Taliban withdraws from peace talks. Probably a good thing for Mr. O, negotiating with the enemy would have likely been spun as weakness. So now we have no choice but complete victory or total defeat.

UN report condemns USA for torture of citizen and lack of due process.

[Edited on March 15, 2012 at 12:34 PM. Reason : .]

3/15/2012 12:31:19 PM

long, but good read on the White House's continued war on whistleblowers and journalists:

http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/obamas_personal_role_in_a_journalists_imprisonment/singleton/

3/15/2012 12:35:43 PM

Iran is democratic.

Osama is dead.

Taliban is on the run.

Time to high tail, and let them regroup

Next time they'll be uber fucking pissed. Since we started it all.

[Edited on March 15, 2012 at 12:37 PM. Reason : -]

3/15/2012 12:37:14 PM

Mr. O is going to have to start cracking down on this negative journalism if he's going to win another election.

3/15/2012 12:37:49 PM

^ according to law now he won't have to do shit

3/15/2012 12:38:38 PM

http://unescoeducation.blogspot.com/2012/03/obama-administration-seeks-unesco.html

Obama admin looking to reinstate UNESCO funding. If they can pull this off, i'd be impressed.

3/16/2012 1:55:25 AM

UNESCO is a liberal plot to use global government to stop job creators from drilling for oil under Uluru and the Great Pyramids

3/16/2012 9:31:15 AM

Update: Yeah, GOP's "OBAMACARE COST DOUBLE" story was indeed utter bullshittery

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-cohn/101741/cbo-obamacare-cost-deficit-lie-double-price-fox

Quote :

"Sorting through the deceptive attacks on health care reform gets old, even for me. But on Wednesday the Republicans and their allies made a claim so obviously misleading that they, and the media outlets parroting them, must have known they spreading false information. The basis for the claim is the Congressional Budget Office’s latest projections for the Affordable Care Act, which critics (and I!) like to call Obamacare. When Congress first passed the law, in the spring of 2010, CBO made official estimates of how much the law would cost, how many people would get insurance as a result, and so on. It updated that estimate one year later and has, now, updated it one more time. The CBO distributed its report in the morning and, by 11 a.m., Republican offices on Capitol Hill were spitting out press releases about it. According to the Republicans, CBO had discovered that Obamacare was going to cost $1.76 trillion over the next ten years. “The CBO’s revised cost estimate indicates that this massive government intrusion into America’s health care system will be far more costly than was originally claimed,” Tom Price, chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, said. Within a few hours, both Fox News and the Washington Times were carrying online stories making the same claim. According to the Fox News account, CBO was “showing that the bill is substantially more expensive—twice as much as the original $900 billion price tag.” If CBO had truly determined that health care reform’s cost will be twice the original estimates, it would be huge news. But CBO said nothing of the sort. To figure out the cost of health care reform, CBO looks at each of the law’s component parts and, for accounting purposes, groups them into different categories. It calls one category “gross cost of coverage expansions”—that’s the amount of money the federal government will spend to help people get insurance, mostly by offering Medicaid to more people or giving people subsidies they can use to help offset the cost of private insurance. Last year, CBO estimated that the gross cost of coverage expansion from 2012 through 2021 would be $1.445 trillion. Now CBO thinks the gross cost will be $1.496 trillion. The number shifted, in part, because the CBO has changed its projections for economic growth. (MSNBC’s Tom Curry has a nice explanation of this.) But, in the context of such a large a budget projection, that’s barely any difference at all. In the this latest estimate, CBO extends its projection out one more year, to capture the expenses from 2012 to 2022, in order to capture a full decade. In 2022, CBO says, the gross cost of coverage expansion will be $265 billion. Add that to the $1.496 and you get (with rounding) the $1.76 trillion—the one in the press releases and the Fox story. But there is nothing new or surprising about this. It’s only slightly more money than the previous year’s outlays. The ten-year number seems to jump only because the time frame for the estimate has moved, dropping one year, 2011, and adding another, 2022.Obamacare has virtually no outlays in 2011, because the Medicaid expansion and subsidies don’t start up until 2014, which means the shifting time frame drops a year of no implementation and adds one of full implementation. Still, doesn’t that just validate what the law’s critics have always said, that the administration was playing games to hide the program’s true impact on the deficit? Hardly. Remember, this is just the raw cost of expanding insurance coverage we’re talking about here—in other words, the money the federal government is sending out the door. The new law also calls for new revenue, in the form of taxes and penalties. It also reduces spending, mostly through Medicare, to help offset the cost of the coverage expansion. When the Affordable Care Act became law, CBO estimated that the net result of all these changes, taken together, would be to reduce the deficit. Now, with this revised estimate, CBO has decided the law will reduce the deficit by even more money. Yes, you read that right: The real news of the CBO estimate is that, according to its models, health care reform is going to save even more taxpayer dollars than previously thought. I want to be clear about something. The Affordable Care Act has flaws: Among other things, it reaches fewer people and provides less financial protection than I would prefer. The revised CBO report actually suggests this problem will get mildly worse, since it also expects slightly fewer people to end up with insurance. That’s one reason why the law will cost less; it’s helping fewer people. Another reason is that more employers pay penalties for not offering insurance and more people pay penalties pay penalties for not obtaining it. That’s obviously not great, either. The report also had one finding that give us at least a little pause: CBO now projects the number of people with employer-sponsored insurance will drop by 4 million people, on net. It’s still a small effect, representing less than 2 percent of the total population with employer-sponsored coverage. That’s well within the margin of error of these models. It’s also difficult to tell why CBO thinks this will happen—whether it’s fewer employers offering insurance, fewer employees accepting coverage, or workers moving into firms that are less likely to provide benefits. Any of those would be consistent with lower economic growth, as CBO now expects. Still, the issue merits attention. (If I can get a more detailed explanation of why CBO thinks this will happen, I’ll update this item.) But these aren’t the nuanced claims Republicans and their allies are making. Nor are their complaints consistent with this general point of view. On the contrary, if they had their way, health care reform would reach even fewer people and provide less protection. Meanwhile, the bottom line about Obamacare really hasn’t changed. Notwithstanding these latest adjustments, CBO still thinks it will mean about 30 million additional people get insurance, that insurance will become more secure for those who have it, that the law will more than pay for itself in the first ten years, and that, over the long run, the law will reduce the deficit."

Whether or not you're pro-Obamacare: Read the article, then read the right's characterizations. You don't have to like Obamacare to admit that Fox, Rush, and the right wing media in general were tossing out bald-faced lies on this one.

3/16/2012 5:00:45 PM

I refuse to believe things that fly in the face of my pre-conceived notions.

3/16/2012 6:21:17 PM

i can't wait for Standard & Poor's to be the next target for liberals for downgrading our credit rating


why on earth would they do that??!??!!?


'don't worry fellow citizens, the chinese will always be there to lend us a hand, we will have infinite welfare and healthcare for about 5-10 years, don't worry about after that. we'll take care of it'



[Edited on March 17, 2012 at 9:42 AM. Reason : -]

3/17/2012 9:40:42 AM

What? The only people that were making a stink about that were congressional Republicans, and the only people who were to blame for that were congressional Republicans.

3/17/2012 10:07:37 AM

^^ S&P has been a joke since they gave a AAA rating to bad home loans. Pretty much everyone agreed with this, until Obama took office, and conservatives needed something more to grasp at.

3/17/2012 1:11:14 PM

http://m.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/03/16/executive-order-national-defense-resources-preparedness

Quote :

"The United States must have an industrial and technological base capable of meeting national defense requirements and capable of contributing to the technological superiority of its national defense equipment in peacetime and in times of national emergency.  The domestic industrial and technological base is the foundation for national defense preparedness.  The authorities provided in the Act shall be used to strengthen this base and to ensure it is capable of responding to the national defense needs of the United States."

