TODAY'S TOPICS: Global Warming Emails, Drugging Kids, Gay Mayor, Lost Bush Emails, Lieberman, Wall St. Reform?
Health Care Catastrophe - No Public Option No Medicare Expansion and No Prescription Drug Re-importation!! (Insurance Industry and Big Pharma win again...)
I'm beside myself right now...I just can't believe its really this bad...I'm incensed...and broken. Will talk about the reimportation defeat next post...just seeing that news now...today's post was done around 4:30 PM Tuesday.
Joe Lieberman – a rancid, despicable, and soulless man – is once again holding health care hostage, human life be damned. Lieberman and other conservatives have been opposed to the best parts of the plan from the moment it was unveiled. That's why I never quite understood (unless it was planned this way by Obama and Reid) how Democrats in the Senate could ever get 60 votes for a public option or for a Medicare expansion.
What if this has all been one big Kabuki dance, with the insurance industry waiting for their paycheck, and Obama and Reid knowing all along they weren't going to get anything substantial, but also knew they had to appear like they were at least trying in order to appease the base?
If the Democratic leaders, and Obama, really wanted reform, they would have used reconciliation from the outset. Instead, we’re all forced to watch something more repulsive than anything imaginable: Joe Lieberman strut around like a peacock...as if he’s the President of the United States…all the while flip flopping on everything he’s ever said, or claimed to believe in. He’s truly a vile creature. Now we have no public option or Medicare expansion because of this motherfucker.
Any victory for the Democrats is a defeat for him...the little vindictive bastard. Remember, Democrats rejected him as President AND as Senator of Connecticut, so he now gets off on punishing the party and the liberal wing (i.e. sociopath). But remember too, 45,000 people die every year because they can’t afford health care…so he’s holding all of them hostage as well.
Incidentally, Ben Nelson continues to assert himself on this bill, and won’t vote for it until women’s rights are stripped from any legislation…so we’re basically back to square one, as ANYONE COULD HAVE PREDICTED, with 55-56 supporters of a public option AND Medicare expansion in the Senate, but a tiny minority of corporate Democrats and ALL the Republican knuckledraggers are preventing MAJORITY RULE…and ensuring thousands die in the process.
It’s quite a site to behold, and should drive home the fact that we are so far from living in a democracy anymore its becoming more and more like some SNL parody. Budget reconciliation is the only way to go…but then, that will take a lot more time, because we’d have to go back to the House and begin again…as well as take the whole thing up again in 5 years.
So we’re essentially left with NO GOOD OPTIONS. By not using reconciliation from the beginning we’re stuck with watching Lieberman whittle this bill down to something that is so unpalatable that ACTUAL Democrats in the Senate and House won’t support it, or, if they will, we’ll all be stuck with legislation that is so far from what is needed, so no one will be happy. I feel queasy.
Perhaps its too late for reconciliation now...I've got to think about this...but I don't think this is acceptable. Go back and use reconciliation? How about change the filibuster rule in the Senate? Threaten Lieberman and Nelson with the entire wait of the DNC and the White House? Something...peoples lives are at stake!!
As I have said over and over here, and month after month: the bill would get so bad that the real question would become whether progressives could vote for it in the end, not whether the corporate shill wing of the party would. At this point, the bigger question isn't whether I would, or would not vote for it (obviously a lot of good reforms in it as well), but what the bill itself says about the health of our democracy (we're on life support).
Sanders Single Payer Amendment Vote Friday (hopefully)
Remember, in CA we’ve gotten such legislation to the Governor’s desk twice in the past few years…only Schwarzenegger vetoed it. Well, now we'll see who in the Senate is really on our site, as the Medicare for All, single-payer Sanders Amendment (No. 2837) is up for a vote Friday.
AP: "Exhaustive Review' of Stolen Climate Email Finds 'No Evidence of Falsification, Fabrication"
Sadly, the damage has already been done by this phony story…particularly in light of the fact that this reports finding will barely see the light of day on most corporate media outlets. But, the AP, in an exhaustive analysis of stolen climate science emails found they "don't support claims that the science of global warming was faked."
AS Brad Blog notes, "After weeks of our being bombarded by denialists and despite repeated and open-minded requests for links to any actual email --- out of more than 1,000 stolen and posted --- demonstrating evidence of a "hoax" or that the science behind global warming has now been revealed as incorrect, as many claimed, so far none of those denialists have been able to produce a single such a link
...that despite cynical disinformation to the contrary from manipulative corporate operatives and stooges in the wingnut media hoping to play the disaffected rightwing rank and file as suckers (yet again), no such email or evidence actually exists. In short --- as with the ACORN nonsense, as with the WMD scam, as with the CIA leak case, etc. --- the tea baggers have been had, and played as useful fools and tools for rightwing corporatists who couldn't give less of a damn about them, other than where they can trick them into serving as their own unpaid PR disinformation squad.”
As delegates from countries across the globe gather at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, the world is waiting to see if international leaders will commit to the bold reductions in carbon emissions needed to curb the effects of global warming. As we’re already seeing, the big polluting countries, including the US, appear to be doing everything to ensure NO REAL mandates are agreed upon. Yes, Obama is better than Bush on this, but again, Arby’s is better than a shit sandwich, but that doesn’t mean you’d take a date there to eat. My point is, “better than Bush” doesn’t cut it when dealing with the greatest threat our species has ever faced.
One group of individuals who is doing everything it can to prevent progress is the climate change deniers -- a coalition of dirty energy-funded groups and their political allies on the far right. Despite all this hysteria, the truth is that the content of the e-mails proved no such thing.
While conspiracy theorists were quick to declare that this was evidence of efforts to hide data skeptical of global warming, even Time magazine notes that the most pointed to exchange by deniers was really reference (“trick”) to the replacing of proxy temperature data from tree rings in recent years with more accurate data from air temperatures. It's an analytical technique that has been openly discussed in scientific journals for over a decade - hardly the stuff of conspiracy."
The fact that the e-mails in no way disprove the science of climate change, the mainstream media almost instantly took up the right wing's spin and used it to undermine the case for the existence climate change. The mainstream media's willingness to grant legitimacy to the conspiracy theories has had unfortunate consequences. Two of the scientists whose e-mails were leaked have received death threats, prompting the FBI to launch an investigation. The Saudi negotiator in Copenhagen told the press that his government's "confidence" in the science of climate change "has been shaken" by the hacked e-mails.
Meanwhile, in the world of reality and fact, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released new data that it had compiled that concluded that 2009 will likely be the fifth-warmest year ever recorded. WMO's data "does not show a slowdown or reversal of the global warming trend." Michel Jarraud, the secretary-general of the WMO, said that if nothing is done to reverse climate change, "cold periods will become less frequent, and heat waves and typhoons will become more frequent and more intense."
Two Good News Stories (all be it small ones)
Computer technicians have found 22 million missing White House e-mails from the administration of President George W. Bush and the Obama administration is searching for dozens more days' worth of potentially lost e-mail from the Bush years, according to two groups that filed suit over the failure by the Bush White House to install an electronic record keeping system.
Unfortunately it will be years before the public sees any of the recovered e-mails because they will now go through the National Archives' process for releasing presidential and agency records. Presidential records of the Bush administration won't be available until 2014 at the earliest. Still...there could be some SERIOUS dirt in them...
Houston Becomes First Major City to Elect Gay Mayor!
Democrat Annise Parker was elected Houston's new mayor on Saturday, making her "the first openly gay person to lead a major U.S. city." Parker "first emerged in the public arena as a gay rights activist in the 1980s" and rose through the ranks of city politics. Parker's sexual orientation became a focus of the mayoral race after far right groups came out and condemned her "homosexual behavior."
The Afghanistan Quagmire...Drone Attacks on Cities?
Have you all noticed that one of the most significant and criminal components of this war - the one fought with Predators and drones in Pakistan - is never, and will not be, mentioned by American government officials, let alone explained and defended. Recent escalations of that part of the war - as well as the fact that now, top U.S. officials "are pushing to expand CIA drone strikes beyond Pakistan's tribal region and into a major city (sure to cause MASSIVE civilian casualties) in an attempt to pressure the Pakistani government to pursue Taliban leaders based in Quetta. Does it strike anyone as odd that to supposedly get revenge for an attack on civilians in New York, we want to attack innocent civilians in a city in Pakistan?
Dwight Eisenhower's warning has come true. The military industrial complex might as well be the fourth branch of government - uncontrolled by anyone and almost entirely unaccountable. It virtually always gets what it wants: money, support, secrecy, lawlessness, and death, lots of death.
VIDEO SECTION
from C&L: Keith blasts the right wing noise machine that is Fox News, right wing radio and blogs like Drudge, and their carping about how they don't get any coverage in the mainstream media when the truth is they dominate it. He went after Bill-O the hardest during the lead for his crusade against Dr. George Tiller and his part in the hate crime that resulted in his death.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/keith-olbermann-blasts-fox-news-and-right
Countdown's Worst Persons for Dec. 14, 2009 with winner John Whitehead. Runners up Vincent Keane and James Inhofe.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/countdown-worst-persons-tea-baggers-want-d
How about President Franken? Give me somebody that will stand up to these Republican sociopaths! Here, he does so again, saying Republicans ‘haven’t read the bill and are not very familiar with it”, stating “We are entitled to our own opinions; we are not entitled to our own facts…I stand here day after day after day and hear my colleagues, my good friends from the other side, say things that are not based on fact. […] Watch him, Sanders, and Jerrod Brown dismantle the GOP....
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/cspanjunkie/we-are-not-entitled-our-own-facts-sena
Kucinich doing his thing on the House floor..."The message is clear: We have money for war but not for jobs. We have money for war but not for health care. We have money for war but not for education. . .We have money for war but not for peace."!
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/cspanjunkie/not-all-wars-are-just-some-are-just-wa
World wide protests for climate change action…something else you will see little, if any coverage on our corporate news...but lots about Tiger Woods!!!
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/cspanjunkie/worldwide-protests-climate-change
FROM C&L: Rachel Maddow follows up on her reporting that she's done all week on the kill-the-gays bill in Uganda and its ties to The Family. It appears Chuck Grassley finally decided it was worth his time to give a reply. Sen. Russ Feingold who is not a member of The Family and who has no ties to the law being promoted in Uganda released this statement:
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rachel-maddow-show-how-protest-unjust-bill
ARTICLE SECTION
Disaster and Denial, by Paul Krugman
A little fun fact for you all to consider: If just 7.2% of the $150 billion bonus and compensation pool going to bankers was redirected to help working families recover from the economic recession, we could provide mortgage payment assistance to 1.8 million California families, preventing or postpone every foreclosure projected in the state for 2009-2012.
A fraction of the bonuses and compensation could also plug the entire $6.3 billion mid-year gap in the California budget, avoiding further cuts to K-12, universities, healthcare, and social services.
A few clips:
The first big wave of deregulation took place under Ronald Reagan — and quickly led to disaster, in the form of the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s. Taxpayers ended up paying more than 2 percent of G.D.P., the equivalent of around $300 billion today, to clean up the mess.
But the proponents of deregulation were undaunted, and in the decade leading up to the current crisis politicians in both parties bought into the notion that New Deal-era restrictions on bankers were nothing but pointless red tape. In a memorable 2003 incident, top bank regulators staged a photo-op in which they used garden shears and a chainsaw to cut up stacks of paper representing regulations.
And the bankers — liberated both by legislation that removed traditional restrictions and by the hands-off attitude of regulators who didn’t believe in regulation — responded by dramatically loosening lending standards. The result was a credit boom and a monstrous real estate bubble, followed by the worst economic slump since the Great Depression. Ironically, the effort to contain the crisis required government intervention on a much larger scale than would have been needed to prevent the crisis in the first place: government rescues of troubled institutions, large-scale lending by the Federal Reserve to the private sector, and so on.
SNIP
Talk to conservatives about the financial crisis and you enter an alternative, bizarro universe in which government bureaucrats, not greedy bankers, caused the meltdown. It’s a universe in which government-sponsored lending agencies triggered the crisis, even though private lenders actually made the vast majority of subprime loans. It’s a universe in which regulators coerced bankers into making loans to unqualified borrowers, even though only one of the top 25 subprime lenders was subject to the regulations in question.
