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Good Morning!
Canna. (Photo by joanneleon. October 1, 2012)
Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed.
~ Bruce Springsteen
News and Opinion
Obama Campaign Makes Sure You Know Obama Plans to Cut Social Security
President Obama’s performance in the first debate has been widely criticized, particularly his answer to a question about Social Security. As a result, the campaign felt the need to put up a blog post clarifying Obama’s position on Social Security. While the campaign uses some very weaselly phrases to put the best possible spin on Obama’s position, they make it perfectly clear that Obama’s plan includes cutting Social Security benefits.
From the Obama campaign website:
Both President Obama and Mitt Romney know that the program is solvent for more than two decades and that there’s a need for gradual reforms to the benefits that millions of seniors have worked for, paid for, and earned. [...]
The President knows that guaranteed Social Security benefits are not handouts, but a bedrock of the commitment to retirement security America makes to our seniors. He believes that no current beneficiaries should see their basic benefits reduced, and he will not accept any approach that slashes benefits for future generations.
Note that use of the world “slashes.” Obama promises not to reduce benefits for current seniors but promises only to not “slash” benefits for future generations. The only reason to make these two separate promises is if the phrasing mean two different things.
Why I expect Obama to try to cut Social Security
The problem is that by not lying, he’s told us something terrible, disturbing. This wiggle-room language makes me entirely certain that Obama will cut Social Security benefits if he can. Watch in December; let’s see if I (and he) are not true to our words.
What will be the result?
We could be witness to a two-part disaster.
■ One of those disasters could sink the Democratic Party. Here’s Paul Krugman on that:[ ... ]
■ The second disaster is even worse, in my opinion — Obama may well succeed. David Koch has given his go-ahead to tax increases — the only roadblock to the most recent Obama Grand Bargain attempt. The Koch-funded Tea Party office-holders (who are not the Tea Party voters) have been given their marching orders from AFP headquarters — get this done.
If those two — Obama and David Koch — succeed we could see the clock start rolling back before 1934. Once Social Security is means-tested, it’s welfare, not a universal insurance program. Once benefit cuts are started — via changes to the retirement age and cost-of-living adjustments, for example — where will they stop? As I see it, with manufacturing headed to Asia under both parties and belt-tightening the norm, the country’s going to be squeezed for at least another five years, if not decades. All of which is — yep, reason for even more cuts.
Beware the 'Grand Bargain': Post-Election Deficit Deal Threatens Medicare and Social Security
The solution is Improved Medicare for All
After the November election, there will be a major effort in Congress to pass a budget deal that will make cuts in Social Security, raise the Medicare and Social Security eligibility age, and perhaps more–unless we act to stop it with a solution that is close at hand.
There is agreement from the Wall Street Journal’s David Wessel to liberal economists Dean Baker and Paul Krugman that the pressure will be on to reach a Simpson/Bowles type of compromise. Such a bipartisan plan would damage our most cherished programs and excuse the dastardly deed by asserting that the cuts are small and necessary because of the deficit.
[...]
The projected cuts are not minor but very harmful. Even a small decrease in the Social Security Cost of Living Adjustment would deliver an ever increasing downward push on benefits while corporations continue to threaten secure pensions by turning them into lump sums that will fade with the stock market.
Raising the Medicare age to 67 would be disastrous. There will be no affordable health insurance for those in their 60’s. The Affordable Care Act allows private insurance companies to charge premiums three times higher based on age. Under popular pressure, there were regulations placed into the health care reform bill to stop insurance companies from charging higher premiums based on pre-existing conditions. But the companies were allowed to charge three times the premium based on age.
Because of this allowed age discrimination, the Kaiser Foundation estimates that an individual of age 60 in 2014 with an annual income of $50,000 will pay a health insurance premium of over $10,000, or over 20% of income. That does not include out-of-pocket costs which can add up to an additional $6,000 annually. That brings the total to 32% of income—a bankrupting figure.
Obama and Biden Need to Get Specific About Social Security and Medicare
Do vague statements on Social Security now set the stage for “grand compromises” in the future?
But this has do go deeper than debating points. Americans need real assurances.