If I am reading it correctly, it means the federal government can, at any time, when it deems any resource, person, technology, goods & service, private or public institution is necessary for the defense of the country, commandeer it under the authority of whatever appointed Secretary the President deems.

But, hey, the NCAA tournament is on, so who gives a crap about individual liberty and property rights?!?!

GO WOLPFACK!!!

3/18/2012 12:25:03 AM

^ lol are you kidding?

You realize during WWII, the gov. nationalized basically all the manufacturing in the US to make equipment for the war effort? This was common since the country was founded, and until I think the Vietnam war. Don't remember the Quartering Act do you...? It was this nationalization in fact that provided a lot of the knowledge and funding for the post war tech boom. It's what helped transformed the perception of women in the society too (since they had to leave home and work).

I'm not saying this is right, conditions are different now than in the past, but your outraged seems to be largely based under the false premise that this is unprecedented.

3/18/2012 12:39:12 AM

Quote :

"You realize during WWII, the gov. nationalized basically all the manufacturing in the US to make equipment for the war effort?"

More accurately, they nationalized very little. No need to do so, as industry is always eager for profitable defense contracts. They did nationalize the railroad and trucking companies, but even this was ruled unconstitutional, although the supremes did wait until after the war was over to do so.

There is also always 1952:
"Soon after President Harry Truman nationalized the U.S. steel industry, the U.S. Supreme Court decided he lacked that authority."

3/18/2012 1:23:49 AM

call it what you want.

The US gov. built factories directly, and dumped loads of cash to convert factories, and directly managed their production.

We wouldn't call it anything but nationalization today. They called it "war mobilization" then, but it's the same thing.

Nationalized production, under the direction of the "Greatest Generation" was critical to the US winning World War II. Is this hard for you to admit?

[Edited on March 18, 2012 at 2:20 AM. Reason : ]

3/18/2012 2:19:25 AM

If nationalization is why we won WWII.... Why didn't Germany win?

There are so many factors at play here. You just cherry picked what you want to support your argument.

3/18/2012 8:41:21 AM

Quote :

" Quote : "The United States must have an industrial and technological base capable of meeting national defense requirements and capable of contributing to the technological superiority of its national defense equipment in peacetime and in times of national emergency.  The domestic industrial and technological base is the foundation for national defense preparedness.  The authorities provided in the Act shall be used to strengthen this base and to ensure it is capable of responding to the national defense needs of the United States." "

Or the non-paranoid interpretation is that the government can fund research to add to the technological base of the country...

[Edited on March 18, 2012 at 10:01 AM. Reason : Yes you interpreted incorrectly..]

3/18/2012 10:00:07 AM

Quote :

"Nationalized production, under the direction of the "Greatest Generation" was critical to the US winning World War II. Is this hard for you to admit?"

Yes it is. WW2 has been studied extensively and the best evidence we have is that while rationing and price controls did succeed in crushing non-military production, arguably a good thing, it also led to extreme miss-allocation of resources among military production. It was no coincidence that as the war went on the War Production Board gradually became a rubber stamp for whatever the industrial owners wanted to do in terms of resource allocation, with predictable results: high output prices, low wage controls, and the ability to sell surplus materials purchased at regulated prices out the back of the factory at unregulated prices to unregulated buyers. Thanks to better resource allocation came greater efficiency and production, but owners also pocketed an ever larger share of war-time GDP as profit.

3/18/2012 10:51:58 AM

[Edited on March 18, 2012 at 11:23 AM. Reason : .]

3/18/2012 11:22:46 AM

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74181.html

ahaha. obama is such a dumpy little bitch.

3/19/2012 1:44:54 PM

Quote :

"Yes, you read that right: The real news of the CBO estimate is that, according to its models, health care reform is going to save even more taxpayer dollars than previously thought. "

and then go read those CBO estimates on Medicare/Medicaid costs too.

