Fuck Obama

[8bitagent]

BRILLLLLLLLLIANNNNT. Fuck, people like Ted Rall, Jeremy Scahill, etc make me proud.

It's like hey, Obama just blew up a village with men women and children...but now gays can openly serve in the corporate military meatgrinder. Yayyyy!

[elfismiles]

Heh! I knew you'd like that one 8bit.

And it works for me since so many women I know say they couldn't support Ron Paul because he'd appoint people to the Supreme Court who'd overturn Roe v Wade (among other obvious objections to Paul - tho that was the usual one from women).

In the meantime ... see post below RE: Obama and Afghanistan.

FUCK ROBAMNEY!! Four More Wars!!

BRILLLLLLLLLIANNNNT. Fuck, people like Ted Rall, Jeremy Scahill, etc make me proud.

It's like hey, Obama just blew up a village with men women and children...but now gays can openly serve in the corporate military meatgrinder. Yayyyy!

Obama Ignored CIA Report Against Afghan Escalation

Biden Also Warned Escalation Wasn't Viable
by Jason Ditz,June 25, 2012

Newly leaked memos related to the 2009 escalation of the war in Afghanistan have put President Obama’s decision in an even worse light, with the revelation that Vice President Joe Biden penned a memo warning him that the plan wasn’t “viable.” Even more shocking is the revelation that President Obama knew of a CIA assessment that warned against the surge, and “purposely did not read it” before approving the massive escalation.

The new information is included in the upcoming book Little America by Rajiv Chandrasekaran. The Associated Press got an advanced copy of the book and revealed the new information.

Biden’s memo centered on the idea that, while confident that more troops would be able to chase insurgents from villages, the Afghan government was still not credible, nor able to actual secure any of those “gains.” He recommended a smaller escalation.

In practice even Biden’s assessment was a bit rosy. The surge dramatically increased the death toll in Afghanistan, but here in summer 2012, all of the same problems present in summer 2009 remain, and perhaps have worsened in some ways. Though officials are publicly claiming “progress” the administration has signed a pact with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to keep troops on the ground in Afghanistan through 2024.


http://news.antiwar.com/2012/06/25/memo ... scalation/

[ninakat]

But, but, but Michael Moore thinks it's More Than A Victory. Gosh, who should I believe?

Insurance Companies Win, Public Left on Life Support
Why the ObamaCare Ruling Stinks
by DAVE LINDORFF
Counterpunch, Weekend Edition Jun 29-Jul 01, 2012

Looking on the bright side, the Supreme Court has ruled that something that President Obama has done is definitively not unconstitutional.

That’s probably the best that can be said of the 5-4 decision by the High Court today in upholding the ironically named Affordable Health Care Act.

On the downside for Obama, he goes into the final four months of the election campaign saddled with a decision that says he has raised taxes on some of the nation’s poorest people — for that is what the court said will be happening, 18 months from now, when the health insurance mandate part of the new Act takes effect, and people who have no employer-provided health plan, and no other kind of coverage, fail to buy a policy for themselves and their families. They will be socked with a bill by the IRS, and while the Obama administration and supporters of the act in Congress were at pains to say that the payment such people would be hit with would be a fine, the Justices in the majority were adamant that it would be a tax.

Also taking a hit were Republicans, who universally oppose what they have been deprecatingly calling “Obamacare.” Republicans, including their presidential candidate- in-waiting Mitt Romney, have vowed to eliminate the act after the November election if they win, though unless they do surprisingly well in the Senate and come up with close to a 60-40 majority — very unlikely — they will in truth be unable to do that.

Romney, who as governor of Massachusetts launched a state health plan that included an insurance mandate with a fine for not having insurance, which was clearly the model for the federal law, is in the awkward position of another Massachusetts presidential contender, John Kerry, who went down to defeat in part because he voted for an $87-billion bill funding the Iraq War and then voted against it, leaving him lamely explaining to reporters that “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.” Now Mitt Romney will have to be saying, for the next four months, that “I was for an insurance mandate before I was against it.”

Not an enviable position to be in as a candidate.

The real losers in the latest Supreme Court decision, however, are the people of the United States. Not those who will be required to go out and buy some over-priced, minimal coverage, rip-off insurance plan offered by the private insurance industry, or to pay a “tax” to the IRS for not doing so, but everyone.

This is because the Affordable Health Care Act is not affordable. It does little or nothing to control health care costs, which are destined to continue to gobble up an ever increasing amount of the total US Gross Domestic Product as well as of corporate profits and families’ incomes.

The new federal version of Romneycare simply prolongs the day when the US finally does what it should have done decades ago, should have done during the first Clinton administration, and should have done at the start of the Obama administration: namely expanding Medicare to cover all Americans.

Instead of going for this option when he had broad and enthusiastic support as the newly elected president, Obama deliberately shut out all discussion of the Canadian-style approach to national health coverage — a national program of government insurance for all, with doctors’ rates and hospital charges negotiated by the government — and instead devised a scheme that leaves the whole payment system in the hands of the private insurance industry, and effectively lets doctors and hospitals charge what they can get away with.

