And we have the money to build a fine, new weapon. O, thank goodness!!
Good Morning all.

And what a shocker! Another missile test fails. (AP via MSNBC)

from BT’s link, “But…but…what about bipartisanship?”

Boehner left no doubt this morning that he and his party don’t want to work with Democrats on shaping legislation. That’s fine. But with that in mind, can we let go of the ridiculous notion that Democrats are on the wrong track unless Boehner likes their ideas? And more importantly, can we abandon the absurd procedures that allow a small minority party to prevent the legislative process from functioning?

my bold.

the procedures DON’T allow a small minority party to prevent the legislative process from functioning (*). that’s just another lie the dems have told us — probably to try to excuse their unwillingness to follow through on the policies they claim to favor.

(*) note: from powwow’s research and analysis. will return with links.

Cue the deficit trolls in 5…4…3…

Let the bipartisan healing yowling begin…

O’s budget calls for increased spending on nukes.

Also, “quietly” increasing missile intercept capabilities in Middle East, mostly on ships.

Via democracynow.

I briefly listened to WJ earlier, where the Q was about the budget. Not spurprisingly there was a bipartisan call for decreased military.

Morning Joe has nothing but praise for the great man Roger Ailes

Mornin’, BT, pups

I saw a piece at HuffPo yesterday about Rethugs using Twitter and YouTube more than Dems. A week ago I saw a piece that said that Twitter use overall was decreasing. So now the Rethugs are gonna outstrip the grassroots folks by using Twitter and YouTube. Sorry, Rethugs, tweeting your sexual exploits or frustrations isn’t going to help your evil Party.

When there is no real money for Jobs, HC, Infrastructure or Education why are we still burning dollars on this:

Radar problems foil missile defense test

Joe is nothing but a tool for the right,and so is Gregory and Buchanan.I am so sick of MSNBC with these 3 Palin Droolers

Because we have to feed the MIC and its important Big Guys….such a travesty. Wouldn’t education/HC money be nice.

I can’t wait for all these old Cold War warriors to fade away. Our striving for empire is killin’ us.

from powwow on the 60 vote requirement and the senate filibuster:

… the Democratic Senate has a fall-back position available to it, without need for a rule change or anything else save a simple determination to act: Force the real filibuster back into the Senate, to preserve simple majority rule and the filibuster’s protection for the airing of a passionate minority’s position in that body.

short version: the dems are manipulating the rules with the result that they are preventing their own legislation from passing with a simple majority. 60 votes aren’t required right now with the rules as they currently exist. no rule change is needed for the dems to pass legislation with a simple majority, if the dems would LET / MAKE the republicans actually filibuster first.

for the longer version: i’m trying to keep a running list of powwow’s diaries and comments on senate rules regarding the faux filibuster, cloture and the real filibuster. in chronological order and diaries are in bold:

* http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/27290#comment-136310

* http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/01/28/tom-udall-on-fixing-the-senate-weve-gotten-ourselves-into-a-box/#comment-16135
* http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/01/28/tom-udall-on-fixing-the-senate-weve-gotten-ourselves-into-a-box/#comment-16399

* Anatomy of a Backroom Deal’s Public Face: The case for letting Congress do the legislating on health care reform.

* Let the C-SPAN cameras in, Democrats. [The Party's "Open Government" bluff just got called.]

* http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/18788#comment-107636

* http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/01/21/everyone-is-dennis-kucinich-now/#comment-83404

Morning SD, Are you assuming they aren’t being replaced? Surely hope you’re right….At least Cheney has a bad heart…but his daughter has a big mouth.

Consumer spending rose slightly in December – Personal savings increased to six month high; incomes also edged higher

There was an interesting program on the Cold Warriors and how they influenced foreign policy on book-tv this past weekend. Starts with protoneocons (Haig, for example) trying to undermine Nixon’s detente policy, but coninuing today. Click thru the amazon link & read the 3 reviews also. Very informative, especially on the role of Kraemer, who I never heard of before. Book was made possible by realse of new tapes.

We’ll see, won’t we? Without her father in the background Liz is nothing.

Off to swim in the great capitalist cesspool.

US KIA Irak: 4,375

US KIA Afghanistan: 977

Iraki and Afghan casualties: estimates vary to over 1.5M

US MBS 2010: 3,844 and rising

Be good to yourselves, and all other living things.

Namaste

Thanks…Ive been reading very interesting collection on post-WWII America/policy. The Soviets were the old terrorists. Nothing like fear to roil the coffers. What a waste.

That looks interesting. Thanks.

Yes, there’s a group of young’uns that have been sucking at the tit of the MIC for all their lives.

The schools poll is interesting. Only 12% of Americans give public schools a flat-out F. There are probably that many schools that, for a variety of reasons, are failing. If you look at the poll over against a normal distribution of values, a good part of it is randomly distributed. The bias is toward D and F, but articles like the one reporting the poll reinforce that bias.

Public education has a lot of problems, but so does education in general. Higher education is increasingly based on attracting celebrity professors and on multi-million-dollar sports programs. Community colleges are starved for funds. And the public schools that have the most difficult challenges are still given the fewest resources because of de facto segregation by school district.

Hey Dragon, get yours yet?

The Cold War Recognition Certificate is a recognition certificate awarded by the Secretary of Defense to all U.S. Armed Forces personnel and qualified federal government civilian personnel who faithfully and honorably served the United States anytime during the Cold War era, which is defined as September 2, 1945 to December 26, 1991.[1] Congress established the Cold War certificate in Section 1084 of the fiscal 1998 National Defense Authorization Act.

