Welcome President Obama

littleflower · Post by **littleflower** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 8:26 am

jkisha wrote:
littleflower wrote:specter's defection will not change his votes, which have hardly been solidly conservative in any case.

"This is a painful decision," Specter told reporters of the stunning move that boosted his 2010 re-election chances to a sixth six-year term by sidestepping a tough challenge in the Republican primary from conservative Pat Toomey.
stunning, my ass. looks to me like he switched because he wasn't sure he could win the primary.

just another old dog who won't go away. ho hum.
I think you will find his vote changing...watch him 'evolve' into a democrat over the coming months...don't forget, he has too much to lose by not conforming; he just needs to do it slowly over time so as to not appear like he just rolled over to his constituents.

JK

i don't think so, JK. he thinks he can win the dem primary, then run as a moderate democrat against a conservative republican. i don't think he has to change anything at all... he already votes with the dems much of the time, which is why he's worried about his seat in the first place.

he's just another old guy clinging to power, doing what he has to to keep it. same thing as joe lieberman, but more dishonest, imho.

cowboyangel · Post by **cowboyangel** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 8:44 am

Lieberman is a slime bag par excellance. When will Norm give up the fight againt Al and let the senate function with a full deck of cards? That's important too and doesn't seem to get any press these days. If the situation were reversed, the republicans would have prevailed long ago like they did in 2000, slime muthas

Ugly Dougly · Post by **Ugly Dougly** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:11 am

He's also won some potential favors from the party in power.

Toolmaker · Post by **Toolmaker** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 3:47 pm

After my recent hospitalizationm I figure I should go be a nurse and do the shit right. The first level of nursing assistant pays more than manufacturing and all levels of nursing are in demand and can't go to mexico or china. I'll still make stuff for fun on the side and actually enjoy the things I make. At least in nursing I'll make people better as opposed to making parts that sometimes hurt when you take em out of the machine.

Apollonaris Zeus · Post by **Apollonaris Zeus** » Mon May 04, 2009 7:10 am

Obama ends offshore tax havens and overseas corporate job creation discount Tax loophole! Should bring hundreds of billions of dollars back into budget.

another of Obama promises being kept!

AIIZ

Toolmaker · Post by **Toolmaker** » Mon May 04, 2009 9:01 am

Apollonaris Zeus wrote:Obama ends offshore tax havens and overseas corporate job creation discount Tax loophole! Should bring hundreds of billions of dollars back into budget.

another of Obama promises being kept!

AIIZ

I hate to break it to you but those billions are already earmarked for your wars during the Obama reign.

You really thought he was gonna stop waging war for the corporate rulers. Not gonna happen, any money he brings in is going to either the war or the corporate rulers.

Mark my words.. nothing will change for the better. If there was a difference between the 2 parties we wouldn't be this bad off. My family thats lived through Iraq now gets to go somewhere else. he only re-enlisted for another stint cuz there aren't any jobs here.

When everyone gets sick of the bloodshed and pocketchange feel free to vote Libertarian.

Ugly Dougly · Post by **Ugly Dougly** » Mon May 04, 2009 11:40 am

Apollonaris Zeus wrote:Obama ends offshore tax havens and overseas corporate job creation discount Tax loophole! Should bring hundreds of billions of dollars back into budget.

another of Obama promises being kept!

AIIZ

Keeping dollars and jobs inside the states is great if he can do it.

Apollonaris Zeus · Post by **Apollonaris Zeus** » Mon May 04, 2009 4:26 pm

Ugly Dougly wrote:
Apollonaris Zeus wrote:Obama ends offshore tax havens and overseas corporate job creation discount Tax loophole! Should bring hundreds of billions of dollars back into budget.

another of Obama promises being kept!

AIIZ
Keeping dollars and jobs inside the states is great if he can do it.

Republicans are going to fight him on this. They are attacking the admin's report that the Stimulus Plan has created and/or kept 150,000 jobs.

