When I messed up on my taxes once, I had to pay it back with interest. I had to do it so quickly, I had to borrow it!

People see the unequal treatment and, do nothing. I have no idea why.

Daschle also received huge funds from the health insurance industry.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/01/31-2

Here is what Physicians for a Natl Health Plan think of Waxman, et als, new “reform” ideas.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/02/01-1 (This one has a video)

What he did, as far as lobbying, was legal, of course. I just dont know why it is.

Here is what Physicians for a Natl Health Plan think of Waxman, et als, new “reform” ideas.

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/january/waxman_ready_to_move.php

“Maybe James Clyburn did let slip the dark secret of the Washington reformers. If we were to continue with only incremental reforms, we would end up with a system that will leave many without insurance, that will leave health care unaffordable for many more, and that will leave in place an industry that takes away health care access and choice to further its own financial interests. Hmmm… Looks like another con job. Go the incremental route, but call it universal.”

Don McCanne, MD

I called Waxman’s office to ask what would keep it from becoming a “huge Medicaid”, and they had no answer.

Mr. Robinson. Why have you not written about the Daschle disaster? My guess: the Daschle-shit is not “change” and your computer crashes automatically when you try to write about: “politics as usual”.
If you believe that the American public holds Daschle in the same reverence as Mr. Obama does you are wrong. Much of the public is just as outraged about the tax shenanigans of Geithner and Daschle as Mr. Obama is about the bonuses on Wall Street. Come to think of it, the payers of bonuses did not try to evade any law!
Geithner’s mistake was called an “honest mistake”. Daschle’s mistake is called a “stupid mistake”. What is next? Appointment of Madoff as secretary of commerce? That would be an ingenious coup because he already knows how to swindle money from friends, in that case from our “friendly nations”! Yes you can, Mr. Obama. Yes, you can, but we the people cannot tolerate your gigantic inexperience much longer.

Yes, this may be one of those moments when people with a brain come out and offer their ideas and insights. For 8 years there hasn’t been much point.  And this moment will pass, I’m afraid, as Obama’s policies trend towards the political path of least resistance. Im 56 and American policy has never changed at all.

Kind regards to you, my friends.

Some people are choosing to liquidate their assets in these troubled times:  http://www.newstatesman.com/drink/2009/01/current-wino-wine-nothing

This is too good! (some of you won’t get it) For the rest, enjoy. (there are several Greg Palast fans among us)

Obama Is a Two-Faced Liar. Aw-RIGHT!
Friday 30 January 2009

by: Greg Palast, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

  “ Republicans are right. President Barack Obama treated them like dirt, didn’t give a damn what they thought about his stimulus package, loaded it with a bunch of programs that will last for years and will never leave the budget, is giving away money disguised as “tax refunds,” and is sneaking in huge changes in policy, from schools to health care, using the pretext of an economic emergency.

  Way to go, Mr. O!  Mr. Down-and-Dirty Chicago pol. Street-fightin’ man. Covering over his break-your-face power play with a “we’re all post-partisan friends” BS.

  And it’s about time.

  Frankly, I was worried about this guy. Obama’s appointing Clinton-droids to the Cabinet, bloated incompetents like Larry Summers as “Economics Czar,” made me fear for my country, that we’d gotten another Democrat who wished he were a Republican.

  Then came Obama’s money bomb. The House bill included $125 billion for schools (TRIPLING federal spending on education), expanding insurance coverage to the unemployed, making the most progressive change in the tax code in four decades by creating a $500 credit against social security payroll deductions, and so on.

  It’s as if Obama dug up Ronald Reagan’s carcass and put a stake through The Gipper’s anti-government heart. Aw-RIGHT!

  About the only concession Obama threw to the right-wing trogs was to remove the subsidy for condoms, leaving hooker-happy GOP Senators, like David Vitter, to pay for their own protection. S’OK with me”

Read the rest at the link:
http://www.truthout.org/013009R

When I think of all the intelligent insights provided by the commentators [posting here] I can not help but think if only some of the bright ones in charge of this wretched state would have a look and consider how these matters are being approached, with intelligence, and more importantly, compassion… All I can say is to folktruther, Big B, KDelphi and so many more… thank you. The Beer Doctor.

The GOP is on the wrong side of history, that’s for sure, but, so is the duopoly. When I heard DeMint talk yesterday about SCHIP “underming self respect” (what?? of 5 yr olds? what is considered a human RIGHT by the civilized world??), I thought, they really just do not get it. Unfortunately, neither do Dems, as Waxman was so explicit about yesterday.

