WHY DO I SUPPORT BERNIE SANDERS?

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

WHY DO I SUPPORT BERNIE SANDERS? 
IT’S SIMPLE - BECAUSE HE WAS FIGHTING FOR MY RIGHTS BEFORE I WAS

Bernie Sanders first captured both my attention, and admiration, because he's a fighter, and his life is symbolic of the American struggle itself. Prior to the founding of this nation, America was a hopeless underdog, yet, it faced-down the mighty forces of England based on principle alone, and Bernie Sander’s entire life has been perfectly representative of that kind of courage. All of his life he’s been an underdog, yet he’s never given up on or wavered from the one solitary pursuit that has defined his existence - the fight for the freedom, justice, and equality that was guaranteed us all by the United States constitution. In spite of the fact that he’s been shunned, dismissed, and laughed at as being impractical and living with his head in the clouds, he’s managed to maintain the courage, dignity, and fortitude to face-down the mighty in the name of justice.

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In the past Bernie’s been content to fight this battle alone, but now, for the first time in his life, and from seemingly out of nowhere, he’s gained a tsunami of grassroots support from an America that's aching for a change, yearning for justice, and feeling a fierce affinity for this little guy who refused to give up. That’s why Bernie supporters are so passionate, because we all want to feel like there’s a little bit of Bernie in us as well, and that we too have the courage and tenacity to stand firm in the face of impossible odds. So to us, this is much more than just a political campaign; we’re Bernie’s cavalry, and this is a crusade, for good over evil.

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On the other hand, the Clintons are a perfect metaphor for the arrogance of wealth and power. During the time of our founding fathers, they would have represented the crown. While they have the tremendous clout of establishment backing and a long list of accomplishments, all of their accomplishments tend to benefit the wrong people. Although they talk like liberals, and act like liberals, they always seem to leave behind conservative policies that are detrimental to the average American. For example, Bill Clinton’s 1994 Crime Bill led to the mass incarceration of Black people; NAFTA rewarded corporations for sending American jobs out of the country; the Repeal of Glass-Steagall led directly to the 2008 Great Recession; The Welfare Reform Act only served to devastate many poor Black families; and finally, when Hillary joined the neocons in voting for the senseless war in Iraq, while it greatly benefitted war profiteers, it led to the death of a million Iraqis, and the death or maiming of thousands of American troops.

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In addition, It has been reported that the Clinton's net worth is over $100 million, and they control the $2 billion Clinton Foundation, so they're comfortably entrenched in the very corporate culture that has the American people virtually enslaved. Even their daughter, Chelsea, is married to Marc Mezvinsky, an American investment banker, co-founder of the hedge fund, Eaglevale Partners, and he was formerly an investment banker at Goldman Sachs. So the Clintons and Wall Street are, literally, in-laws.

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So I feel that Bernie deserves my support, if for no other reason than to reward him for his lifelong struggle to improve the lives of others instead of feathering his own nest. I'd be willing to bet that Bernie's one of the poorest men in the senate, and there's a good reason for that - he didn't have time to become wealthy, because he was too busy fighting for my rights as a human being, and even before I was.  So that's the kind of man I want having my back in the Oval Office.

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BERNIE SANDERS FIGHTING FOR BLACK PEOPLE IN 1963

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ONE FOR BERNIE

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Receding hairline, failing vision,

hair now turning grey,

an aging boomer in final protest,

Father Time his foe this day.

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Donning his headband, tie-dyed jeans,

and scorched draft card of protests past,

he set out for one last battle,

as in his youth that had quietly passed.

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Ode to an aging Boomer,

a different kind of man;

colleagues all now in the wind,

as he makes his final stand.

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But he found no placards or the sound of Trane,

no passionate speeches in the gentle rain,

no pretty girls wearing mini skirts,

and no solemn guards on pig alert.

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All he found was a new America,

and more freedom across this land;

the fruit of his struggle

for women's equality,

and the rights of his fellow man.