Apollonaris Zeus · Post by **Apollonaris Zeus** » Sun May 10, 2009 5:41 am

THE FINAL FRONTIER/to go where no vulcan (human) has gone before

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Maureen Dowd

I dreamed that Spock saved our planet, The Daily Planet of journalism.

Instead of swooping in to figure out the dimensionality and logarithms to rescue the world from red matter, as Spock does in J. J. Abramsâ€™s dazzling new â€œStar Trek,â€

Ugly Dougly · Post by **Ugly Dougly** » Sun May 10, 2009 9:52 am

Sounds like somebody is disappointed that he's not smoking crack and chasing whores.

Box Burner · Post by **Box Burner** » Sun May 10, 2009 11:17 am

Newspapers have their place of course. But keep in mind that the newspapers that want you to pay for them are owned by big money. Do you really think that they are going to print the truth? They all have their fingers in the same pie that the politicians and bankers are feeding off of. Who do you think tells them what they can print.

Buying toilet paper is still cheaper, and it doesn't make your butt sore.

Apollonaris Zeus · Post by **Apollonaris Zeus** » Sun May 10, 2009 10:17 pm

Box Burner wrote:Newspapers have their place of course. But keep in mind that the newspapers that want you to pay for them are owned by big money. Do you really think that they are going to print the truth? They all have their fingers in the same pie that the politicians and bankers are feeding off of. Who do you think tells them what they can print.

Buying toilet paper is still cheaper, and it doesn't make your butt sore.

it will be a sad when the investigator reporter is gone and all you have is the blogs, discussion threads and internet conspiracy sites for your news source.

Few news papers pay for investigative report today. The NYTimes has the largest number of them, Washington Post fewer, SF Chronicle fewer still, Boston Globe may be history soon. I don't count on TV or Cable to really give me intense coverage, but sound bites.

Administration Plans to Strengthen Antitrust Rules

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/busin ... st.html?hp

By STEPHEN LABATON
Published: May 11, 2009
WASHINGTON â€” President Obamaâ€™s top antitrust official this week plans to restore an aggressive enforcement policy against corporations that use their market dominance to elbow out competitors or to keep them from gaining market share.

Susan Etheridge for The New York Times
Christine Varney, left, of the Justice Departmentâ€™s antitrust division.
The new enforcement policy would reverse the Bush administrationâ€™s approach, which strongly favored defendants against antitrust claims. It would restore a policy that led to the landmark antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft and Intel in the 1990s.

The head of the Justice Departmentâ€™s antitrust division, Christine A. Varney, is to announce the policy reversal in a speech she will give on Monday before the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy research organization. She will deliver the same speech on Tuesday to the United States Chamber of Commerce.

The speeches were described by people who have consulted with her about the policy shift. The administration is hoping to encourage smaller companies in an array of industries to bring their complaints to the Justice Department about potentially improper business practices by their larger rivals. Some of the biggest antitrust cases were initiated by complaints taken to the Justice Department.

Ms. Varney is expected to say that the administration rejects the impulse to go easy on antitrust enforcement during weak economic times.

She will assert instead that severe recessions can provide dangerous incentives for large and dominating companies to engage in predatory behavior that harms consumers and weakens competition. The announcement is aimed at making sure that no court or party to a lawsuit can cite the Bush administration policy as the governmentâ€™s official view in any pending cases.

As a result of the Bush administrationâ€™s interpretation of antitrust laws, the enforcement pipeline for major monopoly cases â€” which can take years for prosecutors to develop â€” is thin. During the Bush administration, the Justice Department did not file a single case against a dominant firm for violating the antimonopoly law.

Many smaller companies complaining of abusive practices by their larger rivals were so frustrated by the Bush administrationâ€™s antitrust policy that they went to the European Commission and to Asian authorities.

I'm glad to see this action finally.

