Displaying 0 To 0 Of 0 Comments WATCH LIVE: Mubarak Resigns! Egyptians Celebrate! Well, AdLib, if Obama is this efficient and has this many people canvassing, then that must be why our unemployment rate is dropping, yes? I just had NO idea we were sending so many people overseas. My, my. Yes, Glenn is so authoritative! Everybody KNOWS that he who writes on the chalkboard rules the world! That’s apparently where Obama has gone wrong – no chalkboard. » Posted By choicelady On February 11, 2011 @ 11:03 am That is western thinking, not recognition of a society that is not the one we believe we know. It’s NOT a military coup in the Chilean sense of the word. The Egyptian people embraced this for very complex reasons we need to ask Egyptians to explain to us. » Posted By choicelady On February 11, 2011 @ 10:36 am If you’re talking Mondragon, I’m with you. If it’s just handouts and no authority, maybe not so much… » Posted By choicelady On February 11, 2011 @ 10:35 am Hi- The people will not stand for mere shape and shadow of reform. Suleiman? I can’t find his name anywhere which makes me think he’s out, too. The reason you have no precedents is that ours is the first administration since 1947 that has rejected the National Security Council Memo requiring that the U.S. intervene in every other nation’s actions with respect to our national ‘self interest’ alone. President Obama is NOT doing that. He (and Clinton by default) is respecting national sovereignty – first president since McKinley at least – so we have to wait to see what happens. Global forces of course will try to overwhelm all, but that no longer is the certainty that it has been. New day for many people, not least of all the USA. » Posted By choicelady On February 11, 2011 @ 10:27 am If and only if we permit it, control it, have it serve our conservative interests. That’s their definition of “democracy”. Wait for the Teabaggers to start saying it’s a victory for Islamic extremists and that Obama has endangered us. » Posted By choicelady On February 11, 2011 @ 9:15 am Sue – when I looked this morning, it was voter reg. Tonight – you have the smoking gun. Wow. The link this morning about the “consultants” to Sen. Grassley on what regulations need to be removed from churches has upset and infuriated me all day. I feel so helpless to DO any damn thing about the March of the Theocrats. One REALLY good thing – the Military Religious Freedom Foundation with whom I work closely FINALLY got THE expose needed – the “Bomb the World for Jesus” (I am NOT making this up) curricula for the people with their fingers on the button at Vandenberg AFB was SO outrageous that the Air Force Chief of Staff has decreed religious neutrality on ALL issues. No more “Jesus briefs”, no more mandatory session with proselytizing, no more policy with religious over- or undertones. NONE. ZIP. NADA! You can read all about it at militaryreligiousfreedom.org. I will spare you the story at the Dark Side – but it was actually good. The rumor is that Sen Cronyn has his knickers in a huge twist over losing the Air Force as his proving ground for God’s Army. And bit by bit Leah’s book is appearing on Amazon. The description is up. No price yet, no order click, but the description. It’s sort of the Cheshire Cat of books. We have all lawyered up – they are starting to think McGinnis is not enough reason to sit on her book. I had an attorney once who had three letters he could send: Cease and desist or we will take action. Cease and desist or we will take you to court. Cease and desist or I’m gonna smoke you like a cheap cigar! We went for the cigar.Seemed to work. » Posted By choicelady On September 15, 2011 @ 7:45 pm Mansiere I think. Guys – we love you as a species just as you are – so long you bathe regularly. I have no doubt about anyone on the Planet (could NOT hold that up on HP though…) Never mind with the spandex ANYTHING. You’re all fine as is. » Posted By choicelady On August 16, 2011 @ 7:37 pm ultracrepidarian – noun, beyond one’s knowlege or province. Meaning to me, most of what passes for pop culture or politics! » Posted By choicelady On August 4, 2011 @ 8:29 am Killgore – again, can’t answer directly, but please understand when I say the fact you’re tired of incrementalism means nothing. Nothing at all. It’s a feeling, not a policy. It’s yours, not everyone’s. If you’re willing to send this back for a stronger bill for which there were INSUFFICIENT VOTES, then YOU tell the 30 million people they have to wait many more years for health care coverage because it annoys YOU to do incrementalism. I rather think that the 30 million might have a couple of things to say to you about that. I submit that they could not care less what you “feel” when they have life-saving gain to hand. Can you explain to me why I should listen to you instead of to them? Seriously. I am asking why your being tired of incrementalism takes precedence over their health and lives? » Posted By choicelady On February 13, 2011 @ 5:47 pm bito – LOL!!!! I’ve heard that about Mill Rats. ALL of the senses of the term! Did you work there? Fascinating place I must say, rats and all! » Posted