BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 10:30 PM

LH if you say there is any terrorist threat are you lying or is MM?

Whom is the Emperor of America? Should the US retreat from Haiti?

Do Canadians belong in Afghanistan? Do they belong in Haiti?

Brig. Gen. Guy Laroche led Canadian troops in Cyprus, Bosnia and Afghanistan.

I can't find any references to the American Empire but the British Empire is quite prominent:

The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom, that had originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height it was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power. By 1922, the British Empire held sway over a population of about 458 million people, one-quarter of the world's population,and covered more than 13,000,000 square miles approximately a quarter of the Earth's total land area. As a result, its political, linguistic and cultural legacy is widespread. At the peak of its power, it was often said that "the sun never sets on the British Empire" because its span across the globe ensured that the sun was always shining on at least one of its numerous territories.

Wasn't it the British that left a bad taste in the mouths of these colonists?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 28 Jan 10 - 12:51 PM

AP WASHINGTON â€" The Democratic-controlled Senate has muscled through a plan to allow the government to go a whopping $1.9 trillion deeper in debt.

The party-line 60-40 vote was successful only because Republican Sen.-elect Scott Brown has yet to be seated. Sixty votes were required to approve the increase. The measure would lift the debt ceiling to $14.3 trillion. That's about $45,000 for every American.

Democrats had to scramble to approve the plan, which means they won't have to vote on another increase until after the midterm elections this fall. To win the votes of moderate Democrats, President Barack Obama promised to appoint a special task force to come up with a plan to reduce the deficit. The House must still vote on the measure before it's sent to Obama for his signature.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Jan 10 - 02:17 PM

I don't follow that first question, Sawzaw. I don't think you worded it right.

What I was saying is that there is very, very little danger to the average American from Islamic terrorism. You are far more likely to die from a traffic accident, being overweight, or through domestic violence, or by getting hit by lightning. On the other hand, there is enormous danger to ordinary Afghans, Pakistanis, Iraqis, and other Third World people from American terrorism, accomplished by the American military and the mercenary contractors like Blackwater.

You quoted Michael Moore out of context. Unless you post the larger context in which he said the few words you quoted, your quote is a waste of time. You cannot discredit everything a human being stands for on the basis of a single fragment of a sentence that you have lifted out of a whole bunch of stuff he said.

I should think you'd be interested in the fact that Micheal Moore is being extremely critical of Obama's first year in office rather than paying so much attention to a few words from him quoted out of context. You can damn anyone on the planet if you cherry pick through everything they've said and quote one tiny bit of it out of context and ignore the rest.

As for your other questions:

"Whom is the Emperor of America?" I don't know. Who do you think? Henry Kissinger? ;-) Why do you even ask me that?

"Should the US retreat from Haiti?" Not if they are there to render humanitarian assistance to earthquake victims. As long as that's what they do there, I have no argument with it.

"Do Canadians belong in Afghanistan?" Hell, no! If it were up to me, Canadian troops would be pulled out at once. A majority of the Canadian public agrees with me on that, but our Prime Minister is a neocon trained poodle in service of the American empire.

"Do they (Canadians) belong in Haiti?" I have no objection to anyone giving Haitians emergency assistance in the wake of the earthquake. Why would I?

Regarding your remarkes on the British Empire...we appear to agree on every point about the British Empire! ;-) So, what is your point? America has taken over where the British (and more recently, the Soviets) left off. America has indeed built itself a huge empire overseas ever since the late 1800s, beginning with the siezure of Cuba, the Phillipines, and other formerly Spanish possessions in 1898. You don't have to have official colonies to have an empire...you just have to have control of foreign places...militarily and financially and politically or by proxy through local puppets who have been bought or terrorized into submission. That control is achieved through a combination of military invasion or threat, coups, assassinations, puppet and client governments, financial takeovers, huge loans that control a poor nation through debt, etc. Recently Iraq and Aghanistan have been added to the unofficial tally of the American empire. It IS an empire, it just isn't called an empire anymore, because that isn't politically acceptable to do that anymore. So it isn't official. It is actual. And everyone outside the USA knows it, even if you Americans are too sold on your own propaganda to recognize it yourselves.

Our Canadian government has been helping you to maintain your empire, and that is shameful. I am disgusted with them for doing it, and I do not support them in any way when they do that.

I do not regard Haitian relief as empire-building nor would any sane person.

****

Now let me ask you as intelligent a question as some of the ones you just wasted my time with:

Are you still buggering your neighbour's basset hound EVERY day...or just on Sundays?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 29 Jan 10 - 09:40 PM

So get your own country straight before you jump in America's shit LH.

Mike Moore says there is no terrorist threat. Right or wrong?

Al Gore is the emperor and buggering is another Imperial British term that I am not familiar with.

I think it has to do with nostrils and dried mucus removal but I am not sure. Perhaps you could explain and maybe give a demonstration.

Oh, by the way here is a few more billion$ to support your socialist nanny state government.

Hear how loudly Fidel whines and sucks snot when he doesn't get his?

Good thing Canada has all those natural resources to sell eh? Otherwise socialism might collapse.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: mousethief
Date: 29 Jan 10 - 10:32 PM

What a nasty little bitch. And what do you mean, Al Gore is the emperor of the US? What the hell does he do? Fuck-all, near as I can see, except bloviate.

Ake, you never cease to amaze me.

O..O
=o=

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 29 Jan 10 - 10:44 PM

A popular view

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 29 Jan 10 - 10:59 PM

Mouser: "What a nasty little bitch. And what do you mean, Al Gore is the emperor of the US? What the hell does he do? Fuck-all, near as I can see, except bloviate.
Ake, you never cease to amaze me.

Ake isn't even on this thread. You amaze me, as well. I guess if someone gets your goat, you scream out A-A-A-K-E!
(He just doesn't like straight people)

Wink,
GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: mousethief
Date: 29 Jan 10 - 11:00 PM

I can't keep y'all straight. Mea culpa.

O..O
=o=

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 29 Jan 10 - 11:50 PM

Go Sit on a Glacier.

New York Times:

The Obama administration on Friday gave up on its plan to try the Sept. 11 plotters in Lower Manhattan, bowing to almost unanimous pressure from New York officials and business leaders to move the terrorism trial elsewhere.

"I think I can acknowledge the obvious," an administration official said. "We're considering other options."

The reversal on whether to try the alleged 9/11 terrorists blocks from the former World Trade Center site seemed to come suddenly this week, after Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg abandoned his strong support for the plan and said the cost and disruption would be too great.

But behind the brave face that many New Yorkers had put on for weeks, resistance had been gathering steam.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Bobert
Date: 30 Jan 10 - 08:22 AM

It was a bad idea to hold the trial in New York because of the emense security costs ($260M) so hat's off to the Obama administartion for changing the venue to a court where the security costs won't be porhibitive... That, BTW, is smart governement... Bush would have just gone along with it because "The decider" wasn't flexible enough to know when a decision was just plain dumb...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Jan 10 - 11:22 AM

Sawzaw, I'd love to ignore the USA and just concentrate on Canada...but I can't because the USA dominates Canada! ;-) In terms of policy and media and economy, I mean. Therefore the USA is an ever present problem for every Canadian, and we must be concerned about the USA.

