Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

ACA it is no "gift" to the insurance companies which is evidenced by the fact that they're so desperate to kill it.   

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The insurance and pharmaceutical industries aren't trying to kill ACA - They love it.  They wrote it.
ACA was written by Liz Fowler, former executive at WellPoint (Max Baucus hired her as senior counsel to him as the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee - so much for Candidate Obama's pledge on restricting lobbyists from writing our laws).

The regulations were created by the insurance industry and the regulations and legislation is being implemented and overseen by the insurance industry.  Obama put the foxes in charge of this chicken coop (former WellPoint executives Liz Fowler and Steve Larsen) to write both the legislation and the regulations, and enforce the regulations.  Fowler's most notable actions to date has been issuing waivers to businesses that don't want to have to provide insurance to their employees.  

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Obama Campaigns In The Rain, A Long Way From 2008

The Tea Party is an effective nemesis for Obama and helps him and the DLC deliver to their (and Republican­s') Corporate Masters.  The Tea Party is a paper tiger, a scapegoat, and not the real problem.  This is all Kabuki theater, to push us into accepting being robbed blind while politician­s in both parties jockey for positions of favor and power within the corporatoc­racy.

If Obama and DLC-controlled Democr­ats had believed the Tea Party to be a threat, had they wanted to put the Tea Party down, the time to do it was during the healthcare debate when the Tea Party was coming to prominence­. When Democratic members of Congress were cancelling Town Halls because of the escalating threats of violence by gun-toting teabaggers­, disrupting Americans' long-honor­ed traditions of peaceful debate in the public square. Instead of taking to the bully pulpit, instead of increasing security on government properties hosting these events, Obama disappeare­d from the healthcare debate to cut secret deals with Big Insurance, PhRma, hospitals, the AMA, etc., and then he lied about it, all the while that the Tea Party grew and bullied at Town Halls.

What Obama also did during the same Town Hall time period? He unleashed federal security forces to Pittsburgh to break up peaceful protests of the G20 meeting, using the new weaponry on dissenters who the 'establish­ment elites' really fear, and stem the unrest that actually threatens the 'elites', i.e., the American people taking back their government­.

Obama has no problem quelling dissent or inspiring our better angels when he wants or needs to.

Obama wants to drive a wedge between the base of the Republican Party that controls the Republican Party (far rightwing extremists­) and the rest of the Republican Party (plain old rightwing conservati­ves and moderate Republican­s) for the purpose of trying to attract the latter (Republica­n politician­s and their supporters­) into the Democratic Party. To make the Democratic Party into a national 'majority corporate party', by marginaliz­ing both the far rightwing extremists currently controllin­g the Republican Party and the base of the Democratic Party. In order "to govern, from the center, for 100 years".  Only "the center" is pro-corporate, anti-populist, i.e., the Reagan Republican Party.

The Tea Party serves this end it several ways. Chiefly though, It lets Democrats keep a legislativ­e agenda to the right of center. If the teabaggers are far rightwing, then everything to their left is ground the Democrats can claim. And that's a lot of corporate-­money ground.

Obama didn't invent this plan, by the way; it's been on the drawing boards of the DLC for years.
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Obama Campaigns In The Rain, A Long Way From 2008

Nader bashing again?

Nader didn't do anything to Gore that Harry Browne, Pat Buchanan, Howard Phillips, et al (other party candidates) didn't also do, yet you don't hear them being blamed.  Gore and Bush weren't owed other party's voters, and studies have shown that Nader pulled more votes from Bush than from Gore.

You presume that Nader voters would've voted for Gore (or at all) when studies and exit polling have indicated that's not the case.

You blame Nader voters when, had Nader not even run, had he not be in the race, Bush still would've won.  Because Republicans had gamed that election more ways than we're ever going to know about.  You might as well blame Pat Buchanan with the same vigor and vitriole.

Al Gore won.  Gore got more votes in Florida.  Any way it was counted (and the biggest point that people seem to forget is that there were 179,000 perfectly readable ballots that never got counted), Gore got more votes than Bush.

Whatever the means necessary to get Bush-Cheney into the White House would've happened.  Had Nader been in the race, had he not in the race, whatever.  Had Nader not run, the outcome would've been the same.  The powers that be were not going to let Gore win, no matter what, and gamed it innumerable ways.

If the means for getting Bush-Cheney into the White House required a close election and Nader not been running, some other means would've been used.

