“What   you   do   speaks   so   loud,  I   can   not  
hear   what   you   say.” 

Saying of the original inhabitants (owners) of the
“american” continents. They emigrated from Mongolia
30,000 yrs ago across the Aleutian Peninsula. At that
time, it was still a land mass. 

Their land masses have been stolen by the Caucasian man
from Europe, but their wisdom remains.

Tao Walker, You get a aye aye, hey hey, hy dee ho from me…How true true true…. powerful words, nothing I could or would say could add to this…:)

By TAO Walker, February 1 at 6:58 pm

Ahh so, and amen.

The story goes that some Indians came and camped across the bay from San Francisco after the earthquake.  They were interested to see how the americans would respond to this ‘message’ from our Mother Earth.

When those people started almost immediately to rebuild the place, our People just shook their heads and went away.  They knew it’d be a long time before their ‘new neighbors’ figured out their basic mistake.

This Old Savage has pretty much the same reaction when posters here, and commentators and politicians and papered professional experts of all kinds express their expectations that the Titanic U.S. eCONomy, already half-way to the bottom, must somehow be re-floated.  Except that it isn’t going to be very long this time before the impossibility of it, even if the “powers” that wannabe had any interest in doing so, becomes painfully obvious even to the damned thing’s most rabid fans.

Of course, if homo domesticus hadn’t been robbed of their common sense to begin with, the tormentors could never’ve gotten ‘em into the CONtraption in the first place….nevermind back in time-after-time after its failures.  So the ‘good news’ is there won’t even be anything to ‘salvage’ soon, let alone restore to its former faux ‘glory.’

Can we get an AMEN! here?!

Hokahey!

Re Bill Boyarsky: “Nice Speech, Now What”

It rather obvious that this must be next:

In December, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, jointly introduced a bill that would bring back Glass-Steagall and force commercial banks to split off their lucrative, but risky, investment banking operations from their government-insured
depository banking business. The bill was gaining traction in the Senate, racking up several co-sponsors. Still, it had yet to be attached to the larger financial regulatory bill set to be debated in the coming months.

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/yearning-for-glass-steagall-on-capitol-hill/?scp=1&sq=mccain cantwell&st=cse

By wildflower, January 31 at 5:24 pm

Not to be deterred, o has now out spent w on nuclear weaponry
according to this post as CD, so screw the chinese and toast
america’s nuclear diplomacy.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/01/30

State Of The Union Kiss   empirePie   January 31st, 2009

Oh to be agile like my mutt
to say farewell with butt

but…

my spritely pad
missing it’s i
did the flip to be padC
the Corp big C
with bouncy bounty cheeks
augmented on the installment plan
and…
  on my
      dime

the grainy i
Sifting Out Timeless Union
hourglass i grains
the annual SOTU
formal folly sifted
for the anus kiss
juicy like CokeC
but apple wrinkled..
folded
for applause
of just another empty cause

so….

not to be remiss
but lacking reach
I pinched some flesh
for my goodbye

Thanks, Shenon.
I’ve been back at work since Labor Day—but it was a long, dry spring and summer.

While I don’t give the GOP an inch of credit or understanding, I will say the Dims have brought much on themselves and Obama with them.  When you have the majorities they have, there is NO reason on earth to compromise at and, and EVERY reason to force the GOP to come crawling to YOU.

Brainless, spineless, gutless, witless.  That’s the current Democratic Party.  Only Obama has shown ANY gumption at all.  Not much, but some.  He and they need a hell of a lot more if they want to get anything done and not get shellacked in November.

Rabid left? Extreme?

Well, perhaps you prefer these regressive Democrats. Since no one seems to listen to what I’ve been trying to say, perhaps Jon Stewart can explain it better: “Dodd is cutting the consumer protection part of the financial regulatory bill. Three Democrats are co-sponsoring a bill to not even allow the EPA to regulate greenhouse gasses. Two Democrats are calling on Obama to extend Bush’s tax cuts (to the wealthy)”. “The only vaguely progressive action taken by this administration is an increase of government spending to stimulate us out of recession”.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-january-27-2010/blues-clueless

I guess you can tell people that you think there’s something funky in the kool-aid, but you can’t prevent them from drinking it.