It's kind of like Ukrainians must be concerned about Russia. Very similar, in fact. I have a Polish friend and she says that now that she's living here she sees how the USA looms over us just like Russia looms over Poland. She didn't get that till she was living here.

I don't expect you to understand that because you have never experienced it. You're used to living in the BIG place that affects everyone else...and you haven't experienced being the one affected BY the superpower.

I also lived in the USA for 10 years, so I have a good basis of comparison. Canada is mostly a capitalist society, not a socialist society. We do have a socialist form of medical coverage here...and it's the single most popular government institution in this country. It is the one thing that even a neocon administration does not dare to dismantle, because the public would be up in arms if they tried it.

You don't get it. You're ignorant of certain things because you have never experienced them. That doesn't mean you're stupid. It just means you don't know, that's all. We are all ignorant of certain things, and it's not a crime to be ignorant, but it happens, okay? I'm ignorant of many things and so are you. You are ignorant of Canadian society when you characterize us as "socialist", because we are mostly capitalist, but EVERY society has SOME socialism...it can't function without some socialism, and that is true of the USA as well. You HAVE a fair bit of socialism in the USA, because you MUST have it in order to even keep functioning as a society.

To call another primariy capitalist society "socialist" because it has socialism in one or two areas where you don't is asinine.

Cut and paste me or provide a link to the entire Michael Moore talk which you have lifted one little fragment out of...I'll read it so I can see in context what he was talking about...and then I'll decide whether he's "lying", which I seriously doubt. I think he's probably making a very useful point about something...one which has eluded you.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 31 Jan 10 - 10:24 PM

"Bush would have just gone along with it"

Horseshit. He would never make such a dumbass decision the begin with but just leave it in Guantanamo.

Obama is still bumping is head on demolishing Healthcare for the umpteenth time. Now that is some serious, bone headed, non debatable decision making.

Boss Hogg @ Work

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 31 Jan 10 - 11:20 PM

Sorry MR holier than thou that likes to insult other people's countries and get all hurt when they do the same. You are clearly fixated on the USA.

Now if the Imperial mean old US is bad and socio/capitalist AC/DC Canada is so good, Wouldn't it be great if the bad US went away and the good Canada was finally rid of the US?

No? Don't want that to happen? Would you just rather tell others what to do to benefit yourself even more?

Could Canada's Socialist side survive with out the extra $17,108.5 Billion per year to baby sit it's people so they can hoot about what a success they are?

Sorry, this is the only quote from that speech and to me it means what it says:

"There is no terrorist threat in this country. This is a lie. This is the biggest lie we've been told."

---

Britain’s Children

It may be surprising to hear me admit it, but I have quite enjoyed the coverage of Queen Elizabeth’s visit to the United States. The Queen has gotten an overwhelmingly warm reception from the American people and their political leaders, while media the coverage has been excited and respectful.

What I like about this visit is how genuine the support is. When the Queen visits Canada, or some other Commonwealth realm, the visit is always infused with so much political subtext. The republic vs. monarchy debate overshadows all the festivities and everyone is continuously asked for an opinion on the matter. When our politicians show support for Elizabeth they do so with phony, gritted smiles, knowing full well that they are making a controversial constitutional statement by doing so.

The United States has moved beyond all this, however. When the Queen comes to visit the US she does so as a symbol of America’s past, but also as a representative of America’s contemporary, mature relationship with the United Kingdom. There is no irate republican outrage or gushing apologism from monarchists. It is just a nice visit from a special lady.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: CarolC
Date: 31 Jan 10 - 11:36 PM

Horseshit. He would never make such a dumbass decision the begin with but just leave it in Guantanamo.

Except that he didn't. When Richard Reid did almost the exact same thing (except he tried to blow up his foot instead of his crotch), Bush had him tried in Boston, and he is now in prison in the United States.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reid_%28shoe_bomber%29

How soon they forget (or pretend they never knew)...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Feb 10 - 11:48 AM

Okay, Sawzaw... ;-) I think you're fixated on me. I will respond to your post.

Sorry MR holier than thou that likes to insult other people's countries and get all hurt when they do the same. You are clearly fixated on the USA.

Yeah, like the Gauls and the Greeks were fixated on imperial Rome. ;-) Why be surprised? The USA is the Superpower of today, so everyone's fixated on the USA for very clear reasons.

Now if the Imperial mean old US is bad and socio/capitalist AC/DC Canada is so good, Wouldn't it be great if the bad US went away and the good Canada was finally rid of the US?

It would be just lovely, you betcha, but it ain't gonna happen. ;-)


No? Don't want that to happen? Would you just rather tell others what to do to benefit yourself even more?

To the contrary. I'd love the USA to "go away" (or at least leave other people alone), but like I said, it ain't gonna happen.

Could Canada's Socialist side survive with out the extra $17,108.5 Billion per year to baby sit it's people so they can hoot about what a success they are?

Yes. Easily. No sweat.

Sorry, this is the only quote from that speech and to me it means what it says:

"There is no terrorist threat in this country. This is a lie. This is the biggest lie we've been told."

You have been told a long series of big lies, Sawzaw. You were told that Muslim people hate democracy. That's a lie. You were told that the Muslims wish to conquer the world. That's a lie. You were told that Saddam had WMDs. That was a lie. You were told that 911 was planned by Osama. That is probably a lie. You were told that Afghanistan was to blame for it. That was a lie. You were told that the current wave of terrorism began when Muslims attacked the USA. That was a lie. The threat of terror attacks on the USA has been so grossly exaggerated by your government because it allows the people in power in the USA to launch illegal wars and to deprive you Americans of your civil rights with things like the Patriot Act. You've been experiencing a gradual fascist takeover for years now. You're living in the incubation chamber of the Fourth Reich and you're too blind and deluded to even know it's happening. That's what Michael Moore was trying to alert you to.

As for the thing about the Queen...sure. Of course there's no controversy when she visits the USA...she doesn't play any jurisdicational role in the USA, so it's not an issue for Americans. She would get the same positive and respectful reception in Japan for the same reason...she's not an issue there. She is an issue anywhere within her own jurisdiction, which is what used to be called the British Commonwealth (the remains of the once British Empire).

If you can't figure out why that is, you ain't even trying.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 01 Feb 10 - 01:11 PM

..she doesn't play any jurisdicational role in the USA

Nor does she have much influence on our edumacationalistic program, either...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 01 Feb 10 - 03:35 PM

Hey CC. once they reach American soil it is a different story.

When did KSM reach American soil?

LH for the third time. You say there is a small terrorist threat. MM says there is none. Who is right?

You use the lie word a lot. Is that your way of telling other people they are too stupid to figure things out for them selves?

I was not told that "Muslim people hate democracy". If someone said that I to me not believe them. You automatically assume things that you have no way of knowing. Therefore you know why I think the way I do. An arrogant, superior attitude.

