In some cases, have to be paid back.

This is a fascinating read:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/05/obamacare-a-deception/

I am in a situation that is actually discussed in this article -that my income fluctuates and that one year I am making a bit more than enough to survive, but then the next year could be better or worse, and the whole way this program has been devised makes it especially difficult for lower income people in that situation.

The fact that it is our GROSS income rather than our NET income also worries me quite a bit. You can certainly tell the politicans do not have the average person's interests at heart when the plans work out like this.

For at least the last six weeks, every single soul inside the Beltway knew about the October 1st, coming government shut down... So the President spent the better part of ten days, up on a bully pulpit, trying to get us fixated on the notion of attacking Syria... Would that bully pulpit energy energy not have been better spent on revving up American citizens and getting them to help avert the coming shut down?

On the one hand, you have possible retaliation needed for possible Sarin Gas attack. (Although experts are still debating if or if not Syrian rebels or Syrian leader was behind it.)

On the other hand, you have the full scale derailment of American society.

Which matters more to the average person?

And why is it that the Oval Office energy is not about the average American any more?

Given the unpredictability of the governmental shut down, and the fact that no one even knows the ramifications of it, I would hope that the President, (who supposedly is in tight with Jaimie Diman), would in full comprehension of the event then put the considerable weight of the bully pulpit energy out there before the public, on the issue.

Maybe you don't understand what I am saying. To explain it as well as I can, here is a clip from "The Newsroom:"



If I had been President over the last six months, or six weeks, (God help us all, should that day come about!) I think I would have been very tempted to address the nation telling them the damn Republicans were behind the sarin gas attacks, if that is what it takes to avoid this.

Although the following story focuses on Southern Calif., the same is true of many communities that are rural in nature. And of course the poverty levels would be worse, except so many people right now are taking out student loans and going back to school. Additionally many young people are enlisting in the Armed Services, with the Navy seeming to be the choice that makes so many parents happy as then the young person might avoid seeing real heavy duty action on the ground.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/20/southern-california-poverty_n_3957108.html?utm_hp_ref=san-francisco&ir=San%20Francisco

From the above link:
In Los Angeles County, the poverty rate also climbed 3.6 percentage points from 15.5 percent in 2008 to 19.1 percent in 2012. It rose 0.8 percentage points from 2011 to 2012, according to the Census Bureau's American Communities Survey.

"Even through 2012, the L.A. County economy was struggling to recover and ... more Los Angeles County households fell below the poverty line as a result of the lingering effects of the Great Recession," said Robert Kleinhenz, chief economist of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

"You've got people who fundamentally are going to have a more difficult time putting food on their table for their family members, who are not going to be able to get the health care they should have otherwise gotten."

San Bernardino County, which was particularly hard-hit by the recession, fared worse as the poverty rate rose 6 percentage points from 14.4 percent in 2008 to 20.4 percent in 2012. The rate rose 1.1 percentage point from 2011 to 2012.

http://www.ladybud.com/2013/09/18/holder-say-it-like-you-mean-it-federal-prisoner-eddy-lepp-on-holders-legalization-statement/

Convicted pot user Eddy Lepp asks Eric Holder the hard question, which amounts to, "What about us?"

From an article about Lepp (Link first line of this post above):

"What the over all cost of this false War on Drugs will be can only be guessed at now. It will be many many years in the future before we can look back and gauge the true cost in pain and suffering to the fabric of this once great nation.

"As my Darling wife Linda points out every once in a while, “Eddy, you’re not the only damn one in prison, so am I.”

“Eddy, you’re not the only damn one in prison, so am I.”

"Sadly, she is just one of hundreds of thousands sitting at home in prison. When will the government quit using its citizens as fodder to keep their cash cow alive and well? Because, that really is the sole purpose of the War on Drugs, to allow the government to steal left and right at the taxpayer’s expense."
####
I also liked this comment from one GREENAID:

GREENAIDcpsladybud1:
The War on Drugs allows the funding of countless wars, takeovers, and overthrows of any weaker country the government chooses to interfere with. Regardless of the right or wrong of it.

The CIA and the DEA are thought of by many, if not all, to be the two biggest drug dealers in the world, just ask Ollie North.

We must ask ourselves just how serious Holder and his boss Obama are. Do they really wish to end this un-winnable senseless war? If so I and many others in here believe it is time to put it in writing and release all of us being held for non-violent marijuana crimes.

The lies have gone on for years it is time for real change. We as a nation have reached and surpassed the tipping point. It is time we stand up and insist they finally do something real, not just talk. Please get involved not just with the War on Drugs but take time to look at the rest of the mess.

