Aug. 29, 2005: The day America realized that Republicans don't give a shit about Americans

Katrina, George Bush, John McCain, and Cake

This is what happened Monday, Aug. 29, 2005...the day Katrina hit, John McCain's 69th birthday...the day America realized that Republicans don't give a shit about Americans.

Hurricane Katrina:

I remember the radar images from the weather channel the night before landfall. I remember distincly watching it and thinking, "My god...that's going to be bad." I also remember thinking that the government had better be ready to get people out and to deal with the situation.

I was right...it was going to be really, really bad. I mean THIS bad:



While Mississippi and Louisiana were getting slammed by Hurricane Katrina and Americans were dying, THIS is what Bush and McCain were doing:

From CurrentTV comes this amazing footage from WITHIN Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans:

And what were George Bush and John McCain doing while New Orleans was being destroyed and Americans were dying:

Meanwhile, New Orleans was underwater:



And my friend from Mississippi tells me that Mississippi was hit even worse. Years later she was telling me her mother was still in shock from what happened in Mississippi...probably full blown post-traumatic stress syndrome, with minimal help from either insurance companies or the government.

These were the scenes in New Orleans for days after the hurricane: (graphic)

And Bush and McCain were doing this when Louisiana and Mississippi were struggling:

Meanwhile Al Gore, on his own initiative and at his own expense, was helping airlift some 270 Katrina evacuees:

And Barack Obama was equally active as a Senator trying to get aid to the victims and support the recovery.

And Jimmy Carter has been a leader in rebuilding housing for low income residents of New Orleans through Habitat for Humanity:

Why do Republicans hate America? Oh yeah...it is part of their philosophy to drown America in a bathtub. This is how Republican guru Grover Norquist put it:

"Cutting the government in half in one generation is both an ambitious and reasonable goal," Norquist stated in May 2000. "If we work hard we will accomplish this and more by 2025. Then the conservative movement can set a new goal. I have a recommendation: To cut government in half again by 2050"

The death toll of Hurricane Katrina is a direct result of this Republican philosophy of drowning America in a bathtub. Many Americans drowned that day...and George Bush and John McCain ate cake while those Americans died.

And the neglect by Republicans continued. Eleven Repbublicans in the House of Representatives, the Katrina 11, who had no problem giving Halliburton no bid contracts despite incompetence and corruption, voted against aid to Katrina victims. I have been fighting to defeat the Katrina 11 and turn their districts blue ever since. Joe Barton in particular is a nasty, anti-science scrooge of a Republican.

And the neglect by Republicans continued. Even two years after Katrina, my friend from Mississippi wrote this about the situation victims found themselves in:

Most of the people who DID receive money from the insurance companies received only a fraction of what it would cost to replace what they lost. There was the on going battle of wind vs water issue. That even Trent Lott had to deal with. He sued state farm and they settle out of court kind of quietly... However, when Bush visited the coast he promised Trent that he would rebuild his waterfront house. I think it would be interesting to look into what really happened in that case. No one I talked to was happy with the insurance settlements that they received. Now premiums are so high that many people can only afford the basic coverage. Insurance companies were boasting at how much money they gained last year, mainly because they didn't pay the proper amount of money to the people who lost their homes in the disaster. Also, many people have not had the money to fix or rebuild their house and today is the 2 year anniversary.

And George Bush and John McCain did nothing... except eat cake:

See article...

Just what I've been saying all along. Actions speak louder than words.

'Happy Anniversary!'

Related...

• Katrina, George Bush, John McCain, and Cake
• Flashback: As Katrina hit, McCain celebrated 69th birthday with Bush.
• Thom Hartmann asks, after George W Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina, do we want him in Haiti?
• John Mccain George Bush Katrina
  

"I think we ought to remember what Emerson wrote - The true test of civilization is not the census or the size of the city or the crops, but the kind of man (and I'd add women) the country turns out. The kind of national goal we ought to be thinking about is way beyond national product - it is how do we as a nation help our children be the best kinds of people they could possibly be?" - Paul Wellstone

Republicans don't care about jobless Americans

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

Some 1.2 million Americans will lose their jobless benefits if Republicans insist on blocking every bill the Democrats bring to the floor, even bills that they themselves sponsored. We do not count Americans who no longer qualify for unemployment benefits, yet are still jobless.

Have the Republicans forgotten they are the party who in eight years left us with this mess?

Trillions of dollars spent on two wars. Are Iraqis and the Afghanistan people more important than Americans? Is our dependency on oil and coal more important than the safety of American workers? Are our oceans and lands and thousands of jobs worth sacrificing to rich oil companies, leaving us poor at the pump as they get richer?

We bailed out banks that turned around and gave millions to their CEOs as raises and bonuses for tanking our economy. Now the Republicans want to give corporations a tax break! A tax break in this bad economy!

Republicans have lost their moral compass, they have sold there souls to the company store. They call us too lazy to work, “hobos” and just the other day, “spoiled.” I guess trying to keep a roof over our heads and food for our families has spoiled us. As Bush said, how uniquely American it is for Americans to work two to three to four jobs, just to make ends meet.

The Republicans are trying to turn Americans against Americans, they are the party of NO when it comes to helping Americans. You want to stimulate the economy? Then place our taxpayers’ money in the hands of more than 1.2 million jobless Americans.

CECILIA NALL
Chipley

See article...

Well said.

"Truth is treason in the empire of lies." — Ron Paul

Gulf Oil Spill: 7 Ways to Help

Whether you volunteer, report oil-slicked wildlife, write to Congress, donate money, or boycott BP, there are several actions you can take in response to the unprecedented BP/Transocean Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Just how much oil is spilling into the Gulf of Mexico? Here are the stats.

"The time to repair a roof is when the sun is shining." - John F. Kennedy

Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich: Mavericks Extraordinaire

A recent study published by Princeton PhD student Ben Lauderdale — flagged today by Aaron Wiener of the Washington Independent and picked up by USA Today — finds that the two most “Mavericky” House members are … drumroll … Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich.

This shouldn’t be much of a surprise; any such study would hardly seem legitimate if these two didn’t come out on top.

What’s striking is that Paul and Kucinich probably couldn’t agree on anything economically (Paul wants to slash government involvement in pretty much everything while Kucinich wants to use the full power government to help the working class).

At the same time, they stand together in staunch opposition to America’s penchant for war and military action — a concept average pols and traditional newspapers are afraid to seriously consider, and which both parties typically get behind when push comes to shove.

No surprises that Russ Feingold, who has a similar outlook as these two on war, was the top Maverick in the Senate, according to the study.

