Thursday, January 28, 2010

Alito Mouths 'NOT TRUE' At State Of The Union (VIDEO)


And now, even our Supreme Court Justices, are refusing recogonize a bit of proper decorum for any but their own political positions.

A Justice would never stand for so much as a shake of the head and a mouthed insinuation to express dissatisfaction with they way they get things done in their court room.

But this one feels within his boundaries to do so to the president in a joint session and SOTU address on national television.?

This guy was a bad choice for a lifetime position in a body of people who have such a powerful voice in the highest levels of American law.

And based on this last decision rendered soley to the benefit of Corporate America and the detriment of our democratic processes...so were at least 4 others.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Saturday, January 23, 2010

CIA Avenges Suicide Bombing With Barrage Of Predator Drones


"OK...Who gave the C.I.A. the Predator Drones?

Now we've told the Pentagon again and again that only they get to play with the drones. The C.I.A. gets all the cool listening devices, survellience sats, international agents, helicopters a bunch of really cool cars, a complete database on everybody on the frakkin' planet and unlimited dry cleaning for those black suits the agency boys insist on wearing....

You guys already get to run the drug operations and the covert stuff everywhere! When is it enough for you guys?

But listen up, team! I only want to say this once.

The Predator Drones and where they get thrown at people is strictly off limits for civilian intel agencies.

That stuff, along with the phosphorus bombs, the depleted uranium, the fleet of Humvees, the really cool jets with the heat seeking armament and stuff like that is strictly for the guys in uniform in our military.

I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings but theresa constitution and a chain of command...and we have to still abide by it until we finally render the darn thing pointless...We're working on it, ok? But give me a break. Rome wasn't destroyed in a day!

Don't make me have to tell you again.

Dismissed."
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Rise In Secret Bill Writing In Washington


No matter how long or how much of this nonsense goes on, some people still want to hang tight on the divisional aspects of party and ideology as the problem.

For Main St. there certainly is a problem. For Capitol Hill, everything is running like clock work.

And as long as everyone clings to this being a matter of left vs right, conservative vs liberal, Republican vs Democrat, this gov't which consists of but one party is free to do as they please and drag their feet on the needs of the people while moving forward with an agenda that has never been disclosed to the American people but remains a topic of conversation only in elite circles of business and in the back rooms of gov't.

The divisional properties of party and ideology as simply a means to difuse and redirect the anger of a distraught public and offer an ever shifting target for that displeasure while the machine of gov't conveniently moves on it's own accord towards whatever it intends to do and has intended to do for a century or more.
Perhaps it's time we as a populace should begin to hold government itself responsible for ethical behavior and producing the desired and promised results that a free society has demanded of it all along.
It doesn't matter which party "takes the hit" or appears to be responsible for the failure of existing or pending legislation.
Perhaps it's time we made it known of our displeasure with gov't as a whole and make Congress and the president accountable as a whole.
It's due time to strip gov't of the double blind it has created through the media and let our elected politicians know that hiding behind party lines is not going to afford either party absolution from the accountability they accepted when they were elected and swore an oath to this country and her people.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Protest Against America's Toughest Sheriff Turns Violent in Arizona


The gov't here and elsewhere realize that the sting of being labaled a terrizt is not long for this world and a very hard sell to make when neighbors begin hearing that people they know are being arrested for peacful assembies as the constitution mandates they should be allowed to.

In a world (NWO) where domestic uprisings are sure to become a more frequent event, we're now being bombarded more and more often with the word "anarchist" because that other word isn't going to cut it for classifying everybody.

As sad or as ominous as it may be we'd better get used to it, just as we have gotten used to seeing our police forces no longer simply in uniform but in full paramiltary (swat) gear for even the most benign public gathering and events.

I say "get used to it" but I'm not implying that we endorse, accept or enbrace any of it as if it were a good thing.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Obama Weekly Address: President Details Changes In Health Care Legislation (VIDEO)


I'm not hearing a whole lot of what the people were told in Minnesota...or in the speech made to Congress when the drive to begin health care reform began.

