COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Monday, August 20, 2012

Fold, put down your cards, smile and walk away from the table.

20 comments:

  1. Claire McCaskill spent money to get him through the Primary. :)

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  2. From a liberal left wing blogger:

    I have become very disenchanted with President Barack Obama even though I voted for him in 2008.

    1. He did not even propose the public option healthcare system: he had campaigned on that system, promising to propose it. (Wikipedia: ”President Barack Obama promoted the idea of the public option while running for election.[3] After becoming President, Obama downplayed the need for a public health insurance option including calling it a “sliver” of health care reform,[4] but had not given up pursuing the idea before the health care reform was passed.[5] The preceding statement is disputed by evidence that the Obama administration had agreed to drop the public option from the final plan in the summer of 2009[6] in a back room deal with representatives of the for-profit hospital lobby[7]“)

    2. He has appointed countless Wall Streeters to his top economic team, failing to appoint labor voices like Robert Reich.

    3. He has bailed out Wall Street instead of Main Street: remember TARP? And then the banks dispensed $6 billion in bonuses in that year to its executives.

    4. He failed to attack the mortgage crisis, leaving an elephant still in our “room”, with one-third of home mortgages now underwater.

    5. He failed to veto the National Defense Authorization Act, doing away with habeous corpus, allowing the government to arrest and detain indefinitely without a trial or hearing.

    6. He agreed to an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and on top of that, he agreed to an egregious reduction of the estate taxes on the rich, exempting as much as $10 million from any estate taxes and lowering the estate tax rate down to a ridiculous rate of 35%, when our country has a $15 trillion debt. That alone saved the Walton heirs $17 billion in taxes.

    7. He has failed to indict and imprison any of those banksters involved in all of that fraud on Wall Street from the subprime mortgage, including robo-signing, and selling shit-backed mortgage securities known to be worthless.

    8. He appointed Jeffrey Immelt to head his Jobs Council when GE has been saying “China, China, China,” and shipping all jobs overseas while closing plants here in the US.

    9. President Obama is now considering and proposing to lower the corporate tax rate to 26%, when corporations are not only at a low-time rate of paying taxes but getting billions in tax subsidies from our government and opening up offices on the 19th floor of one building on the Cayman Islands to avoid taxes altogether.

    10. President Obama spoke in favor of PIPA and SOPA, when the internet is the last vestige of free speech and the availability of free information to the general public.

    11. There were no indictments by President Obama of all the contractor fraud reported on by Bernie Sanders and Ron Paul in a Congressional Report released over a year ago. Whenever the rich and big corporations are caught in fraud, Eric Holder adopts a policy of “looking forward”, instead of holding them accountable.

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  3. 12. President Obama agreed to the “grand bargain” (thank, God, Boehner did not accept it) to cut over $2 trillion in spending, including social security, medicare, medicaid, and other social safety-net programs merely in return for hypothetical “revenue increases” of $800 billion relying on “dynamic scoring”.

    13. President Obama has done nothing to level the trade treaties, where corporations are shipping labor to Cambodia (22.5 cents per hour), China, Philippines, etc., where labor is paid 25 cents per hour. This is exporting slavery to other countries. Where is the level playing field for Americans?

    14. President Obama in 2009 only proposed $140 billion in infrastructure spending when Paul Krugman and other economists predicted that $1.5 trillion was needed for our economy to recover. And last year only proposed a paltry $108 billion in infrastructure spending.

    15. President Obama praised the recent JOBS Act, which allows corporations to go public and raise capital without audited financial information in their public presentations for the first five years, allowing them to present fictitious numbers and defraud investors?

    16. President Obama has failed to propose the return of Glass-Steagall, separating commercial and investment banking, which will soon plunge us back into another mega-bailout of Wall Street.

    17. President Obama has failed to propose the break up of the big banks and corporations. What ever happened to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act?

    18. President Obama touted a $25 billion robo-signing settlement when a trillion dollars of our pension and retirement funds were stolen.

    19. While campaigning, President Obama promised to put on his walking shoes for labor, but failed to even show up in Wisconsin and walk the picket line against Governor Walker.

    20. President Obama has not declared war on the Supreme Court, as President Roosevelt did, to oppose the corporate/rich posture of Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts. Why not take them on?

    21. President Obama has arrested and raided more marijuana users in less than four years than George Bush did in eight years. Why is President Obama proposing cuts to social security, medicare, and medicaid while spending more on marijuana arrests and raids, especially when a majority of Americans are for legalization of pot and for the open sale of marijuana for medical use?

