Birther’s ‘don’t care’ about Obama’s birth certificate

If you tell a Birther that the sky is blue, then point to the sky and show them that the sky is blue, they will still deny that the sky is really blue. After Wednesday’s release of President Obama’s official long form certified birth certificate, that is essentially what the Birther's are saying.

According to Politico, “Phil Berg, who filed one of the original birther lawsuits, now believes Obama was adopted by his Indonesian father and lost his U.S. citizenship.” Berg said.

Adopted? Now that’s a new one. But just in case that is not enough to keep a baseless movement going, you can always change the question.

Berg added, “The issue is that he’s not anymore natural born. I don’t care if he releases his birth certificate or whatever.”

But wait! Wasn’t that the entire point of the Birther Movement in the first place?

Politico adds, “Orly Taitz, once called Queen of the Birther’s and who was responsible for a number of lawsuits, says she is verifying the document’s authenticity and now believes the president is using a false Social Security number.”

The sad part about the new adoption and Social Security claims against President Obama is that the Birther movement may be forced to change its name to cover their new fear-based, made-up theories.

How about this one: Barack Obama wasn't born anywhere because he was created in a test tube on a space ship, and no one has ever really seen him because he is really a computer generated avatar.

Don’t laugh, but that one could be next from the ridiculously suspicious, or ridiculously stupid people keeping the importance of the Birther Movement ahead of unemployment, the continuing foreclosure crisis, rising poverty rates, crumbling roads, the national debt, and controlling health care costs.

After all, the sky is not blue, it's really black with pink and plaid polka dots - you just can't see it.

Will the Gulf of Mexico ever recover from the BP oil spill?

A year ago today, eleven men died in an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. The oil spill disaster that followed changed the world in ways that neither BP, nor the United States government appears willing to admit. Oil still washes up on the shores of Louisiana, despite official claims that the spill was cleaned up.

The BP Gulf oil spill may one day be acknowledged as the worst environmental disaster cover up in history. From the day the oil began pouring into the Gulf, the media blackout wheels were in motion. BP didn’t want to tell the public that the spill rate was far more than the 2,000 barrels a day originally reported, or that the catastrophe underway was already out of control.

By the time the Macondo well was capped 4 months later, 5 million barrels of oil and more than 1 million gallons of the deadly chemical dispersant, Corexit, had been dumped into the sea.

Thousands of birds, turtles, dolphins, whales, and fish had been killed. The corpses collected from the shores were only a tiny fraction of what remained beneath, in the icy depths on the sea floor.

The BP oil spill police chased reporters and camera crews away from Louisiana beaches, ashamed to let the world see what they had done; not out of concern for the poisoned, dead and dying wildlife, but to protect their falling stack price, and avoid costly environmental damage fines.

Just days after the onset of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, BP began buying the silence of scientists with lucrative contracts that have entombed biological a great deal of data.

Evidence that has escaped the snare of BP’s gag orders has revealed blankets of sunken oil smothering the breeding grounds of the food chain. Studies on dead dolphins and sea turtles show internal bleeding and brain damage lead to painful deaths.

Established oil spill data proves that the damage does not go away. Thousands of miles from the site of an oil spill, animals continue to die months and years later. Some suffer reproductive problems, or are found with cancer and other tumors. Once the food chain has been tainted, there is virtually no limit to how far currents and weather patterns will carry it.

Animals cannot file lawsuits, but people can. If all long and short term scientific data on the BP oil spill was publically released, there might not be enough money in the world to repair the damage that has been done to animals, the environment, the food chain, and the health of human beings.

See:

BP oil spill turning Gulf of Mexico into graveyard: Endangered species may be lost forever 

BP oil spill wildlife dying by the thousands

What happened to the Republican Party of family values?

The political party that once called up a sense of morality and decency, has turned on the very principals they once publicly embraced. Now instead of promoting family values, the Republican Party is the source of division, and are far from setting an example for moral decency.

Republicans want to exchange Medicare, college grants, Social Security, Medicaid, environmental protection, clean water, clean air, Wall Street reform, and public safety, for  a 10% reduction in the top tax rate, which will cost America $4.2 trillion dollars.

On Real Time with Bill Maher, former RNC Chairman Michael Steele said he didn’t know what would happen to seniors when their $15,000 health insurance voucher money ran out. But he still thought getting rid of Medicare was a good idea. Steele said, “lets give it a try.”

What exactly is America supposed to try? Figuring out what to do with grandma when the nursing home throws her out after six months, because the substitute Medicare voucher does not cover the expenses for a full year of residence?

What happens to the disabled when their vouchers do not cover the cost of physical therapy and medicine? Should sick children on Medicaid be sent home to die when they need life saving medical treatment that will no longer be paid for?

Nothing in the republican plan promotes family values, decency, or morality.

According to the Daily Kos, Republican Paul Ryan’s budget plan “contains $1.4 trillion in Medicaid cuts over ten years …large cuts in food stamps, low-income housing, Pell Grants, and other programs for people with limited incomes; and repeal of the health reform law’s subsidies to help low- and moderate-income people purchase health insurance.... Cuts of this magnitude in programs for people of low or modest incomes will lead to substantial increases in poverty and hardship. In addition, the steep cuts in programs like Pell Grants to help low-income students get a college education would reduce the opportunity for many individuals to lift themselves out of poverty.”

Newly empowered Tea Party Republicans have seized Capitol Hill like a tornado. They are ripping through everything people once thought would stand forever, shaking the foundations of generations under the guise of fiscal crisis.