Re: “Obama slammed almost everybody in town. . . the president called out the Republicans for being consistently obstructionist. . . called out the Democrats: “the people expect us to solve some problems, not run for the hills.”

And as this silly U.S. soap opera continues, China leaps ahead:

“The Chinese have leaped past Western competitors in the race for alternative energy, becoming the world’s largest makers of wind turbines and solar panels. And they’re not done yet.” [Truthdig-Earth to Ground]

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/china_leads_alternative_energy
_race_20100131/

Hello ITW, I am so glad you are back to work!  You sound relieved.  I have
thought about your plight many times over the last few months and wondered
how you managed.  It did my heart good to read your post that trying time has
come to an end.  I can only imagine the anxiety of relying on unemployment
funds to get you and your family through.  The worry did come across in a
couple of your posts.  I think you said your wife worked but often wives work
because they have to and with the husband out of work the burden doubles up. 
Again, I am glad and happy to read you are working and are here too. 

It is so hard for Americans nowadays with 30,859,131 people thereabouts out
of work.  I’d rather put it in terms of millions of people rather than an
abstraction called 10%.  It hits the perception a whole lot clearer.

A year into the new political administration, after dealing with and stopping the
slippery slope to depression, finally coming up with a plan for withdrawal from
Iraq, a provisional plan for Afghanistan, an under the radar dealing with Iran
and North Korea, dealing with terrorist trials, oh gawd!  the President has a half
a breath now to work on the appalling unemployment problem.  I see this
lineup a function of putting ducks in order for jobs to be created.  Maybe I am
wrong, but I am hopeful.  I’ve never been one to expect instantaneous fixes,
which more often than not are irrational reactions that produce more problems,
i.e., the financial crisis.  If we had crystal balls we could tell if a path is going to
be fruitful or not.  Even the experts crystal balls were cloudy.  So I’m willing to
wait a bit longer to see results.  There are still things on the buffet table of
stinky problems to deal with, such as education and infrastructure, the
environment, some of which can be addressed as promising programs are
developed.

It staggers the mind to watch and listen to Republican argot both in reaction to
President Obama’s State of the Union address and his subsequent
groundbreaking meeting with them.  If din could be called sour, their behavior
is deafeningly and rancidly morose.  It never ceases to amaze me that
utterances that issue forth from the mouths of the decomposed minds on the
Right always collectively sounds the same empty flatulent hot air.  The
staleness in their hollow claims shows an absence of meaning in any of their
programs that help the rich and disaffect the poor and middle class, those who
do not make either no money or very little in comparison.  The Republicans
enmass do not skip a beat and in unified cacophony sounds but give only
negative or completely silent reaction to any legislation produced by Obama or
the Democratic Congress in the House and the Senate.  They are definitely the
Party Of No and the Party of Public Destruction.  The voting public needs to be
made aware of this constantly.  After hearing incessantly the Obama’s speeches
on the news, which the news is obsessed to do, I am convinced he is on the
correct path to recapture the political base that was squandered away by
inattention by the Democratic Party.  Those of us on that side of the aisle,
regardless of how far, ought not to let them forget it, unceasingly, particularly
at local voting times.

Hey, Shenon! Nice to see you—and I agree with you.

No, there is no pleasing the GOP, nor the extreme left.  One wants leave to re-implement their failed systems so a few at the top can prosper, and so 25% of Americans can describe themselves as being in the top 1% of wealth!

The other side wants to implement policies that have also failed, abroad, and lead to corruption and dictatorship.

I spent 4 months unemployed in 2009 and for me, I really tasted what Bush’s GOP policies brought.  And at the Unemployment Office I met people who suffered far more than I did, who had to decide which bill to stave off paying and whose calls NOT to take.  I met women selling their bits of gold jewelry to pay the gas bill for one more month—when gold was $800, not $1100.

It takes time to slow a giant ship.  You can’t stop it on a dime or a billion dollars.  I don’t agree with every Obama policy, but dammit the man is TRYING to bring the economy back, and not with the only tool a Republican has: “Cut taxes for corporations and de-regulate them”....like that has ever worked.