Oh, and conservatives simply ignore the catastrophe in commercial real estate: in their universe the only bad loans were those made to poor people and members of minority groups, because bad loans to developers of shopping malls and office towers don’t fit the narrative. In part, the prevalence of this narrative reflects the principle enunciated by Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/14-1
US Kids Represent Psychiatric Drug Goldmine, Evelyn Pringle
Big Pharma and our Brave New World…now its Alduous Huxley that’s rolling in his grave. A few clips:
Prescriptions for psychiatric drugs increased 50 percent with children in the US, and 73 percent among adults, from 1996 to 2006, according to a study in the May/June 2009 issue of the journal Health Affairs. Another study in the same issue of Health Affairs found spending for mental health care grew more than 30 percent over the same ten-year period, with almost all of the increase due to psychiatric drug costs.
On April 22, 2009, the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality reported that in 2006 more money was spent on treating mental disorders in children aged 0 to 17 than for any other medical condition, with a total of $8.9 billion. By comparison, the cost of treating trauma-related disorders, including fractures, sprains, burns, and other physical injuries, was only $6.1 billion.In 2008, psychiatric drug makers had overall sales in the US of $14.6 billion from antipsychotics, $9.6 billion off antidepressants, $11.3 billion from antiseizure drugs and $4.8 billion in sales of ADHD drugs, for a grand total of $40.3 billion.
SNIP
The path to child drugging in the US started with providing adolescents with stimulants for ADHD in the early 80s. That was followed by Prozac in the late 80s, and in the mid-90s drug companies started claiming that ADHD kids really had bipolar disorder, coinciding with the marketing of epilepsy drugs as "mood stablizers" and the arrival of the new atypical antipsychotics.
Parents can now have their kids declared disabled due to mental illness and receive Social Security disability payments and free medical care, and schools can get more money for disabled kids. The bounty for the prescribing doctors and pharmacies is enormous and the CEOs of the drug companies are laughing all the way into early retirement.
SNIP
…the rate of Americans disabled by mental illness has skyrocketed since Prozac came on the market in 1987, and reports: (1) the number of mentally disabled people in the US has been increasing at a rate of 150,000 people per year since 1987, (2) that represents an increase of 410 new people per day and (3) the disability rate has continued to increase and one in every 50 Americans is disabled by mental illness.
The statistics above beg the question of how could this happen when the so-called new generation of "wonder drugs" arrived on the market during the exact same time period. The truth is, the "wonder drugs" cause most of the bizarre behaviors listed by doctors to warrant a mental illness disability. The CIA "World Factbook" estimates the world population to be about 6.8 billion and the US population to be a mere 307 million. In an April 2008 report, the market research firm Datamonitor reported that the "US dominates the ADHD market with a 94 percent market share."
http://www.truthout.org/1213091
Financial 'Reform' Preserves Too Big Banks, Too Much Speculation, by John Nichols
A few clips:
The U.S. House has voted for legislation that is described as "financial services reform." But most of the "reforms" are so mild that the savviest of the nation's big bankers will be breathing sighs of relief, rather than worrying about being regulated into good behavior. That's not to say that the House bill is meaningless. It proposes some valuable shifts, including the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency that could – if infused with proper authority and backed by a White House and Congress that want to tip the regulatory balance in favor of the great mass of Americans – give bankers and speculators some headaches.
SNIP
The bill would create, at a cost that could run into the billions, a Consumer Financial Protection Agency in an attempt to head off the kinds of lending practices that led many homeowners to take on mortgages they could not afford. The bill would bring regulation for the first time to a portion of the over-the-counter market for derivatives. It would create a process for dealing with troubles at very large financial institutions that might pose a risk to the financial system and the economy, and require large firms to contribute to a fund to help with an orderly dissolution of those institutions if they are in danger of failing. And the bill includes a number of other provisions to address executive compensation, investor protections and regulation of hedge funds.
On the negative side, the House legislation fails to dismantle even the biggest of "too big to fail" firms that could still collapse the U.S. economy. It also fails to even address the most serious abuses of the world's $600 trillion derivatives market. Why is the House bill so disappointing? Of course, Republican opposition was a factor. But the biggest frustration was the Democratic block that tried, at every turn, to defend the big banks and speculators.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/14-2
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Saturday, December 12, 2009
TODAY'S TOPICS: Obama Sells Out/Taibbi, Populism, Dem Implosion, War is Peace, Corporate Personhood, Big Pharma
Note: Read the three articles I have posted today.
Democrats/Obama Imploding and the Populist Answer
An important factoid to consider when you hear the media talking heads blathering about America being a conservative country and the health care plan being too "liberal" is that, uh, we're not. As I have argued, the opposite is true...we're center/left, and the real problem with the health care plan is it doesn't go far enough (because the right wing will oppose ANYTHING ANYWAY). Now I have proof of my hypothesis: It turns out that a significant minority of about 25 percent of the people who opposed the plan -- or about 12 of the overall sample -- did so from the left; they thought the plan didn't go far enough.
Still, the "conservative America" myth is repeated regardless of the facts. By continuing to bend to the will of the corporate interests the Democrats and the Obama Administration are destroying the hope and energy of their base, and killing their chances to change anything in this country, let alone stay in power for the longterm. Democrats would never have won Congress in 2006 without public anger at the Iraq War, and Barack Obama would never have become President without a revulsion to the corporate, militaristic ways of the mildly retarded sociopath named George W. Bush.
But despite a public mandate, conservative “Democrats” - and the Obama Administration in many instances - conspire with Republicans to protect the Matrix/status quo. If Democrats lose in 2010, it won’t be because they were “too liberal” or pushed “too hard” for change...it will be because they failed to accomplish what they were elected to do...and were disingenuous in doing it too.
Let's face it, the anger, angst, and concern of the public is palpable right now...nearly EVERYONE is fed up with our for the corporation/rich, of the corporation/rich, and by the corporation/rich country. Its precisely this anger and angst that allows maniacal and greedy demagogues like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sarah Palin to thrive...because they are using a faux populism to do it.
The Democrats need to take back populism now, before its too late for them, and shit, for our country. If we've all learned anything since Obama's election, its that our democracy is in a whole lot worse shape than any of us could have imagined. Corporations own this place now.
The people at the top of the party don't comprehend the power of that populist message. Just look at the teabaggers for god's sakes...yes, they're totally misguided, but at their core, even they understand something has gone terribly wrong in our country. This is the time the Democrats need to connect and fight for the middle class and bring economic justice and fairness back to the table. But alas, they are not (aside from the Progressive caucus efforts). And because they are not, I am becoming more convinced than ever its going to take an uprising to change things (not violent...but certainly mass protest), Democrats be damned.
As another blogger wrote, "Democrats who ignore the populist revolt do so at their own peril. When Democrats are strong on these pocketbook issues, they succeed (remember Obama's campaign). But if we yield the populist ground to the Republican Party, the results of 2010 will not be in our favor. The middle class feels abandoned by both parties, the American Dream is more out of reach than ever. When it comes to outrage at the bipartisan march toward centralization of power and wealth, it's in our nature for Democrats to lead the charge."
Instead the Dems are left defending the Wall Street bailout, failed efforts to address the foreclosure crisis (have lenders VOLUNTARILY renegotiate mortgages? Really!?), a health care plan that gives far more to the insurance industry than it does to people, and a jobs plan (from Obama anyway) that continues to avoid the kind of New Deal aggressiveness everybody is waiting for...thus allowing some Republicans to even co-opt the populist mantle, and they are antithetic to that cause.
If the Democrats can be framed as "the corrupt government" that is owned and controlled by big money, they will lose, the country will lose, and worst of all, the Republicans will win...and that is scary. For over a century Democrats have been recognized as the party of working people…they are risking what’s left of that legacy. And Obama is throwing it out the window (see my articles today!).
For instance, here’s another perfect example: The White House and the corporate Dems together have formed a coalition for Big Pharma…and promising to continue to prevent the ability of the US to import cheaper drugs from Canada. Obama, the corporate, two faced whore that he is, actually claims to support the ability to do this, but just as Bush before him, now claims there are…wait for it…health and safety concerns!!! Nevermind that the drugs we use now are made in Canada and shipped back here and then overpriced, somehow, other drugs from Canada aren’t safe. The mind fucking reels.
But thankfully, Senator Dorgan is holding up the health care bill to get a vote on his reimportation amendment that of course conflicts with the deal made with Big PhRMa. The White House his standing strong on this of course…but not for anything that helps people, as they are more than happy to trade away the public option or wall street regulations, but absolutely will fight to the finish to protect drug company profits. And no, I’m not talking about George W. Bush…I’m talking about Barack Obama.
The big news is that Dorgan’s fighting back:
The White House, aided by Sen. Tom Carper is working hard to crush an amendment being pushed by Dorgan to allow for the reimportation of pharmaceutical drugs from Canada, Senate sources tell the Huffington Post. As a result, the Senate health care debate has come to a standstill: Carper has placed a “hold” on Dorgan’s amendment and in response, Dorgan tells HuffPost, he’ll object to any other amendments being considered before he gets a vote on his.
The pharmaceutical industry, aided by the White House, is strong-arming as many Democrats as possible into voting against reimportation, because it would blow up the Big PhRMa deal and risk blowing up the whole bill (Obama RAN ON importing drugs from Canada!)…I can’t believe I even fell a little for Obama…I always had doubts, and I wrote about them extensively for years, but wow, I still feel suckered.
VIDEO SECTION
Jon Stewart rips into Glenn Beck for his manifest lack of ethics in promoting gold as an investment on his program.
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/stewart-lambastes-glenn-beck-his-gol
Stephen Colbert talks to Matt Taibbi about his reporting on the Wall Street bailouts and Goldman Sach's unprecedented access in Washington. Matt's latest article at Rolling Stone is available on line now--Obama's Big Sellout The president has packed his economic team with Wall Street insiders intent on turning the bailout into an all-out giveaway. Also be sure to watch the clip of Taibbi explaining his article (that I have posted in the article section…but its really long…so at least watch this):
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/colbert-report-matt-taibbi
And here’s what ACTUALLY NEEDED to reform Wall Street: Restore the Glass-Steagall Act. Listen to Thom Hartmann and Rep. Peter DeFazio discuss five progressive congress members efforts to give banks one year to choose between being commercial banks or investment banks….nice!
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/thom-hartmann-show-rep-peter-defazio-tryin
Colbert on the GOP’s latest soiling of itself: The Purity Test. The only thing today’s rancid Democratic Party has going for it is the GOP…a sickening, ignorant based, fact free group of corporate whores and religious scoundrels that get off on sending other peoples children to war for their own profit and their cowardly need to live vicariously through real soldiers…but I digress:
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/word-grand-old-purity
Marcy Kaptur on the ever weakening “wall street reform” legislation…and what is actually needed (i.e. break up the banks for one!):
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/cspanjunkie/maybe-someday-real-banking-reform-will
Hospital groups and the AMA oppose the Medicare buy-in idea…so you KNOW its a good idea…Watch Rep. Alan Grayson tear them apart…
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/hospital-groups-and-ama-dont-want-med
U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich plans to force a House of Representatives vote early next year on whether to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Pakistan.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/cspanjunkie/congressman-kucinich-force-vote-end-wa
ARTICLE SECTION
Obama's Big Sellout, MATT TAIBBI
This should all sound fairly familiar to what I’ve been exposing here since he was elected…but it hasn’t been done as well as the great Matt Taibbi does here. Over the past few weeks its really started to sink in...Obama’s not with us…and more often than not, he will be an adversary (and a formidable one at that), not an ally as I had hoped…he’s got the silver tongue, and an endless supply of double-talk, justifications and half truths to spin.
A few clips:
Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers "at the expense of hardworking Americans." Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it's not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing.
Then he got elected.
What's taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside.
SNIP
Barack Obama was still just the president-elect when it happened, but the revolting and inexcusable $306 billion bailout that Citigroup received was the first major act of his presidency. In order to grasp the full horror of what took place, however, one needs to go back a few weeks before the actual bailout — to November 5th, 2008, the day after Obama's election.