By choicelady On February 13, 2011 @ 2:44 pm jdmn – what an elegant analogy! Only thing I’d change is that Obama got handed gray, weathered board with bird poop on ’em. That said, this is very eye-opening as a way of having people understand what difficulties come in undoing the damages inflicted over the past 40 years on poopy weathered boards. Thank you – may I pinch this for use elsewhere? It’s very clarifying! » Posted By choicelady On February 13, 2011 @ 2:42 pm We on the State Strategy Group for single payer are working with the folks in VT. We are all pretty much in the same boat – it’s all in flux, we’re sharing data, and our folks who are developing the financing plan are working with theirs. That said, we don’t have the “final final” for either state yet. I have real hope that between the two we will figure something out that is good on both the finance end AND the delivery end. We have the second, not the first in both states. It’s just too soon to tell. Sorry not to be able to be more definitive! » Posted By choicelady On February 13, 2011 @ 2:40 pm ghsts – signing statements used to be largely clarifying and ceremonial. ONLY Bush decided to use them to press his Imperial Presidency. We are so sick of Bush’s abuses that we cringe when stuff we used to take for granted is even mentioned. Obama has used them infrequently but not at all as far as I can see to thwart the law. We progressive folks HAVE to stop flinching at everything simply because we became familiar with a term only when it was abused. We are becoming inflexible and hostile and crabby. It’s not helpful to become the mirror image of the ‘baggers. » Posted By choicelady On February 13, 2011 @ 8:02 am ghsts – the Attorney General has a judicial function. The issue was executive authority to determine location. That is all. Otherwise of course you’re right. » Posted By choicelady On February 13, 2011 @ 7:58 am Oh bito – you could not have made me happier! I’m honored you’d even think of me on the same page as Mrs. Perkins. My folks had friends from MN who were major progressive leaders there during the Depression. Mrs. P. came to town, they were asked to have her to dinner. Thinking she’d probably be ladylike, they bought a set of sherry glasses to offer her some libation. Turns out the lady drank whiskey. Neat. The “Francis Perkins Sherry Glasses” however became a family treasure. As is the story. I do think very highly of her indeed, and I’m touched you’d think me worthy of comparison – even though I don’t like whiskey. » Posted By choicelady On February 13, 2011 @ 7:55 am eileen – spot ON. I don’t always hear the weekly addresses, but what I’ve heard never EVER “trickles out”. You are so correct, especially about AH and her screaming headlines that top a totally different story. Over and over I’ve listened to even smart, pretty progressive people make HUGE errors in interpreting what Obama has said or done or what has passed or why. I feel like Alice in Wonderland – nothing I see squares with reality at ALL. Thank you for making this so clear. I am in total agreement. » Posted By choicelady On February 13, 2011 @ 7:49 am This is what makes my teeth grind – in the Health Care bill you got HUGE changes that will make major alterations in covering millions. I’d suggest reading it – all of it – and not leaping to such simplistic conclusions. Progressives have to take more responsibility for understanding details and not just some ‘frame’ that makes us dismissive without substance. » Posted By choicelady On February 13, 2011 @ 7:45 am I would live in Canada in a heartbeat – did one summer while teaching at UCCB in Sydney, NS. But we are stuck with our own, odd notions of “exceptionalism” that have been honed over two centuries and through much propaganda to propagate the idea that the private sector is best. Canada’s health care plan is outstanding – except for the regressive tax used to pay for much of it. There is not a lot good one can say about a 17% VAT that falls most heavily on the poor. In CA we are looking at funding a single payer plan – very hard to do without gouging the poor. So while I hail Canada’s plan to the skies, I have reservations – big ones – about how you all have chosen to pay for it. I do NOT know whether people below a certain income level get some kind of rebate? I have to laugh if they don’t – you offer us tourists a form to file to get OUR VAT payments back (I won’t do that – I support your system and am happy to add my pittance to it.) Now = scroll down to last night’s discussion of HRC, and you will see that imperfect as it is, it borrowed many of the principles of the CA single payer plan including per capita costs. So it’s not a failure. It’s a start. And maybe, over time, we will find a funding plan that is less burdensom to the needy. Or perhaps not. But that is a flaw in the Canadian system, and one that troubles me a great deal. » Posted By choicelady On February 13, 2011 @ 7:42 am ghsts – the FACT of a signing statement is unconstitutional? NO! The refusal to abide by the law passed, as Bush did over and over, is unConstitutional. Obama’s signing statements are supportive and “value added” by reinforcing the importance of the bill. I think you have not READ them – you can read them at the site. At no point can I find one that undermines the legislation, only makes his own support known. What was unconstitutional about Bush’s “signing statements” is that he used them to VOID the laws and say why he refused to support what Congress had passed and he had signed. The fact of a signing statement is not prima facie evidence of unconstitutional behavior! READ them. » Posted By choicelady On February 13, 2011 @ 12:03 am ghsts – AdLib and I among others are making inroad via building on a law that is NOW WORKING in Ohio. We will explain more as we develop the idea and get it finished. But we’re not doing this in a granola vacuum. Neither AdLib nor I is ignorant of “California Exceptionalism” and how often it just lies here and goes nowhere else. That’s why AdLib did such a superb job of looking nationally for ideas upon which to build. Interestingly – despite the war on Ohio unions, Ohio is a leader in progressive ideas on many fronts. Just saying – we appreciate everything from everywhere. » Posted By choicelady On February 12, 2011 @ 11:57 pm Absolutely, bito! This is the fist pushback the financial institutions have had in over 30 years, and it’s a GREAT first step. PROGRESSIVES – there is a very real possibility that had the collapse come in 2006 or 2007 and Obama had run in 2008, we WOULD have had FDR and the second New Deal. But it did not. Americans are ignorant of both history and, well, facts. They were not ready or eager to believe that the abundance they’ve known since WW II was really gone, that this wasn’t a blip in the firmament. We had another such scare in 1987 and pulled out; the S&L disaster in 1989 and pulled out. The bounty of the 90s and the downturn (temporary we thought) after 9/11 – all that we recovered from. So Obama got caught in America’s magical thinking – this is supposed to be temporary and we should get out, go back to business as usual, the only people hurt are THEM (whoever) but not, God forbid, ME! You did not have enough time lag of experience with failed GOP policies to let Americans understand, as they did under Hoover, how freaking bankrupt the system IS. So you don’t have the will among the Blue Dogs or many Americans to fix it with BIG solutions. Obama is moving us in the correct direction, but unlike Roosevelt he does not have the ability to do a WPA, etc. His own party undermined that. His plans for the American Re-investment and Recovery Act got chopped by DEMS. FDR never faced that because the situation was worse for middle income Americans than it was for the same group in 2008. Today it is different also because so many of the people seriously harmed by this financial collapse are people of color – and white Americans, the “likely voters” – secretly or openly believe they brought their disasters on themselves. So between short time lag, conservative Dems, and intrinsic racism, you have no real room for Obama to write his projects in a big way. It’s not the same as 1933. We play the hand we’re dealt. Instead of comparing Obama to FDR, just look at him compared to the last freaking 40 YEARS!!! It is insanity for the GOP to think we can just have the same old all over again. It is also insanity to think Obama can just make it “OK” overnight. Unlike the New Deal, we will take this the way it was built – one step at a time. It took 40 years to get this screwed up. It will take at least a decade to fix it. Get over the desire for a New Deal. Welcome to the New Reality. » Posted By choicelady On February 12, 2011 @ 11:53 pm bito – hang around the grain elevators circling the Great Lakes – the workers give the rats names and great respect! I agree about the lunch boxes! Steelworkers at Bethlehem Steel in Lackawanna swore they went hungry because the rats had taken the boxes! » Posted By choicelady On February 12, 2011 @ 11:39 pm KB – can’t reply below but on Davis-Bacon, this is just another war on working people! This is consistent with the assaults on public employees (and private sector unions, too) in Ohio. It takes ALL of us screaming to make these bozos HEAR that cutting decent wages is doing two things – it’s an assault on those working and it’s ALSO an assault on the economy since lower wages always yield less consumption which is the ONLY thing that refuels the economy. The pernicious effect of the Laffer curve – supply side economics – is with us even now. The neo-cons and Baggers seem to believe that you can have an economy predicated entirely on trading paper. Wall Street and nothing else. This is what KILLED us in 2008 – but they won’t give it up. It’s sexy and glamorous and has HUGE bucks associated with it. And somehow they think it works!!!! They believe that we don’t need manufacturing and we don’t need to pay people well so we can have a Latin American economy with very low wage workers at the bottom and a tiny number of uber rich at the top, and that’s OK. Well, it doesn’t work. It’s unsustainable. And that is the lesson of Egypt – and I predict that Latin America will go up in flames in many nations