...with more answers from Comrade Ralph...
The Latest Obama Thread...
Thu, 2011-01-13 00:14
#1
The Latest Obama Thread...
Thu, 2011-01-13 00:16
#2
You know that the civic groups-often called the Independent Sector-employ many thousands of people around the country often on shoestring budgets with no profits in mind. They work for health, safety, economic and environmental well being, for living wages and access to justice, for peace and the rule of law in domestic and foreign policy. Yet you as President do not adequately attach your cachet in their favor and give them the visibility that you give commercial businesses. Strange! For profits and jobs, yes I'm coming says the President. For justice and jobs, no I'm not coming says the President.It is time to associate yourself with civil society, name some with approbation as you have done with companies, express your support for the expansion of their budgets and activities, in short, identify with them.
Open Letter to President Obama: Meet with Civil Society Leaders
Sat, 2011-01-15 20:53
#3
M. Spector
No matter what Barack Obama says in his State of the Union Address later this month, it is clear where he is headed: ever rightward. His appointments tell the tale. Obama also gave the game away - that he would govern from the center-right and attempt a grand consensus with the GOP - in the weeks before he was first sworn into office, January 20, 2009. That is, [b]his appointments of Bill Clinton's Wall Street deregulation crowd to head economic policy and his retention of George Bush's Secretary of Defense to guard and expand the empire, should have signaled to every sober observer that Obama's political orientation might differ dramatically from his predecessor's in tone, but not in substance.[/b] The problem was, there were very few sober Left political observers around two years ago, and nearly all Black folks were falling down drunk on ObamaL'aid - a brain-softening condition that persists among many, to this day.
[url=http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/obama%E2%80%99s-comfort-zone...
Mon, 2011-01-17 13:53
#4
The danger that the last nail is about to be driven into the New Deal's coffin is real and imminent. Republicans may still be better than Democrats at engineering the tax system to redistribute wealth upwards. But Republicans can't touch the 'third rail' of American politics. Even with the vaunted "political capital" he acquired after the 2004 election, the first that he actually won, George Bush couldn't privatize (gut) Social Security. Clinton probably could have but for la Monica, and so can Obama, at least so long as the "folks" who routinely vote Democratic, the only people left who can block the Reaganite tide he is riding, continue to stand by their man.
Obama is counting on Tea Partiers and their representatives in Congress to scare those voters into line and to bring "moderates" back into his fold. Perhaps they will. But as he hastens along the path Bill Clinton blazed, he just might miscalculate and overreach. Let's hope so – because this time Monica Lewinsky is not there to save us.
Monica Lewinsky, Where Are You Now That We Need You ... Again?
Mon, 2011-01-17 14:08
#5
New Congress Leaders Promote 'Clash of Civilizations'
http://www.voltairenet.org/article168177.html
"the majority would appear to be Israel-firsters amd rabid advocates of the 'clash of civilizations'.
Mon, 2011-01-17 21:54
#6
Speech Pathololgy: Rain Puddles in Heaven, Hell Fire on Earth by Chris Floyd
http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/2076-...
"As President Barack Obama consoled the nation Wednesday with talk of 'rain puddles in heaven' his agents were murdering 4 more people in his illegal war in Pakistan.."
Mon, 2011-01-17 22:24
#7
Massive crowds came out to see him during his campaign. Stadiums full.
Where did they all go? All those young people who never vote?
The Tea Party always seemed to me to be organized for the purpose of wading into those crowds after the election in bloody street fights.
like the Hardhats before them.
But the Obama crowds vanished.
Mon, 2011-01-17 23:06
#8
Why shouldn't they have vanished? "Yes, we can" became "No we won't".
Mon, 2011-01-17 23:58
#9
Obama is certainly an "establishment guy", but I had been hoping that he was going to cut back on military spending and activity. NOT!!
Obama the Warmonger? Evidence is mounting. Here is the short list:
* With the creation of the Pentagon's Africa Command (AFRICOM), American foreign policy on the African continent has become increasingly militarized.
* Obama's administration has expanded covert special operations throughout the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa
* The Obama administration has been saber rattling with North Korea
Pres. Obama has:
- rapidly accelerated the war and occupation of Afghanistan
- expanded the war into Pakistan
- started a new war in Yemen
- supported a military coup in Honduras, which removed a popular democratic government in favour of a brutal dictatorship.