Poll after poll confirms the popularity of Social Security, as well as the strong preference on the part of voters of all regions, parties and ideological trendencies that the program should be protected from cuts when politicians address debts and deficits.
[...]
Even before his bumbling debate performance, Obama sent conflicting signals about Social Security. That’s troubling to Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who has emerged as perhaps the most determined defender of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
[...]
“I fear very much that there is a possibility that in a lame-duck session (after the election), President Obama and Democratic leaders will be pressured to make cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid in exchange for some modest revenue increases — much of which will end up coming not from the wealthy but from the middle class,” Sanders told The Nation. “That’s not the way to go, but I’m convinced there are Democrats who are prepared to make that compromise.”
What price basic competence in economics reporting?
What chance do policy-makers and the public have if business journalists are so wildly wrong? We need some accountability
One of the reasons that the United States and much of the rest of world remains mired in near-recession conditions is that many involved in the policy debate are completely confused on even the most basic facts of the downturn. The Washington Post exemplified this sort of confusion in a front-page article last week that labored over the problem of savings being so high. The article offered a variety of explanations and talked to several exports about the problem of "households … squirreling away cash".
The problem with the article is that people actually are not saving excessively. In fact, contrary to the premise of the article, the saving rate remains unusually low, not high. The saving rate in the second quarter of 2012 was 4.0%. By comparison, it averaged 8.3% in the 1960s, 9.6% in the 70s, 8.6% in the 80s. Even with the stock market-driven consumption boom of the late 90s, the saving rate averaged 5.5% for the decade as a whole.
The Maimed
Who are our brothers and sisters? Who is our family? Whom have we become? We have become those whom we once despised and killed. We have become the enemy. Our mother is the mother grieving over her murdered child, and we murdered this child, in a mud-walled village of Afghanistan or a sand-filled cemetery in Fallujah. Our father is the father lying on a pallet in a hut, paralyzed by the blast from an iron fragmentation bomb. Our sister lives in poverty in a refugee camp outside Kabul, widowed, desperately poor, raising her children alone. Our brother, yes, our brother, is in the Taliban and the Iraqi insurgency and al-Qaida. And he has an automatic rifle. And he kills. And he is becoming us. War is always the same plague. It imparts the same deadly virus. It teaches us to deny another’s humanity, worth, being, and to kill and be killed.
[...]
We cannot flee from evil. Some of us have tried through drink and drugs and self-destructiveness. Evil is always with us. It is because we know evil, our own evil, that we do not let go, do not surrender. It is because we know evil that we resist. It is because we know violence that we are nonviolent. And we know that it is not about us; war taught us that. It is about the other, lying by the side of the road. It is about reaching down in defiance of creeds and oaths, in defiance of religion and nationality, and lifting our enemy up. All acts of healing and love—and the defiance of war is an affirmation of love—allow us to shout out to the vast powers of the universe that, however broken we are, we are not yet helpless, however much we despair we are not yet without hope, however weak we may feel, we will always, always, always resist. And it is in this act of resistance that we find our salvation.
Commentary: What happens in foreign policy after election ends?
Remember that awkward presidential open microphone incident?
It happened last March in Seoul, South Korea, when President Obama was speaking with then-Russian President Dmitry Medveded. As the men sat side by side waiting for the press to assemble for a news conference, Obama leaned in close and whispered into Medvedev’s ear. In that intimate moment, unaware that his private words would be recorded and broadcast throughout the world, Obama sent a message to Russia’s real leader, then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin regarding a contentious plan to place American missiles near Russia.
“This is my last election,” Obama noted. “After my election I have more flexibility.”
[ ... ]
On that March day in Seoul, Obama accidentally revealed one of the dirty secrets of any campaign. Voters already knew that words and deeds on an election year are affected by the push to win votes. It is a challenge for voters, and journalists, to push back for answers.
Election year garbage
Whatever is awful about the US political process is magnified in the election season, and increases each day until it's mercifully over
To summarize: in light of extreme anti-American sentiment, we must drone-bomb more, kill Iranian civilians with sanctions, send more symbols of military occupation to their region, move still closer to Israel (which could only be accomplished by some sort of new surgical procedure to collectively implant us inside of them), and even more vigorously support the repressive Gulf regimes. In other words, to solve the problem of anti-American hatred in the region, we must do more and more of exactly that which - quite rationally - generates that hatred.
