I hope President Obama continues walking into the press room and taking questions, explaining to the American people what is going on. He sheds light on the Republicans, exposes their ideological stances and stupidity. There are still the Michele Bachmann types who are saying they won’t vote to raise the debt ceiling. Americans need to know who wants to throw our country under the bus on purpose.
These Republicans who state they’re concerned about the debt are getting ready to ensure our country and every one of her citizens goes deeper in debt. When the rates to borrow increase that is just a tax by another name and they won’t be able to avoid their culpability.
Imagine what our election system might look like if it were designed today: No Byzantine electoral college, no long lines on a random Tuesday, no closed primaries that force candidates into the arms of their party’s special interests. Modern Madisons and Hamiltons would try to devise a process that’s open, online, citizen-driven, and capable of producing leaders that can unify the nation once in office.
That’s the idealist vision driving a new group, Americans Elect, which has quietly collected enough signatures to secure a 2012 ballot line in eight states, including Arizona, Michigan, and Missouri. They will soon submit an unprecedented 1.6 million signatures in California.
The ballot position they’re securing isn’t for a specific platform, person, or ideology, but rather an entirely new way to elect a president. As Elliot Ackerman, the group’s chief operating officer, explains it, “This isn’t a third party—it’s a second process.”
Here’s how the group envisions it will work: An online convention will take place over a course of two weeks in June 2012. Any registered voter can participate as a delegate, after signing up securely at the newly launched AmericansElect.org. Through a series of interactive online questionnaires, they will be able to seek out potential candidates whose policy positions most closely resemble their own. A party platform will be determined and candidates drafted. A final field of six prospective nominees will then each select a running mate from a different party, with those options eventually winnowed down to a bipartisan ticket that will inherit the Americans Elect ballot line in, the organizers hope, all 50 states.
A congressional commission has finished their three-year evaluation of the U.S.’s contracting operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it doesn’t look good. The U.S. wasted or misspent $34 billion on contracts for wasteful or failed services during its decade in the battlefield. Some of that figure comes from projects that were poorly conceived, like an agricultural development project that paid Afghan farmers to plow their own fields. Part of the figure also comes from funds diverted to insurgents, such as when a subcontractor pays 20 percent of their contract for “protection.” The report also singles out private security guards as especially problematic, and calls for an overhaul of the way the U.S. employs them.
I suppose we could have a lengthy discussion about how many people are on welfare and whether or not they deserve any help.
Maybe we could discuss how many prisons are full, how much education spending is and whether or not there is any connection between the two.
Let’s talk about other entitlement programs — Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security — do Americans deserve these?
Maybe only those who pay ____ in taxes are deserving. Do we get to count sales taxes? Some people are lucky to have enough money to buy food and if they live in Kansas they pay sales tax on those purchases. But we could talk about how they don’t pay any taxes.
But isn’t it all just black and white? Seems to me you’re talking grey areas, that’s liberal talk. If you’re not working you must be lazy and just want everyone else to pay your way. If you need help, ask your family or your church, doesn’t matter that they’re all in the same boat and it’s sinking fast. I guess the good Samaritan picks and chooses who he helps nowadays and when Christ said that what you do to/for the least of these, you do to/for me, He wasn’t talking about the needy in the U.S.
My husband has a way of looking at personal donations that we should all adopt. He says that once that donation has left his hand he has done his part. What that person does with it is on them. The argument has been made to him that the person was just spinning a tail and really didn’t need the money for food, they’ll just by booze/drugs with it. He says that he ‘paid’ for their story. To do otherwise is standing in judgment of them. Again, after the money leaves his hand it’s on the recipient. God will judge them, not him.
The uncomfortable reality is a majority of Americans are not living well in the richest country in the world.
Given how many bought into the dominant borrowing culture of the past 20-or-so-years, one might be tempted to “write them off” (to use a peculiarly analogous phrase).
I don’t. I have sympathy even for the wealthy people who were scammed out of everything in a legally and moral cultural environment that made it inevitable.