"You were told that the Muslims wish to conquer the world." Just where was I at when I was told and who told me.

I have no idea what you were told, by whom or how true it was. Therefore I do not know why you think the way you do and I do not arrogantly assume I know.

Maybe you should prepare a budget for Canada reduced by $17 billion.

The Canadian Empire

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Feb 10 - 04:03 PM

That was the old British Empire, Sawzaw. I'm glad it's not around any more. I disapprove of British imperialism too. I don't much care for any form of imperialism.

I still have not seen the context in which Michael Moore says what you say he said. Where is it? And where did you hear about it? How do I know if he really said it or not?

I also don't see why any human being should be wholly judged on the basis of one fragmentary phrase out of the millions of words that have come out of his mouth. Why don't you ask Michael Moore if he really thinks there is NO terrorist threat? That's obviously impossible for anyone to even know, so how could he think it? Send him an email. Call him up. Get that explanation you are longing for instead of spending time trying to make me agree that Michael Moore is as you wish me to see him. Talk to him about it.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 01 Feb 10 - 04:10 PM

An arrogant assumption by Mr X: LH has been lied to. He has been told there is a terrorist threat. Therefore if he believes it, he is stupid. If he does not believe this thing that I have determined to be a lie, he is smart.

Here LH, you can believe this or not and I won't make assumptions about your IQ based on whether you believe it or not: I will add that I think it is wrong for the US to interfere as Chavez and Canada are wrong to interfere.

Canadian imperialism stands back and watches coup unfold in Honduras

Camilo Cahis in Toronto 10 July 2009

Canadian imperialism stands back and watches coup unfold in Honduras. Canada has stood almost alone on the international stage, going so far as to say that Zelaya should not return back to Honduras. This should not come as a huge shock for Canadians as the Canadian state has been pursuing an increasingly interventionist role in Latin American affairs for a while now.

The world is currently witnessing another reactionary coup d'etat in Latin America, unfortunately the latest in a long line of coups that have deposed popularly elected governments in the hemisphere. Honduras' president, Manuel Zelaya, was kidnapped in the dead of the night and exiled by the country's military on 28th June and the reactionary Roberto Micheletti put into power. Governments around the world, including a half-hearted US government, said that they would not recognize Micheletti's regime and called for the return of Mr. Zelaya. Canada, on the other hand, has stood almost alone on the international stage, going so far as to say that Zelaya should not return back to Honduras. This should not come as a huge shock for Canadians as the Canadian state has been pursuing an increasingly interventionist role in Latin American affairs for a while now.

Manuel Zelaya had planned to return to Honduras on Sunday 5th July, a day after the Organization of American States (OAS) had voted to suspend Honduras' membership and issued a resolution stating they had a "deep concern about the worsening of the current political crisis" in Honduras. Most OAS countries had also supported a resolution calling for the immediate return of Zelaya, but this resolution was defeated largely by the arguments presented by the United States and Canada. The US and Canada also opposed any mention of placing sanctions on the illegal government in Honduras, preferring that countries simply "reflect" on their countries' relations with Honduras.

In an article published in the New York Times, the most vocal opponent to re-instating Mr. Zelaya appears to have been Canada's secretary of state for the Americas, Peter Kent. In this article from 5th July, Kent states that he is "emphatically" opposed to Zelaya's return to Honduras because "it is far from clear that the current conditions could guarantee his safety upon return." Kent was also opposed to sanctions or any other harsh measures imposed on the new Honduran dictatorship, stressing that the OAS needed to "maintain diplomatic initiatives" which "directly [engage] the interim government to help end the crisis." Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Hondurans are out on the streets demanding a return of Manuel Zelaya and the end of this military dictatorship. The Micheletti dictatorship has responded with the arrests of hundreds of workers and activists, and even killing some of them. In spite of this, there has not been even a peep from the Canadian government.

Canada's shameful role in Honduras should not be a surprise, though. Too many Canadians have been brought up with the idea that Canada is a peacekeeping nation and that unlike the United States, it does not invade or interfere in other countries' affairs. We would argue that Canada has always been an imperialist country but it is true that in the last decade, we have seen a hardening in Canada's foreign policy, with Canadian imperialism becoming much more naked and overt. Canada's continued occupation of Afghanistan is the most evident example, but Canadian imperialism has played an increasingly important role in Latin America. And, with the election of the Obama administration, the spirit of George Bush's foreign policy seems to have migrated north to Ottawa.

With US imperialism having being bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, there has been an opening for Canadian interests to come to the fore in Latin America in the meantime. Moreover, considering the significant interests that Canadian banks have in the US, it is very much in their interests to defend and represent US interests in the hemisphere, too.

A lot of people do not know, for example, the pernicious role that Canada has been playing in Venezuela. During the 2004 recall referendum where the Venezuelan oligarchy attempted to recall Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, the Canadian embassy in Caracas was funnelling funds to Sumáte, the opposition group looking to get rid of President Chávez. (It is also important to note that the Liberals were in government then, meaning that this imperialist role in Latin America is not simply a result of the Conservatives currently being in government.) Since then, the Canadian embassy in Caracas, coupled with Focal, a supposedly non-partisan arm of CIDA (the Canadian International Development Agency), have been repeatedly caught giving funds to groups that are tied to various opposition groups in Venezuela. During Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 2006, the Venezuelan government expelled the Israeli ambassador; Israel simply opened up their diplomatic offices from within the Canadian embassy. Peter Munk, the chairman of Barrick Gold, the world's largest gold mining operation, publicly denounced the governments of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and of Evo Morales in Bolivia, declaring that he would prefer to work with the Taliban than revolutionary governments in Latin America! Numerous Canadian media outlets, including the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and Maclean's magazine, have launched what can only be described as a vicious smear campaign against the radical governments of Latin America. Tim Harper, the former Americas bureau chief for the Toronto Star, was finally censured by the Ontario Press Council after a campaign by the Bolivarian Circle "Louis Riel" proved that Harper had written a series of maliciously one-sided articles trashing Chávez and the Venezuelan government.

According to noted journalist, Yves Engler, Canada is the second largest investor in Honduras. Canadian mining companies Breakwater Resources, Goldcorp, and Yamana Gold all have significant operations in Honduras. President Zelaya had previously announced a moratorium on new mining concessions, undoubtedly angering these Canadian mining interests. Furthermore, Montreal-based clothing giant Gildan produces over half of all their t-shirts in Honduras, and would not have benefited from Zelaya's policies that attempted to lift millions of Hondurans out of poverty with better wages.

As much as Peter Kent and the Canadian government's response (or lack thereof) to the coup d'etat in Honduras is deplorable and needs to be protested, it isn't simply due to the Conservatives being in power. Canadian interference in Latin America has been going on since before Stephen Harper took power. Canada has strong economic and political interests in Latin America and it will do its utmost to defend them, even if it trumps the democratic will of the people of Central and South America. Canadian imperialist interference will continue as long as Canadian economic interests continue to profit from the exploitation of working people around the world.