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He found Martin, Chavez, and Malcolm X,

all standing by his side;

He found Thomas Jefferson

and all his forefathers

beaming down with pride.

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He found minority children across this land

whose reach now exceed their grasp;

He found Jim Crow angrily cursing him,

as he took his final gasp.

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He found pride as an aging boomer,

more hero, than common man;

He found a quirky old fart embraced by history,

for having the courage to take a stand.

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Alone, an aging Boomer,

fellow travelers now in the wind;

but one last time he limps to his trench,

to defend his fellow man.

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Eric L. Wattree
http://wattree.blogspot.com/
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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Barack Hussein Obama Will Be Remembered As One of Our Greatest Presidents - Here Are the Facts

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Barack Hussein Obama Will Be Remembered As One of Our Greatest Presidents -

Here Are the Facts

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I am sick to death of these so-call Black "intellectuals" spending so much time criticizing President Obama - not because I don’t feel that EVERY politician’s feet should be held to the fire, I do, but because most of the nonsense  they’re spewing is pure, unmitigated, ignorance. And what makes it worse is it’s either purposeful ignorance, or ignorance due to a lazy-mindedness that could be corrected with less than ten minutes of objective research.
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The irony is, people like Tavis Smiley, Cornel West, the entire GOP, and a lot of other uninformed haters are severely criticizing the President, while Obama's is showing himself to be one the most fearsome warriors for the American people that this nation has ever had. That's why the GOP is trying to impeach Eric Holder, because he and Obama are killing their cronies on Wall Street for the abuse of the American people that led to the Great Recession.
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Most American's have all but forgotten about the Wall Street debacle, at least in terms of recouping our losses. They’ve simply written it off as a loss, but not Obama. He's made Wall Street pay all of the bailout money back to the American taxpayer, with interest (Bailout Payment Tracker), reimburse customers, admit guilt (which leaves them open to private lawsuits), made them pay billions of dollars over and above what they stole, and THEN, he’s making them cooperate in their OWN criminal prosecution! These corporations may be "too big to fail," but if President Obama has his way, their managers won’t be too big to jail.
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But at the same time, President Obama realizes that he's walking a tight rope. While he understands the importance of having Wall Street pay a price that they won't soon forget, he also understands the importance to the economy that while he's exacting that price, that it not be perceived as blind retribution or reckless political point gathering. So Obama is going about the business of admonishing Wall Street in his typically thoughtful and pragmatic manner. This is exactly how a president should conduct business, by defending the interests of the American people, but at the same time, thoughtfully enough to take all of the pros and cons into account so as to minimize the chances of unintended consequences.
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But nobody's talking about that, and Obama doesn't believe in tootin' his own horn. The man is in Washington walking on water, while his critics are talking about him like a dog. But even as they criticize, he's quietly performing one miracle after another, and then casually walking away without saying a word. So if he has any shortcoming, that’s it - he obviously finds it prudent to pursue the nation’s interest without fanfare.  He fully recognizes the political realities that come with being the first Black President of the United States. Things have to be done just a little bit differently, by necessity - and bragging about his accomplishments is definitely one of those things.
