Republican Comeback

[Keith Millea]

The Republicans have taken Sen. Kennedys Senate seat.Why am I not caring?Probably because the Dems NEED to get a big ass whippin'.......... tickyman:

http://www.counterpunch.org/
Coakley Loses and a Good Job Too

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Republican Scott Brown takes over a seat held by the Kennedy family for over half a century and the dark cloud already hovering over Obama's White House thickens. By any measure the energetic Brown's emphatic defeat of Martha Coakley, believed only a month ago to be a sure thing as Ted Kennedy's replacement, is a disaster for the Democratic Party and for President Obama.
Coakley, a former prosecutor and attorney general of Massachusetts, ran a dumb, complacent campaign, allowing Brown, a state senator, to charge that she seemed to believe she had an inherent right to the seat. Coakley ladled out platitudes; Brown, pelting about the Commonwealth in a manly GMC truck, made the Democrats' health reform bill his prime issue, which was scarcely rocket science, since people of moderate income accurately believe that "reform" is going to cost them money, with zero improvement in overall service.
A year after his inauguration Obama has disappointed so many constituencies that a rebuke by the voters was inevitable. Yesterday it came in Massachusetts, often categorized as the most liberal in the union. This is entirely untrue. It's a disgusting sinkhole of racism and vulgar prejudice, as five minutes in any taxi in the state, listening to Talk Radio or reading the local newspaper, will attest.
Brown's achievement is not novel. His type of Republican has been elected governor in Massachusetts three or four times in the last 18 years by the real "majority party" --which is the "unenrolled" independents who are 1 and 1/2 times the size of Democrats in number among registered voters and tower over the Republicans of whom less than 12 per cent are registered as such.
CounterPuncher Steve Early, a labor organizer in the state wrote to us on Monday that Brown is in the mould of two recent Republican governors of Massachusetts, William Weld , and Paul Celluci, the latter two actually being backed by later Change to Win local affiliates like HERE Local 26 and the Teamsters. These were genial, likeable, clean-cut jocks, presenting themselves to independent voters as a much needed public rebuke to "an increasingly corrupt, arrogant or personally screwed up Beacon Hill clique of Democrats (see recent spate of House and Senate member/leader indictments, jailings, and/or resignations pending trial). A lot of folks, at the moment, are again just plain pissed about the self-serving political class of Democratic Donkeys who run our one-party state, including the now unpopular Obama pre-cursor, Deval Patrick."
Because the Democratic majority in the US senate is now reduced to 59, the common prediction is that the Democrats' health reform bill is doomed, since it takes 60 votes to override a filibuster, which the Republicans would mount to kill the bill. More likely is that the insurance companie , (which dictated the basic terms of the "reform" and stands to gain millions of new customers who will be forced by law to take out health insurance), will be loath to throw away months of successful lobbying and will dictate some new "compromise" that will allow both Republicans and Democrats to claim victory. Obama will delightedly sign any insurance bill landing on his desk bearing the necessary label, "reform".
Certainly Coakley's resounding defeat is grim news for Democratic politicians limbering up for the midterm elections this coming fall. The parallel is with the midterms of 1994, when voters, furious at the bumbling failures of Clinton's first to years, handed both the senate and the house to Republicans for the first time in decades. Obama has caused fury and disillusion across the spectrum. The nutball right bizarrely portrays him as a mutant offspring of the Prophet Mohammed and Karl Marx, demonstrating that cretinism flows more strongly than ever in Uncle Sam's bloodstream. The Republican small business crowd tremble at the huge deficits. The independents see no trace of the invigorating change pledged by Obama. Working people in the labor unions who supplied the footsoldiers for Obama's campaign see no improvement in their economic condition. Everyone knows that Obama is the champion of bankers, not bankrupts. The liberals morosely list twelve months of disasters, from a wider war in Afghanistan, to major betrayals of pledges to restore constitutional restrains after eight years of abuse by Bush and Cheney.
Obama richly deserves the rebuke from Massachusetts. Armed with a nation's fervent hopes a year ago, he spurned the unrivalled opportunity offered by economic crisis to do what he pledged: usher in substantive change. He's done exactly the opposite . Wall Street has been given the green light to continue with business as usual. The stimulus package was far too weak. The opportunity for financial reform has passed. Trillions will be wasted in Afghanistan.
A final note on Coakley. She rose to political prominence by peculiarly vicious grandstanding as a prosecutor, winning a conviction of 19-year old child minder Louise Woodward for shaking a baby to death. An outraged judge later freed Woodward, reducing her sentence to less than a year of time served. Then Coakley went after headlines in child abuse cases. Innocent people are still rotting in prison as a consequence of Coakley's misuse of her office. For this alone, regardless of the setback the Democrats richly deserved, I rejoice in her humiliation.

