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Your shadow government in action.
Good luck.
C8 -- Obama chose his advisors either out of ignorance or design. Liberal economic advisors were not hidden away somewhere, they were available. (Don't get me started on the Clinton sellout!)
AIW -- A follow-on: There were no women in the caucus room.
AIW -- I don't disagree with what you say. We need to get the testerone out of the oval office. I think FDR would have been very similar to Obama with regards to drones, detention, and assasinations.
ckrob -- You look at Obama as Clinton with his economic advisers. I look at Obama as FDR without Francis Perkins, Mariner Eccles, and Elanor.
I don't fault the prez for the Repugs' obstructionism that's kept him from getting much done. I do fault him for the drone attacks, assassinations, and indefinite detention without charge or trial, which I saw Obama sign into law without a gun to his head. I also despise him for appointing the same financial retards (Geithner, Sumners) who nearly trashed this economy, and for his vigorous attempts to fast-track the TPP, which poses a huge threat to our wellbeing, soverignty and democracy. My initial reservations about Obama as a presidential candidate have all proven spot-on, I'm sad to say. And I've had my fill of moderates. In this political climate they are worthless. - Aliceinwonderland
ckrob -- There are many solutions e.g. card check, no waivers to buy American Act of 1936, etc. All we need is a overwhelming democratic percentage in the house and senate. We need enough democrats to drown out the conservadems. I think Obama is a bleeding heart liberal. I think his problem is that his mother had zero stress during her pregnancy; consequently, she had no cortisol in her system.
Welcome to the state of mind called, The Green Party, Mr Hartmann! No longer do you have to buy this feel your pain nonsense while no action is taken. Vote your conscience as Mr. Nader asks!
Now you can stop babling about the Republicans and ask how are we going to get a JFK type in there who'll say if we can put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, we can have a massive solar project in the Mojave desert, windturbines in the Atlantic and a grid to power it all. If the US could fund NASA, we can fund Renewables, can't we?
Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your progressive audience!
Isn't it time, Mr. Hartman that we all get to work building the massive renewable project which will cut oil and other fossil fuels, and allow us to cut or military expenditures by two thirds. Think about it Mr. Hartmann, while your babbling about Republicans, you could be talkign about how the US could borrow at 2% and get rates of return of 15% or more, not mentioning clean air and water!
In keeping with Obama's intransigent reliance on conservative economic advisers, he is now pushing a savings plan for the poor which would take $ out of the economy and give even more $ to the banksters. This on top of the Fed. shoveling ungodly amounts of crisp newly printed cash to, who else, the banksters. Friedman would be proud! IMHO more cash to the people who caused our economic crash in the first place might not be a good long term strategy. Half the money inserted at the bottom of the economy would have brought us roaring back to economic health.
It appeared to be more of the same ol' Obama rhetoric. As the saying goes: "No guts no glory". We'll see what transpires.
A slight divergent topic: it seems to me that the very wealthy and or wealthier GOP politicians have no concept of reality when it comes to inequality. Not everyone wants to be rich just like them, as they seem to believe. There are those, like my dad, who loved the outdoors and loved working with his hands, and was happy with being in construction. He could have been a local union leader, but he would have hated a desk job. He loved his work, and was dedicated to taking care of his family. There are those who like tinkering with cars, like working the earth with small farms, like fishing, building homes, piloting tugboats or whatever. They don't care about getting rich. They only want or need what makes life comfortable and livable for their households. This is what the wealthy don't get.
1 other note: I was watching a CSPAN series on 1st ladies. They finally made it up to Hillary Clinton, and a remark was made that I found interesting - why she voted for the Irac war. She was senator for NY. 9-11 happened in NY. She had to represent the people of her state.
Amen Aliceinwonderland:
Also consumers, workers need liviable wages--extra money left over after bills--to keep small business afloat--or there will be NO money/profit for them--why don't they understand that?
My uncle had a small, very successful, heating AC business. He took care of his customers and his employees and their families. (He has since retired, but his employees are still loyal to him and come to his aid when he needs help.) He provided well for his family, but they did not live "high-on-the-hog." They lived in a modest home, did not go on fancy vacations every year, need new vehicles every year, fancy worthless toys...I think you get the picture,
He saw his business as a way to MAKE A LIVING not as a get rich quick scheme and a way to USE others to pay for a grander lifestyle. I wish that there were more businesspeople like him. The world and our economy would be in a better place.
mrbrannon68:
I could not agree with you more. The Citizen's United case will be viewed, in the future, as an assinine unConstitutional decision made by intellectual light-weights (the K-RATS) bought by big money, which has severely damaged our country.
Corporations DO NOT deserve a vote--they are not people. Every real person working at the corporation already has his/her ONE VOTE when he/she steps into the voting booth. It's all REAL people get--one person, one vote. Why should a corporation get more votes and who decides what that vote will be? Real people are not permitted to give unlimited amounts of money to politicians. Why are corporations given that right--a right ABOVE citizens? There seems to be a raging double-standard at work, which does not belong in DEMOCRACY.
Why has no one seen this unConstitutional? Or just plain stupid?
