More post election incompetence.

They forgot.  In the good cop, bad cop routine, one of them is supposed to be the “good cop.”  

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs starts off the Lame Duck post election session:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

“He would be open to having that discussion and open to listening to what the debate is on both sides of that,” said Gibbs, during an off-camera gaggle with reporters. “Obviously… making those tax cuts for the upper end permanent is something the president does not believe is a good idea.”

The issue, Gibbs said, will be a topic of discussion when the president convenes a bipartisan meeting of lawmakers at the White House in two weeks. Included in that meeting (and working dinner) will be Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cali.), incoming Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), incoming Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), and Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.).

At his press conference on Wednesday, the president expressed his first openness to date with the process of negotiating on the Bush tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of the year.

Meanwhile, Peter Orszag, right wing neocon, concern troll “deficit spending hawk,” Wall Street mouthpiece, and former Obama Administration head of Office of Budget and Management (OMB)  writes in the New York Times the day after the election, November 3, that the harvest of the last of the middle and working class entitlement programs can’t begin fast enough for his new right wing think tank benefactors at the Council on Foreign Relations.  

Kabooki

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

“Obama conducts first sit down with “progressive” bloggers ”

The invitees fall more under the rubric of ideological or issue-oriented activists as opposed to online reporters, though the names are familiar to most political junkies. An administration official confirmed that Joe Subday of AMERICABlog; Duncan Black (“Atrios”), who runs the site Eschaton; Barbara Morrill, who writes for the DailyKos; Jon Amato, who edits Crooks and Liars; and Oliver Willis, who runs an eponymous site, spoke with the president on Wednesday.

Calling the mistress of the ugog MF banhammer trolls who routinely rid the site of anything not uber right wing a ‘progressive blogger’ is like calling a shark a vegan guppie kitten kisser.  

Of her last eight diaries, 7 were about the Rand Paul headstomping incident and one about the latest Jerry Brown ad.  Before that set, ones on AZ sherrif tweets about Sarah Palin, and Juan Williams getting fired and going to Fox. DADT.  One on Joe Miller. Joe Miller. Joe Miller. Joe Miller. Sharron Angle. Christine O Donnell. Tea Party. Christine O Donnell.

At least 16 Tea Party Is Bad diaries in the last 22 days (others were open threads and news roundups)

Joe Miller, Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle are all being financially supported by the same King Media/Russo Marsh Rogers/Move America Forward/Our Country Deserves Better/Tea Party Express PAC and Republican PR firm (that is also registered as a foreign lobby for Northern Iraq, and that also has done extensive Pentagon media work during the Iraq War)  that supported Sarah Palin and Tom McClintock (R, chickenhawk) in 2008 and John Doolittle (R, Abramoff Scandal) in 2006. This PAC has changed their name and filing techniques, so the swiftboating expenditures they did before Oct 2008 on behalf of McClintock and Doolittle do NOT show up under their current FEC name but were made as general payments to Russo Marsh.  Here’s their first 2008 filing under the new name, which has a payment to Bryan Barton who made the anti Democratic candidate videos for Tom McClintock http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-b…  

I just checked their independent expenditures and they appear not to be funding the Rand Paul Kentucky thing but certainly Paul associates himself with Tea Party.  

So I imagine the “outreach” went something like this.  Say, could y’all start ramping it up some more on how bad the Tea Party and the Republicans are ? Big Scary. Other issues way too complex. Don’t mention where money comes from. Do NOT mention Blue Dogs, DOD, or Foreign Interests. Do not mention Wars, Torture, Drones, Pentagon Budget having Domestic Narco Surveillance Money, 50 million Americans without Health insurance,  Economy, Energy or Foreign Policy, Foreclosures or the Unemployed and Homeless. Do not mention that Greek woman named Arianna. Do not mention any Senators from Connecticut, ever.  Kthnxbai !

Other lead blog stories right now on:

Oliver Willis.  Rand Paul headstomper story, calls Ari Fleischer a liar.

Crooks and Liars.(Amato)  Rand Paul headstomper story.  Teabaggers.

Eschaton. (Black)  Said he was optimistic about November on Tuesday. Aie yi yi.  Latest post is on walkable neighborhoods.

John Aravosis at Americablog. had a TeaParty Rand headstomper story and Obama meets 5 top progressive bloggers at White House, including Joe Sudbay of AMERICAblog includes photo and write up of meeting.

