Category: Barack Obama

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/op…

By Arnold Schwarzenegger

September 24, 2010

Los Angeles Times

It would also make California a laughing stock.

But you already did that.

Republican Governor of CA, Arnold Schwarzenegger Smoking Pot

Two weeks ago, I asked whether or not the Obama administration’s Department of Justice under Eric Holder would seek to thwart the ruling of Judge Virginia Phillips, when she ruled on 9/9/10 that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the military’s antiqued discharge policy used against gay people, was unconstitutional.  The lawsuit was brought by the Log Cabin Republicans, who won the ruling on the grounds of freedom of speech, freedom of association, and the ability to petition the government for the redress of grievances-  the good, old fashioned stuff.

https://www.docudharma.com/diar…

Since then, the Democrats in the Senate made another one of their feeble, half hearted attempts at accomplishing something meaningful and legally correct, and of course, failed, after 3 of their alleged Dem caucus bailed on them during a cloture vote to get an amendment to get rid of DADT tucked into the latest DOD spending bill for FY 2011.

Here’s the roll call on that pathetic 56 to 43 vote.   http://www.senate.gov/legislat…

Judge Phillips said in her ruling that she intended to issue an injunction to stop enforcement of DADT,  yesterday, the Obama Administration’s Dept of Justice Filed An Objection to Overturning DADT, and even said that the Judge would be overstepping her bounds if she did it.  

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.c…

“A court should not compel the executive to implement an immediate cessation of the 17-year-old policy without regard for any effect such an abrupt change might have on the military’s operations, particularly at a time when the military is engaged in combat operations and other demanding military activities around the globe,” federal attorneys said in their objection.

Department of Justice officials declined to comment further.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs tried to pretend this was not backpedaling on that fierce advocacy for equal rights that was mentioned in the 2008 campaign.  Instead he tried to blame Congress, via an email, sent to the Associated Press.   Odd that he said “this clearly shows why Congress must end this policy.”   Because Congress is thought of as the House, and the House has its act together on this and would vote for it.  It’s the Senate, and more specifically a Democratic Majority Senate that is at fault,  that has decided a man or a woman in some states  gets to have 2 and 2/3 Senators, while the rest of the country only gets 1 and 1/3 Senator, every time they insist on a 60 vote majority to decide any procedure.

One potential solution to this would be for every person in the military who this policy impacts to immediately declare themselves a member of the   Log Cabin Republicans, since Judge Phillips could limit the injunction to them and not upset Attorney General Eric Holder’s Department of Justice…..  too much during an election season.   I’m not recruiting for them, but it looks like President Obama is confused about that equal protection under the law Konstitooshunal bipartisanshipthingee again.   I would love to see the Judge smack down more doofus crap from any administration who is telling her that the military members have to belong to the Republican Party to have equal protection, wouldn’t you ?

And of course,

Back in April in CA at the Boxer fundraiser

Back in April at the White House

Last year in DC , Oct 2009

They say that this country is free, and they say that this country is equal, It is not equal if it is “some times”

Aside from the legal and moral issues, since this is the height of campaign season, and the President is running around the country doing million dollar fundraisers for some of these Senatorial candidates, let’s say what they fear the most:

Don’t Equalize, Don’t Pay to Play.

Because there is nothing more obnoxious that watching the current spectacle of the Senate Democrat’s Villain Rotation being used as an extortion tool.  

Link

GOP’s ‘Pledge To America’ Replaces Affordable Care Act With Provisions From Affordable Care Act

By Igor Volsky, ThinkProgress.org — Sept 22, 2010

Ironically, today Republicans are also unveiling a new “Pledge To America,” an agenda that promises to “repeal” all of these benefits — as well as the entire health care law — and replace it with “reforms that lower costs for families and small businesses, increase access to affordable, high-quality care and strengthen the doctor-patient relationship.”

The document provides almost no specifics about what the [GOP] party would do to control health care spending, improve quality, or pay for its reforms.

And at least 7 of the GOP’s ideas on health care are already included in the health care law:

Insurance Across State Lines

High-Risk Insurance Pools

Pre-Existing Conditions

Lifetime and Annual Caps

Recissions

State Innovation

Conscience Protections

WTF!  What Kind of Pledge is that?

Crossposted at Daily Kos and The Stars Hollow Gazette

Christine O’Donnell is fast becoming the face of the Republican Party.  Her campaign slogan is — to put it in Marxist language — power to the people.  Or, something like that. To quote an oft-used phrase on the internet(s) and one used frequently on this blog, “Teh stoopid! It burns.”  

Time permitting, I will try to post Part II of this diary later on this week.  

Democrats like to poo-poo the idea of running a challenge to the sitting President in a Democratic Primary.  They become angry when such an idea is suggested and direct their flames at the messenger.

This would ensure electoral defeat, they say.  There isn’t a candidate who could be presented as a credible choice.  Their excuses go on and on and on.

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce you to Barbara Lee:

She’s a clear voice of Progressive Democratic principles.  She voted against the war in Afghanistan and against the Patriot Act.  She’s stood up against corporations when her party was caving in to the moneyed interests.

in case you missed it …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

Wall Street Wizard, Anthony Scaramucci, complained like a baby to the President yesterday:

I represent the Wall Street community. We have felt like a Piñata. […] we certainly feel like we’ve been whacked with a stick.

