It would be nice wouldn’t it if our “journalists” would ask every single federal candidate every single day if they support a lame duck session to cut social security and medicare.

Instead all we get is inside the beltway faux indignation at Romney’s tax returns–as if any evidence of offshoring of jobs and/or financial shenanigans is something that Obama hasn’t fully supported through his policies.

Oh, well.

Austerity for all, (except the ruling caste)!

The problem I see is a desperate lack of alternatives. That’s why I think it’s imperative to vote write-in or third party: a president elected to office by a not even close to majority plurality is an unspinnable statement. The conversation and conversion has to start somewhere.

Do not forget that the era of greatest prosperity was during high tax rate years for the wealthy and corporations, which gave the economy more consumers. There are no secrets here. Undercutting national prosperity is the right wing goal.

That’s why I think it’s imperative to vote write-in or third party:

But seriously, what good do you think that’s going to do? A third party candidate has almost zero chance of winning any electors but if somehow s/he prevented any candidate from getting to 270 electoral votes, the system will just gasp and be paralyzed. I agree with what you say about the lack of alternatives but our system is designed to prevent any insurgent parties from winning the White House and until that changes, a protest vote is just that: A protest.

We’ve allowed the 1% to buy (well, rent) our politicians.What on earth did we expect to happen?

And now we’ve got two tools running against each other and we get to pick which one screws us!

Boxturtle (Perhaps next election I’ll vote FOR someone rather than AGAINST someone else)

Undercutting national prosperity is the right wing goal.

Their goal is to contribute absolutely nothing to anybody but themselves. They want their tax rate to be zero and the government to live off of fees. The destruction of national prosperity is simply a side effect.

Boxturtle (Wonder what would happen if the right was given a choice between taxes and prisons?)

I think that’s the whole point: the system – which serves only the rich – needs to be paralyzed and choked to its gasping point as a cold stark warning: the next election will be decided by bullets instead of ballots if THEY don’t hold THEIR nose for a change …

Good morning, pups. Today we have Brooks, Nocera and Bruni. Bobo says we need “More Treatment Programs.” He babbles that after a tragedy like the killings in Aurora, Colo., people use the event to indict whatever they don’t like about society. But dealing with it is about psychology, not sociology. Of course, he’s very vague on how to fund the treatment programs he calls for. Mr. Nocera has a question: “Penn State Is Hit Hard. Is It Hard Enough?” He says the N.C.A.A. ordered sanctions with some teeth. Too bad the football program wasn’t also suspended for a while. Mr. Bruni looks at “The Divine Miss M,” and says as the latest antics of Michele Bachmann show, she and others on the right have a curious religion.

Here they are.

The coffee and tea are ready, the cold drinks are in the fridge, and I’ve got bagels with cream cheese this morning. I overslept this morning, so while I may feel a bit refreshed now I’m in a mad tear to get ready for work. Have a great day.

But MY point is that’s not going to happen. It’s just not. And the Democrats taking another bloodbath will only make them move further to the right. The system is designed in such a way that “punishing” The Democrats always = rewarding the Republicans and any insurgent third party candidate would be reviled as a traitor by the party s/he is running as an alternative against, (see H. Ross Perot and Ralph Nader). I invite you to refute my conclusions but please provide citation and examples. Seriously, I wish it wasn’t designed this way and I think it needs to change but what I think and what I wish are meaningless.

Treatment programs are nice. The fellow in Co would never have gone NEAR a treatment program. Neither would almost all people who really need them, like the Unibomber or the Columbine shooters. Even if we have the programs, how do we identify the people who needs them and get said people into them without violating their rights BEFORE they start shooting?

Take a psych eval in order to get a drivers license? I’d suggest a psych eval before a gun purchase, but theres that odd interpretion of the 2nd amendment that the supremems seem to support.

Boxturtle (And somewhere a rednecks head just exploded simply because I suggested it)

That’s pretty much my conclusion too. You can’t even begin to have a real discussion on the problems the nation faces and how to address them until you get rid of the chatty cathy uniparty and their kabuki act. They literally suck all of the oxygen out of the room and outright refuse to discuss any options that won’t benefit their corporate overlords(see banking, health care, defense spending, etc etc.)

