I am sure that Dan Gainor is a beautiful human being with a soul filled with love and kindness for his fellow human beings and animals everywhere.

Obama surrounded himself with who he is comfortable with . . . Chicago School Economist types.

@Avatar, so I guess Obama has decided to mandate an end to poverty and homelessness too.

Campaign promises aren't worth the polluted air that they are spoken into.

OFFICALLY: YESTERDAY, THERE WERE NO EXIT POLLS IN THE BROWN/COAKLEY ELECTION BECAUSE 20-22% OF MASSEHUSETTS VOTERS SAID IT WOULD ALLOW ACORN TO STEAL THE ELECTION!!!!! Mostly, I think this was to allow Diebold to steal the election BUT there was NO, NADA, NONE, ZIP check on the democratic system yesterday.

Yep, we are proud members/owners of a fourth rate banana republic.

Lord Goldsmith warned ministers that Iraq war would be illegal
Lord Goldsmith, then the attorney general, warned Cabinet ministers in 2002 that he did not believe attacking Iraq would be legal.
By James Kirkup, Political correspondent
Published: 11:33AM GMT 19 Jan 2010
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/7025672/Lord-G...

********************************************
Mr. Obama, where is our inquiry? Where is our accountibility? Whisky Tango Foxtrot Mr. Obama?

I going home tonight and watching Rollerball to prepare for our future . . . The 1975 Norman Jewison/James Caan/John Houseman/Maud Adams version . . . Not the 2002 piece o’ shaving cream.

In response to your query re: Pete Peterson and his attack on Social Security, I mentioned that he was the funding behind I.O.U.S.A., and that the movie was based on several major mistakes. They are:

1) IOUSA cites massive unfunded liabilites, but this is deceitful at best. What is not mentioned is that while these liabilities are CURRENTLY unfunded, funding mechanisms already exist for them. (Example: IOUSA fails to note FUTURE Social Security deductions from paychecks in its accounting.)

2) IOUSA makes no distinction between retirement security and healthcare security obligations. Obviously retirement funding is in FAR better shape than healthcare, but IOUSA misleads on this, lumping them both as one. (Peterson betrays his bias here; Social Security is his real target, but he obscurs this in IOUSA.)

3) In citing unfunded healthcare, IOUSA claims these will bankrupt the government. While this is potentially true, IOUSA fails to note that this is a problem accross all of American society. In other words, regardless of whether or not there are government obligations in healthcare, healthcare will bankrupt ALL of American society if it contines on its current trend line.

These taken together and applied to the theme of IOUSA, the REAL take-away from the movie becomes that healthcare inflation has been, is, and looks to be in the future UNSUSTAINABLE. (The current bill leaves this almost totally unaaddressed.) Peterson however simply wants to slash our last remaining fixed-benefit retirement security, and he has earmarked $1 billion of his own money to this end.

I hope this helps.

P,S Peterson also has several appearances on Larry King. You can watch him there.

A 60 vote majority is a smokescreen to rationalize poor policy by Obama who is just fundamentally continuing GBW with different phony rhetoric. Coakley actually won ALL HAND COUNTED DISTRICTS. See Brad's Blog and Black Box Voting to check out the details on how the machines always get a different result than the hand counted areas. Obama has lied consistently on healthcare. 2003 he is only for single payer (see You Tube). Then public option and now next to nothing and he IS SATISFIED. Progressives need to organize a national campaign NOW to target 2012. Spineless progressive Democrats need to STAND UP NOW AND DON'T GIVE IN TO THIS CORPORATIST IN THE WHITEHOUSE. Let the Democratic Party implode and build a real Progressive Party for 2012. TODAY'S PARTY HAS NO CHANCE TO GO ANYWHERE FOR THE PEOPLE. HOW MUCH EVIDENCE DO PROGRESSIVES NEED???? Think long term.

scoville rating:
5,000,000–5,300,000 Law Enforcement Grade pepper spray,[5]
FN 303 irritant ammunition

Thank you Gerald. I read with great interest your proffer of Rabbi Lerner's words. I guess not all of us are evil.

Rabbi Michael Lerner wrote in the Washington Post.

The defeat of the Democrats choice to succeed Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate is being treated as though there is a decided shift of mass opinion to the Right in the U.S. But it is the Obama Administration, not the people who supported him in 2008, which moved to the Right--in the name of being pragmatists or realists-- in the process emptying their own agenda in regard to health care, environment, human rights, social and economic justice, and global peace of the critical elements that made those programs sound hopeful, and leaving many of their supporters feeling confused, disillusioned, and unable to rally around the politics that seemed so very far from "the change you can believe in" that we had been promised.

Thousands of us saw this coming, and tried to warn Obama, but he wouldn't listen.