Wiener explains Lauderdale’s model:

Mavericks, he explained to John Sides, are members who vote “less on the basis of the political dimension that predicts all legislators’ behavior and more on particularistic factors unique to themselves.” In other words, their voting might seem erratic in the context of a rigid political spectrum, reflecting an idiosyncratic willingness to break ranks to support or oppose legislation on specific policy grounds.

In an age of growing partisan polarization where the Republican Party increasingly demands conformity and squashes dissent — and where Democrats (not Kucinich) have subdued their criticism of various Bush policies after Obama adopted them — voting on the basis of policy and principles, rather than conventional wisdom and partisan loyalties, is something people admire.

It’s why Paul and Kucinich are both marginalized often by their party leaders yet have among the most passionate supporters across the nation.

Also, in what should surprise no one at all, John McCain — long the standard-bearer of the term in Washington — has since 2008 moved into negative territory on “Maverickiness,” having plummeted particularly after he began running for president.

See article...

No surprises here...

"Deficits mean future tax increases, pure and simple. Deficit spending should be viewed as a tax on future generations, and politicians who create deficits should be exposed as tax hikers." - Ron Paul

"I think it's inconsistent to tell the American people that you oppose the war and, yet, you continue to vote to fund the war. Because every time you vote to fund the war, you're reauthorizing the war all over again." - Dennis Kucinich

With Liberty and Justice for All...

Who Can Afford It

"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." - Thomas Jefferson

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Obama!

By FRANK RICH
Published: April 3, 2010

NOT since Clark Kent changed in a phone booth has there been an instant image makeover to match Barack Obama’s in the aftermath of his health care victory. “He went from Jimmy Carter to F.D.R. in just a fortnight,” said one of the “Game Change” authors, Mark Halperin, on MSNBC. “Look at the steam in the man’s stride!” exclaimed Chris Matthews. “Is it just me, or does Barack Obama seem different since health care passed?” wrote Peter Beinart in The Daily Beast, which, like The Financial Times, ran an illustration portraying the gangly president as a newly bulked-up Superman.

What a difference winning makes — especially in America. Whatever did (or didn’t) get into Obama’s Wheaties, this much is certain: No one is talking about the clout of Scott Brown or Rahm Emanuel any more.

But has the man really changed — or is it just us? Fifteen months after arriving at the White House, Obama remains by far the most popular national politician in the country, even with a sub-50 percent approval rating. And yet he’s also the most enigmatic. While he is in our face more than any other figure in the world, we still aren’t entirely sure what to make of him.

Depending on where you stand — or the given day — he is either an overintellectual, professorial wuss or a ruthless Chicago machine pol rivaling the original Boss Daley. He is either a socialist redistributing wealth to the undeserving poor or a tool of Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs elite. He is a terrorist-coddling, A.C.L.U.-tilting lawyer or a closet Cheneyite upholding the worst excesses of the Bush administration’s end run on the Constitution. He is a lightweight celebrity who’s clueless without a teleprompter or a Machiavellian mastermind who has ingeniously forged his Hawaiian birth certificate, covered up his ties to Islamic radicals and bamboozled the entire mainstream press. He is the reincarnation of J.F.K., L.B.J., F.D.R., Reagan, Hitler, Stalin, Adlai Stevenson or Nelson Mandela. (Funny how few people compared George W. Bush to anyone but Hitler and his parents.)

No wonder that eight major new Obama books are arriving in the coming months, as Howard Kurtz reported in The Washington Post last week. And that’s just counting those by real authors, like Bob Woodward and Jonathan Alter, not the countless anti-Obama diatribes. There’s a bottomless market for these volumes not just because their protagonist remains popular but also because we keep hoping that the Obama puzzle might be cracked once and for all, like the Da Vinci Code.

The first of these books, out this week, is full of intriguing clues. Titled “The Bridge” and written by David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, it portrays Obama as fairly steady in his blend of liberal and centrist views, however much they (like everyone else’s) may have evolved over decades. Even his cultural tastes combined the progressive with the cautious. In the apartment he shared with a roommate at Occidental College, the playlist at late-night parties ran the gamut from Bob Marley and the Talking Heads to “that not-so-great soft Grover Washington stuff,” a friend recalls with some disdain.

If Obama’s belief system was fairly consistent, his public persona was not. Remnick returns repeatedly to the notion that Obama is a “shape-shifter,” with a remarkable ability to come across differently to disparate constituencies. Some of that reflects his agility at shifting rhetorical gears when, say, speaking to a living-room gathering on Chicago’s Near North Side or at a black church — a talent not unknown to some white politicians, starting with Bill Clinton. But much of this has less to do with Obama’s performance style than with how various audiences respond to his complex, hard-to-pigeonhole poly-racial-cultural-geographical identity. As far back as 2004 — when Obama was still in the Illinois Senate — a writer at The Chicago Tribune, Don Terry, framed what remains the prevailing Obama takeaway to this day. “He’s a Rorschach test,” Terry wrote. “What you see is what you want to see.”

Last week, after I wrote about the role race plays in some of the apocalyptic right-wing hysteria about the health care bill, a friend who is a prominent liberal Obama supporter sent me an e-mail flipping my point. He theorized that race also plays a role in “the often angry and intemperate talk” he has been hearing from “left-liberal friends for the past many months about what a failure and a disappointment” the president has been. In his view, “Obama never said anything, while running, to give anyone the idea” that he was other than a “deliberate, compromise-seeking bipartisan moderate.” My friend wondered if white liberals who voted for Obama expected a “sweeping Republicans-be-damned kind of agenda” in part — and he emphasized “in part!” — because “they expect a black guy to be intemperate, impetuous, impatient” rather than “measured, deliberate, patient.”

Read more...

"The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people." - Theodore Roosevelt

A Ticket for Rush!

Recently, a number of interesting things happened. First, Rush Limbaugh said on his radio show that if the Healthcare Reform Bill passed, he would go to Costa Rica. Second, the Healthcare Reform Bill passed. As you can imagine, this has made a number of people very excited. We are among that number. We want to make sure that Rush is able to make good on his promise, and so we've made this website.

Here's how this is going to work:

1. We're accepting 1 dollar PayPal donations to buy Rush a one-way ticket to Costa Rica. We are currently accepting donations.
2. At the end of the donation period*, we will attempt to personally contact Rush, and offer to buy him a first-class plane ticket from Palm Beach International Airport to San Jose International Airport, Costa Rica.
3. If Rush does get cold feet**, and refuses to move to Costa Rica, we will instead donate all of the money to the Planned Parenthood Action Center.
4. Additionally, if we make more money than the cost of ticket, or if we don't make enough money for a ticket, everything will still go to Planned Parenthood.
   