The invitations were extended late last week, and the meeting was to be a Q&A with the President for 45 minutes, followed by 15 minutes with presidential adviser David Axelrod. No recordings are permitted, but the White House will release a transcript of the discussion after it is finished.

It will also be the first time that President Obama has sat down and taken questions from a member of the gay media, Joe Sudbay, who is representing both AMERICAblog and AMERICAblog Gay.

You know, when I watch somebody like Rachel Maddow, I don’t think of her as the “gay” media but somebody who just brilliant at interviewing, but I don’t in my mind have to make her over into “straight” media, either.  She just is what she is.

comment under post at AmericaBlog:

….The administration has spent months trashing progressive bloggers as well as those who read and support them. One afternoon, mere days before the election, smacks of desperation. Like they suddenly realized they did something wrong and have to quickly try to unburn a couple bridges.

  Here’s the verbal writeup from Aravosis.  Go read. But here’s the summary.

Finally, Joe asked the President if he has a strategy for passing the DADT compromise legislation during the lame duck session in Congress. The President did make some news here, by telling Joe that he asked the Log Cabin Republicans in a meeting at the White House yesterday to get him 2 to 5 votes. The President seemed to think that Joe could help persuade Log Cabin to help. Joe told the President that he didn’t have sway with those people.

“Those” people ?

Well, hell, they are Republicans.  Try the Bipartisanshipthingee.

“once like a movie write your own ending keep believing keep pretending we done just what we set out to do….”

_______

Thurs am update:  Full transcript of this “outreach” can be found here .  It is not possible to tell easily who was asking what question on all of them  

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

Summary. The guy still thinks he needs 60 votes to do anything.

I don’t think that this person in the WH Oval Office really has a core commitment to anything other than saving his own hide for the next 2 years, and he’s already been practicing mouthing Republican catch phrases for months in preparation.  I think at this point it is time to stop calling him the “leader” of the Democratic Party.   Somebody else needs to act as a spokesperson when they have a top elected official sabotaging the ticket that much and trying to get more of the other party elected.   Apparently he also wants the supposedly left blogs (hah ) to acknowledge their lack of actual relevance,  and diss him to give him credibility with the MSM.   If anyone would want to accuse me of hyperpartisanship I would be more than willing to debate several of the Republican talking points he used in this interview,  and tell the country that we do not need any more excuses from either the WH or the Senate as to why this country MUST constantly seek to appease privatization extremists and Corporations in the MIC who do NOT want things to become better.

__________

Fri Afternoon 10/29/10 update

The “progressive” blogger whom I characterized as a shark masquerading as a guppie kitten kisser has not posted anything on her homebase website since the White House experience other than the WH transcript of the meeting, and a few comments on it.   She has since stated in a comment that the questions she asked were on raising the retirement age and the one which started “I want to go back with working with Republicans…. ”

This would be these questions, which were actually very good:

Q – I want to go back to the idea of working with Republicans. And given the comments from McConnell and — well, all of them — I think that what a lot of people find frustrating is that our side compromises and continues to compromise just to get that one Republican on. We’re going to get one of the Maine twins — whatever. And it doesn’t happen, and then by the time health care or whatever goes through we’ve compromised; we still don’t get any Republicans.

I don’t anticipate this changing in the next two years. I think it’s going to get worse. How are you going to get Democrats to understand that compromise means the other side has to give something sometimes, one day?

THE PRESIDENT: Look, obviously I share your frustrations. I’ve got to deal with this every day.

Q Well, I don’t expect you to talk like a blogger. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: But I guess I’d make two points. The first is, I’m President and not king. And so I’ve got to get a majority in the House and I’ve got to get 60 votes in the Senate to move any legislative initiative forward.



Now, during the course — the 21 months of my presidency so far, I think we had 60 votes in the Senate for seven months, six? I mean, it was after Franken finally got seated and Arlen had flipped, but before Scott Brown won in Massachusetts. So that’s a fairly narrow window. So we’re right at the number, and that presumes that there is uniformity within the Democratic caucus in the Senate — which, Barbara, you’ve been around a while. You know that not every Democrat in the Democratic caucus agrees with me or agrees with each other in terms of complicated issues like health care.

So it is important for me, then, to work every angle I can to get as much done as I can. If we had a parliamentary system, then this critique would make sense to me because you do as much as you can to negotiate with the other side, but at a certain point you’ve got your platform and you move it forward and your party votes for it.