Everyone will need to acquire insurance...but from who? The same leeches that were selling Americans out for generations in the first place?

And if this bill should follow the bulk of the other bills and programs that have come forth in the last year...there will be loop holes for the insurance industries, so large, they'll be able to drive a (omni)bus through them. In the wake of the multiple failed bailouts is there any reason to expect otherwise?

This was not what we were told we should expect in health care reform in view of the 36 other countries providing their citizens with more accessible health care opportunities.

Perhaps it would have been prudent to have said nothing publicly at the onset of this reformation and then perhaps people would have been happy with whatever scraps of progress they were ultimately offered.

Instead we have gone from "near perfect" to "good" to "good enough" to "not nearly enough" to "better" to "better than nothing".

It's very hard to get positively excited about "better than nothing" when so many other poorer and less endowed countries have managed to achieve more lofty goals and aspirations for providing their citizenry, health care.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Saturday, January 09, 2010

Nine Months Later, Obama Plan To Help 1.5 Million Struggling Homeowners Yet To Launch


Very hard to get this thing rolling when each time a measure is implemented it can't get into or out of Congress without being stepped on like a street bag of coke from the 80's.

From presidential appointees to Senators and Representatives to final signature, these programs end up with strategic loop holes and weasel clauses that remove all the good it might have held in principle and bears no teeth to make corporate America comply with the original intent of the program... which was to improve the economy, not the financial footing of the housing/banking industry.

It's beyond unfortunate. I believe initially, President Obama had his heart in the right place and now, in the light of a Washington day, he is as surprised and disappointed as any of us with the limited service our system can actuall deliver to the people and for it's own maintenance in these current times.

Of course he is neither blameless for adding to these obsticles or solely to blame.

It just appears, that in the wake of the callousness of the last few administrations, the greed of Wall St. and industry, the incompetence and self serving nature of Congress, the subordinate approach to corporate America shown by his appointees and his own unwillingness to stand in opposition to those same people and forces...there is little less than a clean slate either with or without President Obama that will solve our current social and econimic problems and put America back on track.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Friday, January 08, 2010

'Afghan Insurgency Can Sustain Itself Indefinitely,' Top U.S. Intel Chief Says


As long as there is but one random act of violence anywhere on the planet where the perpetrator can be associated with Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Nigeria, Iran, Palesitine, Yemin or a half dozen other primarily Muslim influenced countries, it will be called "terrorism" and the US and British led NATO will take it as a call to continue their mission and crusade to further occupy soveriegn nations in the name of "global security".

Meanwhile, in Dafur and other parts of Africa, hundreds of thousands of people are being killed and brutalized by machette weilding conscripted citizen armies led by power driven warlords whose brutality shadows that of the past 10 years of AQ, the Taliban or Hamas combined.

And in America (according to the FBI web site) approximately 17,000 souls per year are lost to homicide on the streets and in the home across the US.

The response to "global security" is misplaced, misdirected and out of proportion for the majority of the people on the globe who remain to be victimized by whatever existing barbarians there are doing them harm, for whatever the cause or for none at all but the most base of human nature.

If America and the western alliance insists on deploying untold weapons, troops and mercenaries to stem the increase of organized or random violent insanity in this world, their efforts are wasted and their ulterior motives are painfully transparent to anyone capable of seeing and thinking.

We are not providing "global security" neither here or abroad. We are following a self serving agenda and portraying the terror we contribute to the ME as heroic and noble.
But it is neither.
Enough.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Thursday, January 07, 2010

Obama Tells House Democrats He Supports Senate Tax On Cadillac Health Care Plans


There still seems to be an inordinate amount of concern for the preferences of the insurance companies rather than the people.

If the dwindling middle class must accept new legislation as it is presented to them (whether it is what was promised or is tastefully acceptable or not) then why all the finagling to find a program acceptable to the whims of the insurance industry? This country was founded on the rights of the people, not on the "rights" of industry and the interest of corporate Kings.

