Saturday, July 9, 2011

Davids Daily Dose - Saturday July 9th


1/  This is in many ways a crucial weekend - the President and other Congressional scum are working hard on a "deal" that will include raising the debt ceiling, major spending cuts in the trillions and hopefully some tax increases, or at least closing a few tax loopholes [see #10]. 

But is Obama also about to sell us out on Medicare and even Social Security? 

Paul Krugman is afraid he is.....

What Obama Wants

By 
Published: July 7, 2011
On Thursday, President Obama met with Republicans to discuss a debt deal. We don’t know exactly what was proposed, but news reports before the meeting suggested that Mr. Obama is offering huge spending cuts, possibly including cuts to Social Security and an end to Medicare’s status as a program available in full to all Americans, regardless of income.

Readers' Comments

Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
Obviously, the details matter a lot, but progressives, and Democrats in general, are understandably very worried. Should they be? In a word, yes.
Now, this might just be theater: Mr. Obama may be pulling an anti-Corleone, making Republicans an offer they can’t accept. The reports say that the Obama plan also involves significant new revenues, a notion that remains anathema to the Republican base. So the goal may be to paint the G.O.P. into a corner, making Republicans look like intransigent extremists — which they are.
But let’s be frank. It’s getting harder and harder to trust Mr. Obama’s motives in the budget fight, given the way his economic rhetoric has veered to the right. In fact, if all you did was listen to his speeches, you might conclude that he basically shares the G.O.P.’s diagnosis of what ails our economy and what should be done to fix it. And maybe that’s not a false impression; maybe it’s the simple truth.
One striking example of this rightward shift came in last weekend’s presidential address, in which Mr. Obama had this to say about the economics of the budget: “Government has to start living within its means, just like families do. We have to cut the spending we can’t afford so we can put the economy on sounder footing, and give our businesses the confidence they need to grow and create jobs.”
That’s three of the right’s favorite economic fallacies in just two sentences. No, the government shouldn’t budget the way families do; on the contrary, trying to balance the budget in times of economic distress is a recipe for deepening the slump. Spending cuts right now wouldn’t “put the economy on sounder footing.” They would reduce growth and raise unemployment. And last but not least, businesses aren’t holding back because they lack confidence in government policies; they’re holding back because they don’t have enough customers — a problem that would be made worse, not better, by short-term spending cuts.
In his brief remarks after Thursday’s meeting, by the way, Mr. Obama seemed to reiterate the Herbert Hooveresque view that deficit reduction is what we need to “grow the economy.”
People have asked me why the president’s economic advisers aren’t telling him not to believe in the confidence fairy — that is, not to believe the assertion, popular on the right but overwhelmingly refuted by the evidence, that slashing spending in the face of a depressed economy will magically create jobs. My answer is, what economic advisers? Almost all the high-profile economists who joined the Obama administration early on have either left or are leaving.
Nor have they been replaced. As The Wall Street Journal recently noted, there are a “stunning” number of vacancies in important economic posts. So who’s defining the administration’s economic views?
Some of what we’re hearing is presumably coming from the political team, whose members seem to believe that a move toward Republican positions, reminiscent of former President Bill Clinton’s “triangulation” in the 1990s, is the key to Mr. Obama’s re-election. And Mr. Clinton did, indeed, rebound from a big defeat in the 1994 midterms to win big two years later. But some of us think that the rebound had less to do with his rhetorical move to the center than with the five million jobs the economy added over those two years — an achievement not likely to be repeated this time, especially not in the face of harsh spending cuts.
Anyway, I don’t believe that it’s all political calculation. Watching Mr. Obama and listening to his recent statements, it’s hard not to get the impression that he is now turning for advice to people who really believe that the deficit, not unemployment, is the top issue facing America right now, and who also believe that the great bulk of deficit reduction should come from spending cuts. It’s worth noting that even Republicans weren’t suggesting cuts to Social Security; this is something Mr. Obama and those he listens to apparently want for its own sake.
Which raises the big question: If a debt deal does emerge, and it overwhelmingly reflects conservative priorities and ideology, should Democrats in Congress vote for it?
Mr. Obama’s people will no doubt argue that their fellow party members should trust him, that whatever deal emerges was the best he could get. But it’s hard to see why a president who has gone out of his way to echo Republican rhetoric and endorse false conservative views deserves that kind of trust.