But that’s not the system of government we have. We’ve got a different system. I will say that the damage that the filibuster I think has done to the workings of our democracy are at this point pretty profound. The rate at which it’s used just to delay and obstruct is unprecedented. But that’s the reality right now.

So I guess my answer is that there has not been, I think, any issue that we’ve worked in which I have been willing to sign on to a compromise that I didn’t feel was a strong improvement over the status quo and was not the best that we could do, given the political alignments that we’ve got.

And, yes, it leaves some folks dissatisfied. I understand that. But let’s take the health care bill. As frustrated and angry and dispirited as the base might have been — we didn’t have a public option, and it just dragged on for such a long time, and you’re having conversations with Grassley, even though it turns out Grassley has no interest in actually getting something done — all the complaints which I was obviously very familiar with, the fact of the matter is, is that we got a piece of legislation through that we’ve been waiting a hundred years to get through; that in the aggregate sets up a system in which 30 million people are going to get health insurance; in which we’ve got an exchange that forces insurance companies to compete with a pool of millions and will be policed so that they can’t jack up prices; that pool has purchasing power that they’ve never had before; that you’ve got a patient’s bill of rights that was the hallmark, sort of the high-water mark of what progressives thought we could do in the health care field — we got that whole thing basically just as part of the bill.

You’ve got investments in community health centers and preventive medicine and research that’s going to help improve our health care delivery systems as a whole. And we can build on that.

And I know this analogy has been used before, but when Social Security was passed, it was for widows and orphans. And a whole bunch of folks were not included in it. But that building block, the foundation stone, ended up creating one of the most important safety nets that we have. And I think the same thing is going to happen with health care.

_____

…… (the answer continues to ramble on to include financial reform and finally the stimulus. note this:  )

And I’ll give you one last example because I know this is a famous example in the blogosphere, is the stimulus. I mean, if folks think that we could have gotten Ben Nelson, Arlen Specter and Susan Collins to vote for additional stimulus beyond the $700 billion that we got, then I would just suggest you weren’t in the meetings.

This notion that somehow I could have gone and made the case around the country for a far bigger stimulus because of the magnitude of the crisis, well, we understood the magnitude of the crisis. We didn’t actually, I think, do what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did, which was basically wait for six months until the thing had gotten so bad that it became an easier sell politically because we thought that was irresponsible. We had to act quickly.

They never filibustered. They merely threatened to, and the Democrats folded meekly.

Here is the sorry spectacle of the President trying to set the conditions of what reality he can operate under, the Majority Party Caucus declaring that they need a supermajority of 60 to pass any legislation. the 3/5’s rule, we should start to call it,  and then saying he cannot depend on his own caucus so he has to go to the other side.  But he did have that 60 vote majority for half a year.    We already know that the President decided to have secret meetings with lobbyists like Billy Tauzin at the WH right at the very beginning of his Presidency, and that is when the Public Option was secretly ditched.  We know the House under Speaker Pelosi passed their version of the Bill on time and with a Public Option.  We know the President let the Senate dither away stalling for months all summer.   And he finally got the health care bill he wanted – one with no Public Option.

Said bill which much of the general public hates, because most of it isn’t implemented yet,  did not change a single thing for them, and let private contractors, aka private insurance, get the promise of being able to feed off of more Medicaid in the future,  but it let the insurers continue to jack rates up. It will, by the numbers, barely cover half the uninsured someday in the future if the Republicans don’t destroy it,  the rest have still been thrown to the wolves.   The reality is embarrassing.

If Ben Nelson is such an incredible impediment to ever getting any sort of legislation passed in the Senate, there is a simple solution –  throw his sorry butt out.  Nebraska is low in population. There is no reason I can see to let people who are never going to vote with the party on major issues continue to caucus with said party.  They’ve already tried this with Sen. Lieberman and it never works-  it backfires.  Notice how he never mentions Lieberman and his wife who sits on so many boards who pay her a nice fee.  He never mentions Blanche Lincoln, whom he endorsed and campaigned for after she went on point against that Public Option.  Nor Kent Conrad, another in what Glenn Greenwald aptly named the Village Villain Rotation.

Regarding the stimulus bill, look who he tries to blame again – Ben “Mutual of Omaha” Nelson, Arlen Specter who has changed parties again, another Republican, Susan Collins, plus Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s irresponsibility.

