side note: the real sad truth here is Target was allowed to make these contributions because of the recent Supreme Court ruling which freed them to spend CORPORATE funds on elections. This stems directly from Bush and the people he put up on the Supreme Court, which was Roberts and Stevens. These Republicans have no idea what it means to protect the citizens of this country, all they know and all they think about is protecting corporations, since they believe corporations are just like people. the line has got to be drawn somewhere. Talk about Judicial Activism.

A few Target Corp. and Best Buy Co. institutional shareholders weighed in Thursday on the flap over the companies’ political donations in Minnesota, urging the boards of both retailers to increase their oversight of campaign contributions.

Walden Asset Management and Trillium Asset Management Corp., both of Boston, and Bethesda, Md.-based Calvert Asset Management Co. filed shareholder resolutions with both companies. Together, the three firms control less than 1 percent of each company’s outstanding shares — 1.1 million Target shares worth $57.5 million and 344,000 Best Buy shares worth $11.3 million — but they are moving the debate over the political giving to a new arena.

Target gave $150,000 and Best Buy $100,000 to a business-focused political fund helping a conservative Republican gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota, triggering a national backlash from gay rights groups and liberals. The companies made the donations after a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling freed them to spend corporate funds on elections. The candidate, state legislator Tom Emmer, opposes gay marriage and other rights for same-sex couples. (more…)

Matt Taibbi has a new article in the latest Rolling Stone issue that paints the real picture of our current economic situation and where this country is headed. When President Bush came on TV in September of 2008 and insisted that the economy was in a tailspin, and that we needed to bailout the banks…..I saw red flags pop up all over the place. It didn’t help that this guy had lied about virtually everything in his 8 years as head of this country. But something didn’t seem right……Bear Stearns had collapsed back in March of 2008 and the world didn’t come to a halt. Lehman Brothers failed and Earth didn’t stop rotating. So why this need to bailout a few institutions?

Well folks….the answer to that question is another question:
What happens when Wall Street and the Government come together in a “lets fuck over everyone” romance?

Read Taibbi’s article….then head over to your bank and move your money from those greedy, piece of shit financial institutions that don’t care about ethics or this country.

side note: This was something I was worried about when President Dubya announced that we had to bail out the banks, we had to flood our financial institutions with money or the sky was going to fall. Then Henry Paulson goes to Congress with a one page proposal for $700 million dollars, and then Bloomberg news announced they have uncovered that the Federal Reserve used their emergency powers to loan $2 trillion, yes trillion dollars, to unknown entities…on top of the $700 million they were asking for. What raises red flags in my head is that during the entire Bush years…..they used fear tactics to push their agenda through Congress….the American people…whomever they needed to convince. And here they were, once again…following the same script. We know that the neo-cons want to privatize everything….they want to “shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub”. Now…a few years later, we see that no President is going to be able to push their domestic agenda through…b/c there’s no money available, from the below NYTimes article: “there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors.” Do I know for sure that the bailout was bullshit? Nope…not an economics guy myself….but how can these guys do everything wrong, or right if you’re part of the elite in this country…and then suddenly get something correct……just doesn’t add up.

By DAVID E. SANGER
The New York Times

WASHINGTON — In a federal budget filled with mind-boggling statistics, two numbers stand out as particularly stunning, for the way they may change American politics and American power.

The first is the projected deficit in the coming year, nearly 11 percent of the country’s entire economic output. That is not unprecedented: During the Civil War, World War I and World War II, the United States ran soaring deficits, but usually with the expectation that they would come back down once peace was restored and war spending abated.

But the second number, buried deeper in the budget’s projections, is the one that really commands attention: By President Obama’s own optimistic projections, American deficits will not return to what are widely considered sustainable levels over the next 10 years. In fact, in 2019 and 2020 — years after Mr. Obama has left the political scene, even if he serves two terms — they start rising again sharply, to more than 5 percent of gross domestic product. His budget draws a picture of a nation that like many American homeowners simply cannot get above water.