before the next decade is out. So Davis-Bacon does NOT save Americans money. It costs every business its income, and it costs every community its safety and well being. Henry Ford got it – and it’s just as true today. Pay workers well and they buy stuff. When Chrysler demanded a $200/mo pay cut from workers in the 1980 bail out, their sales plummeted. Why? Their own workers were the biggest customers, and $200 per month is a car payment. Mechanize, outsource, shift to paper – you don’t pay, you don’t get paid. I once had a small consulting business – my favorite stamp for bills was: “Please pay us so we can pay them so they can pay him so he can pay you.” It actually worked. We got paid when we stamped that on unpaid invoices. Kill Davis-Bacon and frankly, you kill America. » Posted By choicelady On February 12, 2011 @ 11:16 pm ghsts – I can’t reply to you below, so I’ll do it here. Repeating the mantra of the right but making it his own is just brilliant. Of course we ‘want’ fiscal responsibility – and there is a ton of duplication and silliness in government (who need THAT many armed forces bands???) so Obama’s move to look at restructuring some of government is great. And it keeps the GOP busy. And off the streets and out of bars (not to name a Speaker or anybody.) But as for “signing statements” you CAN look them up. In 2009 Obama had 8. In 2010 he had 5. This year so far 2. You can Google them. They are mostly confirmations of the laws Congress passed. Bush had 24 in 2001. 34 in 2002, 28 in 2003, and so on. http://www.coherentbabble.com/listBHOall.htm So – what does one say about “Obama’s signing statements” that really matters? He is not Bush. He is NOT undermining the Constitution in ANY way. If you have a smoking gun about Obama and signing statements, I’d sure like to know it ’cause I can’t find it. » Posted By choicelady On February 12, 2011 @ 11:04 pm Chinese saying: death by a thousand cuts? It works. » Posted By choicelady On February 12, 2011 @ 10:46 pm I’m not quite sure what it means, but I love it anyway! LOL!!! » Posted By choicelady On February 12, 2011 @ 10:45 pm bito – can’t reply to the next question but here it goes. This issue arose this week in Ohio. The state is moving to de-unionize the public employees, and overall make Ohio a right to work state. The pressure being applied by conservative legislators is: public employees are stripping tax benefits from the ordinary hard working Ohio person such as the poor laid off steelworkers, etc. (As if the GOP gave a damn about laid off steelworkers!) Reality – taxes were cut some years ago and not raised so no, public employees are NOT raising taxes to support lavish incomes. BUT that mantra – public employees are screwing laid off steelworkers – is working. What you and I did “on the line in ’89” was the death knell of worker solidarity. Public employees and “upper level” professional unions did NOT support blue collar people. Left liberals sneered at them and cheered when plants were torn down – called them “eyesores” and “environmental disasters”. Reagan and many others (Nixon with the hard hats vs. hippies) managed to get us all to turn our backs on one another. We now believe that what “you” get is somehow “my” loss. In Ohio if the unions and workers and retirees from blue collar private sector jobs do NOT support one another, the entire ship sinks. If public employees are de-unionized and forced to work on specious individual contracts, then Ohio will be right-to-work and the private sector unions will be killed off and pensions will across the boards be raided and defunded. All in the name of “protecting” the public. Ohio labor – across the boards -MUST come together NOW on behalf of police, fire, teachers, academics, whoever. No matter what has happened in the past, this is a war on ALL working people, not just the public unions. So we have allowed ourselves to be sectionalized. We have allowed anyone who is not ourselves to become “THEM”. Labor, women seeking reproductive choices, women NOT in favor of choice, public sector employees, immigrants, minorities – THEM. You can add to this list at any moment. Bumper sticker I saw today: “There is no THEM” That one sentiment is the first step. Second step – making alliance with someone not yourself around an issue that does not affect you. Never mind what it is. Don’t have breast cancer? Lobby for those who do. Not a machinist? Bring coffee to a picket line of those who are. Not an immigrant? Demand fair treatment for them anyway. One step at a time. One micro step to stand with someone else. Best movie about Jim Crow – “The Long Walk Home” with Whoopie Goldberg and Sissy Spacek. Spacek’s privileged white character walks in the shoes of her housekeeper during the Montgomery bus boycott – she finds compassion for a woman who’d previously been invisible to her. We are all freaking invisible to one another. And that includes progressives who don’t see others who need things that maybe we don’t want or need. Buddhist philosophy teaches of the “near enemies”. These are emotions that approximate ones that we value. The worst, I think, is substituting pity for