And, how did beloved Blue Dogs vote? That is what I figured. As Outraged said, it is hard to know how to feel about his “package”. One thing we do NOT need is the piddly for people, huge for business, tax cuts.

thebeerdr—WHY is Reagan being mentioned by both parties, the MSM, etc. without the disgust the mere mention of his name wells up in my throat??  Just because he was a good manipulator, did not make him a moral or dedcent person.

PurpelGirl—
“Repugs constantly refer to the ‘Tax payers’ they are protecting, blatantly neglecting the Fact that Taxpayers are citizens with Jobs.” Yes, but not “jobs” as you or I woudl know them, for the most part. I would agree, no more tax cuts. I just wish that the Dems felt the same way.

I think that it is fair to say that alot of the money in the “stimulus”, is “catchup”. The GOP (and Dems, to a lesser degree, only) have been cutting programs for so many years, that many are just plain broke. Of course, you cannot say that the poor, or even poor children, deserve anything at all from the criminal rich, in good ole free enterprise USA.

The basic value underlying the DemGop coalition is inequality. They both agree that they are part of an Elite power structure moneyed, media’d and managed by the bank and corporation owneres.  However they differ tactically how best to maintain the increasing class inequality which is, historially, destroying the American power structure and the Western tradition.

As Beerdoctor quoted Toynbee, civilizations die by sucicide, not murder.  The Bushites, before handing off to Obama, stuck the US in three or four wars, enormous debt, a disfunctional economic system, a delusive system of truth organs, and a militarized police state to keep maintain the full spectrum class inequality.

Which Obama is continuing. The quickest solution, as cruxpuppy suggests, is to nationalize the financial system. Which of course it is quite impossible for Obama to do. But the long term solution is more fundamental, to increase the power equality of the American people and the people of the world.

The place to begin is with the truth organs, the learned and mass media that is now dedicated to deluding the American people.  These are owned or in other ways controlled by the ruling class, and are an essential part of the American power structure that mandates inequality under the guise of Freedom and Democracy. 

The codewords actually refer to the freedom and democracy of the ruling class and their power struture. 

But if a population-controlled truth organs are essential to promote power equality, the question is how such population controlled truth organs can be developed.  Or how we can begin to develop them. Becasue these are necessary in embryo at the time that the economic and power collapse occurs as the American power system decays.

The election of Obama does not, as Eugene Robinson thinks, constitute any fundamental change at all.

The R’s early last year proposed, and got, an $850 billion “bailout” package for their corporate buddies, no strings attached, no oversight.

This year, Obama has proposed, and will get, a trillion dollar “stimulus” package for his buddies in various pressure groups and lobbies (and probably corporations that threw in some campaign money).

There is no ESSENTIAL change at all. There are changes in window-dressing, but nothing fundamental.

The R’s and D’s are just two wings of the same party, folks: the big government party. The R’s tend to steal public money and send it to Chase Bank; the D’s want to steal public money and send it to ACORN. 

The R’s want to focus the efforts of the US global hegemony on Iraq. The D’s want to focus it on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Window dressing, folks—there is no fundamental difference.

The black curmudgeon on the Supreme court was appointed by what party? What color was the first non-white head of the Pentagon top brass and what is his party affiliation? The first black female Sec of State?

The “racist” Republican Party is a “big tent” for people of all colors who will swear fealty to the aristocracy of wealth. It is not racism that drives the Republicans, it is fear of populism.

In the Democratic Party, FDR’s New Deal Progressivism was created to co-opt populist sentiment.

The great appeal of Obama is the presumption of his populist tendencies by the mass of people in the street. If you’re black you automatically understand what it’s like to be socially disadvantaged and you will work to level the playing field.

Did any of these aforementioned black Republicans take up the cause of the disadvantaged? So, why does anyone believe that racism is a factor? Because they are naive and just a tad racist in their own view of reality.

Racism is irrelevant. The racism of the American public has been used to great political advantage by the Republicans. The election of Obama is a masterful Democratic use of the “race card” and the public is not wrong is believing that Obama cares. He is progressive.

Here’s the rub: PROGRESSIVE DOES NOT MEAN POPULIST. POPULISM IS THE MUTUAL ENEMY OF THE DemoRepublican Party. BOTH PARTIES ARE BUT ONE PARTY THAT EXISTS TO PROTECT AND DEFEND THE PRIVILEGES AND POLITICAL ASCENDANCY OF THE FINANCIAL ELITE, THE NEW GLOBAL ARISTOCRACY.

