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Obama’s Oily Waterloo
President Obama's handling of the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico can be aptly described, in the words of the great Yogi Berra, as "déjà vu all over again". After nearly two months of dilly-dallying, Obama finally got the deservedly reviled BP CEO Tony Hayward to the White House where he extracted some kind of a commitment-over-time for a $20 billion dollar escrow fund. Republicans cried foul, Democrats praised the president's fortitude.
So it has been with the president's handling of the nation's economic woes. Obama inherited a horrible situation with a collapsing American banking system, with job loss and home foreclosure at record levels. But just as he did with the problem of regulating the oil giants, the ever-conciliatory president "stayed the course." Instead of looking for new leadership to right the ship, the president installed Clinton retreads and Wall Street insiders-Summers, Geithner, Bernanke-in other words, the guys who got us into the mess in the first place. Eighteen months later, the economy remains stagnant and the same hacks remain in place.
Meanwhile, the gusher in the Gulf keeps getting worse with no end in sight. As one oil industry whistle-blower recently summed up the situation, "It's a race now...a race to drill the relief wells and take our last chance at killing this monster before the whole weakened, worn out, blown out, leaking and failing system gives up it's last gasp in a horrific crescendo."
Everyone knew when the guard changed in January of 2009 that the Minerals Management Service (MMS) was a den of thieves and worse. So did the new president clean it up, bring in fresh faces with a determination to protect the country from the vicious profiteering that defines Big Oil? Did he heed his Democratic Party colleagues who had harangued Bush/Cheney for eight years for being too cozy with the industry? Not exactly. Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss!
Obama brought in Ken Salazar, a wealthy Coloradan known for defending western landscapes but a man who never met an offshore oil proposal he didn't like. Instead of a swift broom, he brought a silk handkerchief to the MMS. "Stop the whoring and drugs," he warned, "but keep dishing out those environmental exemptions!" The authors of this piece could care less who is screwing whom, but we would prefer it if oil companies were forced to comply with reasonable safety regulations. Why is it that the United States goes easier on oil companies than any country outside of the continent of Africa? Answer: the US functions in many ways like a Third World country, subservient to the dictates of corporate power.
We'd like to suggest a few changes, not that we think they will happen but because people should know that there are things that could be done save the "political will" to do them. As former Clintonite Robert Reich has suggested, BP could, by executive order, be placed into receivership in recognition of the fact that $20 billion is just an oily drop in the bucket compared to what it will take to repair the immeasurable damage that has been done to what was one of the richest and most diverse places for marine life on the planet. Not to mention all the lives and livelihoods destroyed for decades to come. A $235 billion company, fourth largest in the world, BP can and should be forced to pony up much, much more.
Many have pointed out the looming dangers if the US government doesn't move quickly in this regard. BP, like the other oil giants, holds significant sway in the federal courts of the states in which it operates. It isn't hard at all to imagine the company being allowed to split off its US operations, declare bankruptcy, and leave only crumbs behind to address the damage caused by its criminal negligence.
Tyler Slocum of Public Citizen has called for revoking the contract that BP was awarded by the Pentagon to deliver $2 billion in fuel to the Air Force. This should be a no-brainer. The federal government must stop contracting with lawless, corrupt corporations. Now.
President Obama could throw BP off the bridge and install the Northern Command/US Navy to take lead the disaster response. As Reich opines, "It is simply impermissible to have...the operation that is trying to plug the hole at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico...under the direct control of the same company whose recklessness and negligence have generated all of this, a company that has a history of cutting corners." What part of this doesn't the president understand?
With BP in charge, over a million gallons of the dispersant Corexit has been sprayed into the Gulf in what appears to be an out of sight, out of mind strategy. What the public isn't told is that the active ingredient in Corexit is a neurotoxin pesticide that is acutely toxic to both human and aquatic life, causes cancer, causes damage to internal organs such as the liver and kidneys simply by absorbing it through the skin and may cause reproductive side effects.