*Donation period will run until April 30th, 2010. That's like, more than 4 weeks notice for the guy.
**Rush has publicized that he never said he would move to
Costa Rica. However, we still think it's a good idea.

See article...

Hey! First class!

"Let the revolution begin." - Ron Paul

Iraq Opens Up to Foreign Oil Majors

Western producers like BP, Exxon Mobil, and Shell are enjoying their best access to Iraq's southern oil fields since 1972

By Anthony DiPaola and Daniel Williams

(Bloomberg) -- BP Plc and Exxon Mobil Corp. took the best deal they could get in Iraq last year when they won the largest oil contracts since Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003. Oil companies may wait a long time to get a better one.

Parliamentary elections may produce a weak or unstable government incapable of tendering new oil contracts, said Samuel Ciszuk, a London-based analyst at IHS Global Insight. He said he does expect the 10 technical-services contracts won by Exxon, BP and 20 other companies to be honored.

"One thing that's fairly certain is there won't be a strong coalition, so it may take time for the next government to get its act together," Ciszuk said in a telephone interview.

"Bottlenecks could hold up production increases" if no government forms by June.

Western producers haven't had access to oil fields in southern Iraq since 1972, when the country nationalized production including concessions owned by the companies now known as BP, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Exxon.

The contracts awarded in two auctions, which pay a per-barrel fee for development work rather than granting a share in the production itself, will cost the companies a total of about $100 billion to develop deposits, Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said in December. Iraq, with the world's third-largest oil reserves, will earn about $200 billion a year.

Read more...

The article in BusinessWeek later states that,"Iraq is one of the most attractive oil markets in the world." Hmm. 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' may have been a bit of a misnomer. Thankfully, [sarcasm] the wars for all this oil have made that commodity better, more available, and more affordable.

I think they can more appropriately hang their "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner now.

Related...

• "Mission Accomplished," 5 Years Later
• Mission Not Accomplished
• Bush Remarks on "Mission Accomplished" Banner Embarrass White House
• White House pressed on 'mission accomplished' sign
• 2003 Mission Accomplished Speech

"I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive." - Thomas Jefferson

Obama Extends Patriot Act for Another Year

If the Patriot Act hadn't been approved for another year, Sunday would have looked much different.

Sunday could have meant the government was no longer given permission to wiretap the phones of Americans and seize their records and property.

But since the bill was approved by Congressional Democrats earlier this week and signed into law by President Obama on Saturday, this Sunday is just another Sunday for Americans living with the Patriot Act.

To be fair, many Democrats asked for additional protections for the privacy rights of American citizens.

But Republicans said that would detract from the ability of the country's intelligence agencies to track down terrorists. Lacking a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate to pass the bill with the extra provisions, Democrats left them out.

Democratic Rep. Jane Harman opposed the House's approval of the extension, citing abuses during the administration of President George W. Bush.

"While I strongly support using the most robust tools possible to go after terrorists, Congress must revise and narrow -- not extend -- Bush era policies," Harman said.

Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com had the following to say of the overwhelming support of the law's extension:

"One of the strangest prongs of conventional Beltway wisdom is the lament that there is not enough bipartisanship. The opposite is true: many of the most damaging acts inflicted on the country by Washington are enacted on a fully bipartisan basis -- the most destructive political act of this generation, the invasion of Iraq, was fully bipartisan, as were most of the post-9/11 civil liberties abuses and other Bush-era initiatives-- and, at least in certain areas, the harmonious joining together of Republicans and Democrats continues unabated."

Most publications and politicians expected Obama to sign the Patriot Act.

See article...

So where's the change from Bush Administration policies?

"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty." - Thomas Jefferson

"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." - Thomas Paine

Another great email titled...

A Lay-off letter from an excellent boss.

Naturally, of course, I can't let this slide. My responses are in blue.

Dear Employees: As the CEO of this organization, I have resigned myself to the fact that Barrack Obama is our President and that our taxes and government fees will increase in a BIG way.

Really? Have they increased already? How much have they gone up? Because last I checked, they haven't. For anyone. In fact, just about everything else has drastically increased in price, except taxes. Furthermore, have you checked the tax rates historically and compared them with the current rates? According to taxpolicycenter.org, these are the rates for most of the past century for those who have been in the top tax bracket, which generally includes CEOs...

Also available as: PDF Excel

If you look at any particular period of time, you may notice that the lower the highest marginal income tax rate, the worse the economy. The economy crashed in 1929, then again in 1987, and 2008, not to mention the recessions of 1982, 1991 [pdf, pdf], and 2002. There sure are a lot of theories as to how and why these economic downturns occurred, however there are also a few common threads.

But more important to this discussion, note how the tax rate has remained the same under Obama. And though taxes were slightly lower at the end of the Reagan Administration, we all paid considerably more, on average, under the man forever revered in 'conservative' circles. Of course the great reduction in taxes enjoyed under the Reagan Admin. couldn't have been achieved without a record level of deficit spending. Interesting, too, since Ron Paul (R-TX) said and truly believes, "Deficits mean future tax increases, pure and simple. Deficit spending should be viewed as a tax on future generations, and politicians who create deficits should be exposed as tax hikers." It appears that he is suggesting that the tax rate increase that occurred under the Clinton Admin. was a direct result of the unprecedented levels of deficit spending under Ronald Reagan.

With that in mind, please remind me who created this massive deficit. If you answer honestly, it was the George W. Bush Admin. And the bulk of what he didn't contribute was still there from the Reagan/GHW Bush Era. This after Bush entered office with a balanced budget and a tax surplus. Furthermore, from January 2003 to January 2007, when Republicans controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House, this country collected more taxes than ever before, or so they bragged, while also amassing more debt than any other 4 year period in the history of this country. During this time, funds were also cut from public education, law enforcement, border enforcement, firefighting, public roads, and countless other domestic programs and institutions. Tens of billions of dollars are/were funnelled to the wars and their cronies for rebuilding the countries destroyed in these wars.

Sure Obama is on track to borrow about the same as Bush, but he is not enjoying the record high tax revenues Bush did. Bush will most likely retain his record on overall spending.

Ironically, many of the same so-called 'conservatives' are now complaining about the very spending they ALL championed just a couple of years ago. They're also complaining about the wars they insisted were necessary to our national security, the cronyism, the lack of government transparency, the consolidation of power, the trampling of Constitutional rights, etc. when it was ALL OF YOU republicans who made all that possible with your:

1. USA Patriot Act - A 342 page document presented to Congress one day before voting on it that allows the government access to your bank and email accounts, as well as your medical and phone records with no court order. They can also search your home anytime without a warrant.