For Mr. Obama and his successors, the effect of those projections is clear: Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors. Beyond that lies the possibility that the United States could begin to suffer the same disease that has afflicted Japan over the past decade. As debt grew more rapidly than income, that country’s influence around the world eroded. (more…)

side note: Here we go again….just another lie put into motion by the criminals who ran our government the last time around! Isn’t it unbelievable that they put a lie in motion, and then justify their actions around that lie. Saddam has WMD’s…..we must go into Iraq. They leak that story to the press, and then go on national tv and say “look, even the press knows about it! Didn’t you read the NYTimes today?!?!” Al-Qaeda has ties with Iraq….we must go to Iraq. The story about the aluminum tubes that that discredited journalist wrote about for the NYTimes…..yep, another reason we had to go into Iraq. Or hey…we know that our country has had the torture debate in the past…we even helped prosecute other people based on that policy. But we want to do it now…so lets have a bunch of lawyers come up with some legal mumbo-jumbo and we’ll be able to do it to! Or the Downing Street Memos that were discovered…….or they pay off journalists to promote their agenda, remember that? And now this…..the guy that “proved” that waterboarding worked….well, he wasn’t even there! This piece of shit should be charged with a crime…..for allowing other criminals to cover up their crimes. He’s a traitor in my eyes……nothing like being angry at 9am!

BY JEFF STEIN
Foreign Policy
A study in “enhanced reporting techniques.”

Well, it’s official now: John Kiriakou, the former CIA operative who affirmed claims that waterboarding quickly unloosed the tongues of hard-core terrorists, says he didn’t know what he was talking about.

Kiriakou, a 15-year veteran of the agency’s intelligence analysis and operations directorates, electrified the hand-wringing national debate over torture in December 2007 when he told ABC’s Brian Ross and Richard Esposito in a much ballyhooed, exclusive interview that senior al Qaeda commando Abu Zubaydah cracked after only one application of the face cloth and water.

“From that day on, he answered every question,” Kiriakou said. “The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.”

No matter that Kiriakou wearily said he shared the anguish of millions of Americans, not to mention the rest of the world, over the CIA’s application of the medieval confession technique.

The point was that it worked. And the pro-torture camp was quick to pick up on Kiriakou’s claim.

“It works, is the bottom line,” conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh exclaimed on his radio show the day after Kiriakou’s ABC interview. “Thirty to 35 seconds, and it works.”

A cascade of similar acclamations followed, muffling — to this day — the later revelation that Zubaydah had in fact been waterboarded at least 83 times. (more…)

side note: WTF? Does anyone else feel like there’s no hope at times? How can I compete with a multi-billion dollar company? I give 50 dollars….they give 50 thousand! Who would you listen to if you were an elected official? We need to get those pieces of shit, Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas off the Supreme court…..they are contributing to downfall of our country. I go back to the 2004 election….and how people said it wasn’t a big deal……

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that corporations may spend as freely as they like to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, easing decades-old limits on business efforts to influence federal campaigns.

By a 5-4 vote, the court overturned a 20-year-old ruling that said companies can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to produce and run their own campaign ads. The decision, which almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.

It leaves in place a prohibition on direct contributions to candidates from corporations and unions.

Critics of the stricter limits have argued that they amount to an unconstitutional restraint of free speech, and the court majority agreed.

”The censorship we now confront is vast in its reach,” Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his majority opinion, joined by his four more conservative colleagues.

Strongly disagreeing, Justice John Paul Stevens said in his dissent, ”The court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation.”

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor joined Stevens’ dissent, parts of which he read aloud in the courtroom.

The justices also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill that barred union- and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns. (more…)

side note: Another great article from Matt Taibbi…read this over lunch, and even though I knew some this stuff, it was filled with tidbits that blew my mind. This has been my biggest issue with President Obama. He either doesn’t understand economics, which I don’t think is correct…..or, after a few years in DC…he has fallen prey to the establishment. I highly recommend you head over to Rolling Stone’s site and check out the article there…has some links and people have already posted comments. Plus…it’s a really cool site with tons of content. We need President Obama to wake up and realize that he needs to deal with the criminals who are currently implementing their economic ideology…which is to continue to fund the rich and fuck the middle class and poor.

by MATT TAIBBI
RollingStone.com

Watch Matt Taibbi discuss “The Big Sellout” in a video on his blog, Taibblog.

Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers “at the expense of hardworking Americans.” Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it’s not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing.

Then he got elected.

What’s taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside.

How could Obama let this happen? Is he just a rookie in the political big leagues, hoodwinked by Beltway old-timers? Or is the vacillating, ineffectual servant of banking interests we’ve been seeing on TV this fall who Obama really is?

Whatever the president’s real motives are, the extensive series of loophole-rich financial “reforms” that the Democrats are currently pushing may ultimately do more harm than good. In fact, some parts of the new reforms border on insanity, threatening to vastly amplify Wall Street’s political power by institutionalizing the taxpayer’s role as a welfare provider for the financial-services industry. At one point in the debate, Obama’s top economic advisers demanded the power to award future bailouts without even going to Congress for approval — and without providing taxpayers a single dime in equity on the deals. (more…)

side note: An awesome article from Vanity Fair, check out their site b/c they have quite a few links backing up some of the facts in this story. I’m a bit torn on this….on one side, I agree with Prince that if he was truly a CIA asset, then he should have the same legal protections as Valerie Plame did….granted her cover was blown based upon politics and he never mentioned this in the article. On the other side of the coin, I’m a true believer in our laws…and that we are governed by those laws and even in times of crisis, we shouldn’t abandon them. Erik Prince is/was a mercenary that broke countless US and international laws. If he does it with the consent of the sitting government……does he get a pass? I don’t believe so…..but that’s just my opinion. What frightens me the most about Blackwater is they were not just working for the US government….they can be contracted by any foreign government as well. To me, that’s a conflict of interest. In addition….he’s someone who clearly sits with the right-wing croud, and I truly believe they have let the American people down by trampling our Constitution that believes in the seperation of powers…..and a host of other illegal acts they have committed to further their agenda.

BY ADAM CIRALSKY
Vanity Fair
JANUARY 2010
Erik Prince, recently outed as a participant in a C.I.A. assassination program, has gained notoriety as head of the military-contracting juggernaut Blackwater, a company dogged by a grand-jury investigation, bribery accusations, and the voluntary-manslaughter trial of five ex-employees, set for next month. Lashing back at his critics, the wealthy former navy seal takes the author inside his operation in the U.S. and Afghanistan, revealing the role he’s been playing in America’s war on terror.

I put myself and my company at the C.I.A.’s disposal for some very risky missions,” says Erik Prince as he surveys his heavily fortified, 7,000-acre compound in rural Moyock, North Carolina. “But when it became politically expedient to do so, someone threw me under the bus.” Prince—the founder of Blackwater, the world’s most notorious private military contractor—is royally steamed. He wants to vent. And he wants you to hear him vent.

Erik Prince has an image problem—the kind that’s impervious to a Madison Avenue makeover. The 40-year-old heir to a Michigan auto-parts fortune, and a former navy seal, he has had the distinction of being vilified recently both in life and in art. In Washington, Prince has become a scapegoat for some of the Bush administration’s misadventures in Iraq—though Blackwater’s own deeds have also come in for withering criticism. Congressmen and lawyers, human-rights groups and pundits, have described Prince as a war profiteer, one who has assembled a rogue fighting force capable of toppling governments. His employees have been repeatedly accused of using excessive, even deadly force in Iraq; many Iraqis, in fact, have died during encounters with Blackwater. And in November, as a North Carolina grand jury was considering a raft of charges against the company, as a half-dozen civil suits were brewing in Virginia, and as five former Blackwater staffers were preparing for trial for their roles in the deaths of 17 Iraqis, The New York Times reported in a page-one story that Prince’s firm, in the aftermath of the tragedy, had sought to bribe Iraqi officials for their compliance, charges which Prince calls “lies … undocumented, unsubstantiated [and] anonymous.” (So infamous is the Blackwater brand that even the Taliban have floated far-fetched conspiracy theories, accusing the company of engaging in suicide bombings in Pakistan.) (more…)

side note: I’m not always the biggest Matthews fan…but this time he made me proud. I am sick and tired of the church (u can pick from the 10,000 different religions out there, this time it happens to be the Catholics) wanting to stick their belief system into our laws. When the 10,000+ kids were getting abused by 100+ priests out there, they didn’t want to be apart of our judicial system….b/c if they were, those scumbags would be in jail, where they belong! Instead, they just decided to cover it up and move the child abusing priests to different cities, so they could prey on other young children…some as young as 8 years old! Where’s the “moral clarity” from the Catholic Church? Oh ya…..hypocrisy screams loud and clear on this one!

side note: A few things as I just wrapped up watching this video…..first and foremost, well done to the folks at New Left Media. Second, for those fuckin twits out there, FOX news in the #1 news source on TV…..they are the main stream media people! That’s why we have so many fuckin idiots in this country. Third…..speaking of FOX news…..watch an evening of that garbage, and then watch this video…..these people, like robots, repeat the talking points they here on such shows as Beck, Hannity and O’Reilly. They are like little talking FOX parrots…….except this time around, Polly needs a friggin brain!

side note: Another win for our cause! Not only is it important for the sick to have access to marijuana, but it could also become a major player in helping to revive our economy. Marijuana is the #1 cash crop in America…yes, it crushes corn, wheat….etc!

by Ryan Grim
Huffington Post

Maine voters became the first to license nonprofit organizations to sell medical marijuana on Tuesday, with the state’s Question 5 cruising to a landslide victory. With roughly half of the precincts reporting, six in ten Maine voters had tallied in favor of allowing state-licensed nonprofits to distribute pot to approved patients.

Two other states — Rhode Island and New Mexico — have approved such nonprofits, but Maine is the first to do so through the ballot box. In California and Colorado, the dispensaries are not specifically regulated as pot shops, but rather as businesses in compliance with state laws.

Rhode Island, New Mexico and Maine, by more tightly regulating distribution, present a model counter to California’s. As more states approve licensed dispensaries, the debate will shift from whether medical marijuana should be legal to how it should be produced and distributed – a resounding victory for advocates and patients.

Thirteen states permit the medical use of marijuana.

Maine’s election result can be partially credited to President Obama’s announcement that he would not raid or prosecute patients or dispensaries in compliance with state laws. The decision was first announced in February and codified in a memo on October 19. (more…)

side note: My girlfriend and I couldn’t stop laughing last night…WTF is this!?!?!

THE PRIVACY SCARF
Thanks Huffington Post!

HuffPost Description: Could also be called the “I’m watching porn in public scarf” or the “I’m required to stay out of schools, parks and other places children congregate scarf”

Check out the other 14 over at the Huffington Post

side note: Still think we’re the best country in the world? Only if you’re fuckin rich! The crazy thing about this is that tons of these kids will come from areas that are heavy Republican controlled….where people literally vote against not only their interests….but their childrens’ interests as well. This is one of the saddest things I’ve read in a long time…….

BY LINDSEY TANNER
Chicago Sun Times
AP

If she didn’t get food stamps, Angie Minix and her two boys would have had to survive on the peanut butter-and-jelly diet.

The Sauk Village mom isn’t alone.

In fact, nearly half of all U.S. children and 90 percent of black youngsters will be on food stamps at some point during childhood, and fallout from the current recession could push those numbers even higher, researchers say.

The estimate comes from an analysis of 30 years of national data, and it bolsters other recent evidence on the pervasiveness of youngsters at economic risk. It suggests that almost everyone knows a family who has received food stamps, or will in the future, said lead author Mark Rank, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis. (more…)

side note: Important aspect of this healthcare debate that isn’t discussed. Who would have thought that only Baseball and Insurance companies are exempt from anti-trust laws. If we could make it so they are playing on a more level playing field…then the Justice Department could look into how their conducting business. My assumption is that most, if not all, would have to change quite a bit to come into line under federal law.

By Bob Buckley
The Examiner
Can not have reform until this changes

Maybe I have missed it, but there has not been any discussion in the healthcare reform debate about what may be the biggest problem health insurance companies have. Actually, it is not a problem for them, but for those of us who have to pay for health insurance, and for physicians who are at the mercy of health insurers for reimbursements.
It is a little known fact that health insurance companies are exempt from the antitrust laws. A law passed at the end of World War II, the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945, exempts health insurance companies from the federal anti-trust legislation that applies to most businesses. Actually, the law gives states the authority to regulate the business of insurance without interference from federal regulation, unless federal law specifically provides otherwise.

Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont has introduced legislation about three weeks ago called the Health Insurance Industry Antitrust Enforcement Act, which removes the exemption or immunity health insurers enjoy. The law would also apply to medical malpractice insurers. Hurrah! (more…)

side note: This is why we need to continue to have conversations with everyone we can. At my last job, I was fairly outspoken about where I stood on many subjects. During the run-up to the 2008 election, I took my role of educating people who clearly didn’t pay attention seriously. One of my co-workers, who I had spoken to previously sent me one of those chain emails going around. Remember when Obama didn’t put his hand over his heart for the National Anthem? Well…this email said that it wasn’t the Anthem, it was the Pledge of Allegiance. And this woman sent a nasty email to me showing me how little “Obama cared about this country”. Of course, I emailed her the YouTube video showing her that it was the Anthem and not the Pledge, and then emailed her 10 videos of Americans at sporting events, singing the Anthem without covering their heart. One of the owners of my past company came out of her office and told me that this wasn’t the place or the time, and that I shoudn’t bring that stuff to work. And I flatly disagreed with her….WE NEED TO BE TALKING TO THESE PEOPLE EVERY CHANCE WE GET….THEY ARE NOT PAYING ATTENTION, AND IF THEY ARE, THEY’RE TURNING ON FOX NEWS FOR 5 MINUTES A DAY! She didn’t like my answer….but sometime you need to stand up for what you believe in, especially if you think you’re making a difference. With that being said, it helped that I was in the owner’s good graces, b/c someone else may have fired me…..but that’s a chance i was willing to take. BTW…that woman, who sent me that email, who was calling Obama…Osama during the summer of ‘08….ya, she voted for Barack in November!! Touchdown Superbowl!!

Media Matters releases new video showing right-wing media’s leading role in driving movement

Washington, DC – Today, Media Matters for America released a new video demonstrating how the conservative echo chamber operates in the age of President Obama. Conservative activists – aided by Fox News, a political organization disguised as a news network – use distortions, lies, and smear tactics to shape public opinion and influence national policy.

Media Matters

side note: There’s a reason that the health care industry was spending 1.4 million dollars a day (not a typo), on lobbying DC politicians to make sure they got the bill they wanted. And now we see the results of that coordinated effort. At the end of the day…..our politicians do not represent the people of their state or district….they represent the corporation who help them get re-elected. This is biggest downside of our system….campaign financing. We need to rid ourselves of this so these snakes in DC can get back to representing their constituents, not big business……..ya, I know, when pigs fly! (Which makes me think of one of my favorite scenes from The Simpsons:

By Noam N. Levey and Lisa Girion
LA TImes
The final bill may well reflect an industry group’s strategy of shaping universal coverage to benefit companies.

As President Obama’s push for a healthcare overhaul moves toward its final act, the oft-vilified health insurance industry is on the verge of seeing a plan enacted that largely protects its financial interests.

That achievement, should it stand up in the final legislation, would be the capstone of a sophisticated lobbying and strategic campaign that began even before Obama was elected president.

The specifics of the healthcare legislation are still being hashed out on Capitol Hill, and key details will evolve in the days ahead. Even so, there is broad agreement that the final plan will, for the first time, require Americans to buy health coverage, with taxpayer subsidies for millions who cannot afford it.

For the health insurance industry, that means millions of new paying customers. What’s more, there are likely to be no limits on what insurers can charge, while at the same time the plan is expected to limit competition from any new national government insurance plan that lawmakers create.

These anticipated wins — from an initiative that has at times been portrayed as doomsday for health insurers — is the result of a strategy developed by one of Washington’s savviest lobbyists, Karen Ignagni. Under Ignagni’s leadership, the industry group America’s Health Insurance Plans adopted the goal of universal coverage while setting out to shape it in a way that benefited insurers — a crucial move that aligned their interests with those of other groups, including consumers and hospitals.

Insurers poured campaign donations into the coffers of key sympathetic members of the House and Senate, and loaded up on lobbyists. And when Obama and other Democrats began attacking the industry, insurers made a strategic choice not to walk away from the negotiating table.

“While so many in this town have been playing checkers, Karen has been playing chess,” said Mark Merritt, a veteran lobbyist who heads the Pharmaceutical Care Management Assn. (more…)