STOP TRADE DEALS NOW!

Our country has to regain it’s footing before we can trade, Free or otherwise!

I’ll bet they’ll still support Obama in 2012 though. Bets?

These are not “free trade” agreements….

they are “cheap labor” agreements.

OT It appears there’s a budget deal: $39 billion in cuts with the EPA and Planned Parenthood riders saved for the next round of negotiations.

Giving away the store again I see. But didn’t you know this trade deal was going to get done? Where was the push back from the Progressives? Nope, too busy defending the Health Care Plan.

Then all the Kabuki Theater surrounding Muslims and The Tea Party…

Forget it, this is a done deal just like the AT&T/T-Mobile Merger. This America’s last gasp, remember the Roman Empire and how that ended? Yep, history repeating itself, we’ll just see if we’ll end up less powerful than Germany or France after everything is said and done.

Bingo!

Spot on! Calling these agreements “free trade” is no different than saying abortion is a sticking point in the budget negotiations. It’s not “abortion” that’s on the chopping block, the Hyde amendment already prevents that, it’s womens’ health care services.

Lori Wallach had an interesting piece in HuffPo that implies that the WH has agreed to a package deal that gets the Korea, Colombia and Panama trade deals done all together.

Is it possible that this already a done deal?

What is now the U.S. of A. will Balkanize after the collapse of the dollar and the economy and the Empire. Nobody is gonna wanna be ruled by Washington. No link – Chrystel Ball.

Yes and combine that with GE and friends trying to import those profits without having to pay US taxes on them…in exchange for exporting jobs, they benefit by getting better profits and no US taxes.

Republicans demanded all three together awhile back.

One big clusterfuck is preferable to three medium-sized ones I guess. You can campaign on it.

What the Republicans could NOT accomplish with their guy in the White House, they can accomplish with Obama.

If Obama was really a liberal, he would be leading the fight in Wisconsin against union busting. And he would use the opportunity to revive the Employee Free Choice Act. The point should be made that unions help all workers. It’s harder to sell the union case when it only helps workers paid by tax dollars.

Exactly. They’ll still enable their own political enemy, under the failed and stupid ‘philosophy’ of lesser evilism.

I’d still have some respect for SEIU if they’d at least target some Democratic Congress critters for electoral defeat, who are anti-American labor. But do they have the nerve to target even 1 Democratic Senator, or even 1 measely Representative?

The Tea Partiers have more aggressiveness in their pinkies than the SEIU, though in fairness I’m not aware of any Tea Party faction deliberately targetting any Republicans, even voting for Democrats if that’s what it takes. This is a strategic mistake on their part. In a least one of the northern states, various Tea Party factions have learned from their vote-splitting experience in 2010, which led to the defeat of all Tea Party candidates in the primary. They will be settling on a compromise Tea Party candidate in 2012.

However, though they’re going up the learning curve, and will be able to demonstrate yet more political muscle as a result, AFAIK none of the Tea Party groups has been clever enough to target even a single Republican in the general elections. What they should do is analogous to what I suggested that progressives do wrt the Democratic Party candidates. Until progressives have the nerve to deliberately target anti-progressive Democrats, why should anybody fear them? Likewise, the Tea Partiers should have an electoral hit list of Republicans, that they will work hard to defeat, even if it means voting for a Democrat.

See Recommended Short and Long Term Voting Strategies for the Dump Obama Movement

Thanks.

If the WH has indeed agreed to a package deal, that seems to indicate that passage of the deal in Congress is assured, unless there is an unlikely revolt among Senate Democrats