Along with protests aimed at Peter Kent and the Conservative government, the Honduran solidarity movement needs to demand an end to Canadian imperialist activity throughout the hemisphere—hands off Latin America! We need to attack the state and corporations at home that make imperialist intervention possible. Canadian workers and students need to be brought into the same struggles as those being fought by their Honduran counterparts. The best way to defend the revolutionary movements of Latin America is to build the conditions for revolution at home.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Feb 10 - 04:23 PM

So? Yeah, I pretty much agree with that article. Our present prime minister is nothing but a lapdog for the American neocon business agenda, and yes, he is pursuing an imperial agenda...in concert with the USA and the UK.

What of it? Where did you get the idea that I was defending my government and only attacking yours? Yours happens to be the much bigger problem for the world, that's all. My government is playing a bit part in the imperial order. Yours is in the starring role.

The reason we have these problems, Sawzaw, is that our governments are not serving the people. They are serving huge business and banking interests. The political parties are funded BY those huge business and banking interests, and that's why little changes no matter who we elect.

There is NOTHING we can do about it at the ballot box, Sawzaw. Do you get that? They play this party game all the time to make us think there's a choice, but it's just a surface game. The details change. The rhetoric changes. The faces change. The basic policy rolls on.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 01 Feb 10 - 04:57 PM

Canadians, know thyselves. Our record abroad is dirty. By Michael Nenonen

We go to great lengths to obscure self-knowledge of what we're really like in the capitalist world at large

Canada's exploitation of the developing world reminds me of sex in Victorian England. The rigid class structure of Victorian England was maintained, in part, by excesses of sexual exploitation, violence, and perversion, but at the same time, sexual repression was so intense that in well-to-do homes even table legs had to be concealed. It was this division between obscene truth and comforting appearance that Robert Louis Stevenson captured so perfectly in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

In I Don't Believe In Atheists (2008), Chris Hedges addresses the cruelty that marks the human condition: "This cruelty arrives however, in different forms. Stable, industrialized societies, awash in cash and privileges, can better construct systems that mask this cruelty, although it is nakedly displayed in their imperial outposts." Nowhere is this principle better displayed than in Canada. The cruelty sustaining our way of life has become obscene in the way that sexuality was obscene in Victorian England. The more we exclude it from our public consciousness, the more deranged and pervasive it becomes.

The contrast between our national self-image and our country's foreign policy is as stark as the contrast between Victorian prudery and Victorian porn. In The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy (2009), Yves Engler writes that "Numerous studies have found that Canadians' self-appraisal of their country's foreign policy is more positive than any other country. A March 2007 poll found that 84 percent of Canadians believed that Canada played a positive role on the world stage while 10 percent felt it was negative. According to a survey released in June 2005 . . . 94 percent of Canadians believed their country was well-liked around the world, the highest percentage of 16 nations surveyed." Few Canadians want to know that in many parts of the world our country is reviled for the violence inflicted by our corporations with the full support of successive Canadian governments.

Engler documents the way that Canada's foreign policy has consistently helped Canadian corporations, our "imperial outposts," to savagely exploit the resources and peoples of developing countries. While Engler's book looks at Canada's role in nearly every region of the globe, in this article I'm going to focus solely on the information he provides about Canada's influence in Latin America and, in particular, Colombia.

In 2007, Canadian corporations invested $117.2 billion in Latin America and owned more than 1,300 mineral properties in the region. These corporations have worked closely with the Canadian government to support draconian regimes and steal Latin American resources. Colombia provides a useful case study of Canada's contempt for human rights and the environment in the developing world. Currently, Colombia has Latin America's worst human rights record. Engler writes that between 2002 and 2007, Colombia's civil war claimed the lives of 13,634 people. Most of the human rights abuses were committed by the government, either directly or through its support for paramilitary forces. Regardless of this record, in November 2008 the Harper government signed a free trade deal with Colombia, a step that even the United States has thus far refused to take. Most of Colombia's organized peasantry and labour movements opposed the agreement, which they correctly see as part of an ongoing effort to liberalize their country's economy.

For example, in August 2001 Colombia's Department of Mines and Energy accepted a proposal from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and a University of Calgary think-tank called the Canadian Energy Resource Institute (CERI) that radically revised Colombia's mining code. The new code contains environmentally and socially ruinous provisions. Previously, corporations paid a 10 percent royalty rate on mineral exports above 3 million tonnes per year and a 5 percent rate for exports below 3 million tonnes. Now, they only pay 0.4 percent. Mining concessions have been lengthened from 25 to 30 years, with possible extensions for up to 90 years. Furthermore, mining companies that cut down timber can now sell that timber for 30 years without paying any taxes on it. These companies care little for the local population: the Canadian resource company Conquistador Mines has been credibly accused of encouraging the murder of local community leaders and widespread displacement of peasant miners and their families.

Mining isn't the only Canadian industry that's fouled its hands with Colombian blood. In 1995, CIDA provided a $4 million dollar grant to liberalize Colombia's telecommunications industry. The Canadian corporation Nortel Networks, supported by a $300 million dollar line of credit from Export Development Canada (EDC), played a crucial role in this liberalization, which cost 10,000 unionized telecommunications workers their jobs. Protests were brutally suppressed: over 70 trade unionists were murdered by paramilitaries for demonstrating against the privatization of Colombia's biggest telecommunications company, TELECOM. This alliance between Canadian corporations and the paramilitaries wasn't an isolated occurrence. With the help of $18.2 million from the EDC, The Canadian corporations BFC Construction and Agra-Moneco built the Urra dam, submerging 7,400 hectares and the homes of 411 indigenous families. 2,800 people were forcibly resettled, and up to 70,000 people were impacted by the development. When the community tried to stop the project, paramilitary and guerilla forces killed six people and disappeared ten others.

The same collusion with the Colombian military was displayed by the Calgary-based Enbridge and the Toronto-based TransCanada Pipelines, which operated the OCENSA pipeline in Colombia in the late 1990s. Until 1997, the OCENSA consortium worked with the British security firm Defense Systems Colombia (DSC). This firm used paid informants to gather information about the local populations affected by the pipeline, and then forwarded this information to the Colombian military. The firm was well aware that the military, alongside its paramilitary allies, regularly committed extra-judicial executions and disappearances. OCENSA and DSC also purchased military equipment for the Colombian army, an act of generosity emulated by the Canadian government, which has supplied Huey helicopters and intelligence gathering equipment to Colombia.

This same basic pattern occurs in every region penetrated by Canadian corporate interests. Of course, Canada isn't unique: every developed country plays the same sadistic game. We live in the "free world" in the same way that whites in the Confederacy lived in a "free world": our freedom is defined in contrast to the people we enslave. This is the obscene truth of global capitalism, a truth so devastating to our collective self-image that we go to absurd lengths to repress it. As in Victorian England, repression exacts a high cost. The more we repress the awareness of our "obscenity," the less prepared we are to take responsibility for it. By denying their desires, Victorians fed their depravity.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Feb 10 - 05:54 PM

Thanks for revealing all this stuff, Sawzaw. More people need to know. Would you consider writing for the Toronto Star or the Globe & Mail? It's time Canadians were made more aware of the dark underbelly of Canada's history, and you are clearly the man to do it.

