Ironic that yesterday, NY Times columnist Charles Blow, certainly an Obama cheerleader from way back, penned a column entitled Obama’s to Fix, in which he cautions the President to stop blaming George Bush for the “mess” he inherited. Clearly, our President, far from undoing such a mess, is daily making a bigger one of his own. Mr. Blow begins with this ominous phrase:

What a difference a year makes.

In October 2008, the candidate Barack Obama delivered a major economic speech in Toledo, Ohio. In it he said: “Right now, we face an immediate economic emergency, and that requires urgent action. We can’t wait to help workers and families and communities who are struggling right now — who don’t know if their job or their retirement will be there tomorrow; who don’t know if next week’s paycheck will cover this month’s bills. … We need to pass an economic rescue plan for the middle-class, and we need to do it not five years from now, not next year, we need to do it right now.

“So today I’m proposing a number of steps that we should take immediately to stabilize our financial system, provide relief to families and communities and help struggling homeowners. It’s a plan that begins with one word that’s on everybody’s mind, and it’s easy to spell: J-O-B-S.”

“Right now,” “immediate economic emergency,” “requires urgent action,” “can’t wait.” Wow! He gave the impression that job creation would be his top priority, that action would be swift and effective, that his solutions would not only stanch the hemorrhaging, but reverse the trend.

He has not made jobs his top priority. This health care debacle, bailing out Wall Street, getting into the car business and generally putting money into the pockets of everyone except those who need it have all taken priority over putting Americans back to work. And, no, putting an extra $13 a week into people’s paychecks is not going to do the trick when as Mr. Blow points out the new official labor statistics have us at 10.2 unemployment, which is an increase of “more than 50 percent from the time Obama gave that speech.”

“(By the way, the underemployment rate, which includes part-time workers who want to work full time and those who’ve given up searching, is a staggering 17.5 percent.)”

I am still at a loss to understand why there was such a great urgency to pass health care legislation that is not supposed to go into effect for more than three years. Someone on another blog made the observation that Obama and Pelosi et al are using the economic crisis and joblessness as a weapon to pass their agenda. As people are panicked at losing their jobs and their healthcare, they are more likely to look to government to bail them out – and more amenable. As Rahm Emanuel said, “never waste a good crisis.” What better time to ram this through. Mr. Blow continues:

Job creation has dropped from top priority to one of many, and President Obama has been remanded to pandering for patience and offering excuses. On the one hand, he argues the tortured rationale that there is good news in the awful numbers: Things are still getting worse but at a slower pace. On the other, he incessantly reminds us that he inherited the crisis. The implication: Don’t blame me, blame Bush.

But this president can’t keep deflecting to the last one. Pain is presently felt. The crisis that took form on Bush’s watch is being experienced on Obama’s. Fair or not, finger-pointing is not effective policy.

This is now Obama’s crisis, and it carries political consequences. During Tuesday’s gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, nearly 9 in 10 voters said that they were worried about the direction of the nation’s economy in the next year. And the majority of those who held that view voted for the Republican candidates. This could portend a flashback to 1994.

It isn’t President Obama’s fault that he inherited this mess, but it is his to fix, and he must make haste. To paraphrase his Toledo prelection: you need to do it not five years from now, not next year, you need to do it right now. J-O-B-S.

There were many options to put people back to work this year if that was really the priority. Clearly it was not. This President spent almost a billion dollars to get his job. I don’t want to hear complaints now. Obviously, he inherited a mess, which he has made worse with reckless spending. No one expects him to fix everything in the space of a year, but I thought his “good judgment” meant he knew how to prioritize. We need leadership and part of that involves sacrificing one’s ego to help those who need it most. That is far more important than pushing legislation just for the purpose of putting a check mark next to one’s name. You don’t not spend billions, even trillions, you don’t have at a time like this. Since this bunch so miscalculated on their $787 billion stimulus package, I am not inclined to trust them now by handing over 1/6 of the economy to their stewardship.

It is interesting that Mr. Blow, who played the race card on Mr. Obama’s behalf last year, is now joining the ever increasing number of his pundit supporters who are having problems with his endless campaigning, blaming and wrongheaded focus.

As to the health care debate, I called my Congressman’s office Friday morning to complain about the bill and his assistant debated the merits with me. At least she took the time to do so. It was a shame she was wrong on the facts. I told her to go back and read the thing. Now we have a 2,000 page beast that the Senate must contend with and we are told it will never pass in its current form. So why the rush? Why wouldn’t this Administration be in the same kind of rush to help get people back to work?

There are 237 millionaires in Congress. Perhaps that explains why they have difficulty relating to the urgent need to put millions of Americans back of work, instead manufacturing an urgent need to pass labrynthian legislation for the mere purpose of saying “Mission Accomplished.”

Hmm. Where have we heard that phrase before?

Nope, I am not talking about Anita Dunn this time. Ron Bloom is the latest Obama Czar (Manufacturing) to quote Mao as an authority. And just wait to see which quote he uses from Mao. Oh, and he disses that whole free market thing, too. See for yourself:

You may recall that Ron Bloom was a negotiator with the United Steel Workers, and apparently known for being a bit of a potty mouth while he was at it. Oh, and naturally, like so many of the people with whom Obama surrounds himself, has ties to the SEIU, which was co-created by Wade Rathke of ACORN fame. Yep, he surely does.

Remarkable, isn’t it? When Obama keeps trying to claim he doesn’t know all that much about ACORN and their doings? Yeah, right. But I digress.

You know, it makes sense, though, really. As Obama takes over private enterprise as well as banks with our dollars (more on this below), and attempts to destroy any media that isn’t favorable to it, I think we are well on our way to an, um, less than Democratic union. And we have Czars like Anita Dunn and Ron Bloom to lead the way, not to mention Obama himself, a card-carrying member of the Socialist New Party (and don’t forget Van Jones, who had to resign). Ain’t that something?

Remember when our friends and families scoffed at us and ridiculed us for making these claims about Obama and his associates? Uh huh. Dontcha just HATE it when you know you’re right and people treat you like your nuts? I wonder how they feel now? Oh, right – they’re probably all singing their “Mmmm mmmm mmm” song while our once democratic nation goes by the boards…

By the way, the Bailout Watchdog had this to say about the TARP program – OUR taxpaying dollars at work:

But even as the administration aimed to refocus the massive Troubled Asset Relief Program on small businesses and homeowners, Barofsky said in his report that the effort to save the nation’s financial sector came at great cost to taxpayers, to the integrity of the financial system and to the public’s perception of the federal government.

“Despite the aspects of TARP that could reasonably be viewed as a substantial success,” he wrote, “Treasury’s actions in this regard have contributed to damage the credibility of the program and of the government itself, and the anger, cynicism and distrust created must be chalked up as one of the substantial, albeit unnecessary, costs of TARP.”

Barofsky said public suspicion was fed by Treasury’s decision not to require banks to report how they used their rescue money and its “less-than-accurate” statements describing the financial condition of nine large banks that benefited from large infusions of aid. The TARP program began under the administration of President George W. Bush and has expanded under Obama.

And now the Obama Administration has taken on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. I’m not kidding. The All Stars had an excellent discussion on this last night, and included the overarching issues of both the Chamber of Commerce AND the attacks by Anita Dunn on Fox News. It provides a good overview of the direction the Obama Administration is heading:

You know, if things continue down this path with the people Obama has surrounded himself, I think we can expect to have this painting in the White House:

Replaced with this one:

Hey, it could happen! And the chances of that seem to be increasing with every day…

Many Americans were duped by financial practices and products emanating from Wall Street. Where was Washington? I would assess Washington’s involvement and responses in the following fashion:

1. At worst, Washington was complicit given a wide array of failed public policy programs, especially in housing. These public policies were largely ‘greased’ by lobbying dollars and campaign contributions.

