Despite all the spinning and supposed sloughing off of the election returns last night in key districts in Virginia, New York, and New Jersey, by White House officials, Obama and the DNC, quite frankly, these comments are both BS and the losses they engendered served them right.
Furthermore the appalling comments from an anonymous (of course) White House official that Bloomberg's appalling third victory in New York, which is undemocratic, against the will of the people, and is a victory for nothing else than the corruption of money in politics for a man who has ruined this city, has contempt for everyone but the rich, and is doing his best to blacklist anyone who opposes him, (just like Obama) is yet again a sign of a White House and a DNC seriously out of touch. With democracy, it's voters, it's base, this country and the shape it is in, it's mission as a party, and even the Constitution.
First of all, David Plough's comments that CANDIDATE OBAMA is the same as the man who now occupies the White House is so laughable that it's almost tragic. If it's true then we voted for a liar and he should be impeached. If it's not, then Obama is a spineless, shrinking violet, or political rube, or perhaps political sociopath, who deserves to lose, along with the other Democrats in DC, who think that abandoning their base, going right instead of left, are mired in corruption, and acting more like Republicans than Democrats is a winning strategy.
Because there are plenty of Republicans who advertise themselves that way, and if people wanted Republicans in office they would vote for them. And just did.
Not Democrats who pretend they are something else.
I say these victories for the Republicans (who I generally despise) serves the DNC right.
And should send an unmistakeable message to the egotistical idiot in the White House with an ego so large and a staff so egocentric that they take constructive criticism as "damaging" and count it as coming from enemies. When in fact it's coming FROM THEIR BASE.
Who put the damn idiot in office.
Furthermore the thuggery, lawbreaking, lying, and continued Bush policies of Obama, might as well make him a Republican. Which I didn't vote for, nor do I think is right. He has abandoned all the campaign causes he ran on, or subverted them under the advice of the worst and most corrupt insiders in DC. Again, for that he deserves this loss.
Obama needs to rethink, regroup, and seriously rethink his own strategy, his supposed brilliance, get off his sexist and elitist kick, and start letting really new ideas (and people) have access to the Oval Office. If not start firing most of his staff and cabinet. That includes YOU CASSANDRA BUTTS. Not to mention Rambo. And the cabinet heads of Labor, HHS, Interior and HUD. For starters.
Instead of spending all of his time propping up incumbants who are going to lose, and claiming Messiah status. And taking date nights to New York at $215K a pop at the taxpayer's expense.
Does the man have a clue that this is the amount of money of at least six average annual middle class salaries that he spent to indulge his overprivileged and spoiled if not corrupt and lying wife? IN ONE NIGHT? Or his wife have a clue that the tennis shoes she loves to wear in her hypocritical and made for TV appearances at homeless shelters cost TWICE AS MUCH as the "stimulous" given out to the most poverty sticken Americans that OBAMA and his wife have DONE NOTHING TO HELP.
And then has the audacity to complain about being criticized for it in the face of a national economic meltdown? While giving all his corporate cronies all the best goodies in the bailout? While spending further tax dollars to promote the Olympics in his home town the year he gets out of office, to further promote his own career and reward his personal cronies. All again, on the taxpayer's dime.
While bailing out Wall Street, covering up the cost, lying about jobs created, undermining Democracy, expanding Executive Privilege, upholding the expansion of FISA, underming FOIA, doing nothing to expand the civil rights of the LGBT community and even less for those with disabilities, continuing the drug war (even as his own FDA is approving trials for medical marijuana), creating a healthcare deform bill that is anything but, and in fact accomplishing NOTHING if one is charitable, but actually much worse, but perpetuating the crimes, and refusing to punish the worst crimes of the last administration. Including the perpetuation of two wars.
And spending as much money to promote a stupid war in Afghanistan as the ENTIRE DOMESTIC BAILOUT, which everyone except his corrupt and sexist economic advisor told him was too small. But he rejected, in his natural brilliance because of course, Obama is always right. Because he's the Messiah, and much smarter than everyone else on the planet. Of course.
NOT.
The man is out to lunch.
So I would highly suggest dancing to a different tune over there at 1600 Penn.
And oh, by the way, that includes a personal meeting with me, over my jobs stimulous proposal, that will trim the budget, to the tune of the national deficit annually, create green jobs for years, not to mention create environmentally friendly clean energy, and I know, despite coming from a white woman in her forties (conspicuously absent from ANY high ranking White House or cabinet position in this administration) much less invited to the White House for the signing of legislation that she (as in me) was responsible for creating the situation for in the first place at an age Obama wasn't even an elected official yet (IN DC, IN CONGRESS, at the age of 27) - the White House chose to invite a White Guy instead.