[...]
This was reflective of the two-pronged consensus in Democratic partisan circles yesterday: (1) Romney's foreign policy speech advocated what is basically a replica of what Obama is already doing; (2) when it comes to foreign policy, Romney is a dangerous, bellicose extremist. Both of those propositions are hard to dispute (the second is harder than the first), and the combination of those two precepts - and the logical conclusion it generates - is particularly worth reflecting on today, the third anniversary of the selection of Barack Obama as the 2009 recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace.
[...]
It's a bit bizarre, to put that generously, to insist that protecting Social Security is one of the prime reasons to dedicate oneself to Obama's re-election when he not only worked hard to cut that program substantially, but himself said just last week that he and his opponent have a "somewhat similar position" on that issue.
Whatever is awful about the American political process is magnified in the election season, and exponentially intensifies each day as the election approaches. That would all be perfectly tolerable if not for the fact that the election process is 18 months long, or close to 1/3 of each president's term. One of the most effective tactics for keeping the electorate distracted and confused is ensuring that the time when they pay the most attention to the political process is exactly the time when political reality is most obscured.
Movements Need Politicians—and Vice Versa
The familiar question of whether we work on electoral politics or on movement politics is fraught with emotion and argument about whether movement or electoral politics is more effective for the left. We think it is the wrong question. Both are needed, and without both, neither is effective.
[...]
It’s also worth remembering that when politicians are dependent on electoral blocs that are also movement constituencies, they will often hesitate to use the full arsenal of the state’s repressive capacities against movement actions and may even make uncertain efforts to protect movements—as when Robert Kennedy, as attorney general, grudgingly tried to protect the Freedom Riders.
Sesame made it pretty clear from day one that they were not keen on dragging Big Bird out there for petty political purposes but that was largely ignored by the campaign and it basically forced their hand -- yesterday they told the Obama campaign to pull their new ad. It was a ridiculous effort anyway. Sesame probably did them a favor by shutting the whole thing down. Maybe they will now focus on some of the critical issues facing millions of Americans.
Big Bird Says Neither Obama Nor Mitt Know Who Our Bankster Enemies Are
DOJ isn’t even joining in the what’s-old-is-new suit against JP Morgan and Bear Stearns, five years later, and Eric Schneiderman isn’t charging any human beings there.
This ad shows well that Mitt doesn’t understand which villans threaten our country.
But it also shows that Obama has the very same willful misunderstanding.
How the US Quietly Lost the IED War in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON - Although the surge of “insider attacks” on U.S.-NATO forces has dominated coverage of the war in Afghanistan in 2012, an even more important story has been quietly unfolding: the U.S. loss of the pivotal war of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to the Taliban.
Some news outlets have published stories this year suggesting that the U.S. military was making “progress” against the Taliban IED war, but those stories failed to provide the broader context for seasonal trends or had a narrow focus on U.S. fatalities. The bigger reality is that the U.S. troop surge could not reverse the very steep increase in IED attacks and attendant casualties that the Taliban began in 2009 and which continued through 2011.
[...]
The damage from IEDs was far more serious, however, than even those figures suggest, because the injuries to dismounted patrols included far more “traumatic amputation” of limbs – arms and legs blown off by bombs – and other more severe wounds than had been seen in attacks on armoured vehicles.
A June 2011 Army task force report described a new type of battle injury – “Dismount Complex Blast Injury”– defined as a combination of “traumatic amputation of at least one leg, a minimum of severe injury to another extremity, and pelvic, abdominal, or urogenital wounding.”
The report confirmed that the number of triple limb amputations in 2010 alone had been twice the total in the previous eight years of war.
UN envoy: Afghanistan not headed for collapse
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The international community will continue supporting Afghanistan after U.S. and NATO combat forces leave the war-wracked nation by the end of 2014, a top U.N. envoy said Tuesday.
[...]
"The international community is ready to do everything possible to support Afghanistan and frankly, to help Afghanistan not lapse into these kind of doom-and-gloom scenarios that are coming from different places," said Kubis, the U.N. envoy to Afghanistan.