On April 29, 2009, Tikkun and our education arm the Network of Spiritual Progressives bought the entire back page of a special supplement published in the Washington Post on the occasion of the 100th day of Obama's presidency. We warned him that his presidency was in grave danger. Our point was simple and direct: "Your success depends on helping people believe that they can count on each other, that they are not alone in a ruthless world in which people are out for themselves, and there is a possibility of building a society based on kindness, generosity, and caring for each other. Unless your programs actually allow people to feel in their own lives that they are part of build a new society based on love and generosity of spirit, they will soon fall back into the older paranoid view-that we are all competing with each other and have to look our first for number one. And that will likely them right back into the hands of the most conservative forces in this society. It's that simple, President Obama: if your policies do not give people a personal experience of caring and generosity, people will quickly succumb to the fearmongers who compete in the media over who can make people most afraid, most cynical, and most angry. "

Our add went on to tell President Obama that his supporters were beginning to feel mobilized because they cannot explain to themselves and others:

*Why you are bailing out the bankers and the Wall Street crowd rather than prioritizing the needs of people who have lost their jobs and homes

*Why you are not backing single payer (Medicare for Everyone) health reform but are instead preserving the interests of the health care profiteers and insurance companies that make our health care system so costly

*Why you are escalating the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, when you must know that these are no win situations, and when you have even agreed with Rabbi Michael Lerner that the best way to achieve "homeland security" is not by attempting to dominate others around the world in an insane "war on terrorism," but instead by a Strategy of Generosity manifested in the Network of Spiritual Progressives' proposal for a Global Marshal Plan introduced into the Congress by Congressman Keith Ellison

*Why you have failed to bring into your Administration more leaders of the peace, social justice, labor and environmental movements that gave you the critical support you needed to win the Democratic nomination for President.

Our conclusion: "If the people who made your presidency possible stop feeling excited about your present direction, the populist energies that oculd be mobilized for fundamental change will instead by mobilized by the Right for reactionary goals, and you may find yourself without the base of support you need even for your scaled down goals." And now our worst fears and prophetic predictions are coming true. [If you were one of the many members of the Network of Spiritual Progressives or subscribers to Tikkun who donated to make the ad we published possible, I want to thank you for your ability to see what was ahead--and your willingness to back your wisdom with the money we needed to publish that ad!]

But what could he have really done, many ask, given the way corporate interests seemed to have bought their way into power not only in the Republican party, but among Blue Dog Democrats in the House and Senate?

It's true that if Obama had fought for the kind of change he led his followers to believe would be possible, he might have lost. But winning legislative battles is not the highest goal, as FDR and Reagan, the two most influential 20th century presidents, learned. The most important thing a president can do is develop a worldview and convince the American public of that. Obama could have spoken the truth, told what he saw happening in Washington rather than trying to be a clever inside manipulator-a game that he was destined to lose. Any legislative victory won by compromising away the heart of what you are fighting for isn't worth much, and in any event, even good legislation can quickly be dismantled by the next president if you haven't won over the minds and hearts of the American people--and to do that you need to speak the truth and tell people what we are up against in the system of global capital and its ethos of materialism, selfisness, and looking-out-for-number-one, and what it would take to dismantle it and replace that system with a more humane and caring, environmentally sane and ethically and spiritually coherent society. And Obama could have constantly reminded his supporters that the 2008 election had shown that their yearning for a world of peace and justice, of love and caring and community and real solidarity and democracy, were not the private dreams of an isolated minority but the real needs of the American majority. By making us visible to each other, he would have empowered people to fight for programs that manifested their highest values (if and only if his programs did in fact manifest those values, which unfortunately they often did not).

Now it's up to us, the tens of millions of Americans who really showed in 2008 the powerful commitment we have to building a world of love, kindness, generosity, environmental sanity and caring for others. We have to reconstitute that movement without Obama's help, before the disillusionment with Obama's compromises leads to the resurgence of the Right's policies, the surge of a know-nothing Tea Party movement, and the retreat into despair and self-imposed powerlessness by all those who are questioning whether there's any real possibility of replacing corporate power, materialism and selfishness with a more ethically and spiritually grounded community of caring.

Please don't let your disappointment at Obama lead you or your friends into political passivity...because the alternative if you do that is Sarah Palin and The Tea Party extremists and the haters and fundamentalists, all of whom are now momentarily dressing themselves in the language of populism, but all of whom will actually only give even more power to the elites of wealth and power.

That's why it is so important for you to become part of our efforts to reconstitute the movement of hope--and we can do that with your help. We need your ideas and involvement--and so we've created two conferences, a one day event on the Monday of President's Day weekend, February 15, at the McLaren Hall on the campus of the University of San Francisco on Fulton St. near Clayton; and a longer event June 11-14 at the Church of the Reformation on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. The conferences are co-sponsored by The Nation Magazine, Yes Magazine, Democracy Now, Op-ed News, Peace Action, 350.org, the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and speakers will include Chris Hedges, Bill McKibben, David Korten, Congressman Keith Ellison, Riane Eisler, Rev. Brian McLaren, Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister, Peter Gabel, Rev. James Winkler, Rev. Conrad Braaten, Robert Thurman, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Rev. Gralan Hagler, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Jonathan Granoff, Marianne Williamson, Paul Wapner, John Dear SJ, John Nichols, Svi Shapiro, Bob McChesney, Rabbi Michael Lerner, and many more.

@Avatar, thanks for the link. I'd like to watch this, but unfortunately I'll be in class at that time. Trying to improve my lot in life, since my chosen profession of draftsman has sort of petered out here in a country that has all but abandoned supporting manufacturing.