If Obama wanted to be a sexist, racist, economically irresponsible, war mongering politician who refuses to listen and serve his constituents, instead of serving up the same old crap and creating the same appalling Washington insider's game of lobbyists, money dictating policy, and cronyism, why didn't he run as a Republican instead?
That way, voters could have had a much clearer vision of the man they were voting for, instead of the liar we now have in the White House who claims the moral high ground but actually feeds and revels in the mud and piggy trough, bails out the rich, ignores the poor, lives in a bubble, thinks he's a Messiah, and has an ego complex that is intolerable just because he raised alot of money from corrupt rich people, just like his predecessors in the Oval Office for way too long, Republican and Democrat alike.
Change we can believe in? What a laugh.
And how tragic for the American people who believed it.
It's time for a change in America, but it's clear that Obama ain't it. Just another self centered, egotistical, sexist, who's only interest was winning, celebrity and personal promotion.
Who just deserved the bitch slap he got.
Who doesn't deserve this is the American people, who are suffering under his deluded policies and cabinet and staffing picks. Not to mention a mountain of wasted debt.
And the progressive base who will now suffer with a Republican backlash this lying bastard will perpetuate.
Gee thanks dickhead.
And don't you think some rethinking is in order Einstein?
Or maybe a rereading of the classic book "Presidents for Dummies?" Or the special edition, "How to be a progressive President For Dummies without alienating your entire base?"
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Comments
So was Obama just another lying skunk of a candidate during his run for the Presidency? Did he find himself in the WH and was told that his policies were going to stay the same as bush or he’d find himself back at his community organizer job real soon!
To say he has been a disappointment to me so far is an understatement, and if he stays in Afghanistan I won’t be voting in 2012 since I can’t vote for a republican and right now I’d call Obama a republican just like McCant.
I think Obama's economic advisors are way off base. And corrupt. The concept of "Wall Street Reform" per his advisors is ridiculous and a sham because everyone knows, at least those who have worked on the Street, that base pay is low and bonuses are where the real money is.
I think at this point in America there does need to be real wealth redistristribution, given the fact that 1% of the population owns 90% of the country's wealth. And that is not healthy. Economically and historically that leads to Oligarchy and Banana Republics. Look at Bloomberg. Perfect example.
Furthermore when you have such disparity in wealth distribution, especially for example when elected representatives are not barred from steering earmarked money to their relatives, you have more and more concentrated wealth and power in the hands of a few, and democracy suffers for it.
I don't think Obama's plans are particularly progressive, nor do I think he's particularly progressive in general...I mean look at his board of advisors....he's giving all the best cleantech money to Google, GE, DE Shaw, and huge amounts of help to the banks, without regulating them, spending as much money in Afghanistan in ONE YEAR as the entire domestic bailout (i.e. focusing on a war based economy which is dreadful, regressive and even more of a wealth concentrating strategy), and refusing to impose a truely progressive tax structure.
As unpopular as it will be, he needs to really soak the rich, which I would define as anyone making over $150 to $200K. Sorry, but that's the only way to do it. When you have twenty percent of this country kept in deliberate poverty (the disabilities community) with no government intervention to help them, not to mention the additional thirty to forty percent who are usually poor and undereducated because of the appalling lack of investment in public education, but huge amounts of money spent on military budgets, I would say there are several issues that he needs to really rethink and recalculate, although I doubt that he will with crooks like Geithner and Summers at the wheel and his own appalling drive for personal gain.
First, a war based economy is horrifically wasteful. Cutting military spending immediately and drastically will go far in cutting the deficit. I'm absolutely opposed to the war in Afghanistan for many reasons, see my blog on the subject, and the situation in Iraq is appalling (I don't know if you saw that yet again multinational oil companies are moving in to recolonize the region) not to mention the "missile defense shield," coming back to life from the dead which is the Reagan Star Wars project revisited (something like 100 Billion already spent and the damn thing still oesn't work) but now they are thinking of rejiggering it for North Korea. Stupid.
Secondly there is a tremendous need for progressive taxation. It makes no sense for example to cut off taxation on social security at a certain level. The whole system of the social safety net needs to be re examined.
I have no problem with hard work being rewarded, but the problem is that this society is unequal in access to education and opportunity, both in networking, access to education, funding for startups, loans, social networking etc.
What Obama did to get where he is, was to involve himself in some of THE most corrupt people in Chicago, tied mostly to real estate and banking, which is how he financed his campaign.
I think that as a sustainable system, while not perfect we need to look for a new model. My late uncle, Peter Drucker, the so called Father of Management, used a model in which he called for a society in which CEOs made no more than twenty times what the lowest worker in any company did. If I can get my company off the ground that is the model I will at least try to use as a rule of thumb. Reinvestment in one's own company, worker ownership in the company and investment in the company itself is a far more progressive and healthy attitude than the one we have at huge corporations today.