That was the day the jubilant Obama campaign announced its transition team. Though many of the names were familiar — former Bill Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, long-time Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett — the list was most notable for who was not on it, especially on the economic side. Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist who had served as one of Obama's chief advisers during the campaign, didn't make the cut. Neither did Karen Kornbluh, who had served as Obama's policy director and was instrumental in crafting the Democratic Party's platform. Both had emphasized populist themes during the campaign: Kornbluh was known for pushing Democrats to focus on the plight of the poor and middle class, while Goolsbee was an aggressive critic of Wall Street, declaring that AIG executives should receive "a Nobel Prize — for evil."
But come November 5th, both were banished from Obama's inner circle — and replaced with a group of Wall Street bankers. Leading the search for the president's new economic team was his close friend and Harvard Law classmate Michael Froman, a high-ranking executive at Citigroup.
SNIP
Around the same time that finance reform was being watered down in Congress at the behest of his Treasury secretary, Obama was making a pit stop to raise money from Wall Street. On October 20th, the president went to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York and addressed some 200 financiers and business moguls, each of whom paid the maximum allowable contribution of $30,400 to the Democratic Party. But an organizer of the event, Daniel Fass, announced in advance that support for the president might be lighter than expected — bailed-out firms like JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs were expected to contribute a meager $91,000 to the event — because bankers were tired of being lectured about their misdeeds.
SNIP
This is the kind of person who is working for the Obama administration, which makes it unsurprising that we're getting no real reform of the finance industry. There's no other way to say it: Barack Obama, a once-in-a-generation political talent whose graceful conquest of America's racial dragons en route to the White House inspired the entire world, has for some reason allowed his presidency to be hijacked by sniveling, low-rent shitheads. Instead of reining in Wall Street, Obama has allowed himself to be seduced by it, leaving even his erstwhile campaign adviser, ex-Fed chief Paul Volcker, concerned about a "moral hazard" creeping over his administration.
SNIP
What's most troubling is that we don't know if Obama has changed, or if the influence of Wall Street is simply a fundamental and ineradicable element of our electoral system. What we do know is that Barack Obama pulled a bait-and-switch on us. If it were any other politician, we wouldn't be surprised. Maybe it's our fault, for thinking he was different.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31234647/obamas_big_sellout/print
Supreme Court's Ruling Would Allow Bin Laden to Donate to Sarah Palin's Presidential Campaign, By Greg Palast
Greg Palast on another coming catastrophe (I’m sorry for all the bad news, but I didn’t start this blog to hide the truth): The Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission will come down as early as Tuesday, and is expected anoint corporations and their money as persons – actually more than persons - that can make unlimited contributions to political campaigns. We just might look back in 10 years from now at this decision as the time our democracy finally slipped through our fingers for good...
A few clips:
I'm losing sleep over the millions -- or billions -- of dollars that could flood into our elections from ARAMCO, the Saudi Oil corporation's U.S. unit; or from the maker of "New Order" fashions, the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Or from Bin Laden Construction corporation. Or Bin Laden Destruction Corporation…if the Supreme Court rules that corporations can support candidates without limit, there is nothing that stops, say, a Delaware-incorporated handmaiden of the Burmese junta from picking a Congressman or two with a cache of loot masked by a corporate alias.
SNIP
If Olson gets his way, she told me, corporations will have more rights than people. Only United States citizens may donate or influence campaigns, but a foreign government can, veiled behind a corporate treasury, dump money into ballot battles. Malloy also noted that under the law today, human-people, as opposed to corporate-people, may only give $2,300 to a presidential campaign. But hedge fund billionaires, for example, who typically operate through dozens of corporate vessels, could, should Olson prevail, give unlimited sums through each of these "unnatural" creatures.
And once the Taliban incorporates in Delaware, they could ante up for the best democracy money can buy. In July, the Chinese government, in preparation for President Obama's visit, held diplomatic discussions in which they skirted issues of human rights and Tibet. Notably, the Chinese, who hold a $2 trillion mortgage on our Treasury, raised concerns about the cost of Obama's health care reform bill. Would our nervous Chinese landlords have an interest in buying the White House for an opponent of government spending such as Gov. Palin? Ya betcha!
http://www.alternet.org/rights/144502/supreme_court%27s_ruling_would_allow_bin_laden_to_donate_to_sarah_palin%27s_presidential_campaign
The Strange Consensus on Obama's Nobel Address, by Glenn Greenwald
Now that Obama has given an Orwellian masterpiece of a “War is Peace” speech in Oslo, let’s get back to the cold hard facts about this newly anointed war criminal. First, for every soldier we send to Afghanistan it costs the same as it would to build 25 schools there. Just let that sink in for a bit…
Meanwhile, President Hamid Karzai just stated that "Afghanistan would not be able to pay for its own security until at least 2024," highlighting his government's long-term financial dependence on the U.S. and NATO. Who wants to take bets as to when we’ll really be out of that country? I’d put it at a 1000 to 1 that there will be anything remotely resembling a withdrawal in 2011…in fact, I’d put money down that we’ll be there for decades.
A few clips:
…it's not difficult to see why Rovian conservatives are embracing his speech; so much of it was devoted to an affirmation of their core beliefs.
The more difficult question to answer is why -- given what Drum described -- so many liberals found the speech so inspiring and agreeable? Is that what liberals were hoping for when they elected Obama: someone who would march right into Oslo and proudly announce to the world that we have a unilateral right to wage war when we want and to sing the virtues of war as a key instrument for peace? As Tom Friedman put it on CNN yesterday: "He got into their faces . . . I'm for getting into the Europeans' face." Is that what we needed more of?
Yesterday's speech and the odd, extremely bipartisan reaction to it underscored one of the real dangers of the Obama presidency: taking what had been ideas previously discredited as Republican or right-wing dogma and transforming them into bipartisan consensus. It's not just Republicans but Democrats that are now vested in -- and eager to justify -- the virtues of war, claims of Grave Danger posed by Islamic radicals and the need to use massive military force to combat them, indefinite detention, military commissions, extreme secrecy, full-scale immunity for government lawbreaking, and so many other doctrines once purportedly despised by Democrats but now defended by them because their leader has embraced them.
SNIP
Much of the liberal praise for Obama's speech yesterday focused on how eloquent, sophisticated, nuanced, complex, philosophical, contemplative and intellectual it was. And, looked at a certain way, it was all of those things -- like so many Obama speeches are. After eight years of enduring a President who spoke in simplistic Manichean imperatives and bullying decrees, many liberals are understandably joyous over having a President who uses their language and the rhetorical approach that resonates with them.
But that's the real danger. Obama puts a pretty, intellectual, liberal face on some ugly and decidedly illiberal polices. Just as George Bush's Christian-based moralizing let conservatives feel good about America regardless of what it does, Obama's complex and elegiac rhetoric lets many liberals do the same. To red state Republicans, war and its accompanying instruments (secrecy, executive power, indefinite detention) felt so good and right when justified by swaggering, unapologetic toughness and divinely-mandated purpose; to blue state Democrats, all of that feels just as good when justified by academic meditations on "just war" doctrine and when accompanied by poetic expressions of sorrow and reluctance. When you combine the two rhetorical approaches, what you get is what you saw yesterday: a bipartisan embrace of the same policies and ideologies among people with supposedly irreconcilable views of the world.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/11-9
Note: Read the three articles I have posted today.
Democrats/Obama Imploding and the Populist Answer
An important factoid to consider when you hear the media talking heads blathering about America being a conservative country and the health care plan being too "liberal" is that, uh, we're not. As I have argued, the opposite is true...we're center/left, and the real problem with the health care plan is it doesn't go far enough (because the right wing will oppose ANYTHING ANYWAY). Now I have proof of my hypothesis: It turns out that a significant minority of about 25 percent of the people who opposed the plan -- or about 12 of the overall sample -- did so from the left; they thought the plan didn't go far enough.
Still, the "conservative America" myth is repeated regardless of the facts. By continuing to bend to the will of the corporate interests the Democrats and the Obama Administration are destroying the hope and energy of their base, and killing their chances to change anything in this country, let alone stay in power for the longterm. Democrats would never have won Congress in 2006 without public anger at the Iraq War, and Barack Obama would never have become President without a revulsion to the corporate, militaristic ways of the mildly retarded sociopath named George W. Bush.
But despite a public mandate, conservative “Democrats” - and the Obama Administration in many instances - conspire with Republicans to protect the Matrix/status quo. If Democrats lose in 2010, it won’t be because they were “too liberal” or pushed “too hard” for change...it will be because they failed to accomplish what they were elected to do...and were disingenuous in doing it too.
Let's face it, the anger, angst, and concern of the public is palpable right now...nearly EVERYONE is fed up with our for the corporation/rich, of the corporation/rich, and by the corporation/rich country. Its precisely this anger and angst that allows maniacal and greedy demagogues like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sarah Palin to thrive...because they are using a faux populism to do it.
The Democrats need to take back populism now, before its too late for them, and shit, for our country. If we've all learned anything since Obama's election, its that our democracy is in a whole lot worse shape than any of us could have imagined. Corporations own this place now.
The people at the top of the party don't comprehend the power of that populist message. Just look at the teabaggers for god's sakes...yes, they're totally misguided, but at their core, even they understand something has gone terribly wrong in our country. This is the time the Democrats need to connect and fight for the middle class and bring economic justice and fairness back to the table. But alas, they are not (aside from the Progressive caucus efforts). And because they are not, I am becoming more convinced than ever its going to take an uprising to change things (not violent...but certainly mass protest), Democrats be damned.
As another blogger wrote, "Democrats who ignore the populist revolt do so at their own peril. When Democrats are strong on these pocketbook issues, they succeed (remember Obama's campaign). But if we yield the populist ground to the Republican Party, the results of 2010 will not be in our favor. The middle class feels abandoned by both parties, the American Dream is more out of reach than ever. When it comes to outrage at the bipartisan march toward centralization of power and wealth, it's in our nature for Democrats to lead the charge."
Instead the Dems are left defending the Wall Street bailout, failed efforts to address the foreclosure crisis (have lenders VOLUNTARILY renegotiate mortgages? Really!?), a health care plan that gives far more to the insurance industry than it does to people, and a jobs plan (from Obama anyway) that continues to avoid the kind of New Deal aggressiveness everybody is waiting for...thus allowing some Republicans to even co-opt the populist mantle, and they are antithetic to that cause.
If the Democrats can be framed as "the corrupt government" that is owned and controlled by big money, they will lose, the country will lose, and worst of all, the Republicans will win...and that is scary. For over a century Democrats have been recognized as the party of working people…they are risking what’s left of that legacy. And Obama is throwing it out the window (see my articles today!).
For instance, here’s another perfect example: The White House and the corporate Dems together have formed a coalition for Big Pharma…and promising to continue to prevent the ability of the US to import cheaper drugs from Canada. Obama, the corporate, two faced whore that he is, actually claims to support the ability to do this, but just as Bush before him, now claims there are…wait for it…health and safety concerns!!! Nevermind that the drugs we use now are made in Canada and shipped back here and then overpriced, somehow, other drugs from Canada aren’t safe. The mind fucking reels.
But thankfully, Senator Dorgan is holding up the health care bill to get a vote on his reimportation amendment that of course conflicts with the deal made with Big PhRMa. The White House his standing strong on this of course…but not for anything that helps people, as they are more than happy to trade away the public option or wall street regulations, but absolutely will fight to the finish to protect drug company profits. And no, I’m not talking about George W. Bush…I’m talking about Barack Obama.
The big news is that Dorgan’s fighting back:
The White House, aided by Sen. Tom Carper is working hard to crush an amendment being pushed by Dorgan to allow for the reimportation of pharmaceutical drugs from Canada, Senate sources tell the Huffington Post. As a result, the Senate health care debate has come to a standstill: Carper has placed a “hold” on Dorgan’s amendment and in response, Dorgan tells HuffPost, he’ll object to any other amendments being considered before he gets a vote on his.
The pharmaceutical industry, aided by the White House, is strong-arming as many Democrats as possible into voting against reimportation, because it would blow up the Big PhRMa deal and risk blowing up the whole bill (Obama RAN ON importing drugs from Canada!)…I can’t believe I even fell a little for Obama…I always had doubts, and I wrote about them extensively for years, but wow, I still feel suckered.
