Tag: change

One change makes you larger,

And one change makes you small,

And the ones Obama gives you, don’t do anything at all.

Go ask Geithner, when he’s ten feet tall.

Bring a shovel with you, he’s WAY down in that 10 trillion dollar rabbit hole no Obamabots want to talk about, he’s down there with the Mad Hatters of Wall Street and the Cheshire Cats of the Fed, he’s down there high-fiving his Goldman Sachs pals, they’re on a roll, they’ve been raking in market bubble billions and cashing in when those bubbles have exploded ever since the 1920’s.                

Mad Hatters, Cheshire Cats, whacko wingnuts and Goldman Sachs.

Are we having fun yet?

There can be no doubt we face many problems and crises as a nation at this time. Most of these are the direct results of the misanthropic mismanagement of the Republican Party over the last eight years of so. This combined with a change in controlling party has put the Democrats and a the Political Left in general in a place where they are expected to clean up the mess and do it right now. This is a huge opportunity, but it will only happen if we can stay together as a coalition. This is the challenge the Dog would like to talk about today.

“Originally posted at Squarestate.net“

Crossposted at http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

    I was recently told that an effective way of contacting my Congress Critter is to write a hand written letter and then send it off to them. Apparently, the effort that goes into writing an actual letter is a clear signal that I mean business, much more so than a phone call that never reaches my Congressperson or an e-mail that can be easily deleted.

    Therefore, I propose that we all get some “Get Well Cards” and send them off to our Representatives in Congress. That way, they will know we really, really care.

    We know the votes are there. Are the vertebrae there is the question.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Choosing the right card is important. It can be funny or angry, home made or store bought, and you should definitely personalize the message on the inside.

    The message should be as clear as daylight. We want health care reform with a real and robust public option. You want to get re-elected. We should work together in order to accomplish our goals.

    Send one to both your Senators and your Congressional Representative, as well as your local State Representatives. Let them know that the American public will not tolerate bullshit on this issue, or any other issue where the status quo and Big Business stands in the way of real reform and progress.

    Mailing addresses for your Representative in the House can be found here at writerep.house.gov

    And your Senators mailing address can be found here at www.senate.gov

Crosspsoted at daily kos

Top 5 Lobbyists for the First Quarter of 2009

1. Chamber of Commerce of the U.S.A.: $9,996,000

2. Exxon Mobil: $9,320,000

3. Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America: $6,910,000

4. Chevron U.S.A. Inc: $6,800,000

5. Lockheed Martin Corporation: $6,380,000

    No wonder there are so many alternatives to real reform and real change. If the buck stops in Washington the buck started in a lobbyists briefcase.

    Simply put, if they can afford to lobby, they can afford to change.

    This goes for every Special Interest and every Big Business. While they fight change and kick and scream we here in Real America are fucking dying. We are dying while fighting your wars, we are dying waiting for health care reform, we are going broke waiting for Wall St to clean up it’s act, to make a long point short, Americans know you have the money, and now it is time to ante up.

Way back in the olden days – 1968 – there was a nasty big war going on in a godforsaken little country in southeast Asia called Vietnam. In those days there wasn’t an “All Volunteer Force” full of high school dropouts, petty criminals who bought off jail time by enlisting, way too many hopeless kids from the rust belt and impoverished heartland with no other options, etc.

In those days we Baby Boomers, the largest chunk of humans ever to gift the planet with our presence, were enjoying our youth and our freedom immensely with what our parents who fought World War II at home and abroad were able to buy us with their rewards for suffering through decades of economic depression and war. We were the best educated generation ever, a huge percentage of us went to college because our parents were hell bent on giving us all the opportunities they never had.

So in order to have an ample rotating pool of millions of young men to fight their war, they had a system called “Selective Service.” Conscription. Now, this system and the Last Great Opium War it supported were not very popular with the young Boomers who got to be cannon fodder whether they wanted to or not. As resistance and protest against the war grew among the young and disrupted college campuses all over the country, the huge ‘bubble’ of humans that comprised my generation began looking really dangerous to the Powers That Be who like to run things from some basement in or near Washington, D.C.