Barack Obama did point-out (though with a somewhat partisan bias both in his S-O-T-U speech and the next day at the GOP CONclave) how poisoned has become the ‘well’ of public discourse, and the paralyzing effects that is having on all those who both drink-from and piss-in that fountain….which, given the 24/7 CONtributions to the mess from the mass-media, gets to be one-way-and-another just about everybody among theamericanpeople.  This “circular firing squad” (or, as The Daily Show has it, “CLUSTER-F**k”) is something never seen here among us surviving free wild Turtle Island Natives, even though we do get together in actual Circles to consider what concerns us All.

In The Tiyoshpaye Way we do Ceremonies, which just naturally occasion The People’s respect.  In theamericanway it looks like increasingly the “powers” that wannabe just stage rituals, which more-and-more fail to get even theamericanpeople’s deficit-riddled attention.

Maybe that’s a good thing.

Hokahey!

There is no satisfying the rabid left nor the rabid right, Virginia777.  The
words rational and lucid do not appear in either of their dictionaries.  I share
your point of view.

Hi Maani, it’s been a long long time.  Nice to see you.  We’ve had our
arguments but it is so civilized to get over them!  Listening to the State of the
Union and the Meeting with the Rethuglicans, I think Obama may have ignited. 
At least let us hope he continues to burn and burn even brighter.  I was glad he
told the condensed heads how stupid and wrong they are in a public forum. 
Now the Democrats need to keep harping on that message everywhere, not let
the conservatives try to make hay out of the fact that for the first time in
history a Democratic president had a meeting with them.  They shot themselves
in the head by letting it be televised, hahaha I just can’t get over how funny
that was.  It showed the world just what kind of tombstones they are.

“No, No!” after he talked of offshore oil drilling.

Misleading considering the two senators pressuring Obama and Salazar to drill are DEMOCRATS!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100128/pl_nm/us_virginia_drilling

Thankfully, I left that state long ago. The ironic motto: “Sic Semper Tyrannis” still gives me a chuckle. Nothing is left but memories from my childhood- everything else has been sold off. The quiet two-lane country road I grew up on has turned into a metropolis. The quiet family beaches with beautiful sand dunes now overshadowed by condos. The smell of honeysuckle drowned out by exhaust, the fireflies that danced in the fields nearly extinct. I know we all have these memories of childhood, but the contrast is startling.

Yeah really, what’s with all the criticism! Censor them I say! Stiffle the voice of opposition! How dare they speak truth to power! Who do they think they are?!

What was your favorite part Virginia? His bragging about cuttting taxes? Killing the public option? Freezing spending with threat of veto? Comparing his health care plan to that of Bob Dole’s? Executive order to create a commission to cut entitlement spending? All that tough talk is so sexy!

Mine was his desire to extend the WTO with Doha.

Nice Speech? Now What!

oh yeah, tropicgirl, Obama is “the wrong man for the job”?

I suggest you head back to Tahiti and enjoy the sand. We have a Great president in office and he doesn’t need the petty griping and negativity of couch potatoes,

he needs people who want to take on the real work its going to take for all of us, to make our country better.

Now what Bill, oh, you are impatient with Obama?

Now what, is his kick-ass performance today at the GOP issues conference!

Stop it with the petty griping and negativity. It is destructive to our true agenda, which is to mobilize the left. Let me hope that this is your true agenda too, Mr. Boyarsky.

or is it?

Though so many of the comments on this site were attempts by Americans to make sense of policies and politics in this America where we all know something bad is going on and don’t know who is lying or telling the truth anymore; but Hammond Eggs made no attempt to make any social or political point but just indulge himself in what he probably sees as a witty attack on the President, but was in reality just hate spewing forth. I do believe it is probably Hammond Eggs admiring himself in the mirror, and congratulating himself for being so witty. This is an example of one of the things that has gone so horribly wrong in our country. Where out and out hate and attack is substituted for political thought or discourse. Our country could do with a lot less hateful subhumans. I suggest he find a country whose President he approves of and moves there. YOU BETCHA.