In fact, the Obama administration has expanded Special Operations forces into 75 countries around the world (compared with a height of 60 during the Bush regime), including:
- Yemen, Colombia, the Philippines, Somalia, Pakistan, among many others.[6]
I got those from this article> http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22781
Wed, 2011-01-19 00:43
#10
President Obama said Tuesday he will sign an executive order to trim outdated and ineffective regulations that impede economic growth.In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Obama said the country's complex regulatory structures have sometimes had a "chilling effect" on job growth and, giving a nod to the priorities of the new House Republican majority, observed that small businesses often feel that burden.
Obama launches review to target 'excessive' regulations
The illusion of US democracy continues...
Wed, 2011-01-19 13:45
#11
...as do the Clinton parallels...
When Bill Clinton suffered an electoral reversal after his first two years in office, he abruptly embraced the corporate money guys who had financed his congressional opposition in an effort to purchase a second term. On Tuesday in his Wall Street Journal Op-Ed piece, Barack Obama veered sharply down that same course, trumpeting his executive order " ... to remove outdated regulations that stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive. ..." He employed the same "creating a 21st-century regulatory system" rationalization used by Clinton when he signed off on the sweeping deregulation legislation that unleashed the Wall Street greed that ended up being the biggest job-killer since the Great Depression
Mon, 2011-01-24 11:51
#12
The moral outrage of the liberal class, a specialty of MSNBC, groups such as Progressives for Obama and MoveOn.org, is built around the absurd language of personal narrative-as if Barack Obama ever wanted to or could defy the interests of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase or General Electric. The liberal class refuses to directly confront the dead hand of corporate power that is rapidly transforming America into a brutal feudal state. To name this power, to admit that it has a death grip on our political process, our systems of information, our artistic and religious expression, our education, and has successfully emasculated popular movements, including labor, is to admit that the only weapons we have left are acts of civil disobedience.
Mon, 2011-01-24 14:05
#13
Seems to me expecting an American Presidential politician of any stripe to actually attack American corporations is like expecting a Catholic cardinal to attack the Vatican. It's not going to happen.
Mon, 2011-01-24 15:02
#14
Well, yeah. Presidents aren't elected to fight the system, they're stewards of the system.
Wed, 2011-01-26 18:23
#15
Tue, 2011-02-01 16:18
#16
Obama is a libertarian? I do not think that word means what he thinks it means...
Wed, 2011-02-02 10:10
#17
As soon as I saw the defiant tone and substance of Mubarak's speech, I realized that he is not speaking for himself but for the US/Israeli sponsors. Israel erred before the Arab people by exposing her intense panic and fear from the prospect of an Arab democracy next door. Of course, Obama would take note and he consulted with his key adviser on the Middle East, Netanyahu....The US is now arranging for a coup against the will of the Egyptian people. It requires utmost vigilance and steadfastness and thus far those qualities have been abundant among the Egyptian people. This move by Obama towards Egypt can be described as criminal because it will lead to blood on the streets. I wonder if Obama during his talk with Mubarak discussed numbers like: just don't kill more than 50 or 60 a day, or something like that. His unprincipled cynicism reminds me of the conspiracies of the 1950s. I am so glad that I resisted all efforts by my liberal and leftist friends who were urging me to vote for this personification of the Bush Doctrine.
Wed, 2011-02-02 10:37
#18
Pictures of Egyptian toddlers waving flags from atop tanks in Cairo streets this morning. Why does "the left" continue to do it to itself in this fashion?
Wed, 2011-02-02 10:48
#19
Obama is a libertarian? I do not think that word means what he thinks it means...
Levine: "Obama used the occasion to reveal more plainly than ever before what his underlying political philosophy is. It is not what is widely supposed. Obama is a libertarian, and therefore not, according to the most pertinent sense of the term in our political discourse today, a liberal."
Not to be impertinent, but I agree with Levine that Obama is not in the "most pertinent sense of the term" liberal. Neither is he in the most ridiculous sense of the "term", libertarian.
Wed, 2011-02-02 11:22
#20
Which "left" do you have in mind, and to what fashion are you referring?
Wed, 2011-02-02 14:08
#21
Seems to me expecting an American Presidential politician of any stripe to actually attack American corporations is like expecting a Catholic cardinal to attack the Vatican. It's not going to happen.
It absolutely can't.
Wed, 2011-02-09 12:05
#22
In his recent State of the Union speech, Obama offered only cold comfort to the millions of Americans who are unemployed or barely employed, saying blandly that "The rules have changed." Well, yes--and who changed them? Self-serving CEOs like Jeffrey Immelt, that's who.
America's working families--our endangered middle class--have a right to expect Obama to fight for rules that are fair to them and our country, not meekly accept rules that have been skewed by an elite corporate class to profit them alone. Instead, our president is waltzing with the devil.
