Into The Lions’ Den: Barack Obama Visits Fox News Channel
Well you can’t say Barack Obama isn’t willing to face his critics! The president sits down with Fox News Channels’s Bret Baier to discuss the health care reform bill:
Part 1:
Part 2:
Obama Says Will Not Campaign for Any Democratic Congressmen Not Supporting Health Care Reform
Looks like the arm twisting is working, as one of the strongest critics of this current effort, Dennis Kucinich, just announced he will vote for the bill. Alex Spillius writes on the Telegraph:
The president will refuse to make fund-raising visits during November elections to any district whose representative has not backed the bill.
A one-night presidential appearance can bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in funds which would otherwise take months to accumulate through cold-calling by campaign volunteers.
Mr Obama’s threat came as the year-long debate over his signature domestic policy entered its final week.
Mr Obama is personally telephoning congressmen who are still on the fence this week, in between several personal appearances devoted toward swinging public opinion.
Obama NASA Plans ‘Catastrophic’ say Moon Astronauts
From BBC News:
Former Nasa astronauts who went to the Moon have told the BBC of their dismay at President Barack Obama’s decision to push back further Moon missions.
Jim Lovell, commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, said Mr Obama’s decision would have “catastrophic consequences” for US space exploration.
The last man on the Moon, Eugene Cernan, said it was “disappointing”.
Last month Mr Obama cancelled Nasa’s Constellation Moon landings programme, approved by ex-President George W Bush.
Nasa still aims to send astronauts back to the Moon, but it is likely to take decades and some believe that it will never happen again.
Obama Supports DNA Sampling Upon Arrest
From Wired’s Threat Level:
Josh Gerstein over at Politico sent Threat Level his piece underscoring once again President Barack Obama is not the civil-liberties knight in shining armor many were expecting.Gerstein posts a televised interview of Obama and John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted. The nation’s chief executive extols the virtues of mandatory DNA testing of Americans upon arrest, even absent charges or a conviction. Obama said, “It’s the right thing to do” to “tighten the grip around folks” who commit crime.
When it comes to civil liberties, the Obama administration has come under fire for often mirroring his predecessor’s practices surrounding state secrets, the Patriot Act and domestic spying. There’s also Gitmo, Jay Bybee and John Yoo.
Now there’s DNA sampling. Obama told Walsh he supported the federal government, as well as the 18…
ACLU to Obama: ‘Change or More of the Same?’
From The Raw Story:
The American Civil Liberties Union has never treated the Obama administration with kid gloves, but with their latest ad buy it’s become increasingly clear that their patience for the continuance of some Bush-era policies has run quite thin.”What will it be Mr. President?” the ACLU asks in a full-page New York Times advertisement published Sunday. “Change or more of the Same?” The ad also features a portrait of Obama that morphs into Bush.
The ACLU’s images of the subtle transition between presidents is filtered and lacking in detail, and spans just four frames. However, it appears to be a take-off of a protest image that circulated Facebook and some progressive blogs late last year, showing a similar transition in eerie detail.
The ACLU’s full-size advertisement is below this text.
The ad specifically…
Many Are Dying For Our Having Hoped Obama Would Not Practice Imperialism
In retrospect, does it not sound terribly naive that we would hope a U.S. president whose candidacy was selected and backed by our most powerful bankers would be permitted, just maybe, perhaps by virtue of his being black and well spoken, to modify the intense imperialism that has characterized all previous presidencies since, if not including, that of Teddy Roosevelt and before?
He said he would bomb Pakistan and he has.
He indicated he would be willing to sacrifice men, women and children to assassinate leaders of those warring against American occupations and he has.
He said he would, and he did, send more troops to broaden the war against Pashtun Taliban, formerly the Reagan approved and recognized government of Afghanistan.
He has praised Americans for having fought the Vietnamese in their own country…
Republicans Playing on People’s Fears (Officially)?