While the rhetoric is a step in the right direction, we all deserve real change, and I hope for it every day I serve this ten-year sentence.

Until today.

I put up an important topic for consideration. Note that the following link --

this link:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023680657

is not about a conspiracy theory. It is about two facts:

Fact One) comets, space debris, asteroids, space junk, including satellites that are no longer being used and that are falling apart, are all objects that exist beyond our atmosphere, and can fall into our atmosphere and then can impact earth.

Fact Two: The Air Force run, Space Control and Space Surveillance Center is going to be shut down due to sequestration efforts from the Republicans.

Here is the link to the existence of this program: http://www.stratcom.mil/factsheets/USSTRATCOM_Space_Control_and_Space_Surveillance/

You can go and read about it there.

When the USSTRATCOM space control and surveillance center is made non-operational, due to the budget constraint crazy crowd that now has so much power in the Congress, there is a potential for a huge problem.

Basically, once this center quits operating,there will no longer be a direct connection between the military and the top astronomers who have a day to day understanding of what it is that is impacting our atmosphere. You can have as many fine independent astronomers as you want, but most of them would find it difficult to get through to the top Big Wigs at the Pentagon, to let them know that "incoming" at 4 o'clock is just part of a meteor that is burning up.

It may be unlikely that this affects us today, or next week, or even next year. But it is still likely that once this center goes down, we could be in big trouble.

So why was thi s link shut down? Not a conspiracy, not about guns, not about Israel, or Palestine,. etc.





.

For those of you who are following the travels of Comet Ison, you may have noticed how this comet impacted several asteroids over the last two days. The comet hit many asteroids, and some of those were able to go on and enter our atmosphere. Those asteroids went on to hit our planet. (Most were about the size of a baseball, or smaller.)

The heavenly activities of Comet Ison are going to continue, and if initial science reports are to be believed, the results will end up being more spectacular as time goes on.

The next twelve months are critical in terms of the interplay between the comet, the asteroids it deflects into our atmosphere, and all of that.

Big Problem for earthlings and other sentient life that occupy the planet - on account of sequestration, the Air Force Space Surveillance Center is scheduled to shut down, just as the spectacular asteroid activity is heating up.

Now please note: my concern is not that a huge asteroid is about to get deflected into our atmosphere and hit the planet, obliterating all life. The projected sizes of the asteroids that might be "doomed" to enter our atmosphere are not a problem.

What is a problem is that without such a Surveillance Center up and operating, and with tension still existing between the USA and Russia, do we want to risk not having the safety advantages of the surveillance center?

http://www.theawl.com/2013/09/are-the-startup-fellas-hellbent-on-destroying-education-even-literate

Helluva good rant, the above is, over at "The Awl.

I especially like the last two paragraphs:

"This is exactly how we are are in danger of wrecking our educational system, and so much else. Instead of taking pains to preserve what we have, and demanding that any cuts to funding or alterations in our practices, however minute, be subjected to the most rigorous resistance and interrogation, we're unaccountably willing to risk enormous sums, often in public money, on "experiments" to "fix" what isn't broken—on charter schools, MOOCs, and for-profit universities, for example, in the case of education—only to find that each time, these alleged improvements consist mainly of snake oil and charlatanism.

"We might blame the culture of Silicon Valley, which appears to believe that "building an app" and throwing a few million dollars at it is always a good idea; or we might blame California Governor Jerry Brown, who's already squandered some unclear amount of public money on Udacity classes in a disastrous pilot program at San Jose State, which began in January and was suspended in a matter of months. Brown is desperate for band-aids, however tiny, however hopelessly ineffectual, with which he may pretend to conceal the giant hemorrhaging gashes in the state budget (substantially caused by the quintupling of California's prison population since 1980). Here is an idea for you, Governor Brown: legalize marijuana! No matter what the police and private prison lobbies say."
####
Hells bells, here in California the "state voter-approved" and state legalized med marijuana clinics were bringing in some 125 million bucks a year. Now that dollar amount is down by half that, due to the Eric Holder DOJ policy of cracking into the dispensaries and shutting them down. And to forcing some six thousand people out of high paying jobs and into unemployment. (In my county, if you lose a good job, there is 18% unemployment, so good luck with finding another job.)

A police chief over in Humboldt or Mendocino County has realized and gone publicly on the record that the taxation of legal med marijuana means we can have fully staffed schools, police departments, fire departments etc.

And although the Prison Industry would take a hit, so what?

