Fuck You Mr. Obama, Sellout

[Box Burner]

It cannot happen as long as we have a two party system and there are republicans and democrats in office. Until those conditions are met the only fix is armed revolution.

Makes for a nice bumper sticker, but the reality of a successful armed revolution in this day and age is a pipe dream of massive proportions.

Generally I agree. But as long as the current crop of "leaders" and the system that they have for staying at the top stays in place things will not change. As I have said before; If you voted for a democrat or a republican, you have wasted your vote. As long as those two parties, and their cronies, remain in charge things will only get worse. The two party system just makes it easy for any other two political parties to fix themselves at the top where they will become "republicans and democrats", with new names. You are right, an armed revolution will not work. At least not in the sense that most people think that it should. The problem is bigger than just the United States. The real enemy has been quite successful with their campaign of disinformation. Probably the best we could get out of a revolution is that it will spread with the end result being, aside from the massive destruction, total anarchy.

I suppose being a borg wouldn't be so bad. Live and work in your cubicle, eat your rations, watch the lives of the rich and famous on the video feed, and go into the compost heap when you are no longer able to be "productive". I wonder how our childrens children will feel about it. I wonder if they will be allowed to.


"In the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all -- security, comfort, and freedom. When ... the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free." -- Sir Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." - Thomas Jefferson


"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. ... God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion; what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms." -- Thomas Jefferson


The republicans are two sides of the same wooden nickel, if you vote for either of them, no matter how good the individual running for office might be, you have wasted your vote. They are like cockroaches. For every one that you see there are 200 more in hiding who will come out as soon as you are not paying attention.

[Elderberry]

Sure, let's cut the police and fire protection and schools. Is that what you mean by distribution of wealth?

no, lets cut the bridges to nowhere, bullet trains to nowhere, subsidies to various special interest groups, foreign aid,
some military, certain "entitlements" and social programs (not all, by any means, but we all know there is huge waste and redundancy on social spending). etc, etc.......and for "cause", congressional perks and retirements.

Of course, the list could go on, and is very, very subjective..

And, are you saying there is no waste in the education system? It's not a "sacred cow".

(Swoon...)
Yiggy for president!

A "D" is just an "R" with its legs tucked in.

pure genius right there............much better than my " D and R: two sides of the same wooden nickel"

May I plagiarize?

Oh God, now I have TWO of you to deal with!

[ygmir]

Sure, let's cut the police and fire protection and schools. Is that what you mean by distribution of wealth?

no, lets cut the bridges to nowhere, bullet trains to nowhere, subsidies to various special interest groups, foreign aid,
some military, certain "entitlements" and social programs (not all, by any means, but we all know there is huge waste and redundancy on social spending). etc, etc.......and for "cause", congressional perks and retirements.

Of course, the list could go on, and is very, very subjective..

And, are you saying there is no waste in the education system? It's not a "sacred cow".

(Swoon...)
Yiggy for president!

A "D" is just an "R" with its legs tucked in.

pure genius right there............much better than my " D and R: two sides of the same wooden nickel"

May I plagiarize?

Oh God, now I have TWO of you to deal with!

*runs over and kisses JK on the cheek, big hug*

I love ya buddy......you keep me in line.

[CapSmashy]

Definitely agree with cutting defense spending. Social Security should be fixed by removing the cap on SS tax ad means testing, and Medicare should be fixed by implementing a public health system for everyone.

Unless their are massive refunds being doled out, no means testing for social security. Even if you did quite well for yourself into retirement, you were still forced by law to pay that money into the system and it is yours when you hit the age to start collecting it. And yes, remove the wage cap.

[Foxfur]

(Swoon...)
Yiggy for president!

A "D" is just an "R" with its legs tucked in.

pure genius right there............much better than my " D and R: two sides of the same wooden nickel"

May I plagiarize?

Please do!
Sometimes these things pop into my head from outer space.
I love that...

[Foxfur]

Definitely agree with cutting defense spending. Social Security should be fixed by removing the cap on SS tax ad means testing, and Medicare should be fixed by implementing a public health system for everyone.