Ben Smith writes on the Politico:
The Republican National Committee plans to raise money this election cycle through an aggressive campaign capitalizing on “fear” of President Barack Obama and a promise to “save the country from trending toward socialism.”
The strategy was detailed in a confidential party fundraising presentation, obtained by POLITICO, which also outlines how “ego-driven” wealthy donors can be tapped with offers of access and “tchochkes.”
The presentation was delivered by RNC Finance Director Rob Bickhart to top donors and fundraisers at a party retreat in Boca Grande, Florida on February 18, a source at the gathering said.
In neat PowerPoint pages, it lifts the curtain on the often-cynical terms of political marketing, displaying an air of disdain for the party’s donors that is usually confined to the barroom conversations of political operatives.
The presentation explains the Republican fundraising in simple terms.
Assessing the QDR and 2011 Defense Budget
By Gordon Adams at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:
The new Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and the fiscal year 2011 defense budget request have arrived. Unfortunately, they miss the mark: The QDR vastly expands the military’s missions, and the budget responds in kind by expanding for the fourteenth consecutive year.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates argued that the two documents were “shaped by a bracing dose of realism” with regard to risk and resources. I respectfully disagree. The QDR’s risk assessment piles on missions like a short-order cook stacks pancakes at IHOP, setting no priorities between near-term challenges and long-term requirements. And the budget continues to accommodate such a limitless agenda. The bottom line: This lack of discipline will broaden the country’s defense requirements and expand military spending in ways that will…
Obama Gets Visited by Ghosts of Presidents Past
This is pretty cool if you have been a fan of the history of Saturday Night Live and the actors who played the presidents. Sadly, Phil Hartman who did the best television Reagan ever (among other great things) is no longer with us, so they called in someone else to fill his shoes.
There’s actually a message at the end of the video … enjoy (the video was directed by Ron Howard):
U.S. Government Told Japan: Buy Our Bonds Or We Shut Down Toyota
Max Keiser talks with Ellen Brown, author of Web of Debt, about the Fed, the debt and Obama’s budget.
Obama Signs One-Year Extension of Patriot Act
From the AP:
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has signed a one-year extension of several provisions in the nation’s main counterterrorism law, the Patriot Act.
Provisions in the measure would have expired on Sunday without Obama’s signature Saturday.
The act, which was adopted in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, expands the government’s ability to monitor Americans in the name of national security.
Three sections of the Patriot Act that stay in force will:
Authorize court-approved roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on multiple phones.
Allow court-approved seizure of records and property in anti-terrorism operations.
Permit surveillance against a so-called lone wolf, a non-U.S. citizen engaged in terrorism who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group…
Health Care Overhaul Summit Cements Differences
From NPR:
President Obama’s made-for-TV health summit probably didn’t change many minds. And it certainly didn’t produce any bipartisan breakthroughs on Thursday. But it did clarify some of the biggest differences between Republicans and Democrats.
The 18 Republicans who attended the all-day meeting at Blair House, just across from the White House, were polite, but firm. The bills passed by the Democratic House and Senate last year are simply too big for them, and for the American people, to swallow.
“We’ve come to the conclusion we don’t do comprehensive well,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee. “Our country is too big, too complicated, too decentralized for Washington; a few of us here, just to write a few rules about remaking 17 percent of the economy all at once.”
But Democrats were just…
The Bank of the Fed is Closed…Forever
In an effort to explain our escalating financial crisis, an American Nightmare (an Environmental Dream), the pundits are focusing their angst on the 44th POTUS, who might very well go down as the single most inept president in all of American history. (How to Squander the Presidency in One Year, David Michael Green)
Barack Obama is not inept, greedy or stupid and he isn’t one of “us”.
He rose from obscurity to power with his top economics adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the co-founder of David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission and he travels in the same circles as other members of the super-secret Skull & Bones Society at Yale University, who pretend to be running for president every four years.