How anyone believes this will actually SAVE money is beyond me. The cuts to medicare simply wont come, esp when the rationing board (or as Palin called them Death Panels) gets more attention.

Best case scenerio is the big court throws it out.

3/19/2012 6:27:03 PM

lol this says it all

3/23/2012 9:23:46 AM

Welcome to Mecklenburg, Population Constant

3/23/2012 11:37:10 AM

GUYS WE TRIED but charlotte gained 400k people in 1 year. our bad

3/23/2012 11:50:57 AM

A 3-5k fluctuation in work force in a year is not at all unusual for a county with a city the size of Charlotte.




[Edited on March 23, 2012 at 11:59 AM. Reason : .]

3/23/2012 11:57:34 AM

GAINS 20-30K MORE CITIZENS

LABOR FORCE SIZE SHRINKS


ha, just give it up. the only way you're going to "keep" unemployment at 10% instead of the realistic 15% it's at is to lower the size of the work force and pretend that people can still retire at early ages and yet live exponentially longer.



[Edited on March 23, 2012 at 2:57 PM. Reason : 3]

3/23/2012 2:56:09 PM

Nobody's "keeping" unemployment at 10%, the government readily provides the U-6 rate (which includes discouraged workers) as well http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm.

The media and most commentators choose to use the U-3 because it's more reliable, whereas the U-4, U-5, and U-6 are increasingly based on estimates since obviously discouraged workers are by definition out of the system and can only be guessed at through polling. Nonetheless, U-1 all the way through U-6 are down for the fourth month in a row.

[Edited on March 23, 2012 at 3:34 PM. Reason : .]

3/23/2012 3:33:04 PM

Quote :

" (which includes discouraged workers)"

and you finally admit openly to the hidden high unemployment

3/24/2012 9:07:18 PM

^to be fair the unemployment number is calculated the same as usual. Obama didnt change that or anything. I do agree with how it is calculated does make it artificially low. So like when uemployment rates was around 4.5% during bush years I think the real unemployment rate would only be slightly higher as the economy was going and people could generally find work. In prolonged rough times I think the unemployment rate are really under estimated as many will simply give up.

But it is what it is. THey give you numbers to compare, but one would really have to look at other factors to get a better sense of the issue. imo

3/25/2012 12:31:04 PM

It's not hidden you stupid autistic fuck it's right there on the BLS news release for everyone to see, every month. Again: All the measures are down for the fourth month straight, including discouraged workers.

Quote :

"In prolonged rough times I think the unemployment rate are really under estimated as many will simply give up."

That's what the U-5 and U-6 rates are for. Right there, BLS website, if you have better estimates then show em. The fact is that discouraged workers are difficult to track because they're sitting at home, not filling out paperwork that would indicate their status. Because of this, any estimate of their numbers has an inherently high statistical error, which is why most organizations (news, advocacy, government) prefer the U-3, as it's numbers are more reliable. Nobody's hiding the U-6, that's just zerohedge.com trying to maintain their "edgy/getting away with something" appeal.

More on why the U-3 is often preferred: http://www.morningstaradvisor.com/articles/printfriendly.asp?s=1&docId=19559

[Edited on March 26, 2012 at 10:33 AM. Reason : .]

3/26/2012 10:22:10 AM

cya later healthcare

3/28/2012 9:24:38 PM

cya later budget

3/29/2012 7:25:35 PM

I remember when unemployment was actually really lower than everyone thought, and it was just artificially high because libtards are so lazy

3/29/2012 7:58:22 PM

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/04/05/carney_obama_not_understood_because_he_spoke_in_shorthand_since_he_is_a_law_professor.html

hahaha, ill take arrogant shitheads for $500, alex.

