For my money, corporations took our democracy over a long time ago, so this is closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. Still I’m glad to hear Dr. Utopia say this:
They want to take Congress back and return to the days where lobbyists wrote the laws. It is the most insidious power grab since the monopolies of the Gilded Age. That’s happening right now. So there’s a lot of talk about populist anger and grassroots. But that’s not what’s driving a lot of these elections.
We tried to fix this, but the leaders of the other party wouldn’t even allow it to come up for a vote. They want to keep the public in the dark. They want to serve the special interests that served them so well over the last 19 months.
Cue Charles Lane and Megan McArdle whining that Obama hates free speech.
Steve
Even on the Citizens United court, the Justices ruled 8-1 that Congress had the power to require disclosure of corporate expenditures. Only Clarence Thomas disagreed. So this is not exactly a radical proposal.
homerhk
Also cue progressive whingers saying this are just pretty words and that Obama is just as bad a corporate sellout as Republicans. Obama loves the banks don’t you know – hence credit card reform, wall street reform, consumer protection and Elizabeth Warren.
Of course it makes no difference who has the Presidency or who controls Congress so why bother? Obama is just Bush with better rhetoric.
Corner Stone
Haven’t read the article. When he mentions “the other party” that wouldn’t allow it to come up for a vote, which party does he mean?
Blue Neponset
@homerhk: I hate to admit this but Bush’s rhetoric was much better than Obama’s. If the Dems had the soulless lying machine that the Republicans have we would be much better off. Instead, we are going to lose our shirts in November after saving the economy and passing historical health care reform.
One of the things I was excited about with Obama was his supposed ability to sway public opinion and I have to say I am disappoint. Ever since the death panels of august he hasn’t won a round against the Republican lying machine. He has to do better.
carlos the dwarf
I was at this speech. [I’m a volunteer for the candidate he was campaigning for.] It was very clear that Obama was actually soft-pedaling his criticisms of Wall Street and Big Business. Remember, this speech was being given in the New York suburbs part of Connecticut, and just about everyone there is much better off financially when the big Wall Street firms do well. A good number work in high-level positions for big Wall Street firms, and don’t want to hear much criticism of the way they make their money. I expect that if he had given this speech in, say, Iowa, he would have been even more critical.
maya
Well, I’m pulling all my $$$ out of that blue chip, Masturbation Corporation, now. It feels like the prudent thing to do.
eemom
You know, in all sincerity, it is things like this, plus Elizabeth Warren, plus NO to tax cuts for top 2% scum, plus getting HCR fucking PASSED, plus getting FinReg fucking PASSED, plus Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, plus calling out No-Boner for the lying orange liar that he is, plus telling Ed Henry that he likes to know WTF he’s talking about before he opens his mouth, plus whatever else I’ve overlooked at the moment,
that really, REALLY makes me admire this man…….and really, REALLY despise all the ignorant, bigoted, evil, and/or self-interested assholes on both sides who are trying to destroy him instead of trying to help him, and this broken down clusterfucked mess of a country that he really is doing his damndest to try to fix.
Obama Akbar.
eemom
@Blue Neponset:
you would be Exhibit A to what I just said.
Linda Featheringill
@eemom:
Come on. Tell us what you REALLY think. :-)
Blue Neponset
@eemom: If I clap harder will the Democrats keep the House in November?
eemom
@Blue Neponset:
no, but if you stop whining and do some work we might.
Blue Neponset
@eemom: What work have I not been doing?
Dork
Meg McAddled will argue that Obama hates free speech 34% of the time, or 7 out of 8 times.
eemom
on a happier note
mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/jon-stewart-plans-to-rally-against-extremism/
if anyone is going to be in deecee for this we could have a big ole Balloon Juice get together….!
Linda Featheringill
It looks to me like Obama is trying to take the rotten economy away from the Republicans as a campaign topic and making it a Democratic topic.