2. To a large extent, Washington was negligent in terms of oversight, especially on the financial regulatory front.

3. At best, Washington was naive given a general lack of understanding of markets and finance.

The American public is now responding in appropriate fashion. How so? In increasing numbers, they are choosing not to play the Wall Street game. What game is that? Active trading and investing. While the numbers of pure day traders may have increased, the American population at large is focused elsewhere. Where is that focus? On the economy at large and on their individual pocket books.

Washington’s focus on Wall Street and its selling of the market rebound as reflective of a return towards prosperity is a product that will not fly . . . try as they might. Why?

It’s the economy, stupid! Reports this morning indicate that wages will likely show the greatest decline since 1991. Even in the face of declining wages, consumers’ purchasing power is being further eroded by the continuing decline in the value of the dollar. That decline is inflationary which hurts consumers but it continues to present a very cheap funding vehicle for those who want to use the greenback to employ leverage in the markets. Who has the advantage in that process? The large banks. Do they spread that wealth in terms of increased credit and higher savings rates? Now why would they do that?

The American saver and consumer shouldered the cost of the bank bailouts in 2008. They are now shouldering the cost of the wealth transfer to the banks in 2009. While Washington would like to sell this dynamic differently, the American public gets it.

Washington will continue to sell this dynamic at its peril.

LD

The American Idol president is running his own reality show and we are picking up the tab. Mr. Obama seems to think that he and his wife are the most fascinating part of the American narrative. Last Friday, the IOC clarified the butter for the Obamas. In the past months, we have published many articles reporting on Kool Aid drinkers who have lifted their heads from the pink trough, dazed and confused, wondering where the “Change” is. The list is long: Peggy Noonan, Frank Rich, Susan Estrich, Andrew Sullivan, Camille Paglia, Robert Reich. Feel free to add your own. Today I add three more to that growing list.

First WaPo’s Richard Cohen complains Obama Doesn’t Seem Ready to Lead:

Barack Obama’s trip to Copenhagen to pitch Chicago for the Olympics would have been a dumb move whatever the outcome. But as it turned out (an airy dismissal would not be an unfair description), it poses some questions about his presidency that are way more important than the proper venue for synchronized swimming. The first, and to my mind most important, is whether Obama knows who he is.

This business of self-knowledge is no minor issue. It bears greatly on the single most crucial issue facing this young and untested president: Afghanistan. Already, we have his choice for Afghanistan commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, taking the measure of his commander in chief and publicly telling him what to do. This MacArthuresque star turn called for a Trumanesque response, but Obama offered nothing of the kind. Instead, he used McChrystal as a prop, adding a bit of four-star gravitas to that silly trip to Copenhagen by having the general meet with him there.

Mr. Cohen is blaming Gen. McChrystal for someone else leaking his report to the President. The more important point is, as Gen. Wes Clark or anyone else who’s actually been in this position will tell you (and as he did say in an interview this weekend), you’d better listen to your commanders on the ground. Cohen is right that the 25 minute meeting with McChrystal on Friday was merely a photo op. He’s still deliberating. How many more months of ‘deliberating” are required while our soldiers are dying in Afghanistan?

This is the president we now have: He inspires lots of affection but not a lot of awe. It is the latter, though, that matters most in international affairs, where the greatest and most gut-wrenching tests await Obama. If he remains consistent to his own rhetoric of just last August, he will send more troops to Afghanistan and more of them will die. “This is not a war of choice,” he said. “This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans.”

President Obama has the disastrous example of Iraq where Bush’s Generals told him from the outset that an overwhelming force was needed. They did not get it. You saw the result. Obama himself admitted that the belated 2007 surge was wildly successful. How much more evidence does he need? Define the mission, and either send the forces in to get the job done or pull all our men and women out of there. Choose. Lead. That’s the job description. Date night I don’t care about. Dog walking I don’t care about.

Cohen concludes:

But the ultimate in realism is for the president to gauge himself and who he is: Does he have the stomach and commitment for what is likely to be an unpopular war? Will he send additional troops, but hedge by not sending enough — so that the dying will be in vain? What does he believe, and will he ask Americans to die for it? Only he knows the answers to these questions. But based on his zigzagging so far and the suggestion from the Copenhagen trip that the somber seriousness of the presidency has yet to sink in, we have reason to wonder.

Has the seriousness of the presidency sunk in? Now there’s a question.

You may be surprised to note that NY Times columnist Bob Herbert is wondering the same thing. A huge cheerleader for Obama, Herbert cried racism and even saw phallic symbols in the leaning tower of Pisa in a misguided attempt to defend his chosen hero last year. Now he wonders Does Obama Get It? Well, Mr. Herbert, don’t feel bad. This question has been keeping me up nights, too. He states:

The big question on the domestic front right now is whether President Obama understands the gravity of the employment crisis facing the country. Does he get it? The signals coming out of the White House have not been encouraging.

Clearly Mr. Herbert, if you have to ask, then Obama does not understand the gravity of the situation. Where is his good judgment? How can one not understand 9.8 unemployment – in reality it is a much higher number when one includes Americans out of work for so long they have fallen off the rolls.

The Beltway crowd and the Einsteins of high finance who never saw this economic collapse coming are now telling us with their usual breezy arrogance that the Great Recession is probably over. Their focus, of course, is on data, abstractions like the gross domestic product, not the continued suffering of living, breathing human beings struggling with the nightmare of joblessness.

Even Mr. Obama, in an interview with The Times, gave short shrift to the idea of an additional economic stimulus package, telling John Harwood a few weeks ago that the economy had likely turned a corner. “As you know,” the president said, “jobs tend to be a lagging indicator; they come last.”

The view of most American families is somewhat less blasé. …

Nearly one in four American families has suffered a job loss over the past year, according to a survey released by the Economic Policy Institute. Nearly 1 in 10 Americans is officially unemployed, and the real-world jobless rate is worse.

It is a nightmare. No one is blasé when they are worried how they are going to feed their families. What about the porkulus package? Is this administration waiting to release most of the funds in 2010 to help them at the polls? If that is the case, shame on them.

Why should Obama understand when he isn’t spending his own money? Half million dollar pizza parties, an obscene amount spent on the inauguration and several million on this reckless Copenhagen junket show a frightening disconnect between Obama’s priorities and his fiduciary responsibility to the American people. Herbert continues:

The Obama administration seems hamstrung by the unemployment crisis. No big ideas have emerged. No dramatically creative initiatives. While devoting enormous amounts of energy to health care, and trying now to decide what to do about Afghanistan, the president has not even conveyed the sense of urgency that the crisis in employment warrants.

If that does not change, these staggering levels of joblessness have the potential to cripple not just the well-being of millions of American families, but any real prospects for sustained economic recovery and the political prospects of the president as well. An unemployed electorate is an unhappy electorate.

Mr. Herbert, they are already crippled, but instead of addressing the urgency of the economy and Afghanistan head on, we get what George Will calls The Obamas’ Narcissism on Display. Speaking of Mr. and Mrs. Obama’s speeches before the IOC last week,

…Their separate speeches to the International Olympic Committee were so dreadful, and in such a characteristic way, that they might be symptomatic of something that has serious implications for American governance.

Both Obamas gave heartfelt speeches about … themselves. Although the working of the committee’s mind is murky, it could reasonably have rejected Chicago’s bid for the 2016 games on aesthetic grounds — unless narcissism has suddenly become an Olympic sport.

George Will suggested that since the Obamas used so many “I” and “me” references in their speeches, Obama’s genius speechwriters (Favreau et al) should have substituted the words I and me with “sauerkraut” to underscore the ‘antic nature of their excessive appearances.’ Someone needs to tell the Obamas that what is compelling about America is all Americans – all colors of the rainbow, all states, all social strata – together. All of us. Not just the two of them. And all of us are hurting out here. Our soldiers are hurting, too.

Will also points to Obama’s excessive use of cliché:

“At this defining moment,” a moment “when the fate of each nation is inextricably linked to the fate of all nations” in “this ever-shrinking world,” he aspires to “forge new partnerships with the nations and the peoples of the world.”
…
Does our Cicero even glance at his speeches before reading them in public?

All this is indicative of a man not connected to his words or not caring enough about either his audience or the subject at hand to come up with anything better than patented brand phrases that some focus group told him “resonate” with the public.

Our soldiers and our economy need a coherent plan. Now. He has had ample time to figure this out, as has Congress. Too much energy is focused on infighting for a health care plan that is such an incoherent monstrosity that they should trash it and start over. This is not even supposed to take effect until 2013, after the next election. Hmmm I wonder why. All things considered, that leaves health care the least urgent issue of the three.

On Afghanistan and the economy, pressing matters where lives, jobs and homes are on the line – where is the president? Will concludes:

Unhappy will be a president whose defining adjective is “vain.”

In keeping with the vanity of this man’s administration, we also see that nothing President Obama does is his own fault. This is the job he wanted. And a majority of the electorate voted him in to do it. What is he waiting for? There is no one else to blame if he hems and haws so long that Afghanistan is lost. There is no one else to blame if he insists on focusing on parts of an agenda that are not helping put the American people back to work. This is his presidency now. So I’ll ask again.

Mr. President, why did you want this job?

Since Neil Barofsky, Special Inspector General for the (TARP) Troubled Asset Relief Program and Elizabeth Warren, Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel of the (TARP) Troubled Asset Relief Program were guest witnesses, it seemed a good time to get some answers to the $700 billion dollar questions of how well is TARP working and how stable has our economy become.

And, well, you might want to hold off on the champagne.

From SIG Neil Barofsky:

“I think we may be in a far more dangerous place today than we were a year ago,” he said.

As Ms. Warren points out in her testimony:

EESA [Emergency Economic Stabilization Act] listed five specific objectives for TARP: to restore financial stability, protect home values and family savings, promote jobs and economic growth, maximize returns to taxpayers, and provide public accountability.

——

Since EESA was enacted one year ago, the apprehension that pervaded this country has turned into something else: frustration and anger. Taxpayers have committed over $531 billion through TARP, and although there is no doubt that the financial system has begun to stabilize, families are still feeling the pain of rising unemployment, rampant foreclosures, higher bank fees, and limited access to credit.

Today’s fragile stability has come at an enormous cost to the American people. Taxpayers have a right to expect full clarity, full transparency, and full accountability in Treasury’s use of their money. They also have a right to know what has fundamentally changed to prevent this crisis from ever happening again….

From Mr. Barofsky testimony:
On Maximizing Returns to Taxpayers

The progress on meeting the goal of “maximiz[ing] overall returns to the taxpayer” is unclear. While several TARP recipients have repaid funds for what has widely been reported as a 17% profit, it is extremely unlikely that the taxpayer will see a full return on its TARP investment. For example, certain TARP programs, such as the mortgage modification program which is scheduled to use $50 billion of TARP funds, will yield no direct return, and for others, including the extraordinary assistance programs to AIG and the auto companies, full recovery is far from certain.

Similarly, Treasury’s original stated goal of increasing lending has not yet occurred, although, as SIGTARP’s recently issued audit on TARP recipients’ use of funds indicates, it is likely that lending from TARP recipients would have decreased far more in the absence of TARP funding.

On Protecting Home Values and Family Savings;
On Promoting Jobs and Economic Growth

…the goals of “preserving homeownership,” “promot[ing] jobs and economic growth” have not yet been met, and the ultimate success of meeting these policy goals will depend on programs that are just now reaching the implementation stage, such as the TARP’s mortgage modification program and the public-private investment funds. In the meantime, the risk of foreclosure continues to affect too many Americans; unemployment continues its rise to levels that Treasury has characterized as “unacceptable”; the so-called “toxic” assets that helped cause this crisis for the most part remain right where they were last fall – on the banks’ balance sheets; and it is becoming more and more clear that the commercial real estate market might be the next proverbial shoe to drop, threatening to increase the pressure on banks and small business alike yet again.

On Providing Public Accountability

“Treasury’s default position should always be to require more disclosure rather than less and to provide the investors in TARP — the American taxpayers — as much information about what is being done with their money as possible. …TARP largely remains a program in which taxpayers are not being told what most of the TARP recipients are doing with their money and will not be told the full details of how their money is being invested.”

More from Ms. Warren:
On Restoring Financial Stability

“The toxic assets remain on the books of the banks. The commercial real estate mortgages are a coming crisis. Small banks are continuing to fail. We were talking a year ago about too big to fail. We are now facing an industry that’s more concentrated than it was a year ago and too big to fail is up on us now in a much larger sense.”

“Until we get down to dirt, to something that’s solid, that we can put our feet on, our financial institutions are standing in a secure place, we can’t rebuild and know that we are safely past this crisis”

“The question about how we’re going to get these toxic assets out of here at a time when the real estate mortgage market is still in trouble and the commercial real estate mortgage market may be getting into more and more trouble – I’m not hearing the plan.”

Then again, the way our government has been working of late, maybe it is a good thing if they don’t have a plan for this.

And I have another number for you: 400. Yes, Saturday marks an inauspicious milestone. 400 is the number of Service Members who have been discharged under DADT during Obama’s Administration. 400 men and women whose lives were changed simply because of whom they love. 400 men and women who were willing to serve their country, to put themselves in harm’s way for us, for the U.S.A, and they have now been fired.

And here’s another number for you: $56,400. That is the average, approximate cost to train a service member for their first duty station by one estimate. $56,400 each for enlisted personnel, not officers, including when they first visit a Recruiter (these are 2006 figures, so it might be more now).

The average cost to train an officer? That number is: 120,772. If that officer happens to be a fighter pilot, you can go ahead and round that number up to: $1,450,000. Remember, these are just averages. The cost to train Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach was $25,000,000. Fehrenbach, a decorated war hero, was fired from the Air Force under DADT.

And one last number for you: 9/11. Many people in this country were moved to do some kind of service to and for their country as a result of the attacks on 9/11, GLBT people included. Obama has been pushing this huge call to Service, including on 9/11/09. Secretary Clinton gave a speech on the Commemoration of the First Annual National Day of Service And Remembrance on 9/11. Presumably, the ability to serve one’s country should be open to ALL of its citizens.

Yet today, that ability is not. As of today, 400 Americans have been told their willingness to serve their country, to put themselves in harm’s way on her behalf, is neither desired nor accepted. 400 Americans have been told that the National Day of Service does not apply to them. 400.

How about those numbers?

What a difference a month makes! When my last controversial column posted on Salon in the second week of August, most Democrats seemed frozen in suspended animation, not daring to criticize the Obama administration’s bungling of healthcare reform lest it give aid and comfort to the GOP. Well, that ice dam sure broke with a roar. Dissident Democrats found their voices, and by late August even the liberal lemmings of the mainstream media, from CBS to CNN, had drastically altered their tone of reportage, from priggish disdain of the town hall insurgency to frank admission of serious problems in the healthcare bills as well as of Obama’s declining national support.

…As an Obama supporter and contributor, I am outraged at the slowness with which the standing army of Democratic consultants and commentators publicly expressed discontent with the administration’s strategic missteps this year. … from week one after the inauguration, when Obama went flat as a rug in letting Congress pass that obscenely bloated stimulus package. Had more Democrats protested, the administration would have felt less arrogantly emboldened to jam through a cap-and-trade bill whose costs have made it virtually impossible for an alarmed public to accept the gargantuan expenses of national healthcare reform. (Who is naive enough to believe that Obama’s plan would be deficit-neutral? Or that major cuts could be achieved without drastic rationing?)

Due respect to Ms. Paglia, she might ask herself why she bought into any of this before the election. We did not. Their disastrous spending plans: using the cover of the economic crisis to push through pet projects under the phony label of stimulus, offering bailouts of Wall St., not Main Street. People are without jobs, losing their homes and they are playing games with our money? Most readers at NQ sensed where Obama’s allegiance would be 18 months ago. I find precious little satisfaction in yet another prominent Obama supporter expressing disgust. The stakes are too high and we are now stuck.

I am grateful, however, that a respected voice is calling the arrogant Dem leadership out on its despicable characterizations of American citizens, who are rightfully outraged at this mess:

By foolishly trying to reduce all objections to healthcare reform to the malevolence of obstructionist Republicans, Democrats have managed to destroy the national coalition that elected Obama and that is unlikely to be repaired. If Obama fails to win reelection, let the blame be first laid at the door of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who at a pivotal point threw gasoline on the flames by comparing angry American citizens to Nazis.

Pelosi needs to lose her seat for that one. Disgraceful.

Paglia seems to think Obama might turn it around with a great speech, but wonders if too much damage has already been done. She has written the Dems off is 2012, unless Republicans nominate someone dead from the neck up – entirely possible. Paglia says she “has been calling for heads to roll at the White House from the get-go”:

…Thankfully, they do seem to be falling faster — as witness the middle-of-the-night bum’s rush given to “green jobs” czar Van Jones last week — but there’s a long way to go. An example of the provincial amateurism of current White House operations was the way the president’s innocuous back-to-school pep talk got sandbagged by imbecilic support materials soliciting students to write fantasy letters to “help” the president (a coercive directive quickly withdrawn under pressure). Even worse, the entire project was stupidly scheduled to conflict with the busy opening days of class this week, when harried teachers already have their hands full. Comically, some major school districts, including New York City, were not even open yet. And this is the gang who wants to revamp national healthcare?

Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year’s tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators?

Ms. Paglia still betrays a trusting naiveté here, thinking that Democrats were too insulated to know the protests were genuine. Not so. The Obama Administration simply continued the same techniques of the Obama campaign – demonize any opponents in order to silence them. She acknowledges that network and cable TV are not the central forums for debate any longer. They just play out more junk politics, backing their respective brands. Ms. Paglia notes…

…the truly transformative political energy is coming from talk radio and the Web — both of which Democrat-sponsored proposals have threatened to stifle, in defiance of freedom of speech guarantees in the Bill of Rights. …[O]n talk radio, which I have resumed monitoring around the clock because of the healthcare fiasco … I heard the passionate voices of callers coming directly from the town hall meetings. Hence I was alerted to the depth and intensity of national sentiment long before others who were simply watching staged, manipulated TV shows.

While she concludes her column giving the Republicans some well deserved slaps as well (and I encourage you to read the rest of her piece for yourself), most of it is devoted to pointing out Democratic Party arrogance. This is what the Clinton wing of the party, cruelly cast aside along with Hillary after the primaries, have noted as well. Ms. Paglia asks questions many here would find familiar:

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.

But affluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them. …Independent thought and logical analysis of argument are no longer taught. Elite education in the U.S. has become a frenetic assembly line of competitive college application to schools where ideological brainwashing is so pandemic that it’s invisible.

If any of Obama’s supporters had been capable of critical thought last year, they would have seen through his ridiculous promises and contradictory policy statements and had the sense to turn away. As this article is a prelude to President Obama’s big speech on healthcare this evening, Ms. Paglia’s next comments reveal the shortcomings of a compliant media and congress…

Throughout this fractious summer, I was dismayed not just at the self-defeating silence of Democrats at the gaping holes or evasions in the healthcare bills but also at the fogginess or insipidity of articles and Op-Eds about the controversy emanating from liberal mainstream media and Web sources. By a proportion of something like 10-to-1, negative articles by conservatives were vastly more detailed, specific and practical about the proposals than were supportive articles by Democrats, which often made gestures rather than arguments and brimmed with emotion and sneers. There was a glaring inability in most Democratic commentary to think ahead and forecast what would or could be the actual snarled consequences — in terms of delays, denial of services, errors, miscommunications and gross invasions of privacy — of a massive single-payer overhaul of the healthcare system in a nation as large and populous as ours. It was as if Democrats live in a utopian dream world, divorced from the daily demands and realities of organization and management.

Yes, the party in power does seem oddly divorced from reality as if wishing at the foot of President Obama’s HOPE poster would make their rosy predictions about the effects of their reckless leglislation come true. This past week, other columnists have pointed out that dissent and disagreement are a value to any President. Blank stares and idol worship will not make this Administration better. For the sake of our country, it would be refreshing change indeed if someone in the White House showed actual concern for the needs of Americans and went back to doing the people’s business. I think that may only happen if left, right and center keep speaking out and keep the pressure on. Only fear of the voters might have any effect whatsoever. And I’m not even sure of that.

Ms. Paglia, for one, worries it’s too late for Obama to turn it around…

As many recent townhall meetings have shown, the American people are dealing with a few issues of trust in regards to their government. So I thought it might be fun to take a look at two very different videos on Money and what it can do.

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In this video from a June forum on the banking industry, William Black discusses our current financial meltdown in which a single bank, IndyMac, lost more money than was lost during the entire Savings and Loan crisis. He examines the industry structures and political failures behind this economic disaster, including a pretty scathing analysis of the key players and current FOG’s, Friends of Goldman, in charge of our economic recovery. And he explains the massive fraud as well as the vast transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class that took place and continues as the federal government bails out the reckless, and quite possibly the criminal.

Warning, this video is 98 minutes long, but well worth the time.

William Black was litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, deputy director of the FSLIC, SVP and General Counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and Senior Deputy Chief Counsel, Office of Thrift Supervision. He was deputy director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement.

He currently teaches White-Collar Crime, Public Finance, Antitrust, Law & Economics (all joint, multidisciplinary classes for economics and law students), and Latin American Development at University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law.

In his book, The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One (University of Texas Press 2005) Mr. Black presents a history of the savings-and-loan industry scandals of the early 1980s and lays out how dishonest CEOs, crony directors, and corrupt middlemen can systematically defeat market discipline and conceal deliberate fraud for a long time — enough to create massive damage.

Sound familiar?

The larger fear is that Obama might be just another corporatist, punking voters much as the Republicans do when they claim to be all for the common guy.

Congratulations, Mr. Rich. With all your education, it has taken you two years longer than most of the people on this site to arrive at this conclusion. Obama is a corporatist. Or, as noted on HillaryIs44, an opportunist. He doesn’t care about the little guy or gal. Further, by his use of signing statements, a disturbing echo of the Bush Administration, he is on the road to becoming a “Unitary Executive.” I wonder if Mr. Rich feels ‘punked’ over that as well.

Let’s take a look at some of Mr. Rich’s observations leading him down disillusionment alley:

… [T]here is real reason for longer-term worry in the form of a persistent, anecdotal drift toward disillusionment among some of the president’s supporters. And not merely those on the left. This concern was perhaps best articulated by an Obama voter, a real estate agent in Virginia, featured on the front page of The Washington Post last week. “Nothing’s changed for the common guy,” she said. “I feel like I’ve been punked.” She cited in particular the billions of dollars in bailouts given to banks that still “act like they’re broke.”

But this mood isn’t just about the banks, Public Enemy No. 1. What the Great Recession has crystallized is a larger syndrome that Obama tapped into during the campaign. It’s the sinking sensation that the American game is rigged — that, as the president typically put it a month after his inauguration, the system is in hock to “the interests of powerful lobbyists or the wealthiest few” who have “run Washington far too long.” He promised to smite them.

…What disturbs Americans of all ideological persuasions is the fear that almost everything, not just government, is fixed or manipulated by some powerful hidden hand, from commercial transactions as trivial as the sales of prime concert tickets to cultural forces as pervasive as the news media.

Come on, Mr. Rich, it’s not such a long walk to realize why Wall Street has been protected with endless bailouts. Mr. Obama got more money from Wall St. than any other candidate. Rich must give Obama credit that he is doing some of the “rigging.” Rich still tries to pretend that Obama just can’t fight ‘the man.’ loathe to acknowledge that Obama is ‘the man.’ Certainly, he was elected by ‘the man.’

Where Rich tries halfheartedly to assail Republicans for disruptive town hall meetings, he must admit Democrats have unclean hands as well:

As Democrats have pointed out, the angry hecklers disrupting town-hall meetings convened by members of Congress are not always ordinary citizens engaging in spontaneous grass-roots protests or even G.O.P. operatives, but proxies for corporate lobbyists. (snip)

But the Democratic members of Congress those hecklers assailed can hardly claim the moral high ground. Their ties to health care interests are merely more discreet and insidious. As Congressional Quarterly reported last week, industry groups contributed almost $1.8 million in the first six months of 2009 alone to the 18 House members of both parties supervising health care reform, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer among them.

Then there are the 52 conservative Blue Dog Democrats, who have balked at the public option for health insurance. Their cash intake from insurers and drug companies outpaces their Democratic peers by an average of 25 percent, according to The Post. And let’s not forget the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, which has raked in nearly $500,000 from a single doctor-owned hospital in McAllen, Tex. — the very one that Obama has cited as a symbol of runaway medical costs ever since it was profiled in The New Yorker this spring.

Finally, Rich has a hallelujah moment when he points out that (D) or (R) after one’s name means less and less. It’s the character, stupid!

In this maze of powerful moneyed interests, it’s not clear who any American in either party should or could root for. The bipartisan nature of the beast can be encapsulated by the remarkable progress of Billy Tauzin, the former Louisiana congressman. Tauzin was a founding member of the Blue Dog Democrats in 1994. A year later, he bolted to the Republicans. Now he is chief of PhRMA, the biggest pharmaceutical trade group. In the 2008 campaign, Obama ran a television ad pillorying Tauzin for his role in preventing Medicare from negotiating for lower drug prices. Last week The Los Angeles Times reported — and The New York Times confirmed — that Tauzin, an active player in White House health care negotiations, had secured a behind-closed-doors flip-flop, enlisting the administration to push for continued protection of drug prices. Now we know why the president has ducked his campaign pledge to broadcast such negotiations on C-Span.

The making of legislative sausage is never pretty. The White House has to give to get. But the cynicism being whipped up among voters is justified. Unlike Hillary Clinton, whose chief presidential campaign strategist unapologetically did double duty as a high-powered corporate flack, Obama promised change we could actually believe in.

Rich cannot miss an opportunity to trash Hillary Clinton to the bargain. I was waiting for him to find some inane reason to drag her name into this, even though Obama has proven himself to be in bed with corporate interests ten times over. We’d be lucky to have her as President right now. No matter what, I can assure you he would not feel ‘punked.’

Still, Mr. Rich cannot hide from the truth although he does try to soft pedal it:

[Obama’s] first questionable post-victory step was to assemble an old boys’ club of Robert Rubin protégés and Goldman-Citi alumni as the White House economic team, including a Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, who failed in his watchdog role at the New York Fed as Wall Street’s latest bubble first inflated and then burst. The questions about Geithner’s role in adjudicating the subsequent bailouts aren’t going away, and neither is the angry public sense that the fix is still in. We just learned that nine of those bailed-out banks — which in total received $175 billion of taxpayers’ money, but as yet have repaid only $50 billion — are awarding a total of $32.6 billion in bonuses for 2009.

It’s in this context that Obama can’t afford a defeat on health care. A bill will pass in a Democrat-controlled Congress. What matters is what’s in it. The final result will be a CAT scan of those powerful Washington interests he campaigned against, revealing which have been removed from the body politic (or at least reduced) and which continue to metastasize. The Wall Street regulatory reform package Obama pushes through, or doesn’t, may render even more of a verdict on his success in changing the system he sought the White House to reform.

President Obama has shown no signs that he wants corporate control to stop metastasizing. The advisors and moneyed interests with whom he surrounds himself offer ample evidence of that, which even Mr. Rich now admits.

Despite this Administration’s expending significant resources on smoke and mirrors, the realities that Mr. Rich alludes to are getting more and more attention. Change We Can Believe In has now been substituted with The Fix Is In.

Some of us knew that a long time ago.

Yesterday I was appalled to watch the Speaker of the House comment on Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ assertion that the anger at these town halls over health care reform is “manufactured”. The reporter asked, “Do you think there is legitimate grassroots opposition going on out there?”

Nancy Pelosi made the following statement:

“I think they’re Astroturf…you be the judge. They are carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care.”

How dare she? I have heard of bullying tactics but this is beyond the pale. She is cherrypicking a couple of extreme protesters, if indeed they exist, in order to deride the whole as an angry mob. My husband and I were Democrats for thirty years and we have questions and concerns about this overhaul as well. Here’s a hot flash, Ms. Pelosi, my Dad was used as slave labor by people who wore swastikas so I don’t appreciate being grouped in with them.

Average citizens who daily watch our leadership trade places in the clown car have a reason to be worried. Until Ms. Pelosi and every other elitist in Congress, on both sides of the aisle, is willing to be subject to the exact same health care plan, and use it on their own mother, their children and themselves, they have no business sticking it to the rest of us. “Okay for thee but not for me” is not going to cut it.

There is no doubt that both sides “astroturf.” President Obama’s svengali, David Axelrod, is known for this behavior. There will always be groups left or right who will try to bank on to a legitimate protest for their own ends. Yet I have no doubt that the majority of these protesters are legitimate. We are talking about a 1,000 page monstrosity that no one can explain.

Pelosi is talking about overhauling one sixth of our nation’s economy when they have just laid an egg with the stimulus package and $60 billion dollar car bailouts.

Last year I watched the DNC insult anyone who did not buy the “cool” candidate they chose to put on their spaghetti jar. Their bullying tactics drove me away. As brilliant WaPo columnist Marie Cocco put it, their “deafening silence” on what looked to be the media lynching of Hillary Clinton didn’t help either.

People get mad when you question them for one of two reasons. Either they don’t have the answer and don’t want be made to look bad, or they know they are trying to pull a fast one and don’t want you to get a peek behind the curtain. Which is it? If the policy cannot be explained coherently and simply, that means they don’t have it working yet. Pardon my dust, but I thought the ultimate goal was to craft a policy that is better than what we have now.

I do not appreciate being bullied or blown off. People are angry and they are scared. Unemployment is in double digits in my state. My Congressman has been ensconced in his position for 25 years. He runs unopposed so I assure you, he isn’t bothering to have a town hall meeting on health care otherwise I’d be there shouting, too.

We pay their salaries. I do not wish to be told to shut up and sit down by the likes of Ms. Pelosi, who sees fit to negatively classify the opposition because she does not feel like being countermanded.

I can appreciate the President wishes to put forth an ambitious agenda, but this White House is tone deaf. We have moved beyond ego here. I am not concerned with someone racking up “accomplishments” just so they can say they did. We have severe problems in our economy and trying to do all this at once without first making sure you’ve got the right formula is like trying to paint a house in a hurricane.

Nancy Pelosi needs to apologize to the American people for the disrespect she has shown them. We are dealing with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and we have every right to have all our questions answered.

We can do without the name calling and disrespect from our elected representatives. That is not the way to earn anyone’s trust.

Oh, I still marveled at the painful truths he revealed to his audience. I was still awed by his ability to connect dots that the rest of us couldn’t even see. But strangely, I found myself envious of the audience’s ability to clap, cheer and even laugh. They were like some alien creatures from another era. They still had that Pre Election 2008, Pre Economic Meltdown, Pre Bank Bail Out mindset that wanted to believe – life is good. They knew Carlin spoke the truth. Yet, they still were able to believe that the best was yet to come.

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And if you think I’m being overly dramatic. And Mr. Carlin was exaggerating for the sake of laughs. Then you probably believe the Andy Borowitz’s piece below (h/t BGD) is just satire.

Goldman Sachs in Talks to Acquire Treasury Department:
Sister Entities to Share Employees, Money

In what some on Wall Street are calling the biggest blockbuster deal in the history of the financial sector, Goldman Sachs confirmed today that it was in talks to acquire the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

According to Goldman spokesperson Jonathan Hestron, the merger between Goldman and the Treasury Department is “a good fit” because “they’re in the business of printing money and so are we.”

The Goldman spokesman said that the merger would create efficiencies for both entities: “We already have so many employees and so much money flowing back and forth, this would just streamline things.”

Mr. Hestron said the only challenge facing Goldman in completing the merger “is trying to figure out which parts of the Treasury Dept. we don’t already own.”

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And if you still believe the Federal Reserve is still chaste and pure and doing good, then you might want to view this video by Lagan Sebert, Harry Hanbury and AmericanNewsProject.

h/t- Sonic Ninja Kitty
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Then read this little excerpt from Glenn Greenwald’s recounting of The events preceding Goldman Sachs’ new “blowout profits”

UPDATE: … back in September, the Federal Reserve allowed Goldman (and a few other surviving institutions) to convert from an investment bank into a bank holding company. The Wall St. Journal claimed at the time that the move meant the firm would “come under the close supervision of national bank regulators, subjecting them to new capital requirements, additional oversight, and far less profitability than they have historically enjoyed.” …

But what the conversion did allow was access to lending from the Federal Reserve. Since then, the Fed has increased its balance sheet by $2 trillion while steadfastly refusing to disclose the beneficiaries of that credit. Thus, even aside from the bailout money it directly received and the billions in bailout money which it indirectly received (through AIG), Goldman has had access to massive amounts of Fed lending in order to fuel its bulging profits. …

As of Tuesday, the House bill to require a full-fledged audit of the Federal Reserve by the end of 2010 had won 275 co-sponsors and the companion bill in the senate has 17 co-sponsors. Sounds great. But lets not forget that the road to passage travels right through the House Financial Services Committee chaired by, none other than – Barney Frank. More Greenwald:

UPDATE III: It’s worth recalling this bit of central truth, blurted out in April by the number two Democrat in the U.S. Senate, Dick Durbin:

And the banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.

That was nice and blunt. That same week, it was announced that the newly-hired top lobbyist for Goldman Sachs, Michael Paese, was — immediately prior to his hiring — the top staffer to Rep. Barney Frank on the House Financial Services Committee chaired by Frank. …

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Now, if you still believe Ron Paul’s bill will magically pass through Barney Frank’s committee intact, maybe you need to start at the beginning and watch Carlin’s riff again, then read…

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The average Goldman worker could end up taking home more than 10 times the typical American family’s income.

Woohoo – aren’t you SO proud that your money has helped to buoy up this company? Let’s just make clear what that means with the whole salary thing:

Were the firm to set aside bonuses at the same rate in the second half, the compensation pool would hit a record $22.8 billion — and the average Goldman worker would stand to make $773,000 for 2009, more than doubling their 2008 take.

That would eclipse the $662,000 Goldman spent on its average worker in 2007, according to the firm’s regulatory filings. Median household income was $50,233 in 2007, according to the most recent Census Bureau data, while mean income — the apples-to-apples comparison — was $67,608.

And there ya have it. Doesn’t it make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?? The AVERAGE worker made close to $700,000!!!! Gee – I wonder how that compares to MOST people in this country? And how many of US got bailouts??

Hmmm, I wonder just what they are going to do with all of that money? One of my favorite satirists, Andy Borowitz, had an idea in this post:

Goldman Sachs in Talks to Acquire Treasury Department: Sister Entities to Share Employees, Money

In what some on Wall Street are calling the biggest blockbuster deal in the history of the financial sector, Goldman Sachs confirmed today that it was in talks to acquire the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

According to Goldman spokesperson Jonathan Hestron, the merger between Goldman and the Treasury Department is “a good fit” because “they’re in the business of printing money and so are we.”

The Goldman spokesman said that the merger would create efficiencies for both entities: “We already have so many employees and so much money flowing back and forth, this would just streamline things.”

Mr. Hestron said the only challenge facing Goldman in completing the merger “is trying to figure out which parts of the Treasury Dept. we don’t already own.”

Goldman recently celebrated record earnings by roasting a suckling pig over a bonfire of hundred-dollar bills.

Well, that’s a bit mixed – on the one hand, they cannot do a worse job than Timmy Geithner, right? So yeah – taking over the Treasury Department might not be all that bad.

On the other hand, well, just more of our tax dollars going to roast those suckling pigs, and I don’t even EAT pork! Sheesh.

Oh, Borowitz finishes out his column with these two tidbits:

Elsewhere, conspiracy theorists celebrated the 40th anniversary of NASA faking the moon landing.

And in South Carolina, Gov. Mark Sanford gave his wife a new diamond ring, while his wife gave him an electronic ankle bracelet.

Now, I can SURE see that happening with Mark and Jenny, can’t you?? Uh, yeah…Too bad she didn’t think of that before! Live and learn, I reckon…

Don’t you just LOVE our new government?? It hands out money like candy to all the wrong people, and then wants more sacrifices from US. It’s gonna be a long 3 1/2 years, isn’t it?

Wow. This is but one of the profound statements made by Dr. Jones throughout the course of Bill Moyers’ “Journal: Faith and Social Justice,” which also included Dr. Cornel West, formerly of Union, now at Princeton University, and Dr. Gary Dorrien, from Union. There is a video of the show, which can be seen HERE, and is from which all further quotes are taken (thanks, SusanUnPC, for the link).

Back to President Jones for a moment, though. In Union Theological Seminary’s 172 year history, she is the FIRST woman to hold this post. I wrote about her way back in April, 2008, “Is This A Sign Of Things To Come??” Of course, now we know that the Powers-That-Be made sure it wasn’t, but a girl has to have her dreams, and that was mine at the time. (Now, it is that Secretary Clinton can get out before her ability to affect change has been marginalized beyond recognition. As in, she should be in Russia right now – just sayin’.) President Jones has a distinguished resume, including teaching at Yale for the past 17 years, at the university as well as the law school. She is an impressive woman, brilliant mind, yet the kindness and warmth exude from her like, well, like it does from Hillary. Or as one might expect from someone who is the head of, and teaches at, a seminary preparing students for ministry.

Union has long had a history of social justice in the world. One might say that is its calling, or the calling of the students who attend it. During my time there, we were able to get the Board of Trustees to divest assets in South Africa, still in the throes of apartheid at that time. Many of the students worked in soup kitchens, engaged in protests on a variety of issues, and dealt with the AIDS crisis as it first erupted in New York City. In addition to that, because it was understood that language shapes reality, all classroom discussion, all papers, and all worship services HAD to be in inclusive language. It was an amazing environment in which to learn, though it made it rather difficult in the world at large in which language was certainly not all inclusive, or in which women did not hold prominent positions Even then, though, we had a number of outstanding professors in women’s theology, ethics, and Hebrew Scriptures. Thankfully, those numbers continue to increase among the faculty. (Photo by wallyg)

So, it is in that environment that this discussion took place with Bill Moyers moderating. Bear in mind, these are Christians, and that is the place from which they move in the world. BUT – that being said, they may not be the kinds of Christians you are used to hearing from, thus why I encourage you to listen to the whole video, if you have the time and inclination.

This is what followed the statements made by Dr. Jones above:

BILL MOYERS: And that’s the trade union movement you talked about.

SERENE JONES: That’s what love is.

CORNEL WEST: That’s the woman’s movement. That’s the gay and lesbian movement.

SERENE JONES: You put it in policy forms.

GARY DORRIEN: It’s the love that, that’s what holds you in the struggle, you know. Even if you’re not succeeding, you know.

CORNEL WEST: Allowing you to sustain and do.

GARY DORRIEN: It’s the energy. It propels you into a struggle in which you might not be succeeding.

BILL MOYERS: You remind me that all three of you come out of what, once upon a time, was called the Social Gospel movement. The movement to apply Christian ethical principles to society. And wasn’t that a response to the first round of economic collapse in the early part of the last century?

GARY DORRIEN: There is something new that started in the 1880s with the Social Gospel. You have a sociological consciousness itself that there’s such a thing as social structure. And so, well, if there’s such a thing as social structure then now there’s something that’s just different.

That makes the equation different. That it’s not just a question of bringing people to Jesus who will then transform society. But rather salvation itself has to be conceived, not just in personal, but social-structural terms. So, with the Social Gospel movement in the 1880s, you do, for the first time, see preaching and theology in which Christian salvation is being talked about as including making movements toward the change of social structures themselves in the direction of something that’s now being called social justice.

CORNEL WEST: There’s a sense of-

GARY DORRIEN: Because even the term social justice is only coined during that very same period.

BILL MOYERS: But the Social Gospel tradition was, in itself, overwhelmed by the materialism of the last part of the 20th century and by the turbo capitalism that you were talking about enshrined in Thomas Freidman’s icon. I mean, the Social Gospel was not sufficient to sustain itself against the power of economics and, in fact, structural wealth. Right?

CORNEL WEST: Right. That’s true.

SERENE JONES: But I think we can never underestimate the crisis of desire. That it wasn’t just that there was – it didn’t have enough social strength, or a good enough analysis. That what turbo capitalism does, is it – the biggest, sort of, war zone is interior to us – where it takes over your desire. It makes you into a creature who wants to buy the commodities. So you could have a great political analysis. But what you’re doing, on the ground every day, is you’re fueling this turbo capitalism. And it’s in the churches that another kind of desire should have been being crafted. That’s where you can get people in their bones and really begin to force the question of, what is it that you want? What makes you happy? What makes your life mean? What, you know, it’s those deep questions of want.

“Turbo capitalism” – what a concept that is. I think we have seen that operating on Wall Street and in our banks (which was the discussion preceding this one). Here is a good bit of the discussion on Obama. Now, I should say that early on, as I understand it, West was a supporter of Hillary Clinton’s. Clearly, he has moved to back Obama, but critically so, as he points out in this discussion. There is more about Obama, but for space reasons, I am limiting that part of the discussion to this:

BILL MOYERS: You said the age of Obama is about everyday people. And you asked the question: how do we unleash their power? What’s the evidence that that’s happening?

CORNEL WEST: Well, I think it’s a very complicated situation. Because, of course, the age of Obama actually emerges with a discredited Republican party in disarray. With a mediocre Democratic party that only had the Clinton machine at the center. And if this charismatic, brilliant, young, black brother can somehow get over the Clinton machine, he can become president.

That’s why I supported him. Critically! A Socratic, prophetic, orientation toward the brother, right? Because he becomes the initiator of a new age. We had to bring the age of Reagan to a close. The era of conservatism had to be brought to a close. Thank God it was. But then the question will be, well, is he going to focus on the poor and working people? Will he recycle neo-liberal elites from the old establishment of Wall Street – which the economic team is?

BILL MOYERS: We know the answer to that.

CORNEL WEST: We know the answer to that.

BILL MOYERS: Right after the election, you were-

CORNEL WEST: Will he recycle the same neo-imperial elites when it comes to foreign policy. I know he’s dealing with tremendous power. Wall Street. Congress. And so forth, and so on. I understand the political considerations. People have the right to organize. Lobbies have a right to bring power and pressure to bear. That’s what American democracy’s about.

But that’s not truth. That’s not the same as prophetic witness to truth. Especially as Christians, you see. So that the critique launched against Barack Obama, be it Gaza, be it Darfur, be it in Ethiopia, be it wherever. It has to be put forward. That is the calling of prophetic Christians.

GARY DORRIEN: Well, I wouldn’t even give him the out that Cornel just gave him. Because I think, in fact, he could stay in his lane and do way better than he has on the economy, and also on scaling back the military empire.

So, on those two things, to be so solicitous of Wall Street, to have treatment of the banks that’s just absurdly favorable to their interests, and refusing to clear out shareholders, and refusing to get to the bottom of it.

And also in his just utter refusal to really face up to the cost and extent of the military empire that, even though he notes in this book, “The Audacity of Hope,” is outspending the next 25 nations combined in the military. He says in the next paragraph, and he has continued on this line, that we need to expand it further. So we’ve got nothing coming on sort of pulling back on that issue as well. On the other hand, you can’t say that this has been a cautious president overall.

I mean, it’s quite amazing that he is taking on virtually everything one way or another at the same time. So he has – there’s been a fair amount of audacity in deciding that this is his moment. There’s not going to be a better moment to come along anyway.

If he’s going to do something about health care, or a number of issues. Dealing with Iran, maybe make a breakthrough with Cuba. That he’s got to put his cards on the table now and get what he can.

BILL MOYERS: You said, after the election, “We want to give him time. We want to give him room.” And my question to you is: how much room and how much time?