Had our legislators kept this foremost in mind, perhaps we could have had a single pay or public option program like countries with existing universal health care programs already do, and we wouldn't be reinventing the wheel now and making things twice as lengthy or complicated as they remain to be.

America was established to serve the people, not industry and corporate entities.

Until that ideal returns to American government, it can no longer profess to be a workable form of government for the American people.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

NYT On Housing Crisis: 'Things Didn't Have To Get This Bad' But We Can Still 'Avert The Worst'


"We can still avert the worst."



Gone are the days when our national incentives were to strive make things better than anyone else and do it correctly the first time around.

We have finally been reduced to the realms of "it could be worse" and the minimist goal that we may "still avert the worst".

Is it any wonder that our health care "reform" went from "best" to "2nd best" to "good" to "good enough" to "hardly what was required" and ultimately "better than nothing"...when gov't cares more to cater to needs of big business than the needs people of America?

Bailout after bailout to the housing/credit industry, insurance industry, automobile industry are not proving fruitful in any instance because there was no regulation to bring the behavior of these corporate interests in line with any thing less than the Sodom and Gomorrah retelling that they have been renacting at the people's expense since prior to the great depression.

There must be a good reason for the gov't to make these tax payer provided funds readily available with no quarter drawn for the prescribed and proper use of the money, all the while insisting publicly that this will be the solution needed to restore the economy.

And a reason is becoming more and more apparent...and it is neither good, noble or proving to be of much good to anyone but the elected politicians and the industries abusing the free "surge" in their avilable capital.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Senate Passes Health Care Bill, 60-39


While the good news remains good, I fear Congress may still be on the wrong track.

Senators (and Dem Senators!) are already asking for no material changes to the Senate bill by the co-joining with the House.

From where I sit, the Senate has to come in line with and incorporate quite a few items from the House bill before this even gets close to what this "reform" was supposed to be about in the first place.

Otherwise...in spite of what good news there is, we'll be looking at health care modification and not a whole lot of heath care reform.

Just my (not to often) humble opinion.

"I ain't sayin'. I'm just sayin'. Know what I'm sayin'?"
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

McCain Emerges As Front Man In GOP Efforts To Claim Reform Mantle


This is how our system rolls.

One party proposes and the other obstructs.

When the party that issues a proposal has been beaten down in the name of compromise, the obstructionist party uses that to it's own advantage by claiming to be the champion of the people.

I've watched this process back and forth with the two parties interchanging ideologies, loyalties, positions and intent publicly for more years than I care to mention here.

It's a sham and a con game that has been repeated in perpetuity on the American people in particular and on the global community in general throughout the last 150 years. A nominal amount of research into American history is all that is required to make that embarrassingly clear to anyone that genuinely cares to see it.

This story about the chameleons of government, fresh on the heels of thhi recent defeat of the health care reform is ample truth delivered yet again on top of yet an already existent hard truth.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Accused Of Abandoning Health Care Principles In New Ad


Watch Obama's speech to Congress on Sept. 9, 2009 and from Minnesota Sept. 13, 2009 (The first is on Youtube...it's part of the infamous, Joe Wilson "You lie" speech) The second, you may need to search for.

There's no question that the President was At that time in favor and supportive of a public option and a litany of other health care proposals for the benefit of the people.

Unfortunately the effort wasn't sustained and his initial support started and ended much to early to be of any consequence when it was really neded when the House and Senate were deliberating.

We could have used him on this. And while I'm deeply disappointed as are so many others, rather than accuse him of negligence I think it's just his management style to assume that Reid and Pelosi would have follwed up on his proposals for HCR...and in Reid's case, that's where the ball was dropped.

Unfortunately, as in football, the team gets the credit for the wins but the coach gets the blame for the losses.

