the hillbilly teleprompter is proof that Sarah Palin is not advocating what is best for everyone because if it was what is best she wouldn't need to remind herself what it was

ALLLLLL Social Security disbursements to payees go DIRECTLY back into the economy. So what is this anti-Social Security guest worried about???

It's not like privatized military, privatized utilities, and tax-free transnational corporations taking our wealth out of the country in offshore-protection scams!

His screwy priorities exemplified by his zero-ing in on the insurance/pensions of retired, elderly, sick and disabled, orphaned and widowed is just plain REACTIONARY. He wants things the way things USED TO BE -- the Poor destitute and the Rich holding perfumed handkerchiefs over their noses to keep out the stench of The Masses. Disgusting!

TIME IS SHORT

Bob Herbert and Paul Krugman both emphasized the need for (and dismaying lack of) the nation's leaders to put together a plan to revitalize the U.S.'s economic future.

Part 1: Bob Herbert (Saturday)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/06/opinion/06herbert.html

Rescuing the U.S. economy will require a commitment, and undoubtedly sacrifices, that need to start now. And it will require leadership that pulls together the best talents from all sectors of the society — not just business, not just government, but from everywhere.

Bruce Katz, the director of Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program, discussed some of the steps that need to be taken to remake an economy that has been thrown completely out of whack by frantic, debt-driven consumption, speculative bubbles, exotic financial instruments, and so on.

A new, saner, more sustainable economy will have to be more export-oriented, powered by cleaner fuels, bolstered by innovation that comes from a renewed focus on research and development, and committed to delivering a better-educated, more highly skilled work force.

Mr. Katz believes this is doable, but by no means easy. The nation’s infrastructure, he said, will have to “shift from 20th-century models of transport and energy transmission to rapid bus, ubiquitous broadband, congestion pricing, smart grid, high-speed rail and intelligent transport.”

New ways of financing such transformative changes will have to be developed, linking public and private capital, preferably through the creation of a national infrastructure bank, among other things. The nation’s political leaders and the public at large will have to grasp the difference between wasteful spending and crucial investments in the future.

It’s time for serious people to step forward and help lead on these critically important issues. Time is short.

CNN and Fox News might call the tea party “movement” a “phenomenon,” and a “challenge” to the status quo, but the reality is that we have heard the tea party shtick before, only now the “movement’s” Republican handlers have given it a cute and cuddly name to conceal its source in the usual right-wing obsessions: race, “big” government, taxes, “alien” invasions, and “enslaving” white people—often making wild and insensible accusations that only a person suffering from acute schizophrenia could appreciate. Why do some people on the left wish to believe that the current tea party “movement” is somehow different in its essence than other far-right “movements” in American history? These “movements” always come out of the woodwork when the “natives” feel threatened, employing the same right-wing talking points that accused FDR, Truman, Kennedy, LBJ, MLK Jr. and even Eisenhower of anti-Americanisms and coddling communists and pushing a socialist agenda; they were the ones who “hunted” Bill Clinton, and are now “hunting” Obama.

Some observers now suspect that the “real” teabaggers and their handlers are cynically trying out tactics of destruction on the health care reform as a test run on their real object: immigration reform. Tom Tancredo’s speech (unremarked upon by CNN) at the Nashville “convention” received its most favorable reception when he made his usual anti-immigration harangues; Tancredo doesn’t just hate illegal immigrants, he hates Latinos in general, people he told the mesmerized teabaggers “cannot even spell the word vote, or say it in English.” Immigration has always carried the taint of racism, whether it be “inferior” European “races,” the Chinese, Jews and now Latinos. We should never allow ourselves to be deceived that it is just a couple of “crazies” who carry placards with shockingly racist slogans and depictions (usually of Obama) at these parties; they always seem to be welcomed as an “approved” mode of discourse. The tea party movement is, after all, a wholly white program; the rare black like Alan Keyes who try to ingratiate themselves with racists and xenophobes can be as easily dismissed by the left as they are cynically manipulated by the right.

The tea party movement, rather than be coddled, needs to be exposed for the dangerous pressure group it is in reality, and the menace it poses, before it is too late. Too many so-called “independents,” the confused and ill-informed voters are already being sucked into this maelstrom of paranoia. This country faces too many pressing problems, like runaway health care costs that promise to cause more damage to the economy (at least in the medium term) than federal deficits, and we need an energy policy that weans us away from dependence on foreign oil. We need an economic and trade policy that creates meaningful jobs here, and not gambling casinos. But these are not “sexy” topics for TV journalists these days; there was a time when respected journalists refused to give far-right extremists and their views the time of day, let alone airtime. But today, corporate-controlled CNN has abdicated any journalistic integrity it may have once had by refusing to expose the tea partiers and the agenda of their Republican handlers, giving them a dangerous “legitimacy.” Of course, Fox News never had any journalistic integrity.