AIIZ

Box Burner · Post by **Box Burner** » Mon May 11, 2009 9:31 pm

I agree. It will be a sad day when the investigative reporter is gone. They are mostly gone already. Most papers ( And broadcast news) get their stories from a single source already. with only a little investigation of local issues. We all know that many newspaper slant their news. some overtly, some not. Have you ever wondered if the source is corrupt? I have.

Top reporters have to please somebody to get the kind of assignments they have. You cannot trust them to give you an unbiased account of what they are reporting on. One of my best freinds throughout school wanted to be a reporter. He wrote everything, and still does. Just out of high school when he was submitting stories to local papers and magazines trying to get a break, he happened to get a seat on a plane next to a well known international reporter. Of course he was thrilled and plied the man with many questions about what it was like and what it took to be a good reporter. In the end he was told that if he wanted to be a top reporter he would have to forget about telling the truth. My freind never did become a reporter. It was a long time before he wrote anything again. Even his personal journals I think. He only writes for himself now.

There used to be two big rival papers here behind the Zion Curtain. And there still are two big newspapers here. Interesting thing is that they are both owned by the same corporation and share the same printing facility, sales, delivery system and most of the same staff. I wonder which one is going to tell me the truth?

Don't dissmiss the radical news sites to readily. (The blogs, discussion threads and internet conspiracy sites, etc.). They also have their place. And while I think that sometimes they wouldn't know the truth if it bit them, at least they are honest. And like the man in black said ("best reporting in the Galaxy"). sometime they do hit the mark.

Toolmaker · Post by **Toolmaker** » Mon May 11, 2009 9:58 pm

On Jounalism..

I know alot of ppl don't like Indymedia.. BUT they did report the FTAA thing here in FL fairly accurate and on time while everyone else was trying to ignore what happend and make it look like a riot of some sort.

I was there so I should know..

One thing I always keep in mind when getting the corporate feed of news is that a picture is worth a thousand words and sometimes ppl manage to put some interesting pictures on there. I think there will always be decent journalists out there away from the corp sector but they may have to be on the internet as they certainly aint gonna be pimped on the corp feeds. I have noticed that foreign papers have been a lil more "honest" about the "war" than we seem to be able to be with corp owned news.

At least we still have The Washinton Post to tell us that we are approaching the 5000 mark with no end in sight STILL. In the back of my mind I knew Obama would keep my loved ones in harms way for no good reason but I did hope for awhile there. This coulda been from subliminal programming, I gotta stop sleeping with the TV on. Better yet I should just get rid of the TV but I can't stop looking for hulu commercials.

As to what BoxB said about the two paper companies, I would venture a guess and say that they each reflect a different "popular" view. Even though the same big company might own them both its all about the sales you see. You can sell more papers if you market to both the liberals and conservatives. Now if we had alot more anarchists with money I think we would see some real interesting shit on mainstream media.

As far as conspiracy sites and onion.. without outlets like that I would likely off myself if I only had CNN for my news. Sites like The Onion help keep me from getting depressed and sometimes give me a laugh, even though I know its nothing to laugh about its better than gettin steamed over something I have NO control over. What if Bob Dobbs is right in the end? Than we really are doomed.

I just wish that Obama would keep one fuckin promise and stop the terrorism abroad so others won't want to give us a dose of our own shit back. At least for starters stop fighting for oil we don't need and start pushing for Americans to start farming switchgrass and manufacture fuel for export to put US back to work. We need something so my neighbors will stop shooting each other over pocketchange from street level drug deals and stolen/knockoff goods.

Box Burner · Post by **Box Burner** » Mon May 11, 2009 11:16 pm

Sorry. I did not mean to imply that there were no decent reporters out there. I guess it did come out that way though. Yes there are good journalists out there. And most of them are away from the corporate sector. And "corporate" (corporation) is the key word here. Corporations, those that own news services as well as those that don't, expect their employees to speak the company line at all times. All news is to be reported with an eye to the corporate interest.