Then there are the people who get angry at the system, not because of the utter havoc that greedheads are wreaking on other humans worldwide, but because they feel they aren’t getting a sufficient piece of the action.
I’ve known such people. I’ve somehow restrained myself from punching them.
And perhaps it makes me more sensitive to the number of people in the country, regular folks, who seem not to realize that it’s their own interest and future that are on the line, especially when easy targets are invoked.
Freebird – I think you missed my entire meaning on my posting about whose going to take care of those kids you want to take away from their druggie parents.
Your comment sounded alot like Newt Gingrich back when he led the GOP in the Contract ON America and he suggested we warehouse orphans.
Yeah, that sure sounds like a good way to raise productive citizens – shoving them all into a warehouse.
I hear they do that chickens and hogs…..but not children – yet. But give the GOP some time. Especially if there is a profit to be made in the warehouse business by getting the government to pay the bills.
Boehner is pulling the tired old GOP tactic of playing chicken with Obama.
I was not a big fan of the 14th Amendment beign used but I think Obama should pull that out the minute we are in default and tell Boehner, Cantor and McConnell to go shove that in their lilly-white faces.
I sense Obama was hitting a nerve when he was reported to have said in that debt meeting last week – Reagan did not have to go through this.
And Obama is right. Reagan raised the debt ceiling 18 times – and this guy was in office for only 8 years. Can these REpublicans figure out as to how many times Reagan had to overspend in order for them have to raise the debt ceiling 18 times?
Obama’s approval rating would go sky high if he would tell Boehner and Gang – shove it and take your tea bags with you.
PrairiePopulistsAndProgressives.net 
I hope President Obama continues walking into the press room and taking questions, explaining to the American people what is going on. He sheds light on the Republicans, exposes their ideological stances and stupidity. There are still the Michele Bachmann types who are saying they won’t vote to raise the debt ceiling. Americans need to know who wants to throw our country under the bus on purpose.
These Republicans who state they’re concerned about the debt are getting ready to ensure our country and every one of her citizens goes deeper in debt. When the rates to borrow increase that is just a tax by another name and they won’t be able to avoid their culpability.
The Web’s Stealth Presidential Race
Imagine what our election system might look like if it were designed today: No Byzantine electoral college, no long lines on a random Tuesday, no closed primaries that force candidates into the arms of their party’s special interests. Modern Madisons and Hamiltons would try to devise a process that’s open, online, citizen-driven, and capable of producing leaders that can unify the nation once in office.
That’s the idealist vision driving a new group, Americans Elect, which has quietly collected enough signatures to secure a 2012 ballot line in eight states, including Arizona, Michigan, and Missouri. They will soon submit an unprecedented 1.6 million signatures in California.
The ballot position they’re securing isn’t for a specific platform, person, or ideology, but rather an entirely new way to elect a president. As Elliot Ackerman, the group’s chief operating officer, explains it, “This isn’t a third party—it’s a second process.”
Here’s how the group envisions it will work: An online convention will take place over a course of two weeks in June 2012. Any registered voter can participate as a delegate, after signing up securely at the newly launched AmericansElect.org. Through a series of interactive online questionnaires, they will be able to seek out potential candidates whose policy positions most closely resemble their own. A party platform will be determined and candidates drafted. A final field of six prospective nominees will then each select a running mate from a different party, with those options eventually winnowed down to a bipartisan ticket that will inherit the Americans Elect ballot line in, the organizers hope, all 50 states.
Two-thirds of our debt is owed to the U.S. taxpayer. Who would suffer the most from a default?
New Firefox Add-on Warns You About The Dangers Of The Murdoch Propaganda Machine
http://newsjunkiepost.com/2011/07/21/new-firefox-add-on-warns-you-about-the-dangers-of-the-murdoch-propaganda-machine/
U.S. Misspent $34B in Iraq, Afghanistan
A congressional commission has finished their three-year evaluation of the U.S.’s contracting operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it doesn’t look good. The U.S. wasted or misspent $34 billion on contracts for wasteful or failed services during its decade in the battlefield. Some of that figure comes from projects that were poorly conceived, like an agricultural development project that paid Afghan farmers to plow their own fields. Part of the figure also comes from funds diverted to insurgents, such as when a subcontractor pays 20 percent of their contract for “protection.” The report also singles out private security guards as especially problematic, and calls for an overhaul of the way the U.S. employs them.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903554904576462373038573518.html
I suppose we could have a lengthy discussion about how many people are on welfare and whether or not they deserve any help.
