obama! FIRST DO NO HARM BY FIRST CUTTING: Big Oil Subsidies, Agriculture Subsidies, Ethanol Subsidies, Foreign Aid, Repeal Tax Cuts for The Greedy, Cut the Military Industrial Complex, Cut The Prison Industrial Complex, End The War on Drugs, Cut Lawmakers Pay/Benefits by 40%..they currently “earn” about $3500.00 per week Plus Benefits and they are Only there for about 20-25 Weeks out of 52…, Cut Wall Street financing, Cut Big Bank Bailouts….ReFUND Social Security (Pay back the money the gov’t ripped)…BEFORE Hurting America’s Most Weak, Poor and Vulnerable.
What Kind of Community Organizer was he?
He is Now their President for having Failed to First Protect and Support those Most Weak, Most Poor, Most Vulnerable and Most Aged!
I have disowned him as a representative of “The People”…He has clearly demonstrated Abandonment of His People (base) who Believed and had Faith in him, who supported him, gave him “5$ here; 10$ there”.

He’s just about locked up the new found relationship with his “not so subtle” Favoritism Toward the Corporate Right with his Choice of budgetary cuts/decisions.

In other words, anything that’s good for anyone but wealthy white male conservatives will be cut, and the country can go to pieces because the very Important People will have money and walled compounds all to themselves.

Idjits.

It should be

20,000 fewer researchers supported by the National Science Foundation

These scientists are at universities all over the country.
Their grants support the kind of basic research that doesn’t exist at corporate labs. And

$2.5 billion in cuts to the National Institutes of Health

should do wonders for the drug pipeline, since companies like Pfizer are also laying off researchers left and right. Go USA!

No talk of cutting debt is serious without ending both wars now this is screw the poor kabuki that doesn’t really help cut the debt.

Cut Spending for poor people expect crime to go up or does the GOP just expect poor people to lay down and die?

Cut Congress and the the WH’s health care benefits completely before they touch a cent for the poor.

I don’t see why we bailout BOA and they have cash to spend for lobbyists.

Cut defense spending to just twice what Russia or China spends on defense (which ever country spends the most).
Also do we really need enough nukes to destroy the world how about if we just have enough nukes to destroy 1/10 of the world.

FDR won WW2 and got us out of the Great Depression by taxing the rich. I suspect tariffs on foreign goods also helped.
Just what real world examples does the GOP have that cutting spending works? Reagan sorry raised taxes and spent on weapons. Weapons don’t produce benefit for the economy unlike the projects FDR did.

I heard they propose to zero out NPR and PBS support. I can’t tell from your summary if that’s true or not.

I hear Obama was applauding the special-ed teacher for taking that second job to help her daughter along at college so the daughter could also become a teacher and work 80 hours a week?

When are we going to get a party that isn’t bragging about taking us back to the 19th century?

Morally repugnant….and please do tell me just what sacrifices the wealthy political corporate ruling class have made here? Just what belt tightening have they had to do after getting yet another tax cut extension that benefits them immensely for the next 2 years?

Yes Obama-is trying to coopt the narrative of the repugnicants by becoming them..way to go. Just like the tax cuts (line in the sand) for bajillionaires. You really outsmarted them there didn’t you. And then you have the freakin nerve to tell a middle class school teacher kudos for you for getting another job to help put her college aged daughter to school and to pay for school supplies for her students. Jeebus H..what’s wrong with this picture….and he’s the Democratic President?

I’m disgusted and sickened by our race to the bottom.

And you know what, well this working middle class college educated family was willing to forgo that measely tax this family received to prevent these types of things from happening. But oh no…. those damn wealthy 2% of us would have none of it. Eff themmm eff them and their greedy “Ive got mine screw the rest of you” eff them for not feeling any sense of moral responsibility to the least amongst us in our society.

We need government regulation to stimulate the economy look at Sun King and Napoleon France, Bismarck Germany huge Government Regulation but notable scientific advancement.
FDR America we get the Atom bomb and IBM computer, JFK big government project we go to the Moon. Reagan deregulation we get Savings and Loan Crisis. Bush Deregulation we get banking crisis.
Reagan deregulation we almost got catsup as a veggie, Bush we get Chinese mercury catfood, we get Taco bell meat 35% beef.

just getting the GOP memo?