He's rebranding his presidency, all right. It's becoming Obama, Inc.
Wed, 2011-02-09 12:15
#23
Seems to me expecting an American Presidential politician of any stripe to actually attack American corporations is like expecting a Catholic cardinal to attack the Vatican. It's not going to happen.
It absolutely can't.
Some understanding of recent historical events brings understanding and concensus on this one...while others foam in 1940's fashion. Bad stuff is happening for sure, but all the yapping won't change it. Trick will be to use the corporation for the welfare of the commons, use the new structure to put the Immelts out of work.
Wed, 2011-02-09 12:29
#24
You suggest you have the key to the solution. Please stop being so coy. Can you add any substance to these hints, or is yapping all you'll contribute?
Take your time responding, though; I have to take my zoot suit to the cleaners now and won't be back for a while.
Wed, 2011-02-09 13:14
#25
People with your intellectual profile will, of course, be very careful about where their savings are stashed in the corporate world, aQ. But I'm afraid that mainstreeters will continue to invest in the Generous Electrics, even while tut-tutting about their CEOs. They might even get a warm, cozy feelings watching all the verbal spitballs being tossed by your radical element. Morally uplifting.
others are trying to take that capital and put it where it might do some good, where the sun really shines:
SLOW MONEY. Green Calgary presents Woody Tasch, founder of the Slow Money Alliance. 23 February. (I've got his book, and would really like to hear from others about their experience with/knowledge of this venture. I believe it's not just co-incidental that interest in this shows up in Calgary where, perhaps, an element of Green Communities Canada has been driven by the idea of growing food in a capital-obsessed climate.
There's a growing resentment of the use to which savings are being put in our capitalist world. Take your time coming back with your next , well-thought-out missive from google, aQ. Perhaps you might like to comment on the Tasch profile, rather than indulge in juvenile one-liners. Hope springs eternal. : )
Wed, 2011-02-09 14:26
#26
America's working families--our endangered middle class--have a right to expect Obama to fight for rules that are fair to them and our country, not meekly accept rules that have been skewed by an elite corporate class to profit them alone.
Really? The endangered middle class has the RIGHT to EXPECT Obama to fight for them?
Obama, like any Imperial president, will only fight those battles when/if the people make him. So far, the Left is not making him do anything. Neither the endangered middle class nor the working class is politically engaged, and Obama is not feeling any pressure to fight for them.
Now that I think more about it I suppose people have the right to expect all kinds of things to happen, for all the good it will do them.
Wed, 2011-02-09 15:39
#27
M. Spector
Finally we have George's solution: everyone has to invest in "green" capitalism!
Wed, 2011-02-09 19:33
#28
Finally we have George's solution: everyone has to invest in "green" capitalism!
And grow veggies! Don' forget to read the article. It isn't all that bad. Really. A german friend visiting Detroit industry for a couple of weeks - a health nut - dropped off some Stonyfield yogurt the other day. I might get through it if the frozen fruit holds out. I'd like to see little food producers popping up all over the blessed place, replacing the corporate preparations. I'm told that if there were a halt to traffic across the border, the local food suppliers might be good for about 3 days. Hell, we might be lucky if the local marketing boards for poulty and eggs and milk survives the Doha round and the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade agreement deal that Maude Barlow's been warning us about. We need to support little producers who will be impervious to those bastards.
On the use of stashed cash: But everyone now invests in UNgreen capitalism, MS. Take your pick...or are your savings going into a sock, under the mattress? :)
Wed, 2011-02-09 22:50
#29
Wed, 2011-02-09 23:36
#30
M. Spector
But everyone now invests in UNgreen capitalism, MS. Take your pick...or are your savings going into a sock, under the mattress?
What makes you think I have any savings? In fact, if I were typical of North American workers, I would be heavily in debt up to my eyebrows, not sitting on piles of cash or clipping coupons. Your perspective is decidedly one of middle class privilege.
People's capitalism, like green capitalism, is a myth promoted by those who seek to obscure the class nature of our society and to encourage the belief that capitalism is the only solution to problems that capitalism itself has created.
Thu, 2011-02-10 07:32
#31
N.Beltov
More on that story noted above by NorthReport ...
New Obama Strategy: Beat up poor people
The Obama administration, reports National Journal's Mark Ambinder, will propose big cuts to a program that provides energy assistance to poor people when it unveils its suggested 2012 budget. "The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP," writes Ambinder, "would see funding drop by about $2.5 billion from an authorized 2009 total of $5.1 billion."The news is generating a lot of outrage from progressives, in large part because of a paragraph that suggests that the White House wants to gain political advantage from being seen as tough on the most vulnerable Americans -- people who can't afford heating oil during cold winters.