VIDEO SECTION
Jon Stewart rips into Glenn Beck for his manifest lack of ethics in promoting gold as an investment on his program.
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/stewart-lambastes-glenn-beck-his-gol
Stephen Colbert talks to Matt Taibbi about his reporting on the Wall Street bailouts and Goldman Sach's unprecedented access in Washington. Matt's latest article at Rolling Stone is available on line now--Obama's Big Sellout The president has packed his economic team with Wall Street insiders intent on turning the bailout into an all-out giveaway. Also be sure to watch the clip of Taibbi explaining his article (that I have posted in the article section…but its really long…so at least watch this):
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/colbert-report-matt-taibbi
And here’s what ACTUALLY NEEDED to reform Wall Street: Restore the Glass-Steagall Act. Listen to Thom Hartmann and Rep. Peter DeFazio discuss five progressive congress members efforts to give banks one year to choose between being commercial banks or investment banks….nice!
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/thom-hartmann-show-rep-peter-defazio-tryin
Colbert on the GOP’s latest soiling of itself: The Purity Test. The only thing today’s rancid Democratic Party has going for it is the GOP…a sickening, ignorant based, fact free group of corporate whores and religious scoundrels that get off on sending other peoples children to war for their own profit and their cowardly need to live vicariously through real soldiers…but I digress:
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/word-grand-old-purity
Marcy Kaptur on the ever weakening “wall street reform” legislation…and what is actually needed (i.e. break up the banks for one!):
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/cspanjunkie/maybe-someday-real-banking-reform-will
Hospital groups and the AMA oppose the Medicare buy-in idea…so you KNOW its a good idea…Watch Rep. Alan Grayson tear them apart…
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/hospital-groups-and-ama-dont-want-med
U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich plans to force a House of Representatives vote early next year on whether to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Pakistan.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/cspanjunkie/congressman-kucinich-force-vote-end-wa
ARTICLE SECTION
Obama's Big Sellout, MATT TAIBBI
This should all sound fairly familiar to what I’ve been exposing here since he was elected…but it hasn’t been done as well as the great Matt Taibbi does here. Over the past few weeks its really started to sink in...Obama’s not with us…and more often than not, he will be an adversary (and a formidable one at that), not an ally as I had hoped…he’s got the silver tongue, and an endless supply of double-talk, justifications and half truths to spin.
A few clips:
Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers "at the expense of hardworking Americans." Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it's not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing.
Then he got elected.
What's taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside.
SNIP
Barack Obama was still just the president-elect when it happened, but the revolting and inexcusable $306 billion bailout that Citigroup received was the first major act of his presidency. In order to grasp the full horror of what took place, however, one needs to go back a few weeks before the actual bailout — to November 5th, 2008, the day after Obama's election.
That was the day the jubilant Obama campaign announced its transition team. Though many of the names were familiar — former Bill Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, long-time Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett — the list was most notable for who was not on it, especially on the economic side. Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist who had served as one of Obama's chief advisers during the campaign, didn't make the cut. Neither did Karen Kornbluh, who had served as Obama's policy director and was instrumental in crafting the Democratic Party's platform. Both had emphasized populist themes during the campaign: Kornbluh was known for pushing Democrats to focus on the plight of the poor and middle class, while Goolsbee was an aggressive critic of Wall Street, declaring that AIG executives should receive "a Nobel Prize — for evil."
But come November 5th, both were banished from Obama's inner circle — and replaced with a group of Wall Street bankers. Leading the search for the president's new economic team was his close friend and Harvard Law classmate Michael Froman, a high-ranking executive at Citigroup.
SNIP
Around the same time that finance reform was being watered down in Congress at the behest of his Treasury secretary, Obama was making a pit stop to raise money from Wall Street. On October 20th, the president went to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York and addressed some 200 financiers and business moguls, each of whom paid the maximum allowable contribution of $30,400 to the Democratic Party. But an organizer of the event, Daniel Fass, announced in advance that support for the president might be lighter than expected — bailed-out firms like JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs were expected to contribute a meager $91,000 to the event — because bankers were tired of being lectured about their misdeeds.
SNIP
This is the kind of person who is working for the Obama administration, which makes it unsurprising that we're getting no real reform of the finance industry. There's no other way to say it: Barack Obama, a once-in-a-generation political talent whose graceful conquest of America's racial dragons en route to the White House inspired the entire world, has for some reason allowed his presidency to be hijacked by sniveling, low-rent shitheads. Instead of reining in Wall Street, Obama has allowed himself to be seduced by it, leaving even his erstwhile campaign adviser, ex-Fed chief Paul Volcker, concerned about a "moral hazard" creeping over his administration.
SNIP
What's most troubling is that we don't know if Obama has changed, or if the influence of Wall Street is simply a fundamental and ineradicable element of our electoral system. What we do know is that Barack Obama pulled a bait-and-switch on us. If it were any other politician, we wouldn't be surprised. Maybe it's our fault, for thinking he was different.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31234647/obamas_big_sellout/print
Supreme Court's Ruling Would Allow Bin Laden to Donate to Sarah Palin's Presidential Campaign, By Greg Palast
Greg Palast on another coming catastrophe (I’m sorry for all the bad news, but I didn’t start this blog to hide the truth): The Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission will come down as early as Tuesday, and is expected anoint corporations and their money as persons – actually more than persons - that can make unlimited contributions to political campaigns. We just might look back in 10 years from now at this decision as the time our democracy finally slipped through our fingers for good...
A few clips:
I'm losing sleep over the millions -- or billions -- of dollars that could flood into our elections from ARAMCO, the Saudi Oil corporation's U.S. unit; or from the maker of "New Order" fashions, the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Or from Bin Laden Construction corporation. Or Bin Laden Destruction Corporation…if the Supreme Court rules that corporations can support candidates without limit, there is nothing that stops, say, a Delaware-incorporated handmaiden of the Burmese junta from picking a Congressman or two with a cache of loot masked by a corporate alias.
SNIP
If Olson gets his way, she told me, corporations will have more rights than people. Only United States citizens may donate or influence campaigns, but a foreign government can, veiled behind a corporate treasury, dump money into ballot battles. Malloy also noted that under the law today, human-people, as opposed to corporate-people, may only give $2,300 to a presidential campaign. But hedge fund billionaires, for example, who typically operate through dozens of corporate vessels, could, should Olson prevail, give unlimited sums through each of these "unnatural" creatures.
And once the Taliban incorporates in Delaware, they could ante up for the best democracy money can buy. In July, the Chinese government, in preparation for President Obama's visit, held diplomatic discussions in which they skirted issues of human rights and Tibet. Notably, the Chinese, who hold a $2 trillion mortgage on our Treasury, raised concerns about the cost of Obama's health care reform bill. Would our nervous Chinese landlords have an interest in buying the White House for an opponent of government spending such as Gov. Palin? Ya betcha!
http://www.alternet.org/rights/144502/supreme_court%27s_ruling_would_allow_bin_laden_to_donate_to_sarah_palin%27s_presidential_campaign
The Strange Consensus on Obama's Nobel Address, by Glenn Greenwald
Now that Obama has given an Orwellian masterpiece of a “War is Peace” speech in Oslo, let’s get back to the cold hard facts about this newly anointed war criminal. First, for every soldier we send to Afghanistan it costs the same as it would to build 25 schools there. Just let that sink in for a bit…
Meanwhile, President Hamid Karzai just stated that "Afghanistan would not be able to pay for its own security until at least 2024," highlighting his government's long-term financial dependence on the U.S. and NATO. Who wants to take bets as to when we’ll really be out of that country? I’d put it at a 1000 to 1 that there will be anything remotely resembling a withdrawal in 2011…in fact, I’d put money down that we’ll be there for decades.
A few clips:
…it's not difficult to see why Rovian conservatives are embracing his speech; so much of it was devoted to an affirmation of their core beliefs.
The more difficult question to answer is why -- given what Drum described -- so many liberals found the speech so inspiring and agreeable? Is that what liberals were hoping for when they elected Obama: someone who would march right into Oslo and proudly announce to the world that we have a unilateral right to wage war when we want and to sing the virtues of war as a key instrument for peace? As Tom Friedman put it on CNN yesterday: "He got into their faces . . . I'm for getting into the Europeans' face." Is that what we needed more of?
Yesterday's speech and the odd, extremely bipartisan reaction to it underscored one of the real dangers of the Obama presidency: taking what had been ideas previously discredited as Republican or right-wing dogma and transforming them into bipartisan consensus. It's not just Republicans but Democrats that are now vested in -- and eager to justify -- the virtues of war, claims of Grave Danger posed by Islamic radicals and the need to use massive military force to combat them, indefinite detention, military commissions, extreme secrecy, full-scale immunity for government lawbreaking, and so many other doctrines once purportedly despised by Democrats but now defended by them because their leader has embraced them.
SNIP
Much of the liberal praise for Obama's speech yesterday focused on how eloquent, sophisticated, nuanced, complex, philosophical, contemplative and intellectual it was. And, looked at a certain way, it was all of those things -- like so many Obama speeches are. After eight years of enduring a President who spoke in simplistic Manichean imperatives and bullying decrees, many liberals are understandably joyous over having a President who uses their language and the rhetorical approach that resonates with them.
But that's the real danger. Obama puts a pretty, intellectual, liberal face on some ugly and decidedly illiberal polices. Just as George Bush's Christian-based moralizing let conservatives feel good about America regardless of what it does, Obama's complex and elegiac rhetoric lets many liberals do the same. To red state Republicans, war and its accompanying instruments (secrecy, executive power, indefinite detention) felt so good and right when justified by swaggering, unapologetic toughness and divinely-mandated purpose; to blue state Democrats, all of that feels just as good when justified by academic meditations on "just war" doctrine and when accompanied by poetic expressions of sorrow and reluctance. When you combine the two rhetorical approaches, what you get is what you saw yesterday: a bipartisan embrace of the same policies and ideologies among people with supposedly irreconcilable views of the world.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/11-9
Thursday, December 10, 2009
TODAY'S TOPICS: Bernanke, Bernie Sanders, Wall Street Re-Reg?, Global Warming, Obama, Public Option/Medicare, Carlin, Kucinich
I've been out sick all week and desperately trying to get caught up...sorry if its a little sloppy but needed to get some stuff up...a lot going on...
Global Warming: We're Back to Debating Whether it’s Real
As the clock ticks on our species survival, the Washington Post is running full page op-ed's from Sarah Palin asserting that climate change is a global conspiracy among the scientific elite. You'd think that a paper with the supposed clout of the Washington Post might think twice about publishing a screed so full of lies about something so important...but alas, standards are hard to find these days in the corporate media. Palin debate Gore on climate change? Really? How about Hawkings versus Tyson on Quantum Foam Theory then?
Strangely, I have found some solace recently in the fact that we're back to debating whether climate change is even real and a growing number of Americans believe it isn't. I mean, if we're that stupid, don't we deserve to perish? I'm pretty comfortable now with the answer "yes", why yes we do. This would be much harder for me to accept if say, 80 or more percent of Americans understood the crisis but our government and the fossil fuel industry were preventing action anyway. But man, if only that were true...the fact is, barely a majority of the public even get it anymore...and that's an abomination. Bottom line, there's a lot of blame to go around...and it all centers around our failings as a species, or at least as a society. Of course, I'm feeling incredibly cynical and jaded today :)
“Ice asks no questions, presents no arguments, reads no newspapers, listens to no debates. It is not burdened by ideology and carries no political baggage as it changes from solid to liquid. It just melts.”
- Henry Pollack, Ph.D., Geophysicist and Author, A World Without Ice
Meanwhile, NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites continue making aerial surveys that indicate the East Antarctic ice sheet is melting faster than expected - 57 billion tons of ice a year are melting into the Antarctic seas along with West Antarctic runoff of 132 billion tons of ice per year. GRACE data also shows the Greenland ice sheet melt is accelerating along with the Arctic ice melt.