[Magda Hassan]

The bloody Democrats couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery, a fuck in a brothel or a dump in the toilet
They are worse than useless. They are complicit. Why people waste their time with them I have no idea. People have to move right away from the idea that things will be better under the Democrats. They are Good Cop to Republican Bad Cop. Stop drinking the kool aid, think outside the box and get organised.

[Keith Millea]

The bloody Democrats couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery, a fuck in a brothel or a dump in the toilet

I LOVE IT!

[Magda Hassan]

It's the way we speak here. :lollypop:
Now, Obama will look at the results from all of this and he will learn his lesson. He will move further to the right. :banghead:

[Keith Millea]

The few,the proud,the mostly ignored true Democrats.

http://rawstory.com/2010/01/exclusive-ku...democrats/
Exclusive: Kucinich shreds Democrats for betraying the promise of change



By Sahil Kapur
Thursday, January 21st, 2010 -- 9:45 am










Slams health bill 'madness'
WASHINGTON -- Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) on Wednesday said the Massachusetts election was a "wake up call" for Democrats and that his party had better change course or it could suffer devastating losses come November.
"People elected Democrats in 2008 to change the direction," he told Raw Story in a nearly hour-long interview.
"And the same entrenched interests that George Bush could not shake, this current White House is having great difficulty in shaking. One could suggest they might be more entrenched than ever."
Kucinich staunchly defended liberalism but alleged that Democrats are not behaving like liberals.
"There's nothing liberal about the bailouts. There's nothing liberal about standing by and watching banks use public money to get their executive bonuses. There's nothing liberal about giving insurance companies carte blanche to charge anything they want for health care... Since when did that become liberal?"
"There's nothing liberal about letting coal and oil write climate change legislation," he added. "Are you kidding me?"
The 13-year congressman lamented the lack of change in economic policies, tying it to the major problems Democrats are facing.
"The minute the president appointed Tim Geithner and Larry Summers to key policy positions, and the minute that [Ben] Bernanke was named to head the Fed again, we're looking at people who participated in the decline of the economy," he said. "This group has done us a disservice."
"Every area of the economy is still about taking wealth from the great mass of people and putting it into the hands of a few. If you don't have a economic democracy, you don't have a political democracy."
"We have to be more defined as being on the side of the people and not on the side of interest groups that are so entrenched," said Kucinich, who is widely regarded as a champion on progressive issues.
Dems 'jumped in bed with insurance companies'
Kucinich said he's deeply disillusioned with what health reform has become, suggesting Democrats should "slow down" and "take a step back."
"Health care became too complex and too riddled with concessions to insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies," he said. "It's really time to take a new direction and that direction has to be back to the American people."
One idea Democrats are floating is to pass the Senate bill through the House, which would then allow the President to sign it into law.
"I don't think that's going to happen," he said. "The senate bill is so totally flawed that I don't think it can get the votes in the House to pass. I certainly wouldn't vote for it."
"It hits very sharply at people who gave wage concessions to get health care benefits," he said, citing the excise tax on health care benefits. "We're going to ask Americans to take a wage cut? Why?"
"We lost the initiative the minute that our party jumped into bed with the insurance companies. And soon they were looking at increasing taxes as a way of subsidizing insurance companies. It's just madness."
"We're redistributing the wealth of the nation upwards by giving the insurance companies 30 million new customers, $50 billion a year more in revenue."
A number of progressives and Democrats disagree with Kucinich's conclusion, and say despite its flaws the health care bill is at least an important step toward expanding coverage and reducing costs.
"Well, which direction are we building in?" Kucinich responded. "If we give insurance companies a monopoly on health care, if we put no controls on premiums, if we give them antitrust exemptions... Is this the direction we build in to protect health care for people, or to protect insurance companies?"
He said part of America's distrust for the bill is the special deals the leadership cut with certain Senators, citing Sen. Ben Nelson's exemption for Medicaid expenses in Nebraska.
"People know when things get to that point, it's time to stay stop. Stop what you're doing. Don't make another move. Slow it down. That's the message from Massachusetts."
Kucinich voiced his long-held view that the best way to address health care is to achieve a "Medicare-for-all system." He said Democrats shouldn't abandon health reform, but need to signal they realize it's been mishandled.
Rips Obama admin on economy, giving Wall Street 'immunity'
Kucinich said the Massachusetts election was also a referendum on the Obama administration's "inadequate" response to the economic crisis.
"We ought to focus on creating 15 million jobs, and if we do that, we'll regain the confidence of the American people on domestic issues," he said.
"With people losing their jobs, losing their homes, their investments, their savings, retirement security, losing opportunities for their children to go to college, we have to focus on economic issues."
The congressman from Ohio claimed these problems have arisen because the system is skewed against the interests of the people, and that Obama's economic team isn't helping to solve them.
He said the Obama administration was giving Wall Street banks "immunity and too big to fail protection," saying they "even pride themselves on that."
"People understand the precarious nature of the economy, and that's what they're responding to in Massachusetts."
"We're really at a moment here, a moment of pivot. We need to regain the confidence of the American people by rallying them on the economic issues. But if not, Massachusetts will just be a harbinger of what's to come."
Special interests 'more entrenched than ever'
Kucinich lamented Democrats' growing camaraderie with big moneyed interests, claiming it's hurting the party.
"You ask the banks to reform banking?" he said. "Put the insurance companies to reform insurance. Call in nuclear to reform energy policies? Are you kidding me?"
"These problems, lest we forget, did not start with Barack Obama," Kucinich said. "It was George Bush drove the economy over the cliff with a trillion dollar tax cut and a war based on lies, and an expanding trade deficit."
"And we can't do that by playing paddycake with Wall Street, by caving into the demands of big banks, by playing footsie with insurance companies and by jumping in bed with the pharmaceutical industry.
"Americans are really skittish about the economy, and they have every right to be," he said. "This isn't a left-right argument; this isn't a liberal-conservative argument. This is about down or up."
"We have a really deep recession, and the only way to bring it back up is to have a massive jobs program," he said. "I don't see any evidence" that Obama's economic team is standing behind that.
"We have to listen to what the message is from Massachusetts. We better listen carefully."
Beyond left and right
In what may come as a surprise to some of his supporters, Kucinich declined to blame Republicans for what he believes have been economic policies gone awry.
"We have to be looking at ourselves," he claimed. "We have to be looking at what we need to do to govern... It's really simple: the people don't like what we're doing."
"Democrats have to look at our own responsibilities, not the Republicans' responsibilities," he said. "If we want to give the mantle of leadership to Republicans, they're the minority, they're willing to take it."
Kucinich said the Democratic strategy, as unveiled in a leaked internal memo obtained by Talking Points Memo's Brian Beutler, of urging Republicans to take more responsibility was "wrong."
"This isn't about the Republicans, this is about the Democrats."
"There's been a serious mislabeling of politics in America, where there's an attempt to confuse people about who stands for what, and in that it's the triumph of special interests."
'Still time to recover'
Kucinich said that despite the Democrats' turn in the wrong direction, they can still win back the people's trust.
"I'm not one who believes the sky is falling," he said. "We just need to listen to what people are saying. The people of Massachusetts sent the message that they're not willing to be taken for granted."
"Democrats need to take a more aggressive stance," Kucinich posited. "The only time I've ever voted against my party is when I thought we could do better, and be stronger."
"We can only keep our majority if this wake-up call is used in a constructive way, and we have our eyes open."
"We just had an alarm go off in Massachusetts, and we better wake up. Because if we shut the clock off and go back to sleep, when we wake up in November we could end up in the minority."
Despite his harrowing words, Kucinich said he "remains optimistic" that Democrats can "turn things around."
"We still have enough time to recover. A political eternity exists between now and November. Plenty of time. But we have to really reset the pointer of our political direction."