China however is going green power so huge they can’t export rare earth minerals like they used to, they are building a smart grid

China’s control of 97 percent of the rare earth market gives it tremendous power. Over the past year, it has reduced its exports of rare earths, shrinking them from 50,000 tons per year to 30,000 tons. Then in July, the government announced it would export only 8,000 tons for the rest of the year. At the same time, it has raised export taxes for the minerals.

http://www.thetrumpet.com/?q=7576.0.129.0

Nearly half of the more than 5 million electric vehicle charge point installations anticipated worldwide by 2015 will happen in China, according to Pike Research. In addition, the government-owned utility State Grid Corp. plans to invest $586 million in a smart grid buildout over the next five years.

China has been investing in a green economy across the board, including clean power, energy efficiency and plug-in cars.

http://gigaom.com/cleantech/the-key-to-chinas-electric-car-market-partnerships/

To reach 15 percent of total electricity-generating capacity nationwide by 2020 would require ramping up the industry to build in the neighborhood of 210,000 additional megawatts of wind capacity. It would mean building at twice the pace of the best year wind installations have ever been built in the United States – which was 10,000 megawatts in 2009. Too big a reach? Depends on how can-do we’re really willing to be. The Chinese installed more than 15,000 megawatts in 2010, a 62 percent increase over the previous year. They’re planning to do it again this year.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/1/27/939201/-Sputnik-moment:-Reenergize-America15-20-by-2020

China very well might need all its rare earth minerals if they keep planning on increasing wind production and electric cars.

the best (rough) estimate of annual cost to the U.S. economy due to power outages: $100 billion or nearly 1 percent of the economy (pdf: page 4). For a fraction of that cost, investment in modernization of the grid (smartgrid and otherwise) would nearly eliminate that cost and provide other benefits (such as more efficient use of energy) that would boost the economy.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2011/2/5/941435/-Deception-on-Texas-Blackouts-Threatens-American-Prosperity-and-Security

http://my.firedoglake.com/thingscomeundone/2011/02/06/rare-earth-minerals-chinas-undeclared-trade-war/

There is something terrifyingly wrong with a teacher being unable to earn enough money to pass along her career to her own children. Obama should be talking about the scandal of paying a teacher so little that she cannot educate her own children. What is it about “middle class” that this elitist doesn’t get?

It does help to state the obvious so the slow people in the Media and politics can learn dude.

you’re an optimist, I’ve given up thinking the Media & such will learn

China’s economy is doing better than ours maybe we can ask Obama and the GOP why we are not copying what China is doing it seems they are copying what FDR did. After all the goal of the economy is to make money right not reduce the middle class and turn them into serfs right…right?

Keep repeating the obvious it took years to get the Media to realize that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are lost and not about getting Ossama who is in Pakistan.
America is a SlowOcracy a government by the slow Politicians and Media elite.

China is building for the future, we only think of next quarter’s profit margin. Soon we’ll be working in sweat shops for the Chinese and if we don’t wake the f-ck up it will serve us right

Much of the defense and intel spending is hidden in other budgets like transportation or HHS or energy (esp. energy), so the revealed $708 billion is really more like 1.3 trillion.

Last I looked we spend more than everyone else combined – but that is not fair because we fund others military spending as a welfare check to our companies because the money we “give” must be spent on those companies products. Spending at a Chinese level, released the unused funds into productive GDP increasing activity, would be one heck of a stimulus!

As to destroy the world – we had enough to destroy all life 40 times over – but recent treaties may have cut that back a bit – perhaps only 15 to 20 times. To destroy just one tenth would again upset our MIC folks – but would be a great stimulus.

gottcha

You know, if I wasn’t certain I’d have a stroke by voting for a Republican, I might give it a try.
They don’t lie to you directly. You know they’re gonna fuck you over and they come out swinging for the fences. Unlike Mr. Bait-and-Switch they don’t hide behind populist rhetoric and Baptist, bible-thumping elocution.

