The presidential debate this week was much ado about nothing, and Mitt Romney beat Barack Obama because he was more energetic in distorting the significance of their miniscule differences. What generally has been celebrated by the mainstream media as a wonky debate over substantive disagreements on the economy and medical reform -- "a fundamental choice about the future of America," Peter Baker trumpeted in The New York Times -- was nothing of the sort.
It is absurd to depict this rhetorical stew of superficial nitpicking by two candidates with a proven record of subservience to the Wall Street bandits responsible for wrecking our economy as a meaningful exercise in democratic governance. Both would rather talk about anything but Wall Street's financing and control of both parties and chose instead to dwell on their nonexistent differences over health care reform.
The president gleefully concedes that Obamacare is a carbon copy of the original Romneycare plan in place in Massachusetts, a plan that Obama took to the national level but was similarly designed as an alternative to a single-payer system. Both extend rather than diminish the reach of for-profit insurance companies. Neither plan confronts the cost control issues at the heart of the health crisis.
On the far larger threat to our economic well-being posed by endemic Wall Street greed, both candidates are clearly wedded to the bailout strategy that saved those responsible for the economic meltdown while ignoring the victims among the tens of millions unemployed and foreclosed. Instead of confronting that topic, they were reduced to brief and meaningless quibbling about the Dodd-Frank law that as Romney correctly pointed out leaves the concentrated power of the five largest banks intact.
Rare was the commentator who grasped, as did David Weidner in The Wall Street Journal, that the six minutes of the debate devoted to Wall Street regulation was bizarrely disproportionate to the crucial role of the financial industry in first creating and then managing the government's response to the crisis:
"If you think six minutes out of the planned 90-minute debate is appropriate, then consider this: Since the last presidential election, we've endured the worst stock market, housing and economic crash since the Great Depression. And Wall Street was in the middle of it all."
Both Obama and Romney favor the Fed and Treasury policy of rewarding Wall Street with free money while ignoring the plight of homeowners, whose underwater mortgages are at the heart of the crisis. Neither candidate, nor terminally hapless moderator Jim Lehrer, even referenced the $40 billion a month that the Fed continues to waste as part of its $2 trillion purchase of the toxic mortgage-based securities that the banks fraudulently marketed. Nor did they mention interest-free trillions made available to the banks that continue their ruthless foreclosure of underwater homeowners whom they refuse to qualify for mortgage adjustments.
Jousting about the tepid reforms of Dodd-Frank does nothing to restore the sensible regulation of the financial industry that had stabilized the economy for seven decades, regulations instituted by FDR in response to the Great Depression to prevent another one and that were gutted by Democratic President Bill Clinton following the leadership of congressional Republicans.
Romney was Reaganesque in blithely ignoring the consequences of Republican free-market gospel, as the Gipper did in the face of the savings and loan scandal. But Obama did not challenge that legacy and instead offered a vision of government activism that Reagan could have accepted.
Let me admit that I am a sucker for the lesser-evil argument in presidential elections, and my first reaction to the debate was to regret that Obama had performed so poorly. But then I reminded myself about how morally compromised he is on economic issues. In the debate, he even equated the responsibility of unfortunate purchasers of fraudulent loans with the crimes of Wall Street swindlers. The choice between the two candidates, particularly now that Romney is campaigning as a Massachusetts liberal, may explain the apathy among Democratic voters.
If you want a compelling-if-unintended reason to loathe the two-party choice, check out the new book "Bull by the Horns" by former FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair. Her principled but ultimately futile effort to check the overwhelming power of the Wall Street lobby under both Republican and Democratic administrations indelibly documents the hoax that now passes for our representative democracy.
Bair, a lifelong Republican, first made her mark as an effective Senate staffer for Bob Dole and was George W. Bush's choice to head the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. She was reappointed by Obama to continue leading the agency created to ensure that banks serve the public interest. Her book is a confessional tale of her inability to do that because of the financial conglomerates' awesome power over both administrations.
As a key, if outgunned, participant in the meetings with Treasury and Fed officials, who kowtowed to the demands of the banking lobby, Bair documents the bipartisan culpability in betraying the common but false rhetoric of concern for the ripped-off middle class. Read her detailed description of how Timothy Geithner, then head of the powerful New York Fed, acted in lockstep with Hank Paulson, the former Goldman Sachs CEO whom Bush appointed Treasury secretary, and tell me why candidate-of-change Obama appointed Geithner to replace Paulson.
Follow Bair's record of mostly losing skirmishes with Geithner as he consistently rewarded Wall Street while screwing Main Street and ask yourself whether it really matters who won Wednesday's debate.
William K. Black: The Vampire Squid Has Feelings and Obama Is No Longer Her BFF
 |
 |
|
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
Sadly Obama and the Clinton DLC (look it up) are Reagan blue dog dems. They go along with way too much of the anti republic agenda.
The GOPT are taking away the right to vote, they don't like voting, they hate democracy.
The GOPT crash the economy as soon as they get into office. Every time since Reagan.
Bush let 9/11 happen, his neocons needed it and they sent a letter from PNAC say just that. Means and motive.
What disasters will Mitt and the gopt let happen this time? A nuke in NY?