Instead of “joining” the tea party “movement, as a few progressives might suggest, the movement must be fought (and fought hard) with cold, reasoned logic by Democrats and the left in general, because teabaggers in general are merely loud and intolerant, not reasonable and logical. People have to be forced to ask themselves where close-minded bigotry will take the country. There has to be an alternative view clearly enunciated. As much as we disapprove of Obama and the Democrats lack of backbone, the alternative that the teabaggers offer is much worse. Obama and the Democrats, could, of course, make the job much easier by showing some of that backbone.

For anyone listening in LA, I just moved my money (well, all the money an 18 year old can have) to a great community bank that has a good amount of locations in the Southland: Pacific Western Bank, I highly recommend it!

By the way thanks for making me the member of the day last week Thom, looking forward to reading your book when I get it!

Hello, Thom!
Concerning bioethics, I would like to suggest that you interview Lori B Andrews, author of The Clone Age. She is a paternity lawyer who deals with a lot of invitro cases, as well as cases which concerning the copyrighting of genetic codes. In her book, she outlines how invitro fertilization has been controlled by the wealthy, right wing anglo-saxons, while receiving subsidies to pay for related birth defects and "Frankenstein" science.

I suggested on Face Book , that the Teabagger movement should go for broke on the gimmicks. Sarah Palin should wear a cape and tights, along with her acolytes, and they could act like superheros, with the battle cry being "Teabaggers Assemble", or "Look, a Liberal...Tag 'em and bag 'em!"

As far as human rights, we need to demand that Siegelman be set free, and this should be put to the teabaggers to prove his guilt.

Also, in regards to human rights, we now have missionairies who are being held on bogus charges in a Haiti prison. We should demand US intervention and call for their immediate release. The parents of the children involved, made claims that they willingly offered their children to the missionairies, yet the Haitian government is holding them on human trafficking charges. We should stop all support to Haiti, pending release of the missionairies.

"We have always known that self-interest was bad morals; we now know that it is bad economics." ~President Franklin D. Roosevelt

thom what is happening with abraham bolden and his quest to find justice?

It astonished me to hear an American lawyer, much less a Harvard lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, say in a national press interview that a terror suspect is "not likely to provide information unless we use certain extreme measures," and that we should not let "low-level people" torture suspects.

Mr. Dershowitz was a criminal defense lawyer. Intelligence interrogation is not his field, to put it mildly. But what his rawest first-year law student would repeat back to him, is that the testimony of any witness, obtained under duress, is inadmissible in evidence as being unreliable. "Duress," a type of coercion, means using a threat to make someone do or say something.

The most extreme form of duress is torture. It's a kind of psychological kidnapping. Water-boarding is that kind of duress. You don't need to debate whether it looks better in a nice new suit ("enhanced interrogation techniques") because the point is the same: Anyone put under enough pressure, will do or say what you want in order to stop the pain. Whether it's true or false is irrelevant--it's just what your victim thinks you want them to say. In other words, statements obtained through coercion are inherently unreliable.

So what is actually being proposed, is to create unreliable intelligence. A prisoner guesses that his waterboarder expects him to name an Al Quaida cell in Afghanistan. So he names some people he knows. The torture stops. The U.S. Air Force bombs a few houses to bits and tells CNN the U.S. has killed another 15 "suspected" Al Quaida operatives, while a young mother, her parents, kids, brothers and cousins are blown to bits.

Congratulations, Mr. Dershowitz. If my law school had been Harvard, I'd be demanding my money back.

Corporations already had way too much influence on our government officials, but now with the Supreme Court ruling on no limit on campaign funding, we will no longer have any say on anything.

has any one read the republican't s heath care bill.

if I understand it right it spends 175 billion with out paying for it.

it lowers the cost by telling the states to do so.

and then ties there hands by allowing company to sell across state lines and use the companies home location as the laws to go by.

i an working this into a leaflet to distribute.

we must help the low info voter get the next election right.

Love the poor and your life will be filled with sunlight and you will not fear the hor of death. - St. Vincent DePaul, the first social worker!

http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=106342