Top Bailout Recipients Spent $71 Million On Lobbying In Year Since Bailout

Quite the inflammatory main.

What did anyone expect?

Credit card interest rates are being increased so that the taxpayer can help pay back the money that was loaned to the banks and credit industry by the same people that gave them the bailout.

And the banks took all that they could get and still appear squimish to lend any back...again to the very source of where the bailout came from...the US taxpayer.

The health insurance industry and the pharms have spent a ton on lobbyists to defeat a public option that would provide the American taxpayer some decent coverage and affordable meds and are raising their rates and prices as we speak so that again the consumers can pick up that bill.

And all the while, the politicains on bith sides of the aisle are dragging their feet, because they are highly motivated to not kill this csh cow none to soon.

$71 million on lobbyists isn't even the tip of the iceberg.

And I'm supposed to get all politically militant over a small slice of "business as usual" on Capitol Hill?

Not hardly.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

The anniversary of hope. What was and will never be.

It should be becoming apparent to even the stanchest believers that the office of the President no longer wields the sort of power that it may have at one time in America.
The system is far too convoluted and fractionalized with those powers being distributed between industry, banking interests and the flow of capital from these entities and into the halls of our representation in Washington to the point where America itself has become a corporation, silently controlled by the will of huge financial investors equivelant to stock holders and proxied interests.
Our Presidents, (and specifically this President) have been reduced to just one more voice in the crowd (albeit a louder one) with no more control over the processes than steering the predesignated course of this country's real but unseen navigators and occasionaly standing on the bow of this ship alerting us when either shoals or rocks or land is visible from his vantage point.
The presidency (and again this President in particualr) is not lacking, faulty or broken. The system is.
The hull of this ship called America has been breached for 100 years and it is all we as it's crew or any given president can do but to bail and pump so that we don't swamp completely. And the water rises with each decision, each bill and each term served by elected officials.

Until we as a nation recognize and accept this for the reality that it is, we can never hope to make the necessary repairations to stay afloat and perhaps once again set sail on our properly intended course because we have handed the helm over to privateers and mutineers who have as much to gain or more through our sinking as they do with our returning to a safe passage.

Obama One Year Later: The Audacity of Winning vs. The Timidity of Governing

The audacity of my hope was that Obama would enter office with pen a-blazing and he would repair the damage that the past POTUS and CO had inflicted on this country, our gov't and the office.

While the reality of his term is turning out to do otherwise, that hope has diminished to a large degree, to the point where much to my disappointment and unfortunately, less to my surprise, he appears to be just a more palatable version of the same type of champion of the status quo that any person who rises to this level of office turns out to be. I can remain as patient as most of us who voted for him, but I have better things to do than continuously listen with my ear to the ground for the earth to shake and give way to the new dawn for America that many of us thought putting Barak Obama in the White House would bring.

I still wish him well. I just no longer expect very much from him.
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Clinton Makes Personal Bid To Resume Mideast Talks

Some people feel we are holding Israel hostage with the funding we provide them with on a regular, ongoing, annual schedule.
Funny (and not in a "ha-ha"way) the term "hostage" is used.
Because that is exactly the image that comes to mind when I consider the plight of the people in Israel who are not Israeli and confined to Gaza.
I'm not talking about the radical fringe, extremists who keep lobbing primitive fireworks on other people.
I'm talking about the everyday Palestinian that would just like to go to work each day, enjoy basic amenities we all take for granted like fresh water, sanitation, hospitals, schools and electricity... and would simply like to earn a living and provide for their children and families....like we all do.
These people can no better stop the Hamas from doing the harm they do to Israel than we in America can do can stop our gov't from the damage it has been responsible for in Iraq and Afghanistan for 8 years now. Quite certainly, they can do even less.

Perhaps, rather than having our Secretary of State beg to allow us to orchestrate their peace talks in Israel, we should accept the reluctance of that country for our services and withdraw our efforts and our contributions in the billions each year to their treasury as well.
What is the point of funding a people who refuse our efforts to help create peace when they insist that this accomplishment is beyond their own resources and obviously (as time has shown) they cannot accomplish this on their own?
It's one thing for us to come-a-courting with gifts and services, but do we need to do so as a spurned lover?
I don't think so. Not so much. It's too much.
About Hillary Clinton
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Seven Members Of House Defense Subcommittee Scrutinized By Ethics Investigators

Term limits, investigations, caving into industry pressures and approving multi-industrial bailouts to the point where it interfers and alters providing legislation in accordance with the will of the people on issues such as the use of our military, job creation, healthcare, the economy, credit and housing regulations (the list goes on) and the corruption of individual representative stemming from lobbyists as in this story creates a list of self serving pirates that gets longer every year. Over time, America as it was intended has experienced a silent yet totally effective coup.

Does anybody still believe there's any possible way this system will ever be fixed and made right again in any short order to save a sinking ship?

Electing a President (or a string of them) that promises change for the better, (even those with the best intentions) or sending any handfull of new Congress people to the Hill every cycle is not going to provide the needed cure for this patient called America.

Even holding the hope for a better America is becoming a scarce commodity in the face of the shape this government is in. And it has transformed (deteriorated) to such a degree, that it may never again be within the power of the American people to ever have the capital or influence to make it right again.

"Give me control over a nation's currency and I don't care who makes the laws.” ~ Mayer Rothschild~
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Inside The Tripper's Brain: Scientists Create 3D Maps Of Brains On Drugs (VIDEO)

I find it interesting that this video was every bit (or more) as much a piece of anti-hallucinogenic propaganda as it was (as announced) an information piece on the research being done in mapping the brain using hallucinogenics. It was not balanced in that only the negatives of the drug were highlighted to any real depth while the positives such as resultant individual consciousness expansion, the many positive uses it can and has been used for in the treatment of various psychiatric ailments and as a tool to help people release themselves from self destructive dependencies on substances such as alcohol. I am but a layman but I am an advocate of regulated use of certain types of pharmaceutical grade hallucinogenics being made available to the public for personal use in controlled environments and assisted by trained medical personnel in specially designed spa based clinics for the purpose of the occasional internal vacation which could vastly expand a person's view of the physical paradigm to the point where the average, everyday person's irrational fears, tensions and seemingly overwhelming daily obstacles could be reduced and exposed for the illusions they truly are.

Really, when you dig right down to the core of it, our society, culture, media, nationalism, politics, policies toward the world around us are all thier own form of hallucinogenics and illusion as things are, and having a cleansing alternative on occassion (under controlled conditions) would be an eye opening experience for anyone who has never experienced it.
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Feingold: No Public Option A "Strong Reason" Not To Support Reform

WHy the buzz?

Obama is either for it or against it but it's not in his hands at the moment.

If any bill for reform gets passed by the House and the Senate, Obama (if he's truly against it) can simply veto. If he signs it, it's law.

Either way, either the people get reform or Obama will face the consequences of killing the bill, a very hard thing for him to recover from after all these years of foot dragging from both sides of the aisle.

Then too, if Obama is even voicing opposition to reform at all, perhaps it's no maore than a face saving gesture so he can face his contibutors and honestly state that he did the best he could to oppose it on the Hill, whether he went through the motions for political purposes or not.

Bottom line?

Keep the pressure on the Senate and House for reform. And no matter what sort of buzz the media generates, remember, they as well as we only get half of any story until it's finalized.

So what happens prior to hitting the President's desk is all speculative. Until Obama signs or vetoes the reform bill, let's not count him out over the buzz created for "click counts", Neilsen ratings or paper circulation.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost