Okay. I’m jealous. Wouldn’t you love to do this good a job if you were interviewed by Fox?
The kids in New York and in other cities seem to be doing it: forcing these issues into the conversation. Now, if only the politicians who call themselves Democrats would tap into this discontent and actually advocate policies to stem the rise of the oligarchs, we might get somewhere.
I know that Newt and his wife have long since become mere caricatures, but I can’t resist piling on. I ask you, of the two entities depicted here, which looks more like it’s not quite real. Barbie looks more lifelike than Callista.
From TPM.
Here’s an enlightening video:
And here, to prove the point, is a picture that appears twice in this morning’s New London Day, once as a teaser and once as a half page picture accompanying an article about the protests.
So, the Obama campaign is tacking left in order to win the presidential election, after spending the past three years tacking right in pursuit of the White Whale, otherwise known as the mythical homogeneous independent voters.
So, we’ll be hearing a lot about Obama protecting Social Security and Medicare, which is probably good, because it will make him reluctant, at least for now, to return to talk about grand bargains consisting of cutting those programs in order to reward Republican intransigence. We also may be hearing some stuff about Wall Street, if his ratings continue to go South.
I hope it works, considering the alternative, but I question whether the people who have been paying attention will believe a word of it. But then, those people are like me: nowhere to go. This election is about the people who aren’t stupid or political enough to become tea partiers, but are too stupid or inattentive to know what’s being done to them by the corporations and plutocrats running the country. Those people know a few things: they love them some Social Security and Medicare, and they probably don’t like banks. Who knows, Obama may benefit, in a back handed way, from the ludicrous charge that he’s a socialist, since his new found commitment to Social Security, Medicare and tax equity does have a faint, albeit very faint, whiff of Socialism about it. The uniformed may actually believe he’s in character.
It all makes you wonder: where would Obama be in the polls had he stood up for these principles all along? It is impossible to believe he could be lower than he is today had he been constantly making the case that the lower 99 shouldn’t be carrying the burden for the upper 1%. Who knows, maybe he would even have accomplished something had he successfully painted the Republicans as the protectors of the rich that they are. Oh well, better late than never.
Warren Buffett on class warfare:
QUESTIONER: Are you happy seeing your suggestion, this new Buffett Rule, becoming more of a basis of a political battle that really has turned into class warfare?
BUFFETT: Actually, there’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years, and my class has won. We’re the ones that have gotten our tax rates reduced dramatically.
If you look at the 400 highest taxpayers in the United States in 1992, the first year for figures, they averaged about $40 million of [income] per person. In the most recent year, they were $227 million per person — five for one. During that period, their taxes went down from 29 percent to 21 percent of income. So, if there’s class warfare, the rich class has won.
Buffett’s point is an obvious one, and one that the Democrats, were they really concerned for their alleged constituency, would have been making for the past thirty years. Who knows, maybe Buffett will give the Democrats some cover to start fighting back; maybe those kids in New York will help force the issue into the national conversation, and maybe Obama will take it up as the only way for him to survive politically. For whatever reason, it seems that the floodgates have opened a bit, and maybe the fact that the rich have systematically plundered the rest of us will finally become an issue.
Speaking of those kids in New York, they’ve answered the ginned up criticism that they haven’t articulated their grievances ( funny how no one has demanded coherence from the tea baggers ). Check out their Declaration here.
Before I start this rant, let me say that I appreciate the fact that the New London Day is one of the best, if not the best, newspapers in the state, even now that Ted Mann is gone. But that, unfortunately proves only how low the profession has sunk. In this morning’s paper, a “poll” was reported, giving responses to the following question:
Would you support Michael Buscetto III as a write-in candidate for New London mayor?
There is no direct link to what turns out to be an Internet poll, which I found embedded on the Region section on-line.
I have my opinions on Buscetto, who is mounting an independent bid for mayor after losing the Democratic primary, but they’re irrelevant to this post. What I found amazing about the fact that this was reported in the print edition was that there was no caveat whatsoever to the effect that the poll has no scientific validity whatsoever. It was reported as a poll. Is the Day unaware that readers go to their newspapers for facts, and when a paper reports poll results their is an implied representation that the results being reflect some meaningful reality? There is no way that a poll that anyone can answer, as many times as they like, tells us anything about the actual state of things in New London. It is possible that a scientifically conducted poll would reach results similar to those published in the Day, but if it did one could only chalk it up to coincidence. If such a poll were conducted, I, being a resident of Groton, would not be among those polled, yet I cast a vote on-line without a problem. The Day is certainly free to conduct meaningless on-line polls, if that’s what it takes to up its hit count, but it has an obligation to disclose that the results are meaningless.