2. USA Patriot Act II - This one allows secret government arrests, the legal authority to seize your American citizenship, and the extraction of your DNA if you are deemed a potential terrorist.
   
3. Military Commissions Act of 2006 - Ends habeas corpus, the right to an attorney, and the right to court review of one's detention and arrest. Without this most basic right, all other rights are gone too since anyone can be detained indefinitely. Now anyone may be arrested and incarcerated and nobody would know.
   
4. NSPD 51 - A directive signed by George W. Bush on May 9, 2007, that allows the President to declare martial law, effectively transforming the U.S. into a dictatorship with no checks and balances from the Legislative or Judicial Branches. Parts of this directive are considered classified and members of Congress have been denied the right to review it.
   
5. Protect America Act of 2007 - Allows unprecedented domestic wiretapping and surveillance activities with a reduction in FISA court oversight. Probable cause is not needed.


6. John Warner Defense Authorization Act - Signed by George W. Bush on October 17, 2007, this act allows the President to declare a public emergency and station troops anywhere in America without the consent of the governor or local authorities to "suppress public disorder."


7. Homegrown Terrorism and Radicalization Act - Passed overwhelmingly by the House on October 23, 2007, is still awaiting a Senate vote. This act will beget a new crackdown on dissent and the Constitutional rights of American citizens. The definitions of "terrorism" and "extremism" are so vague that they could be used to generalize against any group that is working against the policies of the Administration. In this bill, "violent radicalization" criminalizes thought and ideology while "homegrown terrorism" is defined as "the planed use of force to coerce the government." The term, "force" could encompass political activities such as protests, marches, or any other form of non-violent resistance.

Be careful what you wish for, now you've got it. Don't cry foul just because your candidates aren't the ones with all the stroke anymore.

Back to the email.....

To compensate for these increases, our prices would have to increase by about 10%. But since we cannot increase our prices right now due to the dismal state of the economy, we will have to lay off sixty of our employees instead.

So, you're sticking it to either your loyal customers who keep you in business or your dedicated employees in anticipation of your personal income taxes going up, when, even after a year of "socialism," you still pay the same exact rate you've been paying for seven years? No wonder this country is in the toilet.. with people like you making such 'brilliant' decisions and forcing everyone else to eat it for you. Could this all be avoided if you alone took a mere 5% pay cut?

This has really been bothering me since I believe we are family here and I didn't know how to choose who would have to go.

Yeah, I'm sure you're all broken up about it.

So, this is what I did. I walked through our parking lots and found sixty 'Obama' bumper stickers on our employees' cars and have decided these folks will be the ones to let go. I can't think of a more fair way to approach this problem. They voted for change...... I gave it to them.

Great! Now, not only have you crippled production at the company with selfishly poor, and illegal decisions, but now you have bankrupted it with the ensuing class action discrimination lawsuit from the 60 former employees you singled out. That decision just cost everyone their job because your candidate lost the election. Who would you have laid off if McCain had won and we're all exactly where we are now anyway?

I will see the rest of you at the annual company picnic.

Picnic is canceled. You've got a deposition to prepare for. By using your authority and punishing everyone who has a different opinion than you, you have broken the law and will stand trial. You have violated a fundamental right in this country. The right to free thought.

THE BOSS

Not anymore. Because he both subscribes to petty, partisan politics, flawed logic, and misinformation, AND allows it to dictate his actions, the company is now bankrupt and out of business. Go home.

Related...

• Economy at a Glance
• The U.S. Economy: A Brief History
• World Economic Recession History
• Recession.org
• United States Recession History
• The US Economy at War
  

"The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people. Ron Paul

What Do You Think The 'Tea Party' Movement Is About?

By You Decide - FOXNews.com

How to define the Tea Party movement was nearly as big an issue last week at the National Tea Party Convention as the political issues discussed, from government fiscal responsibility to greater accountability of public officials. Some participants drew cheers for raising more controversial topics, such as President Obama's nationality, but others argued that those points were, at best, politically unproductive. Meghan McCain went further on Monday and called segments of the movement "racist."

So far, the results show...

Small government and fiscal responsibility 13% (29,345 votes)

Exposing Democrats' socialist agenda 1% (2,193 votes)

Voicing outrage at out-of-touch politicians 5% (11,106 votes)

Fruitless mix of racism, conspiracy theories 80% (174,815 votes)

Other (add your comment) 1% (1,446 votes)

Total Votes: 218,905

This is not a scientific poll.

See article & take poll...

Haha! Love it!

"Truth is treason in the empire of lies." - Ron Paul

Fiscal Conservatives In Name Only

For more information go here.

"Never separate the life you live from the words you speak." - Paul Wellstone

A Day in the Life of Joe Republican

Joe gets up at 6:00am to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards. He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure their safety and work as advertised.

All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance, now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

Joe takes his morning shower reaching for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained. Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some tree hugging liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks to the subway station for his government subsidized ride to work; it saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees. You see, some liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay, medicals benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some liberal didn’t think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

It's noon time, Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FDIC because some liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae underwritten mortgage and his below market federal student loan because some stupid liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime.

Joe is home from work, he plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive to dads; his car is among the safest in the world because some liberal fought for car safety standards. He arrives at his boyhood home. He was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans. The house didn’t have electric until some big government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification. (Those rural Republicans would still be sitting in the dark)

He is happy to see his dad who is now retired. His dad lives on Social Security and his union pension because some liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to. After his visit with dad he gets back in his car for the ride home.

He turns on a radio talk show, the host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. (He doesn’t tell Joe that his beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day) Joe agrees, "We don’t need those big government liberals ruining our lives; after all, I’m a self made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have."

See article...

Haha!

To be fair...

• A Day in the Life of Joe Democrat

"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it" - George Santayana

No Joke: South Carolina Now Requires ’Subversives’ to Register

Five-dollar registration fee for persons planning to overthrow US government

Terrorists who want to overthrow the United States government must now register with South Carolina's Secretary of State and declare their intentions -- or face a $25,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison.

The state's "Subversive Activities Registration Act," passed last year and now officially on the books, states that "every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States ... shall register with the Secretary of State."

There's even a $5 filing fee.

By "subversive organization," the law means "every corporation, society, association, camp, group, bund, political party, assembly, body or organization, composed of two or more persons, which directly or indirectly advocates, advises, teaches or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States [or] of this State."

A PDF of the registration form can be found here, courtesy of FitsNews.

Read more...

Hahaha! Wow.

