Obama used to insist that the healthcare mandate was not a tax. Now, in court, in fighting state nullification, the Obama Administration says just the opposite.

When life give you lemons, you really should make lemonade. In this case, we’re getting lots of black goo, and so we should make…..black goo sausages! Allow me to explain. I’m not talking about booms…

After reading this, today, I’m leaning towards believing that the oil flow will not be stopped, not until whatever underground cavern it’s tapping is mostly emptied. So, the question becomes, what to do with all that oil?

My answer is to basically store it in balloons, which are made of the ‘same’ material used to create inflatable buildings. (Yes, there really are such things. Back in the day, the ‘Busch Bubble’ housed a gymnasium for Rutgers University.)

Celente, who we’re told has a very good record with his predictions, predicted the rise of a new 3rd party last month during an interview for Gary Null’s show on ProgressiveRadioNetwork.com

Celente interviewed on ProgressiveRadioNetwork.com here, from May 7. This particular prediction starts at about 13:00.

Celente predicts a new, third party, which he labels as Progressive-Libertarian. It will have the following characteristics:

progressive

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* health

* nutrition

* environment

* education

libertarian

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* not becoming involved in foreign entaglements

* government staying out of your personal business, as long as you’re not hurting anybody, and nobody else is paying for it

not libertarian in the sense that

==================================

* we don’t need any government regulation, at all (e.g., Glass Steagle are desirable)

Full title:  $$$ 10 MILLION DOLLAR REWARD $$$ for Sarah Palin to eat a ‘Drill here, drill now’ Shrimp Cocktail announced! (With a nod to Chris Hedges)

(A ‘Drill here, drill now’ Shrimp Cocktail is one made from a delightful blend of authentic, freshly killed Gulf of Mexico shrimp, Gulf Crude, and BP-approved dispersants. All served in a decorative shrimp cocktail glass, with an anti-corrosive long spoon.)

I’m pleased to announce a $$$ 10 MILLION DOLLAR REWARD $$$ for Sarah Palin to demonstrate her faith in her “Drill here, drill now” religion! For a woman like Sarah Palin, who would never recommend such a course of action unless her it was also a rational belief, based on knowledge of the state of regulation of the oil industry, and knowledge of their true liability, it’s important to demonstrate that all her deeds are consistent with those beliefs. After all, she might be a candidate for POTUS, and we certainly wouldn’t want a hypocrite for POTUS, would we?

We want Sarah Palin to eat a Drill Here, Drill Now shrimp cocktail, so as to inspire the residents of the US and Mexico with her deeply held faith; you know, that she really was right, after all. Yes, in spite of the spin that the liberal media is giving that silly Gull spill. After all, some folks in the liberal media think that the livelihoods of people in the Gulf – fishermen, tourist trade, etc., are going to be RUINED. And in an economy which is dipping back into recession, at that. (For which we can thank Obama more than Palin, but that’s off topic, here.) And others actually think that dumping toxic dispersants might kill humans who eat fish which absorb chemicals.

What is wrong with these people? Don’t they know about the wonders of the free market? Don’t they have faith in America, and in the free enterprise system? When they read “The Jungle” in high school (probably inserted into the curiculum by America-hating liberals, BTW), didn’t they realize that this book is complete fiction, and the Meat Inspection Act that it inspired was just because of the hysteria created by the liberal, America-hating media?

Because of the dangers of socialized first aid squads, when Sarah is richly rewarded for demonstrating her failth in America’s greatness, we can promise not to call any socialized first aid squad if she has any adverse reaction to our special shrimp cocktail. No!, we’ll let Sarah’s private healthcare plan deal with any tummy ache she may develop, so Sarah, please bring your health insurance contact info with you, along with your deeply held faith.

So, to Sarah Palin I say: eat our special ‘Drill here, drill now’ shrimp cocktail, and claim your $10 million dollars!!! Inspire us with your deeds, not just your words!!!

The following is from a post I made at zcommunications’s Chomsky forum, outlining program ideas for an internet-based media replacement that bypasses corporate and government influenced gatekeepers.  I currently don’t support creating the following, as a Day 1 media bypass implementation, unless big $$ appear, first. Instead, as a Day 1 media bypass implementation, I recommend just creating new “uncommercials”, which replace the standard commercials. Later, when the new system takes off and there is a significant revenue stream, it can be funneled into creating democracy-friendly, cutting edge content, of the sort that I indicate after the flip.

