Now I remember why I was an independent all those years.

[LouieB]

Clearly if Scott Brown voted against a jobs bill in the fairly liberal state of MA, his ass would be run out of town on a rail.

LouieB

[futureage1]

Senate votes to extend Patriot Act

Democrats retreat from adding new privacy protections to the law

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35571223/ns/politics-capitol_hill

 

WASHINGTON - The Senate voted Wednesday to extend for a year key provisions of the nation's counterterrorism surveillance law that are scheduled to expire at the end of the month.

 

In agreeing to pass the bill, Senate Democrats retreated from adding new privacy protections to the USA Patriot Act.

 

The Senate approved the bill on a voice vote with no debate. It now goes to the House.

 

 

Woody Guthrie~ All You Fascists Bound To Lose

 

 

In a entry dated March 4 1942 in his notebook for a letter to his unborn son, Woody had this to say:

“Maybe I should talk to you about fascism. It is a big word and it hides in some pretty little places. It is nothing in the world but greed for profit and greed for the power to hurt and make slaves out of the people… But fascism can no more control the world than a bunch of pool hall gamblers and thugs can control America. Because all of the laws of man working in nature and history and evolution say for all human beings to come always closer and closer together…

 

“How come me launching into a talk about fascism to you – only 4 months on the way – not even here yet? Because in the whole big world… fascism and freedom are the only two sides battling… every other shades into the fight somewhere, I’m not worried about where you’ll be standing – but – how could I ever get this book wrote full unless some of it was cussing out fascism?

 

Like Tom Joad said to his dying mother in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, “wherever working people are fighting for their rights, I’ll be there”.

 

 

"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."-James Madison

[LouieB]

Sadly, no one wants to appear soft on terrorism in an election year.

 

LouieB

[Atticus]

and which year isn't an election year?

[Sir Stewart]

This is going well.

[LouieB]

and which year isn't an election year?

Exactly. Anymore the election cycle is so quick that you are essentially correct; and certainly every year is a fundraising to get elected year. It is frightening to think that in a mere two years we will be right back into the presidential cycle as well. That is something to look forward to.

 

This is going well.

Are you speaking of the healthcare summit?? How is it going???

 

LouieB

[Sir Stewart]

 

Are you speaking of the healthcare summit?? How is it going???

 

LouieB

 

It's interesting (I'm watching/listening to the live stream from CNN) from a voyeuristic perspective, but it also (shock!) seems to be chock full of grandstanding on both sides.

[calvino]

It's interesting (I'm watching/listening to the live stream from CNN) from a voyeuristic perspective, but it also (shock!) seems to be chock full of grandstanding on both sides.

 

Yeah, lots of reading of letters.

[LouieB]

It's interesting (I'm watching/listening to the live stream from CNN) from a voyeuristic perspective, but it also (shock!) seems to be chock full of grandstanding on both sides.

Yea some shock....sounded like McCain was still running for President.

 

If the Dems are smart (a stretch at this point...) they should pass a short, succinct bill with basic stuff (no denial for pre-existing conditions, etc.) take out the bullshit (the Nebraska compromise) and pass the fucking thing through reconciliation; then go back and hammer out the more complex stuff. Once they show that they are serious, maybe the rest will come easier.

 

LouieB

[mountain bed]

I think that's the plan, Lou - at least Jim Clyburn seems to think so. We'll see.

[Analogman]

Funny or Die's Presidential Reunion

 

Barack Obama gets a surprise visit in the night from ex-Presidents Bush Sr., Bush Jr., Clinton, Ford, Reagan and Carter to get a few pointers about the Consumer Financial Protection Agency and why it's so important.

[ih8music]

^ there are so many awesome things about that video.

[mountain bed]

Funny or Die's Presidential Reunion

Thanks for posting this, Aman. I saw it on Countdown tonight and I have to say it is THE GREATEST POLITICAL AD EVER.

[kidsmoke]

Loved it.

[bleedorange]

It's funny.

 

Of course, I don't need an agency to tell me not to spend money I don't have.

[futureage1]

Obama signs one-year extension of Patriot Act

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100228/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_patriot_act;_ylt=AnYcnSC9U3jCTu5cMXztwMms0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNvbWwzMDQ2BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwMjI4L3VzX29iYW1hX3BhdHJpb3RfYWN0BGNjb2RlA21vc3Rwb3B1bGFyBGNwb3MDNgRwb3MDMwRwdANob21lX2Nva2UEc2VjA3luX2hlYWRsaW5lX2xpc3QEc2xrA29iYW1hc2lnbnNvbg--

 

Ralph Nader Was Right About Barack Obama

 

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/ralph_nader_was_right_about_barack_obama_20100301/

 

By Chris Hedges

 

We owe Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney an apology. They were right about Barack Obama. They were right about the corporate state. They had the courage of their convictions and they stood fast despite wholesale defections and ridicule by liberals and progressives.