Yet, in the media’s effort to show "both sides" in reporting the phony “email controversy”, the only thing that isn’t reported is the actual science of climate change. Instead, it’s the OPINION of liberals and scientists, versus the OPINION of right wing nut jobs and the fossil fuel industry. Worse, its their opinions about these emails, rather than the decades of peer reviewed, hard data and evidence.
This leaves the public – which is already facing the high hurdle of its own ignorance - with the impression, however unjustified, that scientists have probably done something wrong, and those that deny basic, verifiable fact, are finally being given a "fair hearing" they don't get from scientific journals...or facts, or logic, or compassion....
Here’s a suggestion: consider the melting ice in every region of the world if you’re still confused!! There’s a chunk Antarctica the size of a state floating towards Australia for Christ’s sakes. The Arctic ice will soon be gone! Siberia's permafrost is melting! What else do Americans need to know? C02 traps heat. We’re releasing mass amounts of C02 (and that's only one component of the warming) by burning fossil fuels and cutting down trees…again, is there something confusing about this equation?
One Third of Californians Can't Cover Living Expenses
Before I get to the moderately good poll numbers regarding what Americans believe is needed most right now, look at these SHOCKING economic numbers in California (welcome to the Third World):
Thirty percent of California's households lack the income to cover "bare bones" living expenses, according to a new statistical study released by United Ways of California, a charitable fundraising consortium. The study, which relies on Census Bureau data, was conducted by the Center for Women's Welfare at the University of Washington and is entitled "Overlooked and Undercounted 2009."
It goes beyond the decades-old federal method of calculating poverty and includes not only the traditional data on housing, food and shelter costs, but costs of transportation, child care and taxes. It does not, however, count money for restaurant food, retirement savings, emergencies or loan payments.
The Good: Americans Support Govt. Spending on Infrastructure, Renewable Energy, Jobs, Increased Taxes on Rich, and Oppose Cuts in Medicare or Social Security
Americans want their government to create jobs through spending on public works, investments in alternative energy or skills training for the jobless. They also want the deficit to come down. And most are ready to hand the bill to the wealthy.
A Bloomberg National Poll conducted Dec. 3-7 shows two- thirds of Americans favor taxing the rich to reduce the deficit.
Even though almost 9 of 10 respondents also say they believe the middle class will have to make financial sacrifices to achieve that goal, only a little more than one-fourth support an increase in taxes on the middle class. Fewer still back cuts in entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare or a new national consumption tax.
While the public sees both unemployment and the deficit as a threat, anxiety over unemployment is higher. Eight out of 10 poll respondents rate unemployment a high risk to the economy in the next two years and 7 of 10 say the same about the deficit.
Two-thirds of Americans back boosting spending on infrastructure. Six of 10 also support more spending on alternative energy to stimulate job growth, another measure Obama announced.
But…Here Comes the Stupid: Americans Also Want Deficit Reduced Now, Cuts in Spending, AND Tax Cuts (Note: worst thing to do in a recession is cut spending and reduce deficit...)
Americans support a range of other potential new government initiatives presented as employment programs, with ideas from both parties backed by wide majorities. An across-the-board tax cut, a favorite of some Republicans, also is supported by 6 of 10 Americans.
The poll shows that an across-the-board 5 percent cut of all discretionary government spending also attracts support as a deficit-reduction measure, with 57 percent saying they would back it.
The mind reels…they want spending, but also support tax cuts, but also deficit reductions and cuts in spending, but don't want reductions in social programs, but don’t believe government can help with jobs, but supports spending on jobs…oh man are we finished.
Sorry, it just seems like we've entered a kind of Keystone Cops on bad acid period of our nation's history...
Public Option AND Expand Medicare
Wish I had more time, but suffice it to say, I love the idea of expanding Medicare to those 55 and older, and loathe the idea of eliminating the public option (I'll talk about this more next post).
AS Democracy for America states, "The continued talk of finding a "compromise" in the Senate which would eliminate the public option in the healthcare bill is a negotiation with defeat. Even if the deal expands access to Medicare for some Americans under 65, this should not be a question of one or the other. The choice of a public option and expanding access to Medicare before the 2010 elections are each essential to real reform.
The American people continue to support the public option by overwhelming majorities. In fact, poll after poll makes it clear the public option is more popular than any other aspect of healthcare reform. So why is removing the choice of a public option from the bill still being considered? The answer is simple. Insurance Interests have contributed over $80 million to the campaigns of Senate Democrats.
Watch also for Bernie Sanders efforts to get a concession of his own: even more money for community health centers…stay tuned…
Wall Street Re-Regulation and Attempts to Gut it by Bought Off Politicians
Let me being by saying that this legislation is ALREADY woefully inadequate (I'll get to this more in future posts), but, as I've said so many times, the most important component of the financial reform bill being debated in Congress is the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
It's essential that the CFPA have adequate resources and enforcement abilities because, as the financial sector has regained strength and large banks have been paying back their government funds, new financial products that could harm consumers have quickly come back onto the market. McClatchy reported that "an influx of shady loan professionals" have ramped up the sale of reverse mortgages, which the National Consumer Law Center calls "subprime revisited."
Many subprime brokers have also returned as "dubious loan fixers,", promising mortgage modifications for outrageous fees. Many mortgage lenders, meanwhile, have reintroduced a plethora of "junk fees," earning record profits despite the current housing slump. Big banks such as Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase have also rolled out "newfangled corporate credit lines tied to complicated and volatile derivatives," while Wells Fargo and U.S. Bancorp are expanding their payday loan businesses and "using their national bank charters to avoid state usury laws."
The bill also includes a number of long-sought provisions to both enhance protections for investors in their dealings with securities professionals and strengthen the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Our country’s current financial meltdown starkly demonstrated how the lack of consumer and investor protections not only harmed millions of families, but also pushed our economy to the brink of collapse. Americans have paid dearly for bad financial regulation through the loss of their homes, jobs, and retirement and college savings, not to mention skyrocketing credit card interest rates and $40 overdraft fees for a cup of coffee.
As we might expect, the House GOP leadership (i.e. corporate whores) "met with more than 100 lobbyists at the Capitol Visitors Center" yesterday to strategize about how to kill financial reform legislation. One lobbyist who attended the meeting told the press that "the message was...the Democratic majority are ruining America, ruining capitalism."
Thirty-four members of the U.S. House of Representatives that offered amendments to weaken consumer protections in the House financial reform package received $3.8 million in campaign contributions from the financial sector in 2009, an average of $111,000 each, according to a Consumer Watchdog analysis of data obtained from the Center for Responsive Politics.
But there's more...let's not forget to the corporate Democrats. Members of the New Democrat coalition, which delayed consideration of the bill last night until their demands on amendments were met, raised $6.5 million from firms in the financial sector.
The financial sector gave a total of $28 million to all members of the House of Representatives this year. The financial industry made a fortune gambling with America’s money, then got their friends in Congress to bail them out at taxpayer expense. Now they’re lobbying to weaken the regulator that will rein in new schemes to steal money from consumers.
These proposed amendments were bought and paid for the by financial industry and aimed at sabotaging reform. Weakening or eliminating the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency is a top priority for financial industry lobbyists and has been a flashpoint in the financial reform debate this year.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce executive David Hirschmann said, “We’ll spend whatever it takes,” upon the launch of a multi-million dollar financial industry campaign against the consumer protection agency in September. Sponsors of the original amendment to override state consumer protections received $1.4 million in campaign contributions from companies in the financial sector in 2009, and $11.4 million over the course of their careers. Primary sponsor, Illinois Representative Melissa Bean, has received $393,000 from the financial sector, 50% of all the money she raised in 2009.
One bright spot (which CFC was a part of) was the defeat of the Baca Amendment. His amendment would have exempted payday lending from state regulation, damaging regulations that have been enacted in California and other states. The Baca amendment 76, based on H.R. 1846, legalizes payday loans at almost 400 percent APR for two-week storefront loans and 520 percent APR for loans provided via the Internet.
It authorizes loans that give lenders first claim on the borrower’s next pay check deposited into a borrower’s bank account by authorizing loans based on unfunded checks, compulsory debits and demand drafts. And the measure prevents states from protecting consumers from predatory payday lending.
One to watch...the Conyers Amendment (yes!): It would permit bankruptcy judges to lower the amount of principal that financially distressed homeowners owe on mortgage loans for their primary residences. The fact that this hasn't already been done is all the proof anyone should ever need to see that Wall Street runs Congress.
VIDEO SECTION
George Carlin on Republicans…oh man do I miss him! This is pure gold...
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/truth-about-republicans-george-carlin
Must see!! C&L: Rachel Maddow takes on this shyster who claims he can 'cure' homosexuality and confronts him about the way his book has been used to spread anti-gay propoganda around the world -- in particular by the members of C-Street pushing the kill-the-gays bill in Uganda. Richard Cohen is not licensed by any accrediting body and when he cited his marriage as proof he'd been cured of his homosexuality, let viewers know that Mr. Cohen continued to have sex with men after being married.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rachel-maddow-takes-cure-gays-author-richa
From C&L: Rachel follows up on her interview with Jeff Sharlet where they discussed C-Street Family member David Bahati's role in introducing anti-gay legislation in Uganda. Jeff Sharlet reports that the Ugandan MP did not as many thought first get the idea for the legislation at the conference held in Kampala Uganda in March of 2009, but instead was discussing it at a private meeting at the 2008 Ugandan National Prayer Breakfast hosted by The Family.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rachel-maddow-show-c-street-familys-uganda
Congressman Dennis Kucinich on the House floor (Sanders/Kucinch 2012...run against Obama...force him either to move left, or be defeated...) announces his intention to introduce a privileged resolution in the House in January to "End the War."
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/cspanjunkie/congressman-kucinich-ready-challenge-p
Countdown's Worst Persons for Dec. 9, 2009 with winner David Wright. Runners up Glenn Beck and Fox & Friends producer Lauren Petterson.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/countdowns-worst-person-abcs-david-wright
CNN's idiotic reporter Jessica Yellin talks to TARP Congressional Oversight Chair Elizabeth Warren (who's fantastic) about the details of her report about to be released to Congress. Just sit back and watch a really smart person trying to do what's right, talk to a corporate media shill who should be working for a highschool paper:
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/elizabeth-warren-we-need-resolution-author
Jon Stewart on Fox News Gretchen Carlson for their continued problems with polls and addition...yet secretly a Stanford alumn with honors who studied at Oxford on scholarship...yet she plays the dumb bimbo for Fox in order to "connect" with their audience (who needless to say, are very, very, very stupid):
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/daily-show-gretchen-carlson-dumbs-down
Colbert interviews Bernie Sanders…
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/colbert-report-bernie-sanders
ARTICLE SECTION
Bernanke Must Go, by Senator Bernie Sanders
A few clips:
Since Bernanke took over as Fed chairman, the unemployment rate has more than doubled and, today, an incredible 17% of the American workforce is either unemployed or underemployed. Not since the Great Depression has the financial system been as unsafe, unsound, and unstable as it has been during Bernanke's tenure. More than 120 banks have failed since he became chairman, despite the Fed's army of nearly 3,000 bank supervisors with broad powers to maintain the safety and soundness of financial institutions.
Under Bernanke's watch, the value of risky derivatives held at our nation's top commercial banks grew from $110tn to more than $290tn, 95 per cent of which are concentrated in just five financial institutions. While Bernanke was asleep at the wheel, Warren Buffett, as early as 2003, called derivatives "financial weapons of mass destruction" and warned that they posed a "mega-catastrophic risk" to the economy.
SNIP
In the midst of a horrendous economic crisis that has caused massive suffering in this country Bernanke had the opportunity to force irresponsible and corrupt Wall Street firms to change their ways. The chairman could have demanded that Wall Street provide adequate credit to small businesses to create decent-paying jobs. He could have insisted that bailed-out banks end the usurious practice of charging interest rates of 30% or higher on credit cards. He could have required bailed out banks to stop making risky bets in derivatives.
