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.

Dead bird outbreak worsens across Southeast US

The latest bird deaths in the wildlife mystery appeared on the roadside of Interstate 65, near Huntsville, Alabama on Saturday. The 300 black-colored grackles strewn over a white blanket of white snow was an eerie scene for motorists driving past the carcasses.

Since the beginning of 2011, thousands of dead birds and millions of dead fish have been reported worldwide. In Faenza, Italy, more than 700 doves were found dead with blue stains on their beaks. Authorities say it was a sign of suffocation. Sweden also reported dead birds last week. In the United States, strange bird deaths have been reported in Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama and California. Dead fish and crabs have been reported by the millions in Maryland, Illinois, Arkansas, New Zealand, Brazil.

A recent report in the Huffington Post claims scientists have discovered the cause of death for the Doves in Italy. "We are fairly confident the birds died as a result of massive indigestion brought on by over-eating," Rodolfo Ridolfi, a director at the regional zoological institute, told The Daily Mail.” Additional data suggest that dead birds across the United States are the cause of blunt trauma and internal bleeding.

What all the reports lack is what prompted the bird deaths. Why did the birds in Italy suddenly eat themselves to death? In the US, the internal bleeding claimed to be the cause of death of the birds in Beebe, Arkansas could have been caused by impact, after falling from the sky. But what cause the birds to fall in the first place?

Birds and fish are at the top of the food chain, so whatever affects them also soon affects humans. There is some speculation that pollution from chemicals and oil from the BP Gulf oil spill has infiltrated the environment on a global scale. NOAA had suggested this possibility last year, during the height of the crisis.

However, much of the Gulf oil spill data has been hidden through contracts between BP and scientists, so the connection may be difficult to document. Concealing oil spill damage data was the purpose of the BP contracts, to reduce the company’s monetary damage penalties.

There are any number of reasons for the sudden death of birds and fish worldwide. Climate change, pollution, and theories of the Apocalypse are among them.

One thing is certain; there is a reason for the sudden death of wildlife across the globe, we just have no solid evidence to support any of them right now. Until we do, the speculation, and perhaps the birds deaths, will go on.

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