Thursday, April 12, 2012
Friday, March 23, 2012
2012: The Year The Republican Party Could Die
NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 16: An Occupy Wall Street protester sits in Zuccotti Park a day after it was cleared of the Occupy Wall Street camp in an early morning police raid on November 16, 2011 in New York city. Hundreds of protesters, who rallied against economic inequality in America, have slept in tents and under tarps since Sept. 17 in Zuccotti Park. A New York judge ruled Tuesday that the protesters could return to Zuccotti Park but couldn’t set up tents or sleep in the park. Zuccotti Park became the epicenter of the global Occupy Wall Street movement. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)The Right To Peaceful Assembly In New York CityThere is no stopping The Occupy Movement, TOM. Winter is over. Spring is here. And that is all the movement was waiting for. (Occupy Wall Street Could Legitimately Go Indoors) If the movement had not known the winter was going to be as mild as it was, there was never even going to be a break.
The Democratic Mayors of America have a choice to make. Granted the Mayor of NYC is not a Democrat, but he is a former Democrat. And every other elected official in the city is a Democrat, pretty much. The Democratic Party has a choice to make. Either the Occupy movement will breathe new life into the Democratic Party, or it will end up being its own political party.
America might continue to be a two party democracy. But one of those two parties might as well be the Occupy Party. Not now. But who knows where we will stand a year from now?
All the Democratic Mayors have to do is facilitate and celebrate the Occupiers' right to peaceful assembly. If they can't do that the Occupy movement is going to split from the Democratic Party and create its own party.
Total campaign finance reform within the first 100 days of Barack Obama's second term is the only thing that will quench the Occupy movement. Nothing less will. Should that goal be met, then the leaders of the Occupy movement could move on to running for elected office all over the country at all levels of government, armed with nothing more than social media. A new breed politician is about to be born.
The Right To Peaceful Assembly In New York City
Occupy Wall Street protesters have taken over Zuccotti Park as a base of operations. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)It blows my mind that Zuccotti Park is private. It absolutely blows my mind. While we are at it why don't we privatize Central Park as well? Maybe The Donald will buy it. What about Prospect Park? I mean. Isn't there a budget deficit or something? What are parks for? This city needs to buy back Zuccotti Park at the earliest, like this year. And give it to the Occupy people. The Occupy people put New York City on the world map last year like nobody and nothing else. That has to be honored. It is called saying thank you.
Ends up there is no right to peaceful assembly in New York City. There is a right to peaceful assembly in New York City just like there is a right to free speech in Syria. Assad was asked about free speech a few years back. He said, there is free speech in Syria. As long as people are respectful and decent in what they say. Otherwise you will have chaos, he said. Imagine that. Chaos.
There are people in this city who think the Occupy people doing their 24/7 thing in Zuccotti Park last year was chaos. Do they smell? They asked. It took a Time magazine to see the Occupier's worth, and people running this city still don't get it.
And this city is supposed to be the progressive capital of the world? I am not feeling it. I am not feeling the love.
10 million people joining a Facebook group could not have done what 200 people camping out 24/7 in Zuccotti Park did. It had to happen in person. It had to happen 24/7. It needed to happen in a public place.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Russian, Chinese Stands On Syria: Great News
Russia's Putin Feeding Bashar Assad Syrian's Blood (Photo credit: FreedomHouse)For those who don't think Russia and China are just too big, and so there's no hope for democracy entering those domains, their wrong stands on Syria is an opportunity to expose them. Unless they come on board, Libya like military action is not possible, necessary but not possible. But there are so many other options. There is always room for unilateral military action. Aerial bombardments are an option for NATO. America is not seeking Russian and Chinese approval for any possible military action on Iran. But there are several options before that. One is getting the Syrian opposition better organized. That is political work. And the opposition army in Syria could be provided help. So there is no global military action. But there is action on the ground by those who have rightfully defected from the Syrian Army.
Homs Is Benghazi
The best strategy on Russia and China is to engage them. Let them spell out all their arguments. The more they speak in support of a dictator the more they themselves get exposed. People in Russia are listening. People in China are listening. Syria is a great opportunity to expose the dictatorship in Russia. Russia is an example of how you can have elections and still not have democracy.
MSNBC: US drones monitoring clashes in Syria
In a show of support for Assad, China's vice foreign minister, Zhai Jun, arrived in Damascus after the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution telling the increasingly isolated president to halt the crackdown and surrender power.