I don't know if that is the correct model, or even feasible politically, but something has to be done to correct the vast imbalance of wealth in this country and one of those ways, as much as people will scream about it, is to increase taxes, and dramatically, on those earning above say $150K to $200K.
Considering the fact that the average worker in this country only makes $50K a year, I would say that this is very fair.
While this may sound like heresy to some, this country is so out of whack, our system is failing everywhere, there has to be a recorrection and rebalancing before we proceed with any more social remodeling.
Everyone needs access to the proper healthcare. Everyone deserves access to good education. Meritocracy is dead in America today.
It's all about who you know, how much money you have, where you went to school, if you are a white male, which is also based on the above two factors, and a progressively regressive system of taxation where the rich are taxed less and less and the burden of everything falls on the majority of everyone else.
It is appalliing for example that Obama would let the Fed bail out Wall Street for example, without capping pay AND bonuses, fail to reign in the pharma industry by giving up the right to negotiate prices, and continue to let a failed system continue on a highway to another crash. Which is exactly where it is going.
With Robert Reich (hardly a raving liberal) already saying that real unemployment is close to twenty percent (and he's not counting the disabilities community who are deliberately kept out of the workforce due to rampant discrimination), you are looking at a country today where less than fifty percent of the population is even earning a paycheck.
That's not sustainable, intelligent or any way to run a country.
I think "wealthy" is a relative term, so I am not sure I can put a dollar figure on it. But I think it's obscene that you have to make over six figures to live in Manhattan for example. Or to insure that your kids get a good education ANYWHERE in this country today.
However, I would say that if you are making two to three times what the average worker is making in your region of the world, you are wealthy, or certainly upper class and deserve to be taxed accordingly. I'm not saying take all your hard earned money away. But the fact is that too many people in this country have never had a chance to access good schooling, good jobs, good mentoring etc. And to perpetuate that through prejudice and lack of unpopular political choices (i.e. no real change in the tax system) or letting people like Rangel off the hook for not paying fines on his taxes is obscene.
If you look at America say between the forties and sixties, of the last century, this country was probably the most equal (for white men at least) it's ever been. I think we need to recreate a system where everyone has the chance and access to a good education. Where political leaders are barred from channeling pork barrel projects and earmarks to family members and friends. Where the money is taken out of politics. And scholarships and loans to start businesses are available to everyone.
Which is not the case today.
Women for example are still paid less than men. The disabilities community lives in abject poverty with a 90% unemployment rate and is considered by the Judiciary even to have less contractual worth than the able bodied. Which is stupid in an information based economy. VC's and banks don't loan to women to start their own businesses. Women don't or can't get loans to get into medical school or MBA programs. And minorities in general are redlined.
Not to mention that our entire infrastructure, from healthcare, to public schooling, and even the planes and roads we travel on are collapsing from years of underinvestment, corruption and neglect.
The money has to come from somewhere, and it's not going to come from the middle class, simply because there isn't one anymore.
So I would say there has to be a couple of things.
1. A realignment of priorities in our political leadership, with no more BS and corruption, which is kind of hard to do if you are knee deep in it to begin with and that's how you make your money.
2. A real system of progressive taxation that includes the creation of a real social safety net, so for example "welfare" does not put you on the street, which it does today. With an emphasis on education over dead paying jobs.
3. Some sort of realignment of priorities of industry, where Wall Street does not become the driving force of our economy. It is obscene that these people make so much money. As well as a shrinkage of the healthcare system. It should not be as big a part of our economy as it is today.
4. And you probably won't like this, some sort of realignment of the healthcare system. While doctors work hard and spend many years in school, which is very expensive, I think the commoditization of such education should be re-examined, and that will go a long way in dropping the cost of the training itself and the justification of salaries. The same goes for lawyers and other "professionals." As well as a dropping of the branding of say Harvard over a very good public education at a good public university.
So, to wrap this up, I can't answer your question with a dollar figure. But what I can say is that whether Americans like it or admit it or not, we are living in a class based, oligarchy that has nothing to do with Democracy or meritocracy today.
And Obama, unfortunately is an elitist, who only got into Harvard because he had a supportive family, and despite what he said on the campaign, had both a legacy advantage AND a minority advantage to entrance. Which makes his Ivied credentials far less impressive, and explains a lot about the mistakes he is making. Including the appalling reliance on corrupt ex Wall Streeters who caused this problem in the first place to "fix" the mess we are now in.
I don't know if that answers your question, but I can tell you, we are FAR from being a just and egalitarian society today.