Again, I agree with the article. Big money talks...poor people die.

As the article says: "every developed country plays the same sadistic game. We live in the "free world" in the same way that whites in the Confederacy lived in a "free world": our freedom is defined in contrast to the people we enslave. This is the obscene truth of global capitalism, a truth so devastating to our collective self-image that we go to absurd lengths to repress it. As in Victorian England, repression exacts a high cost. The more we repress the awareness of our "obscenity," the less prepared we are to take responsibility for it. By denying their desires, Victorians fed their depravity."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 02 Feb 10 - 12:38 AM

So why single out America as the big bad wolf LH?

Who drew up that line that separates Afghanistan and Pakistan?

You know, the one that that the terrorists keep slithering over to attack and murder and then slither back. Maybe, just maybe it was drawn in the wrong place by some bureaucrat in a selfish Imperialist government that really didn't know what they were doing and didn't give a shit. Didn't consider the desires of the different ethnic groups involved.

Maybe that is a reason for Muslim extremists to hate foreign governments and not only "the imperial activities of the USA armed forces in foreign countries where they do not belong"

Point your finger of scorn elsewhere. There is Plenty of blame to go around.

Mr Moore spoke at a university in Michigan October 2003 and that quote is all that survives in writing.

Also he claims not to be a member of either political party. But.......

In case you are still enthralled with MM:

"You know in my town the small businesses that everyone wanted to protect? They were the people that supported all the right-wing groups. They were the Republicans in the town, they were in the Kiwanas, the Chamber of Commerce - people that kept the town all white. The small hardware salesman, the small clothing store salespersons, Jesse the Barber who signed his name three different times on three different petitions to recall me from the school board. Fuck all these small businesses - fuck 'em all! Bring in the chains. The small businesspeople are the rednecks that run the town and suppress the people. Fuck 'em all. That's how I feel."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 02 Feb 10 - 12:42 AM

In publicizing the movie, Moore has been up to his old dishonest tricks. Just before the screening at Cannes, he charged that Disney had told him "officially" the day before that it would not distribute Fahrenheit 9/11. Moore said this was an attempt to kill the film. He indicated a newspaper article had the correct explanation of Disney's decision: "According to today's New York Times, it might 'endanger' millions of dollars of tax breaks Disney receives from the state of Florida because the film will 'anger' the governor of Florida, Jeb Bush."

Later, in a CNN interview, Moore admitted he'd learned nearly a year ago that Disney would not distribute the movie. By pretending he'd just gotten word of this, Moore was involved in a cheap publicity stunt. And it wasn't the New York Times that said, on its own, that Disney feared losing tax breaks. It was Moore's agent who was quoted as saying that in the Times. Disney denied its president Michael Eisner had told the agent of any such fear. "We informed both the agency that represented the film and all of our companies that we just didn't want to be in the middle of a politically oriented film during an election year," Eisner told ABC News.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 02 Feb 10 - 12:50 AM

Moore accused of telling tales over tequilas with Chavez

independent.co.uk 28 October 2009

He's crossed swords, over the years, with all the usual right-wing suspects, from car-makers to gun owners to Wall Street executives, health companies, and George W Bush. Now Michael Moore has picked a fight with a hero of the international left.

The documentary-maker has caused outrage among Hugo Chavez's supporters by using a late-night chat show to tell a humorous anecdote about meeting Venezuela's socialist President in a luxury hotel suite during the recent Venice Film Festival.

His two-minute yarn, told to ABC host Jimmy Kimmel earlier this month, seemed harmless enough. Moore alleged that he and his wife had been woken at 2am by a racket coming from Mr Chavez's room and ventured upstairs to ask him to quieten down.
Related articles

"A bottle and a half of tequila later," Moore claimed, he had helped the President to write the speech he recently delivered to the UN. "At the very least, the guy owes me a year's worth of free gasoline!" he joked.

But there was a problem with the story. A big one. The meeting that Moore so confidently described never happened. And tequila certainly wasn't consumed: Mr Chavez is teetotal.

The duo did meet in Venice, but only in the daytime. Moore, in town to launch his new film, Capitalism, sat with Mr Chavez, who was there to promote Oliver Stone's documentary South of the Border, for three hours. The US press were excluded from the meeting.

Supporters of Mr Chavez now suspect that Moore fabricated his anecdote to gloss over the chummy nature of that encounter. They have taken to the airwaves in a Monty Python-style PR offensive, to accuse Moore of betraying a supposed comrade.

"Michael Moore is a most unfortunate coward," declared blogger Eva Golinger. She dubbed him "the worst of yellow journalists, a liar and storyteller on the big screen", and said his yarn was "offensive and insulting" and a clear sign of his "hypocrisy and lack of ethics". Franz JT Lee, a Marxist academic and blogger, claimed that the film-maker's comments were "part of the United States' 'war of ideas'" against Venezuela, and said similar "propaganda" led to the rise of the Nazis in 1930s Germany.

They didn't just spark outrage on the left, though. Critics of Mr Chavez have called the level of invective against Moore – some of which was aired on Venezuelan state television – disproportionate. They believe his anecdote was intended to be a harmless, tongue-in-cheek joke. The socialist movement failed to grasp the nuances of his intended irony, they claim, because they lack a sense of humour.

Quite what the affair says about the integrity of Moore and his documentaries remains to be seen. The film-maker has declined to comment or apologise for misleading TV viewers, save for a brief message posted on his Twitter feed on Monday: "For the record, the President of Venezuela doesn't drink."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Feb 10 - 12:30 PM

I think you're doing a great job exposing the misdeeds of Canadian big business, the British Empire, etc, Sawzaw, and I encourage you to keep doing so. Don't let the bastards get away with it scot free any longer!

And I'll take care of the USA's part in the rotten game, so you won't have to waste any of your energy there. Think of the time I'm saving you.

As for Michael Moore, I never thought he was a perfect human being without a single flaw... (grin) But I do agree with about 95% of what he says, and that's good enough for me. That's more than I agree with a great many people in this world, after all.

If it makes you happy to demonize him, however, why should I stand in your way? Enjoy yourself to the max. Maybe he'll hear about it, get deeply depressed about your low opinion of him, and jump off a tall building. You never know. ;-) Good luck, eh?

Think about getting a life, okay? I think about it every day and I swear to myself as I go to bed each night that I will not even OPEN Mudcat Cafe tomorrow...but then tomorrow comes and I weaken. When I finally quit responding to your posts here, you can assume that I have finally managed to get a life.

And that will prove that it really can be done! A beacon of hope to all those who have been sucked into the black hole of daily Internet communications...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: mousethief
Date: 02 Feb 10 - 02:03 PM

And we can use some beacons because the Brits are shutting all of theirs off.

O..O
=o=

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: CarolC
Date: 02 Feb 10 - 05:42 PM

Hey CC. once they reach American soil it is a different story.