The progressive movement permitted the Democratic Party to drive a stake into the heart of the Populist Movement that it inherited from he 19th Century. Populism does not exist today except in the inchoate yearnings of the people who wonder why the governments they elect seem to be owned and operated in the name of special interests and not in the name of the General Welfare.

This is the crux of the matter: the two parties become one party in their support of the new global elite of financial masters. The bail out to the tune of many trillions of these “useless eaters”, these gamblers and usurers, demonstrates in stark relief the hollowness of the progressive view.

Populism is the enemy of the DemoRepublican Party. Progressivism is the tool the Democrats use to preempt and co-opt Populism in their midst.

So, what is populism? David Sirota does not know. If you listen to the politicians, from Putin at Davos, to voices in Washington, you notice “populist” being used to describe something dangerous and undesirable. It is used today in the same way that “mob rule” was used at the time of the founders in the 18th Century.

Populism, first of all, is direct democracy.

And most crucially in the terms of current debate about the financial melt down, Populism means “economic democracy”. The private monetary system that is currently in private hands would be transferred into public ownership and operated in the name of the general welfare as a public utility.

Most of you people are enthralled by the ersatz populism called progressivism. You do not know the difference between nationalizing an economy and nationalizing the monetary system. Under a populist system a privately owned free market economy grows stronger on a level playing field, but the public utility called “credit” is administered by the people’s Treasury in the name of the general welfare.

Is it OK with you that trillions are given away to he private owners of wealth and a mere 819 billion allocated for the general welfare?

The crisis we are in presents a clear choice between popular sovereignty and the continuation of the rule of an elite. When Obama finally realizes he cannot jawbone the private owners of wealth into showing some concern for the general welfare, his deep populist impulses, as with Lincoln, will emerge. And when he makes moves to nationalize the monetary system, they will kill him.

Paul_GA, January 31 at 6:32 am #

They canonize Reagan like they do because they realize they’ve never had a president in living memory as popular and looked up to as FDR. Reagan is (so they think) the GOP’s answer to FDR.
***********************************
I agree.  RR’s gift to the GOP was he gave them something be proud of and look forward to.  He helped them sweep Nixon under the rug.  With his sunny smile, his quick jokes, and his satanic ability to convince Democrats to go along with his absurd policies, he had a reputation for true bi-partisanship. He, at least, saw the difference between the party and the person—Tip O’Neil was his favorite dinner guest and they enjoyed each other.

And, if you close one eye, kid yourself a little or a lot, his policies “worked”.....at least enough to sell to the electorate.

That doesn’t change my opinion that he was a miserable failure as President and terrible for the country: even Nixon couldn’t do as much damage.  Only Buchanan and Tyler were worse before him. Of course, Dumbya eclipsed Reagan and all his predecessors in the damage he did to this nation.

They canonize Reagan like they do because they realize they’ve never had a president in living memory as popular and looked up to as FDR. Reagan is (so they think) the GOP’s answer to FDR.

beerdoc is correct. How much longer is the back page of the repug playbook going to be the deification of Reagan? Has history not now proven that this bumbling moron and his puppet masters are responsible for nearly every crisis facing america at this time, from our economy to our moral decline? It apparently needs to be said yet again, that while Ronny was reading off the card the empty platitudes and imperialistic bullshit that made the idiot working class swoon for him, his handlers(yes, the very same ones who handled W) were deregulating essential services, giving money away to the wealthy, and giving weapons away to the enemy, thus creating the giant shit sandwich that we are being forced to eat right now!

Reagan should be cannonized all right, he should have indeed been fired out of one.

The “old orthodoxy” and the “new orthodoxy” equal the same orthodoxy: government exists to facilitate the greed and corruption of the ruling class.

Mr. Robinson’s article is typical, establishment liberal nonsense. Why he chooses to resurrect the ghost of Ronald Reagan is baffling. That corrupt senile old fool has been mythologized into greatness… and strangely Robinson buys into this bogus historical narrative.

If the era of white rule is over why is the Obama administration made up mainly of white ruling class elites?

44 years ago the GOP began exploring exploiting White Racism and excluding Blacks from voting.  Remember? In Arizona in the 1964 election a young Republican lawyer was seeking to intimidate Black voters by questioning their credentials.  His name? William Rehnquist and it was in response to resentment of the July 2 Civil Rights Act, that LBJ forced through to the resentment of Southern Democrats.

Thus, the “Southern Strategy” and GOP racism were born, out of pure cynicism and hunger for power.