The situation looked pretty grim to me too, though I tended to have a lot more faith in my generation than the wigs in D.C. did. I figured it would eventually come down to revolution, but I also figured we’d win. Sheer force of numbers. I joined the local NAACP Youth Council, thinking we were going to need the boomers who weren’t WASPs, as much or more than we needed boomers who were. We also had some luck recruiting Native American kids, which I considered a very hopeful sign. Our revolution would need us all, so I actively went to work rounding up as many “all” as I could find. It being Oklahoma (Muskogee, in fact), they weren’t hard to find.

My sister who was a year older had joined the SDS while away for her first year of college in Kalamazoo. She wasn’t at all shy of trying to recruit me into the fold every time she came home on holiday. She too was convinced that a revolution by our generation was inevitable, and despite serious inborn intellect (she was Valedictorian in high school, eventually got a PhD in plant physiology), seemed totally under some kind of spell cast by some older people – pre-WW2-born Beatnik generation – who were trying really hard to manage the great desire for change and a better world for their own purposes. By manipulating us.

So here we are, still confined in the Netroots Ward of this Nationwide Nuthouse of Centrism, owned and operated by the Wall Street Foundation for Permanent Fiscal Fuckery, staffed and supervised by the best Centralizing Centralizers of Centrism money can buy, and presided over by the Head Nurse of Centrism, your friend and mine, Nurse Ratched  . . .

Look into those eyes, you’ll see Centrism personified, Centrism epitomized, Centrism symbolized, manifested, and defined.

She knows what’s best for us.  Centrism.  She monitors the behavior of her patients very closely, especially our behavior here in the Netroots Ward.  Her patience with us is wearing thin, we just won’t get with the program, we won’t take our medication, we won’t submit to her control.  She’s not going to tolerate that, she never tolerates that.

I’ve watched her get more and more skillful over the years.  Practice has steadied and strengthened her until now she wields a sure power that extends in all directions, I see her sit in the center of this web of wires like a watchful robot, tend her network with mechanical insect skill, know every second which wire runs where and just what current to send up to get the results she wants.

Her orderlies in the corporate media are all wired to that current, her orderlies in Congress are all wired to that current, her orderly in the White House is wired to that current.  They’re doing her bidding, the Centrists have made their diagnoses, health care reform will get lobotomized, the EFCA will get lobotomized, real change itself will get lobotomized, she’ll double everyone’s daily dosage of Centrism medication, whoever won’t take it orally will get it anally.

Crossposted at http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

    Representative Barney Frank has introduced H.R. 2835, a bill which is intended to reschedule marijuana for medical use and end federal interference in state laws.

    To provide for the medical use of marijuana in accordance with the laws of the various States.

govtrack.us

   Moving the Overton window happens one step at a time. We need to take bigger steps. This bill does not address the problems inherit in the drug war or the marijuana prohibition issue. If you want a national drug policy that makes sense, this bill does not address the problem, and right now our national drug policy is a big part of THE problem.

    The bill, which was co-sponsored by 13 bipartisan Members of Congress at the time of introduction, would change federal policy on medical marijuana in a number of ways. Specifically, the Act would change marijuana from a Schedule I drug, classified as having no medical value, to a Schedule II drug, which would recognize marijuana’s medical efficacy and create a regulatory framework for the FDA to begin a drug approval process for marijuana. The act would also prevent interference by the federal government in any local or state run medical marijuana program.

commondreams.org

    What seems like a valiant effort to protect medical marijuana users is not quite the problem. Of course I want medical marijuana users to be able to get the medicine they are prescribed, but that is not the Problem.

     

    This is not getting the job done. The incrementalist bullshit, the bi-partisan compromise with people with bad ideas who hope that America fails just long enough for their own benefit, the whole idea that we can push a little here and a little there in a nine sided chess game to fix the clusterfuck just right.