Both(and I use that term loosely) major parties need to go.

Not that it will ever happen here, but gun control with teeth in it would put a real damper on the murder rate. Of course the wingnuts then screech that lunatics will kill anyway, with knives or axes… Well, when’s the last time someone wielding a knife killed and injured 70 people?

If a viable third party worked from a viable beginning to establish itself, it might potentially help. So far, only ego driven alternate candidates and the dishonest attempts of the right to keep the public from voting in its own interest have been potential vote recipients.

Obama gets more blame than Bush for weak economy in new poll

If a viable third party worked from a viable beginning to establish itself, it might potentially help.

In a few decades, because that’s how long it would take. “Viable” is the operative word.

If a viable third party worked from a viable beginning to establish itself, it might potentially help

Yes. Spot on. But an insurgent isn’t going to be elected President without that organizational support behind him/her. No insurgent will be viable this year. It’s nice to think about but as of right now, punishing Democrats is still indistinguishable from rewarding Republicans.

Gotta go to work. Sorry!

By preventing national prosperity, the 1% disempower potential business communities that would provide real services they do not, (such as reputable and solid banking), and real power, to the masses, so yes, it is what they choose to do.

We have absolutely no way of knowing what he would or would not have done. There is no parallel universe where mental illness isn’t stigmatized and people are asked to help recognize it so that it can be treated just like diabetes or high blood pressure.

I’m off to the salt mines. 129 more days…

The person in this particular instance built a bomb. I’m pretty sure he could have taken out a number of people with that even without access to a gun. Don’t get me wrong I oppose guns to mentally unstable people and am for legislation that would curtail their ability to purchase guns, I’m just saying that if you want to save more people then you target mental illness, not just guns.

Yes. The U.S. is peculiar in providing ways to get weapons of all sorts through gun shows and internet, making criminals and psychotics dangerous to all of us. Treatment for the dangerous mind is wishful thinking, most of them learn to hide it, as I have learned from dealing with a mentally ill family member.

And after the election when it comes to both candidates and social security they may be disparate members of the same team.

Amen to that. Obama has been grand-bargaining on cuts to Social Security and Medicare since four days before his inauguration, always with the sponsorship of Pete Peterson in the background.

But, here is the one graph that everyone should keep in mind during this run-up to the lame-duck assault on entitlements. If we simply let the Bush/Obama tax cuts expire, deficits will instantly drop to less than 3% of GDP, the lowest rate since 1980, except for the Clinton years and one short pre-crash blip during GWB’s second term. Keep that graph in mind through all of the grand-bargaining and deficit hysteria.

The U.S. public only knows what the corporate media tells them.

True. But it’s what we somehow need to do here. We’re a nation of hundreds of millions, meaning there are hundreds of one-in-a-millions out there.

Right now, our solution is to wait for such people to identify themselves violently enough that we can lock ‘em up. After all, we’re a nation of hundreds of millions. Those people shot were replaced by new births before the shooting stopped, right?

Boxturtle (Some of these crazies can be identified in grade school)

‘the sponsorship of Pete Peterson in the background’

Get real. Peterson has worked for right wing candidates for his entire career, and has no interest whatsoever in helping any others.

Peterson financed Obama’s catfood commission, and he was scheduled to be one of the keynote speakers and Obama’s original fiscal summit in early 2009 until congressional Democrats went through the roof.

The thing to remember is that Robert Rubin, Obama’s key fiscal advisor and major backer, is tight with Peterson. He sits on the board of Peteson’s foundations and attends his fiscal summits. Both of them are serious deficit hawks.

This is the price of having listened to Geithner, Summers and Rubin in early 2009.
That `right-sized’ stimulus doesn’t look so hot anymore.

and what was the percentage of the “stimulus” in the form of tax cuts?

‘the sponsorship of Pete Peterson in the background’

In your comment you were saying that Peterson sponsored the Prez. Now you have shifted to financing of the catfood commission which was put together by many factors, mostly the congress. Wild charges are not established by vague connections, and really, we expect better here.

Neil Barofsky on Morning Joke

(raises hand) oh oh oh I know, I know.

Over a third.

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2010/08/tax-cuts-and-the-stimulus-package.html

Says Geithner admits that funds in TARP that were supposed to be for helping homeowners were really for “foaming the runway” for the banks.

The unedited version of the quote to which you objected:

Obama has been grand-bargaining on cuts to Social Security and Medicare since four days before his inauguration, always with the sponsorship of Pete Peterson in the background.

My point is that Pete Peterson has been heavily involved in Obama’s efforts to cut “strengthen” Social Security and Medicare. Among other things he provided the staff for Obama’s Catfood Commission.

It might also be noted that Bill Clinton was a keynote speaker at Peterson’s most recent fiscal responsibility forum.

If you had wanted to make a point, stating it would have been a good beginning.

I am heading to the local book store to get a copy of the latest issue of The Progressive. The feature writer, Wendell Berry, from the title, I think may have some useful suggestions for us.

Good morning pups, out before heat of the day.

You’re running into the school marm’s red pencil..;)

Am not sure that I’m the only person here who prefers rational discourse to nonsense, even early in the morning.

He must stay after school and clean the erasers!

They learn to hide it (with the help of others)because society stigmatizes it like its a personal failing rather than a disease.

I also grew up in a household with mental illness. I was 13 when my father went to prison for shooting someone. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia while incarcerated. My brother was bipolar. Both died before they hit 45 by their own hand.

For future reference, Ruth, assume that all of my anti-Obama comments carry the implicit proviso that I am not voting for Mittens :-)

Sorry you had to go through that. In my experience, the mentally ill hold tight to their delusions because that is their only experience of reality, and treatment removes their feelings of security.

Thanks for the reassurance. I had never seen you as irrational, although sometimes we do disagree.

From The Peter G. Peterson Foundation wiki:

Notable Members of Peterson Advisory Board
Sen. Bill Bradley, Managing Director: Allen & Company LLC; Former United States Senator
Gov. Mario Cuomo, Of Counsel: Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP; Former Governor of New York
Harvey V. Fineberg, President: Institute of Medicine
Sec. Robert Rubin: Co-Chairman, Council on Foreign Relations; Former United States Secretary of the Treasury
Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer: Facebook
Sec. Donna Shalala, President: University of Miami; Former United States Secretary of Health and Human Services
Sec. George Shultz, Thomas W & Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow: Hoover Institute – Stanford University; Former United States Secretary of State
Lesley Stahl, Correspondent: 60 Minutes
Paul Volcker, Chairman: Economic Recovery Advisory Board; Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve

It’s an elementary construction of the English language. I said that Obama’s grand-bargaining on cuts to entitlements had the sponsorship of Pete Peterson. What’s your problem with that?

‘Obama has been grand-bargaining on cuts to Social Security and Medicare since four days before his inauguration, always with the sponsorship of Pete Peterson in the background.’

Thanks.

Robert Rubin and Pete Peterson are the tweedle dee and tweedle dum of the billionaires’ grip on politics. Peterson has a network of foundations that are a farm team for conservatives, and Rubin runs the corresponding operation on the left.

Senator Barack Obama was the keynote speaker at the opening of the Hamilton Project in 2006, which was co-chaired by Rubin and Peter Orszag. I suspect they were influential in getting him to run for the presidency. And, when he succeeded the Hamilton was essentially a government-in-waiting. So many of its staff went to work for the White House (e.g., with Orszag as budget director) that the Project literally had to shut down.

amazing.

you all dont understand that there is but one political party in this country.
every cut the republicans want has more than enough votes to pass.
the only issue is how fast to do it.

obama wants the frog in the boiling water approach.

republicans with romney want the nuclear option.

thats all they are fighting for.

elections make no difference.
see what happened in greece?

only a revolution from the people demanding the arrests of the bankers and politicians supported by the military will change things in the euro-zone.

nothing will save this country because the people are simply to stupid.

so the few of us that are aware of whats coming are prisoners to the dumb masses.

now continue to make all the silly comments you want about what we need to do.

I don’t understand this comment.

Ruth, being the stickler for truth that you claim to be … might you see what tomallen has put up @44?

What do you think?

Do you owe wigwam an apology?

DW

IMHO, the most recent attempt at a grand bargain broke down because both the GOP and the Dems wanted to get the credit from the 1% and wanted the other to get the blame from the 99%. The couldn’t agree on how to share the credit and blames but by now their sponsors will have worked something out behind closed doors, and they’ll even have Nancy Pelosi voting for entitlement cuts.

I expect it all to happen very, very quickly in the wee hours of a Saturday morning just as everyone is leaving town for the Holidays.

My intent was not to make people feel sad for me. I tend to believe my experiences have made me the person I am today. I went through a dysfunctional childhood but gained traits like empathy and compassion as a result of it. My intent is to try to get help for people like my brother(who was a smart and kind person despite his medical issues) and to prevent injury like that inflicted upon the Brevard County deputy my father shot.

From my perspective, both jadez @48 and wigwam @51 … have essentially nailed the truth to the door … of the “two-party” cathedral.

DW

I don’t think they officially have the votes yet(not enough willing to commit political suicide).

Hence the need to “reform the filibuster.”

Well said, and thank you, cwaltz.

DW

Per this 3/5/09 myFDL diary, the following was posted at Institutional Risk Analytics the previous day:

Indeed, yesterday we were slumming at the Four Seasons in New York. Among the dinosaurs we observed grazing in the tall grass of this Midtown Manhattan refuge for the transactional class was former C director Robert Rubin, former New York Fed Chairman Pete Peterson and Treasury Secretary Geithner, who apparently was there to get new instructions from his sponsors.

Before Geithner arrived for lunch, Peterson reportedly asked one NY real estate mogul: “How much of that toxic paper is there?” Now we may know where Geithner gathers his market intelligence — over a luncheon table in New York with his owners. Next time we are going to bring the flip-cam.

It’s not “right vs left.” Rather, it’s “The 1% vs the 99%.” Peterson and Rubin are on the same team, and they are the people who give Obama and Romney (and their staffs) their marching orders. It’s that simple.

Yes.

Absolutely spot on, wigwam.

“It’s that simple.”

DW

You’ve seen the old movies, and how do the slave drivers deal with the elderly not able to lift the heavy loads and not working fast enough… Well that’s who these people are, the slave drivers that whip the older slave to death in front of the others. That’s the people we have running our government. These are the people that will be whipping the living shit and life out your parents and mine. No sense in paying a slave that’s no longer putting out for them.

Eric Cantor and the other Uber Rich Firsters are the scum of the earth. They are willing to literally kill our elders for the greed of the few masters. All of which were born with silver spoons stuck up their twisted asses.

These people are not fit for anything. They are criminals against humanity and everyday that America doesn’t rise up, is another day I feel the need to flee from this openly evil control and the country that allows it.

A look at who we are:
The Careerists
by Chris Hedges
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/07/23-0

Absolutely, and anyone playing the left right paradigm is not on the side of the 99. Simple as that. I love people like Thom Hartman, Papantonio, etc.,but they are still playing the two party scam. I guess they can’t give up their well paid posts, but pretending to believe in the Dems who are paid to be a day late and dollar short is what brought up to a place of total domination.

We have to review our so called friends list as hard as it is.

Thank you for say that. I am so sick of blind ass people thinking Pelosi is anything but a servant of the OnePercent. She loves to give lip service to the 99 when there is nothing in play, but the minute it counts, she trots right out and does exactly what the onepercent dictates. She acts completely and totally oblivious to the voters she cultivates when she is just flapping her yap. She walks out after serving the Onepercent, just like her sh!# doesn’t stink and she hasn’t been playing the people for fools everyday she’s been there.

She has made over 250M in a few years on the student loan scam with her part in a phony online university that gives out useless paper for a life time of debt to young hopefuls. She is an evil evil woman and people who supposedly care about this country are fooled by the hair and three piece suits and phony worthless lip service endlessly.

It’s beyond sickening.

I don’t understand why we are forced to listen to the needs of the rich over and over. They are like the people at a BBQ with sixteen plates piled a foot high and people are seriously listening to them complain that they are being slighted while most of the people are not getting anything to eat. I simply do not get it what so ever.