Four years later, and in the wake of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, it blossomed as the key to the Nixon campaign.  Rioting that spring and summer following Dr. King’s murder led Nixon to talk about how he was going to restore “Law and Order”—code words for “silencing the n*****s and putting them back in their place” to the Southern red necks—music to their ears. This cynical shitty policy worked, but the Republicans had sold their souls.  Their form of conservatism, ironically called “Goldwater Republicanism” was on the decline.  Jerry Ford was the last of them to sit in the White House.

This racism has been a great success for them in winning elections.  They won in 1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000 and 2004. They won mid-terms in 1982, 1994, 1998, and 2002, and gained in most of the other mid-terms, losing only in 1986 and 2006. (in 1986, they lost the Senate, in 2006, both the Senate and House).

It took 40 years and 8 years of disastrous leadership to finally blow that away—at least for now.  We may be looking at the finest President since FDR—I certainly hope so!

House Republicans are politicians and like all politicians what they usually have on their minds is the next election.  No one knows what will happen next with the economy or whether Obama’s plan will help at all.  If it doesn’t, and the economy doesn’t improve, republicans will be sitting pretty for the 2010 elections.  This is what they are gambling on.  Unlike democrats, republicans never cave once they’ve staked out a position.  I think this is a better explanation of the vote on the stimulus bill than charges of racism.

By Anthony Look, January 30 at 6:33 pm
•  “The unity in the GOP House vote also speaks to racism and the fanning of the flames that the McCain/Palin campaign so obviously wrought…”
Anthony Look,
Thanks for the excellent post! You really do hit it right here on the head, since pretty much anything the GOP does, has a racist component. And the nomination of Steele is just more of the same. Remember all of those lies and Karl Rove tricks he was playing when he was running for the MD Senate seat in 2006? The guy gives me the creeps like Clarence Thomas gives me the creeps.
Anyway, this says it all here:
“What the GOP does not accept is that the era of predominantly white rule is over. America has caught up with its true nature, it is a nation of immigrants and multicultural heirtage and religions. It is not a majority white nation nor is it a Christian nation only.
The quivering underpinnings of the knee jerk GOP reactions designed to cater to the GOP base are barely sustained white racial expressions of resentment, anger, fear and refusal to accept the reality that America has changed.”

And, you say it SO WELL!! It is indeed that refusal to accept the reality that America has changed. That’s what it boils down to, and rings in concert with the same comments from Dr. Manis in his journal article “When Are WE Going to Get Over It
He writes:
“We white people have controlled political life in the disunited colonies and United States for some 400 years on this continent. Conservative whites have been in power 28 of the last 40 years. Even during the eight Clinton years, conservatives in Congress blocked most of his agenda and pulled him to the right.”
Then:
“ Fighting the urge to throw up, I can only ask, “How long?” How long before we white people realize we can’t make our nation, much less the whole world, look like us? How long until we white people can -once and for all- get over this hell-conceived preoccupation with skin color? How long until we white people get over the demonic conviction that white skin makes us superior? How long before we white people get over our bitter resentments about being demoted to the status of equality with non-whites?”
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-176650
It’s the very last part here that I so noted myself, the first time I did a read through, since it jumped right out at me as ‘the reason’. The part about whites just not being able to get over their very, very, bitter and resentments about being ‘demoted’ to the status of EQUALITY with non-whites.
It took me a really long time to comprehend, intellectually, how or why this racism could retain such an intractable hold on the psychology of so many people, particularly when they’ve come from all over the damn place themselves, and the first people they met here, were NOT white.
Anyway, that’s what it boils down to. The White-Skin Privilege has simply seen the end of its era. Now their very own survival depends on them accepting their equal status with everybody else. Those who can’t just won’t make it, and that’ll be just fine. I think of it as an overall attrition, or the dying out of a species that not only fails to serve any useful purpose, but is dangerous to the continued health of the rest of the body…like a cancer. Those who –CAN- will be all the better for it, since they have a shot at survival in the reality of the 21st Century. (We got to it 8 years late)

But, it’s not looking good for them; not from the looks of their votes at least.

Meantime, in another excellent piece from Mr. Robinson here, he’s pretty much saying the same thing in terms of the survival of the GOP. I guess they COULD all just stay in their soundproofed room, since the rest of us will just do what we’ve gotta do to save ourselves and each other.

That part’s off to a great start.