Gutsy, and probably necessary. Yes, sometimes he comes across a bit like a professor. But who else is the medial going to allow to explain the whole convoluted mess?
The press would not listen to me talk for 30 minutes about what is wrong with the economy, even if the situation warranted that much explanation.
So the Prez makes his speeches, Elizabeth Warren makes the rounds and talks about what her new job is about, and the House and Senate actually get some of that stuff out the door. Sounds like a plan.
Bear in mind that I am operating from the opinion that we only need about a 5% shift in voter opinion in order to save the day. And these actions from the top will probably cause a shift in opinion of about 2-3%. Now we need to get more people in to actually vote.
Greenhouse Guy
@eemom: Yes, what you said. That is all.
someguy
The R’s are the tool of lobbyists – unlike the congressional majority party?
Seriously DougJ… do you really believe that shit? The teabaggies are looking a lot less astroturfy and a lot more loony right populist to me, and pretty much the enemy of the lobbyist corporatist Republicans – Mike Castle being a truly awesome example of the breed. So if the R’s take over it’s going to be pretty teabaggy, and I have a tough time viewing teatards as corporate tools. They’re tools alright… just not the corporate lobbyist type.
D. Mason
@eemom:
It pretty much takes a frothing winger to believe any politician is all good or all bad and you appear to have some foam on your chin.
Also, too. People like you are the reason the messiah meme had legs.
Zifnab
@Corner Stone: Seriously, would it kill the President to name names?
“Alabama Senator Richard Shelby put a blanket hold on court nominees because he objected to cuts pork going to his state.”
“Tom Coburn has personally filibustered over X pieces of legislation, costing the Senate Y hours in additional debate to settle routine business.”
“Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS) lead Republicans to vote against a recognition of Mother’s Day simply to stall debate in the House.”
“The Minority Whip was able to rally a scant 13 votes in favor of extending health care to 9/11 emergency responders, because his party refused to take up the bill without staking on hundreds of amendments that could cost US taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in local pet projects.”
Lay them out. Lay them all out. Let’s give the Sunday Morning Pundits something to actually revisit. Let’s give the Democratic Congressmen some Obama Rallying video for campaign ads against these dastardly incumbents.
Remind voters about the Bridge to Nowhere and the $9 billion missing dollars in Iraq and the trillion dollar Bush deficits. Name some fucking names.
eyepaddle
@eemom:
Well, when you put it THAT way….
I find your ideas intriguing and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Omnes Omnibus
@someguy: Have you looked at the funding sources for the Tea Parties? If you do, you will find the Koch brothers and Dick Armey near the top of the list. I would say that is pretty corporate lobbyist-ish, wouldn’t you?
Sneaux
“Corporations plus government equals fascism.” Benito Mussolini Just call it what it is.
eyepaddle
@Omnes Omnibus:
Along those lines, there’s the old saw about “the greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world he doesn’t exist.” Well, I never really bought that, and I figured that the greatest trick the devil could play was convincing people they were working against him when they are rushing headlong to do his bidding.
This is how the teabaggers can think they are AGAINST the fat cats.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Convincing yourself that both parties are the same is a comforting excuse to sit on your ass and do nothing.
Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. Ready for something different.
eemom
@D. Mason:
well, here’s the thing: I am not, by nature, much of a groupie/messianic type. On the contrary, I am very much convinced that Obama is a human being.
But I am also convinced that he’s a brilliant, talented person who is very sincerely doing his best with what has to be the shittiest hand of cards any democratically leader has ever been dealt. And that is the best any human being can do. And IMO we should be grateful that we DO have a person of his quality actually TRYING to do his best……rather than the unspeakable alternative we came so very close to getting.
For these reasons, it makes me exceptionally furious at the way the man has been, metaphorically speaking, beaten to death with brutal, ugly lies by people who are ignorant, bigoted, evil and/or self interested.
The ferocity of these brutal and unjustifiable attacks provokes me to an equally ferocious defense.