After hundreds of reported illnesses, the EPA instructed BP to cease using Corexit. BP simply refused. Obviously, the fox is guarding the hen house in the most intolerable circumstances imaginable.
We understand that President Obama is operating in a hostile political environment. We understand that he inherited enormous problems across the board. We even sympathize with the argument that he may be a "chess player" with an invisible, but long- range strategy to checkmate his adversaries. But "may be" isn't enough when we just don't see much achievement of significance. Not only is the president falling far short of the progressive ideals he once espoused, he has shown time and again-the ongoing "war on terror", the public option debacle and the current banking reform effort come to mind-that he is not above deceiving the very people who worked so hard to put him in office.
The current situation even brings to mind the question of whether this job-president of the United States-isn't itself part of the problem. In the wake of such continuing dysfunction, regardless of the man or party in charge, might it not be time to seriously re-think the very structure of our system of governance?
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Show All"We understand that President Obama is operating in a hostile political environment. We understand that he inherited enormous problems across the board. We even sympathize with the argument that he may be a "chess player" with an invisible, but long- range strategy to checkmate his adversaries."
Oh, please. Does anybody really believe this Harvard elite dumb-dumb is still playing multi-dimensional chess? Get over it already. This man couldn't find his way around a simple game of checkers (a game I spent many fun hours on as a very young child).
The corporate welfare Obama committed with his bankster bailouts and Obamacare have bankrupted the US Treasury to the point that Obama has lost all his valuable chess pieces, if you want to use a chess analogy, and lost all his valuable cards if you want to use a poker analogy.
Unless you have a terminal case of denial it is apparent that Obama has already sold the US middle class out to the point that even if he changes course and starts promoting policies that are actually progressive (not just labeled that way), he has squandered whatever money may have been available to fund them.
Do NOT exclude Obomber's record-high military budget, his expanded war in Af/Pak, his expanded secret ops in 75 countries, his continuing Guantanamo & Bagram torture sites, and his continuing the Empire.
These components of war spending add up to more than ONE TRILLION DOLLARS per year!
invisible, but long range strategy to checkmate his adversaries, otherwise known as a Predator Drone.
We can "re-think" the structure of our system of governance all we please; we may have come to live in a failed state but some of its few remaining functioning structures are militarized riot police, SWAT teams and the most comprehensive internal spying system in the world. When the truth about the treasonous rot that has plagued this country for the last decade comes out to more people, and it is coming out, one can rest assured that the criminals responsible will not stop at the total destruction of the last vestages of our democracy to preserve their foul lives.
Tony Vodvarka
The miltarized riot police, SWAT teams are just the first responders. In 2008 a US Army battalion returning from Iraq was permanently stationed in upstate New York for the express purpose of dealing with domestic "disturbances".
the drone president is also a corporate drone. all brain and no spine to which to attach it, the cheneys, banks, generals, oil companies, and blackwaters of the world are having a field day with him. we need someone to oppose him in the 2012 democratic presidential primary in new hampshire. now!
The Democratic Party's only mission is to get more corporate contributions than the Republicans.
The Democratic Party has successfully sidetracked popular progressive candidates for decades (For example: Jerry Brown in 1992, Howard Dean in 2004).
Anybody who votes for a Democrat or Republican is contributing to the problem and working against the solution.
Total agreement! Boycott the GD Democrats, vote third party only, in ALL elections. Demonstration of alienation is the only thing our elections are good for anymore.
"In the wake of such continuing dysfunction, regardless of the man or party in charge, might it not be time to seriously re-think the very structure of our system of governance?"
The system is working just fine for those that abuse and control the system. Both the Republicans and Democrats are complicit in this. If Obama really represented Americans, powerless or not, he'd be exposing the scam to the American public. The appearance of dysfunction only serves to make the political system look legitimate.