If “it’s pretty clear that the GOP caucus has been meeting in a soundproof room”, then they’re not alone. It’s even clearer that Robinson has been scribbling in a soundproof room - with the lights turned off - for the last three decades. Actually, the point certainly is to “revisit the merits of the strike or the wisdom of Reagan’s hard-line stance”. A “hard-line stance” against the working class by workplace and governmental authorities in close collusion has been a persistent motif throughtout American history.  It’s nothing short of incredible that a self-proclaimed ‘progressive’ pundit should dismiss this blatant attack on labor so cavalierly. “The point is that the controllers’ union failed to realize that the dawn of the Reagan administration represented a rare fundamental shift in American politics” - so what were they supposed to do, roll over and play dead? Don’t stand in the way of progress ye hoary union, accept the dictates of the new ‘progressive’ president who was elected on a “sweeping mandate” for autocratic rule, and jump into the dustbin of history. So you see,the air traff controllers had “only themselves to blame”! Only a Washington Post liberal could dream up such a loopy explanation. 
  “Reagan’s new orthodoxy wouldn’t have been possible unless Americans had” - no sense at all. “Americans had the sense that the old orthodoxy had reached a dead end” - and it wasn’t long before the “new orthodoxy” did the same. Just a matter of months, in fact. Ray-gun’s brash, young director of OMB at the time, David Stockman, expressed his doubts about that “new orthodoxy” to Wm. Greider in The Atlantic at about the same time PATCO was being bludgeoned to death. Stockman later described the process, in his revealing book expose, The Triumph of Politics. In it, he recounts, “Looking back, the only thing that can be said to have been innocent about the Reagan Revolution was the objective of improving upon what we inherited… But the Reagan Revolution’s abortive effort to rectify these inherited conditions cannot be simply exonerated as a good try that failed. The magnitude of the fiscal wreckage and the severity of the economic dangers that resulted are too great to permit such an easy verdict. In the larger scheme of democratic fact and economic reality there lies a harsher judgment. In fact, it was the basic assumptions and fiscal architecture of the Reagan Revolution itself which first introduced the folly that now envelops our economic governance.”  Bonzo’s wrecking crew swiftly reverted to tried and true Keynesian practices - the only true “orthodoxy” capitalism has known over the last three-quarters of a century - and ran up a record new deficit in the process. Obama’s ‘retread’ crew promises much more of the same, on an even grander scale, in another desperate effort to save degenerate capitalist economies from imminent demise. Little wonder then that Robinson should so admire both teflon-twins, Ray-gun & Obama Copacabana. Was “absolute solidarity among House Republicans in voting no…  a triumph of discipline over reason, of doctrine over observation”?  Or was it just ‘the triumph of politics’ again? “There is abundant evidence suggesting that” both parties will continue to invent ideological smokescreens about “new political era[s] with new rules and a new lexicon” for public consumption - with the help of the Washington Post - as a means of continuing their age-old bipartisan commitment to serving the aims of capital, whether it’s swatting labor or refilling corporate coffers with public funds. Some things never change.

The stimulus bill is a tough call.  The situation is crucial and deficient dollar amounts huge…...what to do? 

Sen. Russ Feingold elaborated his view of the matter on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.  Feingold has an excellent track record and is supported by “mainstreet”, Republicans and Democrats alike.

The beginning of this clip covers some of the Blagoveich(sp?) concerns, if you’d like to skip that start at approx. 2:40 min.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qkvYOrKGos

Cruxpuppy, right on. The US has three branches of government. It has a bicameral legislature, and it has a bi-stable 2-party electoral system which determines the selection of presidents and congress.

The party system oscillates between one party and the other, both composed of *very* similar political architectures and even the same constituencies. There is no difference in the long run, between the Democratic and Republican parties. Both parties are composed of individuals. Individuals can only accumulate influence and power by certain types of behaviors, regardless of party. The political ecosystem or “marketplace” is very large and complex, but both parties scramble for power and influence within the same marketplace and it defies logic that they would have different strategies for very long. And the winning strategy obviously is to serve the wealthiest and most powerful elite in the country, while partnering with the state media system to make up the most plausible lies and rationalizations for the voters.

What we have is a bi-stable system that oscillates between on party and the other. Political power floods into one party, then the other, in an avalanche of wealthy people and companies determined to be part of the winning team. That’s all there is. There’s no capitalism, socialism, anymore, just “winnism”.

The relative power of the two parties changes, and the people in charge change more slowly (95% of the incumbents are reelected ), and policy doesn’t change very much at all.