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A perfect example of that is, if the Republicans had captured or killed Osama Bin Laden, they'd still be bragging about it, and at this point, George W. Bush’s image would be near completion on Mt. Rushmore. Clear evidence of that is how the GOP was bragging about how valiantly they were killing innocent people in Iraq in response to 9-11 - Bush even showed up in a flight suit (presumably the one he ran away from when he was actually SUPPOSE to be in the military).  Every Republican in the country was running on it, but all they actually did was spent a trillion dollars with nothing to show for it - which was actually the plan. They purposely used 9-11 to start a senseless war, give Dick Cheney's old firm a huge no-bid contract, and passed a huge tax cut, to enrich their cronies, and intentionally ravaged America’s coffers so they could use that as a pretext to attack the social programs put in place by the New Deal, the GOP’s primary reason for being for over seventy years. 
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How do we know this?
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We know this because after Bush and Cheney spent seven years, a trillion dollars, and were responsible for the death and/or maiming of thousands of American troops, Barack Obama came into office and casually took out Bin Laden with three helicopters and a handful of America's finest. He then simply announced Bin Laden's demise to the American people and walked away to address other issues just as casually as he accomplished it. Yet, we have Republicans running around claiming that he's the most incompetent president that we've ever had - and that's in spite of the fact that they, literally, had to hide Bush and Cheney for two election cycles.
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So to his severe detriment, President Obama just doesn't like to toot his own horn, but he should - if for no other reason than to bench the demagogues. The American people should be lovin' this guy, and they could be of great assistance in helping him move the country forward. So by emphasizing his accomplishments he could not only shut down the Republicans, but he could also shut the mouths of these so-called Black intellectuals who are so busy bashing the most powerful symbol of Black competence in the world, that they’re providing cover for Republicans who are, literally, cutting America’s throat. How could these people not recognize that, and how can President Obama not recognize the value of shutting these people down? But I suppose he has his reasons, and in light of his track record, I'm not prone to second-guess him.
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And again, take what he’s doing in response to the Wall Street scandal. While Obama is walking around smiling and being Mr. Nice Guy in public, Wall Street and the Republicans know who he REALLY is under that nice guy façade - Attila the Hun. While he's being criticized by uninformed idiots as being a tool of Wall Street, Obama has some of the biggest names on Wall Street in the woodshed bent over with their pants around their ankles. He's taking no prisoners - if you screwed the American people, you're going down - and some of the people going down were his biggest supporters, James "Jamie" Dimon, for example, the head of JPMorgan. I bet Cornel West couldn’t tell Jamie that Obama is "a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats." President Obama is, laterally, shaking that man’s world.
Forbes Magazine: Economically, Could Obama Be America’s Best President?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2013/05/16/economically-could-obama-be-americas-best-president/