A good politician gave a very good video on our problems in this country. Ignored by the media and president as usual.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh7LBtrBq1g#t=250
Mark, so far as I know, all of your posts should not have been affected just because one was. For example, Palindromedary was able to keep trying to post, and those posts that did not contain the world Gucci got through before I disabled the filter. Has anyone else experienced this?
Unfortunately sometimes non-political phrases like Gucci do get co-opted into political or other current phrases, and the balance between whether only spammers will use it, or ordinary members too, shifts.
In this case spammers have only used it about 170 times and it was an important part of the post, so I disabled the filter. Usually, though, members only get caught because of spelling mistakes and typoes, and I ask them to correct those and repost.
We've been asking people to become moderators for years.
These days we do catch most spammers before they get the chance to spam in public, so we are reducing the number of filters as we get a feel for which ones are still getting through.
I've one brief message for small business owners like the one 10-K just described: Don't wanna pay a livable wage? Then DO THE WORK YOURSELF! Goddam crybabies... - AIW
Some guy called Thom at the end of today's show and wanted a pity party for business owners in regard to the proposed increase in minimum wage. I would have simply redirected him to a talk show in Australia where the minimum wage is over $16. I'm pretty sure the small business owners over there haven't packed up their toys and gone home. They still make plenty off the backs of their fellow man.
The State of the Union???? How about the plain truth?....The bloated billionaires, along with their bowel obstruction, also known as the House Teabaggers, continue to have more power than the Democratic State itself. Obama may as well have admitted this truth and apologized for the pain and bruises, we the working class end up with, as they, Obama and the Democrats, continue to get their asses kicked by these Fascist bastards. Our public servants feel no pain, many simply ride off into the sunset of K Street along with their independent wealth.
I had a long discussion with a true Socialist at an Occupy event way back. He swore up and down that the only answer was violent revolution. He was absolutely certain the rich will not let go of their Fascist power without a tremendous fight. I keep asking myself.. oh my god, what if he is right?
We at least have to get back in the streets like our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world...gotta be a peaceful way!
Can we all talk talk talk some more about it all so time goes by and they get richer while doing nothing because they know we are going to keep talking and do nothing?
Obama only says what he knows he has to say to pass the time till someone else is in office and he gets a full retirement for 8 years of "work". No one deserves a full retirement for less than twenty years of work.
Although I did not listen to the SOTUA, from what I've been hearing about it, I would say the Prez "toed the party line". The question is "which party?"
I avoid listening to long winded prevarications, so I almost never listen to political speeches.
Nor was the critical issue of Who Owns America and Who Should Own America was NEVER addressed. Instead, the sole focus was on Jobs Creation and Education, neither of which will be effective unless there is a solid, continuous momentum in the economic growth of the country, and that means simultaneously financing growth while creating new capital asset ownership whereby EVERY citizen over time can acquire a viable income-producing productive capital estate to augment job-sourced income. Even President Obama's proposal for creating "retirement savings bonds" will require the pledge of "savings" and the denial of personal consumption, which in reality will benefit the more well off than the vast majority of Americans struggling to pay check to pay check.
If corporations ship jobs overseas, those corporations should be made to pay the equivalent taxes that the outsourced employees WOULD have paid, until those employees are re-employed at a salary equivalent to what they were on when they were retrenched. If they never again achieve the level of income that they had when they were retrenched, then the employer who outsourced their jobs overseas would continue to be responsible for the difference in taxes paid by those employees.
In one stroke that would recoup the lost taxation income to the government and act as a disincentive for companies to ship jobs overseas, all without raising tax rates on the corporations. The companies that outsource would still benefit from paying the slave wages that are the going rates in the third world, but they would still be responsible to pick up the loss of taxation revenue to the US government. Our country would benefit from still having enough funds to cover infrastructure and services costs.
Woulld this measure be an administrative burden on corporations? Well, yes, but the tax system is already so complicated that they already pay accountants and auditors to manage their taxes who could manage this.
Lame Duck woddling. Even if the Democrats sweep this November, they will still be the whores of the monied interests. Case in point is Nancy "the (inside) trader" Pelosi. Illegal when you trade on nonpublic information BUT not when a Member of Congress engages in it. Congress is not properly duplicitious to faithfully serve their corporate masters and help the regular people commoner serfs. why do we still waste our time on "change you can bel..............
It seems to me that most spammers will start spamming right off the bat, after having just registered. So, wouldn't it be better to apply the spam filter to newbies for...say...a trial period...blocking their posts if the spam filter thought it was spam. That would discourage most spammers...especially if the trial period was random. And I'm mostly talking about commercial spammers. Spammers would have a hard time determining when it was safe to start spamming. And after the trial period, send an alert that the spam filter caught a certain word that might be spam so other readers could determine if it is spam and have the opportunity to flag it themselves. Then the flagged post could be analyzed by the moderator and stricter actions taken if need be.
But, until then, if I am flagged by the spam filter, I will certainly look for any key word that might be interpreted as commercial spam.
Hmmm....spam is a commercial product isn't it? You know, ham in a can. I prefer the turkey spam myself.