As an aside; My freind should have gone on to be a journalist anyway. His ego was a bit fragile and being naive about his heroes he was crushed. He would be an awesome burner. But he has adopted a religious crutch and,but for all it's faults, it serves him well. I am not going to kick it out from under him and demand that he stand without it. He does stand and watch from afar though. And he writes it down.

can't sit still · Post by **can't sit still** » Tue May 12, 2009 7:21 am

At the risk of going off-topic, I see a report that Obama is going to cut $ 2 trillion from health care. Why do I get the feeling that the doctors are going to get screwed?

Apollonaris Zeus · Post by **Apollonaris Zeus** » Tue May 12, 2009 7:29 am

Call your Senator and tell them you support National Health Care!

The Senate Finance committee is holding a public discussion on this topic right now!

My X was a lab tech for private practises. She told me how the doctors would call for tests that she new was unnecessary even if the tests were done by a refering doctor or their general practitioner.

Why?

They can make 1,000% on lab tests from paying insurance companies!

X-rays, Cat and other scans even more.

Call and voice your support!

NOW!

AIIZ

Post by **Elderberry** » Tue May 12, 2009 8:46 am

can't sit still wrote:At the risk of going off-topic, I see a report that Obama is going to cut $ 2 trillion from health care. Why do I get the feeling that the doctors are going to get screwed?

I think you read the report wrong, or it was reported incorrectly. That $2 trillion was the amount the private medical sector volunteered to save in the rise of medical costs over the next 10 years. Obama simply embraced their committment to keeping costs down.

JK

can't sit still · Post by **can't sit still** » Tue May 19, 2009 5:52 pm

Hmmm, is Obama going to go down in history as "The Great Traitor" ? When he appointed Rahm and Geithner, it seemed like AIPAC and J.P. Morgan were going to run the show. He gave billions to the banks and it seemed like a done deal. He was quiet during the Palestinian attacks.
Now, we see the banks scrambling to pay back the TARP money. Obama is trying to nationalize the banks by converting stock. I don't think that was on the agenda when the banks gave him millions in campaign contributions.
We also see Obama playing hardball with israel. No separate state for the Palestinians.... no money from the US. He could never have been elected if he hadn't been anointed by AIPAC . It looks like he's going to jump ship on his 2 biggest financiers.
He won the first election with money. Maybe he expects to win re-election with straight populism. AIPAC and the bankers took a big risk. Obama has a huge majority in congress. It would be very hard to rein him in if he decided to follow a populist agenda. Wait and see.
Dan

littleflower · Post by **littleflower** » Mon May 25, 2009 7:28 am

hooray for presidential perks.... they get to borrow art of their choice from museums! wow

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 87432.html

cowboyangel · Post by **cowboyangel** » Mon May 25, 2009 9:31 am

Maybe someday, we''ll see burner art in the Big House (pun intended)

Hey, I got the City of San Rafael to exhibit my 2 ton Truth sign downtown within the year! Tomorrow, Los Angeles....and then Vilnius Lithuania! Next to the statue of Frank Zappa! Yeah!

Post by **Elderberry** » Mon May 25, 2009 11:38 am

cowboyangel wrote:Maybe someday, we''ll see burner art in the Big House (pun intended)

Hey, I got the City of San Rafael to exhibit my 2 ton Truth sign downtown within the year! Tomorrow, Los Angeles....and then Vilnius Lithuania! Next to the statue of Frank Zappa! Yeah!

Congratulations!!!

JK

Post by **Elderberry** » Mon May 25, 2009 11:39 am

cowboyangel wrote:Lieberman is a slime bag par excellance. When will Norm give up the fight againt Al and let the senate function with a full deck of cards? That's important too and doesn't seem to get any press these days. If the situation were reversed, the republicans would have prevailed long ago like they did in 2000, slime muthas

We're in agreement here.

