Anyone who says we “don’t have the money” should be direct to look at our military budget, which is roughly five times larger then the next largest country’s.

The military budget is really much larger than that.

If you factor in:
1. interest on the military debt
2. nuclear programs hidden in the Dept of Energy
3. rent of foreign bases paid for through foreign aid
4. foreign aid earmarked for purchase of US arms
5. veterans’ affairs
6. clandestine activities hidden in other departments
etc.

The US military budget is greater than the rest of the world’s military spending combined

I haven’t read the comments, so someone probably beat me to this, but I’ll play:

Q: What Does Obama Hope to Accomplish with Another Four Years?

A: The complete dismantling of the social safety net?
A: The formal elimination of the Bill of Rights?
A: Four More Drones Wars?
A: Whatever Goldman Sachs tells him to do?

etc.

I expected him to attack the Ryan budget for not being draconian enough.

No problem here. Large institutions will be made whole on any losses. Isn’t that the new way?

The mandate will not drive down costs much, if at all. The mandate is a give-away to insurance companies. Now, everyone will be forced to buy exorbitant and crappy insurance.

The best way to drive down costs is with a single-payer national plan to compete to private insurance.

Link didn’t come though. I’ll try again:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/03/22/the-strange-case-of-the-liberal-ostrich

thanks for that!

fdl regulars Mike Whitney and Dean Baker are regulars there, so the water’s warm!

You are certainly the morally-based community, and your values and mine are very close if not identical, but I don’t think you represent a reality-based community. We’re on the same side in most ways, yet I feel like we’re in different worlds.

Alan Nasser, a professor of political economy at Evergreen State, wrote an interesting piece on this Democratic cognitive dissonance. It’s the lead on Thursday’s Counter Punch. I won’t link in case it offends any Democratic partisans who mistook fdl for kos, but it’s worth a read, and it’s only a google away…

The list of Democratic promises that ended up “inoperative” in Obama’s first term is long and depressing, but all of them bear one thing in common: liberal goals were tossed aside in the face of conservative opposition

You mean the first two years of his term, when he had Democratic majorities in the Senate and House, yet threw traditional Democratic positions to the wolves, and always appeased the nearly-extinct GOP? The GOP were on the ropes after the ’08 election, and Obama threw them a rope. Many ropes. Obama rescued the GOP from the ash heap of history. He saved them from near-extinction

Don’t bother playing eleventy-dimensional chess with the guys who already had you beat at Etch-A-Sketch, not to mention Monopoly. When their base wins, they get a Maserati and a pair of hookers; when our base wins, we get a savings bond. That’s the problem.

That’s not the problem. The problem is that Obama is playing three dimensional chess against the base- against YOU. He doesn’t even need to play eleventy-dimensional chess against you, because your cognitive dissonance leaves you desperate to fall for any hope that Obama isn’t actually the right-wing destroyer of the party of FDR that he obviously and truly is.

Government cover-up of bank collusion? Isn’t that a crime? I realize the bnksters are above the law, but are their lackeys in Warshington equally immune?

How about this justification for murder: “yes, I did kill Cock Robin, but the dude was going to die eventually, anyway, so I didn’t really commit any harm.”

Or this justification for mugging an old woman: “yes, I did mug her, but she was an easy target, and someone else would have mugged her anyways, so I didn’t really commit any harm.”

Exactly. That’s the entire purpose of the working group: to kick the can down the road until it’s too late to do anything about it.

Either Schneiderman knows this, in which case he’s complicit (for whatever reason), or he doesn’t know this, in which case he’s stupid.

I hope I’m wrong about him, but unless he;s got some plan to play eleventy-dimensional chess against all of DC, I don’t see it.

I watched several hours of it on a live split-screen feed, with Spencer on the left, and an ABC news chopper on the right. It was shooting fish in a barrel for the OPD. You could clearly see from the chopper camera that they blocked the protesters off at either end of the street, and herded them in front of the YMCA.

Media reports said that protesters tried to “occupy” the YMCA. But you could clearly see from the overhead that the cops herded blocked them there, and that protesters entered the building only after the order to “Submit to the arrest” came.

OPD repeated the announcement endlessly: “You are under arrest. Submit to the arrest.” Before that, there was no order to disperse.

This is all on video, and will certainly be shown in court. It’s clear entrapment.

Don’t listen to what they say or read what they write.

Watch what they do.

He’ll sign it, oh yes he will.

I take exception with Iosbaker’s claim that “they are going to use their national security event status to suspend the Constitution.”

He’s flat out wrong: the Constitution has already been suspended, first by Bush, and now by Obama.

These aren’t cuts. These are slight reductions in planned future increases.

The point of this kabuki is to show that the MIC has already “sacrificed greatly” when Obama or his successor come gunning for Social Security, Medicare, etc.

They’ll say that they’ve risked national security to help bring spending under control, so the public should be grateful and glad to abide cuts to the social safety net.

The Great Recession is a misnomer. THe economic effects of the Great Recession are comparable to the Great Depression. The only reason we aren’t seeing similar social effects, like soup lines and Obamavilles, is because of the social safety net, which was put in place to offset the harrowing consequences of the inherent instability of capitalism (harrowing for all but the 1%, that is).

1. Social Security
2. Medicare
3. Food Stamps
4. Unemployment Insurance
5. General Assistance (slashed by Clinton)
6. Low-income housing

Take any of these away, and conditions would worsen. Take several away, and there would be blood in the streets. Take them all away (which the bi-partisan neo-liberal “Austerians” in DC are hoping to do), and the Great Depression 2 would make the Great Depression 1 look like a Sunday picnic.

You’re right. Obama, as a neo-liberal Trojan horse, blinded and incapacitated Democrats who couldn’t see that their man-crush was Reagan Redux. For example, who would have thought Democrats would enthusiastically support a bill mandating a tithe to health insurers?

Democrats, as weakened and spineless as they have become, would at least put up a nominal fight against Romney or Not Romney.

The Times has an Edsall piece up today which all but puts the final nail in the Democratic coffin as the Party of FDR. I’m surprised it hasn’t been mentioned here today. Maybe it’s too depressing to believe. I won’t link to the Times, but google “The Future of the Obama Coalition”. Read it and weep. I’m sorry I’m no longer a Democrat, because this article sure makes me want to quit them again…