While delivering his SOTU blather, Obama said he has never been more positive about America’s future than he is right now. Of course, in this wide ranging state of national emergency, he has to regurgitate this stock boilerplate BS, but I fear he actually believes it.  Obama is a feckless, hapless cross between a judas, Gordon Gekko, an exective of the Boy Scouts of America and someone selling cheap costume jewelry on the Home Shopping Network.  He looks at himself in the mirror every day, gives a couple of vigorous fist pumps and assures himself everything’s going to be okay.  God is testing me but I will emerge on the other side of the Valley of Political Death as a Hero.  He believes this as he believes the populist bullshit he churns out like rancid sausage.  The man is not naive, just enormously dangerous.

Felicity said, “In the same way that the Mafia gets upset when the police or the FBI ‘interferes’ with their businesses, Wall Street gets upset when arms of the government interfere with their businesses. Can we assume that there’s little difference between the two?”

You may not be aware of this, but uber-mobster Lucky Luciano was once invited to visit the New York Stock Exchange.  After listening to his hosts tell him how it worked, he is famously quoted as saying, “What a racket!  If I had known about this, I would have stayed legit!”

True story.

Lest i forget,Obama also pledged his unshakable support for Israel.I hope someone sends him this link for him to see the “vibrant democracy” he and his predecessor always see in Israel, with this coming right from their own soldiers mouth.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3841480,00.html

Nice speech, so now what?

Why, we will shortly witness once again how o’s actions are
meaningless in relation to his words just as they were after he
was inaugurated a year ago.

As already he appears to promote the vast improvement of the
economy such that the recession is almost over and the talk of
jobs is just that rhetoric.

He complains about the fed and the regulation of banks but how
convenient that members of congress are sorely lacking in the
numbers to stop the terrorist bernanke from serving another
term as head of the fed nor are there the congressional numbers
there to regulate the banks, all of it contrived and planned for
appearances with no substance which will leave the fed in
control of the country along with the help of wall st. and the
banks.

And still the msm numbed masses just think IT IS THE WAY TO
DO BUSINESS!

What a sorry state the world i’v lived in for 43 years have become.
Today i watched in pure rage and hatred as the lying SOB blair defending his lies that led to genocide against human beings and soldiers sent to their deaths for nothing,and in front of their families no less.
And to top my evening,i just read about this supposed arm sales to Taiwan.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_us_taiwan_arms_sales

Not that i have any ill feelings towards the Taiwanese people,but yet again,selling those arms to them inspite of what china thinks just makes me wonder why is it that the whole damn western hypocrite goverments are literally thinking of starting a third world war because Russia wants to sell Iran the S 300 missile system? which are solely defensive BTW..Why did the same damn administration refusing the lebanese army any significane military hardware that they solemnly promised them just a yar ago? If the chinese have any balls,as soon as this deal goes through,they should dump all US treasury bonds even if it hurts them economically,after all,they are worthless in the first place.

To the Person comparing the Republiklan party to a crime family, I have a name for their party:

The GOPranos.

What now?

See http://WWW.DEMOCRATZ.ORG

and http://LIBERAL.POSTEROUS.COM

Sign the petitions. Unlike most petitions, these petitions have sharp political teeth.

Yes, the murderer of the humans in Yemen, Iraq, Afganistan, Pakistan, and Somalia gives pretty speeches.  But he has disinvested himself of the people of his own country and those of the world; he is already over.

felicity: “And by the way, 140,000 jobs/month must be created just to keep up with population growth, a fact to keep in mind when reading jobs/month statistics.”

My prof at university spent part of a lecture walking us through the smoke and mirrors charade governments perform when publishing this monthly mythology.

I can’t remember all the details but the short of it is: YOU CAN DOUBLE WHATEVER IS PUBLISHED and you’re getting closer to actual fact.

There are many stats published by “authorities” that are a lot closer to fiction than fact - those published as the “crime rate,” for example. Each and every jurisdiction gets to play with what crimes are included or excluded. The pooled results are meaningless.