Being on the road gives you a chance to listen to the radio, and one guest on an NPR show said roughly the following - "the reason the Republicans are so far to the right is that incumbents have to protect their positions against Tea Party challenges. Obama feels he can abandon liberal principles because the left wing of the party has nowhere else to go. What Obama needs in 2012 is a primary challenge from a populist champion of the middle class.... then he might fight the extremists on the right rather than caving all the time".....

Interesting, huh?














2/  You may remember Frank Rich, the premier columnist from the New York Times who left the paper a few months ago. He's back, writing for New York magazine which gives him the space to get into the "meat" of stories. 

This is a dissection of President Obama's dilemma, and his failure to deal with the cancer at the heart of this country - the Wall Street oligarchs who crashed the world economy. 
A fascinating, in-depth article about the failure of "change you can believe in" and the dire consequences for us all if he doesn't make the right decisions....

Some Obama fans think it’s tactical genius that’s holding him back—his fabled long ball. Americans are no longer as angry as they were in January 2009 so much as they are defeated, depressed, and jaded by the slow recovery and by four decades of raging inequality that tells them the deck is stacked no matter who’s in Washington. Better, then, not to ruffle these still waters—or those easily rattled independents fetishized by political consultants—and instead scare seniors about imminent Medicare cutbacks and plot deep-think policy initiatives that (like health-care reform) might fix America over time. But the voters’ placidity hardly augurs well for Democratic turnout in 2012. And it may not last. All that’s required is one more economic panic to shatter the phony peace and whip the rage back to center stage, once again to the right’s advantage.
















3/  Music video - a DDD favourite. Medina with "Addiction".......
A beautiful woman, and a very cool dance song......















4/  The Republicans booked comedian and Obama impersonator Reggie Brown for their leadership conference a few weeks ago......but pulled him off the stage halfway through his act after he started on Michele Bachmann. So Bill Maher had him finish his act on his show.....four very funny minutes.....















5/  One of the major frustrations of intelligent people is how does Fox News have such a hold on it's audience to the point that they are oblivious to facts, or reality? This story shows some of the techniques Fox uses to bemuse the stupids.....

14 Propaganda Techniques Fox 'News' Uses to Brainwash Americans

The good news is that the more conscious you are of these techniques, the less likely they are to work on you.
















6/  How to torment your [talking] dog about food......funny....1 minute.....
















7/  Here is a Times editorial that goes to the heart of our medical crisis we are facing - Medicare has approved some very expensive drugs that give terminal cancer patients a few more months of life, but at costs of up to $90,000 for each patient. The article doesn't mention the side effects from these new drugs, but you can be sure there are some nasty ones.

Moral dilemma - is a few more months of "life" for a terminal cancer patient worth it for society, considering the enormous cost? Is it worth it for the patient, scratching out a few more pain-wracked months of existence? 

Isn't it just guilt?

Extremely Expensive Cancer Drugs

Published: July 6, 2011
Many patients with advanced cancer must feel great relief after last week’s decisions by Medicare to pay for two drugs that provide limited medical benefits. For these patients, even a few more months of life is beyond price.
The unaddressed issue, however, is whether public and private insurance should continue to pay the staggeringly high cost — reaching $88,000 and $93,000 in some cases — for drugs that offer modest help to the typical patient. A prime driver of our escalating health care costs is the advance of medical technology and the understandable desire of patients and doctors to adopt the latest treatment. Sooner or later, as the nation struggles to contain health care spending, we may need to devise measures to determine whether very high-priced drugs provide enough medical benefit to warrant paying the bill.
Neither the Food and Drug Administration, which decides which drugs can be marketed, nor Medicare, which decides which treatments to cover, considers costs.












8/  Slideshow of 13 of the most surreal landscapes in the world.....fascinating......
















9/  Scientists in the aggregate are a bunch of weenies, and are very reluctant to speak out on any issue without measurable proof, which explains how climate change remains a "debate" on Fox News....