"What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?" - Thomas Jefferson

How Corporations Secretly Move Millions to Fund Political Ads

By Brad Jacobson
Thursday, February 4th, 2010

The Supreme Court’s seismic January ruling that corporations are free to spend unlimited amounts of their profits to advertise for or against candidates may have been the latest shakeup of campaign finance – but gaping holes already allow corporations to spend enormous sums without leaving a paper trail, a Raw Story investigation has found.

Campaign finance experts confirmed that though disclosure rules remained intact in the new Supreme Court decision, there are effective methods to circumvent them.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, an attorney and campaign finance expert at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, said corporations already effectively end-run campaign finance law by shuffling money through trade associations.

“One of their favorites right now is spending through trade associations,” Torres-Spelliscy said.
Trade associations are considered tax-exempt non-profit organizations under US law. While they must report contributions received from other corporations to the Internal Revenue Service, the document itself remains confidential and is not made available to the public.

“Money coming through the trade association doesn’t get disclosed,” Torres-Spelliscy explained. “You can’t tell if it came from particular corporations.”

For example, she said, “The disclaimer form is likely to just say, ‘This is brought to you by the Chamber of Commerce,’ with no extra ability to see behind that.”

The Chamber of Commerce is the world’s largest trade association representing at least 300,000 businesses and organizations.

A fellow non-profit that works on campaign finance, the Center for Political Accountability, calls trade associations “the Swiss bank accounts of American politics.”

“What was the lesson from Watergate?” Torres-Spelliscy quipped. “Follow the money?”

Health insurers, pharmaceutical companies embrace loophole

Trade associations such as America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) have had an enormous impact on the health insurance reform bills pending in Congress. In fact, AHIP was recently found to have solicited $10 million to $20 million from leading health insurance companies -- UnitedHealth, Wellpoint, Aetna, Cigna and Humana among them -- and funneled it secretly to the US Chamber of Commerce to underwrite anti-reform attack ads.

Asked about the story, the Chamber's top lobbyist told the reporter, "No comment. We never disclose funding or what we're going to do." The Chamber of Commerce did not respond to a Raw Story request for comment.

Raw Story’s 2008 award-nominated investigative series The Permanent Republican Majority noted that, “Despite its seemingly bipartisan name, the Chamber of Commerce has operated as a pro-Republican powerhouse since the fervently anti-regulation Thomas J. Donahue became president in 1997.” Raw's Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane uncovered, for instance, that the Chamber, under Donahue's leadership, had an indirect role in the defeat and political prosecution of Governor Don Siegelman and in targeting sitting judges in contested state elections.

President of the Center for Political Accountability Bruce Freed told Raw Story that trade associations also use other trade associations in this manner as “blinds for ads” to “launder their money.”

“It’s a way for the industry to avoid responsibility for those ads,” Freed remarked.

Karl Sandstrom, the Center's lead counsel, noted that it isn't only the public that remains in the dark over the "Swiss bank" loophole. He said that when the Center surveyed boards of directors of companies, the majority of them just assumed their businesses' contributions supporting political ads were being disclosed.

“It’s just almost a working assumption,” Sandstrom said.

Most of the boards of directors, he said, were “shocked to learn there is no disclosure.”

While these types of contributions prior to the new Court ruling could only be used for “issue ads” -- political advertisements that do not expressly advocate for or against a particular candidate -- many such ads were often accused of blurring this line and having nearly the same impact as express advocacy ads.

Christian Hillard, spokesman for the Federal Election Commission (FEC), confirmed Tuesday that the FEC has “no authority over issue ads.”

Corporate funding of issue ads through trade associations has “no filing requirements with us,” he told Raw Story.

New ruling’s impact on the trade association loophole

Now that corporations, including trade associations, are free to spend funds on political ads – which cannot be coordinated with a candidate or political party but which expressly advocate the election or defeat of a candidate – the line between funding issue ads and express advocacy ads has been largely erased.

Campaign finance experts expressed grave concern in conversations with Raw Story.

Paul S. Ryan, an attorney and expert in federal election law at the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C., asserted that Congress did not contemplate this new Court ruling when it wrote the laws for disclosure related to independent expenditures or electioneering communications, because at the time such corporate spending was prohibited. Ryan said that it’s imperative that the FEC addresses disclosure requirements pertaining to this decision.

“Take hypothetically a group like the Chamber of Commerce,” he explained. “The Chamber collects money from lots of other corporations. So the question becomes: What kind of disclosure are we really going to get when the FEC gets around to promulgating rules to implement this Supreme Court decision?”

“Yes, the Chamber needs to file paperwork with the FEC saying we ran an ad saying Vote for Candidate Smith,” he continued. “But does the Chamber need to tell the FEC where it got its money to pay for that ad? And when the FEC adopts its rules to implement this new Supreme Court decision, the FEC will likely say, ‘Chamber of Commerce, you only need to tell us where you got your money if that money was given to you specifically designated to run election ads.’”

Ryan and other campaign finance experts told Raw Story this is a simple dodge.

“It’s child’s play to get around that type of disclosure,” Ryan said, adding, “It’s unclear whether the Court was being naive or disingenuous” when it touted disclosure provisions during its decision.

He explained that, for example, all the Chamber of Commerce has to do is tell other corporations, “Give us money and we’ll make sure it advances your business interests.”

“So as long as the donors don’t say to the Chamber, ‘We’re giving you this money to run political ads,’ as long as they refrain from saying that, then their identity can continue to be shrouded or hidden from the public.”

The Center for Accountability's Sandstrom agreed, saying this type of disclosure “is easily avoided” and adding, “As long as you don’t designate it, you won’t be disclosed.”

The Chamber of Commerce, in fact, argued against any disclosure in the Citizens United case.
“Their first brief filed in Citizens United is on the disclosure issue,” Sandstrom said. “They argued that they would raise substantially more money the more they could keep it anonymous.”

FEC spokesman Hillard said that the FEC was still examining the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision and would not comment on anything pertaining directly to that ruling, including disclosure provisions.

Brad Jacobson is a contributing investigative reporter for Raw Story.

Correction: The Chamber of Commerce represents at least 300,000 businesses and organizations, not three million. The figure was incorrectly put out by the Chamber itself, which revised its membership figure in 2009 but maintains the inflated number on its website.

See article...

This is a huge step backwards. Things are going to get worse.

Related...

• Supreme Court rejects limits on corporate spending on political ...
• Supreme Court Rolls Back Campaign Finance Restrictions
• SUPREME COURT GUTS CAMPAIGN FINANCE LAW FREE SPEECH: In 5-4 ruling ...
• FEC News Stories - Fix the FEC
• COMMENTARY: Supreme Court ruling denounced as 'disastrous ...
• Supreme Court ruling: Pro-GOP?
• The Corporate Take-Over of U.S. Democracy

"The idea of democracy has been stripped of it moral imperatives and come to denote hollowness and hypocrisy." - Paul Wellstone

The Corporate Takeover of U.S. Democracy

By Noam Chomsky

Jan. 21, 2010, will go down as a dark day in the history of U.S. democracy, and its decline.