You would be surprised to find people still defending this careless regime by trying the blame on to the individuals. This is how the Obama PR team operates. They send people everywhere to try to force progressives and liberals into feeling guilty by first asking "What are you doing about it?". These Obama soldiers are worse than the Bush soldiers and they'll go out at great lengths to make others ready to speak against the perpetrators the top feel like they're doing nothing about it. They will take from the conservative and libertarian playbooks to argue that they're doing great and are hardworking but that everyone else aren't doing anything about it. The Obama soldiers get their pampering from the scums in Washington that most everyone else wouldn't get. The dirty secret is that they are engaging in "socialism for me, capitalism for the rest" and "I got mine, to hell with you". They know that Obama is still cooperating with the fascists and that he is going down for it so they fudge the polls, troll on progressive sites, and cooperate with Republicans to bring hell to this nation on purpose so that they can pretend to be heroes of tomorrow. They play good cop bad cop in ways that not even the Reagan for Bush foot soldiers could have done so brilliantly. Don't think that Obama has met his Waterloo yet. He and his PR foot soldiers aren't done yet. Prepare to confront them and treat them exactly as Republicans. It's for their own good and ours.
When I criticized Obama and his policies not long ago, one longtime good friend of mine mentioned that "at least we're not living in a McCarthy-style era the way we were under the G. W. Bush Administration, when nobody could express his/opinion on things if they were different from the conservative mainstream." I told her that it's still like that, and that Obama is continuing many of G. W. Bush's policies and curtailing Civil Liberties even more zealously than G. W. Bush did. She didn't believe that and accused me of "having a personal antipathy towards Obama because of his smart-alecky attitudes". While it's true that I don't like his smart-alecky attitudes, I also don't like him for what he's done so far. My friends and I finally agreed to disagree. What is wrong with people that they have to jump on others with different opinions?
"What is wrong with people that they have to jump on others with different opinions?"
That's not the worst of those foot soldiers. Many of them may have realized what a rut this administration has become and I have gotten there but some others will subtly defend them and even criminals like BP and other corporate scumbags at the top. They know their leader is losing it big but they'll do everything nasty to keep him from taking the heat for bad leadership. The capitalist system gives too much power to oil tycoons while crippling the little guy and that makes it too easy for the foot soldiers to attack us and not the criminals at the top. Obama being tied to them will keep it even more so depending upon their loyalty.
re-think the very structure of our system of governance
Ya think?!
Problem is, governance is working very profitably for the governance class.
And the thirty percent of idiotic voters at the bottom "think" that's nature's way or god's will.
At this point, only bloody revolution can possibly purge US.
Yes, there Must be a non-violent revolucion, violence only cause more violence. A true revolucion will come from the people. Not easy, since the masses are still so brainwashed/ deluded; but they are waking up as the crises get worse.
I had stopped posting on CD (to the relief of other posters), disgusted with how conservatives and Republicans were succeeding in taking over this site and demonizing the entire Democratic Party over the actions of conservative Democrats, delivering others into the hands of Republicans.
But I like Dan Hamburg's articles enough to post my appreciation.
"conservatives and Republicans were succeeding in taking over this site and demonizing the entire Democratic Party over the actions of conservative Democrats, delivering others into the hands of Republicans. "
Could you please explain that because I don't get that? Are you talking about conservatives defending corporate fascists by diverting attention away from the top perpetrators with their "What are you doing about it?" distraction talk. These same conservatives are too busy defending crooked CEOs and banksters, warlords, and even defective leaders. I don't see anyone demonizing the Democratic Party here as the party has already done that to itself.
I don't know if the clinics for them are worth the trouble. I wouldn't want Obama and his henchmen setting them up to make them 3-4 times stronger. Those troublemakers are already a thorn in the neck. Is ezeflyer generally like that "Ted Markow" here?
Grandma Jefferson sez:
Speaking of Resource Exploitation, more Good News, from the National Mayor of Amity...