I noticed during the speech the republicans did not stand nor applause when Obama said no more tax breaks for companies that send jobs overseas. It seems there is no denying republicans are in favor of this practice. I agree Democrats are not fighting for the American people but I have been paying attention to politics for years now and it is definitely republicans who are the true a$$ kissing corporate lackeys who have led the way in the betrayal of the American people. Why do republicans want to keep giving tax breaks to companies who are creating jobs overseas instead of in America?

Performance???

Well consider his performance over the past year, particularly his Nixonian interlude at West Point early last month…

Anyone familiar with how this country became entangled in the swamp of Vietnam beginning half a century ago should be able to see Obama as the operator that he is. Despite all of his high-flowing rhetoric, he chooses to ignore basic reality in Afghanistan and in Gaza - because to directly contend with such realities would directly threaten his re-election.

Only a true leader and a moral giant would have the capacity to do so and Obama is just and only an operator. Witness Ray McGovern’s latest, devastating post:

http://consortiumnews.com/2010/012710b.html

In the same way that the Mafia gets upset when the police or the FBI ‘interferes’ with their businesses, Wall Street gets upset when arms of the government interfere with their businesses. Can we assume that there’s little difference between the two?

And by the way, 140,000 jobs/month must be created just to keep up with population growth, a fact to keep in mind when reading jobs/month statistics.

“If words alone could do the trick, President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech worked”…to trick with words - a trick he might just as well have learned from the cunning zionist shill Boyarsky who likes to play the same kinds of tricky word games himself. “Words won’t put people to work” – and they won’t end the barbarous Occupation of Palestine and the unending crimes of the Jewish State. “Not even Obama’s eloquence—and he did reach that point on occasion [??]—will be enough to inject courage into the gutless Democrats running from”…The Lobby. “Nor will words turn Republicans away from the unrelenting” support for Israel they too think will bring down Palestinians. So, of course, there were not even any words of any kind from AIPAC stooge Obama for suffering Palestinians. Perhaps the affluent bar-flies at the toney Candlelight club in ritzy Santa Monica didn’t even notice or care that the unfeeling Obama has already “walked away” from destitute Palestinians, as have most of the rest of the prostituted pol’s in that House chamber of horrors.
“The difficulty of converting the president’s words into action is shown by a study of the $18.5 billion allocated to California as its share of Obama’s $787 billion stimulus bill”…this is less than Israel will receive in U.S. blood money over the prospective two terms of Obama’s presidency (IF he is re-elected). Yes, “it’s enough to deaden the enthusiasm of supportive activists like those at the Candlelight on Tuesday night”...but infinitely worse, it’s enough to “deaden” for real many more Palestinians. So even if that old zionist militant Boyarsky must lament ‘deadened’ enthusiasm in comfortable California, he can still keep up his enthusiasm for ‘deadening’ Palestinians, like he did last year at this time during the Jewish Wehrmacht’s Kristallnacht offensive in Gaza.
  But there may be a silver lining in affluent activists “deadened” enthusiasm after all, if it helps to lose the repellent Barbara Boxer’s Senate seat. This, of course, is the real cause of tricky Boyarsky’s lamentations about so-called deadened enthusiasm among his noxious Party’s base. That it might contribute to unseating some of his bellicose zionist cohorts like Boxer and Dianne Feinstein - who like the bloodthirsty Boyarsky showed the most lively enthusiasm for last year’s Gaza massacre (and much more) - now in political power.  For far too long these deadly zionists and their fellow-travelers have had a inordinate share of positions in congress and successive administrations, all out of proportion to their numbers in the general population. This has had a “deadening” effect on foreign policy and on many activists enthusiasm for both nearly-identical establishment parties.
  One of Boxer’s main opponents in upcoming election, Tom Campbell, has however indicated that his own enthusiasm, like that of many others, is becoming a little more “deadened” about Israel. Campbell has called (publically!) for an end to economic aid to Israel!  Not yet military, alas, but an important first step in the current political climate, anyway. He also opposed sanctions on Iraq which killed unknown thousands, unlike Boxer. He has indicated a much more even-handed and pragmatic course in the Middle East that actually has attracted quite a bit of Arab-American support for his campaign. He even reminds some of former Republican anti-war congressman, Paul ‘Pete’ McCloskey.  No wonder zionist wardog Boyarsky is so worried. A Republican who’s more ‘progressive’ than a zionist Democrat like Boxer! There may be someone for activists in California to get a little more enthusiastic about after all – but it sure isn’t Boxer! Hopefully, next Nov. we can say, bye-bye, Barbara!