     I am glad Obama is President but the audacity of hope part is over. Right now, I am hoping for a little more audacity.

    Though I don’t entirely agree with everything Bill Maher says, I agree with his point. We need drastic reform for health care, our economy, issues regarding the rule of law and the role of the Executive branch that was abused during the previous criminal administration.

    A little at a time is not enough.

    So, if not now, when?

    If we are not going to stand up now to the banks, the insurance companies, the MIC, the status quo, then when?

    By criticize Obama when he is wrong we give him a reason to act differently. If we only praise him he has no reason to court our interests.

    I think a side effect of the GOP being as far out as they are is that it gives Obama and the Democrats leeway to be just as bad but seem better by comparison. It is like their corruption is less offensive when compared to the lunatic rhetoric of secessionists, fear mongers, torture advocates and “reverse racism” concern trolls.

    I think the only way to be heard anymore is to raise hell, or rather, yell louder.

     

     The party is doing everything they possibly can to ensure that you’ll get re-elected. The Republican party.

     Speaking of which, speaking of the Republican party, if you can’t shove some real reforms down their throats now, then when?

     Barack Obama needs to start putting it on the line in the fights against the banks, the energy companies and the health care industry.  

     And I couldn’t agree more.

     You want change now, or later?

     I, for one, will not trade a bird in the hand for two in the bush. Especially not after fighting like hell to get it in the first place.

     Or was “Change We Can Believe In!” supposed to be a second term issue?

Crossposted at DKos

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

Here is a good example of what is in H.R. 2346

   We are going to give $230+ million to a DoD Base Closure Account in order to carry out operation and maintenance, planning and design and military construction projects not otherwise authorized by law.

    ???

    Are we getting single payer health care? Are we getting a commitment to rebuilding America through building infrastructure and the manufacturing sector? Are we getting the return of the Glass-Steagal Act, or the repeal of Gramm/Leech/Bliley? Are we getting to the end of mountain top removal coal mining, or the beginning of a more sustainable energy plan? Are we getting investigations and a Special Prosecutor for the War Crimes committed by Bush/Cheney?

    No.

    What we are getting are drone missiles, new army bases overseas and defense contracts. With a side of suppression of evidence of war crimes and a big financial bailout on the side.

    We are getting a bill called H.R. #2346, The Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2009

This is an example of what your scarce national resources that are not there for national health care is going to…      

In Why We Can’t Have Change Buhdy argued that there is just not much Obama can do to bring Change about . . .

There is plain and simple, just not much he can do to bring Change about. There is not…yet…much he can do to bring Change about for one basic reason. One basic reason, which then blooms into a thousand flowers all smelling like DC bullshit in the spring.

The one card Obama has to play in the DC Realpolitik Poker Game is….us.  The Power of the People.  A steady 65% approval rating, and that is a HARD 65%.  The People who support him REALLY support him. And his many and varied opponents know it. He has that, and the limited (even post-Bush) power of the Executive Branch.

He brings that to the table.  But sitting across from him, arrayed around the table far outnumbering him….is the entire structure of the United States Government.

The entire structure of the United States government is broken, and everyone knows it. That’s why Obama got elected.  Americans elected him President to fix that broken government.  He has far more than one card to play, he’s sitting at that poker table in Washington with a Royal Flush, but he won’t lay it down on the table.

In 2004, no one had ever heard of Obama.  Yet somehow, he won the Presidency of the United States only four years later.  Why?  Because he promised Change.  Because 65 million Americans believed him when he said we have to put the politics of the past behind us, and voted for him.  But he’s not putting the politics of the past behind us, he’s letting the politics of the past, the politics of bullshit posturing in Congress, prevent him from doing what needs to be done.  

I’m not buying any arguments that Obama can’t bring Change.  The problem we have here is that he won’t bring Change.  Not real change.  He knows, and said so many times on the campaign trail, that the overwhelming challenges we face require new solutions.  Yet the only solutions he talks about involve playing the same old politics of the past with a broken Congress that’s about as popular as syphilis.