tagged w/ two party fraud
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This is the same President Obama that signed the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act into law, a law so odious in its civil rights implications that he issued a signing statement indicating that his administration wouldn’t roll around in the worst of the offal included. Just don’t look at his non-signing hand. It was pointing at some future successor that might.
This is the same President Obama that not only denies U.S. citizens due process in the courts, since, after all, due process doesn’t have to be from the courts as long as it comes from him and his lunch buddies, but also has them assassinated.
This is the same President Obama that started out his term by surrounding himself with Wall Street insiders and then presided over massive Wall Street giveaways while singing plaintive little reassuring tunes to the middle class while Wall Street gets to party at a four-year long bacchanalian rave.This is the same President Obama that signed the 2012 National Defense Authorization... more
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Clearly, the eight (8) years of the Bush Administration has desecrated the Republican Party in the eyes of Americans and the whole world. In a desperate attempt to breath life into the GOP, the recent Supreme Court ruling on campaign contributions is aimed squarely at and provides significant advantage in assisting the beleaguered Republican Party to fund propaganda campaigns - in the absence of voter contributions.
Interestingly, the Republican Party and it's paid for sub group the Tea Baggers, have revived the Busheney era strategy of fear mongering. Remember the boggy man is out to getcha!? The sky is falling and all hell is going to break out. Well, considering that the attack on the United States of America during the Bush Administration was unprecedented, it can only be concluded that the such a thing was made possible by the incompetence of the said administration on watch at the time.
In the aftermath of the Bush Administration, the Republican Party has desperately turned to corporate America or should I say, people from corporations who once relied upon lobbyists to purchase favorable votes in Congress, primarily with the Republican Party have now taken to running for office themselves. These corporate sharks heavily funding their campaigns themselves in an effort to buy their way into office.
Will it work? Will the very people who have collectively fired millions of Americans and sent jobs oversees for personal gain and profit be voted in to office by the people the took jobs away from? Have the American people learned from the eight years of the Bush Administration and the associated Republican stranglehold on government?Clearly, the eight (8) years of the Bush Administration has desecrated the Republican... more
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Should we abolish political parties?
and then put a limit on how much a candidate can spend on a campaign? I think this could help solve the problem of a partisan-only congress (Republicans as of now are a case-in-point). Also, maybe this would teach Congress to be smart with money instead of throwing it at our problems (wars, economy, etc). Of course this would mean the richest person wouldn't win...
Where would you get the constitutional authority to ban people from getting together and representing their ideas as a unified group? Funny, it is only partisan when someone is stopping your party from pushing their political genocide. We need opposition. Unopposed power would be dangerous. But relax. I hear the new episodes of Jersey Shore about to be released so you won't have to worry about the adult stuff anymore.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100905110109AARXRNSShould we abolish political parties?
and then put a limit on how much a candidate can... more
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ejasun
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added this
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1 year ago
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In the violent wake of President Obama's military surge in Afghanistan, and his failure to withdraw the U.S. military from Iraq, the Libertarian Party (LP) says anti-war liberals can vote Libertarian with a clear conscience.
Sadly, President Obama is spending an even larger percentage of America's money on the military than George W. Bush did. According to the tracking website usgovernmentspending.com, during the first two budget years of the Obama administration (FY 2010 and 2011), military spending is expected to be over 6 percent of GDP: a larger percentage of GDP than during any year of the Bush administration.
LP Chair Mark Hinkle commented, "Anti-war liberals who thought President Obama and the Democrats would reduce military spending and American interventionism have been betrayed.
"Liberals have also been betrayed by Obama's unwillingness to reverse the serious civil liberties violations of the Bush administration. Obama has claimed the authority to kill American citizens overseas without indictment or trial. Even worse, he has claimed that 'state secrets' prevent his targets or their families from challenging him in court. Obama's expansion of the 'state secrets' claim is a page taken right out of the neoconservative playbook."
LP Executive Director Wes Benedict added, "In many ways, the Obama administration is looking like four more years of George W. Bush. A vote for Libertarians sends a message for peace and respect for the Constitution."
Benedict continued, "It's important to remember that many congressional Democrats voted for the PATRIOT Act, and many also voted for the War in Iraq. They tried to blame Bush later, even though they deserved just as much blame as Republicans."
The Libertarian National Committee has passed resolutions calling for U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan.
On September 12, 2001, the day after the major terrorist attacks, two-time Libertarian Party presidential nominee Harry Browne courageously spoke out against American interventionism. In his article he wrote, "When will we learn that we can't allow our politicians to bully the world without someone bullying back eventually?"