JK

Post by **Elderberry** » Mon May 25, 2009 11:42 am

littleflower wrote:hooray for presidential perks.... they get to borrow art of their choice from museums! wow

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 87432.html

It's not unusual for Museums to lend art. Many do it for members. Sometimes it's rented for a nominal fee. Sort of like a library.

JK

Ugly Dougly · Post by **Ugly Dougly** » Mon May 25, 2009 4:42 pm

The White House is something of a museum in its own right.

can't sit still · Post by **can't sit still** » Mon May 25, 2009 6:11 pm

"Every â€œgreen jobâ€

littleflower · Post by **littleflower** » Mon May 25, 2009 7:53 pm

cowboyangel wrote:Maybe someday, we''ll see burner art in the Big House (pun intended)

Hey, I got the City of San Rafael to exhibit my 2 ton Truth sign downtown within the year! Tomorrow, Los Angeles....and then Vilnius Lithuania! Next to the statue of Frank Zappa! Yeah!

hey cowboy ... do you have a photo of said sign? i'd love to see it! that's so cool......

cowboyangel · Post by **cowboyangel** » Mon May 25, 2009 11:44 pm

http://911truthburn.blogspot.com

cowboyangel · Post by **cowboyangel** » Tue May 26, 2009 8:26 pm

False Prophet, Uncle Tom on Steroids....

After 8 years of the Bush-Cheney nightmare during which we saw the wanton destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq, the cynical negation of centuries of Law designed to protect the most basic human rights and a foreign policy worthy of Genghis Khan, there came along the "Great Black Hope" in the persona of Barack Obama. The collective world consciousness turned uncritically to what was presented as a new era for peace, change and trust in Government.

Never before had one witnessed such an accomplished use of manipulation, propaganda, imagery and public relations wizardry to sell the public a man who was to take the baton from Bush and run with it in the race to destroy the economy, the rights of the people and help birth a nation totally controlled by those who have always lurked in the shadows of power. "Change" was promised and was delivered in the form of a deepening of the already Dystopic nightmare.

Promises were broken with no apology, the same creative legalese that infested the Bush administration, in the form of John Yoo and Alberto Gonzalez, was again used to deny justice to the inmates of Guantanamo, It was used to justify more torture, more destruction of the Constitution and more illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens.

The President that extended the hand of peace to the Muslim world has murdered hundreds of Pakistani men, women and children. The President who promised accountability in Government has filled his staff with lobbyists, banksters and warmongers. His Attorney General refuses to prosecute some of the worst war crimes committed in modern history and continues to give legal cover to criminals who tortured with impunity.

The country has been further bankrupted by the continuing theft of taxpayer money as the Wall St. campaign donors receive their quid pro quo. Obama has stood by idly as Bernancke states that the private Federal Reserve is not answerable to either Congress of the American public. The U.S. taxpayer is now on the hook for $14.3 Trillion and rising. Foreclosures and unemployment are rising with no meaningful efforts by the administration to alleviate the symptoms, never mind the cause. The new image of America is one of tent cities, lengthening soup kitchen lines, sherrifs evicting countless thousands of young and old from their homes, once prosperous towns descending in to an eerie stillness and an increasingly disillusioned populace.

The "War on terrorism" has mutated in to a control grid for an increasingly aware population. The foundation for this had already been put in place by Bush with the Patriot Act, Patriot Act 2, Military commissions act and numerous executive orders that strangled what was left of Posse Comitatus and the Constitution.

Homeland Security now defines "Terrorists" as those who believe in the Constitution, the first, second and fourth amendments. Returning veterans are being targeted for a denial of their second amendment rights. A "Terrorist Watchlist" of more than a million and rapidly growing, is being used as the basis for denying citizens the rights to travel and to work.

Obama is now mulling over the idea of indefinite detention without trial for U.S. citizens. This, from a teacher of the Constitution ! Bills are in congress to criminalize free speech on the Internet via the Cyberbullying Act which will make hurting somebody's feelings a felony. Just like the Patriot Act this will morph in to a criminalization of political free speech and any criticism of the Government.