If they were truly interested in dealing with an American financial crisis, they would do what is best for families, instead of a handful of individuals and corporations to the tune of $4.2 trillion dollars.

If Obama gives in on govt. shutdown policy, can he still win re-election?

The battle over the 2011 budget and government shutdown is not about money. Democrats and republicans have an agreement on the dollar amount of budget cuts.

“Our differences are no longer over the savings we get on government spending, Reid said. “The only thing holding up an agreement is ideology,” according to MSNBC News.

At the heart of that ideology are issues that define the Democratic Party, and history may reflect it as a turning point in the Obama presidency.

The republicans are using the budget bill as a way to promote their radical views on the role of government as it relates to corporate pollution, financial regulation, and women’s rights; all core issues.

Tea Party freshmen refuse to budge on holding the entire country hostage to their pro-big business views. They think corporations should be free to pollute at will, no matter what the consequences to the general public or the environment. They feel the same way about financial regulations signed into law after the 2008 economic meltdown caused by Wall Street gambling with packaged mortgages.

The other major sticking point is women’s rights. Abortion is legal in the United States; that is a fact. But the Tea Party and republicans are against it. So they are using any means they can find to stop the practice, including manipulation of funding for Planned Parenthood, which provides breast cancer screenings and other health care services to more than a million women each year.

If President Obama ends of making a deal with the Tea Party and GOP that includes allowing what amounts to a complete corporate take-over of the government regarding public safety regulations, can he still call himself a democrat? Furthermore, does it diminish his chances for re-election in 2012?

There has been admission by Republican leader Mitch McConnell that the only goal of the Republican Party is to make Obama a one term president. Destroying the economic recovery might bring them closer to that goal, and shutting down the government would influence that as well. Furthermore, the budget cuts the GOP has proposed will not create a single new job. In fact, the GOP budget will cost 800,000 jobs, according to CBC news.

Since taking over Congress in 2011, the GOP and Tea Party have made it very clear that they have no interest in doing anything to help the American public as a whole move forward with job creation and economic growth. The facts speak for themselves. The GOP held the Obama Administration hostage at the end of 2010, by blocking important legislation until Obama agreed to extending the Bush tax cuts to America’s millionaires. The move violated republican alleged principals by adding to, instead of reducing the deficit.

In the government shutdown showdown, the GOP is once again holding America hostage over the rollback of clean drinking water, food safety, and other regulations that protect the public from corporate polluters and Wall Street gamblers.

These are not insignificant issues by any means. The outcome will shape the future of the nation and negatively affect the lives of 300,000 people.

If Obama hopes to retain a chance of re-election, he needs to prove to his base that he is still a democrat. He will not achieve that if he agrees to sell out the American people to the corporate funded interests of Tea Party Republicans. The only ones who favor a free for all on unregulated pollution are the businesses that create it.

GOP proposes plan to get rid of Medicare

On the republican road to getting rid of as much government as they can, their efforts to dissolve safety nets for the population has now been cast over Medicare.

Wisconsin republican Rep. Paul Ryan, who chairs the House Budget Committee, has a budget plan that would cut $4 trillion over the next ten years, much of it by getting rid of Medicare, according to Think Progress.

“The plan would essentially end Medicare, which now pays most of the health-care bills for 48 million elderly and disabled Americans,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

Medicare will be replaced by private insurance. Ryan’s plan includes giving money directly to insurance companies to help cover premiums, with a cap of $15,000.

If there is no limit to the amount an insurance company can charge the highest risk group in the nation, namely the elderly, former Medicare recipients will end up with considerably less coverage.

The Ryan plan amounts to little more than taxpayers paying for health insurance twice; once out of pocket, and once through government subsidy payments to insurance companies with their tax dollars.

Insurance companies have posted record profits throughout the worst recession in 70 years. In 2010, insurance company profits were up 41%, according to Healthinsurance.org.

Tea Party threatens govt. shutdown for corporate polluters: A return to the Erin Brockovich era

The threat of a government shutdown on April 8^th, and the focus of newly elected Republicans has not been to create jobs and help America recover from the worst recession in nearly a century. The GOP and Tea Party agenda appears to be all about the destruction of existing laws so big business can benefit by legally exploiting the general population and polluting the environment.

A substantial part of HR 1 includes slashing funding for the environmental Protection Agency. “The bill also blocks EPA from restoring Clean Water Act protections for many of the nation's most vulnerable waterways, including those that feed into drinking water supplies for more than 117 million Americans,” according to the Environmental News Service.

Not only will the republican bill not create jobs, President Obama said it "jeopardize our economic recovery."

There is much more at stake than just money in the budget battle raging on Capitol Hill.  HR 1 is about turning America into a land of no rules for big business; where toxic waste is dumped into the drinking water and air, simply so corporate profits can get a boost, in addition to all the tax breaks the republicans have handed them.

This thinly veiled excuse to reduce the deficit appears to be nothing more than republican redistribution of wealth to corporate polluters. The GOP appears to have failed to learn from the lessons of the past and now they are selling the public deficit reduction snake oil. Deregulation is not smaller government- it’s less responsible government.

“House Republicans included provisions in their $61 billion package of spending cuts that would block the EPA from implementing regulations on a variety of industries”, according to The Republic.

Republicans defending cuts to the protection of clean air and safe drinking water is in the best interest of polluters, not the American public.

One would be hard pressed to find many families who favor living next to a lake or river that the government deliberately gave a corporation the right to pollute and give them cancer. Remember Erin Brockovich?