He could have required bailed-out-banks to modify mortgages so that homeowners could afford to stay in their homes. He could have required too-big-to-fail banks become smaller. He could have instituted a major investigation of how the financial collapse occurred in the first place, and held chief executives at those banks accountable. Instead, Wall Street, with Bernanke's help, has instituted a system of "heads they win, tails taxpayers lose". If Wall Street wins, their executives receive millions in bonuses and they keep all of their profits. If Wall Street loses, taxpayers bail them out, and their executives still keep their bonuses.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/09-10
Dear Barack, Spare Me Your E-Mails, by Robert Scheer
A few clips:
In each of the three most important areas of policy with which he has dealt, Obama speaks in the voice of the little people’s champion, but his actions cater fully to the demands of the most powerful economic interests.
With his escalation of the war in Afghanistan, he has given the military-industrial complex an excuse for the United States to carry on in spending more on defense than the rest of the world combined, without a credible military adversary in sight. His response to the banking meltdown was to continue George W. Bush’s massive giveaway of taxpayer dollars to Wall Street, and his health care reform has all the earmarks of a boondoggle for the medical industry profiteers.
SNIP
As for “solving” the banking problem, Obama simply followed the lead of his Republican predecessor. The throw-money-at-Wall-Street solution for which Obama takes credit is the one crafted by Bush’s treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, and it was fully endorsed by then New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner, whom Obama named to replace Paulson. The buying off of the financial hustlers was blessed by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, who has been renominated to that position by Obama.
The solution that Obama boasts of has left us with trillions more in debt, one out of four children poor enough to qualify for food stamps and, as Obama conceded in his Tuesday speech, “more than seven million fewer Americans with jobs today than when this recession began.”
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/09-6
I've been out sick all week and desperately trying to get caught up...sorry if its a little sloppy but needed to get some stuff up...a lot going on...
Global Warming: We're Back to Debating Whether it’s Real
As the clock ticks on our species survival, the Washington Post is running full page op-ed's from Sarah Palin asserting that climate change is a global conspiracy among the scientific elite. You'd think that a paper with the supposed clout of the Washington Post might think twice about publishing a screed so full of lies about something so important...but alas, standards are hard to find these days in the corporate media. Palin debate Gore on climate change? Really? How about Hawkings versus Tyson on Quantum Foam Theory then?
Strangely, I have found some solace recently in the fact that we're back to debating whether climate change is even real and a growing number of Americans believe it isn't. I mean, if we're that stupid, don't we deserve to perish? I'm pretty comfortable now with the answer "yes", why yes we do. This would be much harder for me to accept if say, 80 or more percent of Americans understood the crisis but our government and the fossil fuel industry were preventing action anyway. But man, if only that were true...the fact is, barely a majority of the public even get it anymore...and that's an abomination. Bottom line, there's a lot of blame to go around...and it all centers around our failings as a species, or at least as a society. Of course, I'm feeling incredibly cynical and jaded today :)
“Ice asks no questions, presents no arguments, reads no newspapers, listens to no debates. It is not burdened by ideology and carries no political baggage as it changes from solid to liquid. It just melts.”
- Henry Pollack, Ph.D., Geophysicist and Author, A World Without Ice
Meanwhile, NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites continue making aerial surveys that indicate the East Antarctic ice sheet is melting faster than expected - 57 billion tons of ice a year are melting into the Antarctic seas along with West Antarctic runoff of 132 billion tons of ice per year. GRACE data also shows the Greenland ice sheet melt is accelerating along with the Arctic ice melt.
Yet, in the media’s effort to show "both sides" in reporting the phony “email controversy”, the only thing that isn’t reported is the actual science of climate change. Instead, it’s the OPINION of liberals and scientists, versus the OPINION of right wing nut jobs and the fossil fuel industry. Worse, its their opinions about these emails, rather than the decades of peer reviewed, hard data and evidence.
This leaves the public – which is already facing the high hurdle of its own ignorance - with the impression, however unjustified, that scientists have probably done something wrong, and those that deny basic, verifiable fact, are finally being given a "fair hearing" they don't get from scientific journals...or facts, or logic, or compassion....
Here’s a suggestion: consider the melting ice in every region of the world if you’re still confused!! There’s a chunk Antarctica the size of a state floating towards Australia for Christ’s sakes. The Arctic ice will soon be gone! Siberia's permafrost is melting! What else do Americans need to know? C02 traps heat. We’re releasing mass amounts of C02 (and that's only one component of the warming) by burning fossil fuels and cutting down trees…again, is there something confusing about this equation?
One Third of Californians Can't Cover Living Expenses
Before I get to the moderately good poll numbers regarding what Americans believe is needed most right now, look at these SHOCKING economic numbers in California (welcome to the Third World):
Thirty percent of California's households lack the income to cover "bare bones" living expenses, according to a new statistical study released by United Ways of California, a charitable fundraising consortium. The study, which relies on Census Bureau data, was conducted by the Center for Women's Welfare at the University of Washington and is entitled "Overlooked and Undercounted 2009."
It goes beyond the decades-old federal method of calculating poverty and includes not only the traditional data on housing, food and shelter costs, but costs of transportation, child care and taxes. It does not, however, count money for restaurant food, retirement savings, emergencies or loan payments.
The Good: Americans Support Govt. Spending on Infrastructure, Renewable Energy, Jobs, Increased Taxes on Rich, and Oppose Cuts in Medicare or Social Security
Americans want their government to create jobs through spending on public works, investments in alternative energy or skills training for the jobless. They also want the deficit to come down. And most are ready to hand the bill to the wealthy.
A Bloomberg National Poll conducted Dec. 3-7 shows two- thirds of Americans favor taxing the rich to reduce the deficit.
Even though almost 9 of 10 respondents also say they believe the middle class will have to make financial sacrifices to achieve that goal, only a little more than one-fourth support an increase in taxes on the middle class. Fewer still back cuts in entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare or a new national consumption tax.
While the public sees both unemployment and the deficit as a threat, anxiety over unemployment is higher. Eight out of 10 poll respondents rate unemployment a high risk to the economy in the next two years and 7 of 10 say the same about the deficit.
Two-thirds of Americans back boosting spending on infrastructure. Six of 10 also support more spending on alternative energy to stimulate job growth, another measure Obama announced.
But…Here Comes the Stupid: Americans Also Want Deficit Reduced Now, Cuts in Spending, AND Tax Cuts (Note: worst thing to do in a recession is cut spending and reduce deficit...)
Americans support a range of other potential new government initiatives presented as employment programs, with ideas from both parties backed by wide majorities. An across-the-board tax cut, a favorite of some Republicans, also is supported by 6 of 10 Americans.
The poll shows that an across-the-board 5 percent cut of all discretionary government spending also attracts support as a deficit-reduction measure, with 57 percent saying they would back it.
The mind reels…they want spending, but also support tax cuts, but also deficit reductions and cuts in spending, but don't want reductions in social programs, but don’t believe government can help with jobs, but supports spending on jobs…oh man are we finished.
Sorry, it just seems like we've entered a kind of Keystone Cops on bad acid period of our nation's history...
Public Option AND Expand Medicare
Wish I had more time, but suffice it to say, I love the idea of expanding Medicare to those 55 and older, and loathe the idea of eliminating the public option (I'll talk about this more next post).
AS Democracy for America states, "The continued talk of finding a "compromise" in the Senate which would eliminate the public option in the healthcare bill is a negotiation with defeat. Even if the deal expands access to Medicare for some Americans under 65, this should not be a question of one or the other. The choice of a public option and expanding access to Medicare before the 2010 elections are each essential to real reform.
The American people continue to support the public option by overwhelming majorities. In fact, poll after poll makes it clear the public option is more popular than any other aspect of healthcare reform. So why is removing the choice of a public option from the bill still being considered? The answer is simple. Insurance Interests have contributed over $80 million to the campaigns of Senate Democrats.
Watch also for Bernie Sanders efforts to get a concession of his own: even more money for community health centers…stay tuned…
Wall Street Re-Regulation and Attempts to Gut it by Bought Off Politicians
Let me being by saying that this legislation is ALREADY woefully inadequate (I'll get to this more in future posts), but, as I've said so many times, the most important component of the financial reform bill being debated in Congress is the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
It's essential that the CFPA have adequate resources and enforcement abilities because, as the financial sector has regained strength and large banks have been paying back their government funds, new financial products that could harm consumers have quickly come back onto the market. McClatchy reported that "an influx of shady loan professionals" have ramped up the sale of reverse mortgages, which the National Consumer Law Center calls "subprime revisited."
Many subprime brokers have also returned as "dubious loan fixers,", promising mortgage modifications for outrageous fees. Many mortgage lenders, meanwhile, have reintroduced a plethora of "junk fees," earning record profits despite the current housing slump. Big banks such as Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase have also rolled out "newfangled corporate credit lines tied to complicated and volatile derivatives," while Wells Fargo and U.S. Bancorp are expanding their payday loan businesses and "using their national bank charters to avoid state usury laws."
The bill also includes a number of long-sought provisions to both enhance protections for investors in their dealings with securities professionals and strengthen the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Our country’s current financial meltdown starkly demonstrated how the lack of consumer and investor protections not only harmed millions of families, but also pushed our economy to the brink of collapse. Americans have paid dearly for bad financial regulation through the loss of their homes, jobs, and retirement and college savings, not to mention skyrocketing credit card interest rates and $40 overdraft fees for a cup of coffee.
As we might expect, the House GOP leadership (i.e. corporate whores) "met with more than 100 lobbyists at the Capitol Visitors Center" yesterday to strategize about how to kill financial reform legislation. One lobbyist who attended the meeting told the press that "the message was...the Democratic majority are ruining America, ruining capitalism."
Thirty-four members of the U.S. House of Representatives that offered amendments to weaken consumer protections in the House financial reform package received $3.8 million in campaign contributions from the financial sector in 2009, an average of $111,000 each, according to a Consumer Watchdog analysis of data obtained from the Center for Responsive Politics.
But there's more...let's not forget to the corporate Democrats. Members of the New Democrat coalition, which delayed consideration of the bill last night until their demands on amendments were met, raised $6.5 million from firms in the financial sector.
The financial sector gave a total of $28 million to all members of the House of Representatives this year. The financial industry made a fortune gambling with America’s money, then got their friends in Congress to bail them out at taxpayer expense. Now they’re lobbying to weaken the regulator that will rein in new schemes to steal money from consumers.
These proposed amendments were bought and paid for the by financial industry and aimed at sabotaging reform. Weakening or eliminating the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency is a top priority for financial industry lobbyists and has been a flashpoint in the financial reform debate this year.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce executive David Hirschmann said, “We’ll spend whatever it takes,” upon the launch of a multi-million dollar financial industry campaign against the consumer protection agency in September. Sponsors of the original amendment to override state consumer protections received $1.4 million in campaign contributions from companies in the financial sector in 2009, and $11.4 million over the course of their careers. Primary sponsor, Illinois Representative Melissa Bean, has received $393,000 from the financial sector, 50% of all the money she raised in 2009.
One bright spot (which CFC was a part of) was the defeat of the Baca Amendment. His amendment would have exempted payday lending from state regulation, damaging regulations that have been enacted in California and other states. The Baca amendment 76, based on H.R. 1846, legalizes payday loans at almost 400 percent APR for two-week storefront loans and 520 percent APR for loans provided via the Internet.
It authorizes loans that give lenders first claim on the borrower’s next pay check deposited into a borrower’s bank account by authorizing loans based on unfunded checks, compulsory debits and demand drafts. And the measure prevents states from protecting consumers from predatory payday lending.
One to watch...the Conyers Amendment (yes!): It would permit bankruptcy judges to lower the amount of principal that financially distressed homeowners owe on mortgage loans for their primary residences. The fact that this hasn't already been done is all the proof anyone should ever need to see that Wall Street runs Congress.
VIDEO SECTION
George Carlin on Republicans…oh man do I miss him! This is pure gold...