Unless their are massive refunds being doled out, no means testing for social security. Even if you did quite well for yourself into retirement, you were still forced by law to pay that money into the system and it is yours when you hit the age to start collecting it. And yes, remove the wage cap.

My dad had a kick ass retirement investment account as well as a GE pension (75% of his ending salary!!!) so he tried to refuse his SS checks. They said he couldn't do that. He showed them... He donated every dime of every check until he died to local charities.
Man, I miss having him in this world. A tremendous role model whose values live on in my continuing to make modest cash donations to the local food pantries even though I lost my job 18mos ago. If I can eat and have money left over then I can't bear knowing that my fellow neighbor is going without.
Even in tough times we still need to do what we can for others. It's the American way.
I also volunteer there to help put together food boxes for elderly shut ins and am hoping to recieve my cert to deliver the boxes personally.

[graidawg]

Definitely agree with cutting defense spending. Social Security should be fixed by removing the cap on SS tax ad means testing, and Medicare should be fixed by implementing a public health system for everyone.

Unless their are massive refunds being doled out, no means testing for social security. Even if you did quite well for yourself into retirement, you were still forced by law to pay that money into the system and it is yours when you hit the age to start collecting it. And yes, remove the wage cap.

My dad had a kick ass retirement investment account as well as a GE pension (75% of his ending salary!!!) so he tried to refuse his SS checks. They said he couldn't do that. He showed them... He donated every dime of every check until he died to local charities.
Man, I miss having him in this world. A tremendous role model whose values live on in my continuing to make modest cash donations to the local food pantries even though I lost my job 18mos ago. If I can eat and have money left over then I can't bear knowing that my fellow neighbor is going without.
Even in tough times we still need to do what we can for others. It's the HUMAN way.
I also volunteer there to help put together food boxes for elderly shut ins and am hoping to recieve my cert to deliver the boxes personally.

THAT MY FRIEND IS WHAT PEOPLE FORGET oops didnt meant to shout.
Imho the real problem is that the curent system simply no longer works, when we had smaller communities wealth was more even distributed now, with worldwide corporatins gobbling up the cash in the world there is less for people and we are convinced we need ever more expensive things and new ones at that. i have a hat its over 20 years old and i inherited it from my dad. My laptop however is 2 years old and in another two it will be virtually unusable because of progress.

[Elderberry]

Here's a solution that I think we ALL can agree on to fix the budget. (Just another reason I like this man.)

I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/warren-buffe ... e-minutes/

[Box Burner]

Here's a solution that I think we ALL can agree on to fix the budget. (Just another reason I like this man.)

I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/warren-buffe ... e-minutes/

I like this too, but you must stipulate that they cannot simply raise taxes to cover it.

[Elderberry]

Here's a solution that I think we ALL can agree on to fix the budget. (Just another reason I like this man.)

I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/warren-buffe ... e-minutes/

I like this too, but you must stipulate that they cannot simply raise taxes to cover it.

I don't think you would need to do that. If all they did was raise taxes they wouldn't be reelected anyway!

[graidawg]

out of curiosity does anyone know the total world debt and total world gdp. i'm just curious to find out if the world is in debt to itself.

[Elderberry]

There's this: http://www.usdebtclock.org/world-debt-clock.html

[can't sit still]

You'll all be happy to learn that the military budget has increased $ 17 billion. This is LESS than obummer asked for. He is very clear about his priorities;
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25537

[graidawg]

There's this: http://www.usdebtclock.org/world-debt-clock.html

thanks from that assuming my in my head adding up is good, external debt to gdp 2540% over 20 countries thats 1270% of gdp for those 20 countries that means the world is in debt to itself or more likely that private corporations and individuals control the worlds economies. For me thats a massive fail on the part of gov. or we could all default and bankrupt the world which would be funny.

[cowboyangel]

I say it again, fuck this uncle tom slave to Wall St president and fuck all the corporations who prop him and puss sack administration up.