4/5/2012 5:21:30 PM

^like the supreme court justices know shit about paying for healthcare. they are getting free health insurance paid for by us and they aren't even democratically elected and they get to hold their position forever.

total hypocrisy:

4/5/2012 9:17:48 PM

you mean appointed by people we elect?

kind of like we elect people to vote on legislation for us instead of voting on it directly (democracy)?

even when they dont vote like we wanted them to?

you mean kind of like a republic, which is what we live in?

yeah, defend obama at all costs. the talking points are working well for you.

4/5/2012 9:59:46 PM

more than half these justices were brought in over a decade ago, so i don't think they represent the people today. why not have term limits?

furthermore, the healthcare bill was passed into law by elected officials and now the court wants to tamper with it.

if that's the case, how about we just get ride of Congress and let these 9 justices decide everything.

i am not saying i am for or against the healthcare bill.

[Edited on April 5, 2012 at 11:25 PM. Reason : .]

4/5/2012 11:20:45 PM

Quote :

"furthermore, the healthcare bill was passed into law by elected officials and now the court wants to tamper with it. if that's the case, how about we just get ride of Congress and let these 9 justices decide everything."

yeah.........You don't really know how cases make it to the Supreme Court, do you?

4/5/2012 11:43:58 PM

It's not about the case making it to the supreme court, it's about their partisanship and the fact that they are unelected

So wtf are you talking about?

[Edited on April 6, 2012 at 12:25 AM. Reason : ..]

4/6/2012 12:14:27 AM

So you'd rather Supreme Court Justices be elected and that they not actually rule on cases before them?

4/6/2012 2:36:34 AM

what i find humorous about the whole "obama doesn't respect that court" bit recently is that the people bitching the loudest are, in most cases, the same who would do everything in their power to get a previous supreme court ruling overturned

4/6/2012 11:34:19 AM

what i find humorous is mnfares not understanding the basic structure of the US government, lol.

someone shouldnt have skipped class to go skateboarding during ELP/civics.

4/6/2012 12:04:58 PM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/obama-cameron-and-their-evolution-on-marriage-equality/2012/04/03/gIQAgtHetS_blog.html

Quote :

"The guests at the state dinner for British Prime Minister David Cameron last month queued up in the East Room for the receiving line to meet him and President Obama in the Blue Room. It is during that time that they think of what to say to the president. For me, it was greetings from my mother, Aunt Lillian and Giuseppe.But another guest used that opportunity to deliver a message to liberal Obama by way of conservative Cameron. “Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for all that you’re doing for marriage equality in Great Britain,” the guest said to Cameron, who was standing to Obama’s right, literally and figuratively. With a gesture towards the president, Cameron replied, “It takes a conservative to convince a liberal about gay marriage.”"

Quote :

"“I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative,” Cameron said in a recent landmark speech on the issue. “I support gay marriage because I am a Conservative.”"

4/6/2012 2:17:00 PM

^ their political system has its own problems but still, well played.

4/6/2012 3:41:22 PM

^^^typical response from people like you. attacking a person instead of discussing the issue. just because i am criticizing the process doesn't mean i don't understand how the government works.

what is wrong with electing judges and giving them terms? it works for north carolina, but i guess u missed that class:

http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/02/01/1820295/electing-judges-still-works-for.html

we all know the supreme court is highly political as it stands now. at least with elections, they wont stay in power for decades...

[Edited on April 6, 2012 at 6:00 PM. Reason : *]

4/6/2012 5:56:37 PM

Yea I see no issue with electing judges, especially with super PACs now. Then if some super rich job creator wanted to do something all he would have to do is a super PAC for each branch of government and boom it gets done... ANYTHING he or she wants to be done.

4/6/2012 6:59:28 PM

4/6/2012 10:14:46 PM

maybe if he bought enough doughnuts for all of the people out of work and not looking (and, conveniently enough for the President, not calculated in the unemployment figures), he could feed them all.

let's see:

4/6/2012 11:26:36 PM

when i was unemployed, i did not blame the president of the united states (bush jr. at the time).

4/6/2012 11:42:42 PM