Kind of refreshing having people in power who you know are gonna screw you, tell you they’re gonna screw you, and then follow through.

Thanks, Pelosi. Just one impeachment investigation could have prevented this.

As to destroy the world – we had enough to destroy all life 40 times over

Link this is a great talking point! What are we worried about Mars Attacking us…Commie Martians 40 times enough nukes to destroy the world is more than over kill this is government corruption a 39 times inflated fat government contract.

i wonder what would have happened if progressives had spent the past year explaining why fed gov deficits were nothing to be feared and why we should have them — not just now, but for the foreseeable future — instead of the dem party line of the deficit doves that deficits are bad but that we need to deal with other things first.

I find the billion dollar cut for community health centers to be interesting. I always figured that Sanders getting that money into the HCR bill wouldn’t last long, and yet the insertion was supposed to be a big reason for progressives/liberals to support the package.

Go figure.

The DEA is left whole? No, it’s a right arse hole.

my thoughts exactly. Sometimes I wonder if it’d be better to see the most extreme Rethugs take over in 2012 so we can get this slow destruction of the working class over with and the sooner the uprising starts.

Book Salon up with Ben Tarnoff’s Moneymakers: The Wicked Lives and Surprising Adventures of Three Notorious Counterfeiters hosted by Elias Altman

Just imagine all the jobs that will be created in the next 2 years as the Republicans and Dems race to see who can chop the most, the fastest! The unending cycle of stupidity is almost unbearable. For two years it was spend spend spend spend. Now it’s cut, cut, cut, cut faster, cut more!! Stay tuned for 2012′s election cycle, as the spend spend spend (who can buy the most votes) cycle reverts once more. Politicians truly are idiotic. How the hell did they all get so rich?

I also wonder what would happen if they chose different priorities and explained those priorities to the American people. Democrats still will make no meaningful cuts in “defense” and they are afraid to end any war or any commitment abroad. We’ve still got the post-WWII defense mentality but we’re taking our domestic infrastructure back to the 19th century or before. Sheesh, I think it was clear back under President Lincoln that Americans chose to build land grant colleges. Now, we’re making those same institutions unaffordable to middle class children. But we can still afford the wars!

You know, if I wasn’t certain I’d have a stroke by voting for a Republican

Sometimes it’s not as bad as you think. I’ve done it a couple of times when confronted by particularly inept or egregiously putrid Dem candidates and it’s really not that hard. You come out of the voting booth feeling sort of liberated. It’s like finally deciding that you’re going to confront the bully in the playground rather than submit to any more harassment.

here’s a good example of the kind of explanation we need to first understand and then spread:

from James K. Galbraith’s In Defense of Deficits, published just a couple weeks short of a year ago (my bold):

To put things crudely, there are two ways to get the increase in total spending that we call “economic growth.” One way is for government to spend. The other is for banks to lend. Leaving aside short-term adjustments like increased net exports or financial innovation, that’s basically all there is. Governments and banks are the two entities with the power to create something from nothing. If total spending power is to grow, one or the other of these two great financial motors–public deficits or private loans–has to be in action.

For ordinary people, public budget deficits, despite their bad reputation, are much better than private loans. Deficits put money in private pockets. Private households get more cash. They own that cash free and clear, and they can spend it as they like. If they wish, they can also convert it into interest-earning government bonds or they can repay their debts. This is called an increase in “net financial wealth.” Ordinary people benefit, but there is nothing in it for banks.

And this, in the simplest terms, explains the deficit phobia of Wall Street, the corporate media and the right-wing economists. Bankers don’t like budget deficits because they compete with bank loans as a source of growth. When a bank makes a loan, cash balances in private hands also go up. But now the cash is not owned free and clear. There is a contractual obligation to pay interest and to repay principal. If the enterprise defaults, there may be an asset left over–a house or factory or company–that will then become the property of the bank. It’s easy to see why bankers love private credit but hate public deficits.