Says Leonard: "I can't imagine that Republicans are doing anything else but laughing. Heartless incompetence is not going to win a budget fight."
Heartless. Incompetence. Hoo rah. "Yes, we can" TO "No, we won't" indeed.
Thu, 2011-02-10 08:34
#32
But everyone now invests in UNgreen capitalism, MS. Take your pick...or are your savings going into a sock, under the mattress?
What makes you think I have any savings? In fact, if I were typical of North American workers, I would be heavily in debt up to my eyebrows, not sitting on piles of cash or clipping coupons. Your perspective is decidedly one of middle class privilege.
People's capitalism, like green capitalism, is a myth promoted by those who seek to obscure the class nature of our society and to encourage the belief that capitalism is the only solution to problems that capitalism itself has created.
We all know that American workers have not improved their standard of living appreciably in the last one-third of a century, that credit has replaced higher earnings. The middle class is disappearing. But we also know that the RRSP has been used extensively in Canada to avoid taxes on money for folks' golden years. And, of course, those people without anything to tuck away, are in the situatiion you describe.
But you will notice in Woody Tasch story that people are relectant to talk about their financial situation, and that is reflected in the absence of input in this thread. Somehow, the savings amassed by mainstream Canadians, including those of "the left", never finds its way into investments in corporations. Not even the premiums in all of those insurance policies.
Gaia only knows what future sources of funding for any of the services and pensions of that society we would all like to see, is going to come from, where class privilege has been abolished along with any means of funding the New Jerusalem.
Thu, 2011-02-10 08:50
#33
Finally we have George's solution: everyone has to invest in "green" capitalism!
The green commodity campaigns, flat screen televisions, hybrid cars, it's all the same marketing. The same ones that have expended so much of their energy toward planetary environmental extincton are now telling us they have a few solutions so long as we have the coin to ante up. We're expected to pay corporatism all over again under a revised marketing and packaging construct, and trust that the new products will be less harmful than everything that has gone before them. I'm supposed to believe that purchasing green and organic labelled bananas at premium cost from a corporate grocery warehouse is the new right thing to do, while being expected to ignore how they arrived there in the first place.
Thu, 2011-02-10 10:36
#34
I'm sure you can explain the connection - in your mind - between Slow Money's focus on locally grown food as a place of investment, and flat screen TVs ,bananas and "corporate grocery warehouses."
Where is your coin invested, jack? So far, nobody, but nobody, hereabouts, has accumulated - or invested - a nickel. But Tasche explains how it's hard to get honest in talking about one's own $ situation. Or did you bother to read that link?
You are still avoiding this question: "Gaia only knows what future sources of funding for any of the services and pensions of that society we would all like to see, is going to come from, where class privilege has been abolished along with any means of funding the New Jerusalem." Or are you only progreammed to operate in critical mode, devoid of Earth-based remedies?
Thu, 2011-02-10 13:08
#35
People with your intellectual profile...
Yikes! "Intellectual profile?"
Remind me never to sing "'Oranges and lemons' say the bells of St. Clemens" in your presence.
Thu, 2011-02-10 15:39
#36
M. Spector
Gaia only knows what future sources of funding for any of the services and pensions of that society we would all like to see, is going to come from, where class privilege has been abolished along with any means of funding the New Jerusalem.
George labours under the misapprehension that all wealth emanates from capitalism, and that without capitalism the workers would starve. It never occurs to him that collective ownership and operation of the means of production, freed from the necessity of providing massive profits to private owners and investors, would generate plenty of social capital to provide services and pensions for all.
Thu, 2011-02-10 15:57
#37
There seems to be a cognitive dissonance at work here. The presidents of the United States are both complicit in the rapacious activities of the corporations that are stripping the planet of resources, and powerless to stop them, so they should be tolerated. Egyptian tyrants have abetted these rapacious corporations in reducing their populace to poverty, so they should be kept in place because the alternative might be worse.
Nowhere in this deference to the status quo is there a suggestion that a political solution is possible, even though the political system is largely responsible for the problems that are noted and condemned.
And then when we point out the contraditions and incongruities of this position we are insulted.
Thu, 2011-02-10 20:40
#38
aQ: "when we point out the contraditions and incongruities of this position we are insulted." ]
You, aQ, provide the snotty little one-liners: "You suggest you have the key to the solution. Please stop being so coy. Can you add any substance to these hints, or is yapping all you'll contribute?
Take your time responding, though; I have to take my zoot suit to the cleaners now and won't be back for a while."