On that day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the government may not ban corporations from political spending on elections—a decision that profoundly affects government policy, both domestic and international.

The decision heralds even further corporate takeover of the U.S. political system.

To the editors of The New York Times, the ruling “strikes at the heart of democracy” by having “paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding.”

The court was split, 5-4, with the four reactionary judges (misleadingly called “conservative”) joined by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. selected a case that could easily have been settled on narrow grounds and maneuvered the court into using it to push through a far-reaching decision that overturns a century of precedents restricting corporate contributions to federal campaigns.

Now corporate managers can in effect buy elections directly, bypassing more complex indirect means. It is well-known that corporate contributions, sometimes packaged in complex ways, can tip the balance in elections, hence driving policy. The court has just handed much more power to the small sector of the population that dominates the economy.

Political economist Thomas Ferguson’s “investment theory of politics” is a very successful predictor of government policy over a long period. The theory interprets elections as occasions on which segments of private sector power coalesce to invest to control the state.

The Jan. 21 decision only reinforces the means to undermine functioning democracy.

The background is enlightening. In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens acknowledged that “we have long since held that corporations are covered by the First Amendment”—the constitutional guarantee of free speech, which would include support for political candidates.

In the early 20th century, legal theorists and courts implemented the court’s 1886 decision that corporations—these “collectivist legal entities”—have the same rights as persons of flesh and blood.

This attack on classical liberalism was sharply condemned by the vanishing breed of conservatives. Christopher G. Tiedeman described the principle as “a menace to the liberty of the individual, and to the stability of the American states as popular governments.”

Morton Horwitz writes in his standard legal history that the concept of corporate personhood evolved alongside the shift of power from shareholders to managers, and finally to the doctrine that “the powers of the board of directors “are identical with the powers of the corporation.” In later years, corporate rights were expanded far beyond those of persons, notably by the mislabeled “free trade agreements.” Under these agreements, for example, if General Motors establishes a plant in Mexico, it can demand to be treated just like a Mexican business (“national treatment”)—quite unlike a Mexican of flesh and blood who might seek “national treatment” in New York, or even minimal human rights.

A century ago, Woodrow Wilson, then an academic, described an America in which “comparatively small groups of men,” corporate managers, “wield a power and control over the wealth and the business operations of the country,” becoming “rivals of the government itself.”

In reality, these “small groups” increasingly have become government’s masters. The Roberts court gives them even greater scope.

The Jan. 21 decision came three days after another victory for wealth and power: the election of Republican candidate Scott Brown to replace the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the “liberal lion” of Massachusetts. Brown’s election was depicted as a “populist upsurge” against the liberal elitists who run the government.

The voting data reveal a rather different story.

High turnouts in the wealthy suburbs, and low ones in largely Democratic urban areas, helped elect Brown. “Fifty-five percent of Republican voters said they were `very interested’ in the election,” The Wall St. Journal/NBC poll reported, “compared with 38 percent of Democrats.”

So the results were indeed an uprising against President Obama’s policies: For the wealthy, he was not doing enough to enrich them further, while for the poorer sectors, he was doing too much to achieve that end.

The popular anger is quite understandable, given that the banks are thriving, thanks to bailouts, while unemployment has risen to 10 percent.

In manufacturing, one in six is out of work—unemployment at the level of the Great Depression. With the increasing financialization of the economy and the hollowing out of productive industry, prospects are bleak for recovering the kinds of jobs that were lost.

Brown presented himself as the 41st vote against healthcare—that is, the vote that could undermine majority rule in the U.S. Senate.

It is true that Obama’s healthcare program was a factor in the Massachusetts election. The headlines are correct when they report that the public is turning against the program.

The poll figures explain why: The bill does not go far enough. The Wall St. Journal/NBC poll found that a majority of voters disapprove of the handling of healthcare both by the Republicans and by Obama.

These figures align with recent nationwide polls. The public option was favored by 56 percent of those polled, and the Medicare buy-in at age 55 by 64 percent; both programs were abandoned.

Eighty-five percent believe that the government should have the right to negotiate drug prices, as in other countries; Obama guaranteed Big Pharma that he would not pursue that option.

Large majorities favor cost-cutting, which makes good sense: U.S. per capita costs for healthcare are about twice those of other industrial countries, and health outcomes are at the low end.

But cost-cutting cannot be seriously undertaken when largesse is showered on the drug companies, and healthcare is in the hands of virtually unregulated private insurers—a costly system peculiar to the U.S.

The Jan. 21 decision raises significant new barriers to overcoming the serious crisis of healthcare, or to addressing such critical issues as the looming environmental and energy crises. The gap between public opinion and public policy looms larger. And the damage to American democracy can hardly be overestimated.

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor & Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the author of dozens of books on U.S. foreign policy. He writes a monthly column for The New York Times News Service/Syndicate.

See article...

"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." - Thomas Jefferson

Angel of Death

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." - Thomas Jefferson

Kucinich shreds Democrats for betraying the promise of change

Slams health bill 'madness'

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) on Wednesday said the Massachusetts election was a "wake up call" for Democrats and that his party had better change course or it could suffer devastating losses come November.

"People elected Democrats in 2008 to change the country's direction," he told Raw Story in a nearly hour-long interview.

"And the same entrenched interests that George Bush could not shake, this current White House is having great difficulty in shaking. One could suggest they might be more entrenched than ever."

Kucinich staunchly defended liberalism but alleged that Democrats are not behaving like liberals.

"There's nothing liberal about the bailouts. There's nothing liberal about standing by and watching banks use public money to get their executive bonuses. There's nothing liberal about giving insurance companies carte blanche to charge anything they want for health care... Since when did that become liberal?"

"There's nothing liberal about letting coal and oil write climate change legislation," he added. "Are you kidding me?"

The 13-year congressman lamented the lack of change in economic policies, tying it to the major problems Democrats are facing.

"The minute the president appointed Tim Geithner and Larry Summers to key policy positions, and the minute that [Ben] Bernanke was named to head the Fed again, we're looking at people who participated in the decline of the economy," he said. "This group has done us a disservice."

"Every area of the economy is still about taking wealth from the great mass of people and putting it into the hands of a few. If you don't have an economic democracy, you don't have a political democracy."

"We have to be more defined as being on the side of the people and not on the side of interest groups that are so entrenched," said Kucinich, who is widely regarded as a champion on progressive issues.