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/truth-about-republicans-george-carlin
Must see!! C&L: Rachel Maddow takes on this shyster who claims he can 'cure' homosexuality and confronts him about the way his book has been used to spread anti-gay propoganda around the world -- in particular by the members of C-Street pushing the kill-the-gays bill in Uganda. Richard Cohen is not licensed by any accrediting body and when he cited his marriage as proof he'd been cured of his homosexuality, let viewers know that Mr. Cohen continued to have sex with men after being married.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rachel-maddow-takes-cure-gays-author-richa
From C&L: Rachel follows up on her interview with Jeff Sharlet where they discussed C-Street Family member David Bahati's role in introducing anti-gay legislation in Uganda. Jeff Sharlet reports that the Ugandan MP did not as many thought first get the idea for the legislation at the conference held in Kampala Uganda in March of 2009, but instead was discussing it at a private meeting at the 2008 Ugandan National Prayer Breakfast hosted by The Family.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rachel-maddow-show-c-street-familys-uganda
Congressman Dennis Kucinich on the House floor (Sanders/Kucinch 2012...run against Obama...force him either to move left, or be defeated...) announces his intention to introduce a privileged resolution in the House in January to "End the War."
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/cspanjunkie/congressman-kucinich-ready-challenge-p
Countdown's Worst Persons for Dec. 9, 2009 with winner David Wright. Runners up Glenn Beck and Fox & Friends producer Lauren Petterson.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/countdowns-worst-person-abcs-david-wright
CNN's idiotic reporter Jessica Yellin talks to TARP Congressional Oversight Chair Elizabeth Warren (who's fantastic) about the details of her report about to be released to Congress. Just sit back and watch a really smart person trying to do what's right, talk to a corporate media shill who should be working for a highschool paper:
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/elizabeth-warren-we-need-resolution-author
Jon Stewart on Fox News Gretchen Carlson for their continued problems with polls and addition...yet secretly a Stanford alumn with honors who studied at Oxford on scholarship...yet she plays the dumb bimbo for Fox in order to "connect" with their audience (who needless to say, are very, very, very stupid):
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/daily-show-gretchen-carlson-dumbs-down
Colbert interviews Bernie Sanders…
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/colbert-report-bernie-sanders
ARTICLE SECTION
Bernanke Must Go, by Senator Bernie Sanders
A few clips:
Since Bernanke took over as Fed chairman, the unemployment rate has more than doubled and, today, an incredible 17% of the American workforce is either unemployed or underemployed. Not since the Great Depression has the financial system been as unsafe, unsound, and unstable as it has been during Bernanke's tenure. More than 120 banks have failed since he became chairman, despite the Fed's army of nearly 3,000 bank supervisors with broad powers to maintain the safety and soundness of financial institutions.
Under Bernanke's watch, the value of risky derivatives held at our nation's top commercial banks grew from $110tn to more than $290tn, 95 per cent of which are concentrated in just five financial institutions. While Bernanke was asleep at the wheel, Warren Buffett, as early as 2003, called derivatives "financial weapons of mass destruction" and warned that they posed a "mega-catastrophic risk" to the economy.
SNIP
In the midst of a horrendous economic crisis that has caused massive suffering in this country Bernanke had the opportunity to force irresponsible and corrupt Wall Street firms to change their ways. The chairman could have demanded that Wall Street provide adequate credit to small businesses to create decent-paying jobs. He could have insisted that bailed-out banks end the usurious practice of charging interest rates of 30% or higher on credit cards. He could have required bailed out banks to stop making risky bets in derivatives.
He could have required bailed-out-banks to modify mortgages so that homeowners could afford to stay in their homes. He could have required too-big-to-fail banks become smaller. He could have instituted a major investigation of how the financial collapse occurred in the first place, and held chief executives at those banks accountable. Instead, Wall Street, with Bernanke's help, has instituted a system of "heads they win, tails taxpayers lose". If Wall Street wins, their executives receive millions in bonuses and they keep all of their profits. If Wall Street loses, taxpayers bail them out, and their executives still keep their bonuses.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/09-10
Dear Barack, Spare Me Your E-Mails, by Robert Scheer
A few clips:
In each of the three most important areas of policy with which he has dealt, Obama speaks in the voice of the little people’s champion, but his actions cater fully to the demands of the most powerful economic interests.
With his escalation of the war in Afghanistan, he has given the military-industrial complex an excuse for the United States to carry on in spending more on defense than the rest of the world combined, without a credible military adversary in sight. His response to the banking meltdown was to continue George W. Bush’s massive giveaway of taxpayer dollars to Wall Street, and his health care reform has all the earmarks of a boondoggle for the medical industry profiteers.
SNIP
As for “solving” the banking problem, Obama simply followed the lead of his Republican predecessor. The throw-money-at-Wall-Street solution for which Obama takes credit is the one crafted by Bush’s treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, and it was fully endorsed by then New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner, whom Obama named to replace Paulson. The buying off of the financial hustlers was blessed by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, who has been renominated to that position by Obama.
The solution that Obama boasts of has left us with trillions more in debt, one out of four children poor enough to qualify for food stamps and, as Obama conceded in his Tuesday speech, “more than seven million fewer Americans with jobs today than when this recession began.”
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/09-6
Monday, December 07, 2009
TODAY'S TOPICS: Transaction Tax?, CO2 Ruling, Medicare/Public Option, Bush Crime Family, Sanders, Franken, Feingold, Orwell
I've caught a bad cold but still want to get a few important tidbits up today.
Four Good News Items (but I never hold my breath anymore)
A Transaction Tax?
How long have I been writing about this idea!? House Speaker Pelosi has reportedly come around to the idea of a global transaction tax. Pelosi discussed the tax with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner yesterday. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) introduced bills that would impose a .25 percent tax on securities transactions the same day.
Senate Dems to Expand Medicare to Appease Progressives?
First, this isn't good news in the sense that I'm happy to see the public option in such dire straights that ideas like lowering the age at which the elderly could enter the government-run insurance program are being floated. But, expanding Medicare to one age segment at a time is probably the best way to get to the holy grail: a single payer system.
Now, its probably unlikely this Amendment ever becomes a reality, but I like the fact its being discussed. The negotiations appear to be returning to the overall usefulness of the bill rather than what compromised compromise on the public option ConservaDems would accept, but I have a hard time believing they would accept an expansion of programs like Medicare or Medicaid (taking it to 150% of the poverty level, in line with the House bill, has also reportedly been discussed) when they’ve spent weeks warning against government-run health care.
As D-Day notes, "If Blanche Lincoln or Joe Lieberman don’t want to see a march to single payer, why would they allow for buy-ins to Medicare, the single easiest way to get to single payer?
The one reason that ConservaDems may accept it is that these moves actually save money. It’s cheaper to expand Medicaid than to pay the subsidies between 133-150% for people to purchase insurance. It’s cheaper to allow people to buy into Medicare than what you would pay in subsidies. That’s mainly because of the rate schedule and the lower price for Medicare. What’s more, Republicans in particular have spent a week falling all over each other trying to “save Medicare,” and watching them caution against buy-in would be most amusing to watch.
The money saved from these public coverage expansions could be plowed into higher subsidies, which are needed under the Senate bill. But that’s all anyone age 27-55 would get out of this – they would be left basically with a forced mandate to buy private insurance.
Where does this all leave the public option? In a van down by the river is where. The idea here is to basically offer something like Medicare buy-in or Medicaid expansion or bigger subsidies or a tightening of the medical loss ratio for insurers (what percentage of premiums must go to medical care) in exchange for basically dropping or triggering the public option. Will that be acceptable?
Private insurance companies would still predominate, and Americans would still be forced under this bill to send them premium money for coverage that may or may not be sufficient. Most importantly, the architecture of a public option, as a benchmark which could be improved upon to change incentives for insurers, could be gone.
EPA: CO2 A Health Hazard (best of the news of the day)!
This is an excellent way to sidestep the political process and keep the necessary changes from getting bogged down in the politics…It could also trigger a series of federal regulations affecting polluters, from vehicles to coal-fired power plants.
The Obama administration will formally declare Monday that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions pose a danger to the public health and welfare, a move that lays the groundwork for an economy-wide carbon cap even if Congress fails to enact climate legislation, sources familiar with the process said.
Under the finding, which can be found here, large emitters at “stationary sources” that burn over 25,000 tons of CO2 per year would have to monitor their GHG emissions starting next month. By 2011, that data would need to be publicly available to allow emissions tracking. Starting next spring, this stationary source emitters would need to use the “best available technology” to reduce or control their emissions should they expand or retool their factories. The EPA would have to put out technical guidance on that technology, and then work with states to implement the measure.
ACORN Employees Broke No Laws, Study Finds
An independent review of ACORN’s governance and management practices finds fault with their lax oversight of satellite facilities after a rapid growth spurt that made such oversight difficult. However, the review, carried out by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, does not fault individuals at ACORN facilities for breaking the law in any of the hidden camera investigations funded and implemented by the far right.
The report, which can be found here, says that management issues are to blame for the hidden camera controversy, not the standards or practices of organization personnel:
This hidden camera controversy is an apt example. While some of the advice and counsel given by ACORN employees and volunteers was clearly inappropriate and unprofessional, we did not find a pattern of intentional, illegal conduct by ACORN staff; in fact, there is no evidence that action, illegal or otherwise, was taken by any ACORN employee on behalf of the videographers. Instead, the videos represent the byproduct of ACORN’s longstanding management weaknesses, including a lack of training, a lack of procedures, and a lack of on-site supervision.
The report also notes that half of the videos – from Brooklyn, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. – featured employees from ACORN Housing, a separate organization from ACORN. It also concludes that “out of the three videos involving ACORN employees, at least two involve extenuating circumstances,” and that at least four of the tapings were illegal under state law because O’Keefe and Giles didn’t seek the other participants’ consent to be filme
Bad News: Afghanistan…A Global War Against a Method is Doomed to Fail
As I have kept saying, our occupation of Afghanistan is only going to deepen divisions in Pakistan and destabilize an already fragile civilian government there. Remember, we’re already engaged in a secret war in Pakistan (see Scahill's work). Blackwater is working with the Joint Special Operations Command and even planning targeting assassinations and drone campaigns. Kind of sounds destabilizing not "stabilizing" doesn't it?
I think you can trace a lot of what’s gone wrong, what continues to go wrong, and what will continue to go wrong, to the entire concept of a "War on Terror." As so many of us wrote in those early days, “How can you fight a war against a tactic?” Worse, as we also predicted, this Orwellian framing of this conflict allowed for exactly what we have seen since: an endless war that knows no boundaries and abides by no laws or rules of engagement.
How can a conventional war ever succeed against the tactic of "terror" (particularly because war is terror)? Until we end the "war on terror" - not just in words (as Obama has done...almost), but in deeds (i.e. getting out of Afghanistan) - the de facto American foreign policy will be one of permanent warfare. And permanent warfare means permanent debt, the permanent starvation of social services here at home, permanent death and tragedy, and our continued economic collapse. Wow, sounds fantastic!
Some of my favorite George Orwell quotes about war:
"All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting."
"Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac."
"Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable..."
"The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor."
VIDEO SECTION
Bernie Sanders on why we need to audit the Fed…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3tTlb0s6Bs
Watch Bernie grilling Fed Chair Ben Bernanke!
http://act.boldprogressives.org/cms/sign/supportsanders/?akid=47.195723.E7ZnhX&rd=1&source=e1-ca&t=1
From C&L: Democracy Now's Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales interview Eliot Spitzer on why Bernie Sanders is right and Ben Bernanke should not be confirmed for another term as Federal Reserve Chairman and that Tim Geithner should be replaced as Treasury Secretary. One question Amy Goodman asked I found particularly interesting was this one along with Spitzer's answer:
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/democracy-now-eliot-spitzer-geithner-berna
Feingold on what they can do to stop Obama’s escalation:
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/feingold-troop-surge-will-be-difficult-sto
Senator Bernie Sanders gives another barn burner of logic, compassion, common sense, and pragmatism…this time on the need for a revolution in primary health care. Listen and educate yourself (in fact, Sanders reminds me of a professor…and a great one at that…):
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/cspanjunkie/we-need-revolution-primary-health-care
From C&L: David Shuster talked to Howard Dean about where the health care bill stands in the Senate right now and whether we should not be allowing four Senators to hold up that bill.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/dean-democrats-need-get-act-together
Maddow has Scahill on to talk about just what the U.S. is doing in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the President's decision to escalate our presence in Afghanistan and the recent revelation that Erik Prince was acting not only as a military contractor, but a CIA asset as well…sick:
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rachel-maddow-show-inside-contractors-stud
From C&L: Sherrod Brown explains to David Shuster why he signed decided to co-sponsor Tom Coburn and David Vitter's amendment which would require members of Congress to enroll in whatever version of the public option ends up being passed in the health care bill…Senators Franken, Dodd, and Mikulski also joined Sen. Brown in co-sponsoring the amendment. Also watch Sen. Franken weigh in - and support the concept - on the Senate floor.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/sherrod-brown-co-sponsors-coburn-vitter-amend
Bush Crime Family Fun Facts
In early 2009, the respected publisher Bloomsbury released Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means For America. Here is a little taste of what Family of Secrets reveals about the “very good, very private” lives and thoughts of George Bush, father and son…
-Proof that the senior Bush, far from being the outsider CIA director in 1976 he claimed to be, had actually worked with the intelligence services in “very private” capacities for his entire adult life.
