If a Republican were president, there would be millions of properly coiffed middle-class Democrats and independents at those Occupy Wall Street marches, and no questions asked as to what they really want. With 25 million Americans unable to find full-time work, 50 million whose homeownership dream has turned into the nightmare of foreclosure, and an all-time high of 46.2 million, including 22 percent of our children, living in poverty, the call to throw the bums out would be compelling.
But the protest signs in a nation headed by a Republican, though surely gussied up a bit with ad agency savvy, would be the same as they are now: Stop catering to the top 1 percent who get ever wealthier and focus on helping the 99 percent who are hurting. To accomplish that, we need a moratorium on bank-ordered evictions, along with a government-funded program to aid the underemployed that is as robust as the trillions spent to save the Wall Street swindlers who caused all of this trouble.
Instead we are left with a Democratic president who soothes our rage with promises of decent-paying jobs that in actuality are being vigorously exported from our shores by the president's top corporate backers. That absurdity was marked by Barack Obama's choice of Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric -- a company that has shifted to foreign countries two-thirds of its workforce and 82 percent of its profits -- to head the president's job creation council.
Obama has failed not because he is a progressive in the mold of Franklin Delano Roosevelt but because he is not. He has blindly followed the lead of George W. Bush in bankrupting the nation by throwing money at Wall Street while continuing to fund wildly expensive and unneeded wars.
Meanwhile, the Republicans divert public attention from their culpability in destroying a sound federal financial regulatory system and gifting Wall Street crooks with a platinum get-out-of-jail-free card. To listen to the GOP presidential candidates, the banking meltdown was caused by everyone except the bankers.
The next time you meet up with Republican apologists, ask them if they ever heard of Phil Gramm, whose name is on the legislation that offered a blanket exemption from government regulation for the bank-concocted "securitization" of home mortgages into the collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps that are at the heart of the world's economic crisis. And if you meet ex-Sen. Gramm himself, ask him if he still thinks we are "a nation of whiners" for thinking there is a crisis, as he asserted when he was heading the John McCain presidential campaign.
OK, it would be worse if McCain had won and Gramm were his treasury secretary instead of being a super-compensated exec of the Swiss-based bank UBS, which American taxpayers bailed out. And, yes, the fact that Gramm is a supporter of his former student Rick Perry for the GOP presidential nomination is a reminder of just how dangerous the Republican alternatives are. But there is also some value in the clarity afforded by having visible villains occupying the White House.
Let me confess that I gagged on those words as soon as they were written. Clarity is not power, and the prospect of a Republican presidential victory by, say, Mitt Romney is just too unnerving. Romney's economic program is Orwellian in form and substance: The candidate has asserted that our economy is in trouble because "President Obama has vastly expanded the regulatory reach of government." Hogwash. It is because he hasn't.
Romney's proposed foreign policy is even more irresponsibly wrong. He has revived the discredited Pax Americana rhetoric of the neoconservatives that got us into the Iraq War and returned military spending to highs reached during the Cold War. That obsession with U.S. military dominance was laid out in his speech in South Carolina last week in which he said he would increase the size of the military by 100,000 members. Romney later thundered to cadets at The Citadel: "This century must be an American century. America leads the free world and the free world leads the entire world. God did not create this country to be a nation of followers."
Leaving aside assertions regarding God's intentions, it is unnerving that the much discredited platform of the Project for a New American Century, which helped bankrupt this country, will once again become U.S. policy if the Republicans gain control of the White House.
No doubt many reasonable Americans will view Obama as the lesser evil come election time, and for some that will prove compelling. But I take the dreary choices to be one akin to a form of slow torture. Better to support the Occupy Wall Street protests as an inspiring alternative.
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You see little difference between Obama and Bush because there is very little difference. Bush was a liberal Republican front for the special interests that got him elected. Obama is a liberal Democratic front for the special interests that got him elected. When you pull back the curtain, it is the same special interests hiding behind the curtain. The people left out in the cold are all of the rest of us.
Each party has, dare I say brainwashed, a segment to blindly follow it believing that party really represents them. It is the same syndrome as the woman who becomes the other woman where the man is married, and later becomes wife number two, only to soon become ex-wife number two – they just don’t understand or see it coming either, even though if there was anyone who should, it was them. We are, and have been for a long time, wife number two. We just think our man will change . . .
Let's give him that, and then judge him.
Imagine what Obama could accomplish with that.
As long as the ship sinks slower.
relative peace of mind in our time.
How many months or years difference before we lose it all anyway?
That makes sense?
Any notion that it will be anyone but Romney is tabloid pap.
The difference is that we can fight Romney as a Republican
while we take back the machinery of the Democratic Party.