"THEODORE, Ala. - In a newly optimistic tone, President Barack Obama promised Monday that "things are going to return to normal" along the stricken Gulf Coast and the region's fouled waters will be in even better shape than before the catastrophic BP oil spill.
"He declared Gulf seafood safe to eat and said his administration is redoubling inspections and monitoring to make sure it stays that way."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37681811/ns/disaster_in_the_gulf/
Dumbyah urged the boobs to "go shopping" after 9/11, this one says, "keep eating all that naturally-blackened gulf shrimp, the FDA is keeping you safe! It's all good, dammit! Now buy the fuckin' shrimp!"
And everything in the gutted, ruined region will be "in better shape than ever", with the addition of millions of gallons of crude and dispersant to enhance the ecosystem there. Of course, the innocent millions of animals currently being murdered, if not rendered extinct, not so much so, but hey, you gotta break a few trillion eggs, right?
The indentured slave clean-up crews can look to their newly reformed health insurance to cover all their medical bills for the years of disease and death to which they have to look forward, since BP told them they don't need no stinkin' respirators or safety gear in the ongoing Kabuki swab down of the beaches. It's all good. No worries about the Gulf Stream, hurricanes or toxic rain, boys, the future's so bright, we'll have to wear shades!
I tell you, it makes me proud, seeing people, government and corporations working hand in hand to solve our major catastrophes! Only in America! Yes we can!
Now show your patriotism and order some scampies.
Do I detect a note of cynicism?
" We understand that he inherited enormous problems across the board."
He knew what was coming. Don't act like this man didn't know he'd be bailing-out Wall Street (or continuing Washington's aggression abroad). Its why the "meltdown" reached critical mass at election time. They all timed it perfectly.
As for the rest, Obama lied about everything he (said) he stood for. Who believes anything he says? Really. Who?
Obama is toast and so is his congress of liars, thieves and incompetent fools.
Thanks to our system, they'll only be replaced by others just like 'em.
"In the wake of such continuing dysfunction, regardless of the man or party in charge, might it not be time to seriously re-think the very structure of our system of governance?"
An excellent place to start; i am sorry your article stopped here. This discussion needs to be had interminably until we can break through the platitudes and the stalling and the fearfulness and begin to make some headway. But there is no system that can't be subverted by the powerful; which is perhaps why, even more importantly, we need to refound this country on principles that preserve the earth that supports it before and above all other laws, rights or freedoms we might wish to be accorded or to seize for our personal gain and/or gratification.
Can we get this dialogue started?
Discussion regarding redesigning the stucture of the US government happens here often; today, it exists on the Sigal article thread. But to redesign the institutions of government, the fundamental governing document that created those institutions must first change--which is to say the 1787 constitution must be overhauled in a similar manner to what it did to its predecessor, The Articles of Confederation--radically. And there's the challenge: Writing a new foundational document that cures most of the ills that bedevil the vast majority of the nation's people--not its elite or businesses--yet still results in a functional national government. Of course, to be effective, the writer of any new document must understand why the current document is a failure so its mistakes aren't repeated.
Now, given what I just wrote, are you ready for such a discussion?
BP SILVER LINING
Sadly, it requires calamities such as the BP gusher, and 9/11, to force measures that were so obviously needed beforehand.
This event underscores the crucial need, not only to enforce drilling safety, but to reduce our dangerous fossil fuel dependence through conservation and renewable energy development--which industry has obstructed through decades of lobbying, misinformation, & fabricated science, with help from cooperative administrations, defaulting legislators, and an apathetic populace.
This environmental disaster provides our president with special opportunities to detooth the energy cartels, and forge ahead with these vital reform measures.
If he eludes this mandate, history will judge him harshly.
"BP gusher, and 9/11" Does this mean that we have to roll up our pants at the airport?
No, but you will have to spread your legs and bend over.
What "measures ... were so obviously needed" before 9/11?
Do this is what it takes to get liberals to see the obvious. After the FISA vote...
Pieces like this are a stark reminder of just how determined we Americans are to live in Fantasy Land.
