Fiscal Cliff 'Plan B' Gets Veto Threat From Obama

If Obama was a legitimate man of the people, what he's doing is not only disappointing, but strategically stupid. From this day on, Obama can no longer go back to the 250K level, and has to try and hold 400K. Whatever happened to something like..'the numbers don't work if you raise the level above 250K'.

Obama had the majority of Republican voters on his side on this one. If Obama can't win the easy ones, then there is little hope for any others. 

"Too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others" -Robert F. Kennedy
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Fiscal Cliff Talks: Wheels Closer To Coming Off Deal Bus

Republicans smell blood in the water.  They claimed Susan Rice's scalp before she was even nominated and now they've set their sights on Chuck Hagel. Rolling the administration on the fiscal cliff along with these two will give them just the shot in the arm they need right now.  They wanted Kerry, they got him.  Massachusetts is now in play.  

This really isn't all that different from the post-2008 election days when Obama slowed the momentum of winning with 10 million more votes than any presidential candidate in history, deliberately handicapped the People's side, in order to "work in a bipartisan way with Republicans".  

At some point Obama's most ardent supporters have to ask themselves if Obama is not who they thought he was, corrupt, or just plain stupid.  Whatever he is, he's not doing anything to help the 99%.

My own personal belief is that Susan Rice was never a serious consideration by Obama for Secretary of State, just as Elizabeth Warren was never anybody that Obama wanted as head of the CPA.  The evidence is very strong that Obama wants to undermine any chance of a filibuster-proof Democratic majority in the Senate or a majority in the house of Democrats.  Just as it took Nixon to go to China, it's a Democratic president that will end New Deal and Great Society programs.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Unions Roll Out Fiscal Cliff Ad Warning Of Social Security Cuts In 'Boehnerville'

Obama has adopted right-wing rhetoric on "entitlement" "reform".  Let's remember that this was the guy whose first act in the budget negotiation way back when was to offer up a freeze on WORKER'S SALARIES!  Tell me this he isn't cut from the same cloth as every other 1%er CEO.

If you go back and watch Candidate O­bama's speeches, interviews and debates in 2008, and listen with what should be now 'experienc­ed ears' (experienc­ed in lawyer-spe­ak, aka Bush-speak­, although Bush needed a team of speechwrit­ers to do what Obama's able to do on his own, i.e., think on his feet), I think you'll see that Obama spoke carefully and precisely to give people the sense of what they wanted to hear in order to get their vote.

One of my favorite examples of this was Obama saying in 2008, ""Part of the job of the next American president is making Americans believe that our government is working for them, because right now they don't feel like it's working for them. They feel like it's working for special interests and it's working for corporatio­ns"

Not making the government actually work for Americans, but making Americans believe that it is.  That's some artful shuck and jive.  Lawyer-speak.

In Audacity Of Hope, Obama said of his political appeal: “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”

Obama got into office by misleading Democratic voters. He ran to the left of Hillary Clinton.  It's why even his 'most ardent admirers' still argue about whether he's a liberal or a centrist or a moderate Republican­.  He convinced centrists that he was a centrist.  He convinced liberals he was a liberal posing as a centrist.  "Privately, Obama describes himself as a Blue Dog Democrat."  Do you consider Blue Dogs to be centrists?  I don't.

Back in early 2008, when Candidate Obama talked about admiring Reagan and what he wanted to emulate about him,  "I think RonaldReag­an changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, RichardNix­on did not and in a way that BillClinto­n did not", do you seriously believe that he was saying that he wanted to go even farther right of the BushCheney administra­tion he was coming in after?  Yet that's exactly what he's done.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Unions Roll Out Fiscal Cliff Ad Warning Of Social Security Cuts In 'Boehnerville'

Spending on social programs like food stamps is the problem?  Anything but cutting military spending:

Then-defense secretary Robert M. Gates stopped bagging his leaves when he moved into a small Washington military enclave in 2007. His next-door neighbor was Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, who had a chef, a personal valet and — not lost on Gates — troops to tend his property.

Gates may have been the civilian leader of the world’s largest military, but his position did not come with household staff. So, he often joked, he disposed of his leaves by blowing them onto the chairman’s lawn. “I was often jealous because he had four enlisted people helping him all the time,” Gates said in response to a question after a speech Thursday. He wryly complained to his wife that “Mullen’s got guys over there who are fixing meals for him, and I’m shoving something into the microwave. And I’m his boss.”

Of the many facts that have come to light in the scandal involving former CIA director David H. Petraeus, among the most curious was that during his days as a four-star general, he was once escorted by 28 police motorcycles as he traveled from his Central Command headquarters in Tampa to socialite Jill Kelley’s mansion. Although most of his trips did not involve a presidential-size convoy, the scandal has prompted new scrutiny of the imperial trappings that come with a senior general’s lifestyle.

The commanders who lead the nation’s military services and those who oversee troops around the world enjoy an array of perquisites befitting a billionaire, including executive jets, palatial homes, drivers, security guards and aides to carry their bags, press their uniforms and track their schedules in 10-minute increments. Their food is prepared by gourmet chefs. If they want music with their dinner parties, their staff can summon a string quartet or a choir.

The elite regional commanders who preside over large swaths of the planet don’t have to settle for Gulfstream V jets. They each have a C-40, the military equivalent of a Boeing 737, some of which are configured with beds.

Read more at http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2012/11/18/Petraeus-Scandal-Lays-Bare-the-Perks-of-Power.aspx#eL4PUXIaFRXhpOBE.99
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Fiscal Cliff Talks: Wheels Closer To Coming Off Deal Bus

In August, Vice President Biden actually explicitly told a group that there would “be no changes to Social Security”:

“Hey, by the way, let’s talk about Social Security,” Biden said after a diner at The Coffee Break Cafe in Stuart, VA expressed his relief that the Obama campaign wasn’t talking about changing the popular entitlement program.

“Number one, I guarantee you, flat guarantee you, there will be no changes in Social Security,” Biden said, per a pool report. “I flat guarantee you.”

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Joe Biden To Lead Push For New Gun Violence Policies After Newtown Shootings

Like Biden led the push during the 2012 election to assure Democratic voters that Obama would never cut Social Security benefits.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Fiscal Cliff Talks: Wheels Closer To Coming Off Deal Bus

IT IS NOT A ENTITLEMEN­T IT IS BOUGHT AND PAID FOR

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

That's why it's an entitlemen­t -- It's been bought and paid for.

That's what 'entitleme­nt' means.  

But the only thing that Republican­s could do with the word, with the concept of 'entitleme­nt', was to try to change people's attitude about the word itself, conflate it with a common parlance of the word used to describe people who are 'putting on airs' --  "Look at her, all high and mighty, as if she were entitled."

The first step is recognizin­g the tricks of the trade (political pin, weasel-spe­ak, and Democrats do it, too), and reclaiming the language.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...