All of this should be painfully obvious, but it is deeply obscure. It is obscure because legions of Wall Streeters–led notably in our time by Peter Peterson and his front man, former comptroller general David Walker, and including the Robert Rubin wing of the Democratic Party…

a year later, how many people really understand this? that we have a choice: it’s the banksters or fed deficit spending and it’s not just the deficit hawks, but the deficit doves also (whether they know it or not) who don’t tell us this truth.

Oh, I’ve been saying for years now I’m sick of this slow death dance. Let’s bring this damn thing to a head and force people’s eyes open. The people have shown consistently that they have to be bludgeoned by the elites into submission before there is even a chance of change.

because they are smarter than the average American, and we all know how smart that is.

Because science is against Gawd’s will. It makes you believe in evolution and stuff. Besides, thinkin is for sissies. Real men just adopt a half baked ideology that would fit on the back of a matchbook, just like Anne Rand, and then scream it as loud as they can to prove theyre alpha males.

Ain’t they a fine bunch of counterfeit ‘christian’ sons of bitches?

I read somewhere the average Egyptian made about 2 dollars a day for the past 30 years before they revolted, I hope we can do better

here’s james galbraith’s warning to progressives (this one published more than a year ago): Why Progressives Shouldn’t Fall For the Deficit Reduction Trap (my bolds):

The fetish of long-term deficit reduction is politically poisonous — and economically pointless. In reality, we need big budget deficits. We need them now — and down the road.

President Obama has announced his support for a commission whose purpose is to ramrod Social Security and Medicare cuts through Congress. Thinly disguised as a program for “deficit reduction,” the proposed commission will meet its first test today, when the Senate may vote to authorize it as part of a bill to raise the national debt ceiling. A large progressive coalition is already on record against it. But the progressives’ case is flawed; it’s not tough enough. Here’s why.

According to a press release issued by the Campaign for America’s Future on January 20, describing the progressive coalition:

Speakers stressed the need for a long-term deficit reduction strategy…. Joan Entmacher of National Women’s Law Center noted that responsible ways to cut the deficit were available now if austerity activists weren’t only interested in attacking Social Security and Medicare…. Hillary Shelton of the NAACP said the responsibility for debt reduction should remain with democratically elected representatives from each congressional district…

Now, when our civil rights leaders speak of deficits, no one supposes they do so from deep conviction. It’s a political move. They are intoning phrases calculated to lend a tone of respectability to a larger and more important cause. That cause — in this case protecting Social Security and Medicare from predators on Wall Street — is a good one. But good political purposes don’t guarantee good economics. And, let me argue, if the economics are based, as they are here, on a false premise, then you can’t make the politics work in your favor.

The CAF coalition concedes that “long-term deficit reduction” is vital. But why? No reason is given.

If you exclude Social Security and Medicare, there is no way to cut deficits seriously (short- or long-term, on unchanged economic assumptions) except by slashing the Pentagon or by raising taxes. If you had to do something, I agree, those would be better moves. But good luck. It’s not a political battle one can win.

sadly, most progressives fell for the “Deficit Reduction Trap” and are still stuck there. and that’s why we are losing this battle.

it’s not an issue of “affording” or “not affording.”

the fed gov is the issuer of our currency and since nixon went off the gold standard, revenues are not a constraint on fed gov spending. see my comment @39

LOL…well if you ask them they’ll tell you how smart they are! Wouldn’t it be great to be a shrink and have the capability of analyzing the electorate continually? I mean if you think about it. Every election cycle, the voters support the candidate that lies the best to them about what they want. This year, apparently it was who can cut the most. 2008 it was who can spend the most. 2012 will probably be back to who can spend the most. It’s truly amazing that people actually vote for either of these two parties.

“I will buy every American a pony!”
“I will buy every American 2 ponies!”

And didn’t Egypt prove (along with Tunisia) that peaceful revolution/uprising from the people themselves can be more effective and certainly far more efficient/less deadly and certainly far more humane than any shock and Awe War or never ending war via remote drone attacks to effect change in leadership or bring a democracy to a country? It nullified and proved irrelevant the whole reason and existence of the MIC for preemptive Wars.

so true, so true. And if you ask Americans they’ll also tell you “We’re #1.we’re#1 we’re#1…..