Arrested Greek anti-fascist protesters claim ‘Abu Ghraib-style’ humiliation
Fifteen anti-fascist protesters arrested in Athens during a clash with supporters of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn have said they were tortured in the Attica General Police Directorate (GADA) – the Athens equivalent of Scotland Yard – and subjected to what their lawyer describes as an Abu Ghraib-style humiliation.
Members of a second group of 25 who were arrested after demonstrating in support of their fellow anti-fascists the next day said they were beaten and made to strip naked and bend over in front of officers and other protesters inside the same police station.
Several of the protesters arrested after the first demonstration on Sunday 30 September told the Guardian they were slapped and hit by a police officer while five or six others watched, were spat on and “used as ashtrays” because they “stank”, and were kept awake all night with torches and lasers being shone in their eyes.
Plucky Little Turkey Standing Up to Evil Syria? It's Not as Simple as That
Turkey is funnelling weapons and armed men across the border into Syria
How the government howled. With the help of a neighbouring state, "terrorists" were trying to destroy the government and its army, blowing up and murdering its supporters. "Terrorists" were crossing the international border, arms were being shipped over the frontier and given to rebels fighting the government, "non-lethal" aid was being sent to the opposition. I couldn't help remembering this when I crossed that same border four days ago. Not from Turkey into Syria, but from the Irish Republic into Northern Ireland.
There, to the left of the Newry road on a plateau of rock and green grass, lay the broken wire-mesh anti-mortar screen which once guarded the fortress where British troops – so often attacked by the IRA from Dundalk in the Republic – guarded the border. When the British-supported government of Northern Ireland turned on its Catholics in 1969, thousands of Catholic refugees flooded across the border into the Republic. Sound familiar? When British paratroopers were ambushed at Warrenpoint, soldiers fired back across the border at a "terrorist". He wasn't a terrorist, but an innocent holidaymaker. The IRA gave press conferences in pleasant Dublin suburbs and, oh my, the British government howled.
Odd how these things get forgotten. Now it is plucky little Turkey, hosting the opposition to the Syrian regime, funnelling weapons and armed men across the border into Syria – encouraging the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad – which is the victim. The IRA's' "terrorism" against the occupying Brits has been transmogrified into the valiant Syrian resistance against a vile Alawite-led regime whose Baathist acolytes must be crushed in order to bring democracy to Damascus, etc, etc.
Now the usual caveat – which will be forgotten by those who wish to accuse the writer of being a member of the Syrian intelligence service: Bashar al-Assad is a despot, his regime is awful, its policemen torture on a scale that would stun the RUC thugs who beat up their Catholic prisoners in Castlereagh, and Syrian militias fill mass graves; there were no mass graves in Northern Ireland.
BUT. When it comes to international law, to moral compromise, to sheer hypocrisy, the Western powers take the biscuit. La Clinton raves on about Syrian depravity when Syrian shells slaughter a Turkish woman and her four children – which they did – but gives succour to the gunmen who torture and kill and suicide-bomb the regime's supporters inside Syria. Clinton's predecessors at the State Department took a quite different view about Northern Ireland. William Hague rabbits on about our "non-lethal" aid to Syrian rebels; but didn't the Irish authorities give "non-lethal aid" (bandages, funds, intelligence information) to our political and military enemies in Northern Ireland?
Blog Posts and Tweets of Interest
The Evening Blues 10-9-12
US Delegation's Message of Peace Received Warmly in Pakistan - by Medea Benjamin and Robert Naiman
Obama Campaign Makes Sure You Know Obama Plans to Cut Social Security
'The Raiders of Your Lost Retirement' -- Obama Campaign Website Weasels on Social Security
Transgender Health Tales: One movie and two websites
Bruce Springsteen - We Take Care Of Our Own
Remember when progressive debate was about our values and not about a "progressive" candidate? Remember when progressive websites championed progressive values and didn't tell progressives to shut up about values so that "progressive" candidates can get elected?
Come to where the debate is not constrained by oaths of fealty to persons or parties.
Come to where the pie is served in a variety of flavors.
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." ~ Noam Chomsky
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