Your comment presumes that, despite any presumed endorsement, members of the SEIU will blindly vote the union endorsement. That hasn’t happened in many years, but is less likely to happen with a candidate who has betrayed the voting union worker as badly as this one.
I am a union man who is disabled and retired. My pension is small (Social Security) and my insurance has big holes in it (Medicare). Despite that, I managed to squeeze together money to contribute to this lying sack of s**t by skipping meals and doses of medications. I worked phone banks for hours despite the searing pain in my feet, legs and lower back of sitting in those uncomfortable chairs so common to these boiler rooms. Not this time. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
If someone runs against him in the primary, I will do the same things that I did for him, in spite of anything that the leadership of the AFL-CIO or the leadership of my specific union, which is a member of the AFL-CIO, about say about endorsing this person. I will do my best to defeat him for a true moderate or liberal Democratic candidate who will not betray the principles of the once proud Democratic Party for a few corporate dollars.
If no one runs against him or he is the nominee of the Democratic Party, I will do what I have not done since I was 18 years old in 1968. I will not vote for a Democratic nominee for President. I will vote for a Green Party candidate or some other similar additional party nominee and do the campaigning and donating that I did of President Obama. I will not be ‘throwing away my vote.’ Voting for a corporatist, lying, immoral person such as President Obama would be ‘throwing away my vote.’ Because it would be a vote directly against my economic, moral, legal and constitutional interests.

Well said.

And you are quite right about union endorsements. The endorsements can have limited effect in funneling cash and warm bodies in select voting areas, but union members do not blindly vote a union-endorsed ticket.

Wow, this is a powerful testimony.

I was referring to the SEIU as an organization, and am aware that union members don’t always follow the dictates of their leadership. Thankfully.

However, along with the rest of American society, I’m disappointed with rank-and-file union members, also. Why don’t they organize outside their unions, as well, if their union leadership is stuck on Democratic Party sycophancy? I refer you to my diary Why are there no MLK’s of Labor?

May I inquire as to your opinion of the New Progressive Alliance, which was given birth here at MyFDL, even though without the encouragement of FDL management? In particular, is this something that rank-and-file union members, of your acquaintance, could sign on to, in a big way?

Finally, I refer you to How teachers could make Rush Limbaugh’s head explode, but chronically fail to IMO, unionized teachers, without any help from any other groups of unionized rank-and-file, could spark a democratic renaissance in the US.

Yet, who has ever heard of teachers doing anything like what I suggest? There were teachins at college campuses in the 60′s, which were good in their day. But lately? Outside of WI? And outside the orbit of the Democratic Party?

This void of effective activism, which should instead be bubbling along, reminds me of the loneliness expressed by the ancient poetess Sappho in this fragment:

The Moon is gone
And the Pleiads set,
Midnight is nigh;
Time passes on,
And passes; yet
Alone I lie.

Where we should have democratic ferment and experimentation, we instead have inspiration for lonely poets! Some people mistake the “tempests in a teapot” that spirited arguments in a blog read by maybe 1% of the population represents, but that is a disempowering delusion.

Boehner, despite controlling only one third of the relevant institutions in the budget fight, was able to get the President to agree to even larger cuts than those Boehner originally asked for

this is because the request for cuts was not as severe as obama had hoped

we have to stop playing games thinking the best about this corporatist, he wasn’t “bested” when he gave up the public option, he wasn’t “bested” when he gave up competition on drugs, he wasn’t “bested” on redistibuting middle class assets in the guise of “bush tax reductions”, he wasn’t “bested” on telecom imunity

he is not being “bested” he is accomplishing the corporate agenda he had in mind when they recruited him back after the democratic convention when he showed some potential

we are being had so bad it’s not amusing, the democrats are not only giving the country away to the wealthy we are also going to be blamed for the damage that give away costs

here’s the republican mantra;

“the economy is bad, we need to lower taxes”

“the economy is great, we can’t lower taxes and ruin it”

here’s the democrats mantra

“the economy is bad so let’s do whatever the republicans want even thought that’s what caused the problem”

“the economy is great so lets do what the republicans want since we can afford it”

can we start talking on the front page about how bad we want obama defeated?

if we don’t start now then we will have him as the democratic candidate, if we do start now at least we have hopes of some kind of primary challenge

this man in office is doing more damage then bush and that is not hyperbole

No bet here. Also don’t forget about the AFL-CIO. Come 2012,Dick will be right on board the Obama train too.