Found another one for the consideration for the “Assie” Award.
CNN’s Glen Beck, a conservative commentator, made this statement on his Headline News Show, when commenting on Obama and his issues, he said:
“Barack Obama and his brand of socialism…..”
Now are there really pea brains out there that believe Obama is a socialist? If so, maybe they should have spent a few more days in school before they dropped out.
Nothing about Obama’s campaign is socialist!
This a conversation I had with one of my readers about the post I had on the electrocution of an American soldier in Iraq.
ss: god..like having our guys killed over there is not bad enough..that is just plain senseless
lobotero: did u see there has been 12 to die?
Ss: yep..would like to see those write ups and where and why
Lobotero: i want to see how far the congressional investigation goes…KBR has a lot of money in Washington
Ss: bet it never goes to trial
Lobotero: true that..if anything they will settle out of court…if they are held responsible at all
Ss: they will settle just to make it go away
Lobotero: yep…but in my opinion they should execute the head of the company…
Ss: nope…
SS: they should let him take a shower in the same place the soldier did
Loboter: yep
Lobotero: and under the same conditions
SS: agreed
Lobotero: but with a corporation that large…i do not see them getting any satisfaction for the family
SS: cause that is neither quick or painless
lobotero: from now on…these contractors must use the stuff before the troops…
SS: especially if they knew about it…that is just plain negligence
lobotero: yep…but they will start shredding any info…if they have not already…
SS: the larger corporations will cover their butts and the low man on the totem pole will be the scape goat
SS: kind of like the military huh
lobotero: you right…some low level grunt will be blamed for the accidents…no doubt
SS: yep
SS: won’t be the foreman or manager…will be the lowly electrician
Lobotero: or it will be the fault ofd the military for their pre-use inspection
SS: or some e-2 or e-3 for supposedly messing with it..
Lobotero: sure the company clerk will be implicated
SS: probably
SS: wouldn’t surprise me at all…or there will be a sign on it that says that it is not to be used for use in showers
Lobotero: LOL
Lobotero: good one…
SS: nope that won’t be it…that would come back to be a company error..cause they installed it…my bad
Lobotero: true that
Lobotero: with all the probs they are having with contractors in Iraq…u would think there would be better oversight
SS: by who..the military?
Lobotero: i mean look at halleburton over charging the government
SS: they can’t control their own
Lobotero: or blackwater killing civilians
Lobotero: and now this…just to mention a few
SS: they send somebody over to oversee and my thinking is this….I believe it is called ‘a friendly fire incident’
Lobotero: i guess anybody would look the other way for the right price….
SS: or wind up dead
Lobotero: for sure
SS: and who can tell by whom
Lobotero: true
Lobotero: i believe stuff like this is what gives capitalism a bad taste
Lobotero: because it is always about money…seldom about the people invoolved
SS: lol…believe I am in the wrong business..
SS: need to start selling computer stuff to the government for 10 times the going rate
Lobotero: no you are not…I do not believe that you would be any part of this
SS: you are right…
Lobotero: see i am perceptive…lol
SS: lol yes you are..
Lobotero: is your blood pressure up yet?
SS: and you know I would wind up buying everything for the locals if they needed it anyway..would still be broke…lol
Lobotero: so true….so true….lol
SS: this could have ended a long time ago and should have
Lobotero: but at lkeast you would be breaking the mold of what they (iraqis) see as Americans
Lobotero: and that is a good thing
SS: lol..yeah they would run screaming from the room
SS: crazy americans
SS: lol
lobotero: nope…they would see what a true American is capable of doing
Lobotero: being a bigger person than the crap heads in corporations
SS: uh huh..and I know somebody else who would do the same boo…
Lobotero: oh really?
SS: yep…and I am talking to him right now…
Lobotero: so have we beat that dead mule long enough?
SS: yep..think it is definately dead
Lobotero: okey dokey…thanx for the mental exercise
I enjoy the conversations on the posts and would like to have more interaction.