JPMORGAN AGREED TO PAY $13 BILLION, AND IN A FIRST, ADMIT GUILT
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According to a CBS News report:
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In the past, "The banks in all the SEC cases were allowed to neither admit nor deny wrongdoing - a practice that brought criticism of the agency from judges and investor advocates.
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"But in a first for a major company, JPMorgan admitted in the agreement with the SEC over the $6 billion trading loss in its London operation that it failed in its oversight. The admission could leave the bank vulnerable to millions of dollars in lawsuits. JPMorgan also reached settlements over the trading loss with the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Britain's Financial Conduct Authority."
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In response, the government in January 2012 set up a task force of federal and state law enforcement officials to pursue wrongdoing with regard to mortgage securities.
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In September, JPMorgan agreed to pay $920 million and admit that it failed to oversee trading that led to a $6 billion loss last year in its London operation. That combined amount, in settlements with three U.S. and one British regulator, is one of the largest fines ever levied against a financial institution. In another case, the company agreed to pay a $100 million penalty and admitted that its traders acted "recklessly" with the London trades.
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To sum up the pound of flesh that Obama is extracted from this one corporation (and one of his biggest supporters) for the abuses that it perpetrated against the American people, Obama has demanded the following:
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1). Of the $13 billion, $9 billion is fines or penalties and $4 billion will go to consumer relief for struggling homeowners.
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2). JPMorgan also agreed to provide cooperation in investigations against individuals within the company.
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3). JPMorgan settled SEC charges in June 2011 by agreeing to pay $153.6 million and reached another such agreement for $296.9 million last November.
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4). As part of the tentative agreement, JPMorgan dropped its demand for the Justice Department to take a "non-prosecution agreement" off the table, which means a criminal investigation of the bank's conduct being handled by federal prosecutors in Sacramento, Calif., continues.
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"Mounting legal costs from government proceedings pushed JPMorgan to a rare loss in the third quarter, the first under Dimon's leadership. The bank reported Oct. 11 that it set aside $9.2 billion in the July-September quarter to cover a string of litigation stemming from the financial crisis and its "London Whale" trading debacle. JPMorgan said it has placed a total of $23 billion in reserve to cover potential legal costs."
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And they’re not through paying yet, because in spite of this "settlement" the administration is STILL coming after them with MORE charges, including criminal. And again, in another first - the head of JPMorgan, James Dimon, was one of Obama's biggest supporters. So Obama has taken a "take no prisoners" approach - if you screwed the American people, you're going down, no matter who you are. That’s a new wrinkle in American politics (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57608321/jpmorgan-chase-justice-department-reach-tentative-$13-billion-deal-over-mortgage-backed-securities/).
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And Obama’s accomplishments go far beyond simply punishing Wall Street. In addition to getting Osama Bin Laden - again, something that Bush spent a trillion dollars allegedly trying to do - Obama, literally, saved the world from slipping into another Great Depression. While the Republicans, and many Black Obama haters, have the audacity to ask "Where’s the jobs?," these people are conveniently failing to recall that under George W. Bush the nation was hemorrhaging 850,000 jobs PER MONTH. So compared to that, we’re experiencing a robust economy. Obama also saved the American auto industry, cut the deficit in half, and he’s providing health insurance to millions of Americans who couldn't previously obtain it.
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In addition, he’s gotten Syria to give up their chemical weapons, and persuaded Iran to allow nuclear weapons inspectors inside the country. If George W. Bush had been as effective in Iraq as Obama has been in both Syria and Iran, he could have saved the nation a trillion dollars, and saved the lives of more than a million people.
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With that said, I'm going to repeat myself here, because I feel obliged to ram the following point home. Compare President Obama's accomplishments above with the fact that Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, two of his most persistent and severe critics, traveled all across the country on a bus under the pretext of being so passionately concerned about poverty in America that they felt honor-bound to take a stand - but of course, that was BEFORE the election, and when they had books to sell. But now that the election is over, and they don't have any books to sell, they couldn't bring themselves to walk down the street from Tavis' office to support the Black Friday demonstrations taking place all across the country against Wal-Mart - Tavis' major sponsor, a member of ALEC, and the biggest abuser of the working class in America today.
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And not only did they fail to attend ANY of the demonstrations taking place across the country against Wal-Mart, they didn't even issue a statement of support. All we've heard coming from the Smiley/West camp are crickets - and as everyone knows, that's extremely uncharacteristic of Cornel West, who's renowned for being willing to trade a kidney for a sound byte. 
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So I'd say that just about says it all about those two - Tavis Smiley and Cornel West are two of the biggest hypocrites that the Black community has ever suffered, and their constant denigration of the most powerful symbol of Black competence in the world is a slap in the face of the Black community, and nothing short of a distraction that allows cover for the GOP to more easily pursue their agenda of cutting America's throat.  
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Thus, contrary to the criticisms of the GOP, and the attempted character assassination of the president by a handful of self-serving, and/or clueless, Black "intellectuals," Barack Hussein Obama has already accomplished enough to be remembered by history as one of our greatest presidents.  So, he, the Black community, and his supporters, would be well served to begin to trumpet that fact, and tell the idiots, demagogues, and poverty pimps to go take a nap - and that has nothing to do with becoming an Obama cheerleader or lending blind support for everything that he does. It's about reflecting the facts, supporting our own best interests, and countering the brutal assault on Obama being staged by self-serving demagogues whose activities are lending comfort to those who have morphed into the domestic enemy of the United States.  

