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I don't know if it is "Obama is missing the point" or if it is more sinister than that. I hope not..but "hope" is such a useless, fickle term. I voted for him and believed he would change things for the better...for us. You are much younger than I am but I know what you mean about spending your working years toiling away, trying to make a great life for yourself and your family, paying FICA (social security insurance payments) all those years, and paying increased taxes on everything all along, seeing your paychecks get smaller , perhaps (at least for many people), and then be told that you will no longer be able to reap what you put in to the system....the "insurance" you have been paying all these years is going to renege on their responsibilities so that the rich can get richer. I will post yet another message, from the economist Michael Hudson, that really hits home and exposes the fraudsters and their crooked system and how they are using it, traitoriously, against us.
Gerald: Thanks for the compliment.
@global & Palindromedary, just reading the comments from many writers to this blog I can see why Thom considers all of you with keen minds!!! Keep up the good work!!!
Palindromedary, I think my post may be of interest to you. I've been holding off on boarding the "Obama is missing the point train", but now conclude I'll be in the standing room only section. Based on his many compromises .....public option, continued tax cuts to those who least need them, and now the inevitable debt ceiling deal , which have all been defeat for "We The People" and victory for ", "They The Elite 2%", he is sadly misrepresenting "We The People". I believe he has not recognized that public support of the republican, "rich man only agenda ", is built upon fox lies and other right wing corp. media brainwashing. Why give in to terrorists and make economic decisions based on a false premise to begin with?
Fox media has convinced many to vote in a manner that cuts their own throats and it looks like Obama is going to force the rest of us to choke on the resulting blood. Obama needs to factor out the ,"rich man", media manipulation before he decides what true Democratic compromise is.
The debt ceiling compromise will only further plunge the country into economic darkness and the only light burning will be in in the mansions of the banksters and slave holders.
Being an average working citizen under 55 and having paid into social security for 37 consecutive years, I worked my way through college, I'm pretty pissed off to put it mildly. My property taxes will be around $9000 this year, I paid over a $1000 in sales tax on a used car not long ago, gas pump taxes, fees, income tax, you name it, and the right wing is trying to convince the general public that only the rich pay tax. Do they pay 40% like me and actually work for it? I've already ate my peas and peeled off the band aid.
My union was forced to agree to a 3 year wage freeze, if I have a job that much longer, this means I will now have to practice trickle down economics. The occasional eating out, the $8 six pack of Vermont cider......"worth every penny", Christmas spending, weekend trips to races...... "distance running", the list is long, all will be curtailed and the pain passed along creating further unemployment.
The lights may be burning bright in the gated communities, but they better remember the power is coming from the outside!
Well, there is a lot to this and if someone looks at it as they do their own credit they can see where the problem is with or without a credit limit increase. Tax increases or not, the RIGHT spending cuts need to be made to show our creditors that we are serious. Leave the special interest stuff on the back burner for now and take care of what's necessary, social security, military, vets, medicare, medicaid, education. We are in a rebuilding situation where there is no money to provide for turtles or fish on the backs of the American people until that deficit is brought down. We also don't need $42,000 hammers.
Online-Casino = This Online-Casino has slot machines that payout frequently and will keep you wagering in an attempt to get the bonus games.
Grover Norquist doesn't want "government"....he wants "groverment"!
Looks like Ali Velshi reamed Grover Norquist's a$$ today on CNN...heh, heh!! That-a-way-to-go Ali!!!! Ali was having no tolerance for Grover Norquists Republican lies on the air. You could tell Grover was not happy to be questioned, rather challenged, so belligerently. This has really ticked off a lot of right wingers.
see it here:
http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2011/07/15/n_norquist_intv1.cnnmoney/
Looks like the big ponzi scheme has been exposed.
I'm not in favor of investigating his private life. If we do that we are nothing better than Republicans. His business dealings and acts as an ostentsible public servant are fair game.
You cannot compare a social animal like a human being to a solitary one a feline. Human beings in their natural state live in community. Most naturally, the hunter-gatherer, SHARE EVERYTHING IN COMMON. We all know from reading our Political Economic Evolution that monogamy didn't begin until the development of private property (which began with the domestication of plants and animals which led to the domestication of other people in the variouss forms of enslavement [of women etc.]) because monogamy wasn't needed until there was private property because until then the entire community raised the kids. It was all one big family and every adult member was every child's authority - auint or uncle or what all.
The social structure we live in now is artificial and unhealthy.
Do the Christians not know what is a "tyranny of the majority"? Do they not know that democracy is not only majority rule but a majority rule with a protection of minority rights. They both claim to be and admit that they are not "persecuted". I know them well. As exhibited on The Big Picture, they consider themselves persecuted if they are not allowed to persecute others.
Hey liberals, I thought the social security money was in a big trust fund and safe. Why is Obama saying he cannot guarantee the social security recipients they will get their money if the government shuts down August 2nd. I think it is totally evil for him to use this scare tactic on these people. also, payroll deductions in social security can only be used for SS. How do you explain this sick political tactic.
"Sixteen Tons"
"You load 16 tons--and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt! St Peter don't call me cause I can't go. I OWE MY SOUL TO THE COMPANY STORE."
and these lyrics may be the change President Obama needs to consider:
"if you see me coming better step aside! One fist of iron the other of steel. If the right one don't get you,--then the left one will!"
My Old Kentuky Home is the song I hear.
Senator McConnell, seeing you almost nightly on National News reminds of that other
Great Republican, Senator McCarthy and his most lasting Memorial … the quote
“Have you no sense of decency”
I feel it might equally apply to yourself in your current Quest.
Thanks,
I needed to correct a spelling. Kim Chi or kimchi is the correct spelling and not kim chee.
