pkarnig’s posthaven

Sen. Scott Brown's (R-Mass) announcement that he will oppose sweeping campaign finance reform legislation has spurred speculation that the bill cannot pass in this legislative session. The Massachusetts Republican was the top target to cross party lines and support the DISCLOSE Act. Democrats on the Hill admitted that they were, as one aide stated bluntly, putting all their eggs in the "Brown basket.

First the Dems lost the Kennedy seat and now we can't even pass the Financial Reform Bill.

It is as enraging as it is heartbreaking, and we will not relent until this leak is contained, until the waters and shores are cleaned up, and until the people unjustly victimized by this manmade disaster are made whole," Obama said.

The real problem here is that our government is not looking out for the people or the planet. Our government is clearly looking out for big business. Obama needs to lead and change our country. This is the platform that he campaigned and won on. The People and the Press need to hold him accountable. We need real reform of all the businesses that we rely on. Now it's just the same old bullshit scam that we have been handed for 30 years. And look what has happened in the last 30 years: The US middle class is gone and the planet is in worse shape than ever. We need real reform of the Healthcare industry, the Oil industry and finally, the way our government works and how people finance their election campaigns. We should be working together to bring about the changes that we need and want.

1. The Volcker Rule, as specifically proposed in the Merkley-Levin amendment

Constraints on the size and leverage of our largest banks, as proposed by the Brown-Kaufman amendment

When the mainstream consensus shifts in favor of these measures, or their functional equivalents, we will have finally begun the long process of reining in the dangerous economic and political power of our largest banks.

Americans that care about regulating banking activities need to pay attention to these issues as they come up in congress and tell their representatives this is what we need for a more healthy economy.

For all of Goldman Sachs' professed support for an overhaul of financial regulations, the megabank hasn't exactly withdrawn its army of lobbyists. Far from wearing out its welcome, the firm is busier than ever safeguarding its interests while a Wall Street crackdown takes shape in Washington.

Goldman has an unrivaled and influential network of lobbyists, including about 50 people with close ties to Congress and past White Houses, a Huffington Post Investigative Fund analysis of lobbying and campaign records shows. The lobbyists are challenging reforms aimed at Goldman's profit centers, including the trading of complex contracts known as derivatives. The Senate this week will continue debating proposed regulations of derivatives, which are blamed for fueling the financial crisis

The fact that banks have been allowed to trade derivates as a means of hedging their bets on investments like risky mortgage backed securities really points out that the combined lack of regulatory control by our government and the lack of transparency in financial reporting creates an environment where our big financial institutions, like Goldman Sachs, can manipulate markets and reap huge profits at the cost of financial stability. We need more regulation now before we find ourselves in another harmful bubble market.

Don't worry about that pesky oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, BP CEO Tony Hayward says: It's "relatively tiny" compared to the "very big ocean."

Hayward launched this novel defense of the worst spill in U.S. history during an interview with the Guardian that deserves a full read, especially with BP fighting the Obama administration's push to make the company pay the full tab for cleanup costs. The BP chief executive acknowledged for the first time that he expects his future with the company to be "judged by the nature of the response" to the current crisis; this may help explain his stream of delaying tactics and excuses.

"We will fix it. I guarantee it. The only question is we do not know when," Hayward told the Guardian. "The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume."

Before calling the oil spill analogous to the Apollo 13 flight and comparing it favorably with a deadly 2005 BP rig explosion in Texas, Hayward said BP is "increasingly confident" that they'll find a way to stop the oil flow, and that the company has already prevented significant amounts of oil from reaching the shore.

BP's CEO isn't alone in downplaying the effects of the spill. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) told the Associated Press his state is ready for tourism dollars -- just don't get too close to the water while waterskiing.

"We don't wash our face in it, but it doesn't stop us from jumping off the boat to ski," Barbour said.

This seems like the standard management response to what is clearly a catastrophic event for our oceans and planet. This guy even looks a little like Alfred E. Newman. "What, Me Worry?" If it wasn't so terrible, it would be funny.

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says that US forces in Afghanistan are carrying out what he referred to as "battlefield executions" of prisoners.

"One of the great tragedies of my country is that Mr. Obama is looking the other way, because equally horrible things are happening to prisoners, to those we capture in Afghanistan," Hersh said during a discussion at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference last month in Geneva, where he was also the keynote speaker. "They're being executed on the battlefield."

Hersh, who broke the Abu Ghraib prison abuse story in 2004, says that five or six people had told him about the battlefield executions of prisoners. A video of his comments was uploaded to Michael Moore's YouTube Channel on Tuesday.

Every american citizen has to be aware of what is happening in Afghanistan today. We are killing innocent people. We are spending Billions Of Dollars every day. The result is simple: The muslim world sees us as the enemy and this helps the terrorists recruit members. The US has the opportunity to take a leadership position to mend the division in the world. We have no place in Afghanistan. We need to come home now and fix our problems here. God knows, there are plenty!

We are putting a big gamble on this," Thoreen said. "Any of this stuff we're doing here, not just at our level but the $800 billion we have spent so far in the country, is contingent on the government being effective.

So now our military men are being set up as temporary heroes because we are spending 100s of billions of american dollars in a country and a war that we will never win. We have to stop this ASAP. AMERICA NEEDS THIS MONEY FOR OUR OWN SURVIVAL. The only one benefiting from this is the Military Industrial Complex. This is VIETNAM ALL OVER AGAIN - ONLY WORSE.