A List of Obama Accomplishments

http://pleasecutthecrap.com/obama-accomplishments/

 

Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com

Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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Obamacare: What's So Wrong with Having Government Protection?

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

Obamacare: What's So Wrong with Having Government Protection?

(Reprise)

 

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I initially wrote this article in August of 2009. Since that time the single payer plan has been taken off the table, because the insurance industry and the Republicans in congress fought tooth-n-nail on behalf of the insurance industry and against the American taxpayer - the very same taxpayer who had just recently bailed the industry out from certain disaster to the tune of 700 billion dollars during the Wall Street crisis. So yet again, the fat cats had convinced an uninformed American public that protecting themselves, and their families, from corporate manipulation was a form of socialism, and therefore, un-American. Essentially, they convinced us that President Obama was un-American, because he was engaged in a socialist plot to protect our families. Think about that.

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Those in congress who are protecting the insurance industry from government intrusion are doing a great job - of protecting their campaign contributions. They've managed to so complicate the healthcare debate that many Americans have been completely blinded to what should be clearly obvious. There's only one issue in this debate - whether or not we want to entrust the healthcare of our families to an entity whose only goal is to provide service, or one that's in the business solely to make as much profit as humanly possible.

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In order to see through the smoke and mirrors of this debate we need ask ourselves only a few very basic questions. First, do we really believe that the insurance industry is giving politicians $1.3 million a day just so they can protect our well being? Second, how have the insurance companies become so rich that they can afford to give away that kind of money? Third, if they're doing such a good job of looking after our interest, why do they fear that a public option will lead to a government takeover of the industry?

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And finally, what's so bad about government-protected healthcare anyway? The government protects us with the police department, the fire department, the military, social security, and medicare. So why do we allow these things to be run by government? What do they have in common? The answer is very simple - they are all services that are much too essential to our well being to entrust to those whose single motive, and sole reason for being, is to make a profit.

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Can you imagine what it would be like having to negotiate with the police department after having a child kidnaped? Imagine the police telling you, "I sorry but your daughter just turned eighteen, so she's no longer covered under your kidnaping policy." That's exactly what's happening to Americans on a daily basis regarding their family's healthcare.

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The fact is, the so-called insurance industry is not an industry at all. An industry produces products. The insurance business produces nothing. It is made up of Wall Street speculators who take your money with the promise that they'll protect you from financial ruin. Then if something unforeseen does happen, they spend much of that money trying to find loopholes to get out of honoring their agreement.

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Their entire business model is based on the proposition that they can get more money out of you than they'll have to pay back. So they're not in the business of providing you with a service. On the contrary - they're in the business of taking your money while providing you with as little service as possible. That's how they make a profit.

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Now, with his healthcare reform, it is President Obama's contention that too many Americans are being denied services, and as a result, they're dying or losing everything they own just so these speculators can make money. He wants to bring that to an end.

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In response, the politicians who the insurance companies are paying to deceive you are screaming bloody murder - and since they don't have truth on their side, they've taken to lying to the American people.

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If your representative is among them, instead of representing your interest, he's being paid by the insurance companies to lobby against you. He's trying to convince you that it's a bad thing for you to have the choice of a public option that would protect you and your family from loss of coverage if you're laid off your job, or having your insurance cancelled if a member of your family contracts a disease that the private insurance companies deem so expensive to treat that it cuts into their profits. In short, he's placing his seat in congress before the welfare of your family.

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These politicians will often claim that a public option would place a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor. But the fact is, the healthcare plan that the president is proposing for you is the exact same plan that your representative and every member of congress enjoys, and I've never once heard a member of congress complain about their healthcare.

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In addition, they always conveniently fail to mention that with your current healthcare you have a businessman, who's out to make a profit, between you and your doctor. You're rarely aware of what goes on between your doctor and your current insurance company, because your doctor simply won't prescribe a treatment that he knows the insurance company won't cover. But how many times have you gone to the pharmacy and had a generic drug suggested because your insurance won't cover the drug that the doctor originally prescribed, and wanted you to have?

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In addition, we mustn't forget that the infamous AIG is also an insurance company. It was suppose to be insuring Wall Street against investment losses, and you see what happened there - AIG was so greedy for profits and paid so little attention to the precarious condition of its customers, that when Wall Street collapsed and AIG's customers came to it to cover the losses that they'd paid billions of dollars to insure, AIG simply said, "Sorry, we can't help you."

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Thus, if the crooks on Wall Street can't trust the insurance companies, the average American family doesn't have a chance. And remember, even though AIG was founded, appropriately enough, in Shanghai, China, and was doing business and spreading its money all over the world, when it found itself in trouble it ran back to the United States to pick your pocket, in order to get back on it's feet.