 

Obama lies as cravenly, if not as crudely, as George W. Bush. He promised us that the transfer of $12.8 trillion in taxpayer money to Wall Street would open up credit and lending to the average consumer. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), however, admitted last week that banks have reduced lending at the sharpest pace since 1942. As a senator, Obama promised he would filibuster amendments to the FISA Reform Act that retroactively made legal the wiretapping and monitoring of millions of American citizens without warrant; instead he supported passage of the loathsome legislation. He told us he would withdraw American troops from Iraq, close the detention facility at Guantánamo, end torture, restore civil liberties such as habeas corpus and create new jobs. None of this has happened.

 

He is shoving a health care bill down our throats that would give hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to the private health insurance industry in the form of subsidies, and force millions of uninsured Americans to buy insurers’ defective products. These policies would come with ever-rising co-pays, deductibles and premiums and see most of the seriously ill left bankrupt and unable to afford medical care. Obama did nothing to halt the collapse of the Copenhagen climate conference, after promising meaningful environmental reform, and has left us at the mercy of corporations such as ExxonMobil. He empowers Israel’s brutal apartheid state. He has expanded the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where hundreds of civilians, including entire families, have been slaughtered by sophisticated weapons systems such as the Hellfire missile, which sucks the air out of victims’ lungs. And he is delivering war and death to Yemen, Somalia and perhaps Iran.

 

The illegal wars and occupations, the largest transference of wealth upward in American history and the egregious assault on civil liberties, all begun under George W. Bush, raise only a flicker of tepid protest from liberals when propagated by the Democrats. Liberals, unlike the right wing, are emotionally disabled. They appear not to feel. The tea-party protesters, the myopic supporters of Sarah Palin, the veterans signing up for Oath Keepers and the myriad of armed patriot groups have swept into their ranks legions of disenfranchised workers, angry libertarians, John Birchers and many who, until now, were never politically active. They articulate a legitimate rage. Yet liberals continue to speak in the bloodless language of issues and policies, and leave emotion and anger to the protofascists. Take a look at the 3,000-word suicide note left by Joe Stack, who flew his Piper Cherokee last month into an IRS office in Austin, Texas, murdering an IRS worker and injuring dozens. He was not alone in his rage.

 

“Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours?” Stack wrote. “Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. Yet, the political ‘representatives’ (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the ‘terrible health care problem’. It’s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in.”

 

The timidity of the left exposes its cowardice, lack of a moral compass and mounting political impotence. The left stands for nothing. The damage Obama and the Democrats have done is immense. But the damage liberals do the longer they beg Obama and the Democrats for a few scraps is worse. It is time to walk out on the Democrats. It is time to back alternative third-party candidates and grass-roots movements, no matter how marginal such support may be. If we do not take a stand soon we must prepare for the rise of a frightening protofascist movement, one that is already gaining huge ground among the permanently unemployed, a frightened middle class and frustrated low-wage workers. We are, even more than Glenn Beck or tea-party protesters, responsible for the gusts fanning the flames of right-wing revolt because we have failed to articulate a credible alternative.

 

Don't Be a Sucker - 1947

 

Video Description:

 

In this anti-fascist film produced by US Military in the wake of WWII, the producers deconstructs the politically motivated social engineering of Germany by the Nazi regime.

 

Its argument is just as timely and relevant today.

China's investments in U.S. up sharply

 

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-china-invest4-2010mar04,0,4637026.story

Reporting from Washington - Made in China now has a fast-growing sibling: Bought by China.

 

Beijing is using its accumulation of billions of American dollars to step up its investments around the globe. In the last year, Chinese acquisitions in the U.S. have ranged from a relatively obscure theater in Branson, Mo., to stakes in such famous brands as Coca-Cola and Johnson & Johnson.

[Atticus]

so is that why you're an independent?

[bjorn_skurj]

Thank God China is putting some of the money we send to it back into the United States.

 

Arthur Jensen: [bellowing] You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear? You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU...WILL...ATONE!

Arthur Jensen: [calmly] Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those *are* the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that . . . perfect world . . . in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.

Howard Beale: Why me?

Arthur Jensen: Because you're on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.

Howard Beale: I have seen the face of God.

Arthur Jensen: You just might be right, Mr. Beale.

[bjorn_skurj]

Jesus - talk about spineless. According to the BBC, the State Department has apologized to Moammar Gaddafi for dissing him when he called for a jihad (economic, the Libyan leader insists) against Switzerland. (To their non-credit, the Swiss apparently are not allowing minarets to be built in their country.) One, do we REALLY need oil that badly and two, did we ever apologize for trying to kill him back in 1986? Did he apologize for having that plane blown up? Clearly, the U.S.-Libya relationship needs therapy.

[kidsmoke]

Spineless and bizarre!

[D-Dogg]

Several points in that article by Chris Hedges are ridiculous.

 

Including:

President Obama is making efforts to close Gitmo. He is making efforts to withdrawal troops from Iraq.

 

Pharm companies murdering tens of thousands of people.

 

 

 

Ridiculous I say...

[ih8music]

Stupak on board. Looks like the healthcare bill is going to pass.

[Dude]

Teddy's dancing a jig somewhere:

 

[mountain bed]

^^ My first thought while watching tonight.

[Moss]

I'm kind of looking foward to the footage of tea baggers crying and wailing and "Fearing for our country".