The Senate voted, 62-37, to approve a six-year renewal of trade promotion authority (TPA), which provides an expedited process to submit trade pacts to Congress.
Barack Obama, and the MAJORITY IN CONGRESS are telling us to trust them on a trade bill which is more top secret than what makes the F-35 a failure, or a success, or how deep the Virginia Class Subs can dive, or how quiet they can be.
Obama has treated us all to DIVISIVENESS whenever there was a chance to bring us together to act. This is true on issues of RACE (Cambridge, the execrable Zimmerman, Ferguson, etc), Economy (Joe the Plumber, Obamacare INCOMPETENCE, direct subsidization of manufacturing instead of pouring all resources into R&D-SOLYNDRA is the icon for that), Foreign Policy (favoring the Muslim Brotherhood EVERYWHERE they exist, serial apologies, and actions towards our allies which strengthen ALL THOSE inimical to our way of life), ET CETERA. And, by the way, if you like your doctor….
Congress BOTH with unstoppable Democratic Majorities, and now Republican majorities has FAILED UTTERLY by in the former case not INSISTING major and painful compromises be made with the R’s on Obamacare, thus investing the opposition in a successful plan,, and now and SIGNIFICANTLY passing this TOP SECRET trade bill.
Well, I don’t trust them. In fact I now have been compelled to think FIRST that whatever Obama and or Congressional leader R OR D say, the opposite is true.
If a trade bill must be secret, it CANNOT benefit the people. PERIOD.
This bill, unless proven otherwise will therefore be another to benefit giant corporations by granting ever more power to the fleeing of jobs, production, resources, expertise, and finally R&D to the lowest labor, and total overall costs. We cannot blame industry for the physics of profit. We can blame them for not insisting those physics benefit the USA. We CAN blame them for taking the new, and greater profits from lower costs overseas and putting too much of it into executive salaries, bonuses, and Board rewards, a bit into lower prices, and a token into the pockets of the middle class. Has anyone looked at the ratio of earnings of the CEO of corporations like Kaiser in/around WW2 compared to companies like GE now?
I can believe I am with Joe Manchin. I am trying to fathom my COMPLETE agreement with Liz Warren.
The truth here is that personal freedom and economic freedom are one and the same. The latter has suffered greatly, and the former is always weakened when that happens (NSA ANYONE? IRS/DHS seizure of personal/small biz deposits).
The military budget, no matter WHAT you think of it, is a direct derivative of our economic well being.
The amount of funds dedicated to medical research (FOR INSTANCE) is a SOCIETAL LUXURY. I never did a demonstration/consult in central africa, a lot of asia, etc
Space program, you say? Oh, you FORGOT about that.
I find that Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and the leadership of both houses are every bit as loathsome as Pelosi and Reid.
There was a time in the 60′s I HELPED ORGANIZE anti Vietnam War demonstrations. There was a time I was active in the Primaries in NH when we lived in Manchester, having D workers live in our home for months, and there was a time I volunteeered OVER AND OVER for the other party after 2001.
DONE.
It’s impossible to vote for a entitled ciphers like Clinton or Bush. It’s impossible to imagine Mr. Rove’s Crossroads has any benefit except to be better than a Bernie Sanders (sorry Bernie, but I remember you as Mayor of Burlington and essentially the CPUSA.. a lot different from being pres).
But if all our freedoms - economy and personal, or position in the world to UNDERWRITE those freedoms, military, engineering, research, education, are built on a growing economy, then THAT must be what is the first consideration in deciding on the next president.
I lost a lot of trust in the office of the president after the Gulf of Tonkin.
I lost MORE when W did not fire EVERYONE responsible (CIA) for lack of foresight in 2001, and thsalen AGAIN when it became obvious that Iraq did not have the WMD capabilities we had been told they had.
I was DISGUSTED by Congress recording that less than 20 of 535 members went to read the National Intelligence Estimate of 2003 before voting for war.
2700 pages for Obamcare, ANOTHER self expanding, self authorizing federal empire? Even I don’t expect any normal person to read and understand such a monstrosity.
We are in REAL, EXISTENTIAL TROUBLE.
We are responsible, not aliens crossing the border, not Russians sending TU-95′s near Norway or Iceland or Backfires in the Baltic, not the Chinese who, BENEFITING FROM THEIR ECONOMY OF LOW COSTS, are building LITERALLY Chinese Island in the Pacific to base their military and expand even further economically.
WE HERE are responsible.
It’s time for a 3rd AND 4th party in the USA to express those thoughts of conservative-libertarian values, and liberal-progressive values.
The 2 party system HAS FAILED US, as evidenced by what has happened in median income. But make no mistake, the first concrete evidence of decay was was US Steel’s failure in the late 70′s to Japanese imports, and then the rush to ‘free trade’ which benefited businesses that could run their cost structure from places like Indonesia where workers were glad to have any job while living in cardboard boxes (Nike, 1996).
I’m ready to think outside the system.
It’s failed.
Anyone else?
4 comments:
Yes, we are in real existential trouble. None of this makes sense.
A few years ago, after the ""Stimulus package" i told MR, the Stimulus did not look like Stimulus to me so much as a cashing out on America by those in charge.
This looks even more like that.
Like a CEO breaking the corporation up into pieces and selling it off for the benefit of Stockholders.
WE THE PEOPLE ARE NOT THE STOCKHOLDERS HERE.
I agree, absolutely, it makes no sense that Obama's approval rating is still in the 40's. Have the American people gone into full blackout mode? Are we this stupid?
I don't understand it.
Yes, we are this stupid. As long as we can have two + cars, several TVs, lap tops, and as many electronic gadgets required to numb our senses, we are happy and do not question reality. Go to any entertainment park like King's Dominion or Disney's and look around. Overweight, "Idiocracy" looking people, chewing on turkey legs and drinking sodas from buckets because "oversizing" it costs just a few pennies. Who needs basic health knowledge, when we can all eat as much as we want?
Try to find Vietnamese immigrants fitting that pattern, or most other immigrants coming from lands where jobs were a privilege, and rights non existent.
As I said before, we fit the proverbial boiled frog, who died smiling, unaware of what was really going on.
As a direct descendant of real patriots, spent that winter at Valley Forge patriots, whom the ORIGINAL George W sent in to Philadelphia to see what those damn British were up to patriots, it seems to me no longer acceptable to vote for the lesser of two evils when I seeboth D and R as threats to the Repuvlic as those patriots envisioned it. If I don't see you as part of tbe solution I'll vote for whomever is. I'll write in if I have to and work to have you defeated. To me it seems the only morally acceptable action to honor the ghosts of those patriots.
And keep in mind tar feathers pitchforks and torches are still readily available.
Very little to do with a two-party system. It is the electorate that has failed. The two-party system managed the rise of the greatest nation and society in the history of mankind. No amount of political fiddling will change what 'we the people' have become, it's all useless.
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