Benedict said, "The Libertarian Party doesn't have the resources to take the lead in organizing mass protests, but we like to join anti-war protests when we can find them. When George W. Bush was president, Democrats helped organize many anti-war protests. Now that Democrats are doing the war-making, protests are hard to find.
"I made an effort to express the Libertarian position at the One Nation March on October 2.
"The terrorists have tricked our government into massive overreaction, spending trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives to fight a small number of America-hating fanatics. Many thousands of innocent Muslims have been killed in the process. We have gotten bogged down trying to rebuild entire governments. Democrats and Republicans have both given in to this terrorist trickery. Libertarians, on the other hand, see through this trickery, and we would stop wasting lives and money on the disastrous policies of foreign interventionism."
Liberal vs. conservative support
There is a myth frequently repeated in the media that Libertarian candidates take votes from conservatives. In reality, the situation is mixed: many polls show that Libertarian candidates actually receive greater support from liberals.
In this Kansas poll, the Libertarian candidates received more support from liberals than conservatives.
This poll showed North Carolina Libertarian candidate Michael Beitler with more support from liberals than conservatives.
Hinkle said, "Libertarians have a lot in common with liberals. In fact, people with a libertarian philosophy often call themselves 'classical liberals,' in the sense of the word as it was used historically. Libertarians sometimes describe themselves as 'fiscally conservative and socially liberal.'
"We Libertarians have a saying that we're 'pro-choice on everything.' We are uncompromising supporters of free speech. We completely oppose corporate welfare, and we hate the way big corporations often manipulate the government to get subsidies and protection from competition. And we are more immigration-friendly than either Republicans or Democrats."
The Libertarian Party has 21 candidates for U.S. Senate and 169 candidates for U.S. House in the upcoming November 2010 elections.
http://www.lp.org/news/press-releases/anti-war-liberals-can-vote-libertarian
Image photo:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_YMirgSzJl7A/RpeU-HIW-BI/AAAAAAAAAns/DAI0fgfzNFU/s320/Anti-war-protest-DC-1.jpgIn the violent wake of President Obama's military surge in Afghanistan, and his... more
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Cenk Uygur (host of The Young Turks) filling in for Chris Jansing on MSNBC talks to Democratic strategist Keith Boykin and MSNBC contributor Karen Hunter on if President Obama has delivered progressive change or if Hillary Clinton might have fought harder for it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_J68IpVfmo&feature=ytn:mptnewsCenk Uygur (host of The Young Turks) filling in for Chris Jansing on MSNBC talks to... more
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According to U.S. officials, though the United States is currently the world biggest weapons supplier — holding 30 percent of the market—the Obama administration has begun modifying export control regulations in hopes of enlarging the U.S. market share. The administration's stated reason for the changes is to simplify the sale of weapons to U.S. allies, but potential spinoffs include generating business for the U.S. military industry and contributing to Obama's drive to double U.S. exports by 2015.According to U.S. officials, though the United States is currently the world biggest... more
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http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/08/gop-rep-inglis-tells-cnn-about-crazy-right-wingers-who-ousted-him-video.php
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7cQqLUsv3k&feature=player_embedded
August 4, 2010 |
It was the middle of a tough primary contest, and Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) had convened a small meeting with donors who had contributed thousands of dollars to his previous campaigns. But this year, as Inglis faced a challenge from tea party-backed Republican candidates claiming Inglis wasn't sufficiently conservative, these donors hadn't ponied up. Inglis' task: Get them back on the team. "They were upset with me," Inglis recalls. "They are all Glenn Beck watchers." About 90 minutes into the meeting, as he remembers it, "They say, 'Bob, what don't you get? Barack Obama is a socialist, communist Marxist who wants to destroy the American economy so he can take over as dictator. Health care is part of that. And he wants to open up the Mexican border and turn [the US] into a Muslim nation.'" Inglis didn't know how to respond.
As he tells this story, the veteran lawmaker is sitting in his congressional office, which he will have to vacate in a few months. On June 22, he was defeated in the primary runoff by Spartanburg County 7th Circuit Solicitor Trey Gowdy, who had assailed Inglis for supposedly straying from his conservative roots, pointing to his vote for the bank bailout and against George W. Bush's surge in Iraq. Inglis, who served six years in Congress during the 1990s as a conservative firebrand before being reelected to the House in 2004, had also ticked off right-wingers in the state's 4th Congressional District by urging tea-party activists to "turn Glenn Beck off" and by calling on Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) to apologize for shouting "You lie!" at Obama during the president's State of the Union address. For this, Inglis, who boasts (literally) a 93 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union, received the wrath of the tea party, losing to Gowdy 71 to 29 percent. In the weeks since, Inglis has criticized Republican House leaders for acquiescing to a poisonous, tea party-driven "demagoguery" that he believes will undermine the GOP's long-term credibility. And he's freely recounting his frustrating interactions with tea party types, while noting that Republican leaders are pushing rhetoric tainted with racism, that conservative activists are dabbling in anti-Semitic conspiracy theory nonsense, and that Sarah Palin celebrates ignorance.