We've been told by Senators and Congresspersons and the like that They - Big Bankster, Big Energy, and the rest of the Big Corporate Cartel - own The Place - AKA, the government that was formerly 'of the people, by the people and for the people.'
So all of this 'Obama did that' and 'Obama should do this' is utter nonsense. Obama is an employee of The Place; he does the bidding of the Owners of The Place - just like you do at your job. Try telling the Owners of The Place where you work what They Must Do and see how long you're still working for said Owners.
And the Owners of the Place have tasked Employee Obama with two missions: keep the Peasants pacified and insure the perpetual growth of Big Corporate Cartel profits.
Ya know, in the fable, once the child points out the Emperor is naked, The People finally stop pretending and accept the truth. In America, the Emperor's nakedness is pointed out every single day, and we continue to pretend he's fully clothed to the extent that it's killing us.
"Oh me oh my - why won't Obama force BP to turn back time!"
I bet 95 percent of Congress gets re-elected this fall. Evidence: what change did we see in the primaries? Little.
Then Obama will be re-elected too.
Don't vote and tell people that you cannot support the political system anymore.
Voting, is voting for the way things are now. Not voting is a vote for real reform.
I'm going to stay home and masturbate. America did not change on 9/11. It changed months before when Daddy's friends on the Supreme Court selected his son and declared him resident & thief of the United States. I voted (last time) in 2004 and have regretted it ever since. So, on this election day, stay home and pull your lever for your favorite candidate.
So back in 1979 the spill was at 200 feet. Now it's almost a mile! I think we are definitely running out of this shit, don't you???
You don't get it. The spill doesn't come from oil demand directly. The spill, actually gusher, comes from the capitalist system, gone worse, that holds no grudge against an oil tycoon purposely building an oil rig on defective equipment to profit any way possible. If something goes wrong with that rig, he has all the special privileges to make money from his mistakes. We ordinary people couldn't away with that.
Demolition Man--you need to get your facts straight. BP did NOT build the rig. BP built and operated the well that blewout. The rig itself has nothing to do with the blowout; rather, it was BP's well design that caused the blowout. (The well includes everything from the rig to the bottom of the borehole.) The only way to place blame on the capitalist system for the blowout is to focus on the cost-cutting that system demands regarding the constructioin of the well. But, the rig's construction, which is also a result of the capitalist system, is built as safe and as strong as possible because of the demands that same system exerts on such machines--they won't get chartered or earn top dollar for the charter unless they are well built and capable machines.
I'm not defending capitalism. I'm just asking for better thought and utilization of facts.
I was focusing on the rig because that was what exploded. I saw your other reply on the oil wells but I was trying to make a point about capitalism and its effect on the masses. However, thank you for enlightening me on the outsourcing of the operations, something a small business couldn't do as easily without facing tough hell in a capitalist system. I will be reading further information on the Deepwater Horizon oilspill on the timeline that I just found dating from 2008 and after since that was when BP purchased the Macondo well prior to planning the construction of the rig.
One must bear in mind, however, karlof1, that this latest oil-rig explosion in the wake of the most horrible oil spill/environmental disaster in USA history could not have happened without the complicity of this present Administration in Washington.
Ken Salazar was a tricky man for an environmentalist. You should have seen the utter naivety of people in DOI when Salazar was nominated. They thought that he was a fighting liberal when he was a DLC member all along. I left DOI about a year ago when my project on building a web portal to track budgeting for the tribes was done. I would not be surprised to see CO turn red after Obama and Salazar.
Fascist amerika WILL/IS spending/ slaughtering its way into the abyss ! Tough way to go ? All empires must fail or end, amerikas time is at hand !
You are all most articulate. So, what? Keep writing.
'In the wake of such continuing dysfunction, regardless of the man or party in charge, might it not be time to seriously re-think the very structure of our system of governance?'
Ah---Yes, and much, much more!