Obama did this because he was a huge recipient of money from all sectors of the health care industry — the insurance companies, the hospital companies, the American Medical Association, the big pharmaceutical firms, and the medical supply firms.

ObamaRomneyCare is at its core an enrichment scheme for nearly all elements of the Medical Industrial Complex, with the possible exception of the lowly family practice physician, nurses, and hospital workers.

There is a reason why Canadians, who have better health statistics than US citizens, as measured by access to care, life expectancy, infant mortality rates, etc., spend half as much as we Americans do on health care both as individuals and as a percent of national Gross Domestic Product. There is a reason why the US has far and away the costliest medical system in the world, and yet still has some 50 million people who cannot get preventive care, and who cannot be seen by a physician when they or their family members get sick or injured unless they go to a hospital emergency room.

On balance, Obama probably has a narrow win in the Supreme Court decision, because the alternative — having the Affordable Health Act ruled unconstitutional– would have been an unmitigated disaster for him. There are certainly bragging rights in being able to tell Republican critics that the Supreme Court, including its Chief Justice John Roberts, an appointee of George W. Bush, have ruled that it does pass Constitutional muster.

But it is a pyrrhic victory, both for Obama, who will now have to explain why it is a good thing to tax poor people who can’t come up with the money to buy a crummy mandated health insurance plan, and for the public, who are going to end up having to pay through the nose for this new law.

No “progressives” should be cheering this decision. It stinks.

Dave Lindorff is a founder of This Can’t Be Happening and a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press. Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He lives in Philadelphia.

[8bitagent]

That was the strangest thing when Obama, Hillary, Jim Jones, Biden, White House pr staff all had a different idea of what they foresaw with Afghanistan. With bin Laden, they all held hands in some sort of meditative seance' in the special war room...but with Afghanistan all of them were saying completely different things to the press.

I try not to get too angsty thinking about these politicians. I think this series is rather brilliant

[lupercal]

^ my god 8bit that's skanky even by Free Republic standards and what the HELL does it have to do with anything Biden has ever said about anything?

Anyway I'm very happy to let you, Willow, ninakat, elfi and all the other good little Obamacare haters know that you're on the side of the angels for once so put that in your tailpipe and smoke it:

We Are All Catholics!
Posted: June 21, 2012 in Burt Prelutsky

It’s possible that many of you are unaware of the fact that over 40 Catholic institutions have filed lawsuits in opposition to ObamaCare. If you missed the news, it’s because the three major TV networks have chosen to ignore what will be a major constitutional court battle, hoping that by circling their wagons they can maintain the charade that it is women’s rights and not religious freedom that is at risk.

During the week that the lawsuits were filed, the combined coverage by ABC, CBS and NBC, amounted to less than 20 seconds of air time.

The administration has tried to frame the question so that it appears that the Catholic Church is crusading against a woman’s right to birth control and abortion, and one can easily see why. After all, if there’s one thing that Americans take very seriously, it’s surely not the Constitution. Instead, it’s sex, in all of its odd and often amusing, sometimes repulsive, forms. As addictions go, booze and heroin aren’t even close.

But the truth is, Obama, whose only god is the one he sees reflected in his bathroom mirror, is attacking the First Amendment. If he can get away with forcing the Church to go against its own basic tenets, it would mean he could do just about anything. And after running our national debt up to $16 trillion; gutting the military; and taking control of the automotive, energy and health care industries, you can easily see where he’d get that idea.

http://www.bernardgoldberg.com/we-are-all-catholics/

p.s. Benny says thanks for all you do.

[elfismiles]

EDIT: My apologies to everyone and lupercal. I don't want what I said to be my contribution to RI so I apologize. But for preservation's sake I've used the Spoiler:"I said it." ALERT bbcode to archive and self-censor.

Ya know Lupe... on those rare occasions when someone tells me to go 'suck a tailpipe' (commit suicide) whether thru a veiled smokescreen of plausible deniability or not, I usually say Spoiler:"GO FUCK YERSELF A-HOLE."

But I'm not gonna do that today.

^ my god 8bit that's skanky even by Free Republic standards and what the HELL does it have to do with anything Biden has ever said about anything?

Anyway I'm very happy to let you, Willow, ninakat, elfi and all the other good little Obamacare haters know that you're on the side of the angels for once so put that in your tailpipe and smoke it:


p.s. Benny says thanks for all you do.

[8bitagent]

Large portion of California medical marijuana shops are now closed thanks to Obama and Holder's aggressive anti marijuana campaign
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48029713/ns ... -_1FvIxN8E

Its been said not since Richard Nixon has an administration been so focused on pot

[Joe Hillshoist]

You didn't have to apologise to me smiley, I thought you were kind of restrained.