Yeah, everything is alright with the economy, isn’t it?

The recession is almost over, right?

Well, where are the jobs?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35141308/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/

RAE is exactly right on his reading of Congresscritters. They want only one thing.  To stay in power.  Well, maybe two things, because they all also want to ‘advance’ to higher power.

This means, that if you really want to get a Congresscritter’s attention, then threaten his/her hold on power.  Letter, email, stupid petitions, protests in empty streets on a Sat, these are all useless, because they don’t threaten the Congresscritters hold on power.

Fortunately, it would be very easy for ‘the left’ to threaten the hold on power of very many Democrats in 2010.

What we need are independent candidates running in all the CLOSE races in 2010.  There are a lot of Democrats who are in danger in 2010 because they won in 08 on Obama’s coattails.  Those always disappear in the mid-terms, even when a President doesn’t suck and betray his own voters as badly as this one has.

Here’s a list of close house races ... http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2009/House/house_races.html

Pick one near you, and organize a pro-single-payer, pro-peace, anti-wall-street independent campaign.  Get that up and running, and get it to the point where you take away even a few votes in a close race, and you will find that you have now threatened the hold on power of the Congresscritter.  You will now have their attention.

If this happened in 40 or 50 of the closest races, you would then be collectively threatening Pelosi’s hold on the power of the speakership.  Now you have her attention as well.

Since I believe congresscritters only want to hold onto power, this is the way to force them to do what you want in order to stay in power.  The equation will become quite simple for them.  End the wars, or lose office. Pass single payer, or lose office.

I’m starting to like more and more the old Kennedy family motto.

DON’T GET MAD.  GET EVEN!

This is how we get even with the Democrats in 2010.  ORGANIZE!

Shenonymous said, “The frozen faces of the Republicans in attendance of the State of the Union
address showed me, and the world, just how intransigent they have organized themselves to be purposely inattentive to the needs of the general public and the middle class in particular.  That icy-solid face ought to be burned into the minds of every human on the planet.”

I agree.  And although it was far too much to hpe for, I would have liked to hear Obama actually SAY that to the American people - point it out verbally and deliberarely; shame the Repugs directly to the American people.  Sure, those on the right would simply see it as inappropriate, disrespectful, etc. (despite its inherent truth!).  But it would have energized Dems and very probably have gotten many Independents to look (and think) twice.

Re Hespeakssowell’s comment, “Eloquent, Articulate….when have we used these type of descriptions so frequently when talking about a president?”

Hitler was also eloquent and articulate…as is any successful demagogue…

Peace.

So, reporting these days is going to an elite bar (see here for a glimpse at Candlelight ... http://www.candlelightbar.com/ ) and hanging out with a bunch of Democrats to see how they react to the speech?

Next time pal, why don’t you leave your Democrat pals and go hang out with real people.  You might hear something a little different.

But then again, then you wouldn’t be the professional Democrat propagandist that you are.

Guess what, we the citizens just paid for his night out at an elite bar in Santa Monica ... because he undoubtedly wrote off his ‘expenses’ because he wrote this article.

Democrats will get you one way or another ... or both, every time.  At least porn stars get paid extra for taking a ‘double penetration’.

Truthdig has definitely gotten to the where there’s much better writing and reporting in the comments than in junk articles like this one.

As I see it, one huge problem is PUBLIC ACCESS.  Obama makes noises about “I need your help, etc.” but no details or suggestions about organizing such help are ever proposed for guidance.  Grassroots organizing is amorphous and often self-centered.  After shouting or parading, the clamor ends up where it started—in frustration.  Write a letter—get a canned response.  Make a phone call—get a polite empty hang-up and no follow-through. 

Here’s this internet thing reaching into millions of homes and offices, new “communication” gadgets every day, words flying around everywhere.  So what?  Confusion worse confounded. Access—but no access.