Without a doubt. American exceptionalism is alive and well! Watched a show on the tube the other night, showing dramatic inventions that changed the world, and who made them. Almost all pointed back to Germany, even though the US claims to have invented them. Without the Germans there would never have even been a NASA, which has helped achieve a huge amount of electronic advancements. It was quite interesting the inventions claimed by the US, that were actually invented by the enemies.

No we cant. I expect a majority of today’s Americans will eat cat food (and possibly their children) before they riot in the streets. Because, you know, rich people are just so much better and deserving than the rest of us. You can tell because heir billions are Gawd’s way of rewarding them for their virtue, and ‘doin Gawd’s work’, as the head of GOLDMAN SACHS likes to remind everyone while jerking off in his lunchtime caviar entree.

Yes. or indentured servitude to avoid dieing.

You may very well get your wish in the next 8 years. If things continue to go downhill this rapidly, we’re going to have either a) martial law or b) some serious protests in the streets. I was one of the ones who thought Americans would continue to absorb the punishment, but I’m starting to wonder whether it will be the squeezed middle class or the newly-minted college graduates with no job prospects who will start shouting first.

Werner von Braun(sp?)made V rockets & NASA I think. Like to see that show if you recall the name.

Ah, yes. the battle begins. But there is only one side.

LOL I know your right, that was my sarcasm showing (which I usually hide so well). Besides all Americans know they are just one lottery ticket or American Idol audition away from joining the rich & famous!

Einstein the atomic bomb lets not forget that a product of European Government regulated schools. The Computer is ours a result of WW2 government spending however without Turning a gay Englishman where would we be with that?

I think the lay down and die option is precisely what the GOP would like for poor people. Failing that, the poor should have the good taste to quietly fade into the background so their presence doesn’t offend the powers that be and their minions.

The destruction of the middle class will continue at a speedy pace and labor unions and wages will continue to head ‘down the sewer’.Thanks for staying home Dems the end is very near.

Egyptians showed you don’t rely on parties or voting to effect change. Stop going to work.Demand, don’t ask.

Obama will sign this bill. After all, he’s a Republican.

The rich got their raise while the wounded military, and those on SS saw their COLA’S frozen: SS for the 2nd year in a row.

If this crap gets to Obama’s desk, and if he signs these despicable cuts, he will assure his loss in 2012. These cuts will continue to hurt those that voted for him.

I already have decided to drop my Democratic party registration and will NOT vote for Blue Dogs or “New Democrats”, like Obama and my Congressperson, ever again.

maybe the reason “Dems” stayed home is because we see no difference in either party and playing into that false choice just serves the PTB

I just read on AP this morning that Obama is considering cutting the Pell Grant program by $100 Billion over 10 years as well.

But, but but..his approval rating his is still high!

This discussion and complaining is irrelevant. We need a revolution NOW. All this talk about the need for austerity is 100% bullshit. Instead of arguing about whether to cut, what to cut, and by how much, we need to take it to the streets and shut this awful government down.

progressives need to develop core values; figure out a way to get the message out to the general public on a consistant basis; and stand up loudly for what is right…say what you will about the wing nuts but they get the ink and progressive don’t..of course having Corporate money controlling the media helps…we need to support another party as the Dems are done,,,and I think we need to march on Wash with a clear message to explain to others in the country why supporting the progressive movement would benefit them…

Hey friend! You got room in that foxhole for two?

Just wait. Sooner or later science will identify the gene for stupidity.

That reminds me of when Bush said to the woman holding 3 jobs that what she was doing was ‘uniquely american’.

I’ve always doubted that, and the health insurance vouchers, would be there by 2014. All that will be left; an individual mandate and some anemic regulations designed by insurance industry insiders to be circumventable. Can’t afford insurance? Tough crap, pay a fine.

President Obama the socialist, cutting Pell Grants, LIHEAP, and giving a captive consumer audience to one of the most hated businesses in America. It would be hilarious if the American people weren’t getting screwed.