"Cyberterrorism" is being used as a pretext to bring government regulation to the the last stronghold of unbiased information. Washington has realized that it's getting harder to get away with their Fascist agenda and are moving to control the field. The populace have become more aware of just what kind of "Change" Obama intended to deliver.

There has been a growing resistance on a state level with several invoking their 9th and 10th Amendment rights in a valiant attempt to stop the Federal Vampire from draining the last drops of blood, the last vestiges of Freedom and Hope.

This is the Dystopic Nightmare that America finds itself in today and each day brings new assaults on Freedom and Sanity. The framework for total control of the citizenry, the economy and the media is being built upon in a relentless aggrandization of Govermental power. Obama sits atop his new Empire still smiling that sickeningly disingenuous smile surrounded by his seasoned courtiers who have worked for decades to bring America in to this new era of the New World Order.

Andrew Hughes is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Andrew Hughes

can't sit still · Post by **can't sit still** » Tue May 26, 2009 8:46 pm

Cowboy, this all brings to mind Gordon lLightfoot's song, "Race among the ruins"
Dick Eastman publishes much of what I write. Here's some thoughts that I recently sent to him;

Dick, from some points of view, a collapse of the US GOV would keep it and israel from doing even more damage. We'll see.
I have some thoughts on the economy. Correct me where I'm wrong.

The credit bubble was all based on spending money that people hoped to earn. Enter the time factor.
The West is full of people who work for luxury wages. Containerized shipping put them in direct competition with 3 billion people who are accustomed to work for survival wages. We lost the jobs and, as long as shipping is cheap, the jobs won't come back.

The financial system leveraged wealth or money or debt to great heights.
This was predicated on future production giving "body" to these instruments. Once again, time enters the equation.

GOV is now spending money that it hopes will be given body by future production. The time factor.
One has to consider that there are MANY people being supported by the productivity of a few. Is this a form of leverage?
Everybody spends money that they hope will be produced in the future.
The banks are all hoping to weather the bad times. BUT, if the productivity of a few is leveraged to fulfill the needs of an army of non-producers, how can the few producers [and a lot of machines] ever hope to stay ahead of the increasing demands of non-producers.

GOV is doing everything to support non-producers. Like a true parasite, it is hastening it's own demise. In it's desperation, it's trampling the host.
Banks control the country. We can speculate and educate the host [us] about alternative monetary arrangements but, I suspect that GOV / banks are not going to willingly change to a system that robs them of their power.
We can't forget the time factor. Last year, GOV set a new record for the deficit. This year, it's 4 times as high. The host, mindful of the time factor has cut back to conserve it's resources. GOV, meanwhile has pulled out all the stops in consumption. GOV NEEDS RESOURCES NOW. The host can outlast the parasite. The parasite has built up a bubble /pyramid of needs. The host, I believe has built up a bubble of wants. The host can scale down his wants to just needs. The parasite, because of the necessity of maintaining power, can't reduce it's expenditures.

The country can't survive without a producing economy. The longer that GOV [banks] concentrate on banks and ignore the producing economy,,,,,, the less production there is to leverage for their survival.
Time is definitely against the parasite. It's screaming for more financial "nutrition" but, time is on the side of the host.

GOV has made itself an adversary. The host is taking smug satisfaction in watching the parasite thrash around looking for blood that isn't there. The recent Ca bond rejection was a pretty clear message. Long treasury bonds were rejected quite a while ago. The host is intuitively withholding nourishment. The parasite sees disintegration in the future. The host only sees hunger. I'm hoping that, as the vision of the host becomes clearer, it will deprive the parasite of everything that it possibly can.

The non-producers will intuitively side with the parasite. But, everything is predicated on future production and future leverage. They don't have any. The more hunger the producers can tolerate, the more disintegration they can serve to the parasite.

Just so it's not all negative;

something to remember;