Why is that? Are you saying the US has no jurisdiction over the crime committed by Abdulmutallab?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 03 Feb 10 - 01:32 PM

"By every account Rahm Emanuel is a nasty little man with a bad temper and a chip on his shoulder. Your basic Chicago street thug. A little bully in the finest traditions of mobsters like Al Capone. It's no wonder that he fits in so well with his Chicago street thug boss.

You see, Rahm Emanuel, the petite ballerina, is Barack Obama's chief-of-staff. He's the guy that basically run's Obama's agenda. Now granted, even in good times, with a capable president, not an easy job. But most men who have had this job have been able to perform it with a sense of dignity, and even style. But not old Rahm "dead fish" Emanuel.

Emanuel got this nickname, by the way, because he actually mailed a dead fish a pollster who didn't give him the results he wanted. Hmm, didn't the white House just attack pollster Scott Rasmussen? I've got a revolutionary idea for you Rahm: How about instead of attacking the messenger, you figure out a way for Obama not to suck at his job!

To give you a little taste of what Rahm is about Foreign Policy ran a story a while back on "The five most infamous Rahm Emanuel moments."

Today, former Clinton advisor and Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel accepted Barack Obama's offer to be chief of staff for the incoming president.

The pick of Emanuel is our first glimpse into the future Obama White House, and it has already thrown apprehensive Democrats and jaded Republicans alike into a tizzy.

Perhaps for good reason. With the nickname "Rahmbo" and a disposition likened to that of a mobster, Emanuel, though widely respected for his moxy and get-it-done record, isn't exactly Mr. Nice Guy. A dynamic mix of talent and brawn — he was offered a scholarship to the Joffrey Ballet company and volunteered for the Israeli Army during the Gulf War — Emanuel's the real-deal pitbull Democrat (lipstick not included).

What follows is a list of the five most infamous Rahmbo tales. It's the stuff legends are made of:

1. Mailing a Dead Fish

Emanuel is known for his panache for treating donors right. He sends them cheesecakes from Eli's, the famous Chicago bakery. But the one pollster who notoriously ticked off Rahmbo received a 2 1/2 foot decomposing fish in the mail — ripe, stinky, and to the point.

2. Fundraising the Bugsy Siegel Way

His foray into fundraising started in Chicago while campaigning for Mayor Richard Daley's reelection, when Emanuel raised a record number of donations. His sales pitch was simple enough: He'd tell contributors he found their offers so low it was embarrassing and then hang up on them. Mortified, the donors were shamed into calling back and giving more.

3. Nearly Losing His Finger

When he was a senior in high school, he sliced his finger while working at Arby's. But instead of seeking medical attention, he decided to celebrate prom night by swimming in Lake Michigan. The bone and blood infection that resulted was so severe it practically killed him. Scrappy and determined, even at death's door with a fever of 106 degrees, he pulled through, only losing part of his finger.

4. Threatening Tony Blair

Never a mincer of words, Emanuel didn't couch his meaning when he offered Tony Blair counsel just before the then British prime minister appeared with President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal: "This is important. Don't f@ck it up."

5. Knifing the Dinner Table

The most infamous Rahmbo story of them all is the one that begins with the dinner the night after Bill Clinton was elected in 1992. Among those present at the dinner table was ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos, who watched while an overwrought and clearly exhausted Emanuel began ranting at a long list of Clinton "enemies." As he shouted each name, he stabbed the table with his steak knife: "Nat Landow! Dead! Cliff Jackson! Dead!" Apparently, others joined in.

The bottom line: If Emanuel's appointment is a signal of anything, it is that the genteel, arugula-eating president-elect is coming to play hardball.

This guy reads like a true psychopath. (Of course, so do most of Obama's people) Not sure which is more insane though, the dead fish story or the stabbing the table story.

By the way, psychopathic behavior runs in the family, as Rahm's brother, Ezekiel is none other than the infamous "Dr Death" Obama's "health care advisor" who literally wrote the book on setting up the "death panels" that Sarah Palin made famous last summer. A real sick man. "

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: CarolC
Date: 03 Feb 10 - 04:47 PM

As usual, beardedbruce neglected to provide the source for his copy/paste above. He must not want anyone to see where he gets his copy/pastes from since he seldom provides the source. Here is the source for this latest copy/paste...

US for Palin

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: mousethief
Date: 03 Feb 10 - 06:23 PM

How fair and unbiased.

O..O
=o=

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 03 Feb 10 - 06:59 PM

Man, that essay was a real work of prestidigitation!! I suggest she should clear up words before she uses them. Psychopathic? This is delusory horse-pucky, BB, and I am sure you know it, too.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 03 Feb 10 - 08:04 PM

Amos,

Compared to your past posts about members of the Bush administration, it was as soft as a baby's...

But then, I can't expect YOU to have any desire to be treated the way you have treated others.

The view I posted was as "popular" as the views Amos had posted- but I have to assume that liberals have no desire for fairness, reason, or truth. At least fromn the comments posted here.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,Sawzaw
Date: 04 Feb 10 - 02:16 AM

"If it makes you happy to demonize him, however, why should I stand in your way"

How have I demonized him LH? I merely paste some things that he said.

If that makes him look like an asshole and a fabricating SOB to you, that is your determination. It is up to you to make those decisions.

If it makes you happy to idolize him, go ahead. Even a poor Canadian is entitled to some happiness.

I haven't even started on his propaganda about the Cuban health care system yet.

I wonder where he gets his health care? Cuba, England, Canada or France?

I wonder if he has health insurance. I wonder where he invests the millions he makes from his movies and books. After all he did say "I'm a millionaire, I'm a multi-millionaire. I'm filthy rich."

I wonder if he owns stock in Halliburton or drug or healthcare companies?

Does he fly in private jets and ride in CO2 belching limousines.

I wonder if he has body guards that carry guns?

I wonder if he is just another wall street fatcat Capitalist pig?

....What of Disney? After repaying itself $11 million for acquisition costs, it booked a $46 million net profit, which Eisner split between two subsidiaries, the Disney Foundation and Miramax. While it was far less than Disney made on children's fare such as Finding Nemo, it was not a bad outcome. The Weinstein brothers also made a multimillion-dollar profit. They had a deal with Disney that contractually entitled them to a bonus of between 30 percent and 40 percent of the net profits on any film that they produced—in this case, that came out to about $8 million per brother. (The Weinsteins are now in the process of leaving Miramax.) But Michael Moore had perhaps the happiest ending of all. Not only had he made $21 million, he already had a sequel in preproduction—Fahrenheit 9/11 1/2

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 04 Feb 10 - 10:07 AM

Note this is posted on Yahoo- you want to name a more "popular" site???


http://buzz.yahoo.com/article/1:2694fc39135edbc29e6f46ee3c1a07d5:af7f9fb6a132ffe

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 04 Feb 10 - 10:23 AM

TIME opines:

""I am not an ideologue," the President said to the House Republicans, cocooned in their annual policy caucus in Baltimore - and the ideologues among them laughed. The President was explaining, in the midst of an unprecedented, televised "Question Time" session, that he was open to any good ideas they might have. "It doesn't make sense," he continued, that if they told him," 'You could do this cheaper and get increased results,' that I wouldn't say, 'Great.'" But the logic of this seemed to slip past the assembled legislators - and the "I am not an ideologue" bite became a derisive staple on Fox News. And therein lies the crisis of democracy that our country faces: a moderate-liberal President, willing to make judicious compromises, confronted by a Republican Party paralyzed by cynicism and hypocrisy, undergirded by inchoate ideological fervor.
(Italics added)
The President's hour in the lion's den was part of an aggressive week of politics - his first in many moons - that began with his well-received State of the Union address and proceeded through town meetings in Florida and New Hampshire. It was marked by a new willingness to engage the opposition party with cutting humor and offers of compromise. In the State of the Union, he had offered an olive branch to the Republicans - a new commitment to budget balancing (including a bipartisan commission to reduce the deficit that Republicans had been clamoring for), a new emphasis on free trade, a total reversal of his party's traditional positions on nuclear power and offshore drilling. In Baltimore, Obama reminded the Republicans that his $787 billion stimulus package had comprised elements they'd normally support - a $288 billion middle-class tax cut, $275 billion to bail out financially strapped states and an extensive infrastructure plan. "A lot of you," he noted, dryly, "have gone to appear at ribbon cuttings for the same projects you voted against." (See the 10 greatest speeches of all time.)

The Republican response to this barrage was, well, incoherent. But in most cases the need to demonize Obama trumped the party's ideological beliefs. The budget commission - to take one flagrant example - was blocked by a group of Republican Senators who had supported or sponsored it. These included the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, and the formerly virtuous John McCain, a sore loser who has reversed his position on practically everything lately. The Senate Republicans then proceeded to vote unanimously against a provision, attached to a necessary increase in the debt limit, that would force Congress to pay for every new initiative it enacts. This "paygo" provision was the law of the land when Bill Clinton was building budget surpluses (in fairness, he inherited it from the equally responsible George H.W. Bush) - and was abandoned when George W. Bush started building the alpine deficits that plague us today. The hypocrisy of all this was staggering, even for politicians. "

My. Two sides to the story. Hmmmmm.



A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 04 Feb 10 - 10:33 AM

First-time jobless claims rise unexpectedly
         
Christopher S. Rugaber, Ap Economics Writer – 48 mins ago

WASHINGTON – The number of newly laid-off workers filing initial claims for jobless benefits rose unexpectedly last week, evidence that layoffs are continuing and jobs remain scarce.

The rise is the fourth in the past five weeks. Most economists hoped that claims would resume a downward trend that was evident in the fall and early winter.

The Labor Department said Thursday that new claims for unemployment insurance rose by 8,000 to a seasonally adjusted 480,000. Wall Street economists had expected a drop to 460,000, according to Thomson Reuters.

The four-week average, which smooths fluctuations, rose for the third straight week to 468,750.

The figure is the highest in the past two months. Initial claims dropped sharply in late December, raising hopes among economists that layoffs were nearing an end and the economy would soon start generating net gains in jobs.

The figures come a day before the Labor Department is scheduled to report the January employment figures, which are expected to show a tiny gain in jobs. The unemployment rate is forecast to rise to 10.1 percent.

The number of people continuing to claim benefits was unchanged at 4.6 million. That data lags initial claims by a week.

But the so-called continuing claims do not include millions of people who have used up the regular 26 weeks of benefits typically provided by states, and are receiving extended benefits for up to 73 additional weeks, paid for by the federal government.

More than 5.8 million people were receiving extended benefits in the week ended Jan. 16, the latest data available, up from about 5.6 million the previous week. The extended benefit data isn't seasonally adjusted and is volatile from week to week.

Still, the increasing number of people claiming extended unemployment insurance indicates hiring hasn't picked up. That leaves people out of work for longer and longer periods of time.

Some employers are continuing to cut jobs. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Wednesday that it will eliminate 300 administrative jobs at its headquarters. The company has cut almost 14,000 jobs in the past 13 months, including 11,200 positions at its Sam's Club stores.

Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., a unit of Japan's Sony Corp., said Tuesday it is laying off 450 people and eliminating 100 open positions.

Among the states, Oregon reported the largest increase in claims, with 4,336. Puerto Rico and Hawaii also reported increases. The state data lags initial claims by one week.

California reported the largest drop in claims, a decline of 22,674. Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia and Missouri also reported decreases.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100204/ap_on_bi_go_ec_fi/us_jobless_claims

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 04 Feb 10 - 10:37 AM

House faces tough vote on $1.9 trillion more debt
         

Andrew Taylor, Associated Press Writer – 52 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Facing a politically excruciating vote, House Democratic leaders are counting on new budget deficit curbs to help smooth the way for a bill allowing the government to go $1.9 trillion deeper into debt over the next year — or about $6,000 more for every U.S. resident.

The debt measure set for a House vote Thursday would raise the cap on federal borrowing to $14.3 trillion. That's enough to keep Congress from having to vote again before the November elections on an issue that is feeding a sense among voters that the government is spending too much and putting future generations under a mountain of debt to do it.

Already, the accumulated debt amounts to $40,000 per person. And the debt is increasingly held by foreign nations such as China.

Passage of the bill would send it to President Barack Obama, who will sign it to avoid a first-ever, market-rattling default on U.S. obligations. Democrats barely passed it through the Senate last week over a unanimous "no" vote from GOP members present.

To ease its passage, Democrats attached tougher budget rules designed to curb a spiraling upward annual deficit — projected by Obama to hit a record $1.56 trillion for the budget year ending Sept. 30. The new rules would require future spending increases or tax cuts to be paid for with either cuts to other programs or equivalent tax increases.

If the rules are broken, the White House budget office would force automatic cuts to programs like Medicare, farm subsidies and veterans' pensions. Current rules lack such teeth and have commonly been waived over the past few years at a cost of almost $1 trillion.

Skeptics say lawmakers also will find ways around the new rules fairly easily. Congress, for example, can declare some spending an "emergency" — a likely scenario for votes later this month to extend jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed.

And, indeed, there already are exceptions to the new rules, such as for extending former President George W. Bush's middle-class tax cuts past their expiration a year from now. That would add $1.4 trillion to the federal debt over the next decade.

In agreement with Obama's budget earlier this week, there is no exception for taxpayers in the two highest tax brackets whose marginal rates are due to rise by 3 percent or 4.6 percent to a pre-Bush maximum 39.6 percent next January.

But some new White House initiatives, such as doubling the child care tax credit for families earning less than $85,000, also would have to live within the rules, as would continuing subsidies for laid-off workers to buy health insurance — unless lawmakers make another exception.

The so-called pay-as-you-go rules have been a mantra with conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats in the House, who insisted they wouldn't vote to raise the debt ceiling without them.

"We don't have a choice," said Rep. John Tanner, D-Tenn. "We are on an unsustainable march toward a fiscal Armageddon."