But the tide is turning - a group of climate scientists are speaking out and linking climate change with the extreme weather.....yeay......

Scientists are to end their 20-year reluctance to link climate change with extreme weather – the heavy storms, floods and droughts which often fill news bulletins – as part of a radical departure from a previous equivocal position that many now see as increasingly untenable.
Climate researchers from Britain, the United States and other parts of the world have formed a new international alliance that aims to investigate exceptional weather events to see whether they can be attributable to global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
They believe that it is no longer plausible merely to claim that extreme weather is “consistent” with climate change. Instead, they intend to assess each unusual event in terms of the probability that it has been exacerbated or even caused by the global temperature increase seen over the past century.
The move is likely to be highly controversial because the science of “climate attribution” is still in the early stages of development and so is likely to be pounced on by climate “sceptics” who question any link between industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and rises in global average temperatures.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/extreme-weather-link-can-no-longer-be-ignored-2305181.html











10/  Did you know hedge fund billionaires pay a 15% tax rate on their earnings?

Nicolas Kristof gives you a primer on this disgusting and corrupt loophole in the tax code specifically designed for billionaires.....
The House speaker, John Boehner, suggests that the Republican threat of letting the United States default on its debts is driven by concern for jobs for ordinary Americans.
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof
On the Ground
Nicholas Kristof addresses reader feedback and posts short takes from his travels.

Readers' Comments

Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
“We cannot miss this opportunity,” he told Fox News. “If we want jobs to come to America, we’ve got to give American businesspeople the confidence to invest in our economy.”
So take a look at one of the tax loopholes that Congressional Republicans are refusing to close — even if the cost is that America’s credit rating blows up. This loophole has nothing to do with creating jobs and everything to do with protecting some of America’s wealthiest financiers.
If there were an award for Most Unconscionable Tax Loophole, this one would win grand prize.
Wait, wake up! I know that “tax policy” makes one’s eyes glaze over, but that’s how financiers have gotten away with paying a lower tax rate than their chauffeurs or personal trainers. Tycoons have bet for years that the public is too stupid or distracted to note that in many cases they’re paying just a 15 percent tax rate.
What’s at stake is the “carried interest” loophole, and President Obama is pushing to close it. The White House estimates that this would raise $20 billionover a decade. But Congressional Republicans walked out of budget talks rather than discuss raising revenues from measures such as this one.
The biggest threat to the United States this summer probably doesn’t come from Iran or Libya but from the home-grown risk that the nation will default on its debts. We don’t know the economic consequences for America or the world, and some of the hand-wringing may be overblown — or maybe not — but it’s reckless of Republicans even to toy with such a threat.














11/  Florida's dirty little secret - South Florida's drinking water is in deep trouble. Salt water intrusion is growing, and the aquifer cannot continue to supply the water necessary for 8 million people south of Lake Okeechobee. Feel free to read the whole article, but the highlights are below.....

Look for many more water issues across the country and indeed the globe.....

Drought! Straight Talk from the Real Book of Revelations ... by gimleteye

Drought, wildfires, floods. The first three minutes of network news is like a TV primer from the Book of Revelations. But when destroyed drinking water wells in South Florida are on Nightly News, the story won't be the simple-twist-of-fate. In South Florida, political decisions on water management put property owners at risk of a modern Exodus, or, fresh water at the price of gold. It is not a topic in TV political debates or campaigns, but it is the dirtiest little secret in Florida. Understanding it, is to also know why the Everglades are at such peril.

For decades, politicians allowed more growth and development and agriculture than our aquifers could reasonably sustain. This wasn't conjecture or smarmy, feel-good ethos. Within government agencies, scientists, policy makers and attorneys treaded on the subject like walking on egg shells. Early on, it was established to be political suicide to stand up to the destroyers on water supply or water quality issues. Sugar billionaires, their lobbyists, builders and developers and trade associations like the Latin Builders Association had the inside track in the inside hallways. It is still going on. Last week, Florida's Jack-Ass-In-Chief Barney Bishop-- the Associated Industries leader ("a life-long Democrat" who led the successful effort to dismantle Florida's growth management agency), appeared on Fox calling out the U.S. EPA for "killing jobs faster than President Obama can create them". Bishop, a carpetbagger if there ever was one, has prevailed on Florida Governor Rick Scott to push back against federal authority to regulate nutrient pollution where the state won't: overwhelming Florida's valuable rivers, estuaries and coastal real estate values. To round up the disaster, after so many decades, in a pithy "killing the goose that lays the golden egg" puts an unforgivable smiley face on abject corruption.