Dems 'jumped in bed with insurance companies'

Kucinich said he's deeply disillusioned with what health reform has become, suggesting Democrats should "slow down" and "take a step back."

"Health care became too complex and too riddled with concessions to insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies," he said. "It's really time to take a new direction and that direction has to be back to the American people."

One idea Democrats are floating is to pass the Senate bill through the House, which would then allow the President to sign it into law.

"I don't think that's going to happen," he said. "The senate bill is so totally flawed that I don't think it can get the votes in the House to pass. I certainly wouldn't vote for it."

"It hits very sharply at people who gave wage concessions to get health care benefits," he said, citing the excise tax on health care benefits. "We're going to ask Americans to take a wage cut? Why?"

"We lost the initiative the minute that our party jumped into bed with the insurance companies. And soon they were looking at increasing taxes as a way of subsidizing insurance companies. It's just madness."

"We're redistributing the wealth of the nation upwards by giving the insurance companies 30 million new customers, $50 billion a year more in revenue."

Read more...

Well said, Rep. Kucinich. This is essentially the reason why I'm not and have never been a Democrat. They're nothing but gutless, spineless cowards who suck up to anyone that gives them the time of day.

And they wonder why they're blowing their majority at record pace.

My recommendation to the Democratic Party would be to grow a set before beginning your campaigns for [re-]election this year. Although, this may be a good year for third parties.

Related...

• NOW: 'Kill the health bill entirely'
  

"The Democratic Party has lost much of it credibility with working class and low-income people. It retards progress toward presenting a genuine alternative." - Paul Wellstone

Republicans are Happy?

Does anyone else find it funny or interesting that Republicans are rejoicing all across the country at Scott Brown winning the Senate seat left vacant by Ted Kennedy? I mean, are they really celebrating that now without the 60 seat Senate super majority, Democrats have lost their opportunity/ability to fuck up the country as bad as republicans did?

"As I grow older I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do." - Andrew Carnegie

Cindy McCain Poses for NOH8

Posted on Advocate.com January 20, 2010
By Advocate.com Editors


The NOH8 Campaign on Wednesday announced that Cindy McCain, the wife of former Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, has posed to demonstrate her support of marriage equality. NOH8’s Adam Bouska has photographed thousands of subjects since California passed Proposition 8 in 2008. All of the subjects are photographed with duct tape over their mouths to symbolize that their voices aren’t being heard on the subject of marriage equality.

Writes the NOH8 blog: “In the year since we’ve started the NOH8 Campaign, we’ve been surprised at some of the different individuals who have approached us showing their support. Few, though, have surprised us more than Cindy McCain — the wife of Senator John McCain and mother to vocal marriage equality advocate Meghan McCain. The McCains are one of the most well-known Republican families in recent history, and for Mrs. McCain to have reached out to us to offer her support truly means a lot. Although we had worked with Meghan McCain before and we were aware of her own position, we’d never really thought the cause might be something her mother could get behind.”


See portraits of both women at the group’s site.


See article...

Definitely a step in the right direction. And though I have been critical of the McCains in recent history, I like to give credit where it's due.

"All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression." - Thomas Jefferson

Brother Ali - "Tight Rope"

Frigid frozen

Minnesota
Chip on his shoulder
Sick sleeping on a pissy sofa
Unwanted visitor in a different culture
Missing home and he can't go they're civil warin'
Listen solider

Forget getting over
Prison stay around the corner

Homless is even closer
Kids with similar skin color still dont even wantcha
Spit and insult ya cause they have been here longer
He leave his crib he guaranteed the pigs approach ya
Where ya going where ya from any weapons on ya?

Your family is stressed out your getting older
You dont live the way they did back in Somalia
It's extra difficult to be a daughter
Trying to keep it modest with the sinners all around you
Wear the wrong garment your parents get an ulcer
If you wrap it up the other children picking on you

Live in two worlds with your eyes closed
Tip toeing on a tight rope
Holding on for survival
Nobody to blame this is just how it goes

Live in two worlds with your eyes closed
Tip toeing on a tight rope
Holding on for survival
Nobody to blame this is just how it goes

Holidays and you know what the business is
You get two birthdays and two Christmases
Older you get you resent how sick it is
They're trying to cover their guilt with the gifts they give
Bounce from his house to her house
Too bad that marriage didnt work out
Now you don't have a 'your house'
Daddy fighting mommy they both tell me they love me
If I get too close to one, the other one start acting funny
Ma went and had a baby with a different dad
You act happy to please 'em but you're really sad
Seeing first hand that family that you will never have
Plus you ain't no real brother, you're just a half
Got to pick up the pieces and move on
Bed time stories and greet them on the phone
Live in two houses and neither one is home
Wishing you were grown have the freedom to get gone

Live in two worlds with your eyes closed
Tip toeing on a tight rope
Holding on for survival
Nobody to blame this is just how it goes

Daddy was a preacher momma was a Sunday school teacher
Big brother a football squad leader
Now far be it for you to disappoint or displease them
You're just being what you feel you see in
That mirror every time you peer in
Swallow the tears inside that empty feeling
Her boy terrified to let the world in
He has girl friends but doesn't want a girlfriend
He retreats inside himself
Where he lives life itself in secret
Daddy says people go to hell for being
What he is and he certainly believes him
Cause there ain't no flame that can blaze enough
To trump being hated for the way you love
And cry yourself to sleep and hate waking up
It's a cold world, y'all, shame on us

Live in two worlds with your eyes closed
Tip toeing on a tight rope
Holding on for survival
Nobody to blame this is just how it goes

Live in two worlds with your eyes closed
Tip toeing on a tight rope
Holding on for survival
Nobody to blame this is just how it goes

"A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality." - John Lennon

Obama: Time To Keep Your Promises

Do you want to have a Republican House - and possibly Senate - come November?

No?

Then you better put a stop to this crap.

The Fed is telling a bailout watchdog not to share documents requested as part of a House investigation into the bailout of failed insurance conglomerate American International Group Inc.

A letter from the special inspector general for the financial bailout to California Rep. Darrell Issa says, the Fed "has directed us not to provide you with the documents it has provided to us."

Your own party is having none of this:

Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Edolphus Towns, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said he will issue today a subpoena to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for documents related to American International Group Inc.

“This subpoena will provide the Committee with documents that will shed light on how and why taxpayer dollars were used for a backdoor bailout,” Towns said in an e-mailed statement. I know you didn't solicit my advice, but I'm good at providing unsolicited advice in this regard. I tried to warn John McCain prior to the election that his standing with the TARP/EESA "bailout nation" BS would cost him the election, and it did.