A friend sent me this blog post, it is from a blog entitled ’08 Elections:
Autoworkers are fighting two enemies at once: the companies themselves who are closing plants and slashing wages and benefits, and a far right Republican government whose anti-worker and free trade agenda greases the wheel for companies to move production out of the country.
“We have the flexibility to source all of our business to other locations around the world and we have the right to do so” said American Axle CEO Dick Dauch. Work for what I say or I’ll give your job to someone else he said. He did just that forcing huge concessions on the union.
Labor needs a Democratic landslide in the November elections – a landslide that sends a message to the next President and Congress that relief for working people is needed and a landslide that will give working people the leverage to stop and reverse the corporate attack.
And if the auto companies won’t operate the plants, let’s nationalize them! Couldn’t these skilled, disciplined, highly productive workers build trains, buses, fuel efficient cars, or in some way greatly contribute to the rebuilding of our country’s infrastructure?
The Dems would be much more preferrable than the Repubs, as far as labor goes, but I do not see anything changing for labor after the November election. Labor will work hard and probably help get Obama elected and then we will return to the days of yore. Labor will not even get a kiss after the f*cking!
First, read this editorial and then tewll me who or what wrote it.
Barack Obama is not a left candidate. This fact has seemingly surprised a number of progressive people who are bemoaning Obama’s “shift to the center.” (Right-wingers are happy to join them, suggesting Obama is a “flip-flopper.”) It’s sad that some who seek progressive change are missing the forest for the trees. But they will not dampen the wide and deep enthusiasm for blocking a third Bush term represented by John McCain, or for bringing Obama by a landslide into the White House with a large Democratic congressional majority.
A broad multiclass, multiracial movement is converging around Obama’s “Hope, change and unity” campaign because they see in it the thrilling opportunity to end 30 years of ultra-right rule and move our nation forward with a broadly progressive agenda.
This diverse movement combines a variety of political currents and aims in a working coalition that is crucial to social progress at this point. At the core are America’s working families, of all hues and ethnicities, whose determination to move forward does not depend on, and will not be diverted by, the daily twists and turns of this watershed presidential campaign. They are taking the long view.
Notably, the labor movement has stepped up its independent mobilization for this election. It is leading an unprecedented campaign to educate and unify its ranks to elect the nation’s first African American president. Last week, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka told the Steelworkers convention that there is “no evil that’s inflicted more pain and more suffering than racism — and it’s something we in the labor movement have a special responsibility to challenge.”
If Obama’s candidacy represented nothing more than the spark for this profound initiative to unite the working class and defeat the pernicious influence of racism, it would be a transformative candidacy that would advance progressive politics for the long term.
The struggle to defeat the ultra-right and turn our country on a positive path will not end with Obama’s election. But that step will shift the ground for successful struggles going forward.
One thing is clear. None of the people’s struggles — from peace to universal health care to an economy that puts Main Street before Wall Street — will advance if McCain wins in November.
Let’s keep our eyes on the prize.
Barack Obama laid the foundations for a new US foreign policy yesterday ahead of his trips to Europe and the Middle East, promising to work with allies to tackle the threats of the 21st century with a push comparable to the Marshall plan.
In his biggest speech on the matter since entering the presidential race in 2007, he said the US had “paid the price for a foreign policy that lectures without listening”.
He set out five goals for his presidency: ending the war in Iraq; finishing the war with al-Qaida and the Taliban; ending US oil dependency; securing all nuclear weapons and materials from terrorists and rogue states; and rebuilding US alliances.
“As president, I will pursue a tough, smart and principled national security strategy – one that recognises that we have interests not just in Baghdad, but in Kandahar and Karachi, in Tokyo and London, in Beijing and Berlin,” Obama told an audience at the Ronald Reagan building in the heart of Washington DC.
An ambitious plan and with a realistic eye, he may be able to definitely accomplish one, two are ify at best and two are so out reach that they are pie in sky promises. If elected, Obama should be held to this plan to the letter.
For the second time in four months, the US government has intervened to rescue major financial firms and prevent an imminent collapse of the American and global banking system.