compassion. Compassion is real fellow feeling about another’s circumstances. Pity is the “near enemy” that makes the person pitied subordinate to the person feeling the pity. It’s demeaning. And in the pity we can find reasons to sacrifice the other person. We have way too much pity, and it makes us dismissive. We have to make policy choices and political decisions based on compassion. We no longer can walk away dismissing others and feelling justified in that lack of concern. Bill Maher asked – how can Egyptians show us how to have a revolution? Well we don’t need one against a democratically elected administration – we need one in the way we dismiss others. If there is ONE thing we can learn from Egypt it’s that everyone is an ally if you let that happen. There simply is no room for that if we are to move away from the Kochs and back to democracy. We all need us all. Then, bito, we can once again begin to ACT. That cannot happen until we honestly accept others as our equals in this struggle. And that first step – “there is no THEM” – is the hardest step of all. » Posted By choicelady On February 12, 2011 @ 10:35 pm LOL!!! Am I writing too fast???? » Posted By choicelady On February 12, 2011 @ 10:16 pm You’re very kind – but it’s what I DO. Reading crap. I tend to piss people off because of the fact I read bills. Not every one, of course, but the big stuff. I have to because I know I’ve been LIED to by even my supposed allies, and I need to know what is REALLY in these things. I owe a good interpretation to my members and those who rely on my judgement. We also do ballot propositions. So I have to research them. I once explained to members that the “humane farm animal” proposition, Prop. 2 a couple of years ago, relied on some very suspicious data contracted by both sides. So I wound up finding my OWN data from studies outside those done for the campaigns. The focus was on humane cages for chickens. I read academic, government, and foreign reports on raising chickens, costs to consumers, cost of labor, numbers of jobs, safety and disease stats, you name it. I now know waaaay more about chickens than I EVER wanted to know. But I did it so our members wouldn’t have to. We supported the proposition, but we did so not just from knee-jerk sympathies for chickens but also from sound judgements that could be sustained. I think it’s impossible, if you’re not in my position, to keep up with things well. We sort of need a Ombudsman of Interpretation for the ordinary citizen. But one thing I also know – it’s not a good idea to believe everything you DO hear – there is as much wrong information on the progressive side as on the right. It’s not as pernicious, but it’s still inaccurate. I don’t know how to remedy that, I really don’t. I guess I’d simply argue for keeping both your deepest values AND your good sense honed – and be willing to change. Some things look good in principle but suck (a technical policy term, of course) in practice. When push comes to shove, the only value I hold dear is: does it make people’s lives better? If so – it’s worth supporting even if imperfect. If not – even if it’s only some people or in ways that don’t affect you and me – then don’t support it. Following the Hippocratic Oath: First, Do No Harm. » Posted By choicelady On February 12, 2011 @ 10:15 pm We all know that for the latter, tapes showed that health care reform was a cynical an act as anythng Nixon did. He mocked his own work – he knew it would not pass but it would make him look good. Of course Nixon passed things we can’t today – we’ve had 30 years of massive RW shift that makes Dwight Eisenhower look like the commie McCarthy accused him of being! We know that what once was considered “conservative” today looks flaming liberal. That’s why what Obama is doing takes so much guts – it’s trying to bring the center back to the CENTER instead of the right-ish place it’s migrated to being. If Obama had come on the heels of Ford, I think he’d have a very different look and feel to his policies, but after Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush – we’re so screwed that pulling things back is MASSIVELY difficult. People do not accomplish great things simply through will. Obama does not have the luxury of dissing the Constitution that Bush had – Bush had nobody to breathe down his neck, not even the last two years when the Dem Congress had to repair what it could. Obama has his own Blue Dogs AND this unspeakable fragmented and fractured GOP that can’t find its OWN center but with a laser focus on him to kill him off – perhaps not just metaphorically. Speak out because he’s the president? Into what ether? He’s mis-quoted and certainly misinterpreted at every turn by everyone from Wolf Blitzer to Rush. When HP hopped on the bandwagon and LIED about things he had done and said, then just where does his work get a fair hearing? I’ve never seen such a concerted effort to undermine policy AND pronouncements from all sides! That’s the game plan of media monopoly, and freaking A – it’s working! » Posted By choicelady On February 12, 2011 @ 9:59 pmComments Posted By choicelady
«« Back To Stats Page
Home Stats