I can’t get enough of this stuff (via):
One of the guests raised his hand; he knew how to solve the problem. The president had won plaudits for his speech on race during the last campaign, the guest noted. It was a soaring address that acknowledged white resentment and urged national unity. What if Obama gave a similarly healing speech about class and inequality? What if he urged an end to attacks on the rich? Around the table, some people shook their heads in disbelief.
I apologize in advance for calling these clowns pansy asses.
Update. This is a little mean, but somehow of a piece with the above:
But after a few months it became exhausting. They have big egos and are big babies…..I can’t trust any of them. They’re all liars. Some nicer or cuter than others, but all liars.
BGinCHI
Lacking in empathy coming in just above lack of brains for those people.
No sense of history, no experience of struggle, no fellow-feeling.
Now, can we have some proper class warfare? Maybe a national day of violence against the rich? At least then they’d get the “pain” part.
AxelFoley
They really are that obtuse, aren’t they?
MattF
One may recall that in the not-so-distant past it would be taken for granted that any very wealthy person was a thief. Now, was that fair? Well, um, yes, actually.
jwb
@AxelFoley: The only thing that is saving us at this point is that a large portion of our overlords are exceptionally stupid about everything except making money.
satanicpanic
We shall overcome!
Jewish Steel
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the quantity of their capital, but by the content of their character.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I take some small comfort from that, but the guy who said that idiocy was probably the one at that table who will be sending money to SuperPACs.
Svensker
Yeah, but they kill what they eat, so it’s OK.
BGinCHI
@Jewish Steel: If that was true for the banksters they’d be even more fucked given the state of their characters.
c u n d gulag
Instead of asking Obama for a speech, how about at the next dinner-meeting of you Wall Street
baboonstycoons, you have Mayor Bloomberg sing “Let’s Get it On” to you during the cocktail hour in a dominatrix outfit, holding a velvet whip, instead?Villago Delenda Est
These people need a close encounter with a blade dropped from overhead.
Perhaps their children will learn from their mistakes. Perhaps.
satanicpanic
I’m organizing freedom rides for the wealthy. Anyone with an income $500k/yr or above can join us. We’ll be visiting poor neighborhoods to demand that the wealthy get equal treatment before the law. That their children get to attend the same public schools that the rest of us do. Many of the wealthy have been locked out of the political process, so we’ll be registering them to vote. Sympathetic non-rich are encouraged to join. Any volunteers?
Cluttered Mind
@satanicpanic: Any chance you can just send those freedom rides for the wealthy off the nearest cliff instead?
arguingwithsignposts
@Cluttered Mind: Shhhhh. Now you’ve revealed too much!
Valdivia
I have memories of going out on blind dates with these a-holes when I lived in nyc. Gah. And too early to start drinking to drown them.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@Valdivia:
It’s 5 o’clock somewhere.
Jewish Steel
@BGinCHI: Well, this is where my inspirational speech falls apart, I guess.
MattF
Speaking of life among the financially astute, there are two interesting items on the NYT business page:
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/business/index.html
One, near the bottom of the page, on municipal bonds is in the ‘It wasn’t dishonest or unethical or illegal, and we promise not to do it anymore’ mode and the other is the column by James Stewart on the collapse of a famous law firm.
kdaug
@MattF:
Get a rope.
Smiling Mortician
@Jewish Steel: And I have a dream that one day the tears of the banksters will well up and live out the true meaning of their greed.
Davis X. Machina
There’s a strong forelock-tugging gene in us. The Folks in the Big House have always had supporters — and some of them can be persuaded to do their killing for them.
The ancien regime owed its survival – survival long enough to become ancien in the first place — to more than superb tailoring.
The Dangerman
@satanicpanic:
Not just us, no peace!
lamh35
for you brief but cute viewing pleasure, POTUS arriving in Ohio a few hours ago. He was disembarking from AF1, but wait, he forgot someone and had to go back..
http://youtu.be/Vss6WI3-MAk
BTW, I didn’t realize that I could livestream from my IPAD. Or is that just the cutting-edge tech used by OfA. I don’t think I’ve always been able to livestream CNN or whatnot.
Valdivia
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
In china it is already tomorrow so you’re right! I could be having my midnight night cap instead of being a lush. ;)
Uncle Cosmo
@kdaug: Combining the blinding stupidity of that first comment quoted with your recommendation puts us all on notice that there’s more than one way to play “Rope-A-Dope”…
Valdivia
@lamh35:
was it you who linked to the plans of the Romney camp to disrupt the rally for Obama today by circling his bus and whatnot?