Either way, it's not a very promising piece of legislation at this point for the people of Ameria and it doesn't help to be smacked in the face with the reality that Congress (especially the Senate) is more accountable to business and industry than the people they were sent to Washington to serve.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Unemployment Programs In 40 States About To Go Broke


We have had better days.

And unless a new approach is applied, we may not see the likes of them again. This is not going well at all.

Obama is renacting the Dutch boy at the dike, trying to fill the leaks with cash, but everytime he does so, a new leak arises.

This was perhaps not the best plan for us.

Perhaps it would be different if we weren't locked into private banking and having a Fed.

Countries and gov'ts have the means and the right to print their own money, interest free without having to pay interest on it. Instead we're just incurring more and more debt.

The larger the debt, the more credit is extended and more interest is accrued which ensures more taxes to pay the interest while the debt still grows accruing more interest, requiring more taxation...and on and on.

A vicious cycle which has us hemorrhaging finacially with no tourniquet in sight.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Monday, December 21, 2009

Small Business Lending Programs To Get $30B In Bailout Assistance


"Better late than never" and "Better than nothing" are going to be the slogans that this administration is remembered for if they don't get their heads in gear and start taking a direct management approach to providing for this economy and the needs of the American people.

You can't just keep dumping money into the banks as though they are the financial equivalent of BlackWater/Xe and excpect to win the war on this economy.

For that matter, you can't use Congress as "contractors" either to promote an agenda to create a healthcare plan, as we have seen over the last few months.

This White House has got to become as interested/involved in and take ownership of these things to the same degree of ownership and hardship as the American people.

It's not a football team, and we don't need a coach. There's only room on the team for players and The White house is skirting becoming one by suffling all of our issues on to other interests for a huge price.

Where is the "boots on the ground", hands on leadership that most of us who voted for this president expected?
About Small Business
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Friday, December 18, 2009

Obama, Wen Offer No New Emissions Cuts -- China Blamed For Lack Of Progress


As a nation our leadership has the tendency to want to play the role of cartoonist Hank Ketcham's Margaret to the world's default enactment of Dennis Mitchell. We insist on when the tea party will take place, who attends, when and how the cups and saucers are arranged and God help Dennis if he doesn't want to sheepishly comply with every set condition, rule of etiquette or social agenda for the afternoon event because in a snit, Margaret will in whatever way possible lay the biggest guilt trip on Dennis and absolve herself of anything contrary to just trying to bring the best out of everyone for the sake of everyone involved no matter how intrusive and over bearing her "requests", demands or behaviors may be.

Yes, America has control issues which in and of itself isn't lethal. But when a solution may be needed for a dramatic peaceful, international coalition to help stave off a potential global threat from the environment, and America's leadership believes that not addressing the issue due to differences in stewardship is the only realistic and available option, or an existing, reasonable option at all... it could eventually turn out to be.

For everyone.

Bearing in mind that the world's collective body of failing solution seekers will be the last people on the planet negatively affected by those possibly disastrous results.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Friday, December 11, 2009

'Obama Doctrine' Praised By Conservatives After Nobel Speech


Whether or not Obama saying he would stay the course in Afghan surprised anyone or not, is not the issue.

Doing the right thing according to the majority of Americans who put him in office and why and what is morally correct and in accord with the majority of all Ameircans and the better interests of this country is his primary responsibility.

Continuing a course that has been attempted for 8 years and has proven to be a drain on our economy, morally unqualified and in opposition to what most Americans asked wish our military to be involved in is of benefit to no one at this point but industry and the MIC.

The Afgha occupation is but the tip of President Obama's NOT "getting it".

We remain in Iraq. Almost 50% of our budget has been awarded to industry and banking in lock step with the past President's policies and what was to be a national health care reform is being chiseled away to a shadow of what has been working in other nations (36!) for years.

The people who voted for Obama are not seeing the implied and stated objectives of his presidency. But again and again some people hold up his dogged commitment to a futile war as a wonderful accomplishment as though he were fulfilling his promises to those who voted for him.