How does a person who has relied on charisma to get elected, now criticize populism and direct appeals for public pressure with a straight face ?

They can’t.  It’s an excuse, again.  He got what he wanted.  

__________________________

The other question, and look at the ridiculous answer:

Q Mine is an easy question. Will you rule out raising the retirement age to 70?  

THE PRESIDENT: We are awaiting a report from the deficit commission, or deficit reduction commission, so I have been adamant about not prejudging their work until we get it.

But I think you can look at the statements that I’ve made in the past, including when I was campaigning for the presidency, that Social Security is something that can be fixed with some modest modifications that don’t impose hardships on beneficiaries who are counting on it.

And so the example that I used during the campaign was an increase in the payroll tax, not an increase — let me scratch that. Not an increase in the payroll tax but an increase in the income level at which it is excluded.

And so what I’ve been clear about is, is that I’ve got a set of preferences, but I want the commission to go ahead and do its work. When it issues its report, I’m not automatically going to assume that it’s the right way to do things. I’ll study it and examine it and see what makes sense.

But I’ve said in the past, I’ll say here now, it doesn’t strike me that a steep hike in the retirement age is in fact the best way to fix Social Security.

No, we cannot look at statements you made in the past, unless you wish us to presume that you are going to ignore them now that you are elected, that you were lying, or at least you were persuadable to being lobbyied, and that you now have all the possible scenarios on the table.  Because that is the historical precedent we have seen so far with many campaign promises the President made —  they were just that, words.   And the President has a set of preferences, but he certainly isn’t going to share them with anybody.

A “Steep hike” may not be striking him as the best way, but a less steep hike in the retirement age is implied to be on his table.

Currently the retirement age in the US is 62/66 for reduced to full Social Security benefits.  

He could have just said “no,”  and have been done with it.

I don’t believe that one could write up such an experience with those sorts of answers with the timing being right before the election and not have rather the opposite impact of what you intended, if you were intending to want to motivate voters to actually vote for the incumbent Party in office.

Changing the filibuster rules to give themselves a smaller, simpler Senate majority, would mean the responsibility for passing lousy legislation or not bothering to pass it at all, would fall squarely on the shoulders of the Democratic Party with that majority in this instance.  With a much tighter Senate coming up, and a possible loss in the House looming, the President in the next term will now have his perfect, built in excuse.

No wonder the front pagers at that blog all switched over to writing Get Out The Vote pieces afterwards.    

The continued clusterfvck that is Demerkracktic Campaign 2010 Midterms:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

(Democratic Governor of RI candidate) Frank Caprio’s campaign last week said he would welcome the president’s endorsement. But on Monday, the same day Obama was set to make his first visit to Rhode Island as president and a day after the White House said Obama would not endorse anyone, Caprio angrily told WPRO-AM that Obama can “take his endorsement and really shove it. ”

Caprio also accused the president of “treating us like an ATM machine” by coming to Rhode Island to raise money but ignoring it during springtime flooding that swept through the state. Though Obama did not visit himself, he sent Cabinet secretaries, including Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. …..  Caprio also has publicly contradicted Obama on some important policy positions, such as saying he does not support letting Bush-era tax cuts expire on the wealthiest Americans.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, in Rhode Island for a rally Monday, said he was amused by the conflict. “He’s the Democratic nominee, for goodness’ sakes,” he said. “It’s really insulting, when you think about it.”

Caprio is running against former Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee, a Republican.  Chafee endorsed Obama for President in 2008.  Chafee’s campaign manager feigned getting the vapors over the remark by rival Caprio in an Oscar nominee quality performance.

“The senator was shocked at how intemperate the remark was, especially with the president due to arrive in Rhode Island later today.”

In 2009, VP Biden and several Cabinet members cancelled a keynote address at the National Mayor’s Convention in Rhode Island, which embarrassed then  Providence Mayor Cicilline.  Now Cicciline is running for Congress in Rhode Island to for retiring Patrick Kennedy’s seat, and this was supposed to be His Big Day.  His campaign manager wisely decided to keep his mouth shut until Air Force One is way out of the state again.

No word yet on which one the President will hug on the campaign trail.