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And that's not the worst of it. Once the American taxpayer did agree to help them to get back on their feet, they took much of our hard-earned tax money (while we were losing our homes and jobs) and used it to wine and dine company bigwigs at plush resorts, and pass out multi-million dollar bonuses to the very people who ran the company in the ground, and they are currently spending the gains that they received from YOUR tax dollars, to pay YOUR representatives, to undermine YOUR interests.

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So now, these are the people that many of your representatives want to protect from a government takeover - never mind what's in the best interest of your family. And it is these very same people who have already robbed you of your tax dollars, that your representative want to see standing between you and your doctor, with calculator in hand. Of course he does, because the government is not going to contribute to his campaign.

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So if your representative comes to you during this break and tries to feed you this nonsense, you should respond with just one sentence - "You're out of here in the very next election." You'd be entirely justified, since his support of the insurance lobby is irrefutable evidence that what he sees as his vested interest, is far removed from your own.

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Eric L. Wattree

wattree.blogspot.com

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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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Is President Obama a Slave to Wall Street?

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Is President Obama a Slave to Wall Street?

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Whenever I hear a person claim that President Obama is a slave to the corporatist Wall Street culture, I know immediately that he’s one of three things - he’s either ignorant, blind to reality, or he’s promoting his own agenda. Of course Obama is a slave to Wall Street - we all are.
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You can’t live in this society without being a slave to Wall Street. But there are two kinds of slaves. There are slaves who are subservient and content to simply do what they’re told, and then there are slaves who engage in a constant struggle to free themselves and their people. So, while I’m not always happy with some of the day-to-day decisions that President Obama makes to promote our cause, I’m convinced that Obama is one of the latter. If he wasn’t, they wouldn’t be trying so hard to get rid of him.

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The fact is, if you’re a casual observer sitting at home and keeping score based purely on your attitudes, prejudices, and feelings, it’s easy to pass your uninformed judgment on every decision that any politician makes. But the reality is, anyone who decides to go into politics has to be practical, and a huge part of that practicality entails recognizing the fact that you’re going to have to dance to the music that’s being played, and it’s Wall Street that leads the band. So regardless to who we elect, they’re going to have to have, at the very least, a working relationship with the corporate establishment - and ironically, it’s our own fault.

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The primary reason that every politician in this country is forced to play footsy with the corporate establishment is because we, the people, are so lazy, undereducated, and disengaged from our own political well being that we allow the corporations to use money to control our minds. So the only way that a politician like Obama can even get through to us is by way of the corporate establishment.

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The reason that money has such a large influence on our political system is because it’s used to tell us what, and how, to think. From the time that most of us get up in the morning until the time we go to bed at night, we spend most of our free time with corporate voices whispering in our ear. It could be the radio, television, or even the billboards that we don’t think we’re noticing as we’re driving in to work, but the fact is, they are all having a profound subliminal effect on our thinking and attitudes. They’re conditioning us to think, and to do, what they tell us to. Corporations spend billions of dollars a year to convince wimps with severe cases of acne and horrendous body odors that if they buy a certain kind of car, the beautiful model that’s sensuously stroking its hood, or someone just like her, is going to fall in love with them - and they influence out vote in exactly the same way. Thus, every politician must remain cogizant of that fact. 

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My personal favorite is the National Rent-A-Car commercial. They have a businessman walking through the air port in slow motion with dramatic music playing in the background. Then when he gets to the counter, they have the lady behind the counter making goo-goo eyes at him like she can barely restrain herself from jumping over the counter and attacking him. Then the clincher is, at the end of the commercial they have a deep, authoritative voice saying, "YOU DESERVE THIS!"

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That commercial servers two purposes. First, it entices the traveling businessman to believe that using National Rent-A-Car makes him seem more important. But it also sends a message to the public - that big business is powerful, and that’s a good thing, so the concept of big business should be seen in a positive light because, "THEY DESERVE THIS!"