The week after that meeting with his past funders -- whom he failed to bring back into the fold -- Inglis asked House Republican leader John Boehner what he would have told this group of Obama-bashers. Inglis recalls what happened:
[Boehner] said, "I would have told them that it's not quite that bad. We disagree with him on the issues." I said, "Hold on Boehner, that doesn't work. Let me tell you, I tried that and it did not work." I said [to Boehner], "If you're going to lead these people and the fearful stampede to the cliff that they're heading to, you have to turn around and say over your shoulder, 'Hey, you don't know the half of it.'"http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/08/gop-rep-inglis-tells-cnn-about-crazy-right-w... more
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James Carville's polling company reports troubling trends for party in power.
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eva2
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added this
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1 year ago
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All Animals Are Created Equal, But Some Animals Are Created More Equal Than Others!
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Andrea Tantaros has penned a scorching editorial for the New York Daily News deeming First Lady Michelle Obama a "modern-day Marie Antoinette" for her vacation in Spain with her daughter.
"The First Lady is spending the next few days in a five-star hotel on the chic Costa del Sol in southern Spain with 40 of her 'closest friends,'" Tantaros writes, pointing to a CNN report that Michelle Obama and her group are expected to occupy 60 to 70 rooms. "Not exactly what one would call cutting back in troubled times."
"CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller reports the C-32A (757) the First Lady used to fly to Spain - one of the planes that usually serves as Air Force Two, and sometimes Air Force One - operates at a Department of Defense reimbursement rate of $11,351 per hour.
So a 6.5 hour flight to Spain would run $73,781.50 - double for the round trip.
The White House says that as a policy, official trips by the first family are paid by the government but all personal elements paid are personally. Since this is a private trip, the White House seems to be suggesting that the Obamas are personally paying all costs associated with the vacation.
But there appears to be some wiggle room there, in part because the Secret Service must protect the First Family, and the cost to taxpayers would presumably go up during travel.
A few years ago, as Knoller notes, the Government Accountability Office did an analysis of presidential travel at the behest of Congress. The Secret Service refused to divulge how many personnel and costs are associated with safeguarding a protectee during a trip, citing its policy to not give up information that might be used to gauge a level of protection."
I have no qualms with Michell and her daughter taking a vacation. I DO, however have problems with them taking along "40 of their closest friends", taking up 60 to 70 rooms in a luxury hotel that rent for $400 to $2500 per night, and expecting the American taxpayer to pay for it. We paid for their $70,000 'date night', and it cost us $250,000 for their Air Force One tour of Manhattan. With our economy in the toilet and unemployment sky high I'd like to see Washington's rich and famous pay for their OWN damned trips.Andrea Tantaros has penned a scorching editorial for the New York Daily News deeming... more
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"Campaigning for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008, Senator Barack Obama said, 'I don't want to just end the war, but I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place.'
But as Andrew Bacevich notes in his new book, 'Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War,' as President, Barack Obama has done the opposite: he has promoted and acted on behalf of the mindset that leads to war."
Was Barack Obama intimidated by his first meetings with the Joint Chiefs of Staff? What other explanation could there be for his rapid shift in ideology? How does a man who campaigned as an opponent of war so readily become a war advocate?"Campaigning for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008, Senator Barack... more
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Tomorrow, TIME Magazine will treat newsstand customers everywhere to one of the most rank propaganda plays of the Afghanistan War. The cover features a woman, Aisha, whose face was mutilated by the Taliban, next to the headline, "What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan." Far more people will see this image and have their emotions manipulated by it than will read the article within (which itself seems to be a journalistic travesty, if the web version is any indication), so TIME should be absolutely ashamed of themselves for such a dishonest snow job on their customers. Readers deserve better.
Let’s clarify something right off the top when it comes to this cover: Aisha, the poor woman depicted in the photograph, was attacked last year, with tens of thousands of U.S. troops tramping all over the country at the time. This isn’t the picture of some as-yet-unrealized nighmarish future for Afghan women. It’s the picture of the present.
Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) recently published report on this issue, The "Ten-Dollar Talib" and Women’s Rights, provides key context for the struggle for women’s political equality in Afghanistan:
Afghan women assert their rights in what is already a deeply hostile political environment. Any assessment of women’s rights, and indeed the prospects for long-term peace and reconciliation needs to be made in the context of the very traditional and often misogynistic male leadership that dominates Afghan politics. The Afghan government, often with the tacit approval of key foreign governments and inter-governmental bodies, has empowered current and former warlords, providing official positions to some and effective immunity from prosecution for serious crimes to the rest. Backroom deals with abusive commanders have created powerful factions in the government and Parliament that are opposed to many of the rights and freedoms that women now enjoy. As one activist told us, “We women don’t have guns and poppies and we are not warlords, therefore we are not in the decision-making processes.”
This is something that folks who put together TIME’s cover better understand right now: the fox is already in the hen-house. There is a very powerful set of anti-women’s-equality caucuses already nested within the Afghan government that the U.S. supports. These individuals and groups are working to reassert the official misogyny of the Taliban days already, independent of the reconciliation and reintegration process. Given the opportunity, these individuals and groups in the U.S.-backed government will manipulate the reconciliation and reintegration process and leverage armed-opposition-group participation in the process to push through policies they’d prefer already as compromises with their "opponents." This is why the propaganda of TIME’s cover is so pernicious: the women of Afghanistan are caught in a vice already, stuck between their opponents in the insurgency and in the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. If one is concerned about the rights of women in Afghanistan, the question is, how do we give women the most leverage possible in this situation?
Further, TIME’s incendiary headline, "What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan," is a total misrepresentation of the issue discussed in the article. Here’s Aisha in her own words:
"They [the Taliban] are the people that did this to me," she says, touching her damaged face. "How can we reconcile with them?"
Here’s another quote from another woman that gets at the issue much better than TIME’s headline:
"Women’s rights must not be the sacrifice by which peace is achieved," says parliamentarian Fawzia Koofi.
And another quote:
"When we talk about women’s rights," Jamalzadah says, "we are talking about things that are important to men as well — men who want to see Afghanistan move forward. If you sacrifice women to make peace, you are also sacrificing the men who support them and abandoning the country to the fundamentalists that caused all the problems in the first place."
If we are to believe the setup on the cover and in the article, the women of Afghanistan see two options: the U.S. can "stay" and ensure the rights of women, or we can "leave" by route of selling them out. But that’s neither what the women’s quotes say nor what Human Rights Watch found when they interviewed 90 "working women and women in public life living in areas that the insurgents effectively controlled or where they have a significant presence to illustrate the current nature of the insurgency." While they found an intense anxiety over the consequences of the Taliban regaining a share of national power, they also found that:
"All of the women interviewed for this report supported a negotiated end to the conflict."
The quotes of the women in TIME’s article express anxiety about the Kabul government negotiated away women’s rights to warlord war criminals, not us "staying" or "leaving." See what TIME did there? They’ve taken these quotes from Afghan women and manipulated them to portray a false dilemma.
TIME Magazine throws out this useless bromide: "For Afghanistan’s women, an early withdrawal of international forces could be disastrous." Early compared to what? How can a pull-out almost a decade into a conflict be remotely described as "early?" Even if we build a shining utopia for women while U.S. troops were there in large numbers, women’s rights would evaporate the day after we departed if U.S. troops were the force holding them in place. That’s what Afghan Women’s Network’s Orzala Ashraf meant when she told Rethink Afghanistan that,
"I don’t believe and I don’t expect any outside power to come and liberate me. If I cannot liberate myself, no one from outside can liberate me."
The struggle is the liberation as Afghan women discover and use their power. Grassroots involvement in social struggle is what creates societies rooted in democratic values, not men with guns from other countries.
Although you wouldn’t know it from TIME’s editorializing within the article or from the horrendously misleading cover, the issue is not even remotely "if" we leave Afghanistan. We will. The questions are "When?" and "How?"Tomorrow, TIME Magazine will treat newsstand customers everywhere to one of the most... more
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Matt Taibbi's latest article in Rolling Stone giving a good analysis and criticism of Congress' "historical" financial reform legislation. Here's a snippet:
"But Dodd-Frank was neither an FDR-style, paradigm-shifting reform, nor a historic assault on free enterprise. What it was, ultimately, was a cop-out, a Band-Aid on a severed artery. If it marks the end of anything at all, it represents the end of the best opportunity we had to do something real about the criminal hijacking of America's financial-services industry. During the yearlong legislative battle that forged this bill, Congress took a long, hard look at the shape of the modern American economy – and then decided that it didn't have the stones to wipe out our country's one dependably thriving profit center: theft."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/188551?RS_show_page=0Matt Taibbi's latest article in Rolling Stone giving a good analysis and... more
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The Senate invoked cloture on a bill that provides states with $26 billion in funding for Medicaid and to prevent mass layoffs of teachers. These two streams of funding have been added to — and then cut from — bill after bill, because conservatives objected to their cost. Initially, the bill that was voted on today added $5 billion to the deficit, but it was tweaked to include larger spending offsets. And according to the Congressional Budget Office, it now decreases the deficit by $1.3 billion over ten years through cuts to food stamps and closing corporate tax loopholes.