He smoked ’em on that endorsement   (HT to Teddy Partridge @ FDL  for this http://my.firedoglake.com/tedd…

Like clockwork in being timed with the latest wikileaks release:

After increasing the number of drone attacks in September, now the US is pressuring Pakistan to let in more covert paramilitary and CIA forces to increase the unknown, classified number that are already there – to support the death by drones program that is killing an unknown number of militants and civilians.  The story in the WSJ also says that Pakistan’s Inter – Services Intelligence agency, ISI, is currently doing most of the intelligence gathering and that CIA chief Leon Panetta has called them “very cooperative.”

Wall Street Journal:

http://online.wsj.com/article/…

The Obama administration has been ramping up pressure on Islamabad in recent weeks to attack militants after months of publicly praising Pakistani efforts. The CIA has intensified drone strikes in Pakistan, and the military in Afghanistan has carried out cross-border helicopter raids, underlining U.S. doubts Islamabad can be relied upon to be more aggressive. Officials have even said they were going to stop asking for Pakistani help with the U.S.’s most difficult adversary in the region, the North Waziristan-based Haqqani network, because it was unproductive.

Pakistani officials believe the CIA is better able to keep details of its operations largely out of the public eye, although the agency’s drone program has received widespread attention and is enormously unpopular with the Pakistani public.

U.S. military forces on the ground remain a red line for Islamabad. A senior Pakistani official said if the Pakistan public became aware of U.S. military forces conducting combat operations on Pakistani territory, it would wipe out popular support for fighting the militants in the tribal areas. Whether covert CIA forces would cross that line however, remains an open question.

Back in July, the public relationship wasn’t so cozy.

HuffPo, 7/6/10

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

…. but the US – Pakistan relationship is at the heart of Washington’s counterterrorism efforts.

But the CIA became so concerned by a rash of cases involving suspected double agents in 2009, it re-examined the spies it had on the payroll in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. The internal investigation revealed about a dozen double agents, stretching back several years. Most of them were being run by Pakistan. Other cases were deemed suspicious. The CIA determined the efforts were part of an official offensive counterintelligence program being run by Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the ISI’s spy chief.

Recruiting agents to track down and kill terrorists and militants is a top priority for the CIA, and one of the clandestine service’s greatest challenges. The drones can’t hit their targets without help finding them. Such efforts would be impossible without Pakistan’s blessing, and the U.S. pays about $3 billion a year in military and economic aid to keep the country stable and cooperative.

Pakistan has its own worries about the Americans. During the first term of the Bush administration, Pakistan became enraged after it shared intelligence with the U.S., only to learn the CIA station chief passed that information to the British. The incident caused a serious row, one that threatened the CIA’s relationship with the ISI and deepened the levels of distrust between the two sides. Pakistan almost threw the CIA station chief out of the country.

July 2010 – HuffPo says 8 years after the war in Afghanistan, a very poor and not very large country, was not going so well, the Obama administration finally became “concerned” about their intelligence partners in the region.   Three months after the first batch of wikileaks were released,  April 5, 2010.    

From CNN, Your Most Trusted News Source:  

The October Surprise

Anonymous NATO Spokesperson Upgrades Osama Bin Laden From Cave To House in Pakistan, Getting a Jump on the Latest Wikileaks Which Will Show He’s Working at al- Zawahiri’s International House of Naancakes

Kabul, Afghanistan, CNN, Monday, October 18, 2010

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/…

Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri are believed to be hiding close to each other in houses in northwest Pakistan, but are not together, a senior NATO official said.

“Nobody in al Qaeda is living in a cave,” said the official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the intelligence matters involved.

___

The official would not discuss how the coalition has come to know any of this information, but he has access to some of the most sensitive information in the NATO alliance.

Wikileaks Donation Site Shut Down

CNN, Friday October 15, 2010

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-1…

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange claims the U.S. government was behind the decision by Moneybookers to shut down the account, an allegation denied by American officials.

According to e-mails provided to CNN by Assange, Moneybookers informed WikiLeaks of its decision in August, shortly after the Pentagon demanded WikiLeaks return all of the military documents and remove them from its website. WikiLeaks refused to do so and is expected to release hundreds of thousands of additional Pentagon papers later this month.

The first e-mail from Moneybookers that notified WikiLeaks of its decision indicated one of the potential grounds for termination was “to comply with money laundering or other investigations conducted by government authorities, agencies or commissions.”