Do yourself a favor and watch this. Thom Hartmann got a copy of the only first hand account of the Tea Party, written by a participant. My whole life, I’ve always wondered what the big deal was about paying a tax for some stupid tea. Now, I know!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

It’s amazing to me that, so soon after the Democrats got their turd of a healthcare plan passed, which was compromised by nobody more  than Obama, instead of declaring war on corrupted Democrats, lefty websites are more intent on whining about Tea Parties. Well, that’s my impression, anyway.

Medea Benjamin doesn’t think this way, and while I don’t know that she’s leading any anti-corruption crusade against Democrats, she at least has the integrity and good will to reach out to Tea Partiers, instead of looking, endlessly, for angles to smear them with:

A Peace Offering to the Tea Party for Tax Day

We are not naïve to think that it would be easy for the Tea Party and the peace movement to work together. Our core values are different. We have had our battles in the past. We would certainly part ways in terms of how to redirect Pentagon funds, with progressives wanting more government investment in healthcare, jobs, clean energy and education-which is exactly what the Tea Party opposes.

But building peace means reaching out to the other side and trying to find common ground even with those people whose beliefs contradict so many of our own.

Using cold, hard cash and entertainment to smarten up otherwise dumbed down, American voters

The following diary is a quote from a long response of mine to a diary by Nathan Aschbacher at FireDogLake, “Define President Barack Obama in One Word”.

It stands on it’s own OK. For context, see Nathan’s FDL diary  

From a long reply of mine (Comment #43) at firedoglake, this mostly stands on it’s own, OK. I argue for creating a credible civic value proposition, that is so easy to attain, as well as so compelling, that even a lazy citizen will be sufficiently motivated to make the necessary effort. In my example, that’s 3 hours PER YEAR.

From the video, below:

A lot of you have written to us and asked us why we haven’t put forth a very clear platform of issues that the Coffee Party stands for. It’s not that we don’t have opinions. It would have been very easy for Annabel and I and the other early members of the Coffee Party to decide what our opinions were on the issues, and put that on the website and say tat “This is Coffee Party – take it or leave it.” But if we’d done that, we would have missed the opportunity to bring so many new people into the process. and so many diverse voices – we really, really benefited from the wisdom, the expertise, the creativity, we’re experimenting with how we can use new technology to empower the maximum number of Americans to communicate how they feel about the issues. We want you to complete your Coffee Party sphere. This is in the left column of our website, and it’s a very sophisticated tool that’ll helps you create a visual representation of how your see yourself, your future, how you see America’s future, and how you see the issues.

I went to a meeting, today (very late, unfortunately), and it was much larger than the previous one. The people were positive, and if what I saw was typical, not only were they not the OFA shills that some armchair blog posters made them out to be, but most of their concerns seemed to be the same as those of the armchair critics.

I participated in a thread called Another call to publicly disown the “firedogs” My answer was so long, and because it threw light on what, I hope, will be a systematized and rational way of dealing with honest differences of opinions, that I’ve decided to post it as a separate diary on FDL, OpenLeft, and DocuDharma.

Somebody had suggested an “FDL Party”, but I said that an “FDL Voting Bloc” would be smarter.  Turns out, that was too simple a statement, as was made clear by PaulaT’s post:

Back when they had the Mass special election to fill Kennedy’s seat, there were threads on here with comments in the hundreds about what should be done. Some were in the camp of vote for Coakley because she’s progressive, though those were the minority. Some were saying to vote for Coakley because even an establishment Dem was better than a Republican. Others were saying to vote for Brown to send a message about how bad the Senate bill was before the House also passed it and they ended up with a crappy bill (not that it stopped them, after all, but at least there was some hope it might). After all the discussion and some really good arguments from all involved (plus some really bad ones from some), there was no consensus on what should be done. I don’t think there would be on future races. There would be those in the any Dem is better camp and those in the anything but an incumbent who has betrayed us to teach a lesson camp, and probably a few other camps as well depending on the particulars of the race. There are those who would like to see Kucinich gone and those who are mad about health care but say he’s been good on other things or they think the pressure was so great that they are inclined to forgive him or he’s the most progressive one we’ve got even if he’s spineless, or whatever, but want to keep him. When we had Romanoff on here the other day, every other question was about why anyone should trust him even though we know from very recent experience we can’t trust Bennett, who he’s running against. You’d think people would be okay with jumping in on that lesser of evils, but some would still rather go third party or maybe not vote at all, but something other than just trust him from what they were asking.

So how do you get this particular community to vote as a bloc?

My reply follows