#f*&@kyouWashington

Shock Doctrine.

Eschaton: There Is No Crisis

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What Obama Was Willing to Give Away - NYTimes.com:

"Jonathan Cohn summarizes what seems to have been in the deal that Boehner walked away from; it’s horrifying. Above all, the proposed rise in the age of Medicare eligibility was a real betrayal of both Democratic principles and good government."

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Daily Kos: The Debt Ceiling Battle Was Lost Last December:

"Yes, now President Obama and Democrats have to accept a bad bargain to raise the debt ceiling. But if they had negotiated better last December, they could have made a better bargain then. They didn't. The Deal was a terrible mistake. And 7 months later, people like Bernstein want to forget how the bad deal in December is leading to the bad deal in July/August on the debt ceiling (and the one after that on the budget.)

It is taxes that Republicans care about. It is the one thing that animates the party. In December, President Obama had the biggest stick he is likely to have until after the 2012 elections. He gave it up without getting back what he needed.

It was terrible bargaining and everyone should have been able to see it. Apparently, not everyone did."

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Obama, George H.W. Bush, and the ghosts of 1990 - War Room - Salon.com

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Tweeters rage against the D.C. machine - What's Trending - CBS News:

"#F---YouWashington"

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A conservative Christian did this. Not a brown person. Not a Muslim. A conservative Christian who targeted Liberals.

Norway's Timothy McVeigh.

Norway Attack: Island Survivors On Their 2-Hour Fight For Life

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Right-Wing Pundits Jumped To Blame Muslims And ‘Jihadists’ For Norway Attacks | ThinkProgress

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Daily Kos: Norway attacker was a political Terminator:

"Taking out 80 of the people committed enough to go to the AUF's Utoya summer retreat? That's like sending a Terminator back in time to take out a future Parliamentary leadership.

The crime was unspeakably heinous to begin with. And telling Americans that the killer targeted a 'summer camp,' it was no doubt imagined, would only make it sound worse.

It did. But it didn't really describe the magnitude of the loss for Norway. Nor did it convey the calculated sickness—and the very, very intensely political nature—of what the gunman undertook to do."

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I'll Walk the Picket Line With You

There are some mighty fine fighters in WI.

Daily Kos: Wisconsin - Awestruck, a photo diary

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Where are you, Mr. President?

Flashback from candidate Obama: ‘I’ll walk the picket line with you’�|�Raw Replay:

"During a 2007 campaign speech in Spartanburg, South Carolina, then-Senator Obama told supports he would fight for collective bargaining rights if he was elected president.

“And understand this: If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I’m in the White House, I’ll put on a put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself. I’ll walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States.”"

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Shock Doctrine, U.S.A. - NYTimes.com:

"Here’s a thought: maybe Madison, Wis., isn’t Cairo after all. Maybe it’s Baghdad — specifically, Baghdad in 2003, when the Bush administration put Iraq under the rule of officials chosen for loyalty and political reliability rather than experience and competence."

But, also, Egypt and not in the recent good way.

Legal Schnauzer: Is the United States Becoming More and More Like Egypt?

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There are no budget problems. The problem is lack of revenue. Now where would some revenue be... hmm.....

Exclusive: Non-partisan ‘US Uncut’ group demands corporations pay taxes | The Raw Story:

"WASHINGTON – Corporate tax evasion has evolved into a virtual art form. Two-thirds of US corporations didn't pay so much as a dime in taxes between 1998 and 2005, exploiting a multitude of loopholes, according to a Congressional report."

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Good ol' Ben. Keepin' it real.

Letters of Note: Older mistresses are so grateful!!:

"From the pen of Benjamin Franklin in 1745 comes a once-scandalous letter to an unnamed recipient (very possibly fictitious but rumoured to be Cadwallader Colden) in which he begins by suggesting marriage as the best remedy for the young man's sexual urges. In the event of marriage being out of the question for his friend however, Franklin then goes on to write an eight-strong list detailing the advantages of an older mistress which, due to its 'obscene' nature, resulted in its being omitted from published collections of his writings during the 19th Century."

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Shock Doctrine

More blood on the hands of Fox/Rush/Beck/et al.

Think Progress � Angry About Congress Passing ‘Left-Wing Agenda Items,’ 45-Year-Old Parolee Opens Fire On Cops

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What Digby says always:

Hullabaloo

Therefore, his political advisers should know that when the country is still reeling from unemployment and foreclosures after nearly two years, the passage of an inadequate stimulus bill, which unrealistic benchmarks and a giddy victory party ensured would be the only chance they got, the only people who will consider that a "success" would be beltway insiders. They should have realized that a health care bill that nobody in their right minds would have designed from scratch, the worst aspects of which liberals will be asked to defend for years to come, would be met with dampened enthusiasm by those who watched the process devolve from a sense of progressive purpose to an exhausting farce. They are expected to be able to predict that financial reform without accountability for what's gone before, combined with the administration's unwillingness to confront the civil liberties abuse of the last administration -- indeed expanding on them in some cases -- would show a lack of fundamental concern for justice among those who care about such things.

.........

"Since the Village is essentially a Republican town perhaps they assumed that liberals were all going to be the same dead-enders the Bush cultists were, defending their man until the day he was out of office (and then insisting they never liked him in the first place.) That's what 'little people' (and paid political hacks) are supposed to do. But liberals are not known for cultlike devotion to their leaders --- ask Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter."

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Shock Doctrine. Rinse and Repeat.

Chris Hayes: Deficits are the new Weapons of Mass Destruction:

"Conservatives and their neoliberal allies don't really care about deficits; they care about austerity—about gutting the welfare state and redistributing wealth upward. That's the objective. Deficits are just what they can all agree on, the WMDs of this manufactured crisis."
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"The LIES (WMD's, Deficits are the problem, Death Panels, Maverick), once accepted as gospel by the villagers and their uber-wealthy patrons shall no longer require second thought. Anyone with proof of the fallacy of the gospel of the villagers will be ignored. The burden of providing proof is never on the side of the people who push corporatist policies that harm everyone so the richest may profit. And once the corporatist policies utterly fail everyone who wasn't super rich already ( just like they are supposed to ) the same people who were dead wrong the first time will be right back telling you why they never saw it coming and their NEW idea is just what the doctor ordered."

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Daily Kos: The Facade Is Crumbling: The Fraud and Looting Continue:

"How does one decrease the cost of labor in America? Well first, you have to bust the unions. Check. Then you have to create a pressing need for people to work – perhaps give them easy access to credit and then get them to go so deeply into debt that they will have to work until they die to pay them off. Check. It also helps if you push up the cost of living by manipulating commodity prices. Check. Then, take away people’s retirement savings. Check. Lower interest rates to make savings futile and interest income inadequate. Check. And finally, threaten to take away the 12% a year that people have been saving for retirement by labeling Social Security an 'entitlement' program – as if it wasn’t money Americans worked their whole lives to save and gave to the government in good faith. Check."

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Change you can be appalled by:

Obey: White House Suggested Cutting Food Stamps to Pay for Education Program � The Washington Independent

Health Care Reform Produces Win For Abortion Foes

Halliburton 2Q profit jumps 83 percent | Raw Story

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Very good:

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