-Overwhelming and painstakingly documented evidence that the senior Bush lied when he claimed not to remember where he was on Nov. 22, 1963, the day JFK was shot, and that, in fact, he was in Dallas, working for the CIA, and closely associated with a small web of figures directly tied to Lee Harvey Oswald, the control of JFK’s motorcade, the Texas School Book Depository, and other crucial aspects of the events of that day.
-Source interviews and paperwork that show the junior Bush lied when he claimed to have completed his obligatory service during the Vietnam war, and that he was, in effect, AWOL, a crime with no statute of limitations.-Documented assertions from a Bush family adviser suggesting that W. cynically adopted the mantle of Jesus to clean up a spotty past and to win over the crucial fundamentalist vote without which he would have lost badly in 2000.
-Evidence that the man the junior Bush put in charge of handling the domestic emergency response to attacks and natural disasters, Michael Brown, was even far less qualified than previously understood—and why such a person ended up being in that incredibly important position as Hurricane Katrina descended on the Gulf coast.
-Testimony that the junior Bush’s principal personal motivation for invading Iraq was not WMDs, or Al Qaeda, or neoconservative aspirations, or geopolitical goals, or even oil, but because he was convinced that a successful presidency requires a war.
-A body of facts strongly indicating that the same interests, working through the CIA, that removed JFK from power—a group that appears to have included the senior Bush—also took action to cause Richard Nixon to be removed from power. This is of urgent importance because it helps to provide some sense of why Barack Obama has continued to kowtow to major power centers—CIA, military, defense contractors, oil companies, Wall Street—because, simply put, he has absolutely no choice.
I've caught a bad cold but still want to get a few important tidbits up today.
Four Good News Items (but I never hold my breath anymore)
A Transaction Tax?
How long have I been writing about this idea!? House Speaker Pelosi has reportedly come around to the idea of a global transaction tax. Pelosi discussed the tax with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner yesterday. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) introduced bills that would impose a .25 percent tax on securities transactions the same day.
Senate Dems to Expand Medicare to Appease Progressives?
First, this isn't good news in the sense that I'm happy to see the public option in such dire straights that ideas like lowering the age at which the elderly could enter the government-run insurance program are being floated. But, expanding Medicare to one age segment at a time is probably the best way to get to the holy grail: a single payer system.
Now, its probably unlikely this Amendment ever becomes a reality, but I like the fact its being discussed. The negotiations appear to be returning to the overall usefulness of the bill rather than what compromised compromise on the public option ConservaDems would accept, but I have a hard time believing they would accept an expansion of programs like Medicare or Medicaid (taking it to 150% of the poverty level, in line with the House bill, has also reportedly been discussed) when they’ve spent weeks warning against government-run health care.
As D-Day notes, "If Blanche Lincoln or Joe Lieberman don’t want to see a march to single payer, why would they allow for buy-ins to Medicare, the single easiest way to get to single payer?
The one reason that ConservaDems may accept it is that these moves actually save money. It’s cheaper to expand Medicaid than to pay the subsidies between 133-150% for people to purchase insurance. It’s cheaper to allow people to buy into Medicare than what you would pay in subsidies. That’s mainly because of the rate schedule and the lower price for Medicare. What’s more, Republicans in particular have spent a week falling all over each other trying to “save Medicare,” and watching them caution against buy-in would be most amusing to watch.
The money saved from these public coverage expansions could be plowed into higher subsidies, which are needed under the Senate bill. But that’s all anyone age 27-55 would get out of this – they would be left basically with a forced mandate to buy private insurance.
Where does this all leave the public option? In a van down by the river is where. The idea here is to basically offer something like Medicare buy-in or Medicaid expansion or bigger subsidies or a tightening of the medical loss ratio for insurers (what percentage of premiums must go to medical care) in exchange for basically dropping or triggering the public option. Will that be acceptable?
Private insurance companies would still predominate, and Americans would still be forced under this bill to send them premium money for coverage that may or may not be sufficient. Most importantly, the architecture of a public option, as a benchmark which could be improved upon to change incentives for insurers, could be gone.
EPA: CO2 A Health Hazard (best of the news of the day)!
This is an excellent way to sidestep the political process and keep the necessary changes from getting bogged down in the politics…It could also trigger a series of federal regulations affecting polluters, from vehicles to coal-fired power plants.
The Obama administration will formally declare Monday that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions pose a danger to the public health and welfare, a move that lays the groundwork for an economy-wide carbon cap even if Congress fails to enact climate legislation, sources familiar with the process said.
Under the finding, which can be found here, large emitters at “stationary sources” that burn over 25,000 tons of CO2 per year would have to monitor their GHG emissions starting next month. By 2011, that data would need to be publicly available to allow emissions tracking. Starting next spring, this stationary source emitters would need to use the “best available technology” to reduce or control their emissions should they expand or retool their factories. The EPA would have to put out technical guidance on that technology, and then work with states to implement the measure.
ACORN Employees Broke No Laws, Study Finds
An independent review of ACORN’s governance and management practices finds fault with their lax oversight of satellite facilities after a rapid growth spurt that made such oversight difficult. However, the review, carried out by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, does not fault individuals at ACORN facilities for breaking the law in any of the hidden camera investigations funded and implemented by the far right.
The report, which can be found here, says that management issues are to blame for the hidden camera controversy, not the standards or practices of organization personnel:
This hidden camera controversy is an apt example. While some of the advice and counsel given by ACORN employees and volunteers was clearly inappropriate and unprofessional, we did not find a pattern of intentional, illegal conduct by ACORN staff; in fact, there is no evidence that action, illegal or otherwise, was taken by any ACORN employee on behalf of the videographers. Instead, the videos represent the byproduct of ACORN’s longstanding management weaknesses, including a lack of training, a lack of procedures, and a lack of on-site supervision.
The report also notes that half of the videos – from Brooklyn, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. – featured employees from ACORN Housing, a separate organization from ACORN. It also concludes that “out of the three videos involving ACORN employees, at least two involve extenuating circumstances,” and that at least four of the tapings were illegal under state law because O’Keefe and Giles didn’t seek the other participants’ consent to be filme
Bad News: Afghanistan…A Global War Against a Method is Doomed to Fail
As I have kept saying, our occupation of Afghanistan is only going to deepen divisions in Pakistan and destabilize an already fragile civilian government there. Remember, we’re already engaged in a secret war in Pakistan (see Scahill's work). Blackwater is working with the Joint Special Operations Command and even planning targeting assassinations and drone campaigns. Kind of sounds destabilizing not "stabilizing" doesn't it?
I think you can trace a lot of what’s gone wrong, what continues to go wrong, and what will continue to go wrong, to the entire concept of a "War on Terror." As so many of us wrote in those early days, “How can you fight a war against a tactic?” Worse, as we also predicted, this Orwellian framing of this conflict allowed for exactly what we have seen since: an endless war that knows no boundaries and abides by no laws or rules of engagement.
How can a conventional war ever succeed against the tactic of "terror" (particularly because war is terror)? Until we end the "war on terror" - not just in words (as Obama has done...almost), but in deeds (i.e. getting out of Afghanistan) - the de facto American foreign policy will be one of permanent warfare. And permanent warfare means permanent debt, the permanent starvation of social services here at home, permanent death and tragedy, and our continued economic collapse. Wow, sounds fantastic!
Some of my favorite George Orwell quotes about war:
"All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting."
"Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac."
"Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable..."
"The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor."
"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."
"War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it."VIDEO SECTION
Bernie Sanders on why we need to audit the Fed…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3tTlb0s6Bs
Watch Bernie grilling Fed Chair Ben Bernanke!
http://act.boldprogressives.org/cms/sign/supportsanders/?akid=47.195723.E7ZnhX&rd=1&source=e1-ca&t=1
From C&L: Democracy Now's Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales interview Eliot Spitzer on why Bernie Sanders is right and Ben Bernanke should not be confirmed for another term as Federal Reserve Chairman and that Tim Geithner should be replaced as Treasury Secretary. One question Amy Goodman asked I found particularly interesting was this one along with Spitzer's answer:
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/democracy-now-eliot-spitzer-geithner-berna
Feingold on what they can do to stop Obama’s escalation:
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/feingold-troop-surge-will-be-difficult-sto
Senator Bernie Sanders gives another barn burner of logic, compassion, common sense, and pragmatism…this time on the need for a revolution in primary health care. Listen and educate yourself (in fact, Sanders reminds me of a professor…and a great one at that…):
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/cspanjunkie/we-need-revolution-primary-health-care
From C&L: David Shuster talked to Howard Dean about where the health care bill stands in the Senate right now and whether we should not be allowing four Senators to hold up that bill.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/dean-democrats-need-get-act-together
Maddow has Scahill on to talk about just what the U.S. is doing in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the President's decision to escalate our presence in Afghanistan and the recent revelation that Erik Prince was acting not only as a military contractor, but a CIA asset as well…sick:
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rachel-maddow-show-inside-contractors-stud
From C&L: Sherrod Brown explains to David Shuster why he signed decided to co-sponsor Tom Coburn and David Vitter's amendment which would require members of Congress to enroll in whatever version of the public option ends up being passed in the health care bill…Senators Franken, Dodd, and Mikulski also joined Sen. Brown in co-sponsoring the amendment. Also watch Sen. Franken weigh in - and support the concept - on the Senate floor.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/sherrod-brown-co-sponsors-coburn-vitter-amend
Bush Crime Family Fun Facts
In early 2009, the respected publisher Bloomsbury released Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means For America. Here is a little taste of what Family of Secrets reveals about the “very good, very private” lives and thoughts of George Bush, father and son…
-Proof that the senior Bush, far from being the outsider CIA director in 1976 he claimed to be, had actually worked with the intelligence services in “very private” capacities for his entire adult life.
-Overwhelming and painstakingly documented evidence that the senior Bush lied when he claimed not to remember where he was on Nov. 22, 1963, the day JFK was shot, and that, in fact, he was in Dallas, working for the CIA, and closely associated with a small web of figures directly tied to Lee Harvey Oswald, the control of JFK’s motorcade, the Texas School Book Depository, and other crucial aspects of the events of that day.
-Source interviews and paperwork that show the junior Bush lied when he claimed to have completed his obligatory service during the Vietnam war, and that he was, in effect, AWOL, a crime with no statute of limitations.-Documented assertions from a Bush family adviser suggesting that W. cynically adopted the mantle of Jesus to clean up a spotty past and to win over the crucial fundamentalist vote without which he would have lost badly in 2000.
-Evidence that the man the junior Bush put in charge of handling the domestic emergency response to attacks and natural disasters, Michael Brown, was even far less qualified than previously understood—and why such a person ended up being in that incredibly important position as Hurricane Katrina descended on the Gulf coast.
-Testimony that the junior Bush’s principal personal motivation for invading Iraq was not WMDs, or Al Qaeda, or neoconservative aspirations, or geopolitical goals, or even oil, but because he was convinced that a successful presidency requires a war.
-A body of facts strongly indicating that the same interests, working through the CIA, that removed JFK from power—a group that appears to have included the senior Bush—also took action to cause Richard Nixon to be removed from power. This is of urgent importance because it helps to provide some sense of why Barack Obama has continued to kowtow to major power centers—CIA, military, defense contractors, oil companies, Wall Street—because, simply put, he has absolutely no choice.
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