When did President Obama decide to be a lightweight? Was it the moment he stepped into the Oval Office and felt the enormity of the office he sought and won? Is that when the "urgency of now" and the "audacity of hope" morphed into "let's all get along"?
I hate to regret my vote. I regret my vote. The man who seemed to offer so much promise has shown himself to be an empty suit. Bush with a brain. Actually this is worse. He has a brain, a very good one, but seemingly he lacks conviction and heart. We bought the smoke and mirrors act.
Now we see a healthcare reform bill that is a big wet kiss to the insurance companies. Mandating everyone buy insurance as well as paying public funds into private hands to insure about 30 million people. AND subsidies for those already insured. No cost restraints. Reform, American style.
This has peeled back the layers and shown how broken we are. Our democracy seems to be in name only. If there ever was a doubt that we are a corporate-ocracy, it should be dispelled after watching this dog and pony show. I don't see any way out of this, short of campaign finance reform, which is about as likely as catching and holding a whiff of smoke. The very people owned by the power-brokers would need to enact the reform. Get the sad picture?
So I spent some time calling elected officials urging them to vote against a bill I had been lobbying for only a short time before. Habit is hard to break. Our duly elected officials know they are dealing with a low information society, so they know very few of their constituents will have any idea what just happened.
Maybe the few with true convictions will stop this disaster from moving forward. I deeply hope so, not only for my own sake, but for Obama's. Perhaps it will be the slap he needs to wake him up. I know, grasping at the smoke again.
He is easily dismissed because he made his living as a satirist. What doesn't seem to be widely known is he went to Harvard on a mathematics scholarship.
I watched the PBS broadcast tonight of The Warning. It is a must see. Bill Clinton and his administration have much to answer for. I knew about the Financial Modernization Act put together by Senator Phil Gramm and Robert Rubin, Clinton's Treasury Secretary, but I was not aware of how pervasive this corruption was. As I said in the prior post, everyone has been bought off. Major players in this criminal act now occupy the highest positions in the Obama administration. Why?
So Wall Street is in the bonus business again. Or I should say, still. The band of thugs, the financial terrorists are brazenly flaunting their continuing pillaging of the American economy.
JP Morgan has renamed itself a bank holding company, allowing it to receive interest free money from the Federal Reserve. Which they have promptly taken to China to invest in Chinese auto companies. The other thieves are receiving the same sweet deals, no interest to 1/4 percent on free-flowing cash from the Fed. None of it is being used to help spur growth in the US. It's either being used in trading or foreign investment.
They provide nothing and they drain the wealth from the country. And they get away with it. A year later, they are still at it. It would appear that nothing will be done to curb this. The people I listen to are saying next year will make this past year look like a walk in the park.
These investment banks have shifted their losses onto next year, allowing them to show a profit this year, thanks to our money. So now they will pay out record bonuses. I think anyone who leaves money in the market will get an unpleasant present next year.
How do they get away with it? They figured something out. Business does very well under a one party system, so in the past few years they realized if they bought both parties off equally they could in effect create a one party system. Mission accomplished.
If it weren't so terrifying it would be interesting to watch. Raw corruption in plain sight. But I'm not enjoying the view. I'm very scared about the outcome. We are in big trouble.
Does this mean Nero was mad or disconnected? I wonder because there seems to be a lot of fiddle playing while America falters.
Did Nero suffer from cognitive dissonance or insanity? Are Americans collectively mad or so disconnected from reality that we cannot put two & two together and come up with the proper answer. We keep saying three. Four is put up in front of our eyes and we, in unison, call out three.
In March of this year, President Obama sent 21,000 additional soldiers to Afghanistan. This week it is announced another 13,000 are being deployed. Did anyone hear members of Congress speak out about over spending and adding to the deficit? The silence has been deafening. Several days ago the Senate voted 93-7 to fund the additional soldiers. Where was the outcry from the budget hawks?
Funding a healthcare program which would better the lives and the financial situation of many Americans, now that is a different story all together. Democrats and Republicans alike have their rallying call; too much money in such financially stressed times such as these. The CBO (Congressional Budget Office) was not asked to submit a report on the effect on the deficit the additional forces would have. The Pentagon was not required to offset the cost of sending additional forces into Afghanistan, the checkbook is wide open. Not so for the proposed funding for people's heath care.
In the meantime, according to a study recently published by the American Journal of Public Health, 2,800 Americans die every three weeks because of lack of access to health care. Since we invaded Iraq, 300,000 Americans have died because of lack of health care.
We have been fed the worry about terrorists, all the while we are killing ourselves at a greater rate than could be reasonably expected by an attack. But dying from diabetes, asthma, cancer, heart disease. Pneumonia, infection, injury. Not dramatic enough to make the cable channels. These things happen quietly, under cover. At home in someone's bed, or chair. In an emergency room after the situation becomes too critical to worry about how to pay for it. In a hospital bed after a recalcitrant insurance company agrees to pay for treatment, finally, and it's too late.
We are either collectively mad, or we are so well removed from reality that we would be better off certifiably insane. Our cognitive dissonance is a choice; we choose not to look. We choose to decide there are no facts if they don't conform to our beliefs. We choose to borrow money to wage war, but we can't see our way to becoming a civil society. In our state of denial we prefer to see ourselves as different, a cut above the rest.
Everyone else sees us as being quite mad. And so we fiddle.
I heard on the news this morning that 13,000 more soldiers are heading to Afghanistan. This is in addition to the 21,000 deployed in March. This news was preceded by the report of two young Minnesota men who have just lost their lives there.
Our presence in Afghanistan is only a couple of years shy of our involvement in Vietnam. Vietnam was a large part of my youth, consuming the news and the campuses, deeply impacting the country. How can we be doing this again, on two fronts? In a country no one has actually 'won' in. The British couldn't do it. The Russian's couldn't either. So what makes us think we are somehow different. In the end, we won't be.
Barack Obama is on his way to making the mistake of his life. He will wear Afghanistan around his neck for all of eternity. He didn't start it, but he will be the one to own it.
I have been absent. An obvious fact. I needed to take an information vacation before I had a stroke. There has been an interesting result from my turning off and tuning out. I realized why our politicians get away with it.
I became what most of my brethren are; unaware. I have seen a little bit of network news and that's it. I don't have an awareness of what is going on. Except I know the stock market is doing well and that the recession is ending. I did hear a side comment that jobs are still a problem, but it seems the sage seers aren't letting that get them down.
I must say, it is rather comfortable here, in this place of unknowing. I realize why most everyone I know say " I don't follow politics".
It's a temporary condition on my part. Several factors came into play, leaving me in the place I have been for a couple of weeks. But I don't think I can permanently stay here. It is cozy comfy though.
I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House – with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.
I am a person who has always had an interest in how our government works. I have evolved into a Democratic Socialist in a world that has steadily moved in the opposite direction.
How I often see the chance for true change
Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor. Thomas Jefferson
I am a transplanted city-dweller, who gave up the pavement for pastures and coffee shops for feed stores. Along the way I became a breeder of many horses and the owner of some really talented and wonderful horses. And some not so talented, but still wonderful. You can't breed a champion every time, although you always aim for one. As well as having horses, I have a husband, an adult son and a couple of dogs. My interests are fairly simple: horses, politics, food and reading. And some gardening, as well. I rattle on about all of these interests with some regularity here.
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