Where are YOU pointing out anything? Where are YOU NOT insulting? I posted in-depth information about people trying to make a peaceful transition to a society that values Earth first and leading the way to a means to finance the transition.
It is the electorate that brings these monsters to postions of power, and they do so in ignorance of another means of structuring their society. Go to the roots of the problem, the economic structures underlying the political. Try to imagine something else...and have the decency to read and comment on new ideas that are put before you.
Thu, 2011-02-10 20:44
#39
Imagine. Corporations are reduced to diddly squat value and all investors' savings , ditto. And then: "what future sources of funding for any of the services and pensions of that society we would all like to see, is going to come from, where class privilege has been abolished along with any means of funding the New Jerusalem."
No generalized statements about "collective ownership and operation of the means of production, freed from the necessity of providing massive profits to private owners and investors, would generate plenty of social capital to provide services and pensions for all."
How do you get from one to the other with no consideration for the welfare - the very lives - of people involved, the institutions needed to bring it about.. Forget 1917. It can't be brought about in that manner, and I've no time for such bloody-mindedness.
Fri, 2011-02-11 02:51
#40
M. Spector
Imagine. Corporations are reduced to diddly squat value and all investors' savings , ditto. And then: "what future sources of funding for any of the services and pensions of that society we would all like to see, is going to come from, where class privilege has been abolished along with any means of funding the New Jerusalem."
God forbid we should do anything to curb the rule of the corporations; our very livelihood depends on their continuance as providers of wealth to our workers; without them we'd have nothing. Get rid of capitalism and you make the wealth of the world disappear. Abolish class privilege and money will vanish into thin air.
Who writes your material, George? Arthur Laffer?
Fri, 2011-02-11 11:47
#41
You have no alternative ideas for the transition, apparently, that do not involve blood, MS. You simply avoid reality, and now you're getting as bad as aQ.
Lots of people WANT to change the existing situation before our biosphere packs it in. Give them something to go on, a perspective involving the necessary economic AND structural social change, not just repeated rants about what exists. And don't leave them with an either blood or nothing choice. They'll tell you to stuff it, as do I.
Fri, 2011-02-11 13:45
#42
M. Spector
Whether or not blood is shed will depend on how hard the capitalists want to fight to hold onto their privileges. Their choice. See, for example, Egypt today.
If you have no appetite for fighting for social change, then you're welcome to remain on the wrong side of history.
Fri, 2011-02-11 13:53
#43
I must find some reading that lets me live so vicariously distant from the world.
Fri, 2011-02-11 14:08
#44
Imagine. Corporations are reduced to diddly squat value and all investors' savings , ditto. And then: "what future sources of funding for any of the services and pensions of that society we would all like to see, is going to come from, where class privilege has been abolished along with any means of funding the New Jerusalem."
God forbid we should do anything to curb the rule of the corporations; our very livelihood depends on their continuance as providers of wealth to our workers; without them we'd have nothing. Get rid of capitalism and you make the wealth of the world disappear. Abolish class privilege and money will vanish into thin air.
But wait? There are no factories or mills! They've de-industrialized before we had a chance to takeover the means of production! The mills and factories were offshored to Asia! Money is the new commodity. And there aren't even many mints printin money these days - it's all imaginary money created as interest bearing debt and recorded in the bowels of computers. Now what, comrades?
Not get rid of capitalism - get rid of capitalis[u]ts[/u]. Then we takeover what's left of the factories and mills for basic production to meet the needs of workers. And then we get hold of some nanothermite, sneak into the banks and towers on Bay Street, and wait for the signal.
Fri, 2011-02-11 14:14
#45
That's the reading material I need, Fidel.
Fri, 2011-02-11 14:16
#46
I must find some reading that lets me live so vicariously distant from the world.
This should get you started.
Fri, 2011-02-11 14:24
#47
I must find some reading that lets me live so vicariously distant from the world.
*biting tongue*
Fri, 2011-02-11 14:28
#48
I must find some reading that lets me live so vicariously distant from the world.
That's the reading material I need, Fidel.
Fri, 2011-02-11 14:36
#49
I was waiting for a Caribbean beach and frosty Cuba libres and you send me Jack, Jack? 
Sat, 2011-02-12 12:13
#50
Has anyone else thought over the last 19 days that the Egyptians are showing us what real "hope and change" looks like, as opposed to the ad copy that B. Obama, CEO and Chief Managing Director of USA Inc., has been spouting?
Sat, 2011-02-12 12:42
#51
Yeah. Now if we can just get the military to march on Washington the comparison will be (sort of, kinda like) complete (in a way...