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This is the second edition of my little experiment; in case you missed last week’s introduction, The Party Line is my attempt to take the ideas and thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head all week, and use them to kick off a weekend’s worth of conversation.
The lighting and back-of-the-napkin editing continue to offend my recovering filmmaker self, but you go to post with the flip cam you have. . . . I hope, in spite of the aesthetics, you still feel compelled to join in the discussion.
(NB: I will be away from the computer most of the day, but will try to jump back in to the comments later tonight.)
18 Comments
I’m more than bored. I’m disgusted. I mean really! The 0 picks WTF as his new logo. Now that’s just a stick in the eye of anyone who voted for him. What a fool, disappointment, failure.
“The 0 picks WTF as his new logo.”
The whole thing does have a certain surreal quality to it.
As a laugh line WTF is far preferable to
“We Can Do Better.” Or maybe not.
But look what Obama is up against!
The GOP in the House want us to understand that a women just saying no isn’t enough to qualify rape as rape – it must include force, and the incest exception would only allow federally funded abortions if the woman is under 18. It is a way to cut down Medicaid funded abortions that are the result of rape or incest via Rep. Chris Smith’s (R-N.J.) “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” a bill with 173 mostly Republican co-sponsors and one that Boehner calls a top priority in the new Congress,
The rape exemption is be limited to “forcible rape” and stautory rape, rapes in which the woman was drugged or given excessive amounts of alcohol, rapes of women with limited mental capacity, and many date rapes would not be considered “forcible rape”. This ends Federal aid (Medicaid and even your using your family’s HSA account) for abortions for non-forcible statutory rape, and indeed the abortion cost is not even a “medical expense deduction” on your 1040.
I expect this to be combined with the attempt to outlaw tax deductions for insurance plans that cover abortion, even if the abortion coverage is never used.
These folks are forcing me to vote Democratic.
Yeah, the end to subsidies for big oil was soooo bogus. So was ‘simplifying tax codes’, unless the man meant buying into flat tax variations, and we should be even more scared.
I started a diary about taking Obama’s challenge, and innovating ourselves some freaking jobs!, but figured it might be too soon for a Lighter Look, and I don’t know the Lake well enough to know its snrk/humor level. (I even tried to divide the $30 billion for lending by the unemployed levels for verisimilitude.)
Hell, lot’s of us’ll be lookin’ forward to retirements of shopping carts and Hefty bags, veritable innovative hobos (hat tip: Obey in Switzerland)
Excited? That the same as Outraged? Then yeah.
Blue Texan’s regularly scheduled post is up: Ayn Rand Fanboy Paul Ryan Used Social Security “Hammock” to Put Himself Through College
I’m not bored. I’m fed up.
You know who’s taking action to “Win The Future”? The people of Egypt. The people of Tunisia.
US media is inundated with right-wing corporatist talking points. It’s All Austerity, All The Time – for the non-billionaire class. There’s AP telling us that Social Security will be “totally drained” by 2037, and every politician in the country in a hot sweat to tell everyone how our “entitlements” (excuse me while I spit) have to be CUT, CUT, CUT!
Obama had an opportunity to push back on that crap in the SOTU. But he never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. His bland reassurances about SS were very carefully worded to ensure that when he hands it all over to his Wall Street pals, he can say to the people of America with a straight face that he never said he wouldn’t raise the retirement age or cut benefits. He always said that everything was on the table. Everything of OURS is always on the table, but anything claimed by his billionaire buddies (like tax cuts for the rich and their corporate personages, or the endless wars) are NEVER on the table.
Perhaps the best indicator of what we can expect from the Obama Gang are the unsettling revelations contained in the leaked documents from Al Jazeera – “The Palestine Papers”. They show that the decades of “negotiations” regarding a Palestinian state have been a sham, an utter farce. We see the Obama Gang telling the PA to keep negotiating with Israel because they’ve never had a US president so committed to the process. We see the PA offering breathtaking concessions to the Israelis and to the US in order to keep that process alive. And we see the Israelis STILL rejecting any attempts at a negotiated two-state solution. Why? Because they will not settle for anything less than every inch of Palestinian land and the deportation or extermination of every last Palestinian.
That is exactly equivalent to what the Obama Gang is doing to the non-billionaires of America. We are told that we must keep negotiating with the Republican corporatists regarding Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, health care reform, financial reform, climate change, foreclosures, etc. in order to keep the process alive. We are told that WE must make breathtaking concessions to corporatists. We have to keep negotiating to retain some tiny piece of what is OURS by right, otherwise, the billionaires will take it ALL.
And just like the Israelis, the corporatist billionaires keep “building settlements” in our territory, making illegitimate claims and repeating lies about who owns what, who deserves what, and what is or is not politically possible. As we keep negotiating, they keep annexing and appropriating everything for themselves. And who is our negotiator? Who set up this negotiation process? The Obama Gang! They are not an “honest broker”! The negotiations continue only as a cover for the dismantling, defunding, and outright theft of everything which matters to working Americans.