When Assange asked for a further explanation, he received another e-mail from the company saying the account was initially suspended “due to being accessed from a blacklisted IP address. However following recent publicity and the subsequently addition of the WikiLeaks entity to blacklists in Australia and watch lists in the USA, we have terminated the business relationship.”

( If you needed proof that the current “Democratic” administration is throwing support behind getting more Republicans elected this November instead of Democrats, here’s more.)  

The Obama administration’s Attorney General Eric Holder, fresh off his decision to appeal of Judge Virginia Phillip’s injunction against enforcing DADT because of its unConstitutionality, has written a shocking letter to the former chiefs of the DEA on Oct 13th.   And why did he write them a letter ?  Because they want the Attorney General to sue California if Proposition 19 passes, which would decriminalize marijuana at the state level.  

Holder just sent them a letter in agreement.  

“We will vigorously enforce the CSA (Controlled Substances Act) against those individuals and organizations that possess, manufacture or distribute marijuana for recreational use, even if such activities are permitted under state law,” Holder wrote.  

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

Control and tax ? Quit wasting money and resources ? More like Drone and Arrest as usual.

The Department of Justice under Holder has not decreased the number of arrests and prosecutions for marijuana possession compared to the previous Bush administration, in spite of  assurances that medical marijuana users in the state of California would not be targeted. https://www.docudharma.com/diar…  Over a quarter million Californians were arrested last year for drug offenses, with 52% of them being for pot, that’s over 115,000 people getting arrested in CA in 2008 just for possession, per statistics from the FBI.  Make no mistake about it, this is a big cash incentive the Feds are waving at the state when they declare your local LE can only get money this way.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, co chair of the “Public Safety No On 19” committee along with Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein,  also said at a news conference that Federal law would over rule state law and therefore any new law would be unenforceable, and that public use of the drug would continue to be targeted, as usual,  whether or not Prop 19 passes.

The “Yes on 19” committee’s former San Jose Police Chief Joseph McNamara issued a response today, saying that:

“Passing Proposition 19 in California will undoubtedly kick start a national conversation about changing our country’s obviously failed marijuana prohibition policies,” he added. “If the federal government wants to keep fighting the nation’s failed ‘war on marijuana’  while we’re in the midst of a sagging economic recovery and two wars, it just proves that the establishment politicians’ priorities are wrongly focused on maintaining the status quo.”

McNamara, now a research fellow in drug policy at Stanford University, has argued that the 60 percent of the cash that supports violent drug cartels comes from the sale of illegal marijuana.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

I’ve written about the Indian Casinos, the beer and wine industry, and the Oil companies backing this continued idiocy. Now let’s talk about the Pharmaceutical companies.

The last time the Obama administration made a drug deal with Big Pharma, er, PhRMA,  before a law was passed was back in March of 2009 when the President met secretly with PhRMA drug lobbyist Billy Tauzin, Pfizer’s Jeff Kindler, AHIP’s Karen Ignani, the Chamber of Commerce’s Tom Donohue and the RW Johnson Foundation’s Risa Lavizzo-Mourey.

http://blog.sunlightfoundation…

Five months later,in August,  Billy Tauzin admitted that the WH had forsworn Medicare drug price bargaining and given up on importing cheaper drugs from Canada or Europe in the deal to get the health care reform bill passed.  By February of 2010, Tauzin took another golden parachute. http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes…

This time, Baca and Feinstein’s committee “Public Safety First No on 19” is getting money from the following Pharmaceutical Companies, thru CalBusPac (California Business PAC) thru PHARMA IEC PAC, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America Independent Expenditure Committee. They know how to time the donations so it’s less obvious.   And please remember these drug companies aren’t all based in America.  So this is from some foreign money sources.

Baca – DiFi No on 19  list of donors, see CalBusPac

http://cal-access.ss.ca.gov/Ca…

California Business Pac (CalBusPac) scroll down to the 5/7/09 filing to see the donation from PHARMA IEC

http://cal-access.ss.ca.gov/Ca…

PHARMA IEC pac’s donations for this campaign cycle  – Drug Companies against decriminalization of Marijuana

http://cal-access.ss.ca.gov/Ca…

Pharma For HomeLand Security Money to Fight Against Legalized Pot List, October 2010

Bristol Myers Squibb  gave Barack Obama $43,385 in 2008 http://www.opensecrets.org/org…