The difference is that Romney is not as sedative nor as clever as Obama.
There will be no peace of mind for any of us and there will be no security
until we take back the political machinery tied up supporting the Democratic presidential candidate.
We need those organizations to advocate and promote reform.
we cannot open debate again until this man loses
and is discredited by the political fact of losing..
If he wins, he not his critics, will choose his successors
We have unpleasant choices which are no choices at all.
We have to take them.
Voting for Obama says we are happy to give it all away as fools.
we can't wait for someone to hand us candidates and then be disgusted by the choices.
Don't be influenced by fear mongering -- if we cannot survive a Romney win, we cannot survive Obama either. Bush/Cheney evolved over many years before, the gradual decontrol of banking and other industries, the persistent expansion of right wing ideologues while liberals were happy to do nothing, went on for 25 years, it did not suddenly happen. "If only Gore won..." -- not likely much would have been different.
More than deciding whom to vote for, we have to be more active,
to whatever small extent you can, volunteer with local or national reform groups, write to key journalists, tell them you want to know about reform groups, and their issues not just the candidate of the day.
Start thinking about "doing" and we will find that within our abilities there is a lot we can do.
Funny, I saw an article today on HuffPo (haven't read it) whose title speculates having Joe Biden resign. The brief implies that it would help the party overall.... as if Joe bleieping Biden is the - or even "A" - problem.
Maybe inside the bubble he's a problem. But imelt, daly, geithner, bernake, sperling, and the crew of right wingers and political hacks that Obama brought in and fights for are and have been the problem. If there's any one individual whose retirement could help advance the Democratic Party values, it's Obama's. Almost any good Dem could fare well against any of the republican hopefuls. Obama is far less special than many people want to admit.
You were right to think you got it all in the headline.
There is only one solution, eliminate everyone in Washington, DC forthwith and elect a whole new group of DRAFTED governors without parties, campaigning, contributions, conventions. They'll recognize their oath of office mean WITH THEIR LIVES or be impeached for failure to achieve the preamble to the constitution. I'm willing to take the most dangerous position, the presidency, as http://www.change.org/petitions/eliminate-capitalistic-military-regime shows since to "overturn the money changers" requires getting killed in the process. If what is written that Jesus id is true, I know how he did it and will take "the bitter cup" of discarnating.
President Obama's trying to win them over demonstrates his stubborn naiveté or is the realization that there is no way a black president can survive even one term in office without some protection from the top CEO's of Corporate America. Congress, the president and political behind the scenes staff have all been bought and sold. Wall Street protesters realize they may represent the majority of Americans who want change, but a majority is no longer how change happens and people get livable incomes. It takes money and centralized power. This is not a populist nation as envisioned by Thomas Jefferson. This is a capitalistic nation as envisioned by the wealthy few who push all the buttons. Those with the money have the power. Which ones qualify to own that distinction? The big banks, the Energy Companies, the pharmaceutical and medical establishment, Big Insurance Companies who are biding their time to repeal what the Democrats pushed through, the Investor class who rely on their dividends, the top military brass and Industrial complex that supports wars and the ignorant faithful who will die Republicans. That is a tough lot to buck. They hold and money and the power. Corporate Media, commercially driven and owned by large corporations won't help the landscape change. Their financial loyalties are fixed. Amos was right: greed, deceit and cruelty will fail.
Cain's tax plan (Which, by the way, I do not think came from Sim City) is oversimplified and according to economists who are NOT 'That friend of mine in Chicago', not the type that will increase revenue OR encourage growth. Romney is a perfect example of standing for the 1% over everything else; take a look at what he HAS flip-flopped on, and what he has NOT, and you can see his priorities clear as day there. Bachmann is well into 'danger stupid' with her documented complete inability to tell a reputable scientific source from a street bum. Perry is an economic failure who has been squeaking by solely based on Texas' natural resources and the fact that they actually BENEFIT from higher oil prices, and when you adjust from him being the governor of Texas instead of say, Alabama, you get a much clearer picture of his inability.
There's a couple of nice GOP candidates out there. Johnson and Huntsman are the two best. I'd probably vote for either of them over Obama. But most of the GOP is dangerously stupid right now. Which is worse then just stupid.
Well now, I wasn't there but if you can, please tell me. When Romney offered up that pile of steam, did the cadets cheer and applaud as if their champion just won the gold? You never really know why those cadets cheer anyway. Somebody could've said free beer! Ha! If America leads the entire world, somebody might want to remind the entire world. As a country America is like an irresistibly charming child who occasionally has very bad nightmares. In time she will mature and be that shining beacon on the hill to the world. Until then, bear the pain as best you can.