Tag: Democrats

Crossposted at Daily Kos

   Yesterday, in a NYTimes Op-Ed titled “Reform or Bust”, Nobel Economist Paul Krugman gave some well needed advice on good economics and good politics that President Obama and Democratic members of Congress should listen to.

    It’s not just that taking a populist stance on bankers’ pay is good politics – although it is: the administration has suffered more than it seems to realize from the perception that it’s giving taxpayers’ hard-earned money away to Wall Street, and it should welcome the chance to portray the G.O.P. as the party of obscene bonuses.

    Equally important, in this case populism is good economics. Indeed, you can make the case that reforming bankers’ compensation is the single best thing we can do to prevent another financial crisis a few years down the road.

   One obvious point is the need, politically, to make the GOP the party that defends huge Wall St salaries and bonuses, which they will do anyway and gladly. Politically, the GOP can not be for the bonuses. They just can’t. Even more so, they can not be against the regulations AND against the bailouts. It just won’t work. Like Saruman in Lord of The Rings when confronted by Gandalf and the Riders of Rohan at the foot of Orthanc, the GOP can not be all things to all people, or against all things either. When too many eyes are watching at once the illusion is broken. The GOP can not be against all cures and still appear in the populist corner, as their teabagging antics try to portray, badly. The GOP must stand for something, and they do, they stand for the Super Rich and Corporate Wealth. Proving this is very important.

    Recently wingnutty teabagging Republican Senator Jim DeMint (C Street-SC) offered his answer to all that economically ails Wall St. Guess what? His answer; More Tax Cuts!

    Instead of looking at more regulation, we could do a lot by fixing our tax system here in this country, to make us globally competitive. The President needs to focus on what really has caused problems and look at what has really made America so prosperous, and I’m afraid that’s not the lens he’s looking through right now.

ThinkProgress.org

    Because who would think that cutting taxes for Wall St would be kind of rewarding for them, or a serious attempt at real reform.

    The GOP has NO new ideas, and the only ones they do have are Failed, totally and utterly Failed. Bipartisanship with these guys is a sort of cheating off of the dumb kid in class at ths point. It WILL NOT WORK. I understand why Obama has made the effort, but no it is time to play hardball, it is NO LONGER the time to keep trying to make the GOP feel good about themselves, especially when their ideas suck and they hope you fail.

    More and my own analysis below the fold.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    After reading Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH10) DKos post titled The Private Mandate Sausage Machine which explains how Health Care Reform may/will be twisted into a bill mandating that I purchase private insurance but lacks all content of reform, I would like to make the following statement.

    Dear Dems, Feed me a Sh!t/Sausage Sandwich on Health Care Reform and I’ll BURN THIS MFing TENT TO THE GROUND!!!!

    If the Private Health Care disaster is addressed by making it madatory that I buy junk insurance from the bastards that caused this mess, I will make it my personal business to drive the Corporate snakes from the tent and burn the tent to the ground.

    Simply put, if Dems pass a HCR bill with mandates and no public option, I will kick these Dems frakkin asses, and you should too.

    More below the fold and a call to action..

     

We’re a long, long way from home,

Home’s a long, long way from us . . .

Millions More Foreclosures Coming . . .

Only 12 percent of U.S. homeowners eligible for loan modifications under the Obama administration’s housing rescue plan have had their mortgages reworked, and millions more foreclosures are coming, the Treasury Department said last Wednesday.

Impending Commercial Real Estate Crisis . . .

Federal Reserve and Treasury officials are scrambling to prevent the commercial-real-estate sector from delivering a roundhouse punch to the U.S. economy just as it struggles to get up off the mat.  Their efforts could be undermined by a surge in foreclosures of commercial property carrying mortgages that were packaged and sold by Wall Street as bonds.  Similar mortgage-backed securities created out of home loans played a big role in undoing that sector and triggering the global economic recession.

Banking System Bound for Hell With the Hammer Down . . .

Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, said the U.S. has failed to fix the underlying problems of its banking system after the credit crunch and the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.  “In the U.S. and many other countries, the too-big-to-fail banks have become even bigger,” Stiglitz said in an interview today in Paris. “The problems are worse than they were in 2007 before the crisis.”

The Afghanistan Quagmire . . .

The Taliban are back. The Afghans are tired of American troops in their midst  . . . virtually every military expert agrees that Afghanistan is the last place on Earth for a modern army to wage war and that includes every NATO general.

Long ago, the British learned that Afghanistan is a place where empires go to die. The notion that democracy as practiced in the West can be transplanted there is farcical . . . since the 1700’s the primary export from Afghanistan has been heroin and it remains so today.   Other than growing poppies, there’s not much that passes for an economy there.   It doesn’t matter who’s elected because the business of Afghanistan is opium.  American troops will not alter that.

And the business of America is corporate greed, corporate profit, corporate expansion. Obama won’t alter that.  It doesn’t matter who’s elected, because other than speeches and smoke and mirrors policies, there’s not much that passes for reform here.

I don’t see any real change,

I don’t feel much hope,

I feel a dirty wind blowing,

I see Devils and Dust.

