(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
I am a little late to this party, but Howard Fineman’s barbaric yawp on behalf of the political establishment is a truly amazing document. It should be put in a time capsule so that future generations can understand why American politics became so corroded in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. What Fineman appears to be saying is that the public, who elected Barack Obama with the belief that he would fulfill his agenda, supports him in that effort; but that the “establishment,” who is unelected and self-appointed, is very unhappy about all this agenda-fulfilling going on, and that might sink the President. He cites a bunch of data points that I think he picked off of random Twitter feeds from the Gang of 500 to prove his point, but then he admits that they are all contradictory:
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What I think is interesting is that all the Beltway types who welcomed George Bush and his gang into the family when he was trading off his 48% mandate and passing humongous tax cuts early in his term have all these doubts and troubles with Barack Obama trying to make good on his campaign promises. But more than that is this mindset that the “establishment” chatterers are the real constituency in this country, and the people on the outside, the chattel, the hoi polloi, the dumb rubes in flyover country, they’re nobody off of which to base a winning electoral coalition. The Village still thinks that the role of the President is to please the Villagers, but public opinion isn’t bearing that out. Congress’ approval has jumped since they passed a stimulus package and health care for kids and equal pay for women. People trust government to fix the economy and not big business – part of the “establishment” in Fineman’s scenario.
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More masturbation at CNBC.
Oh, if only Bernanke gets a “soft” interview on 60 Minutes.
Did I mention Fuck You Assholes?
the ‘establishment’ is big business and big business is the government.
In remarks to a private dinner at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday, Summers was even blunter, according to an attendee: “Before, we had too much greed and too little fear. Now, we have too much fear and too little greed.”
Obama seems to want it both ways, and calls it unity. How can he fulfill his campaign promises, on every level from the war,civil rights to the economy, and leave the ideology and policies of the by-partisan screw of the last 30 years in place? The stimulus is in a way with the massive inaction on the real trouble is a let them eat cake, a sop. It does not address the underlying faults in a unsustainable real economy. Coal is not clean, educating drones for an economy that has no jobs, more cops don’t stop crime, the goal of the Dream is not just getting rich, the free market is not free, 50,000 troops is not ending the occupation.
His conversations with the ‘bottom’ seem to have no connection to the reality that is unfolding and the players are the same. It’s much like not calling those they detain, ‘enemy combatants’ and fighting in the courts to keep the same policies in place. You can call this by-partisan or unity but it’s not. The fact that the same establishment now twitters and are still in the court is partly because the new politics we were promised, are just another changing of the guard. He could repudiate the lawlessness and corruption by action he has enough support but instead validates the fictions we’ve lived under for years. Our dumb media is then free to keep the chatter in the circle that has simply renamed it’s self, a fertile ground for the same old twitter.
It won’t work as the vandals stole the handles.
off-topic: he looks much better having let his hair grow out, getting rid of that dye job. Anyway…
Until the people get out their pitchforks and retake the country then yes, the crooks and bullies will run things. How do we recognize the crooks and bullies? They’re loud, they’re rich, they’re protected by layers of security.
Until the people get out their pitchforks these crooks and bullies will feel it’s fine to ignore the “will of the people” because, really, who’s going to stop them? All they have to do is not have the people come get them and one easy way to accomplish that is to have yammering pundits say “another bad day for the Obama administration…” whether or not it’s true.
Now most of the people will react by saying “the media is clueless” but that’s the extent. They won’t be rebelling because they know their pitchforks aren’t up to the quality of government issued pitchforks. Most of us know it would be suicide to actually confront the crooks and bullies when they control the “protectors of the people”.
Because, as Sha-sha says,
So we live our lives, lying low, convincing ourselves that acting locally is the best policy because it gives us the most satisfaction we can get while providing some safety. We buy some time for ourselves while not provoking the beast.