Here is a food that can detox stinking thinking.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/07/16/this-food-helps-you-to-detox-pesticides.aspx
I am trying to limit my comments and break away from my old ways but I needed to comment on socialism.. "The wealthy (politicians, the rich, banks, Wall Street, and corporations as some examples) benefit the most from socilism but they do not call it socialism they call it a susidy." - Gerald, a progressive, a Democratic Socialist, and a Jesus liberal! I LOVE BEING A JESUS LIBERAL!!!!! Yes, the socialistic bailout had a price tag of $14 trillion!!!!! NOW THAT IS REAL SOCIALISM!!!!!
I failed to notice when delusion became a political asset. Perhaps if everyone on the Radical Right obtained an Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie (http://zapatopi.net/afdb/) the emanations would be contained, and we could get back to being a nation run by reasonably lucid adults.
I agree jstrahan
Well stated. The more workers are divided by their own lack of "support" of each other, the easier it is to abuse and control all workers in the United States.
The point of governor's attacking state public workers is two-fold: don't provide citizens with services in exchange for their taxed dollars, instead give it to companies. Second, break their unions because they have historically been the largest organized buffer that stands for the average guy against the massive organized corporate machine. The Unions have always been a supporting timber of Democrats (especially before they moved to be Republican Light). Unions have shrunk to miniscile size in the private sector over the last 30 years, leaving public service unions the last citizen collective that has brought votes to Dems to stand in the way of the corporate agenda.
Everyday people would be wiser to support each other because while they fight over crumbs, the Transformers wait to eat the winners.
That is an interesting idea on the family level, but we're still in big trouble on the social level.
I would like to hear other people on how treating the family as a corporation might play out
As long as the privately owned, for-profit Federal Reserve controls our monetary system and thereby our economy, what we've got is what we'll get.
In December of 2010, Dennis Kucinich introduced HR 6550, The National Emergency Employment Defense Act.
This legislation would take the power to issue and control currency from the privately owned, for-profit Federal Reserve (which is not Federal and reserves nothing) and restore it to the government.
Needless to say, no action has been taken on this legislation by our ostensible government, which in reality is nothing more than a wholly owned subsidiary of the neofascist corporatocracy.
Under HR 6550, the government would be required to spend money, debt-free, into circulation only in the amounts required to conduct necessary commerce.
In the present monetary system, the money created by the Fed is loaned to the government at interest but, only the principle is issued. No money is ever created to pay the interest.
Hence the endlessly growing national debt and the reason for taxes. American taxpayer dollars go to pay the interest on the debt, which will never stop growing as long as the monetary system is privately controlled.
Without monetary reform we will remain locked into the debt-based capitalsit business cycle of usury until the inevitable, total collapse of the entire global economy.
Thom Hartmann's commentary on, on RT FreeSpeech TV, on the social programs being "insurance programs" that we all pay in to, or paid in to, and not the "welfare programs" that the Republicans would like us all to believe was really great. Thanks Thom. From now on, every time I mention Social Security or Medicare I will add "insurance program" to it. Social Security Insurance or Medicare Insurance. And maybe we should start referring to all of the programs that make the rich richer....welfare programs. Republican corporate welfare programs for the wealthy.
Ravi Batra's article about Reagan being a Great Socialist:
http://archive.truthout.org/032009r
One problem I have with these Free Speech TV airings of Thom Hartmann Program and Russia Today (RT) is that there are no captions. Also, that "discussion panel" on RT was very hard to understand what was being said because everyone was talking over one another. This reminds me of the non-sense way to communicate that they seem to think is desirable from the other channels. Maybe people who don't have a problem hearing.... younger people..... can sort it all out in their heads but it is all garbled non-sense to some of us older people. I'd better watch out what I say, though, because I might be selected for the new Soylent Green project slated as a way to solve some of todays problems....let's kill grandma or grandpa and turn them into Soylent Green. All I got to say is you younger people will eventually gets yours... (hearing problems, etc).... especially if you keep listening to all of those loud noises.
Thom Hartman in his introduction of Unequal protection asks " Is it possible that what's really incompatible with democracy isn't socialism or a regulated marketplace but instead is the ultimate manifestation of corporate power-corporate personhood.".He also points out that free market laissez faire capitalism equate unrestrained capitalism with democracy. A quote by Grover Cleveland in Chapter 1 of Thom's book is " while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel, corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters." Is there any doubt that with the assistance of the Republicans we are close to what Grover Cleveland predicted to corporations taking control of our government and putting citizens under their boot heels. Is there any doubt as to why Republicans won't discuss raising the debt limit after having done so 20 times under Reagan and Bush?
Gerald: Thanks for that great article of Ravi Batra...Weapons of Mass Exploitation. And another article he wrote that I liked was the one about Reagan being a Great Socialist.
Turkeys in the Hay (for the fiddle)
Well they gobble up their dinners
in such grand affairs of state,
and fly in jets on junkets
while avoiding Will and Kate.
The nation should be thinner
since we can't afford to eat-
addicted to their sweets and fats
with flip-flops on our feet.
Chorus
Oh Turkeys in the Straw,
Turkeys in the Hay,
Turkeys with a pea-size brain,
Carly Simon said it, DC,
"You're so vain."
XXXXX
Better a noodle than a weiner! Although some people can't tell the difference....eh, Anthony? That's it! He was just extending his friendly noodle to a fellow pastafarian, maybe. dummmm di di dum dum dummm di di di di dumm di di dum dum dummm ....just a stumin' on my old stradivariay.
But, seriously folks, check out what young Mr. Zack Kopplin did in Louisiana when he shook his noodle at the school board and managed to shame Michelle Bachman as well. There is a video of him being interviewed on Hardball. Way to go Zack!!!
http://www.venganza.org/2011/05/kopplin-vs-the-lsea/