Waaaaaa!! ….

I bet, The 8 million people who lost their jobs (or homes) are about to …  

This .org website gives a whole new meaning to Industry ‘Front Group’.

TeaPartyExpress.org

larger

It’s a page designed to solicit Donations — and little else.

The Home link — goes nowhere;  (ie. back to the Contribute Page)

The About link — goes nowhere;

The Media link — goes nowhere;

The Blog link goes to this blogspot page

TeaPartyExpressBlog.blogspot.com

where the lead story is

Don’t Raise Our Taxes – Don’t Repeal the Tax Cuts

and which has this emotive Scary Image:

let me guess, it’s designed to solicit Donations.

Why should you care?

Well it looks like Tea Party Express PAC, just may be breaking Federal Campaigns Laws …

“The poor are much poorer than they used to be.”

Doesn’t that sound like the sort of extremely important economic news that almost everyone would already know?

The post linked above at the excellent economics blog Angry Bear explains that in 2009…

6.3% of people in the USA suffered severe poverty, that is lived in households with income less than half the poverty line. This is the highest severe poverty rate on record.

That means that over 19 million people in the USA live in households with income less than half the poverty line (severe poverty implies income significantly less than $ 11,000 per year for a family of four).

Angry Bear makes a case that “Welfare Reform” is responsible for millions of people falling farther into poverty than ever, but whatever the real explanation may be, the brute fact of extreme poverty for millions of Americans is starkly represented in the table below from the Census Bureau.

Americans for Prosperity has worked closely with the Tea Party since the movement’s inception. In the weeks before the first Tax Day protests, in April, 2009, Americans for Prosperity hosted a Web site offering supporters “Tea Party Talking Points”.

Talking Points: Taxpayer Tea Party   [the Bullet point version, pdf]

Americans for Prosperity — April 2009

— Stop the handouts to Wall Street.

— Stop the Federal Reserve’s printing press

— Stop the federal bailouts that pick winners and losers in the marketplace.

— Stop exploding the national debt, which will crush our children and grandchildren.

— The grassroots MUST take action in order to achieve these goals.

Federal Spending

The Obama Budget

Endless Government Bailouts

IRS History and Horror Stories

Who’s behind the baggers?

Americans for Prosperity Foundation — an organization that David Koch started, in 2004

Koch who?

And you thought the Teabaggers were being “run” by the Beckster …

The President of the United States is about to publish “an inspiring marriage of words and images, history and story”, says Chip Gibson, president and publisher of Random House Children’s Books.

From the “patriotism” of America’s first president George Washington to the “artistry” of Georgia O’Keeffe and the “courage” of baseball player Jackie Robinson, the 40-page book is  “an inspiring marriage of words and images, history and story”, said Chip Gibson, president and publisher of Random House Children’s Books. Illustrated by Loren Long, who has previously provided the artwork for bestselling books including The Little Engine That Could, the picture book’s cover shows Obama’s daughters Sasha and Malia walking their dog, Bo, through a sunny, grassy field.

Children need to know! The Father of Our Country was a “patriot!”

But do they also need to know that this “patriot” led an armed revolution against his own country’s government from 1775 to 1781?

Those pointy-headed bureaucrats want to tax our tea!

Kill them! Kill them all!

Obama’s secret agenda is obvious enough on the cover of his book, which shows Sasha goose-stepping across a “sunny, grassy field!”

Mussolini would be proud!

Give those girls some machine-guns!

And those militant children should also know that George Washington was a totally unscrupulous war-profiteer!

When Congress offered to pay him $500 per month, he declined, instead asking only that his expenses be paid. Washington used his expense account to indulge lavishly in food, drink, and other amenities. In the end, the bill he presented to Congress was $449,261.51 (far greater than the $48,000 he would have received in pay.

$449, 261.51! In constant dollars, that would be more than $11 million today!

For “expenses!”

And Barack Obama understands that lesson all too well!

Five days before being sworn in as President, Obama secured a $500,000 advance for an abridged version of “Dreams From My Father” for middle-school-aged children.

And that’s only the most recent publishing payoff for Obama’s career in “public service,” which now includes multi-million dollar royalties from Dreams from My Father and The Audacity to Profiteer.

But before Obama got his face on TV at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, Dreams from My Father had only sold about 10,000 copies and gone out of print, after a final small edition from a Japanese publishing house way back in 1996.

Politics pays, children!

And that’s really all you need to know.

There is a crack daylight, that may topple the Republican’s Wall of Inaction.

Voinovich breaks with GOP to push for small-business incentives

Lori Montgomery, Washington Post Staff — Sept 10, 2010

Retiring Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) said he plans to help push a package of small-business incentives through the Senate next week, a move that would give President Obama and congressional Democrats a key victory on the economy in the final weeks before the November midterm elections.

In an interview, Voinovich said he could no longer support Republican efforts to delay the measure in hopes of winning the right to offer additional amendments. Most of the proposed GOP amendments “didn’t have anything to do with the bill” anyway, Voinovich said, and amounted merely to partisan “messaging.”