Maybe we could discuss how many prisons are full, how much education spending is and whether or not there is any connection between the two.
Let’s talk about other entitlement programs — Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security — do Americans deserve these?
Maybe only those who pay ____ in taxes are deserving. Do we get to count sales taxes? Some people are lucky to have enough money to buy food and if they live in Kansas they pay sales tax on those purchases. But we could talk about how they don’t pay any taxes.
But isn’t it all just black and white? Seems to me you’re talking grey areas, that’s liberal talk. If you’re not working you must be lazy and just want everyone else to pay your way. If you need help, ask your family or your church, doesn’t matter that they’re all in the same boat and it’s sinking fast. I guess the good Samaritan picks and chooses who he helps nowadays and when Christ said that what you do to/for the least of these, you do to/for me, He wasn’t talking about the needy in the U.S.
My husband has a way of looking at personal donations that we should all adopt. He says that once that donation has left his hand he has done his part. What that person does with it is on them. The argument has been made to him that the person was just spinning a tail and really didn’t need the money for food, they’ll just by booze/drugs with it. He says that he ‘paid’ for their story. To do otherwise is standing in judgment of them. Again, after the money leaves his hand it’s on the recipient. God will judge them, not him.
To those that have much, much is expected.
No, it isn’t black and white ever. Everyone has a story and none of us deserves dignity more or less than another.
I like the way your hubby thinks.
http://www.wtfnoway.com/
The uncomfortable reality is a majority of Americans are not living well in the richest country in the world.
Given how many bought into the dominant borrowing culture of the past 20-or-so-years, one might be tempted to “write them off” (to use a peculiarly analogous phrase).
I don’t. I have sympathy even for the wealthy people who were scammed out of everything in a legally and moral cultural environment that made it inevitable.
Then there are the people who get angry at the system, not because of the utter havoc that greedheads are wreaking on other humans worldwide, but because they feel they aren’t getting a sufficient piece of the action.
I’ve known such people. I’ve somehow restrained myself from punching them.
And perhaps it makes me more sensitive to the number of people in the country, regular folks, who seem not to realize that it’s their own interest and future that are on the line, especially when easy targets are invoked.
Freebird – I think you missed my entire meaning on my posting about whose going to take care of those kids you want to take away from their druggie parents.
Your comment sounded alot like Newt Gingrich back when he led the GOP in the Contract ON America and he suggested we warehouse orphans.
Yeah, that sure sounds like a good way to raise productive citizens – shoving them all into a warehouse.
I hear they do that chickens and hogs…..but not children – yet. But give the GOP some time. Especially if there is a profit to be made in the warehouse business by getting the government to pay the bills.
Boehner is pulling the tired old GOP tactic of playing chicken with Obama.
I was not a big fan of the 14th Amendment beign used but I think Obama should pull that out the minute we are in default and tell Boehner, Cantor and McConnell to go shove that in their lilly-white faces.
I sense Obama was hitting a nerve when he was reported to have said in that debt meeting last week – Reagan did not have to go through this.
And Obama is right. Reagan raised the debt ceiling 18 times – and this guy was in office for only 8 years. Can these REpublicans figure out as to how many times Reagan had to overspend in order for them have to raise the debt ceiling 18 times?
Obama’s approval rating would go sky high if he would tell Boehner and Gang – shove it and take your tea bags with you.
Perhaps Michele Bachmann’s Christian Counseling husband had the wrong people in mind when he labeled them ‘barbarians that need disciplined’.
That sounds like the current crop of the Tea Party Clowns that need a good kick in their ‘entitled’ butts.