Where is the movement to enable movements to have a legitimate, significant and successful voice in the affairs of the State and Nation?  Paid advertising is possible only to the rich elites, who are also in communication and have easy access to each other.  “The public” is left out in the cold except for these disconnected, often erratic comment venues.
We could do better?

What now?

See http://WWW.DEMOCRATZ.ORG

and http://LIBERAL.POSTEROUS.COM

Sign the petitions. Unlike most petitions, these petitions have sharp political teeth.

Hiya Ouroborus.  It is not so wonderous.  You might have forgotten but we have
agreed before on other forums.

RAE good observations.  I like the idea of public review of Congressmen, maybe
I’m wrong but I think local elections already do that???  Seems more reflective
voters would do the job you speak of, but would cost us billions to implement at
a national level, and besides the individual politicians are a product of their
sovereign states desires.

I watched the body language of those in the chamber during President Obama’s speech.

The message I received from many of those the cameras picked out for me I interpreted as resistence and petulance. It is my view that many, especially those old, familiar faces, consider President Obama as a “newbie” who has yet to earn the right to tell them anything.

Further, I think they have a healthy fear of Mr. Obama’s intellect. They know he’s smarter than most, if not all, of them. They don’t trust that he’s not 20 steps ahead of them - that he’s a far better chess player than they are.

The most unseemly demonstration that, for me, highlights the MAIN problem facing the government of the United States, is the partisanship underwritten and reinforced by decades of profound, mindless prejudice and bias. I was waiting for the “raspberries” and “boos” to ring out. These privileged folk act as if they’re on sports teams where the objective is to BEAT THE OTHER GUYS using any means they can get away with. And THAT’S the problem. Until all of them realize THEY’RE ON THE SAME TEAM the only people who lose are the spectators - WE, THE PEOPLE.

I suspect that some of these “representatives” have one goal at the top of their priority list: TO REMAIN IN THEIR CUSHY, HIGH PAYING JOBS. If they actually accomplish something that benefits others or their country, oh, that’s good too - but will always remain the #2 on that list.

At the risk of throwing the valuable babies out with the bathwater, I suggest that all representatives should be required to submit to a periodic formal, meaningful and public assessment of their accomplishments since the last election before being allowed to continue in their positions. Elections have become popularity contests and are no longer a reliable or accurate tool with which to sort the wheat from the chaff.

I couldn’t care less if my doctor had the personality and social skills of a recluse - what’s important is his/her competence at diagnosing and treating human conditions and can he/she work well on the team that’s looking after my condition. Too bad we haven’t found a way to hold our politicians to the same standard.

Shenonymous, January 29 at 10:19 am

Holy Shit!!
Shenonymous; I agree with every word, syllable, vowel,
consonant, and adjective you wrote.
Wonders never cease!
Okay, now savage my response.

What now? Obama will continue to put people last, just like the following
decisions he has already made.

1. Ignored previous Republican crimes, misdemeanors and profligacy in the
vain hope of ‘bipartisanship’ and establishing a precedent for future torture and
tyranny
?2. Supported a stingy stimulus, half of what was needed and included one-
thirds tax breaks, increasing the deficit and further reducing the effects of the
stimulus by another one-third??
3. Killed the only option that would have slowed the cost of health care & led
to universal coverage?? (handing ‘reform’ over to Max Baucus and imaginary ‘bi-
partisanship
4. Accelerated the Bush bailout?? against the will of the American people and
with much wise advice to the contrary (from people who would not profit from
the bailouts or had already been involved in them)
5. Escalated a meaningless and fruitless war?? against all common sense and the
will of the majority of Americans
6. Gutted real financial reform and substituted finger wagging and silly taxes
and ‘fees??’
7. Not helped people with bankruptcy and mortgages remediation, instead
bailed out the corporations that feasted on borrowers’ bones? and watched the
institutions raise fees and slow lending
8. Fiddled around, spent all our money on corporate bailouts and then called
for a ‘freeze’ – effectively, putting people last.

This is the pattern of Obama’s decisions and the pattern will continue - putting
people last.