Wake up dupes.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-ferguson/the-financial-crisis-and-_1_b_782927.html
Charles Ferguson: The Financial Crisis and America's Political Duopoly
"...My answer is this: far from being in an era of brutal partisan warfare, as conventionÂal wisdom holds and as watching the nightly television news might suggest, the United States is now in the grip of a political duopoly in which both parties are thoroughly complicit. They play a game: they agree to fight viciously over certain things to retain the allegiance of their respective bases, while agreeing not to fight about anything that seriously endangers the privileges of America's new financial elites. Whether this duopoly will endure, and what to do about it, are perhaps the most important questions facing Americans. The current arrangemenÂt all but guarantees the continuing decline of the United States as a nation, and of the welfare of the bottom 90% of its citizens.
[snip]
In my personal conversatiÂons, I sense an emerging consensus based on nothing more complicateÂd than a sense of basic honesty, fairness, and common sense, qualities which the American people still have in abundance. Let us hope that this can be translated into some organized force that can put an end to the present political cartel. "
Mediocre Politician
and a good Campaigner (debate aside)
and he is many times a better choice then Romney.
Obama can be pushed to the left (a strong shove might move him off the center)
Romeny can not.
I'm voting for Jill Stein this time around. I can no longer waste my vote on the two party system. It's a wasted vote when I cast it for someone I don't support. It's a wasted vote when the media can look at it as an endorsement of the Democrat's march toward Republicanism. It's a wasted vote when I support a party that needs to hear, loud and clear, that it has become an obstacle to the values for which it once stood.
If you want to waste your vote on the LOTE, go right ahead. Unlike many Democrats, I won't try to tell you how you should vote.
How about holding American citizens without trial indefinitely if the government (president) thinks they are dangerous?
THINKS......
Scary!!!!!!
Spot, Mr. Scheer!
Bank regulation - Yes or no (bringing on another bubble and another TARP)?
Secure retirement - Medicare or Vouchercare?
War - Send in the drones once in awhile or send ground troops into Iran?
Environment - Sacrifice a little in red states for the Transcanada pipeline or selling our public lands for pennies on the dollar?
I hear so many Democrats now say Obama isn't perfect, but they always fall back on the argument that he is certainly the lesser of two evils.
If we keep our wits about us and look closely at Obama, we see a priest, not a politician. The Democratic Party is quite literally now reduced to an Obama cult, overlooking every fault, including extending the Bush tax cuts, renewing the Patriot Act, signing NDAA 2012, and a thousand other smaller cuts on liberals and progressives -- acts which if performed by a Republican would have been aggressively resisted and loudly rejected. . . but which are quietly accepted by the flock.
Indeed, the worst enemies of democracy are now the Democrats who are convinced of Obama's lesser evilness.
I hope the unhypnotized Democrats at least investigate their excellent third, fourth, and fifth options, such as Rocky Anderson, Jill Stein, and Gary Anderson (just to mention the most prominent).
I'm sure all Republicans are hoping that Democrats will vote third party because that is the only way Romney will win now that the courts have blocked republican attempts to steal the election with voter ID laws.
Go there and watch the real debate and the real issues and differences that we're not discussed over national television.
Please join me in voting Green. It's time to hose out the stables.
Sure, it won't make a bit of difference this election, but we're going over the cliff, folks, and it doesn't matter who's in the driver's seat.
Once we hit bottom, the country can finally kick both parties to the curb.
It's called the Nader Effect.
Read Scheer's post again.
This is not the GOP of Teddy Roosevelt. This is not the Democratic Party of FDR. BOTH parties have exsanguinated this once-proud country
I find it hilariously ironic that the alleged progressives continue to support the 2nd coming of Reagan, yet their alleged core principles are clearly adopted in the platform of Jill Stein. I say alleged because the progs have shown no interest in holding BO-gart's feet to the fire on prog values. They only make apologies for his teabag collaboration and squeal lesser of two evils. That's ALL they have, and as this article clearly shows, their claim is a lie. In other words, the progs are not truly prog...they are duocrats united with the teabaggers.
Likewise, squealing Nader effect is a front for being scared stiff of defections from supporting the continued duocratic beat down of the 99%. Nobody was squealing Nader effect when Ross Perot took 20% of the vote. But there were many a duocrat kissing the backsides of Perot supporters, weren't there?
Someone said that all the world is a stage and if that is so maybe all that we are seeing on our national stage is what they want us to see. A clever bit of contrived drama designed to give the impression of freedom and liberty, the shimmer of truth and justice the illusion of a democracy while the reality is far, far from anything resembling the hype we are sold.
The truth of the matter seems to be that we have been bought and paid for in advance by those with the power to do so, of course this has always been the case but never has it been so blatant or all encompassing as it is now. The evil that men do has grown with their ability to control and modern technology has allowed for unprecedented gains in what can only be called brain washing, we the little people only hear the side of the story they want us to hear, we react to the buttons they push.
America is in a sad spot today. Our elected leaders lie to the public at every stage and the public just goes along.
If you want to learn more about the PDC and how closely the Democrats and Republicans work to manipulate the debate process, then log onto DemocracyNow.org. They've got a fabulous piece on it.
I'm sticking with Obama/Biden no matter what any pundit writes.
Because Romney/Lyin'Ryan will finish what W started during W's Lost Decade, further destroying the Middle Class, rewarding billionaires with tax cuts, starting more WARS, destroying Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and throwing the poor, the elderly, the handicapped under the bus.
Fanned for having your eyes open and getting it. We need more people waking up to this FACT. Keep blowin' the horn.