The decision to have Obama preside over the greatest financial calamity since the Great Depression was…
Despite Obama’s Nuclear Bailout, Georgia Power Still Increasing Rates
From the AP:
Georgia Power still plans to increase rates next year to finance two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle despite billions of dollars in federal loan guarantees announced Tuesday by the Obama administration.Georgia Power spokesman Jeff Wilson said any savings the utility will see from the federal loan backing won’t occur until January 2012. That means ratepayers will see their electric bills rise by an average of $1.30 a month in 2011 as planned, he said.
The Obama administration said the nuclear plant near Augusta had been selected to receive more than $8 billion in federal loan guarantees. The expansion at Vogtle will mark the first nuclear power plant construction in the United States in nearly three decades.
The two new reactors are scheduled to be completed in 2017 at a…
Chris Matthews on Sarah Palin: ‘An Empty Vessel Ready to be Filled by Ideology She Doesn’t Understand’
I wish more of the talking heads called out those in positions of influence for what they are, an “empty vessel” is an apt description. We need more honest brokers of information. I completely agree, this line of thinking is truly “frightening” (via Hardball with Chris Matthews):
She’s frightening. Mark, that is frightening stuff. Frightening. First of all, president don’t declare war. Anybody knows that in high school. Congress has to declare war. To declare war on Iran, I don’t think the most far right, Middle East hawk will talk about declaring war on Iran, a country with 70-some million people, with an advanced air force. … Why does she talk like that? Is Michael Ledeen, a real hawk, writing this stuff for her? I don’t know anyone as far right as that, besides him.
John Avlon: The Birthers Began on the Left
John Avlon writes on the Daily Beast:
The Birthers were back in force at the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville.
The high-profile resurgence of the Birther claims on cable television provoked much self-satisfaction from liberals as the latest evidence of the influence of wingnuts on conservative politics.
But there’s an inconvenient truth liberals are going to have to confront: The Birthers began not on the right, but on the left.
Investigations for my new book, Wingnuts, revealed that the Birther conspiracy theory was first concocted by renegade members of the original Obama haters, Party Unity My Ass, known more commonly by their acronym, the PUMAs. They were a splinter group of hard-core Hillary Clinton supporters who did not want to give up the ghost after the bitter 50-state Bataan Death March to the…
Snapshots from a Decaying Economy
From Nick P. at Black Sun Gazette:
I don’t know if you’ve looked at the news lately, but apparently we’re in some kind of economic recovery. You’d probably have to be reading the news to know about it, because no one that I know is experiencing the effects, and economic indicators that affect people without stock portfolios don’t seem to indicate that anything is getting better. To anyone paying attention, we’re in far more danger of total economic collapse than we were two years ago.
Complete Control
From Nick P. at Black Sun Gazette:
We’re going on two years of the global economic crisis that has rocked our society to its foundations. All the conventional wisdom of the post-war era about the eradication of social inequality and class conflict under the auspices of continual capitalist development has been exposed as a propagandist deception.
Any illusions that people had in the ability of capitalism to solve the world’s problems has rapidly evaporated. Even as conditions worsen, the contradictions of our system are laid bare.
U.S. Airport Security Plan Calls For 500 Body Scanners In 2011
“No wonder you’re having nightmares. You’re always watching the news.” – Lori in Total Recall
By Thomas Frank at USA Today:
Body scanners that look under airline passengers’ clothing for hidden weapons could be in nearly half the nation’s airport checkpoints by late 2011, according to an Obama administration plan announced Monday.
The $215 million proposal to acquire 500 scanners next year, combined with the 450 to be bought this year, marks the largest addition of airport-security equipment since immediately after the 9/11 attacks. There are only 40 body scanners in a total of 19 airports now.
“It’s a move in the right direction,” aviation-security consultant Douglas Laird said. “We need to scan all passengers.”
The push for more scanners accelerated after the failed Christmas Day attempt to bomb an airliner near Detroit. Suspect Umar…