If that makes me a “messiah” cultist in your view, have at it.
TooManyJens
@maya:
FTFY
someguy
@Omnes Omnibus:
Ah, the Koch brothers, whose nefarious influence and long reach dwarfs even Goldman Sachs…
Congress is a wholly owned subsidiary of the securities and banking industry, and we think the loony libertard Koch brothers are the big threat w/r/t corporatism? Um, okay, sure. By the way, how’s that financial reform bill coming. I hear Goldman really opposed it, hammer and tongs. Oh wait a minute, they campaigned for it, didn’t they. Wonder why that is…
Steve
@someguy:
Have you noticed the big colorful chart at the top of the front page?
Kryptik
My fear is that it’s too little, too late, honestly. This is the kind of stuff that’s refreshing to hear, but it’s also stuff we probably should’ve heard months ago.
It still puts him far above some of the fucking nitwits on the Dem side in Congress, like the one calling for Pelosi’s resignation ‘or else’, or this genius who thinks that the best way for him to win is jump on that anti-Hispanic express and gin up ‘ILLEGALLLLLLS!’ fear. Fucking morons, the lot of ’em.
cat48
@eemom:
That would be fun, but I live 450 mi away. I would like to go though.
someguy
On the other hand, I guess it is possible that the right wing Koch brothers are in league with the center left rent seeking corporatists at Goldman, and somehow a lack of game-rigging federal regulations would work out to Goldman’s benefit. It is possible because Goldman is the biggest hedge player this side of Soros, and they may be positioned well to deal with either greatly increased regs that hurt their competition, or greatly decreased regs that give Goldman some advantage. But I tend to think they’d disagree with the freewheeling wingnut candidates that the tea party seems to be promoting. They don’t strike me as very good party soldiers.
Unless of course they’re faking it as part of a cunning plan to make us think they aren’t corporate controlled, loyal republican lobbyist footsoldiers…
It’s at that point I put down the meth and walk away because my paranoia is totally getting the better of my common sense, and conclude the tea party and Freedom Works may have been astroturfed at the start but they’ve brought out legit loonies who may wreak havoc in the end and who are not very good team players. Occam’s razor and all.
Bob Loblaw
@D. Mason:
Anybody who says things like ‘Obama Akbar’ seriously has some rather substantial issues.
It is kind of amusing though that any administration that even bothers saying this shit gets taken seriously by anybody. I mean, after the PhRMA deal, backdoor bailouts through FNM, mideast weapons deals, carrying BP’s water and not bothering to release a real estimate of the wellhead flow into the gulf for a month and a half, etc., it’s not like this admin is some paragon of virtue.
This is such meaningless political garbage. The federal government would shut down in a day if special interests weren’t allowed to have input into the system anymore. At least 80% of Congress and half the damn bureaucracy doesn’t even understand what it is they’re passing and enacting.
burnspbesq
@someguy:
You mean the financial regulatory reform bill that when fully implemented will measurably improve the well-being of millions of Americans?
Sorry you only got a unicorn charm for your key ring instead of an actual walking, shitting unicorn. If you want to give it back, I’m sure Mitch McConnell would be happy to take it from you. And when MBNA raises the interest rate on your Visa card to 29.99 percent because you were one day late with one payment, I’m sure Mitch McConnell will help you out with that.
Bob Loblaw
@eemom:
That’s so plainly false as a historical statement as to be utterly sycophantic.
Omnes Omnibus
@someguy: Did I say they were the biggest threat? Were we even talking about that? No. The fact that the tea parties are funded in large part by right wing corporate interests tends to refute your implication that they are grassroots phenomena. That was my point, and that was as far as I sought to go with it.
JWL
The democratic party couldn’t punch its way out of a soap bubble.
eemom
Yo Loblollipop (if I may borrow from the General):
The Obama Akbar part is a little BJ joke that trolls don’t get.