That is the problem, the media (Bill Boyarsky included), and the Obama chronic
carpers, expects tricks when Obama was perfectly clear about the jobs
programs he and his administration have already pulled out of the hat and put
into effect and have plans to pull out more particularly where infrastructure and
green energy projects are happening.  Seems to me the media ought to get a
copy of the speech and give it to a couple of journalist graduate students to list
out everything Obama said about jobs.  It is as though they and those who
want to criticize have instant amnesia.  In Boyarsky’s case, it is completely
understood that he needs to have some criticism-laced article to pander to
Truthdippers who want to add another card to their pile of trash in order to
make more sapless comments.  While it is true infrastructure jobs are not
completely permanent jobs and last only as long as the projects do (which are
long lasting by the way), it is one way to start getting money immediately into
the pockets of many unemployed until permanent kinds of jobs are created as
the country recovers its business base. 

The frozen faces of the Republicans in attendance of the State of the Union
address showed me, and the world, just how intransigent they have organized
themselves to be purposely inattentive to the needs of the general public and
the middle class in particular.  That icy-solid face ought to be burned into the
minds of every human on the planet!  Their plan is to present a barricade to
keep Obama from any success and let the people go to hell.  They are mentally
constipated, and by the looks on their faces may be in body as well of which I
have no precise personal knowledge, but the Democrats ought to take that
image and run with it.  The Republicans take every opportunity to crap on the
middle class and the middle class ought to be reminded in large letter that is
the Republican tightly woven hostility to them.  The Democrats simply do not
know how to fight fire with fire, they fight malevolent political arsonists with
damp rag response.  When the Republicans block any constructive legislation,
the Democrats ought to advertise it as big as can be written instead of standing
in their wet diapers and moan about it.  They have to convince the public that
the Republicans are incessant obstructionists and show the voters just how the
Grand Old Party simply does not love them. 

I am sick of it myself.  As a committed Democrat I have already written to tell
my party of choice that I have reregistered as Independent. I will most likely
vote for Democrats and liberal social programs, but will refrain from voting for
any Democrat who is as vaporous as sulphuric gas and as smelly and let the
bloated cows’ chips fall where they may.  And no, I will not be voting for a
third-party candidate, and definitely would never vote for any Republican.  Call
it principled suicide.

Simple facts abound, facts such as;

the decision to invade Iraq was the single most disasterous foreign policy decision in the history of this nation. Obama’s continuation of this war, regardless of the change of locale, abets that horrific decision. His continuation of rendition and torture, despite fine words to the contrary, condemns his actions.

the refusal of Obama to roll up his sleeves and lead on health care reform , in concert with his selling out single payer and doing a deal with Big Pharma, makes hollow his seeming insistance upon said reform.

the refusal of Obama to allow Justice Dept and GAO investigations into the possible ( probable) illegalities and constitutional violations of the previous administration puts him on equal footing with the lawbreakers.

The list goes on of course but, if you like Obama then you fall on the side of his being too inexperienced to actually be able to do the job. If you dislike Obama then you probably think him as dishonest as his predecessor,.

“Don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters.”
Bob Dylan

Waiting for the next speech.

I am wondering if anyone has caught on to the realities, that there are no real difference between the Dems and the Repugs…They are all part of the same banking cartel, gangsters, bought and sold…Actions speak louder than words, and for those who do not understand….Get away from the TV, kill your tv set, stay away from most news for awhile, to withdraw from the programmed, trance state your in…Watch the money, watch the actions of your politicians…Wake up, really if we don’t collectively wake up to the realities of what is really going on, it’s going to mean generations of slaves under, the United States of World corporate Overlords…This is not science fiction or conspiracy theory, it’s right in front of your nose, Wake Up….

The problem with so many news stories about President Obama, especially ones like this: “Now What?” are simply empty of real meaning.

Face it. When the last incompetent gave speeches I don’t remember this sort of patronizing, sophomoric questioning of his motives and content. In fact, the media hardly spent any time worrying about what GWB said because his every policy and action was a failure. Perhaps the question should really be:

We’re let the last president get away with just about everything (war lying, torture, losing an American City, Enron, etc.). Well Media…..“Now What?”