It's not. And the people who held him up long enough to gain the Oval Office know it.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Thursday, December 03, 2009

Obama Afghanistan War Plan Set To Get Congress' Backing, Despite Misgivings


As usual...th­e country is in the septic tank and far too many people use the opportunities given them to speak out by trying to generate a good spin for their party of preference.

There's only one party people.

That's why no matter who is in the White House or who has the majority in Congress evrything still remains a mess.

Look at the economy, unemployment, outsourcing of jobs to foriegn countries, uneven trade agreements, rising taxes, devalued currency, Iraq, Afhghanistan, Iran,Pakistan, past wars, our inefficient and hobbling social programs and ineffective regulatory system... All of these things took decades and both the Republicans and the Democrats working in tandem to get this country this funky.

So the next time you think you have to defend your poitical party by blaming or berating the other one....con­sider whether you're just blowing smoke up your own skirt because we only have one party in America.

And it has been failing us for a long, long time.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Sunday, November 22, 2009

EasyJet Causes Controversy With Holocaust Memorial Fashion Shoot


These camps, while a stark reminder of our capability for inhumanity, are not religious or sacred shrines to the whole of mankind.

If in the United States we can sculpt and erect larger than life carvings of the busts of US Presidents on the same sacred lands where millions of native American Indians were slaughtered and suburban housing and strip malls can be constructed, where are the proprieties of those who insist that taking photos in soveriegn countries other than their own can somehow be prohibited and repressed indefinitely?

Is it acceptable to explore , record and depict in photos the ruins of the people who were eradicated by the Spainish Conquestadors? Is it a social affront to use as a back drop for a photo shoot, the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima?

Then please let's stop this nonsense that these long ago evacuated camps in Europe should be held up as religious holy lands worthy of only global worship. We're closing in on nearly a century after this event. How and when will those who survived the halocaust, ever truly heal from it, if they can't (like so many other people of other brutalized civilizations ) put it to rest and move on beyond it??

Frankly, I'm very tired of having my nose rubbed in this chapter of history every month or so, to appease and console people that regardless of what the world has done for positively choose to remain inconsolable and appear to be victims.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Friday, November 20, 2009

Philip Morris Ordered To Pay $300 Million To Former Smoker


As a smoker of 45 years (minus the attempts to shelve it) I think this is judgement is absolutely out of proportion text book case of legitimized insanity.

If anyone that smokes tobacco, dosen't know that stuffing a paper tube with dried vegetation between your lips, lighting it and inhaling the smoke, 20, 30 or 40 times each day, year after year just might eventually lead to respiratory complications these people should have kept a date with the Grim Reaper long before they could have been rewarded for their stupidity.

Do these same people stand around a bonfire or a burning pile of autmn leaves and breathe deeply? No. They recoil and gasp for oxygen like anyone does. Instinctively they are painfully aware of the toxicity of breathing in fuming leaves. They know it too, regarding tobacco.

A $300 million dollar reward for feigning ignorance and holding someone else for your own negligence to yourself...and barring "feigning" ignorance and truly being unable to recognise or accept the possible consequences of your own actions...perhaps this is the best argument I've heard yet for leagalized euthanasia.

It's a sad day when awards are given to this sum for sheer ignorance, stupidity and lack of personal accountability, in any circumstance.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

The 15 Biggest Congressional Recipients Of Wall Street Campaign Cash


It's nice to see that the Republicans and Democrats can work together on something.

Too bad it's on bipartisan greed and selling out the American voter for greed and profit.

But many of us knew this already.

It's time to see it and call it as it is. The American people no longer have the power of representation in government.

It's also time for more self representation through developing a national means to increase the opportunty for voter participation in the policy of America.

Can we afford it? Yes. If we stop nation building elsewhere and apply that capital here.

More self representation. Less republic.

More true democracy. Less hypocrisy.

If it doesn't change, America will never be a nation for, of and by the people.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost