Austerity profits only the fat and indecently rich.

Keeping with the Harry Reid theme, Fox News didn't complain, Fox News said "some folks" had complained.

Yes, Fox News always says "some people" did something, because they never actually have to report any real facts about who those "some people" might be.

A Bain investor told them

Congratulations, NASA. I would much rather have you conducting the next stage of our space exploration rather than privatizing the operations and paying billionaires who see it as a great sport like dressage.

Do you think NASA built the spacecraft that went to Mars? Lockheed Martin did. Nasa builds little but collects bids from private contractors. This has been going on for a while. Why? It's cheaper to let private industry do it.

It probably wasn't cheaper to let private industry do it, actually. But we have cronies to keep happy, so private industry did it.

NASA has never actually built anything from the Mercury program on. It's an excelelnt public-private partnership.

Curiosity was 2 years behind schedule and $400 million over budget. Not a good example of cheap private industry.

Alan Shepard has said that the thing that he was most concerned about before he launched in 1961, as America's first man in space was the fact that the rocket that he was sitting in was built by the lowest bidder. That's what kept the costs 'down' (relatively speaking). So, yes, private industry built all of the hardware, but at government prices.

Hi ! My name is RobDon and if you have a parade , I would like to piss on it .

Curiosity was 2 years behind schedule and $400 million over budget. Not a good example of cheap private industry.

Actually, I think it was over 2 years behind schedule. But the 400 million represents only about a 30% increase over the budget, which probably isn't bad for space technology construction, but I don't know.

I know it is much better than the near doubling (near 100%) increase of Obamacare according to the CBO - from a cost of 900 million to 1.76 billion.

So, yes, private industry built all of the hardware, but at government prices.

What are "government prices?" Do you think the government in general is more cost effective and cost conscious than private industry?

Might as well pack parachutes for Willard's kids, too.

Obama wants war with Iran too! Haven't you heard? Are you paying attention?

Look, there's a reason Obama has worked secretly to fund and assist insurgent militants and mercenaries to overthrow the governments of Libya and Syria. There's a reason he ordered direct US air support in Libya to overthrow Gadhafi. Obama is methodically and systematically removing potential confederates of Iran NOW so that Iran will have to stand alone in the future when Israel and Obama attack. WAKE UP!

Obama is not doing what he promised to do as a candidate. In fact, by supporting and pursuing regime change in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and now Syria, he is doing the EXACT OPPOSITE of what he promised to do. Obama is completing Dick Cheney's unfinished agenda of regime change for every Arab state in the mid east. He has betrayed his most fundamental promise to us.

I wanted to like Obama. I hoped he would be all he promised, but even hope has limits. Hope won't feed your family and hope don't pay the bills. Hope won't keep a roof over your head, but Obama acts like his base has an endless supply of something that will. Today I'm disillusioned and cynical. I feel like I'm reading a requiem for a lost dream.

We've waited almost 4 years for Obama to prove he really is the man we thought we elected, -the recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize who would set things right. Most of that time we have been dicked around and ignored. Well, I'll give Obama until the election to convince me his promises were genuine and my support was not betrayed by a poser. Frankly I don't expect much, but I've waited this long, I might as well give him the rest of the rope. That's roughly 100 days.

Sigh... find yourself a comfortable armchair. I've got 4 years worth of points and gripes to cover. I hope it will prove worth the read. Still, if what I allege is true, there's no clear answer for what to do about it.

As a Democrat, I look at the future and see Obama running for re-election. Regarding the president’s re-election campaign, I’m not excited; nor am I particularly happy. Sometimes I wonder what happened to the man who promised Democrats he would make sweeping changes to address problems and steer America in a new direction away from the failed policies of the past.

I look at America and see Guantanamo still open. I see America involved in more wars than president Bush started. I remember a candidate who promised to close Guantanamo and end the wars. I see vacant buildings and storefronts on the Main Streets of America and remember that conservative economic policies and lax regulation of our banking and investment sectors helped contribute to the economic downfall of 2008.

I remember strident conservative arguments that tax cuts for the wealthy create jobs for Americans. Over the 8 years of Bush’s presidency, those "tax-cut jobs" never materialized and millions of good-paying US manufacturing jobs were lost as Wall Street invested it‘s wealth in cheap foreign manufacturing. I think about Obama and I wonder why he has allowed the Bush tax cuts to remain in effect.

In hindsight, I realize that Obama has not pursued the promises he made to progressive democrats with any discernable degree of enthusiasm, and I wonder why that is.

I look at the world and see wide-spread social and political unrest spreading across many states of the mid east. This unrest has spawned conflict that President Obama has openly encouraged and in some cases directly supported with funding and military operations. Obama took advantage of America’s desire to end it’s involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but has effectively doubled the number of wars we are involved in. The governments of several mid east countries, including Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya have collapsed and been replaced, while Obama continues to act against the governments of Syria and Iran.

Obama claims his decision to use direct military force in Libya was intended to protect civilians. That tired old argument helped get us into the Vietnam War. You would think if Obama was going to lie, he could be more creative than that. Obviously he couldn’t re-use Bush’s dishonest claim about WMD (in Iraq), since Libya agreed to give those up a decade ago.

Regarding those “civilians” Obama spoke of protecting, I remember TV video footage from Libya of men driving pickup trucks with giant machine guns mounted in the back. I remember seeing men brandishing AK-47s and RPGs. Such men would have been deemed battlefield combatants and mercenaries if they were fighting us in Iraq and Afghanistan, but since they were fighting Gadhafi in Libya, they are "civilians". This is intellectually dishonest. It angers me to think President Obama believes the public can be fooled and manipulated so easily.

Americans have no idea how much involvement the CIA may have had in these countries, -although the developments seem unlikely to have come about by pure coincidence, and more likely to be the result of careful planning and coordination. Like Iraq, none of these countries have attacked us. Remember when Bush said "Saddam must go, -he must leave Iraq"? Obama said the same thing about Gadhafi in Libya. It was a Freudian slip. Now he’s saying the same thing about Assad in Syria. It’s unbelievable. Does he think we are blind, or just stupid?

Regarding Libya, Obama has argued that the war powers act does not apply to him because we were not involved in “hostilities” as the legal term was intended to be used. The bottom line is Obama involved the US military in operations that were killing people in a foreign country that did not attack us, and he did so without the constitutional approval of Congress. In addition to this, Obama presides over a CIA drone program that targets and bombs groups deemed unfriendly in Pakistan and Yemen. Each of these individual acts tie together like a row of dominos leading ultimately to military action against Iran. Taken together, this strategic agenda seems to follow Dick Cheney’s plan for the mid east more closely than it reflects the will of the democratic base that elected Obama.

Is this what his Nobel Peace Prize was for? -War and mass murder for OIL and for Israel? I'm sure of one thing: We didn't vote for this.

Many progressives have asked themselves where the change went. This man who rode a popular wave of change to the White House has applied that mantra of change almost entirely to Arab countries in the middle east, while little to nothing substantial has happened at home. Obama promised he would force a resolution of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, but after 2 years he has not even gotten Israel to honor the obligations of it’s previous peace agreements.

In particular, the Road Map Agreement signed under GW Bush requires Israel to STOP ALL Settlement construction activity. This was Israel’s obligation under Phase 1 of the Road Map. Phase 2 would commence direct negotiations between the two parties for core issues and final status.

Obama’s insistence that the Palestinians go to direct negotiations with Israel without a complete stop of Settlement construction CONTRAVENES the Road Map Agreement that he pledged to honor and uphold when he was sworn into office. Worse, Obama used his veto in the UN Security Council to protect Israel’s Settlement construction from a resolution that might have stopped it so that legitimate peace negotiations could proceed as per Road Map stipulations.

Lastly, Obama has used the US leadership position in the Quartet to cripple it and prevent advancement of the agenda for peace it was formed to pursue.

Obama said he would end the war in Iraq. He didn’t. The government of Iraq threw us out when the "Status of forces" agreement expired, Now Obama wants to claim credit for ending the war. He didn’t end that war, it literally expired. Guantanamo is still open. Obama promised to close it. We all know that Obama promised to end the Bush tax cuts, but they are still in effect almost 4 years after Obama took office on a promise to end those tax cuts.

And Obamacare you say? What about the health care reform legislation? Obama removed the public option from that bill. The rest is a recycled Republican plan originally proposed by a group of 20 republicans, including Orrin Hatch, Charles Grassley, Robert Bennett, and Christopher Bond.

More than anything else, political arguments related to Obamacare have been used as a distraction to divert our attention from what Obama is doing in the mid east, his failure to close Guantanamo, and his failure to investigate allegations that POWs and war detainees were tortured.

Obama seems to operate on the premise that Democrats have no choice but to re-elect him because the other guys, -the Republicans, are worse. Well... I've got to tell you I’m NOT ready to re-elect Obama without a careful analysis of what he promised to do and what he has actually accomplished for the party that sent him. From my perspective, that analysis does not produce a favorable result.

We voted for a man who would end the wars, close Guantanamo, investigate allegations of torture, repair the economy, create jobs, reign in the un-regulated and immoral behavior of Wall Street, protect the middle class from job losses and mortgage foreclosures, and adjust our income tax system to better address the incomes of the wealthy that completely outstrip the current tax table brackets.

We got none of that.

After generously bailing out the banks, Goldman Sachs and Wall Street, and big corporations including General Motors and AIG, -and after extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, Obama has done almost nothing for working class Americans who can’t find jobs and are losing their homes to foreclosure. In fact, if you look at the net results of the first 2 years of Obama’s administration, what you actually see looks a whole lot like George W. Bush’s third term.

Let's be honest: We need an aggressive leader in the White House for the political war that is consuming this nation. We need someone who knows how to take the fight to the opposition, -someone who is willing to fight fire with fire. We DO NOT need a Compromiser in Chief, and frankly we are SICK of Obama's polite exasperation when it comes to the tactics of conservatives who oppose our interests.

Instead of leading, Obama has consistently offered to compromise by taking the middle ground. Unfortunately, the political "middle ground" is utterly worthless as a descriptive term because conservatives have taken the middle ground and moved it several miles to the right. The middle ground is no longer in the center of the political spectrum. Obama has done nothing to take that middle ground and move it back to the place it used to be. Thus when he compromises, they move the middle further to the right, he compromises again, they move it again.

When that happens, we lose.

Aside from that, the lack of presidential words of leadership from Obama on issues like the right wing attacks against Acorn, Planned Parenthood, women's reproductive rights, worker's rights, public radio, union rights and collective bargaining, and new voter-ID laws that oppress or prevent hundreds of thousands of legitimate minority votes -are unforgivable. Obama has sat quietly as Republican governors in several states attempted to destroy some of the most prominent political organizing arms of progressive democrats.

Are you up for a sports analogy?

Regarding the economy, employment, banks, and Wall Street, Obama has operated like the ineffective coach of an arrogant football team that does not like him or his policies. This football team has become accustomed to making their own rules and serving their own corrupt interests, including fixing and betting on games for profit. They have no intention of allowing the coach to end their little party. To be rid of the coach and his progressive policies, -once and for all, -the team has chosen to intentionally lose until the coach gets fired.

Think about that for a moment. What can the coach do? How far is he willing to go to assert the authority of his office and regain control of the situation?

In order to overcome this situation and be effective, the coach needs to walk out onto the field and shoot a couple of those players. Right there, under the lights, in front of the crowd. An example needs to be made of real consequences for disrespect of the coach and his position of authority. Otherwise, these “football players“, who are over-paid, arrogant, self-centered, and in many cases corrupt, -will forget that they play to defend their home field, their school, and the honor of the men who came before them, -and they will continue to place greed and personal profit ahead of fidelity and patriotism.

In my example above the football team is a metaphor for Wall Street and the corporate establishment. I’m sure some would ask me just how this “football team” has chosen to lose. Easy answer. Failing to produce American jobs while allowing more and more American worker's homes to fall into foreclosure puts pressure on the middle class, who the "team" hopes will ultimately fire the coach. That's Obama. These groups, including the US Chamber Of Commerce and dozens of corporate-funded PACs, have gone out of their way and spent millions of dollars to destroy Obama and the reforms that a majority of American voters supported.

WE CANNOT ALLOW THAT.

For all of this, Barak Obama, the man we elected to LEAD us, has sat quietly, never raising his voice, never shouting, never using visual aids, charts, or graphs, never pounding the podium, never behaving as an angry leader. Working class Americans are angry. Many are calling for blood to run in the streets. And Obama? You’d think he was up there getting a political enema. So why isn’t he as angry as the democrats who sent him? Is he secretly working for the other side? Was he sent to betray us and gently compromise away all of our hopes and dreams? At this point, that’s almost the only thing that makes sense out of what he has done.

It seems to me that Obama’s real agenda for the 2008 election was to eliminate Hillary Clinton in the primary, get elected by hitting the "demographic sweet-spot" as a black democrat who was opposed to the wars, then accomplish little to nothing for democrats, compromise at every opportunity with Republicans, complete Dick Cheney's unfinished agenda of regime change for every Arab state in the mid east, prevent any investigation of torture of POWs and war detainees, and basically run out the clock on all the hopes and dreams of Democrats and working class citizens who voted for him.

He is either an ineffective leader who should resign, or he is a poser, -an imposter, a fake copy of Martin Luther King sent to betray his own party by secretly working for republican interests to advance a conservative agenda. He is systematically destroying the democratic party from the inside. If he won't resign, he should be impeached by his own party. At least then we would get to see republicans who claim to despise Obama vote to keep him in office.

The sad thing is republicans win if Obama gets reelected, and they win if he isn't reelected. Right now they are getting practically everything they could have asked for from a third term of the Bush administration. The Bush tax cuts are still in effect. Guantanamo is still open. Allegations of torture were never investigated. The war in Iraq ran it's full term. Worse, Obama just signed an agreement committing the USA to roughly 12 more years in Afghanistan.

Finally, Obama has done MORE to protect Israel's illegal Settlement construction than George Bush ever did. Bush insisted in the Road Map agreement that Israel MUST stop all Settlement construction before negotiations begin for final status and core issues. Israel never honored that obligation. Obama has called on the Palestinians to renew negotiations even though Israel has refused to stop Settlement construction. That contravenes the Road Map agreement.

Obama was supposed to enforce the Road Map agreement. Instead, he has used his veto in the UN Security Council to protect illegal Settlement construction from a resolution that might have stopped it so that legitimate negotiations could proceed as per Road Map stipulations. This is an outrage for progressive democrats, but if you're a republican, what's not to like?

Does anyone wonder why Donald Trump trots out the birther story whenever Obama's poll numbers show support from his base is low? This is how Obama manipulates his base to shore up support from a group whose interests he has largely dismissed and betrayed. Can't let those lying birthers win, suckah.

The same goes for a complete lack of republican campaign advertisements calling out Obama for failing to uphold his campaign promise to end US involvement in foreign conflicts. The evidence is on video tape. Obama was very clear as a candidate. He said he would bring change, -that he would end US involvement in wars and foreign conflicts. He even won a Nobel Peace Prize for this promise. We assumed that meant in his first 100 days. Failing that, then surely in his first 2 years, right? Well, here we are 4 years later, with secret wars in Pakistan, Yemen, and Syria. Obama also ordered direct US military involvement in Libya to topple Gadaffi, and he just signed an agreement to keep US forces in Afghanistan for another 12 years.

Worst of all, Obama has demonstrated a desire to support regime change in Iran. This includes an implicit threat (“all options are on the table”) to attack Iran over the issue of Uranium enrichment. So what happened to ending US involvement in foreign conflicts? Republicans have a giant opportunity to rub this lie in his face, but they have passed. Ask yourself why they would do that. The answer is they don’t want to draw attention to Obama’s ongoing work to complete Bush and Cheney’s unfinished agenda of regime change for every Arab state in the mid east.

Instead we get political theatre on Obamacare, class warfare, and tax cuts for the wealthy. It’s like the establishment is saying ~“Hey, no, no, don’t look at that, -look over here: Let’s argue about health care and taxes! Let’s question Obama’s citizenship and investigate his fake birth certificate!” Folks, we are being played for suckers.

Allow me to tell you what keeps me up at night. Have you ever paused to consider the possibility, -even the most remote, that some part of what I allege might actually be true? Is it is possible that a “Manchurian candidate” could be foisted on the electorate in the current state of our system of government?

For instance, is there anything that prevents one party from running their own people as sleeper candidates on the ticket of another party? No. In fact, recent news reports confirm that republicans have gotten several “double agent” candidates on the ballot as democrats in the recall election of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, -and there’s no reason to think this is a unique case.

It is apparently not a crime for republicans to fraudulently place one of their own operatives on the democratic ballot to pose as a democrat during a primary election.

There was a case in South Carolina in which Alvin Greene, the surprise winner of the democratic primary for senate, refused a request by state party leaders to withdraw from the race after court records were revealed which indicate he was arrested for allegedly showing obscene photos to a college student. More telling, Greene, a 32-year-old unemployed veteran, couldn’t explain where he got the money ($10,400) required to file with the state and qualify himself to be on the ballot.

Not coincidentally, Greene’s competition for that senate seat was republican Jim DeMint. Most pundits decided Greene was paid by conservative political agents to run and was elected in the open democratic primary with crossover votes. With Greene safely locked into the position as democratic nominee, republican candidate DeMint won reelection easily.

So clearly this kind of thing happens with some regularity, even though it should never happen. And it could very well have happened in the democratic primary for the top political office of the United States. Once that primary hurdle was cleared, the rest would be easy. The political winds and public disenchantment with the wars were making it more likely that a republican candidate would lose, so the alternative would win. All that was necessary was to *be* that alternative.

This was accomplished in the primary, when the following series of events gave Obama a sufficient number of delegates to capture the democratic nomination.

(A) Significant numbers of crossover votes helped Obama win the democratic ballot in open primary states, and

(B) caucus states unexpectedly went for Obama when polls indicated Clinton was leading, and

(C) political sabotage resulted in the primaries of Michigan and Florida being "nullified”, which affected voter turnout as well as ultimately allowing the two states to realize only half their normal number of delegate votes at the democratic convention. This damaged Obama’s rival Hillary Clinton. And

(D) a deluge of unexpected switched votes from super-delegates who switched from Clinton to Obama at the very last minute.

Here’s more background regarding the political sabotage alleged in (C) above:

In August 2006, the Democratic National Committee adopted a proposal by its Rules and Bylaws Committee that only four states - Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina -would be permitted to hold primaries or caucuses before Super Tuesday, -February 5, 2008.

In the Spring of 2007, the Florida Legislature (controlled by Republicans), passed House Bill 537, which moved the date of the state's Republican and Democratic primaries to January 29, a week before the earliest permitted date of either party. The Florida Democratic Party tried to amend the legislation and make the date February 5; however, the Republican-controlled legislature refused. Thus the republican party, -in control of both houses, intentionally moved the date of the Florida primary election so that it was too early to be counted in the democratic primary. They knew that Obama’s competition Hillary Clinton was projected to win Florida, therefore they fixed things so that the Florida vote was nullified.

And what of Michigan? The Michigan Legislature passed a similar bill to move the date of the state's presidential primaries to January 15. Just as in Florida, the move-up bill originated in a Republican-controlled State Senate and passed by a 21-17 straight party-line vote with every Democrat casting a "no" vote. Again, Obama’s competition Hillary Clinton was projected to win the Michigan primary. This vote was also nullified.

This is solid evidence that republicans wanted Obama to win and engaged in unethical political actions to sabotage his competition in at least two states. In hindsight, we now have a better understanding of why they did this.

Is there any legal recourse for constituents if a candidate, once elected, breaks practically every promise he made to them, and in fact does in practice the exact opposite of what he promised to do? Well… there’s impeachment, but that would require a majority in the Congress to vote for impeachment, and after trial, a majority comprising at least two thirds of the Senate must vote to convict.

In Congress, republicans have enough seats to block any vote for impeachment, and in the Senate they would not vote for a conviction. So impeachment is out as an option. What does that leave? Nothing. Sorry, you’re screwed. -At least until he comes up for reelection. So when that happens, are you going to swallow his argument that no matter how disappointed and betrayed you may feel, you certainly don’t want those other guys -the republicans- to have the White House? -Are you going to fall for that fear-based argument?

Consider how far to the right the republican party has had to steer itself in order to keep some daylight between themselves and Obama. That alone should tell you something. Obama has become so conservative in practice that republicans have had to redefine themselves with insane positions on the crazy fringe of the right so that voters can differentiate between the two sides. We didn't vote for that.

We didn't vote to waste our biggest chance in years to make the changes Obama talked about when he was a candidate. Sadly, that is what has happened. Obama has presided over the biggest disappointment this party has ever seen in terms of what could have been and what actually is. I'm convinced he is secretly working for republicans to complete the unfinished agenda of the last administration. For example, Obama has done more to topple the governments of Arab states in the region surrounding Israel than he has done to help middle class American families facing foreclosure and loss of their homes. We didn't vote for that.

Lets get to the bottom of these questions in order to determine if we elected a democrat, or just a lying republican poser who fooled us into throwing away our future. Change? These days that's a bitter word to me, -a cruel joke. It describes more what was done to us than what was done for us.

Regarding his campaign promise to end US involvement in wars and foreign conflicts, it is now perfectly clear that Obama lied to the American public. He lied about the wars, he lied about closing Guantanamo, and he lied about ending the Bush tax cuts. He reneged on his campaign assertion that allegations of torture of POWs and war detainees should be investigated. Soon after his election, various military and political figures reported that Obama promised Bush officials in private that no one would be investigated or prosecuted for torture. In his first year, Obama made good on that promise, announcing that no CIA employee would be prosecuted for torture. Later, his administration refused to investigate or prosecute any of the Bush Administration officials responsible for ordering or justifying the use of water-boarding, cold-rooms, stress positions, and other forms of torture as enhanced interrogation techniques. Obama also continued the US policy of extraordinary rendition which allows detainees to be tortured by other countries for US purposes.

For me these lies are unforgivable, regardless of whatever the alternative may be. It causes me to question the basis of the decision to award Obama a Nobel Peace Prize. It causes me to wonder if people really fainted at Obama campaign rallies, or whether it was all part of an act. It reminds me of the “Obama Girl” sensation on youtube. I feel like these things were designed to fool us at a critical moment to gain a political advantage.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against Obama because he's black or because some idiot questioned his nationality. Far from it. I'm against Obama because I think he's red. Obama has kept more of George Bush's campaign promises than he has kept of his own. I didn't vote for that, and I sure as Hell won't vote for it a second time.

To paraphrase an infamous Bushism, fool me once, shame on you. ...We won't get fooled again.

Holy cow!

Kiev Ukraine, Bruce Vandiver, Keiv500

Again - you keep carpet bombing the internet (not just MSNBC) with same post over and over and over ...

Tell you what - when “By Logios” on haaretz.com re-posted a mere 220 words - three or four times you had the following advice :

Why do you post the exact same comment over and over? Are you a mindless parrot?

This is cross-posting. It is an abuse of the system. If you want to relay the same message, find a new way to say it.

By Kiev500 08 Sep 201108:42PM

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/state-department-official-says-u-s-would-veto-palestinian-un-bid-1.383281

Give us a break - pick a topic in the blog - generate an original statement less than 200 words or respond to another poster's comments with an original response.