“We don’t have time for messaging,” Voinovich said. “We don’t have time anymore. This country is really hurting.”

Finally a Republican Senator with some Integrity, who is willing work for the folks, that Voted him into Office  (instead of working against their interests, for his own gain …)

Six years after the Log Cabin Republicans filed suit, and 7 weeks after closing arguments on July 23,  Judge Virginia A. Phillips of the US District Court, Central District of CA, issued a landmark ruling yesterday, which overturned “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”   Judge Phillips said in her ruling that it violates servicemembers’ Constitutional rights, and that she would issue an injunction against the government to stop it from being further enforced.

Log Cabin Republicans (LCR)  said DADT violates due process guaranteed by the 5th amendment of the Constitution and their freedom of speech, association, and the ability to petition the government, guaranteed by the 1st amendment.

Is this finally the end of one of President Clinton’s least popular compromises of the last century ?  Or will the Obama administration, who has dawdled on fulfilling a campaign promise to end DADT by refusing to issue an executive order, appeal, and continue to waffle and defer to yet another Pentagon study after Defense Secretary Gates’ latest one is due out on Dec 1 2010 ?

Since the policy was first introduced in 1993, over 13,000 military personnel have been discharged because of DADT, with 619 being discharged in 2008 and 428 being discharged in 2009.  (In the first two years of the Bush administration, it was 1,241 and 1,273 troops discharged, respectively).  Per wikipedia, of the the 26 counties of NATO, more than 22 of those already permit gay people to serve,  all of the countries of the European Union except Greece permit gay people to serve, and of the UN Security Council, 3 countries, Great Britain, France, and Russia permit gays to serve, with only the United States and China still stuck in the past.  

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…

The decision puts the White House in a quandary, since it comes as the Obama administration is in the middle of a cautious and drawn-out attempt to lift the ban on homosexuals serving openly in the US military.

But those carefully calibrated plans may now be thrown out the window, after Judge Phillips granted a request for an injunction halting “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” from operating, saying evidence showed that it had a “direct and deleterious effect” on the military.

A pdf of the complete ruling by Judge Phillips is here, Log Cabin Republicans v. United States of America and Robert M Gates, Secretary of Defense:

http://www.cacd.uscourts.gov/C…

excerpt:

Many of the lay witnesses also spoke of the chilling effect the Act had on their ability to bring violations of military policy or codes of conduct to the attention of the proper authorities.

__

The Act prevents servicemembers from openly joining organizations such as the plaintiff in this lawsuit that seek to change the military’s policy on gay and lesbian servicemembers; in other words, it prevents them from petitioning the Government for redress of grievances. John Doe, for example, feared retaliation and dismissal if he joined the Log Cabin Republicans under his true name or testified under trial; thus, he was forced to use a pseudonym and to forgo testifying during trial. (Ex. 38 Doc Decl. pp 6- 8; see Trial Tr 88:19- 90:15, July 13, 2010, 708:21- 709:4, July 16, 2010 )

Furthermore, as discussed above, the Act punishes servicemembers with discharge for writing a private letter, in a foreign language, to a person of the same sex with whom they shared an intimate relationship before volunteering for military service. It subjects them to discharge for writing private e- mail messages, in a manner otherwise approved, to friends or family members, if those communications might lead the (unauthorized ) reader to discern the writer’s sexual orientation. These consequences demonstrate that the Act’s restrictions on speech are broader than reasonably necessary to protect the Government’s interest. Moreover, the Act’s restrictions on speech lead to the discharge of servicemembers with qualifications in critically needed occupations, such as foreign language fluency and information technology. The net effect of these discharges, as revealed not only in the testimony of the lay witnesses but also of the experts who testified and Defendants’ own admissions regarding the numbers of servicemembers discharged and the costs of recruiting and maintaining an all volunteer military force, compel the conclusion that the Act restricts speech more than reasonably necessary to protect the Government’s interests.  

Finally, it again must be noted that Defendants called no witnesses, put on no affirmative case, and only entered into evidence the legislative history of the Act. This evidence, discussed in Section IV(C)(1) above, does not suffice to show the Act’s restrictions on speech are “no more than what is reasonably necessary” to achieve the goals of military readiness and unit cohesion. (See supra Section IV (C)(1)

VI. Conclusion

Throughout the consideration and resolution of this controversy, the Court has kept well in mind the overriding principle that “judicial deference to such congressional exercise of authority is at its apogee when legislative action under the congressional authority to raise and support armies and make rules and regulations for their governance is challenged.” Rostker, 453 U.S.at 70.  Nevertheless, as the Supreme Court held in Rostker, “deference does not mean abdication.” Id. at 67,70.  Plaintiff has demonstrated it is entitled to the relief sought on behalf of its members, a judicial declaration that the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Act violates the Fifth and First Amendments, and a permanent injunction barring its enforcement.

“Deference does not mean abdication….”  but since the Obama Dept. of Justice abdicated putting on much of a defense, does this mean they’re finally going to stop deferring to this form of discrimination ?