Abbott Laboratories  spent a million on candidates in 2008, and has given money to Tauzin’s old Phrma Pac, http://www.opensecrets.org/pac…

Endo Pharmaceuticals

Hoffman La Roche (Switzerland) http://www.whorunsgov.com/Prof… Rick C Wade, the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Commerce Dept under Gary Locke, was a senior government affairs advisor for Hoffman La Roche Inc, and also has on his resume state director of S. Carolina Dept of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Services,  besides being a director of Business development at Palmetto GBA/Blue Cross Blue Shield of S. Carolina.  Oh, and the senior advisor to the Presidential transition team.  Hoffman La Roche makes Boniva, an osteoporosis treatment drug (bisphosphonate class ) marketed to post menopausal women which has been causing osteonecrosis of the jaw bone and which double the risk of esophageal cancer. http://www.360reports.com/p/bo…

Sigma Tau

Takeda

Amgen  http://www.opensecrets.org/pac…

http://www.campaignmoney.com/p…  on track to match the $1.4 million they gave to candidates in the last cycle

Johnson & Johnson  just lost a lawsuit and owes Louisiana $258 million for misleading doctors about the harmful effects of the anti psychotic drug Risperdal  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10…   spent $3.5 million lobbying this year so far http://www.opensecrets.org/lob…

Eli Lilly – maker of PROZAC anti depressant , spent $3.8 million on lobbying this year with 248 lobbyists, gave $62,782 to Barack Obama in 2008  http://www.opensecrets.org/org…

Novartis(Switzerland) maker of Ritalin for ADD, and antipsychotic med Clozapine http://www.opensecrets.org/pac…  another bisphosphonate manufacturer, drug may be linked to broken leg femur bones in the elderly

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/…

Merck, maker of biological immune system suppressants ATNF drugs such as Remicade,  gave money to Blanche “there will be no public option” Lincoln in 2008 and 2010

http://www.opensecrets.org/pac…  Just lost price fixing trial on generics

http://www.businessweek.com/ne…

Glaxosmithkline – 3rd largest pharma co worldwide, United Kingdom, makers of Paxel, (paroxetine)  the antidepressant which is known for difficult withdrawals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P…

http://www.opensecrets.org/org…  spent $3.4 million in lobbying in 2010

Glaxosmithkline gave Obama $51,909 in 2008

Astellas

Pfizer Inc Ranked #1 in World Sales per Wiki, they make statin cholesterol drugs, neurontin, the antidepressant Zoloft,  and VIAGRA, pled guilty in 2009 to fraud, will spend $25 million in lobbying this year  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P…

Obama received $155,183 from Pfizer in 2008 http://www.opensecrets.org/org…

Perdue Pharma LP of Roseville  don’t know why this is listed as Roseville when Perdue Pharma is in Canada.  Perdue makes Oxycontin, Dilaudid, and codeine contin.  http://www.purdue.ca/en/produc…

Prozac. Paxel. Risperdal. Ritalin. Oxycontin ?!

I hope you enjoyed the knowledge that you just gained, that indeed our nation’s Attorney General is willing to leave over 51 million Americans without health insurance, while acting as an enforcer for a price fixing pharmaceutical monopoly – including expensive, addictive, and mood altering drugs –  even narcotics –   and intends to keep people from growing a herbal weed that science and research has shown to be NOT a narcotic and not as addictive as many of the drugs listed above.

More “Change” You Cannot Believe In.  So They Say.

image of President and Drug Czar, from the “Nip It In the Bud No On Prop 19” Website

__________________

previously in this series:

BP Oil and No on Prop 19, The Smoking Gun

https://www.docudharma.com/diar…

___________________

Saturday morning update:  FDL shows that one of the ex DEA letter writers to AG Holder, Robert Bonner, has a company which made nearly a half million $$ in Federal Homeland Security “consulting” Contracts concerning the US/ Mexico border.  And he’s been appointed co chair to the Southwest Border Task Force by Janet Napolitano.  

http://justsaynow.firedoglake….

Nice work if you can get it.  

Judge Virginia A Phillips, US District Court, Central District of CA,  has issued an injunction which halts enforcement of the Pentagon’s discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, after ruling it unconstitutional last month on Sept 9, .