From this morning’s New London Day (via the AP):
Southington state Sen. Joe Markley is asking state auditors to review how the Connecticut Department of Social
Services handled the recent distribution of payments to needy people who sustained losses from Tropical Storm Irene.
The ranking Republican leader of the General Assembly’s Human Services Committee said he wants auditors to investigate claims of fraud. He said news reports indicated that the Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program was poorly handled.
Low-income residents who don’t already receive food stamps were eligible for one-time payments, issued through ATM-style debit card, to cover damages such as spoiled food, loss of income and shelter costs.
Last month, thousands turned up at DSS offices to receive the payments, forming lines that snaked through city neighborhoods. DSS had to deploy reinforcements to their offices.
It’s wondrous how upset Republicans get at the prospect that some poor person might be getting a dollar more in government benefits than they deserve, yet they can’t summon up a bit of moral fervor about the rich sucking us taxpayers dry. How many poor people have to commit this type of alleged fraud to equal the amount of money that the baks have siphoned from us all by a mixture of pure fraud plus greed? At least it has a stimulative effect, while the bankers drove us into recession and are now lecturing us against taking effective action to free ourselves from the mess they created? Where, I wonder, is Markley on all that?
This is dedicated to all those poor misunderstood Wall Streeters presently under attack by the proles in New York:
As you can see here, they’re suffering terribly:
If you’re like me, and if you read this blog you probably are, your in-box is full these days. The hours are ticking down until the midnight reporting deadline for political campaign funds, and, judging by the emails, it’s a matter of life and death that I give today. I imagine the few right wing readers I have (and I know you’re out there) are experiencing the same thing. No doubt their missives are even more frantic, as each and every beggar is the last bulwark between liberty and socialism.
To those on the left, the threats are many, and most of them are real. I’d feel better if I thought that those grasping for my money would actually do anything to defend us from them, but the past, as they say, is prologue. James Carville, for instance, reminds me of the threat posed by a Republican takeover of the Senate:
They get their crazy ideas through the House, and the Senate stops ’em. Thing is, they flip four seats, and their ideas will fly right on through.
He’s right. They will fly right on through. But James, why didn’t our ideas “fly right on through” in 2009 and 2010? For that matter, why don’t they fly through the Senate now? Why does it take sixty votes to pass something when the Democrats are in the majority, and only 51 when it’s the Republicans?
The DCCC, on the other hand, warns that the death of NPR is at hand. If you read Dean Baker, you might wonder why we should care. The Republicans have succeeded in doing with NPR what they have done with all other national media: made it a purveyor of their talking points while demonizing it for liberalism. Only Fox escapes the demonization, because it’s so enthusiastic about the purveying.
All these people are promising to fight for me, and yet somehow, once they have my money, they never seem to do so.
But hope springs eternal, so I just gave some money to Elizabeth Warren. But that’s it. I don’t even care if I’m giving up on a chance for dinner with Obama. At this point, I’m not sure I could remain civil if I won.
Tomorrow the emails all stop, and “for this [future] relief, much thanks”, but like Francisco “I am sick at heart”.
Wow, when I first read this quote it was at Kos and I thought it was satire, perhaps someone channeling Garry Trudeau channeling Sarah. But no, it’s pure Sarah:
“Is a title worth it?” she asked, rhetorically. “Does a title shackle a person? Are they someone like me who’s maverick? I do go rogue and I call it like I see it and I don’t mind stirring it up in order to get people to think and debate aggressively.”
“Is a title and a campaign too shackle-y?,” she continued. “Does that prohibit me from being out there, out of a box, not allowing handlers to shape me and to force my message to be what donors or what contributors or what pundits want it to be? Does a title take away my freedom to call it like I see it and to affect positive change that we need in this country? That’s the biggest contemplation piece in my process.”
Maybe it’s some sort of meta thing: Sarah Palin imitating Tina Fey imitating Sarah Palin