This entry builds on what Something the Dog Said and rossl wrote in their own entries.  Before I get to the meat of my own text, I just want to summarize what each of the previous entries state.  Starting any political party, or building an existing one, is going to be a lot of hard work and progressives are going to face an uphill battle regardless of what we do.  If we’re going to break away from the Democrats, however, it’s worth the effort; there are parties such as the Progressives (currently in Vermont and Washington) and the Greens, among others, that have made substantial progress at local and state levels.

That’s the short version of what Something’s and rossl’s entries have to say.  I highly recommend reading them both in full.  Now, on to my own contribution to this subject.  Because I want to provide a real-world context to the topic at hand, I’m going to pick an existing political party (The Progressives), though feel free to substitute your own.  I’m going to lay out some first steps that can be taken to get the ball rolling.

One more thing before I begin: know WHY you are forming a new political party, know what your goals are, and have realistic expectations about what you hope to accomplish.  Don’t hold any illusions.  Unless either the Democrats or the Republicans implode, chances are you’re not going to replace one of them on the national stage.  At most, and if you do things right, you’ll force the Democrats to shift back to the left.  That’s it.  If a new political party does rise to prominence, great, but that is only icing on the proverbial cake.  All you’ll want to do is force one of the major parties to experience an ideological shift to the political left.  Expect at least a generation to pass before you get this result.  It was twenty years between the 1912 election, when Theodore Roosevelt led the Progressive Party and split the presidential election three ways (thus handing it to Democrat Woodrow Wilson) and that of 1932 when Franklin Delano Roosevelt led the New Dealers to power.  It was another generation before the Republicans built their party back up to the point where they could begin taking back political power in government.  Finally, don’t let the progressive movement become subservient to your party – make the party subservient to the progressive movement.  David Sirota explains why far better than I can, so I’ll let his words do it.

And now, without further adieu…

So it’s the day of the big speech, Mr. President, and we got trouble with a capital “T” right here in Health Care City.

What are you gonna do? Do we follow the traditional Democratic Party legislative process of passing…something…at any cost, assuming the entire time that the Left and the Netroots will “go along with the program”, or is there a risk that the calculus doesn’t work as well today as it did in 1994 and 1996?

Well, lucky for you, I’m a fake consultant, and I know a few things about your “target market”, so before you answer that question…we need to talk.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

This might be the most thorough assesment of the Republican party, the media, The Religious Right, Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck, you name it, Dan Savage nails it. In an interview with Keith Olbermann, Dan Savage lays the truth down, hashes it up for all to see and then serves it with a bag of chips and a cup of STFU for the GOP.

Dan Savage:     I really do think the Michelle Bachmanns of the world and the Glenn Becks of the world are actively and, consciously or subconsciously, trying to get, I’m just gonna say it, trying to get the President killed.

    Full transcript and my own take on the issues below the fold.

      Crossposted at progressiveelectorate.com

(I’d just like to state clearly, this is not a rebuttal to the diary posted by Something the Dog Said, rather, consider it a differing opinion)

From WaPo

Prosecutor to CIA Abuse Allegations

by abuse allegations, they mean torture.

More!

From a Daily Kos diary

Breaking: “profanity-laced screaming match” at the White House

    Amid reports that Panetta had threatened to quit just seven months after taking over at the spy agency, other insiders tell ABCNews.com that senior White House staff members are already discussing a possible shake-up of top national security officials.

“You can expect a larger than normal turnover in the next year,” a senior adviser to Obama on intelligence matters told ABCNews.com.    

and this on the heels of news this weekend

From isria.com

9 GOP Senators ask Holder for Mercy for Bus/Cheney

    Now, this is the key part of the news, because I do not think a 1/4 of the GOP Senate would put their necks out to save some no-name underlings.

    I think this is going all the way to the top, and, in my new found attempt to look at things in a glass half full view.

    Therefore, I give you my belief, as of now, that the ball is now rolling, it will build and build, and by the summer of 2010 going into 2012, America WILL lead to Bush and Cheney themselves.

    More below the fold

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    I have republished the two diaries posted by our President and fellow Kossack Barack Obama in order for us, as Democrats, to better understand the man and his style in passing the Democratic agenda he was elected to advance.

    I do so for the purpose of making a point.

    Therefore, I give you the words of President Barack Obama, posted below the fold.

With the final betrayal of the progressive left still stinging like salt rubbed into a raw wound and the Pope of Hope’s filthy Judas administration in full damage control mode after Sunday’s slip by Health and Human Services Secretary Katherine Sebelius that the public option was about to have its life support unplugged. The public option (without it any ‘reform’ of health care is no more than garbage)was the feckless fallback position for the corporate puppet Obama rather than the right thing which would be national single payer insurance and in true form the white flag was already run up by the reigning lord of the jackass party. You would think with armed thugs now carring assault weapons prowling Obama town halls that he and his rotten liar cabal of Wall Street and insurance water carriers that he would be a bit less likely to alienate those who are the true base but once again it is made evident of how much we are all being played for fools and chumps and have been ever since the DLC decided to throw in with the Reagan Revolution.