Anybody who is serious about changing policy would not focus on which of the two states in this state-machine, this bi-stable multivibrator are in control. It is a single monolithic machine, with two states.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_state_machine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivibrator
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscillator

One would first realize we are enslaved by a deterministic system -a mechanical hell—and try to find a way out of it,

Todd

This author believes in the pendulum theory of politics that swings from left to right and back again into any imaginable future and he also embraces the idea that there is a difference between Republicans and Democrats.

On this stimulus bill, yes, there is a difference, but this 819 billion dollars is peanuts, friends, compared to the trillions already distributed by the monopoly banking system to all the distressed insiders, the members of the private club to whom every person in this forum and this country is beholden. The money that is given in our name and on our account to our lien holders and overseers far surpasses a piddling 819 billion dollars. And on this policy of bail out, both parties are in agreement.

And what they agree to is this: we will pay for the excesses, mismanagement, and simple stupidity of a group of people who hold our mortgages and suck us dry through the miracle of compound interest in order that they may continue in their accustomed role as our overseers. Both Democrats and Republicans, even Heath Schuler ( my representative, too, Catharine ), agree that we must continue to support the privatized monetary system known as “The Federal Reserve” that exercises monopoly control over our financial affairs, even though it has failed spectacularly.

The Massa looses a pile at the gaming table and all the good slaves get together to bail him out because they are too stupid to manage their own affairs and be free.

So, Eugene Robinson ignores this significant element of the current situation so that he can exercise his ignorant two-party dialectic over the matter of 819 billions dollars because he believes in that swinging pendulum. Back and forth it goes.

But guess what? The pendulum is broke. It isn’t swinging anymore.The whole system has broken down, Mr. Robinson, because the mechanism that runs it, the privatized monetary system is beyond repair. The two parties that bow down to reverence this money monopoly are morally and intellectually bankrupt.

Get ready for something you have never seen before. This is the time of never before. Not never again, but never before.

If we have a future worth living, it must be what we now refer to as “left”. A new pendulum will swing from “right left” to “left left” and all the increments in between in the spectrum of left.

It is vaguely known as a “new world order”. I wouldn’t know how to describe it more precisely, but I do know that we have not merely come to the end of a particular political fad called “neo-liberalism”, but something much deeper than that: an end to an entire way of life.

The spectacle of congressional partisanship is irrelevant. What we see are people merely reacting to events in stupid ways with canned rhetoric. They are fearful and confused, these Republicans, but so are the Democrats. All the sound and fury of their political ascendancy masks the same fear and confusion.

Obama is the man. The Leader. I truly hope there is a there there.

dihey—you nailed it.  Many of the people in the administration, as well as the bureaucracy, are there to build the next war.  That is their fulltime job. Ancillary activities include getting the funding etc.  But in ALL the broadcast and print media the past month, there has been almost ZERO mention of the military budget, or the real facts of the federal reserve and banking carter.  THOSE are taboo subjects.

I don’t know whether I should laugh or cry about this idiotic writing. Listen to what Dan Rather said last night on MSMBC. “When the snow melts in the mountain passes [between Afghanistan and Pakistan] there will be a lot of killing in Northwestern Pakistan”. It is obvious that Rather meant “by us” because he only talked to US commanders while he was in Afghanistan.
On many occasions I have written that a President Obama will start a new war of his own. It will be Northwestern Pakistan provided he will have enough soldiers there. The waiting is for the units from Iraq. It will be Obama’s war.
It is my opinion that the whole “stimulus ruckus” is a gigantic diversion to take the eyes of the American people off the equally gigantic military budget which Obama will inflate even more. Let’s face it, what is $100 billion per year compared to 1 trillion “stimulus”? Pocket money not worth worrying about.

According to the latest news, ex-Lt. Gov Mike Steele of Maryland is the first-ever black RNC chairman:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/61109.html

Big deal!

Republicans are the party of government screw-ups, kowtowers to large corporations and the rich, handmaidens of the financial ruling class, wacko evangelicals, rednecks, gun lovers, warmongers and crazy ideologues who live in a fairyland and politicize everything in government. Add in being big spenders and huge borrowers creating massive unsustainable government debts, being inveterate liars, corrupt, having complete disregard for the constitution/laws, demonstrating a total abandonment of reality and you have a Republican.

Louise, they may seek comfort from each other in their incompetence, but they certainly cannot seek wisdom, if they had any, we would not be in the mess they have put us in.