Now be a dear and go suck somewhere else. kthxbai
Bob Loblaw
@eemom:
Well, between lollipops and unicorns, I’d say you and burnsy are almost ready for your first big day at kindergarten. Goody goody gumdrops.
eemom
@Bob Loblaw:
got a “for instance” of this Plain Historical Falsehood for us to mull on?
B4 you (unlikely, I know but I’m an optimist) take my advice and get the fuck out of here?
I hear Jane Hamsher’s
hiringaccepting new eunuchs into her service. You’re just so totally her type it would be a cosmic shame not to apply.D. Mason
@Bob Loblaw:
I like “utterly sycophantic” as a way to describe the behavior of some Obama loyalist. Really I like Obama and think he has done an overall OK job, surely better than McCane would have done, but the cognitive dissonance on display among people who think he has done no wrong is no different than that of the Bush 27%ers in my mind. I saw someone the other day say he has pushed state secrets and protected torturers because it’s not his job to lay down the powers usurped by Bush – it’s the responsibility of the other branches to rest that power from him. That’s right, hes taking the high ground there, by covering up torture. Pathetic.
Blue Neponset
@eemom: Congratulations on becoming blog monitor. Is there anything else we can’t talk about here besides our opinion of Obama’s job performance?
Socraticsilence
@eemom:
But don’t you know that the Elizabeth Warren thing is actually a sign of cowardice- If he really just nominated then did this if the nomination failed then he’d be a real president (never mind the fact that this would be exactly the kind of thing we rightly excoriated Bush for- its different when we do it).
Chuck Butcher
Considering the Senate rules it doesn’t take a body ‘owned’ by corporate interests to have outcomes that are in their favor. A FinReg bill that would’ve made large structural changes had no chance of going anywhere, not thanks to a large majority of Senators but thanks to a minority.
If you take a close look at the D Caucus you’ll find about 40 pretty liberal people and that is a significant number. It also isn’t enough. What there is to be done about that, I don’t have a clue, but to make blanket assertions that the difference is just the initial after their name is silly.
With 2 Sen/state it is pretty cheap to fund races in low population states and get enough votes to sway outcomes. Mistaking the status of some members with the entire body isn’t helpful. With the electorate as it is today you will get the outcomes that are being complained about, changing the electorate’s point of view in some states is the difficulty and not much beyond a constant drumbeat of propaganda seems to do the job. I live in a hopelessly Red CD, thirty years ago it was reliably Democratic as is the case with many of the rural states.
jl
Slightly off topic, below is a link to a recent Joseph Stiglitz column in Politico on economics of extending Bush Jr. tax cuts, and good stimulus policies.
Time to build a better stimulus
politico.com/news/stories/0910/42150.html
Corner Stone
@D. Mason:
That was awesome!
Oh, uh..and, btw you’re a firebagger.
Martin
Ok, can we make a point clear:
With Obama’s proposal *everyone* sees a tax benefit, even people making a hundred million dollars per year. The tax benefits will apply to the first $250K that you make. Everyone gets that. Its only income over $250K that will get taxed at the higher rate.
No person is excluded. Only certain income is. This is not a radical proposal – it’s precisely the same approach that the current tax structure operates under.
Corner Stone
@Socraticsilence: Your post reads like argle bargle.
Bob Loblaw
@eemom:
I don’t have four hours to rundown the whole list.
Would it be ok if I just limit myself to post-genocidal regimes, maybe? Or how about post-colonial transitions? Or hell, let’s just start picking various African and Latin American democracies at random over the last few decades.
Stop being dumb.
Chuck Butcher
@eemom:
Oh crap eeemom, FDR just for goddam instance?
Assuming you meant to use a capital “D” in democratic
Hugin & Munin
Bob Loblaw:
D. Mason
@Corner Stone:
A firebagger? Is that anything like a troll(that’s what I normally am when not kissing Obamas feet)? I know I know, I’m a fRight-troll spooftard winger-nut for not falling on my knees and agreeing 100% with the denizens of BJ, but really, what’s a firebagger?