For pity's sake, the CIA was working on GOP absentee ballots in the weeks leading up to election day in Florida.  That was the most amazing revelation from the televised court hearings in the post-election days in Florida --  'Charles Kane' testified to altering absentee ballots in the MartinCounty's Registrar's office in the two week period prior to election day (it's against the law and should render the ballots null and void).  When Kane was sworn in, he had to identify himself and give his occupation and employer. Retired CIA.  The judge asked him why he was altering the absentee ballots, and he answered "I go where I'm told."  Verbatim quote.  The judge didn't follow up.  There was next to no news coverage of this, and none by the networks.

Have you forgotten Jeb Bush's vote purging scheme?

Have people really forgotten all the different ways that that election was gamed by the GOP?  And that's just in Florida.  And just the ways that we learned about because of legal proceedings in the post-election days.

There was a coup d'etat in America in 2000.  A bIoodless coup, but a coup nonetheless.

And Democrats suppressed investigations, and then screwed over the Congressional Black Caucus's attempts to expose that stolen election.
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Obama, Democrats' Fundraising Raised $181 Million In September

As an old old liberal Democrat, an FDR Democrat, my positions on issues are in line with the platform of the Democratic Party; it's the politician­s in the Democratic Party who are ignoring the platform of the party.

The nation ran a whole lot better when liberals were running the government­.  Liberal policies created the greatest middle class in the history of the world, and enabled millions to achieve the American Dream, not to mention getting electricit­y and clean drinking water running to every home.  

Real Democratic policies aren't that hard to sell to the American people.  

The DLC got into power by refusing to defend the word 'liberal' when RonaldReag­an, LeeAtwater and KarlRove 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 outgunned by election dirty tricks and 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 kill 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 Rove were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush and Rove 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.
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Obama, Democrats' Fundraising Raised $181 Million In September

The courts are expected to be above politics.  That is the only reason why these justices are appointed to a LIFETIME position - they never have to pander to a party or public opinion.  Their ONLY job is to make constitutional ruling.

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Theoretically, that's true.

In practice, both parties put up candidates for the federal bench who interpret the Constitution through the ideological prism of their party.  As the Democratic Party has moved farther to the right over the past 35 years in order to both grow the party (by attracting Republicans and Independents into the party) and compete for corporate dollars, its nominees are ever more corporate-friendly/anti-populist.

Alito, Roberts, and Thomas made it through a Democratically-controlled Judiciary Committee and Senate.  And Democrats voted to confirm Thomas (52-48), Alito (58-42) and Roberts (78-22) and Scalia (98-0).  There is nothing that Bush-Cheney, and Reagan-Bush for that matter, did that Democrats couldn't have blocked.  Democrats signed on to all of it.

The real problem we're facing is a president and a Democratic­ Party that, for whatever reason (naivete or a convenient cover for their own corruption­), stubbornly clings to the 'bipartisa­nship model' ("Can't we all get along?") style of legislatin­g and governing that hasn't worked for decades, if ever.  I don't know how many ways Republican­s can say "Go fuck yourselves­" before Obama and Democrats play to win -- Probably as long as there are people who give Obama and Democrats a pass.

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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

In his book The Audacity of Hope, Obama presented himself as the latest in a long line of corporate, centrist Democrats, interested in tinkering with the system but largely agreeing with the consensus on free markets, free trade, and U.S. military power.  As last year's cover story in TIME explains, Obama even agrees with many of the fundamenta­ls of Reaganism, telling reporters, "What Reagan ushered in was a skepticism toward government solutions to every problem. I don't think that has changed."  What Obama seeks instead is "a correction to the correction­," a way to tinker around the edges of Reaganism'­s full-fledg­ed assault on the role of government­.

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Obama Campaign Does Debate Cleanup On Social Security Answer

Obama's been trying to sell himself as Reagan's standard bearer since the 2008 campaign.  Not long ago, Obama actually said, "I admired Ronald Reagan".  A Democrat who governs as a Republican­, continuing just about all of the Bush-Cheney policies and getting Republican legislatio­n through Congress isn't "better".

With Obama, we're getting Republican policies sold to us as if they're what we wanted.  Just because the Republican Party's base is too stupid to know they should be thrilled to have Obama in the White House doesn't mean the Democratic Party's base is.

Back during the campaign in 2008, Democratic voters refused to press Obama when he said this:

"I don't want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what is different is the times. I do think that, for example, the 1980 election was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamenta­lly different path because the country was ready for it. They felt like with all the excesses of the 60s and the 70s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountabi­lity in terms of how it was operating. I think he tapped into what people were already feeling. Which is we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entreprene­urship that had been missing."

He admires and wants to emulate Reagan.

KEEP READING

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