But just as in the case of “single payer” or “public option”, the deal has already been made, behind closed doors, behind our backs. The Obama Gang has already given everything away to their corporate sponsors, and all that remains to play out is the kabuki.
There will never be a Palestinian state. The US and the Obama Gang have seen to that by allowing or even encouraging the Israelis to steal everything they can grab. There’s not enough contiguous land left to make a state, and even if there were, Israel and the US have determined to keep the Palestinians disarmed, disenfranchised, and impoverished. The Obama Gang and the corporatists have done the same to working America. They have taken away our jobs, our homes, our voice in government, our money, and our social safety net. So now there can never be an American state “of, by and for the People” because there’s nothing left once the plutocrats claim ownership of everything.
Time to call an end to negotiations. No more negotiating for what is ours. Obama is not on our side, he works for the enemy. He is swindling us. Not one vote, not one penny for Obama or any of his cohorts. American politicians and their billionaire pals need to learn to fear the American workers, and realize that their days of total control are coming to an end.
America doesn’t need a “Sputnik moment” to “Win the Future”, America needs a “Cairo moment”.
Thanks for the “experiment” Gregg. I hope you make it a regular thing.
On another note, I don’t think Obama really wants to DO anything. I think he is just totally into co-opting Repug talking points, negotiating with himself, and being conciliatory whenever possible.
The “change” he was referring to (in the past) is what has tragically slipped out of the hole in his CEO buddies’ pockets after a night on the town.
Bore me once, shame on me, bore me twice,…. well, you can’t get bored again.
I have especially enjoyed your diaries. Don’t stop, you speak for all of us and our spouses.
innovating ourselves some jobs would be great if we had some type of income. I am one of those 99ers that did not get 99 weeks which is a lie.
I saw an article today from the stinky WaPost. One of the writers is saying the IMF is telling the US to cut out SS and Medicare to right our deficits. Of course, he/reporter does not name the actual names of the IMF personalities that state that.
Gregg! I loved last week and this week is just as good. Your idea of a Party Line is great.
You are right about the SOTU speech. I didn’t even bother to watch it but have read it over 5 times. I don’t remember anything either. It was a bunch of nice rah-rah but absoultely no substance. Our country is in crisis, for Pete’s Sake!
We are now in Obama’s third year. His SOTU speech was more than not exciting, it represented a betrayal of everything he campaigned for. I am sick of the argument that republicans would be even worse while following every major policy of Bush. We need to move on and stop hoping Obama will suddenly start keeping his campaign promises when there is so much evidence to the contrary.
Anthony Noel at admin@themalcontent.com is forming a New Progressive Alliance to try to answer the question of where we go from here.
I am curious as to the answer to where do we go from here.
A 3rd party puts the GOP into every office down to dog catcher.
I am from the Scott Brown – stay at home to send a message – crowd, with 2012 the stay at home election being the Presidential.
I do not see Obama as less corporate than the GOP and I refuse to vote based on “hot button” social issues.
But below the Presidential line I do not see many options beyond primaries and voting Democratic.
Progressives need to take over the Democratic party. It’s ours, we built it. Expel or effectively marginalize the corporatists & Blue Dogs. If they want to kiss corporate glutei, they can wear the big red “R”. A third party is a losing proposition.
There is no fall like a fall from a great height. O’s rhetoric aimed high, his policy has hit low and his response to his gape -mouthed former supporters has been: Fuck you suckers.
Now he’s over. He’s just a slippery little guy who will get a few lines in history about being one ofthe minor presidents in the decadent era that saw the decline of the USA. So, yeah, I’m bored with him, too. Now what I’m looking for is a credible way to act politically in the post-Obama (and possibly post-Democratic Party) era.
Great post, mgloraine. Have you considered turning this into a diary post?
I agree, ed2291. Obama has institutionalized and expanded on Bush. For that, I can not and will not support him. The Dem Party supports Obama, and for that I can not and will not support it either.
Staying at home is no an option for me so I will vote third-party or write-in as I did in 2010.
Thanks, PeasantParty; it was meant to be a Snark Post. There was nothing to left but laugh, I swear. I swear to God too much is absurd lately, like living in front of a funhouse mirror.
I was cross-posting at a site that had some former tpm cafe bloggers; lots of the folks there think that speech was just grande. Just made for Xtranormal ‘Welcome to the Internet Forum’ video!
I am so sorry you got ripped off for the rest of your UI. We have one job between us, as I was injured and had to retire. And in the end, we’re doing better than so many, and are so bloody grateful for what we have.
$1 million per year per soldier, and the Prez wants more to train security forces in Afghanistan. They won’t; they take the guns and uniforms and split; who wouldn’t? Nice temporary gig, then you can rip off other people. (Sorry; I’m tired and bitter.)
Let’s just have a good thought right now for the folks in Tunisia and Egypt. And get some sleep.
My wife and two children and I live in the state of Illinois. Our current health insurance plan is a Choice Plan that is provided by Wise Health Insurance. The plan itself is a consumer driven health care plan.