Why would a enduring, severe drought wreck South Florida's drinking water wells? It's simple. Once salt water gets into the aquifer surrounding a well, it can't be forced out by fresh water. Four years ago, the drinking water well in Homestead serving the entire Florida Keys came perilously close to being contaminated. Just like you don't always hear the stories about fighter jets scrambling to meet a perceived threat of unidentified, potentially hostile aircraft; most Floridians are oblivious to the scrambling that goes on, through a persistent drought. Water managers measure the threat and meet in war rooms to plot out responses with gates, locks, and canals. They are tracking the rapid march of salt water inward as, year-by-year, the growth and water consumption of South Floridians sucks more and more water out of the aquifer.

Think of Florida's water supply and demand as an elastic band, with the competition for water resources being stretched tighter and tighter by serial assaults on the supply by Big Sugar and developers insisting that the primary purpose of water managers is to deliver as much water as they need, whenever they need it. These are the politics-- backed by unlimited campaign contributions-- a rain of toxic cash-- that forced environmentalists and civic activists to the fringe over the past 40 years, in no small part because the mainstream media refused-- and still refuses-- to give weight to the ethical lapses that will ultimately determine whether we can afford to live in South Florida.















12/  Wonderful article from the Miami Herald about our corrupt, evil, scum-sucking pig-dog of an excuse for a Governor......

Nicely written story, not like my intro.....

Gov. Rick Scott’s plutocratic Florida

 

BY JOY-ANN REID

JOYANNREID@GMAIL.COM

There’s a reason no amount of robocalls and prefab letters to the editor will save Rick Scott from his dismal poll numbers: the nagging suspicion, including among a growing number of Republicans, that whatever his motivations, Mr. “777” isn’t in this for the Sunshine State.
Scott has no history of public service. He popped up on the political radar in 2009 to wage war against healthcare reform. His business mantra was: Let us make a profit, so what? This was back when he was running Columbia/HCA and dreaming of privatized Medicare. So far though, Scott has personally lost money on his $70 million gubernatorial investment.
He doesn’t seem to know much about Florida, and doesn’t appear to be all that interested. He spends more time appearing on Fox News than in media that actually reside here.
Scott’s icy demeanor and blink-free stare could lead the most sober mind to conclude he might be some sort of alien life form. Asked to defend his policies, he blankly spits out Heritage Foundation talking points — kind of like Medicare voucher Rep. Paul Ryan, without the hair.














Todays video - very strange Chinese surveillance clip.......












Todays marriage joke

The wife and I were sitting around the breakfast table one lazy Sunday morning.

I said to her, "If I were to die suddenly, I want you to immediately sell all my stuff."

"Now why would you want me to do something like that?" she asked.

"I figure that you would eventually remarry and I don't want some other asshole using my stuff.."

She looked at me and said: "What makes you think I'd marry another asshole?"













Todays bonus marriage joke.....

Don't Lie to Your Wife

A man called home to his wife and said... 

"Honey I've been asked to go fishing up in Canada with my boss and several of his friends. We'll be gone for a week. This is a good opportunity for me to get that promotion I've been wanting, so could you please pack enough clothes for a week and set out my rod and fishing box.
We're leaving from the office so I'll swing by the house to pick my things up".
"Oh, and please pack my new blue silk pajamas." 

The wife thinks this sounds a bit fishy but being the good wife she is, did exactly what her husband asked.

The following weekend he came home a little tired but otherwise looking good.

The wife welcomed him home and asked if he caught many fish.

He said, "Yes! Lots of salmon, some bluegill, and a few swordfish. But why didn't you pack my new blue silk pajamas like I asked you to do?"

The wife replied, "I did. They're in your fishing box..."
 












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