I see from the images that they have a hugely packed stadium, wonder how the disruption is working out in the face of a real candidate instead of the idiots they had in the primary.
andy
Wall Street- well supplied with entitled, overpaid douchebags and lamp posts. Manhattan, being an island, is not unexpectedly also marvelously supplied with rope as well…
Davis X. Machina
@lamh35: My mom, who remembers every president since Hoover, says “Never trust someone who doesn’t look like he’s having fun doing the job.”
Brian R.
If Hollywood weren’t run by corporate whores of a different stripe, they’d realize that the perfect idea for a reality show would be one in which you let ordinary Americans get some form of revenge on Wall Street assholes.
Ideally, they’d be hunted for sport, but that might not fly with the FCC.
Corner Stone
I know I’ll be crying a river:
“For an example, look at Lockheed Martin, where some 8,000 employees got pink slips in the last two years. Chief Executive Officer Robert Stevens received $21.9 million in fiscal year 2010, according to the company’s April 2011 proxy statement, in part because he took the cost-cutting actions quoted above,. By two estimates, from financial research firms Obermatt and GMI, at the time of the proxy, Stevens was one of the most overpaid CEOs in the U.S.”
Stevens went on to make $25.4M last year even though company earnings were down. After the layoffs.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-04/when-your-401-k-provider-doesn-t-vote-your-interests.html
Jewish Steel
@Valdivia: I’m going to disrupt this Metalica concert with my banjo.
Corner Stone
@Brian R.:
I say we use drones to hunt them down. Perfect irony.
Valdivia
@Jewish Steel:
lolz!
Michael Bersin
@jwb:
But, the have managed to get the little people riled up enough to vote against the own self interest.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@Valdivia:
You sound like Tom Friedman.
Valdivia
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
sputters.
I think you just insulted my honor. Do we have to call seconds for our duel or something? ;)
the fugitive uterus
well they just got their answer with the President’s first official campaign speech just now in Columbus
i’m no Obamabot, but it’s good stuff. Michelle made me cry, as she often does.
President still speaking . . .
the fugitive uterus
oh the wailing and gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments!
FORWARD! 2012!
the fugitive uterus
seeing Romney lying face down in the dirt with little cartoon tiretracks across his back
Corner Stone
@the fugitive uterus: Just keep posting. We’re locking down your Uterine Positioning Satellite location…any…minute…now
/GOP
Mike G
@Davis X. Machina:
The Uppers have always cultivated an authoritarian lickspittle element of the working class who will readily stomp their compatriots to curry favor with the powerful.
“I can hire half the working class to kill the other half” — Jay Gould
“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people He gives it to.”
— Irish proverb
Steeplejack
@MattF:
E-Z links:
“Tighter Rules Are Issued on Municipal Bond Deals.”
“Dewey’s Fall Underscores Law Firms’ New Reality.”
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack:
Been saying this here for a few years now.
Although Dewey was an outlier in how it did guaranteed payments. Just another example of the extraction economy.
Lots of little people just lost everything, but the partners still earn 7 figures.
forked tongue
But– but– I read in Ayn Rand that financial titans were huge-bonered uberstuds.
Chuck Butcher
I wonder how many pols and reporters have the same sentiments…
Same line of work?
El Cid
Every day when I wake up I commit myself to finding at least one small way in which I can make a rich person’s life better.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
Whenever I hear the stuff about global time zones and business I always think of Rob Lowe as the crazy Hollywood superagent in Thank You for Smoking.
“When do you sleep?”
“Sunday.”
Procopius
I made the mistake today of clicking on a link to some loooooonnnnggg story about the problems the Dems are having meeting their quotas for donations. I couldn’t finish it, of course, but the reasons the asshats gave for why they wouldn’t donate were pathetic. And as the woman quoted above came to realize, you can’t believe them anyway. They’re holding back now to try to get more leverage (cheap bastards) but in the end they’re going to contribute to the Robama because they are going to see that Obamney doesn’t have a chance of being elected, or it’s too close to risk not having the insurance, the donation. The hell of it is that I believe Obamney doesn’t even NEED the huge war chest he’s creating because he can get all the free air time he wants and the negative ads aren’t going to mean a thing because the people who hate him already hate him and aren’t going to change.
Procopius
@Procopius: Whoops! I meant to say the Robama doesn’t need the huge war chest, not the Obamney. I have a hard time keeping them apart.
StarStorm
@Procopius:
My suggestion is that it is because you are a moron, but hey.
Some Loser
@StarStorm: He was quoting someone I believe.
StarStorm
@Some Loser:
Huh? Oh, who?