There was a time when I believed the USA must concentrate on its back yard that has for a long time been full of weeds and vermin in the form of human beings.
Now I believe the USA is an entirely dysfunctional entity. US citizens who vote and pay taxes are as guilty of dysfunction as the USA itself. This means those who call themselves 'American' as well as their hangers-on, better change their conceited minds.
The 'hole in the earth', the disaster in the gulf, BP, and the multiplicity of topical dysfunctions are small beer. In reality, the logarithmically bigger disaster is the historically core human tradition, the Anglo-Saxon culture and language, of which the USA is an expression. It is an absurdity. This is the the culture that would prefer that we concentrate on the hole in the earth, on such as the catapults 'found' near the dead Turks of the Free Gaza flotilla.
As with the financial criminals of our time, it is not only the criminal BP that is being subsidised while being given the authority to fix its crime, it is presently the Anglo-Saxon, standing brazenly on his weaknesses and holding forth as to the solution to the problems that are the consequences of his cherished weaknesses.
The hold that their weaknesses have on us has to be addressed. This means the old entities and beliefs, such as the USA, US Democracy, understandings of prosperity and, at root, monotheism must be relegated to the fringes and the museum where they will reside as warning to mankind. And let us make no mistake, if humanity is to survive they will be.
Humanity will survive, so the sooner this is done the better.
Their kicking and screaming in 'virtuous and benign' defence of these acts and in the name of 'progress' is as an AIDs virus in humanity. It has to be clearly identified and totally dis-empowered.
Very good points, "mcoyote June 20th, 2010 2:22 pm"
I ran out of a county public hearing last Tuesday evening, on whether the county should raise the local wheel tax to the max (because road funds from the State of Indiana are declining and our local roads are going to pot(holes), to try to hear Obama's Oval Office speech on the Gusher in the Gulf.
"...And God bless America."
At least I caught the tail end!
This past winter oysters hereabouts were over $10 a pound, in a plastic pint container (You know a pint's a pound of course...). Taking any bets on this coming winter's price? I remember when you could get a dozen fresh oysters on the half shell split open by the man wearing the big apron in front of you across the counter---and the lemon and the sauce---in Brooklyn for what? A buck 99? (Back then, a slice of pizza was a dime on the street, and so were the subway tokens. You could go to Staten Island and pass the Statue of Liberty for a nickel, ten cents round trip.)
To remember "the good old days" is not an exercise in futility. It is a comparative to "Remembrance of Things Past." Proust, for those who do not read...
For literally at least a hundred thousand years, as the evidence suggests, homo SS lived in a very slow projection of "progress," for example by "improving" the creation of flint tools (Best documented actually, in the US by Geoff Georgiady in SW Ohio). Then suddenly some five thousand years ago, something changed. It does NOT seem to have been genetic! Language? Art? Writing? Religion? Agriculture? Hierarchical social organization? All of the above? AND we have yet to explain how these social forces arrived for Homo SS nearly simultaneously the world over, with the creation of the Great Religions on all the Great Continents (and I exclude Australia from this exegesis because it is a Special Case).
We do not really know. For, obviously, if we did know (do know), we would not be living the way we are today.
Who among your friends seeks to diminish human capacity? Yet why does it happen so constantly? Cambodia.
I am 67. I am beginning to feel it. I have only the highest respect for those who like my mother live into their 80s. I doubt that I will live so long. I suspect that people will start dying earlier because we are idiots.
Individualism has its limits.
Today we have the capacity for the total reorganization of Homo SS CULTURE. (The United States has no "culture." Got that yet!?)
Apologies if I read to your consciousness as "impositioning," but we really do now have the capacity to end WAR. For the first time in the prehistory of the human species, we "understand" our environment, empirically.
If you have any doubts about the capacity of humans to think empirically, just ask "Professor" Newt Gingrich. As far as the MSM is concerned, he has all the answers.
Like to the Ten Trillion Dollar Debt. Oops. I suspect I have underestimated the debt/deficit by a factor of Oh, maybe the total international value of "Derivatives."