Chuck Butcher
@D. Mason:
That would seem to depend on the poster or commenter and the current mood.
Cris
We are long indebted to Hillbuzz for the delightful “Dr. Utopia” moniker.
Chuck Butcher
@Chuck Butcher:
Your hyperbolic approach to anything Obama really pretty much negates whatever point you may actually have to make. The stupidity of the right scarcely justifies your stupidity, though that’s the case you made for yourself. I don’t mind heat, but stupid inaccurate statements don’t serve any end I can think of.
slag
Goddamn. I’m getting as tired of pointless Obama debates as I am of pointless abortion debates.
News flash, geniuses: You will never convince each other that you are right. Get the fuck over it and move along.
For Chrissakes!
D. Mason
@Chuck Butcher:
Oh ok, so it’s just an “insult” for those who fail to express sufficient fealty to his supreme perfectness or the ideas of his
worshipersfollowerstrue believerssupporters? I’ll try harder in the future to hide my mild questioning of what can only be 75th dimensional 3 tier star-trek chess, too elaborate for my ignorant eyes to perceive.Obama Akbar?
Corner Stone
@D. Mason: It refers to a special category of beings that live in a land called Honalee.
People here hop on their special Puff the Magic Dragons and go looking in every nook and cranny for these mythical beings.
In the absence of actual findings, they use them as stand ins to pre-emptively rebuff arguments not made, and reject criticisms as not legitimate.
IOW, when you see someone invoke the firebagger moniker you can immediately assume two things: a)they are desperate to deflect any disagreement and b)they aren’t too bright, and typically have the mentality of a 5th grader.
No offense to 5th graders, obviously.
Resident Firebagger
Obama talking about the evils of lobbyists writing laws? After Wellpoint wrote HCR? That’s rich.
Dino
Confronting the malefactors of great wealth is good and all.
But he has to couple this message with one of optimism invoking American exceptionalism e.g. “No nation is more industrious, entrepreneurial blah blah blah. We are not the type to accept our fate…”
I know it is corny, but America is corny. It is won over with flattery.
Socraticsilence
@Corner Stone: Its the new meme out in the leftierthanthouosphere- its crazy but its an actual thing- somehow the Warren thing actually makes the President worse because he’s not putting her before congress or something.
Mnemosyne
@Bob Loblaw:
It would be kind of nice if you would restrict yourself to the United States, since that’s the country that’s under discussion. I mean, sure, you can say that the guy who followed Pol Pot was dealt a worse hand than Obama, but it’s not particularly relevant to the current discussion.
Please name a US president other than FDR or Lincoln who faced a worse mess when he got into office.
eemom
@Hugin & Munin:
that’s pretty amusing coming from someone who could fuck up a “reply” post that bad.
Maybe you ought to warm up with that little finger game from nursery school
before you hit the keyboard.
eemom
@Mnemosyne:
Even Lincoln and FDR, putting aside the magnitude of the mess they inherited, were not dealt as shitty a hand, IMO — when you factor in the unparalleled obstructionism of the opposing party, the complicity of the emmessemm, the assholes of the “professional left,” and all of that being empowered by the internet and the 24/7 news cycle, not to mention other technologies that didn’t exist back then.
valdivia
@eemom:
Hey I am in DC and plan on going! let the Juicer get-together begin.
Bob Loblaw
@eemom:
This is who you are defending, Mnemosyne. A religious zealot who is plainly insane.
No, crazy bitch, the lead-up to the Civil War was slightly more tenuous a time to take power in this country. Despite the existential terror that is the “Professional Left” (dun dun DUH) in that syphilitic rat-trap you call a brain, there were actual goddamn secessionists who wanted to treat millions of human beings as chattel and were willing to slay hundreds of thousands of people to keep it that way. There is no comparison. None.