This is the only certificate offered by the U.S. Department of Defense for service during a war

De Facto & Obvious…just another way to “keep ‘em down on the farm.” Obscene

& RevBev,

It was very interesting. They and I really learned something new, not just a rehash. One of the anedotes I remember is that Haig & his cabal actually spied on Nixon, collected his private papers, etc. So with a paranoid prez with people out to get him, you can imagine… Had to keep his China plans very secret otherwise would have been undermined.

Kraemer was not an original thinker, according to one of the reviews, but someone who knew lots of people in power and who could promulgate the “projection of power” meme in circles where it really could be put into effect. One sentence I remember: the politicians have always been successfully lobbied from the right, including the military, and NEVER successfully lobbied from the left.

I just checked out future book salons & it’s not on the docket. But it looks like a candidate.

Oh, gee, I could hang it next to my Bush/Cheney Wanted Poster. What a crock.

What do you think about the money spent on those? How will they get certificates to all the homeless Vietnam Vets?

For Republics, St. Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter…but only when the President is a Republic.

Is there anyone to be our Martin Luther King..a moral, smart voice. Who?
Maybe that was the hope with the Pres’ Peace Prize….Ummmmm

Hey, I’m one of them fellers.

Are we supposed to go show the 214 or are they supposed to track us down (good luck on that given the number 0f times I’ve moved)?

One R ploy, deliberate or inadvertant, is to leave the economy so bad that it is impossible for the D prez to succeed. Nixon & W were the masters to date.

Ha, with all the shit I’ve been involved in over the last decade or so they’ll prolly have mine hand delivered this afternoon.

“Oh, and by the way, Mr D, can we have a peek into your computer?”

See new post….looks like we are all not in such a good mood this morning;) Wonder why? We may have to have an early Caturday, dear.

see my epu’d comment #33 previous thread includes this link

http://marketoracle.co.uk/images/2010/Jan/us-collapse-18-11.gif

karen

1. You will need proof of your service, such as a DD Form 214 (Record of Military Service).
2. Prepare, date, and sign a letter, requesting the award of the Cold War Recognition Certificate. You can also fill out an official request form at the Army’s Cold War Recognition Certificate Website.
3. Send the letter or request form, and a copy of your service proof to:

Commander
U.S. Army Human Resources Command
Cold War Recognition Program, Hoffman II, Room 3N45
ATTN: AHRC-CWRS
200 Stovall Street
Alexandria, VA 22332-0473

FAX: 1-800-723-9262
4. You may also FAX the letter and proof to: 1-800-723-9262.

They’s already peekin in your computer!

New post up…

Which is why this minor bump in deficit spending (CBO says $1.8T this year) is so wonderful: it has a target.
The $25 billion to states, if it doesn’t get cut, should go a long way toward bring about parity with military spending and corporate bailouts.

W is probably pretty darn proud right now.

Well, W always is b/c he is such a narcissist saying what a Big Boy am I. Sorry, can’t help myself. ;)

Shouldn’t we all be concerned about the explosion of government spending, exploding deficits and the growth of government?

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/concern_troll

So it is OK for FDL commenters to rail on endlessly about military spending but ungenuine for non-ideological independents to express their concerns?

Yes. Everyone should be. It’s unsustainable to keep borrowing and borrowing. Somebody has to pay for it all, and no matter how much progressives WISH it was the upper elite paying for it, it won’t be. They don’t and won’t. So, at the end of the day, taxes will skyrocket to pay for all this. They have to. If you can’t pay your $200,000 mortgage, you don’t borrow another $200,000 to pay for it and think it’s all great. This is the only problem I have with having too many social goals. They have to be paid for. Nobody wants to. Yet we still listen to the economic “experts”, even the Krugmans of the world, like they have all the answers. Well, these are the very same experts that cause these economic catastrophes.

Not everyone is a troll just because they disagree on things. Didn’t we have enough of that crap when Bush was the Chosen One?

I absolutely agree. Further, I feel that the growth in federal spending, the growth of deficits and expansion of the federal government limits the ability of Americans to govern themselves. I trust the American people more than political leaders on important national issues. Iview the federal government as a special interest group, and believe that the government and big business typically work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors.

The American attachment to self-governance runs deep. It is one of our nation’s cherished core values and an important part of our cultural DNA.

No, not everyone is.

Then why did you post the wiki page?

To inform people what a concern troll is.

Well prepare yourself for a lot of legitimate concern over Obama’s budget from the American people. Don’t know how the administration will be able to adequately defend it. They’ll probably throw our more Keynesian rationale and blame Bush bs. Don’t think voters are buying it.

ok

So what is the opposite of a concern troll? Team player?

Well, since DoD and its many wasteful programs (such as the pie in the sky “missile defense” that failed another canned test today) has been exempted from the so-called spending freeze, along with exempting that nice “Homeland Security” (with all its Orwellian emphasis); both departments with far more crooks and hangers-on in them than any group in the freeze side of things could ever have, yeah, I imagine a lot of folks will continue to complain about freezing programs that actually help living and breathing humans rather than freezing programs that might slow down the Blackwater/Xe types, the Military Industrial Complex Beltway Bandits, or programs allowing Goldman Sachs to keep pillaging the TReasury while paying their “CEO” an unearned $100M bonus.

Just for curiosity, what government programs (at all levels) are you willing to do away with? FDA? Local trash pick-up? Food inspections? Center for Disease Control? Fire Department? State Police crime labs? After school programs? School Athletics programs? Band? Prisons? Drug treatment?

What programs are you willing to keep and what do you want to cut?

yes!

and my #33 above.

karen

“CBS has come under fire in recent weeks from various groups for allowing a conservative Christian group to air an anti-abortion ad, and for barring a commercial from a dating site for gay men as inappropriate for prime time.”

CBS is just being consistent – anti-gay and ant-women

homer http://www.altara.blogspot.com