    Time and time again President Obama did not fight the good fight for working Americans, who are losing their jobs, health insurance, homes, dignity, etc.

    I am tired of the lame excuse of how we must vote for Obama because of the Supreme Court. How can anyone believe that Obama would not disappoint progressives on that issue after he failed to undertake a recess appointment of Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a position to which she was more entitled to direct than any other American?

    I am done with President Obama.

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    Replies
    1. If he's that pissed about Obama, he'll just love him some Romney, eh? :)

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  4. Man, some of that is just plain silly.

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    Replies
    1. Obama stayed the course.
      As will Mr Romney, if elected.

      He WILL sign an Executive Order banning assault rifles, if the Congress does not pass adequate legislation.
      He WILL maintain Individual Mandates to fund a Federal version of RomneyCare.
      He is committed to both propositions.
      They represent his core principles.

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    2. As reported in Mr Murdock's WSJ ...

      “I believe the people should have the right to bear arms, but I don’t believe that we have to have assault weapons as part of our personal arsenal,” he said on Fox News...

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    3. In 2016 the "Conservatives" will have a long list, if Mr Romney is elected.

      Count on it.

      "I don’t believe that we have to have assault weapons as part of our personal arsenal"

      The wit & wisdom of Mitt Romney.

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    4. I guess that "much less cool-looking" .308, semi-auto deer rifle is okay, though, eh?

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    5. in a Mar. 7, 2010 Fox News Sunday interview.

      “What we did, I think, is the ultimate conservative plan. We said people have to take responsibility for getting insurance, if they can afford it, or paying their own way. No more free- riders. And we solved this at the state level – not a federal plan, but a state plan.”

      Romney went on to describe the mandate as the “biggest pro” of his health care plan.

      “It’s a plan that has pros and cons,” he said. “The biggest pro, in my view, is that we don’t have free riders now expecting other people to pay for their health care costs. And we’re also able to have individuals, who otherwise would not have the kind of specialty care they need, receiving treatment.”

      Two weeks later Romney said during an interview on CNN’s Larry King Live, “right now in this country, people that don’t have health insurance go to the hospital if they get a serious illness, and they get treated for free by government. My plan says no, they can’t do that. No more free riders. People have to take personal responsibility. I consider it a conservative plan.”

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    6. ... Charles Gibson of ABC News: “But Gov. Romney’s system has mandates in Massachusetts, although you backed away from mandates on a national basis.”

      Romney: “No, no, I like mandates. The mandates work.”

      GOP contender Fred Thompson: “I beg your pardon? I didn't know you were going to admit that. You like mandates.”

      Romney: “Oh, absolutely. Let me tell you what kind of mandates I like, Fred, which is this. If it weren’t –“

      Thompson: “The ones you come up with. Bingo”

      Romney: “Here’s my view: If somebody can afford insurance and decides not to buy it, and then they get sick, they ought to pay their own way, as opposed to expect the government to pay their way. And that’s an American principle. That’s a principle of personal responsibility. So, I said this: If you can afford to buy insurance, then buy it. You don’t have to, if you don’t want to buy it, but then you got to put enough money aside that you can pay your own way, because what we’re not going to do is say, as we saw more and more people ...”

      In a follow up question, Gibson asked Romney about his imposition of tax penalties in Massachusetts.

      Romney responded, “Yes, we said, look, if people can afford to buy it, either buy the insurance or pay your own way; don’t be free-riders and pass on the cost to your health care to everybody else.”


      RomneyCare on the Federal level, he was promoting it 16 months ago.
      When he thought Obama was going to a Single Payer System.

      Individual Mandates are in his playbook, count on it.

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  5. Some people have way too much time on their hands:

    147. Fish and Wildlife Service continues to ignore science on endangered species

    164. Yahya Wehelie, an American exiled without charge

    217. Massive screwup in printing $100 bills


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    Replies
    1. Screwed up the $100.00 Bills?

      I never noticed.

      :)

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    2. I dint know they still made them things. Me an my frinds use twennies. (when we kin get'em)

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    3. The Indians I know, rufus, don't use Andy Jacksons. They kinda boycott Twenty dollar bills

      What kind of friends do you have?

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    4. You caught me; I was just boasting. I don't have any friends.

      :) Or, twenties, either.


      Got a "five," and two ones in the dresser drawer, though.

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  6. Fives, fives, worse than the twenties.

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    Replies
    1. HEY!

      I gots news for you bozos; the "worse" thing is "Not having any" fives, or twennies.

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    2. Take it from the voice of experience. :)

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