[Jan Klimkowski]

Keith - yup.

We are the disenfranchised.

Below is a link to a short interview with Howard Dean on BBC Newsnight yesterday. If you can get it to play in America, I hope you will find the contents of interest:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/ne...472662.stm

[Ed Jewett]

Live in America is amusing. Well, in the sense that -- if you don't laugh -- you'll have to engage in a lot of primal screaming or be taken away in a strait jacket for a frontal lobotomy so you'll fit in.

Add to this the fact that the Supreme Court just allowed unlimited corporate spending in election campaigns.

Send lots of cash and a passport ASAP. :trytofly:

[Ed Jewett]

Edited on Fri Jan-22-10 10:50 AM by kpete
Source: Electronic Frontier

January 21st, 2010
EFF Plans Appeal of Jewel v. NSA Warrantless Wiretapping Case

Court Rules That Mass Surveillance of Americans is Immune From Judicial Review

San Francisco - A federal judge has dismissed Jewel v. NSA, a case from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of AT&T customers challenging the National Security Agency's mass surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans' phone calls and emails.

"We're deeply disappointed in the judge's ruling," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "This ruling robs innocent telecom customers of their privacy rights without due process of law. Setting limits on Executive power is one of the most important elements of America's system of government, and judicial oversight is a critical part of that."

In the ruling, issued late Thursday, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker held that the privacy harm to millions of Americans from the illegal spying dragnet was not a "particularized injury" but instead a "generalized grievance" because almost everyone in the United States has a phone and Internet service.

"The alarming upshot of the court's decision is that so long as the government spies on all Americans, the courts have no power to review or halt such mass surveillance even when it is flatly illegal and unconstitutional," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "With new revelations of illegal spying being reported practically every other week -- just this week, we learned that the FBI has been unlawfully obtaining Americans' phone records using Post-It notes rather than proper legal process -- the need for judicial oversight when it comes to government surveillance has never been clearer."

Read more: http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2010/01/21

Judge's order: http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/jewel/...l12110.pdf

Text and further discussion:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/dis...02x4237802

[Magda Hassan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4aQCiRjvZY