Obama's budget projects the government's debt doubling to $26 trillion over the next decade. It offers few solutions for seriously closing the gap other than promising to appoint a bipartisan commission to come up with a plan to address the problem.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100204/ap_on_go_co/us_congress_debt_limit

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 04 Feb 10 - 10:53 AM

"Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce - PM
Date: 05 Nov 08 - 04:35 PM

... and I will express MY hopes that Obama will be held to the same standards that Bush was."






Still waiting...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 04 Feb 10 - 03:47 PM

HEre are my standards:

A willingness to communicate honestly.

A real interest in the world and a desire to know more about it.

Demonstrated intelligence in solving problems, including the ability to recognize what the problems are and which ones are more important than others.

An ability to communicate clearly and a willingess to use it.

A decent respect for the rule of law.

A decent respect for the principles of basic humanity and a reluctance to do harm to others.

A compassion for and respect for citizens of any social level.

I could name a few others but you get the idea. By all these standards Bush was a miserable failure. Obama passes some of them with higher grades than others, but he passes all of them.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 04 Feb 10 - 04:09 PM

" Obama passes some of them with higher grades than others, but he passes all of them.
"

I have to disagree with you on this. He has several failing grades that I see.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 04 Feb 10 - 04:41 PM

You may disagree with his individual choices, BB. But on almost all those criteria Bush was downright subhuman. It is easy to forget how insane things seemed under his administration, and how at risk the Constitution became, and how bruised civil rights and individual freedoms got.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 04 Feb 10 - 05:23 PM

The DJIA dropped 268.37 today to 10,002.18

The Labor Department said today that new claims for unemployment insurance rose by 8,000 to a seasonally adjusted 480,000.

A report from the Congressional Budget Office shows that for the first time in 25 years, Social Security is taking in less in taxes than it is spending on benefits.

With no help in sight, more homeowners walk away.

President Obama Unveils 3.8 Trillion Dollar Budget, 1.4 trillion in new taxes over the next decade and increases the deficit to a record 1.6 trillion dollars.

How's your 401K doing Amos?

Do you feel a pit in your stomach?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 05 Feb 10 - 08:48 AM

"You may disagree with his individual choices, BB."


THIS is the first time that you have admitted this!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 05 Feb 10 - 09:44 AM

The great peasant revolt of 2010

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, February 5, 2010

"I am not an ideologue," protested President Obama at a gathering with Republican House members last week. Perhaps, but he does have a tenacious commitment to a set of political convictions.

Compare his 2010 State of the Union to his first address to Congress a year earlier. The consistency is remarkable. In 2009, after passing a $787 billion (now $862 billion) stimulus package, the largest spending bill in galactic history, he unveiled a manifesto for fundamentally restructuring the commanding heights of American society -- health care, education and energy.

A year later, after stunning Democratic setbacks in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts, Obama gave a stay-the-course State of the Union address (a) pledging not to walk away from health-care reform, (b) seeking to turn college education increasingly into a federal entitlement, and (c) asking again for cap-and-trade energy legislation. Plus, of course, another stimulus package, this time renamed a "jobs bill."

This being a democracy, don't the Democrats see that clinging to this agenda will march them over a cliff? Don't they understand Massachusetts?

Well, they understand it through a prism of two cherished axioms: (1) The people are stupid and (2) Republicans are bad. Result? The dim, led by the malicious, vote incorrectly.

Liberal expressions of disdain for the intelligence and emotional maturity of the electorate have been, post-Massachusetts, remarkably unguarded. New York Times columnist Charles Blow chided Obama for not understanding the necessity of speaking "in the plain words of plain folks," because the people are "suspicious of complexity." Counseled Blow: "The next time he gives a speech, someone should tap him on the ankle and say, 'Mr. President, we're down here.' "


A Time magazine blogger was even more blunt about the ankle-dwelling mob, explaining that we are "a nation of dodos" that is "too dumb to thrive."

Obama joined the parade in the State of the Union address when, with supercilious modesty, he chided himself "for not explaining it [health care] more clearly to the American people." The subject, he noted, was "complex." The subject, it might also be noted, was one to which the master of complexity had devoted 29 speeches. Perhaps he did not speak slowly enough.

Then there are the emotional deficiencies of the masses. Nearly every Democratic apologist lamented the people's anger and anxiety, a free-floating agitation that prevented them from appreciating the beneficence of the social agenda the Democrats are so determined to foist upon them.

That brings us to Part 2 of the liberal conceit: Liberals act in the public interest, while conservatives think only of power, elections, self-aggrandizement and self-interest.

It is an old liberal theme that conservative ideas, being red in tooth and claw, cannot possibly emerge from any notion of the public good. A 2002 New York Times obituary for philosopher Robert Nozick explained that the strongly libertarian implications of Nozick's masterwork, "Anarchy, State, and Utopia," "proved comforting to the right, which was grateful for what it embraced as philosophical justification." The right, you see, is grateful when a bright intellectual can graft some philosophical rationalization onto its thoroughly base and self-regarding politics.

This belief in the moral hollowness of conservatism animates the current liberal mantra that Republican opposition to Obama's social democratic agenda -- which couldn't get through even a Democratic Congress and powered major Democratic losses in New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts -- is nothing but blind and cynical obstructionism.

By contrast, Democratic opposition to George W. Bush -- from Iraq to Social Security reform -- constituted dissent. And dissent, we were told at the time, including by candidate Obama, is "one of the truest expressions of patriotism."

No more. Today, dissent from the governing orthodoxy is nihilistic malice. "They made a decision," explained David Axelrod, "they were going to sit it out and hope that we failed, that the country failed" -- a perfect expression of liberals' conviction that their aspirations are necessarily the country's, that their idea of the public good is the public's, that their failure is therefore the nation's.

Then comes Massachusetts, an election Obama himself helped nationalize, to shatter this most self-congratulatory of illusions.

For liberals, the observation that "the peasants are revolting" is a pun. For conservatives, it is cause for uncharacteristic optimism. No matter how far the ideological pendulum swings in the short term, in the end the bedrock common sense of the American people will prevail.

The ankle-dwelling populace pushes back. It recenters. It renormalizes. Even in Massachusetts.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 05 Feb 10 - 09:53 AM

Bruce, that's horsepucky. I have never said you had to agree with anything. I simply criticized the things you chose to agree with--war mongering, tycoon-pandering, Unary Executive fascism, and the adulteration of the Constitution.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 05 Feb 10 - 09:56 AM

"war mongering, tycoon-pandering, Unary Executive fascism, and the adulteration of the Constitution.
"

But I have NEVER supported Obama's actions towards those goals.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 05 Feb 10 - 09:59 AM

Nor have I supported Obama's lies to the American people, his administration's lure to act in a timely fashion in the case of a natural disaster (flu), or his continued payoff of political supporters such as unions against the best interests of the citizens of the US.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 05 Feb 10 - 10:05 AM

OBama made no actions toward those goals; they were the pennants of the BUsh administration, chum. How soon we forget.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 05 Feb 10 - 10:11 AM

No.


Obama has done ALL those things since he came into office- yet YOU refuse to even look at his actions with anything other than blind approval.