There are already political campaign commercials running for the Republicans for 2010 the same day they rejected Obamas stimulus bill. That tells all of America that the Republicans will not be working for the American people the next 2 years, but rather on the never ending campaign trail. The last one was way to long, and this continuous campaigning needs to stop for all concerned. President Obama or someone needs to make a law where campaigning for any office in government shall last no longer than 3 months. Too much time has/is wasted, along with money on this nonsense and the work? they were selected to do remains undone. These people are nothing more than service workers and should be paid as all other workers in America who do service work are-minimum wage-no perks, benefits or overtime. Perhaps if they had to live at the real wages as the working people do, they would come up with real answers for the real problems they have created. Otherwise they are totally useless and their wages need to be stopped. They are being paid for absolutely nothing. Now that is change I want to see.

Mr. Robinson: one minor correction: the Republicans do not “always slash government spending”.  They spend massively on military, and more recently the “national security state”.  They spend even more massively on the invisible financial state: through interest on the national debt, thru money creation thru state enterprises from the federal reserve down thru fanny, freddy, and myriad opaque operations.  Both the military industrial congrssional complex MICC, and the financial operations stink with rot and corruption, and very effectively loot the treasury, handing $trillions to cronies who then fund the elections of politicians in both parties.  IT is a feedback loop and there’s no way out of it, but citizens ignore money, and go out and do volunteer work, and accept poverty as the price of hobbling the plutocracy.

There must be a rumbling going on. Last night Bob Bennet, US Senator, Utah (R) came to the defense of his party. Not explaining their “better” alternative to President Obamas plan, but trying to defend himself and his party’s perceived obstructionism.
“My objection to what the Democrats are proposing in the Senate has nothing whatever to do with a desire on the part of Republicans to see anything fail. It has nothing to do with the idea that we might get the political advantage if Obama stumbles. I’m going to vote against this package because it’s not going to work.”

So what does that tell us?

Lots of emails and phone calls coming into repubs demanding to know why they want the President to fail!

And, they don’t have a “better” alternative, that’s what.

And of course the notion that to do nothing is somehow better than to try something because it might not work. Oh, amend that, Bennet has assured us “it’s not going to work,” so far better to do nothing!

OK, while we all hold our breath until 2010 waiting for anything that looks and sounds “better” to come out of that group, maybe we need to ask ourselves, if they have “better” ideas, how come we haven’t seen them clearly defined and proposed?

Well I will tell you how come.

They are bankrupt! Bankrupt of “classic” republican issues to rally behind. Bankrupt of original ideas. Bankrupt of past glories to hang on to. Bankrupt of leadership. Bankrupt of wisdom and a clear head. And Bankrupt of a cupboard somewhere holding all of the above. So they are clinging desperately to the only things they do have. Their well-worn security blankie and each other.

Seeking comfort and wisdom from one another, they wait for something that resembles a leader to emerge from their fog.

Meanwhile, they are doing the only thing they can do ... nothing.

Can government possibly spend any more money than it already has?
  Some economists have put the price tag for 8 years of Bush(Supposedly A Fiscal Conservative) at 11 Trillion dollars, and it may take decades to dig ourselves out of that hole.
  It is time to face the fact that there has always been big government. The question is, who will that government serve? Citizens or Corporations? I would argue that our only hope of survival as a nation lies in a government based on a Democratic Socialist model. I am not talking about an Old School Marxist Model but something more contemporary as is found in Europe where capitalism and social welfare exist together.
  Disaster Capitalism has been,Is, and will be a Disaster. Deregulation, privatization, and cuts in social spending have given us a world where 2% of the worlds population holds 40% of the worlds wealth. Keynes was right, Friedman was a criminal.
  And above all, the larger question is , what form of governance results in the greatest amount of Safety, Security, and Happiness for it’s citizens?
It sure as he’ll isn’t the Corporate Fascism we have now.
  Oh, and for those who want to downsize Government,
let us begin with the Military….

Ed, I could not have said it better. The Repukelicans have always hated the people of America from what I have seen in my lifetime. True traitors. If it is not for their “haves and have mores”,it is not worth their time to bother with it, we do not even exist in their world, except to rob us of our pittance of an income. As for spending, it had been to the destruction of life, and environment everywhere on the planet rather than making a better world for everyone. Yet there are still those so blind they think or believe the Repugs are the best thing ever. That is the sad and scary part.

After Republican demi-god Dick Cheney said to Paul O’Neill, “Deficits don’t matter”, I think nobody can take the GOP seriously ever again when they spout their “principled” opposition to Democratic government spending.