The government bailout of the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac announced Sunday goes well beyond the $29 billion injection of Federal Reserve funds used to subsidize the takeover of Bear Stearns last March by JPMorgan Chase.
The plan outlined by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson would give him virtually unlimited and unilateral authority to pump tens of billions of dollars of public funds into the mortgage finance companies. At the same time, the Federal Reserve Board announced that it would allow the companies to directly borrow Fed funds.
It is generally conceded that a failure of the two government-chartered mortgage finance companies would have consequences even more cataclysmic than those which would have likely followed a collapse of Bear Stearns. Between them, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which purchase mortgage loans from banks and other lenders, bundle them into securities and sell them to financial institutions and big investors around the world, hold or guarantee more than $5 trillion in mortgage debt. They currently account for some 80 percent of all new mortgages in the US. Were they to lose the ability to borrow at a discount, the US housing market would come to a grinding halt.
The bailout with public funds of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will set a precedent for a far broader use of taxpayer money to rescue major financial companies. Last week Paulson and Bernanke went before the House Financial Services Committee to demand legislation institutionalizing federal intervention to bail out failing Wall Street firms. The response of key Democrats such as Frank was to urge the regulators to call for such measures now, rather than after the new Congress takes office next year.
Will you allow your tax dollars to be used to bailout these speculators, which btw, your president said he was not going to bailout speculators–so much for that promise.
First McCain stumbled over the difference between Sunni and Shi’as in Iraq. Who the good guys were and such. Now he stumbles again.
In a townhall meeting held Tuesday in Albuquerque, N.M., John McCain mistakenly referred to current events in Czechoslovakia, a country that ceased to exist in 1993 after separating into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
McCain expressed “regret some of the recent behavior that Russia has exhibited…including reduction in oil supplies to Czechoslovakia.”
THis is not such a big deal except that it does fly a bit inot the face of his claim to the better experience in foreign policy, when he has a hard time with countries and Iraqi tribes and religious sects. Or it could be in his mind the Czech Republic and Slovakia are still one country. If so then that could lead to more criticism of his age.
How about a small reality check?
GM is sucking hind tit, Chrysler is whining and selling off assets, Ford has hit bottom and now I hear from various circles that it is labor’s fault that the auto industry is crashing. The Unions and the workers negotiated and got higher pay, better benefits, etc. Afterwards, the companies whined that they could not afford the increases. Now that the slowdown has hit the industry it is costing jobs and such. Now all the gains that labor has made in the past has come back to bite them in the butt and makes them the obvious scapegoat for the industry’s problems.
First of all, let me lead with this statement—What a crock of crap! The auto industry is crapping out because of the decisions made by management, not the workers. These CEOs, COOs, CFOs, all knew what was happening in the economy and what trends were on the horizon. The workers did not design the cars or make the decision on what models were to be produced. The workers did not decide what bad investments to make.
Management teams were chosen on the promises of an increase of dividends to investors. In return these teams made millions even if they put the company in a bad light. If these teams were caught flat footed by the situation, then I say that they are not worth the millions they are receiving as compensation. Workers did not make these horrible decisions. The workers did not set out to destroy the auto industry.
Please stop blaming labor for the auto industry putting itself into the crapper. To blame labor and unions for any of the economic woes of the auto industry in this country is just plain—let me spell it out for you—S-T-U-P-I-D!
Just six weeks after reluctantly surrendering to Barack Obama in the brutal 2008 Democratic primary race, Sen. Hillary Clinton has begun raising money for what she says is her 2012 New York Senate reelection campaign.
Clinton still faces about $20 million in debts from her unsuccessful presidential effort this year. As part of a so-called “unity drive,” Obama has appealed to his supporters in recent weeks to give to Clinton to cover the costs that she incurred while raking him over the coals in a bare-knuckled bid to return to the White House. Some Obama backers have balked.
Ain’t politics great? You can owe everyone in town a buck or two and still try to raise money for an election 4 years away. This should start the salivating of Clintonistas.