. That amendment failed and a second one was crafted for the one time audit which was just as adamantly opposed by Obama.
Obama Opposed Auditing the Federal Reserve
The Senate will decide whether or not to follow the House's lead and adopt a provision requiring government auditors to open up the books at the FederalReserve. The measure enjoys a great deal of popularity on both the left and the right, but is so fiercely opposed by powerful interests that it could nonetheless become a stumbling block in the way of financial regulatory legislation.
BernieSanders is trying to round up 60 or more votes to overcome a likely filibuster and include an "audit the Fed" provision in the Senate's bill. There are just a few small obstacles: the WhiteHouse, major financial institutions, and the Fed itself. Their resistance is fierce--but the measure is so popular that killing it will be difficult for them and that, in their eyes, threatens to put a grenade at the center of efforts to to tighten the rules on WallStreet.
That's why, according to the WallStreetJournal they'll "fight to stop it at all costs." The WhiteHouse is hoping to cut off "audit the Fed" in the Senate, so that they'll have a stronger hand when House and Senate negotiators meet to iron out the differences between their regulatory reform bills. If the Senate bill doesn't include Sanders' amendment, then the House will be in a weak position vis-a-vis the Senate and WhiteHouse and the provision could be easily stripped.
If Sanders prevails, then the WhiteHouse will be all but out of options and Obama will likely be left with the choice of vetoing the legislation, or signing it and raising the ire of very powerful people.
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Banks Repaid Fed Bailout With Other Fed Money: Government Report
One of the architects of the audit of the Federal Reserve was Alan Grayson. He and Keith Olbermann discuss the Bloomberg report on the secret no strings, 0% interest $7.7 trillion had out to the banks that they also reaped another $13 billion in profits. As Grayson points out here, it's far worse than even the Bloomberg report.
So what did Obama have to say about this?
Apparently not a lot (he's too busy raising campaign money from those who benefitted most from this bailout). Obama's 'most ardent admirers' rushed in to defend him against any appearance that he sides with the banks, ignoring the history of his part in the dilution of the DoddFrank regulations:
KEEP READING
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Banks Repaid Fed Bailout With Other Fed Money: Government Report
All that Obama's been doing is trying to save unregulated capitalism and the lock that the 1% has on the other 99%.
With Obama's deal to preserve Bush's tax cuts for the rich (making it Obama's tax cuts for the rich), 99ers were cut off. Of the 6 million people currently receiving unemployment benefits, Obama's deal covered only 2 million, & many of them will get crumbs from his deal because in spite of the 13-month extension, benefits will be cut off for many of those in the coming months when they reach 99-weeks. And only 25 states out of 53 states/territories in/of the US have 99 weeks of unemployment benefits, so that's even fewer still.
David Cay Johnston on Democracy Now! on Obama's deal to extend Bush's tax cuts "The worse off you are, your taxes increase":
The payroll tax 'holiday' in the deal sets SocialSecurity up for its end. That's what Bush and GroverNorquist planned and why Bush believes he'll be vindicated as a great conservative in history: For ending the GreatSociety programs, by having bankrupted the nation so there's no way to pay out those benefits. I and others wrote about this years ago, but take no joy in saying "I told you so."
"The bottom roughly 45 million families in America or households in America—and there are a little over 100 million households—they’re going to actually see their taxes go up. Republicans got an extraordinarily good deal, that raises, I think, basic questions about the negotiating skills of the President."
Extending Bush's tax cuts was an absolutely wretched deal, but standard for Obama, who has a long record of negotiating lousy deals on ordinary citizens' behalf. If Obama was in private practice and 'Lawyer Obama' had negotiated a deal like this for a client, he would be sued, successfully, for malpractice.
The purpose of the deal was so that Democratic political operatives could say, "Obama helped the unemployed"; most readers won't know the actual facts of how Obama sold out the American people. Again. Obama and Democrats have no jobs plan either. Both parties are thinning the herd.
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Banks Repaid Fed Bailout With Other Fed Money: Government Report
If Obama is a one term president, he will have delivered to the CorporateMasters of the universe. He'll hand the baton off to Republicans for the fleecing to continue and go on to reap the benefits from his treacherous betrayal of the People, i.e., the same sort of corporate payoffs that presidents since Gerald Ford have enjoyed.
Over the course of US history, corporations have managed to game our political system, and done it so effectively that the two-party system competes to serve corporate interests while defending that service as, "What's good for GM (corporations) is good for America (the People)".
Democrats and Republicans are corporate tools. Like siblings competing for the attention and approval (campaign contributions) of a parent, Republicans and DLC-controlled Democrats try to outdo each other in delivering for their real constituent, BigCorporations. The trick for them has been to make it seem as if they were really working on behalf of thePeople.
If you must continue to delude yourself into thinking Obama's a good guy who never would've started those wars, and who has only the best of intentions but got a bad deal, think of all this as a business plan where the CorporateMasters of the Universe have charted out their plans years in advance and select the politician/personality best able to achieve those plans in 4 year increments. If you want to l!e the country into war for oil and war-profiteering, then GeorgeWBush is your man to front it (with DickCheney, the former SecretaryOfDefense who initiated the privatizing of the military a decade earlier, actually running the operation from the shadows).
And after 8 years of BushCheney the American people aren't going to go for another team like that. They're going to want HOPE and CHANGE, with a persona they can believe 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).
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Banks Repaid Fed Bailout With Other Fed Money: Government Report
Obama's no better (nor is any DLC-controlled Democratic) than Republicans. He, like all professional Democrats, is just at a different stage than Republicans in the life cycle of an American politician -- Like caterpillars and moths/butterflies. If you'd never seen a chrysalis or cocoon, you wouldn't know that the caterpillar is actually the same creature as the moth/butterfly, spending half its life crawling on and devouring leaves only to pupate and transform itself into a moth/butterfly so that it can fly around and feed off of other plants. And sweaters.
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Banks Repaid Fed Bailout With Other Fed Money: Government Report
Ratigan & Spitzer: TARP's Only a Tiny Piece of Subsidies to Banks
On Dylan Ratigan, Eliot Spitzer and Larry McDonald explain how banks paying back TARP monies doesn't begin to cover what's been stolen.
The Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world.
Then there's the millions more foreclosures in the pipeline - 15 million families are about to face foreclosure.
That's not even the half of it.. Or 1% of what's coming down the pike at us.
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