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

http://miamiherald.typepad.com…

“This order from Judge Phillips is another historic and courageous step in the right direction, a step that Congress has been noticeably slow in taking,” said Alexander Nicholson, Executive Director of Servicemembers United and the sole named veteran plaintiff in the case along with the Log Cabin Republicans. “While this is certainly news to be celebrated, we would also advise caution in advance of a potential stay from the Ninth Circuit. If the appellate court wishes to put itself on the right side of history, however, it will allow this sound and long-over due decision to remain in effect.”

From the injunction ruling itself: (pdf download  http://www.ServicemembersUnite…  )

(3) Orders Defendants United States of America and the Secretary of Defense immediately to suspend and discontinue any investigation, or discharge, separation, or other proceeding, that may have commenced under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Act, or pursuant to 10 U.S.C. 654 or its implementing regulations, on or prior to the date of this judgement.

(4) Grants Plaintiff Log Cabin Republican’s request to apply for attorney’s fees pursuant to the Equal Access to Justice Act, 28 U.S.C. 2412  

(5) GRANTS Plaintiff Log Cabin Republicans’ request to file a motion for costs of suit, to the extent allowed by law.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Virginia A Phillips

United States District Judge

dated October 12, 2010

A writeup yesterday from Law.com thinks that the Obama administration will continue to defend DADT, instead of letting the policy just die,  while waiting for  Congress to further write a new law, Sec of Defense Gates to complete his “study and survey,” and the Supreme Court to eventually issue their opinion on the appeal.

Senators Gillibrand and Udall have sent a public letter urging Attorney General Eric Holder not to appeal, saying such could hold back Congress further.

http://www.law.com/jsp/article…

Still, several signs indicate that the Obama administration plans to continue to defend Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. When asked about the government’s next move, Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said in an e-mailed statement to The National Law Journal: “The Justice Department is defending the statute, as it traditionally does when acts of Congress are challenged.”

The Justice Department already has filed an opposition to a proposed permanent injunction that would bar enforcement of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell worldwide. In it, the government said that an injunction, if granted, should be limited to members of the Log Cabin Republicans.

If Phillips grants the injunction, the government could ask the 9th Circuit for a stay pending any appeal and for a stay to be granted, said Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law. “If she enters a permanent injunction without a stay of appeal, it will seem like a power grab,” he said of Phillips. “The 9th Circuit won’t look kindly upon it.”

As I pointed out previously, the Log Cabin Republicans are Republicans, and to limit the stay of this discriminatory law to their group, says that the US Constitution is not political party neutral,  and the Obama Administration thinks only Republicans are qualified to deserve civil rights and equal protection under the law. Another lawyer in the article pointed out there is a tendency for the judiciary to “defer” to the military.  The last time I looked, there is absolutely nothing in the Constitution which stated that military service can only be performed by members of one specific political party.   The Commander in Chief is still an elected civilian position, no party specified, at least in stated law.  Membership qualifications in a political party to obtain full benefit of the law, even military law, reeks of codified bribery.

The solution is obvious, the Attorney General of the U.S. should not appeal this ruling, to do otherwise implies Justice is for Sale, and our military forces are open to the highest bidder vying for the attention of one of 100 Senators.  This becomes an issue of national sovereignty.  Let DADT die.  Its time has passed.  

previous diaries on this:

Holder’s DOJ Attorneys Behaving Badly, File Objection on Dadt overturn

https://www.docudharma.com/diar…

DADT Overturned, How Hard Will Obama Admin Defend It ?

https://www.docudharma.com/diar…

In my past diaries on Yes on Proposition 19,    Control and Tax Cannabis, aka marijuana decriminalization in California, I’ve shown that right wing conservatives funded by their usual business interests, are behind the continued attempt to let the Federal government waste money on continued harassment of pot users.  I agree with the former San Jose Police Chief Joseph McNamara, who says that:

most bad things about marijuana – especially the violence made inevitable by an obscenely profitable black market – are caused by the prohibition, not by the plant.

An “obscenely profitable”  black market cannot exist with out high level cynicism and corruption in our Federal, state, and even sometimes, county governments.  The state of CA has been severely cutting back maintenance, employees, hours, access to public parks and recreational areas and facilities for outdoor sports and recreational users under their self inflicted “budget austerity,” and the Federal government has been socking us with increased, draconian “user fees,” for groups,  yet they continue to have plenty of loot to fight against personal growing of a weedy herb, which would deflate the market for it.  Priorities are misplaced.  The war on pot has been an expensive failure.