Oh, and for the record, direct quoting is a bitch.
Don’t try to dodge after you got busted selling abject horseshit. Which is what that statement is, whether constrained by American history or not.
Mnemosyne
@Bob Loblaw:
I’m pretty sure she meant Democrat, not, you know, democrat. So dragging post-colonial South American regimes into the discussion seems like you’re trying to dodge the discussion.
Yes, Lincoln was probably dealt a worse hand, as was FDR. And your argument is that because Obama’s hand is slightly better than “imminent Civil War” or “25% unemployment,” that means that any idiot could have solved our current problems with one hand behind his back and Obama’s problem is that he’s just not trying hard enough?
This Onion story doesn’t seem quite so far-fetched anymore.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@Mnemosyne:
It would be nice if eemom had. The exact words were “any democratically leader [sic]”.
I guess we’re not talking about electoral reform anymore. Well, if we’re talking about economic difficulty then not only FDR but Martin van Buren, William Henry Harrison, James K. Polk, and Rutherford B. Hayes are contenders. One could also argue that the stagflation faced by Ford, Carter, and Reagan, while not a “crisis” such as in 2008, was a seemingly intractable problem faced by those three Presidents. Since you threw in Lincoln I guess you are including issues of war and peace and national unity in the “shittiest hand” competition. If that’s the case then every pre-Civil War President, as well as the immediate post-war ones, faced far greater challenges than Obama with his two puny little neo-colonial escapades and Tea Party clown show. Nixon inherited the Vietnam mess and social upheavals of the 60s. Truman and Eisenhower (not to mention Kennedy and Johnson) inherited a Cold War that had everybody thinking about extinction of the species.
I’ll give you this; Obama certainly has been dealt the “shittiest hand” of the last, say, quarter century. Maybe that’s all the older you and eemom are.
eemom
Just for the record, I think that reasonable people with a reasonable understanding of history could have an intelligent disagreement about who got dealt the shittiest hand.
As explained above, my use of the phrase took account of circumstances other than the actual real world challenges (e.g. wars, unemployment) that confronted the leaders when they took office, a point which neither Lollipop nor any other of his ilk addressed. In that context, arguably, Obama was dealt the shittiest hand of all just by being the first AA president, not to mention all the other political/technological strikes against him that neither Lincoln or FDR or anyone else could have dreamed of.
As I said though, I recognize the point could be argued among reasonable people. For example, I respect Mnemosyne’s opinion that Lincoln or FDR, when all is said and done, did get dealt a shittier hand.
And having said that, I am now fresh out of reasonable people on this thread who appear to be interested in discussing this point.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@eemom:
I don’t think reasonable, intelligent discussions begin with the premise of an elected leader being dealt a “shittier hand” than anybody else. That’s really just an emotional statement, and there’s nothing wrong with emotional statements provided you don’t carry on with the laughable pretense that you are being more reasonable and intelligent than anybody else.
Except for a small contingent in your Hosanna Chorus it is painfully obvious to reasonable, intelligent people that your statement back @25 more resembled a schoolgirl’s squeal of approval for the stars of Twilight than reasonable, intelligent argumentation. You can stop the pretense otherwise now, or keep doing it and make yourself look even more foolish, your choice.
Corner Stone
That’s a keeper.
General Stuck
Goddam firebaggers, turn every thread into a pedantic orgy of stupid shit slinging when the point Obama was making was correct and simple. The wingnuts have declared a civil war of sorts. a cold one, but one that is unmistakably seditious launched for one purpose, and that is to bring the engine of government led by dems and Obama to a screeching halt.
Who gives a shit about the glass in your empty heads of Obama hate.. jeebus.
You fuckwits have been screaming for Obama to get fired up and take the battle to the goopers, and every time he does we get nothing but senseless trollery about this peanut, or another and your rage that sure appears to have nothing to do with politics.
Corner Stone
Cue the video of Glenn Beck barking like an insane rodeo clown.