President Obama's Big Deal: Cuts for Social Security, but No Taxes for Wall Street
Monday 18 July 2011
by: Dean Baker, Truthout | News Analysis


The ability of Washington to turn everything on its head has no limits. We are in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Even though the recession officially ended two years ago, there are still more than 25 million people who are unemployed, can only find part-time work or who have given up looking for work altogether. This is an outrage and a tragedy. These people's lives are being ruined due to the mismanagement of the economy.

And we know the cause of this mismanagement. The folks who get paid to manage and regulate the economy were unable to see an $8 trillion housing bubble. They weren't bothered by the doubling of house prices in many areas, nor the dodgy mortgages that were sold to finance these purchases. Somehow, people like former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan and his sidekick and successor Ben Bernanke thought everything was fine as the Wall Street financers made billions selling junk mortgage and derivative instruments around the world.

When the bubble burst, one of the consequences was an increased budget deficit. This is kind of like two plus two equals four. The collapsing bubble tanked the economy. Tax revenue plummets and we spend more on programs like unemployment insurance and foods stamps. We did also have some tax cuts and stimulus spending to boost the economy. The result is a larger budget deficit.

All of this is about as clear as it can possibly be. The large deficit came about because the housing bubble, which was fueled by Wall Street excesses, crashed the economy. Yet, we are constantly being told by politicians from President Obama to Tea Party Republicans that we have a problem of out-of-control spending.

The claim of out-of-control spending is simply not true. It is an invention, a fabrication, a falsehood with no basis in reality that politicians are pushing to advance their agenda. And that agenda is not pretty.

According to numerous reports in the media, President Obama wants a "big deal" on the budget, which will involve cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. The last is especially ironic, since Social Security is financed by its own designated tax. Therefore, it does not contribute to the deficit. If there is no money in the Social Security trust fund, then benefits will not be paid.



The plans to cut to Social Security also seem perverse since we know that the vast majority of retirees are not living especially well right now and the benefits already are not especially generous. If we exclude their Social Security income, more than 80 percent of people over the age of 65 get by on less than $20,000 per year.

The average Social Security check is about $1,100 a month. This would be less than an hour's pay for many of the Wall Street honchos whose greed and incompetence brought down the economy.

Yet, when President Obama preaches equality of sacrifice, it is the elderly and the poor who are supposed to do most of the sacrificing. His plan to change the annual cost-of-living adjustment formula for Social Security would reduce benefits for someone in their seventies by 3 percent, in their eighties by 6 percent and in their nineties by 9 percent.

These are huge cuts. The Republicans are screaming bloody murder because President Obama wants to raise the top tax rate by 4.6 percentage points. Imagine that he proposed raising taxes on the wealthy by twice as much. That is effectively what he is proposing for people in their nineties who are entirely dependent on Social Security.

And he is proposing to impose this tax on seniors who had nothing to do with the crisis, while leaving Wall Street untouched. A modest tax on financial speculation could raise more than $150 billion a year or $1.5 trillion over the course of a decade.

It is striking that a financial speculation tax (FST) has not been mentioned in the debt discussions. The European Union has been actively debating the imposition of a FST ever since the crisis. The European Parliament voted for such a tax by a margin of more than 3 to 1. The United Kingdom has had an FST for decades. It raises the equivalent, relative to the size of its economy, of almost $40 billion a year just by taxing stock trades. Even the International Monetary Fund has come out in support of increased taxes on the financial sector.

Presumably, the continuing power of the financial industry explains why few in Washington are discussing an FST. After all, a director of Morgan Stanley, Erskine Bowles, was the head of President Obama's deficit commission.

And this explains why we are looking to gut Social Security and Medicare in response to Wall Street's wreckage of the economy. The basic story is that the average worker and retiree will have to sacrifice because of the damage that the Wall Street crew did to the economy. That is what democracy in America's looks like now.