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Since the public is manipulated like this 24 hours a day, any politician who doesn’t have a working relationship with corporations can’t survive. The reason for that is simple. The very same corporation that runs commercials on Monday that convinces an unthinking electorate that "Obama is a big-government socialist who’s trying to put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor," can turn around on Tuesday and convince that very same unthinking electorate that it’s appropriate to create a government small enough to crawl up a woman’s uterus. That explains why we have people walking around saying things like, "Obama is un-American - he’s engaged in a socialist plot to insure my family’s healthcare and send my kids to college." It sounds like hyperbole, but as we see on a daily basis, people are actually that brainwashed.

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Thus, the problem in this country is not the amount of money flowing through the system, that’s only secondary; the primary problem is the apathy, selfishness, and ignorance of the people. Money is merely a tool used to feed that apathy, selfishness, and ignorance to our severe disadvantage, and to make sure that we remain that way - both ignorant, and disadvantaged.

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While the corporations can’t use their money to literally buy a political office, they can, and do, use it to convince us to GIVE it to them by repeatedly reelecting those politicians who are willing to promote corporate interests. Their primary method of doing that is by playing on our ignorance and selfishness through the use of conflation. That keeps the poor and middle class so angry and divided that we fail to come together to protect our mutual interest.

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The corporate manipulators will conflate liberalism with socialism, communism, and un-Americanism, then tell everyone else who doesn’t subscribe to liberal philosophy that the liberals are trying to take away their way of life. Then they’ll target Blacks and initiate a campaign to convince everyone else that Blacks want to rob and steal from them, murder their sons and rape their daughters. Thereafter, they target every segment of the poor and middle class, one by one, and associate them with some threat to everyone else. That keeps the poor and middle class in turmoil. It causes them to be so angry, fearful, and divided among themselves that they fail to recognize that they’re being manipulated, while all their throats are being cut by a common foe - corporate greed.
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But corporate greed is not the only foe. We must also add the misery leeches and poverty pimps who also have a vested interest in keeping the people angry and divided. These are the self-appointed "defenders of the poor and put-upon" who make a fortune by manipulating the people’s anger. Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornel West immediately come to mind in that regard. Every time Smiley has a book to promote, wants a boost in his television ratings, or has any other snake oil to promote, he tours the country stirring up the very division that keeps the people impoverished. And West, who has teamed up with Smiley - just as he did with Ralph Nader during the 2000 election that gave us George Bush - also has a vested interest in the peoples’ misery. He reportedly pulls in $10,000 a speech complaining about our misery, while at the same time promoting the division that keep us that way. Thus, if the people ever did "overcome," it would be economically devastating to both of these hustlers.

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The only remedy for this situation is education, and through education, enlightenment. Because through a true education and its attendant enlightenment - as oppose to mere literacy - we’re more prone to become independent thinkers. As a result, we wouldn’t be nearly as susceptible to the unsubstantiated claims of snake oil salesmen. We would examine what we were being told, and we would consider the motives of those who were going out of their way to spread negative generalizations about others. Then, and only then, will we be able to defend our individual interests, and come together to defend the nation against the widespread and rampant corruption that’s currently dragging this country under the bus.

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Thus, if we want to save this nation for the benefit of our children, and their children, it is incumbent upon the American people to wake up to reality - and in a hurry. The world is changing faster than it ever has before, so we may not have but one or two elections left before the damage to this country is irreversible.

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We’ve got to start thinking of this country like it’s a business, we’re the owners, and the politicians are our employees. Only then will we begin to recognize the importance of our full engagement in running that business. Because the fact is, if the United States was a business, and as owners, we simply lounged around at home watching BET, MTV, and ESPN while allowing our employees (the politicians) to run it in the ground by giving themselves unwarranted raises in the middle of the night, and squandering and away our profits, it wouldn’t be the employees’ fault. It would be ours.

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So again, is President Obama a slave to Wall Street? Of course he is. We all are, and it’s way past time to correct that situation. But any president, regardless to who we elect, is going to need our help in that regard.

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Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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