Nixon/Kissinger. Nixon kills Bretton-Woods, Kissinger visits China. Somebody writes an Opera. The Dollar is no longer based on silver and on its way to no longer being the fiat currency that Henry CK Liu writes about at Atimes.com.
He asks, HOW DO WE VALUE LABOR? He answers, by INTERNATIONALIZING IT THE SAME WAY WE DO THE MEDIUMS [sic] OF EXCHANGE. It really is not that difficult to see if you have any empathy. (I suspect that the question CK Liu raises is WHY is any form of currency enabled to cross international borders while not so for people.)
Finally, the US deficit "hawks" who just killed Unemployment Insurance for a few million Americans (with almost no MSM posting of same) are really economically ignorant, or else intent on creating civil war. Food stamps and Unemployment Insurance are huge inputs into economic stimulus. Why would my Congressman, Mike Pence, be opposed to this given that his rural constituency is losing its highways? To RUBBLE!
Hey! People in the Midwest are boarding up their windows. Two weeks of 90-degrees-plus in June in southern Indiana? Around ten degrees above normal. Lots of crops, like snow peas, which I try to raise here, don't hanker to such ambient heat (even when I put their containers into shade).
We have a total failure of government here.
Count me among the "small people." Count me among the very angry.
Any solutions?
-30-
OMR, I am only half your age but I will try to help. Solutions aren't easy but I'm not like some people who are selfish and rude doing their "What are you doing about it?" or "I got mine, to hell with you" attacks. I have heard a lot about your state and I have a cousin who lived in Indianapolis but moved to Boston just last month. Just like people I meet in my state, I think that your people have been conditioned into praising the capitalist system for making them feel big about everything and you may have met people who would say "Oh come on, don't blame the president or the CEO. It's your fault. Look at me. I did everything on my own and I'm successful. What are you doing?". What they don't tell you is that those same people who spout such arrogant talk get their third party help from unexpected sources. We cannot allow them to walk all over us like that and get away with it. We must not be afraid to confront their ignorant and arrogant behavior no matter how weirdly they react. I have gotten used to confront such people everyday and it doesn't matter what party they choose to be with. I have more to say about this but I am currently trying to figure out how to say it best. Stay tuned.
What do we need to do to break the power grip of the corporate plutocracy?
Convince people to pass amendments to the Constitution mandating public financing of campaigns, mandating fair elections, taking the designation of personhood away from corporations, allowing third party representation in Congress, as in some European parliamentary systems? And how long - that would take forever...?
"The federal government must stop contracting with lawless, corrupt corporations." Just announced yesterday, the US State Department has awarded a contract worth $120 million to Blackwater for work in Afghanistan.
Which lawless, corrupt corporations were you refering to gentlemen?
Or you could just pray to the fantasy guy in the sky for guidance. That seems to be really popular right now.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who will guard the guardians, watch the watchers, etc?)
Since corporations are now people time to execute BP. It is time to call them terrorists and declare war on it. If a war on an idea is acceptable then so is fighting a corporation with our military and easier to win. What do we do with captured terrorists (alleged or otherwise)? Put them in our sites both known and black hole ones.
A NOAA map shows that the Gulf is getting roaring hot all around the spill. It keeps getting worse.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/tafb/atl_anom.gif
This can be terrible news in hurricane season.
The heat also helps to lead to a massive dead zone, with dead fish all over the beach to go along with the blackened pelicans.
If you want to know what the Right is really up to, watch who they accuse of what.
Remember when Rush accused the Democrats of deliberately blowing up the Deepwater Horizon?
FREE AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY (DIRECT) DEMOCRACY
"Remember when Rush accused the Democrats of deliberately blowing up the Deepwater Horizon?"
"mschlee June 21st, 2010 6:32 pm" PLEASE DOCUMENT THIS ACCUSATION.
I am not denying it. I just want documentation.
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