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Republican Porridge (2)
Santorum Drops By Iowa State Fair (Photo credit: Talk Radio News Service)Republican PorridgeWall Street Journal: Santorum Delivers a GOP Stunner
Rick Santorum jolted the Republican presidential race Tuesday with a three-state sweep of nominating contests in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota, puncturing Mitt Romney's claim to be the unstoppable front-runner...... Of the eight nominating contests so far, Mr. Santorum has now won four, while Mr. Romney has won three and Newt Gingrich one—a tally that seemed unlikely only a few days ago. ..... Mr. Santorum's Missouri victory margin was substantial: He won 75,000 more votes than Mr. Romney and 29,000 more than Mr. Romney's combined Iowa and Nevada totals..... what could be a long, state-by-state fight for convention delegates. ...... Super Tuesday..... In a sign of how the race was leaping toward that showdown, Mr. Gingrich spent most of Tuesday campaigning in Ohio, a Super Tuesday state, while Mr. Romney planned to fly Wednesday to Georgia, which also votes that day.
Homs Is Benghazi
Image via WikipediaAnd it is time for international military action. The reason China and Russia are opposed is the reason the Burmese General shifted his capital to some remote location once Bush did what he did to Saddam. The Burmese dictator identified closely with Saddam.
Working to get China and Russia to come on board is less about Syria and more about China and Russia.
The Response To Benghazi Has To Be In Tripoli
The Military Options
Don't Let Benghazi Fall
The Guardian: Inside Homs: 'We are seriously dying here. It is really war'
the Syrian army is carrying out a ferocious bombardment against helpless civilians ..... Elsewhere in Syria there appears to be growing evidence that in the wake of diplomatic failure, and Russia and China's veto of a UN resolution to end the bloodshed in the country, Bashar al-Assad, Syria's president, has decided to launch a conclusive military offensive against the rebels. ...... Activists in the former opposition stronghold of Zabadani, 20 miles north-west of Damascus, described how hundreds of tanks were pounding the town. The opposition Free Syrian Army effectively took control of Zabadani last month. Now, the Syrian army was on the brink of taking it back. ...... "There are about 300 tanks besieging the city from four positions. I saw so many tanks I couldn't count them," activist Fares Mohamad told the Guardian, using the town's only functioning phone. ...... more than 1,200 families had fled to Bloudan, to the east of Zabadani, adding that the encircled town had no gas or fuel or communications. ...... The regime's tactics had been entirely cynical, he said, with the mountain town's fire station and hospital among the first targets, so there was nowhere to treat the injured. ...... "I call upon Erdogan in Turkey. I call upon Emir Hamad of Qatar. I call upon King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. I call upon all the Muslims of the world to put pressure on Bashar, the monster." ...... The prospects for the civilians stuck in Homs appear bleak. Raji said there was now no way in or out of the town, with residents sheltering in the ground floor or basements of houses. "I myself am trying to get my family out, especially my sisters. But the problem is that no-one can get out," he said...... he said there was perplexity that the world was taking its cue from Russia and China ...... "We don't believe that Russia and China are more powerful than the whole world. And we don't understand why the world can't open a humanitarian corridor to help us."'Syrian uprising has sparked proxy regional war' - video
Friday, January 27, 2012
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
Andrew Sullivan: Talking Like A True Conservative
Image via WikipediaThe Daily Beast: Andrew Sullivan: How Obama's Long Game Will Outsmart His CriticsWhen Obama took office, the United States was losing around 750,000 jobs a month. The last quarter of 2008 saw an annualized drop in growth approaching 9 percent. This was the most serious downturn since the 1930s, there was a real chance of a systemic collapse of the entire global financial system, and unemployment and debt—lagging indicators—were about to soar even further. No fair person can blame Obama for the wreckage of the next 12 months, as the financial crisis cut a swath through employment. Economies take time to shift course. ...... Obama did several things at once: he continued the bank bailout begun by George W. Bush, he initiated a bailout of the auto industry, and he worked to pass a huge stimulus package of $787 billion. ....... The job collapse bottomed out at the beginning of 2010, as the stimulus took effect. Since then, the U.S. has added 2.4 million jobs. ...... In 2011 alone, 1.9 million private-sector jobs were created, while a net 280,000 government jobs were lost. Overall government employment has declined 2.6 percent over the past 3 years. (That compares with a drop of 2.2 percent during the early years of the Reagan administration.) ....... the stimulus did exactly what it was supposed to do. It put a bottom under the free fall. It is not an exaggeration to say it prevented a spiral downward that could have led to the Second Great Depression. ....... Not only did he agree not to sunset the Bush tax cuts for his entire first term, he has aggressively lowered taxes on most Americans. A third of the stimulus was tax cuts, affecting 95 percent of taxpayers; he has cut the payroll tax, and recently had to fight to keep it cut against Republican opposition. ....... Under Bush, new policies on taxes and spending cost the taxpayer a total of $5.07 trillion. Under Obama’s budgets both past and projected, he will have added $1.4 trillion in two terms. Under Bush and the GOP, nondefense discretionary spending grew by twice as much as under Obama. ........ Obamacare .. will reduce the deficit ...... based on the individual mandate, an idea pioneered by the archconservative Heritage Foundation, Newt Gingrich, and, of course, Mitt Romney, in the past. ...... Like Obama’s Race to the Top education initiative, it sets standards, grants incentives, and then allows individual states to experiment. Embedded in it are also a slew of cost-reduction pilot schemes to slow health-care spending. Yes, it crosses the Rubicon of universal access to private health care. But since federal law mandates that hospitals accept all emergency-room cases requiring treatment anyway, we already obey that socialist principle—but in the most inefficient way possible. Making 44 million current free-riders pay into the system is not fiscally reckless; it is fiscally prudent. ......... Obama reversed Bush’s policy of ignoring Osama bin Laden, immediately setting a course that eventually led to his capture and death. And when the moment for decision came, the president overruled both his secretary of state and vice president in ordering the riskiest—but most ambitious—plan on the table. He even personally ordered the extra helicopters that saved the mission. It was a triumph, not only in killing America’s primary global enemy, but in getting a massive trove of intelligence to undermine al Qaeda even further. ........ where Bush talked tough and acted counterproductively, Obama has simply, quietly, relentlessly decimated our real enemies, while winning the broader propaganda war. Since he took office, al Qaeda’s popularity in the Muslim world has plummeted. ........ By hanging back a little, by “leading from behind” in Libya and elsewhere, Obama has made other countries actively seek America’s help and reappreciate our role. As an antidote to the bad feelings of the Iraq War, it has worked close to perfectly. ....... From the start, liberals projected onto Obama absurd notions of what a president can actually do in a polarized country, where anything requires 60 Senate votes even to stand a chance of making it into law. ....... A depression was averted. The bail-out of the auto industry was—amazingly—successful. Even the bank bailouts have been repaid to a great extent by a recovering banking sector. The Iraq War—the issue that made Obama the nominee—has been ended on time and, vitally, with no troops left behind. Defense is being cut steadily, even as Obama has moved his own party away from a Pelosi-style reflexive defense of all federal entitlements. Under Obama, support for marriage equality and marijuana legalization has crested to record levels. Under Obama, a crucial state, New York, made marriage equality for gays an irreversible fact of American life. Gays now openly serve in the military, and the Defense of Marriage Act is dying in the courts, undefended by the Obama Justice Department. Vast government money has been poured into noncarbon energy investments, via the stimulus. Fuel-emission standards have been drastically increased. Torture was ended. Two moderately liberal women replaced men on the Supreme Court. Oh, yes, and the liberal holy grail that eluded Johnson and Carter and Clinton, nearly universal health care, has been set into law. Politifact recently noted that of 508 specific promises, a third had been fulfilled and only two have not had some action taken on them. To have done all this while simultaneously battling an economic hurricane makes Obama about as honest a follow-through artist as anyone can expect from a politician. ......... the slow and deliberate and unprovocative manner in which it was accomplished made the changes more durable. ....... there are long stretches when Obama seems incapable of defending himself, or willing to let others to define him, or simply weak ........... remember whose strategy won out in the end. ...... This is where the left is truly deluded. By misunderstanding Obama’s strategy and temperament and persistence, by grandstanding on one issue after another, by projecting unrealistic fantasies onto a candidate who never pledged a liberal revolution, they have failed to notice that from the very beginning, Obama was playing a long game. He did this with his own party over health-care reform. He has done it with the Republicans over the debt. He has done it with the Israeli government over stopping the settlements on the West Bank—and with the Iranian regime, by not playing into their hands during the Green Revolution, even as they gunned innocents down in the streets. Nothing in his first term—including the complicated multiyear rollout of universal health care—can be understood if you do not realize that Obama was always planning for eight years, not four. ....... excising the cancer of torture from military detention and military justice ....... We’ve already elected the nation’s first black president and replaced a tongue-tied dauphin with a man of peerless eloquence. ....... Obama has steadfastly refrained from waging the culture war ...... the only way out of that deadlock is an electoral rout of the GOP, since the language of victory and defeat seems to be the only thing it understands. ........ a president who has conducted himself with grace and calm under incredible pressure, who has had to manage crises not seen since the Second World War and the Depression, and who as yet has not had a single significant scandal to his name
Gonna Find Out The State Of The Union
@paramendra
Paramendra Bhagat Going to find out the state of the union tomorrow. http://t.co/Zu2RP6T1 Riviera Cafe (225 West 4th St.) 7:30 - 11:00 pm
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