[can't sit still]

“When a nation becomes obsessed with the guns of war, social programs must inevitably suffer. We can talk about guns and butter all we want to, but when the guns are there with all of its emphasis you don't even get good oleo. These are facts of life.”-- Martin Luther King Jr.

While the retirees are in for a good [bad] screwing, it can't be considered an accident,,,, a result of a bad economy. We live [and die] in a corporatocracy. The U.S. has been obsessed with demographics for decades. They point to Japan with horror,,, all those old people who are demanding to be taken care of. Our southern borders were thrown open to correct the age imbalance. Too few workers supporting too many retirees. These retirees tie up capital that could be put top far better use [making profit]. Obviously, one must make a distinction between Medicare and Social Security. We paid for SS. Medicare is a different animal,,, and a very expensive one.
"What we do know is the percentage of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) that Medicare makes up. Currently the latest numbers show that the program takes up about 5% of the Gross Domestic Product."
http://www.seniorcorps.org/medicare/wha ... n-the-u-s/
I'm not going to claim that Medicare is wasted money. It could be managed much better. A study by the Veterans Admin concluded that coronary bypass operations do not extend life. There are other procedures that have very poor cost-to-benefit ratios.
SS helps pay the basic cost of living. Medicare makes a lot of money for the medical and pharmaceutical sectors. Follow the money.

[cowboyangel]

The republicans are dirt bag enemies of the people. They represent their corporate masters, not the people of the US. Their party should be declared in violation of the constitution and banned forever. Their leaders ought to be exiled to China.

[unjonharley]

\

The "mob alone" skims more each month from medicare, Than the 55 million on it, pay in..

[Ugly Dougly]

Finally we can agree on a solution!

not.

[ygmir]

Jeebus CA..........

yeah, 'cause it'd work so much better, with only one party, one mind set, on proletariat, guided by all knowing, all compassionate comrade generals...........

[cowboyangel]

come on ygmir...that party is utterly evil. Any doubts?


Ralph Nader flays the coward Uncle Tom president...may he reside at 1600 Pennsylvania for only one term, the dirt bag lying son of bitch democrat.

[Ugly Dougly]

come on ygmir...that party is utterly evil. Any doubts?


Ralph Nader flays the coward Uncle Tom president...may he reside at 1600 Pennsylvania for only one term, the dirt bag lying son of bitch democrat.

So you're a Nadirite?

[ygmir]

I'm just sayin, we need more than one party............and, well, I'd say which one is "more evil" is very subjective.

[can't sit still]

Excuse me ! for bringing a bit of reality to the table. Power corrupts and attracts the already-corrupted. Money will always search out the corrupted to do their bidding. In a fascist state, it matters little what party the leader claims to espouse.

[littleflower]

cowboy, i can't help it .....

what, exactly, do you think a corporation is?

what does it do with all its money?

i mean, lets try to get down to earth here ......

[Ugly Dougly]

I know, LF! They exist to create jobs for us, the little people!

[ygmir]

I know, LF! They exist to create jobs for us, the little people!

a job fair?

[cowboyangel]

come on ygmir...that party is utterly evil. Any doubts?


Ralph Nader flays the coward Uncle Tom president...may he reside at 1600 Pennsylvania for only one term, the dirt bag lying son of bitch democrat.

So you're a Nadirite?

I'm not any "ite". Ralph most of the time, makes the most sense. What can he expect, we live with a criminal government now.

[cowboyangel]

I'm just sayin, we need more than one party............and, well, I'd say which one is "more evil" is very subjective.

Yeah, I can see how you got there. I despise the democrats too. We need a workers party, an independent party a strong green party. Fuck the dems and asshole reps....scum bags all of them. except Dennis Kucinich and the black caucus and a few women like Lynn Woolsey.

[cowboyangel]

cowboy, i can't help it .....

what, exactly, do you think a corporation is?

what does it do with all its money?

i mean, lets try to get down to earth here ......

Christ Women, need reminding of BP, Massey Energy, EXXON, Monsanto, CHevron, Coke Goldman?? , shit the list is long...most of their CEOs belong in JAIL.