[StarmanSkye]

--quote--
"Large portion of California medical marijuana shops are now closed thanks to Obama and Holder's aggressive anti marijuana campaign
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48029713/ns ... -_1FvIxN8E

Its been said not since Richard Nixon has an administration been so focused on pot."

--end quote--


My GAwD but that's just criminally assinine!
On some level, I wonder whether the FED's obsession with criminalizing MJ in ALL ots forms (including the hemp fiber and seed-oil food industries!) is due in-part to the FED's traditional arrogance & inability to acknowledge past abuses and policy errors, notably the enormous damage done to individuals, families and communities thru the legal persecution w/ harsh financial costs of individuals for what amounts to non-violent statute violations in which the primary party 'injured' is an abstract aspect of 'the state'. The malicious hypocrisy and sheer predatory opportunism of the state in this perversion of justice can scarcely be topped, as the state routinely partners with and not only excuse/tolerates the much-more-harmful-to-society-and-communities serial crimes of corrupt politicos, judges, law enforcement agencies, corporate & financial fraudsters/racketeers, but even FACILITATES those crimes -- as in illegal wars based on lies, Too Big to Fail multi-trillion dollar wealth-transfer pillaging, insider-trading and election-rigging frauds.

The big question now is -- Can America survive its treasonous, illegitimate sold-out 'leaders'?

[Nordic]

Large portion of California medical marijuana shops are now closed thanks to Obama and Holder's aggressive anti marijuana campaign

Not in my neighborhood. They're everywhere. I could walk to probably five or six of them without even working up a sweat.

Come on down!

[8bitagent]

Not that Im a right winger or am ready to join the anti Obamacare chorus...but even MSNBC is like...hey wait a second...

Obamacare might leave the poorest Americans vulnerable
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/ ... -risk?lite

[seemslikeadream]

[ninakat]

Obama’s Justice Department Rushes to the Rescue of LIBOR Criminals
Tue, 07/17/2012 - 23:14 — Glen Ford



The Obama Justice Department is in theater mode, again, pretending to threaten the bankster class with criminal penalties – prison time! – for their manipulation of the global economy’s benchmark interest rates. The Justice Department claims to be building criminal and civil cases in the LIBOR scandal, which in sheer scope is the biggest fraud by international capital in history. But that’s all a front, a farce. Barack Obama has spent his entire presidency protecting Wall Street, starting with his rescue of George Bush’s bank bailout bill after it’s initial defeat in Congress, in the last days of Obama’s candidacy. He packed his administration with banksters, passed his own bailout and, in collaboration with the Federal Reserve, channeled at least $16 trillion dollars into the accounts of U.S. and even European banks – by far the greatest transfer of capital in the history of the world. Obama has reminded the banksters that it was he who saved them from the “pitchforks” of an outraged public. He pushed through Congress so-called financial reform legislation that left derivatives – the deadly instruments of mass financial destruction that were at the heart of the meltdown – untouched.

Wall Street may or may not remain loyal to Obama, but Obama has been loyal to Wall Street, the guys who gave him the campaign cash to become a viable candidate. His Attorney General, Eric Holder, a corporate lawyer to the core, is busily staging a pre-emptive LIBOR prosecution of bankers in order to shield them from legal action by a host of other government agencies and, ultimately, from the global universe of parties that have been harmed by the bankster’s schemes – a list that stretches to infinity. Holder’s job is to monopolize the LIBOR case, to the extent legally and humanly possible, grabbing jurisdiction and consolidating the cases against the banks with the aim of reaching a settlement that does not further destabilize the financial system.

Holder and his boss already pulled that trick earlier this year with settlement of the bank “robo-signing” scandal – a scheme that would have ranked as the “crime of the century” until LIBOR came along. A small group of state attorney generals were holding up an administration-brokered settlement that effectively gave the banksters immunity from prosecution, in return for a measly $25 billion payout. Obama used every power of his office to pressure the state law officers into line. The last one capitulated with a promise from Obama that a “special unit of prosecutors” would expand the investigation into abusive mortgages practices. You haven’t heard a peep about it, since.

Now Obama and Holder are playing the same diversionary game, making tough noises about criminal investigations of the LIBOR conspirators. But the Justice Department has already given immunity to Barclay’s Bank, of Britain, and to the Swiss banking giant UBS. More immunities will follow. The reason Eric Holder is staging criminal investigations is because that’s the only way he can protect the bankers, through immunities and by gradually narrowing the scope of the case. In the end, there will be settlements all around, and the banksters will move on to even more fantastic heights of criminality – thanks to the loyal, protective hands of President Obama.

[freemason9]

did you hear him say that workers are responsible for getting work done? he actually said that, or something like it.

that was so un-capitalist of him.

[Hammer of Los]

...

In the end, there will be settlements all around, and the banksters will move on to even more fantastic heights of criminality – thanks to the loyal, protective hands of President Obama.

That's not a very optimistic note on which to end an article.

Perhaps the bankers' star will fall further yet.

We shall see.

...