Most of the American people have no problem with anyone making an "unholy" amount of money provided they do so legally, without ripping anyone off.

I know few people who object to a farmer who works his entire life to provide for himself and his family, manages his crops, makes a lot of money, socks it away, and retires to enjoy his last years in comfort.

I know few people who object to the American who invents something new and never-before seen, like an automobile, an operating system for a computer or a new gadget that everyone wants and buys, becoming rich as a consequence.

But nobody, except for the criminal banking cabal on Wall Street and their paid shills, finds it acceptable to sell worthless trash as "money good" securities to states, retirees, pension funds and ordinary people simply trying to guarantee that they have a decent retirement income, whether those securities are bonds and CDOs backed by mortgages made to people who the sellers of the money knew couldn't pay or whether they're Internet bubble companies that never had a snowball's chance in Hell of being able to sell anywhere near enough product or service to cover their expenses.

Americans find it even more outrageous when, after doing the above, that very same criminal banking cabal got caught holding too much of their garbage and faced bankruptcy - so they forced the American people to bail them out while at the same time jacking up ordinary Americans' interest rates on credit cards to 29.9%, imposing new and outrageous fees, and then paid out tens of billions of dollars in bonuses!

One very small piece of this scam is in fact AIG and the role of the NY Fed in both the "regulation" of the banks under its purview during the time that AIG was selling what later proved to be worthless credit default swaps to those institutions under its regulatory umbrella and, later, "negotiating" a back-door transfer of funds from the US Taxpayer to bail out those very same regulated firms that bought worthless "protection" for the purpose of claiming that their risky "assets" were in fact money good.

For the NY Fed to now claim that Tim Geithner knew nothing of the negotiations, public filings and transactions between AIG and these institutions, both prior to the blow up and after it happened, stretch credulity. After all these institutions were specifically under the regulatory authority of the NY Fed in the years prior to this crisis and the NY Fed's charter explicitly includes oversight and management of systemic risk posed by these firms to the banking system as a whole.

You, President Obama, ran on the platform and claim that you were coming to Washington to, in part, STOP THE LOOTING AND START PROSECUTING.

Well Mr. President, there's a hell of a lot of looting that has taken place, and yet we've seen damn little prosecuting.

Millions of Americans have been dispossessed of their homes due to jobs lost in the economy during this mess, and there is no indication at all that the job problem is going to go away any time soon. Indeed, we are now back where we were in 1983 in terms of the percentage of the population that is employed and contributing to the Federal Tax Base, yet the total debt outstanding in the US is, as a percentage of GDP, twice as high.

Every American invested in the public markets has just completed a "lost decade" in which they have in fact lost money over a 10 year time, and that's without counting inflation. These are not small losses - about 35% if you were in the S&P 500, 35% in the DOW and more than half in the Nasdaq 100.

Pension plans, both public and private, have been decimated. Your core constituents, including organized labor of all stripes have taken it in the shorts as a direct and proximate consequence of the outrageous and pernicious fraud heaped upon the public debt and equity markets.

When you add all of this up Mr. President virtually every American has been touched by this mess. Lower-income earners have lost their jobs, middle-income workers have lost jobs, homes and retirement security and upper-income earners have suffered all of the above plus in many cases had their nest eggs literally stolen by scammers like Madoff.

Yet thus far you have focused your prosecutorial attention on Madoff, Stanford and a handful of others - all of whom attacked "high wealth" people.

Here's a hint Mr. President:

The rest of the nation is pissed off and tired of the excuses and lies, and we know who was responsible for all of the bogus securities and lending activity - and it wasn't Madoff.

Fraud is against the law Mr. President. It always has been. You need no new laws, you have plenty of existing ones.

It is my belief that there are literally tens of thousands of people and hundreds of companies, including some very large public ones, you should have under investigation if not indictment right here and now.

You can, right here and now, solve your flagging popularity problem. You need only give a speech that is roughly this:

My Fellow Americans.

The last three decades have been marked by outrageous scams and frauds throughout our financial system. This is not a partisan political issue and has consumed both Democrat and Republican administrations and Congresses alike.

As of today, that era has ended.

To those who believe that blowing bubbles, making homes unaffordable for the common man in this country or driving stock prices to ridiculous levels based on hype and false claims is a means to become wealthy, your days of being able to strip the wealth of the common American have come to an end.

Those federally-chartered institutions that promote a "bubble economy" based on unreasonable and unsustainable levels of debt will find that this administration will do everything in our power to revoke those charters. This includes but is not limited to The Federal Reserve.

To those who have ripped people off, including those who marketed and sold worthless securities, those who claimed to have "protection" against market events when they knew the person they bought from had no money to pay, or who worked together to make loans and sales to people through the use of various lies, such as falsely overstating incomes, you will soon be facing a jury of your peers.

I am today directing the FBI and Department of Justice to open and begin investigations, starting at the top. Each and every one of the large financial institutions in this country, including the banks, GSEs and their officials that operate under a federal charter or banking license will face a forensic audit. We will identify and bring to justice all of those who have robbed this economy of its vitality and stolen your futures. Where possible we will claw back every penny of these individuals and firms' wealth so as to provide you with whatever compensation we can recover. Those firms who have committed wrongdoing will be broken up and their officials barred from serving in the banking or securities industries in the future.

Our own administration and the people in it will be subject to this investigation, as will all members of Congress, the lobbying firms and interests that interact with our government. There will be no sacred cows and no rocks that will be left unturned.

We will investigate homebuilders, realtors, appraisers and mortgage brokers. We will look into the FHA, Ginnie Mae, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and determine exactly how all of these loss-producing loans came to be made. Where we can identify persons or corporate procedures that led investors, firms or people to be misled, we will bring charges.

The days of theft and fraud from the American public, followed by demands to be bailed out when these scams and schemes reach the end of their rope, are over. Civil and criminal penalties have and do exist for these offenses, and they will be enforced to the fullest extent of the law.

All Americans deserve to be able to invest with confidence and rely on the statements and publications put forward to them. Americans deserve to be told the truth. When Americans are ripped off, they deserve justice. Beginning today, every American will receive exactly that.

The days of the "Wild West" on Wall Street and K Street alike are over.

Thank you.

If you don't, and soon, you will have a Republican Congress come November, and in 2012, you will be headed home to Chicago, where you can live in the bankrupt State of Illinois - bankrupted, in no small part, by the same fraud and rip-offs that have infested the rest of this nation.

You've had a year to survey the landscape.

It is now time to keep your promises.

We, the voters and citizens of this nation, are not asking any longer.

We're now demanding you do so.

See article...

"If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?" - Thomas Jefferson