Our children are already spending far too much time on their computers and other devices. We need the best teachers that we can find, and we need them now. And "industry chieftains" don't understand that, as they look down on teachers.

To any of you who feel like it is now an uphill battle, without any strategy, I would say two things:

One - If you really need a break, by all means take one. Politics is exhausting. Many other fine activities exist, and some of those might replenish your soul.

Two: Now is when it gets interesting. We are in uncharted territory. Just five years ago, we had a chance, within the confines of simple electoral politics. Any of us who were out there walking the neighborhood with Dem campaign material, or phone banking or donating small amounts of money felt inspired. When we thought about things at the end of each day, we realized it was possible that people would vote the neo con "R's" out, and then things were ripe for change.

There was a guy who was giving progressive values-inspired speeches. He was young enough and he seemed passionate enough that it was not abnormal to think- "This guy might be the real thing."

It's not our fault that the movement was co opted. But right now, one of the most important attributes to cultivate within our weary souls is this one:

[h2][font color=red] "SOLIDARITY." [/h2][/font color=red]

We might not individually or collectively have a solution. Yet.

But one thing is obvious: total retreat with no intention of returning to the good fight is never much help to any movement. Especially no help to movements concerned with social issues such as poverty, securing an agricultural system wherein the Gm industry is at a disadvantage and conventional farmers and organic farmers are supported, overturning a corrupt Judicial System, shutting down the machinery of the MIC-Surveillance State, getting domestic war criminals brought to Justice (the crimes committed have NO statute of limitation) or doing any of the number of things that we thought were now inside our purview back on Nov 8th 2008.
[h2][font color=red]

As the Dalai Lama has stated, "If you think you re too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito."
[/h2][/font color=red]

We must focus on the statement that Candidate Obama so eloquently borrowed from Mahatma Ghandi, "We are the ones we have been waiting for."

We are. If we don't give up, if we continue on in Solidarity, and if we manage to become Mosquito People.

I know I am one. If you are sick and tired of the same ol, same ol, those leaders who think they are rulers but have no clothing, if you are sick and tired of hearing, "Because Obama!" ("And he is friends with Jay Z!" you are a Mosquito People too.

And as long as we have the various routes to free information, we are supporting the movement. Social Media allows the intelligent and concerned citizen to access multiple venues of intelligent messages, many of which are free from CIA control.

The Social Media venues are also in general free from the rhetoric of political parties and their One Percent appointed leaders. Free from limiting the message to such a tiny bit of information that the CIA message is nothing more than jingoistic prattle. The Irony of Social Media is that when an important message is whittled down to almost nothing by the forces of the One Percent, through their CIA-controlled news formats, that message sinks below the heavy duty messages that make up Truth, and then the activists that are in control of the Social Media messages quite naturally offer their support keeping that Truth buoyed up.

There are numerous occasions when the USA has used illegal weapons. Those weapons include Agent Orange, white phosphorous, napalm, land mines, cluster bombs, and depleted uranium. In the case of land mines and depleted uranium, the hazards of those illegal weapons do not dissipate inside the region where they were deployed for decades after the fighting has ended.

Maybe we should bomb ourselves?

We also have a "good friend and ally" in the Middle East that was confirmed to have used white phosphorous inside a 575 page report by the UN. That report was completed in 2009, regrding the actions that nation took in Dec 2008 and Jan 2009. I don't remember us needing to bomb that nation, or threaten that nation, or whatever.

So I don't see your question as being simple. I think your question and that whole line of questioning is totally disingenuous, and dangerous to boot. By asking it, you are skirting the deeper moral thinking that informed citizens should be doing right now.

"Why Syria?" would be my question, which is the fundamental question. If you really truly think this has anything to do with 400 some innocent people who were hit by sarin gas, and killed by that exposure, I have a chunk of land near a busy airport to sell you for a meditation center.

This country of ours sat by and supported the President of the Congo and 600,000 people were killed. Not one whimper out of Washington DC officials, not one.

But the Congo is a place we already control. Syria is a place we don't. And Syria is the only nation offering Russia a port for its Navy, and a land mass for other military uses.

The Congo and other nations where atrocities are being committed offer us nothing in terms of military strategy in the coming war against Iran. Nor do any other areas where atrocities are being committed figure into the "needed" pipeline for that region in the Middle East.

On white phosphorous and how that chemical weapon was used on citizens of Gaza.

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2009/09/15/UNFFMGCReport.pdf

On edit, this is a summary of the UN report's findings from Amnesty International, and is NOT 575 pages long:

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/israeli-armys-use-white-phosphorus-gaza-clear-undeniable-20090119