Two Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) — voted to invoke cloture and end the ongoing filibuster. The rest of the Republican caucus, however, voted no. That’s 38 Republican senators who voted against a deficit reducing jobs bill. (Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) didn’t vote.) The Wonk Room explains how this vote clearly puts the lie to the notion that Republicans really want small spending measures to pass, but only if they’re “paid for.”The Senate invoked cloture on a bill that provides states with $26 billion in funding... more
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Rachel nails it, just what are republicans going to run on? All they have done is nothing but stand in the way.Rachel nails it, just what are republicans going to run on? All they have done is... more
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A bill that would give law enforcement more leeway during interrogations of people deemed a public security risk would "gut" the rights afforded to people who have been arrested, critics say.
The bill, put forward at the end of last week by US House Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), appears to have the unofficial backing of the Obama administration, at least in principle.
The Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act of 2010 would extend to four days the period of time that law enforcement has to question a terrorist suspect before bringing the suspect before a judge.
Currently, as Schiff explains in a press statement, officials have six hours to present a suspect before a judge. Statements taken after that time would be inadmissible. Schiff's bill would give interrogators four days, provided the US attorney general or Director of National Intelligence sign off on it.
The bill also includes a clause expressing Congress' belief that authorities can delay reading a national security suspect's Miranda rights "for as long as is necessary."
In his efforts, Schiff appears to have the unofficial backing of Attorney General Eric Holder. In May, in the wake of the Times Square bombing attempt, Holder said he wanted Congress to modify the public-safety exception to Miranda rights to make it easier to interrogate terrorists. (The Supreme Court has ruled that Miranda rights can be overlooked in certain national security situations, but backers of new legislation say the exception is not large enough.)
In TV interviews, Holder said he wanted to see an expansion of the exception to Miranda rights, and that he would work with Congress to make that happen.
Schiff told Politico that he got "no formal endorsement" from the Obama administration for his bill, but Politico reports that the Department of Justice is reviewing the legislation.
Blogger Marcy Wheeler calls Schiff's proposed law a "gutting of Miranda rights." She points to comments by Ben Wittes of the Brookings Institution, who supports the legislation and said it should "focus more on suspects who pose a national security threat rather than those sought in connection with particular terrorism-related crimes," according to Politico.
To Wheeler, that suggests that many more people than just terrorism suspects could be caught in the new rules.
"So can an environmental activist lose Miranda rights under this bill?" Wheeler asks. "Can Quakers?"
Ken Gude of the Center for American Progress described the bill to Politico as "a proposed solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. ... Whatever the political theater surrounding Miranda warnings, the FBI obtained valuable intelligence information from both the underwear and Times Square bombers under the existing rules.”
(a little more @ link)A bill that would give law enforcement more leeway during interrogations of people... more
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Last week it was reported that the Obama Administration wants to give the FBI power to force internet companies to reveal information about their users' internet activities: things like who they send email to, times and dates of emails, and maybe also information about their web browser activity.
Even worse, they want the FBI to be able to demand this information without a warrant!
President Obama is racking up an atrocious record on civil liberties and the Fourth Amendment. When he campaigned, he talked a lot about civil liberties. But when he got elected, he made an about-face and started expanding the abusive policies of the Bush Administration.
For example, his Justice Department claimed that "state secrets" doctrine started by Bush gave the government even more secrecy powers than Bush had claimed!
And earlier this year, the president signed a bill re-authorizing even the most abusive parts of the PATRIOT Act.
It seems that Obama has lots of respect for government power, and little or no respect for the rights of the people. Just like his predecessor.
Democrats and Republicans are cooperating to grow the power of government and trample on our rights. Please support the Libertarian Party and Libertarian candidates this year. We are the only real opposition.
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I find it strange all the civil liberty activists are quiet now that a Democrat was elected.Last week it was reported that the Obama Administration wants to give the FBI power to... more
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It's kind of funny the same party that helped establish the 14th amendment want to change it!It's kind of funny the same party that helped establish the 14th amendment want... more
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