The GOP is simply against government spending that actually helps people, regardless of whether it’s economically feasible or not. The GOP is hostile to the needs of actual people. They are so hostile, in fact, that they would rather see the entire economy collapse than see the government organize itself on the principle of achieving the common good.

The GOP hates the American people even more than it loves itself.

What the country needs is two whole new major political parties—and a level playing field where the two big parties don’t have the game all to themselves. I’m pleased to see the decline of the Repubs, but the Demos need to be humbled as well.

OUTRAGE WROTE: On the flip side, agree or not with the stimulus package, the Democrats stuck together!  A very big WIN for their constituents, if not a requirement.

Unfortunately, Outrage, the Dems didn’t really stick together. There sit those eleven or so Blue Dog Dems in the HOR who voted with their Repub buddies.  My rep, Heath Shuler, was among them, and I am outraged over that. These Blue Dogs should be considered Red Dogs…or perhaps Yellow Bellies. GRRRRRR!

Too bad we just can’t summarily fire all the GOP slugs who voted “no” in lockstep behind their noble statesmen “Boner” and Cantor. We’ve got to wait for 2010, where some of them may feel the whip of their constituents, but many will survive because they voted “no” precisely to reflect the will of their right-wing districts. It wouldn’t be the first time herd-centric Americans caught in ideological sophistry voted against their own real interests.

The PATCO analogy by Gene Robinson is very apt and instructive, and one can only hope prophetic. The fewer ideologues in the government, the better. They belong back on the fringe, where they can jerk each other off with abandon, and no one else gets seriously damaged. The more I observe Obama, the more I see a guy with a real “core”, a center of confidence in his own intellect, temperament, vision and capabilities. His decision to go “business casual” in the WH on weekends is a trivial but instructive example: it demonstrates a leader more concerned about the work at hand, the comfort of his team and the attendant symbolism of a “lightened up” style than the brittle, profoundly phony appearance of work, symbolized by suit and tie 24/7 (except when in his equally phony “shitkicker” mode back in Crawford) by the empty vessel that is G.W. Bush. 

Wake up and smell the coffee, “ditto heads” inside the Congress, before that little career termination light you see blinking in front of your eyes goes into “Blago” overdrive.

After 30 yrs of flawed ‘Logic’ our country has finally hit bottom- there is something to say about American resilence. This is not the first crash, nor even the second, but certianly the most substantial and devastating to a greater proportion of our citizens.
‘Trickle Down’ lived up to it’s name, only supplying the most sparing amount of wealth and resources to those ‘below’. It effectively re instituted a socio economic caste system- much like the one our founderswaged a revolution to free themselves from.
Repugs constantly refer to the ‘Tax payers’ they are protecting, blatantly neglecting the Fact that Taxpayers are citizens with Jobs. Worse yet is the claim that only corps generate jobs, failing to acknowledge that it is the Customers who generate jobs through their spending on products and services. And who are these ‘customers’ Workers with money to buy Co’s products and services. What is even more dishonest is the fact that when you have fewer people working, less taxes are being paid. Not only reducing revenues, but increasing the deficit through higher unemployemnt costs. Far more agregious is the fact with such a reduction in Tax revenues and increased Deficit, the cost to future generation goes Up expotentially….with nothing to show for the cost.
A tax cut is a band aid on a shotgun wound, it is short lived and does nothing to stop the hemorraging.
Americans heard the call to arms, so paying taxes (even higher ones) is not a concern. However, racking up dead end deficits, without something to show, is not only useless for US now,but also a slap in theface to our children in the future.This is the reason that After Bush’s Unbridled wild spending spree, the Repugs were voted out.
Don’t tell US you’ll cut our Taxes or spare US from a huge Deficit, if you are unwilling to give US Jobs, to pay our mortgages, our loans, our utilties and,yes, Even our taxes.
Tax cuts do little for US Now and are determental to our descendants and our country’s future.
Someone needs to tell the Repugs, We have grown immune to their “Kool aid”.

Mr. Robinson, your comment:

“If Republicans hadn’t broken the bank with drunken-sailorish spending during most of George W. Bush’s time in the White House, their complaints about the cost of the stimulus package and its impact on future deficits would be more credible. As things stand, we have to let actions speak: absolute solidarity among House Republicans in voting no.

An excellent prognosis.  I agree.  What fools the Republicans were to “draw the line” so to speak, and vote partisan at this most crucial moment.  For anyone cognizant of the slightest hint of the matter would be pained greatly by their aberrant actions.

On the flip side, agree or not with the stimulus package, the Democrats stuck together!  A very big WIN for their constituents, if not a requirement.