CORNEL WEST: Well, the first thing we want to do, we want to protect him, and he and his precious family. Second thing we want to do, we want to make sure all the criticism is fair, so it’s not ad hominids, it’s not personal. It’s not racist. It’s not whatever, you see.

At the same time, he is subject to all the same requirements of truth and justice as any other president, any color. So my criticism out of love for, not just the people, but Barack Obama himself. How my criticism help him? Give him strength? He plans to be progressive Lincoln. Fine. That’s difficult. He will be helped by more progressive Frederick Douglasses. That’s what I aspire to.

BILL MOYERS: Do you see the-

CORNEL WEST: To help him push him in a progressive direction.

BILL MOYERS: Do you hear those voices coming from his left? We know about them from the right. Fox News, Rush Limbaugh. We all know them.

CORNEL WEST: Well, the voices are there! Paul Krugman, and Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Ben Barber and William Greider and Ron Walters. The voices are there. He’s not yet listening. That’s the difference. Lincoln listened to Douglass, Garrison. Brother Barack Obama, he is listening too much to Summers, Thurman, Geithner. We can go right down the neo liberal list. That’s dangerous if he wants to be a progressive president.

BILL MOYERS: Why do you think that is?

SERENE JONES: I think one of the reasons that it happens is that we are living in a very overwhelming time. And it’s always going to be the case that a conservative familiar neo liberal agenda sounds safer.

Because it’s what we know. But the truth of the matter is what we know is what got us in trouble in the first place. So it’s one of those moments that everybody faces in their own life. We happen to be facing it structurally right now. Is everything collapses, what do we do? In the midst of that fear, do we grasp for what’s most familiar? That’s what’s happening. But the very thing you’re grasping for is the thing that got you there in the first place.

CORNEL WEST: Absolutely.

SERENE JONES: It takes a little opening of spirit and an opening of intellect and courage. It’s courage.

There is so much more to this discussion. But for me, it is heartening to know that these kinds of discussions are taking place at all. I hope that their being Christians didn’t put you off, because what they say really transcends what their particular faith system is (and I say that as someone who is not Christian, myself). I am glad that people like this are keeping a watchful eye on Obama, and I think they make good partners with us as we try to reclaim our country from where Obama and his Wall Street cronies are trying to take us.

I began with the words of President Jones, and now I’d like to conclude with them as well. I think these are good words to live by in general, and especially in these days:

It takes a little opening of spirit and an opening of intellect and courage. It’s courage.

President Obama should just join the cast of “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!” It’s not that farfetched; he’s been on everything else….(snip) …there’s a fine line between being transparent and being overexposed. Every time you turn on the TV, there’s Obama. He’s getting a puppy! He’s eating a cheeseburger with Joe Biden! …(snip) I get it: You love being on TV. I love my bong, but I take it out of my mouth every once in a while. The other day, I caught myself saying to a friend, “Don’t tell me if he’s fixed the economy yet, I’m Tivo-ing it.”
(snip)
You’re the president, not a rerun of “Law and Order.” Save some charisma for a rainy day. Taking strangers from a TV show on a tour of your house? We have that show; it’s called “Cribs.” And letting reporters ask you questions like “You like to be the one who picks out the shaving cream, don’t you?” Or as it’s called today, “journalism.” I was willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt until I saw him take Brian Williams into his bedroom, and at the end of the bed there was a teleprompter and it said, “Who’s your daddy?”

…we see your name in the paper a lot, but we’re kind of wondering when you’re actually going to do something.

Are ya’ kiddin’ me, Bill? We’ve been saying this for two years! But it took YOU two years of idol worship to finally find a halfway coherent moment? Mr. Maher, snarky as ever, states:

Remember during the campaign when John McCain attacked Obama for acting like a celebrity and we all laughed at the grumpy old shellshocked fool? Well, it turns out he was right. Sorry, senator. I’m sending a nice gift basket of high-fiber muffins your way.

Well, no, Bill. WE didn’t laugh at Senator McCain because WE didn’t find him grumpy, old or shell-shocked. YOU did. WE knew he was spot on the money. And Hillary Clinton was also spot on the money when she said:

“Senator McCain and I bring a lifetime of service, Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002.”

But you were so busy trashing her on your show every week, it never once occurred to you to appreciate the work she had actually done in her career standing up for those who needed help. And the list is long. As much bashing as Secretary Clinton took during the grueling eighteen month campaign, and as happy as you were to chime in, did you not for once admire her toughness in being able to handle it all with such grace, class and fortitude. She’s a fighter. Don’t you think that quality would have been nice to have, particularly in light of your next comments about President Obama:

“…[W]hen I read about how you sat on the sidelines while bailed-out banks used the money we gave them to hire lobbyists who got Congress to stop homeowners from getting renegotiated loans, or how Congress is already giving up on healthcare reform, or how scientists say it’s essential to reduce CO2 by 40% in 10 years, but your own bill calls for 4%, I say, enough with the character development, let’s get on with the plot.

And let’s stop worrying so much about doing anything that might tarnish the brand. See, this is why I don’t want my president to be a TV star: Because TV stars are too worried about being popular — and too concerned with getting renewed.
(snip)
Obama needs to start putting it on the line in fights against the banks, the energy companies and the healthcare industry. I never thought I’d say this, but he needs to be more like George W. Bush. Bush was all about, “You’re with us or against us.”
Obama’s more like, “You’re either with us, or you obviously need to see another picture of this adorable puppy!”

Bush had horrible ideas, …[t]he point is, he didn’t care if it made him unpopular with every human on the planet not named Cletus or Fred Barnes. Which it did.
And we need to marry the good ideas Obama really believes in with that Bush attitude and Bush certitude.”

I’m afraid you’re missing the point, Mr. Maher, as are most of his die hard supporters. President Obama doesn’t have moral certitude about anything but popularity polls and his TelePrompTer. How would you like the man to attack a problem with certitude? He has never exhibited any throughout his entire career. Believe me, this is not about insulting the President. Frankly I am beyond it, or worrying about it. This is about logic and common sense. So, for the one thousandth time: You can’t know what you don’t know.

Throughout President Obama’s career as a State Senator, with 130 “present” votes and six “wrong” votes, his missing over 40% of his votes in the U.S. Senate, dodging politically risky votes, or voting several times to fund Bush’s war, he has shown a proclivity NOT to lose. His career is no accident. Every move is deliberately and painstakingly plotted out to piss off as few people as possible before actually winning the office of the Presidency.

We never saw him willing to go to the mat for anything. He promised to use public financing and reneged. Moreover, there was no principle or legislation for which he was willing to “go down fighting.” He promised a filibuster on FISA and reneged. Believe me, had he staged that filibuster, it would have been the Senate session heard ‘round the world. Imagine him, sans teleprompter, fighting the good fight till he ran out of spit. You know what, Hillary would have taken over for him and helped out while he caught his wind – because she voted correctly on that bill. That’s the difference between a leader with guts and a “reader.”

If the man’s forte has always been giving speeches, without any governing and precious little legislative experience, if he had not heretofore exhibited leadership on any cause, except talking about it, what potion did you imagine he could ingest on Inauguration Day that would magically endow him with powers he had never previously exhibited? I always appreciated SoS Clinton and Senator McCain because we have the empirical evidence to indicate they had the courage to stand alone and fight. I knew they were both capable of it. Sir, from what mysterious inner reserve did you think Barack Obama would draw this strong character you are so vehemently exhorting him to show now?

You conclude with:

I’m glad that Obama is president, but the “Audacity of Hope” part is over. Right now, I’m hoping for a little more audacity.

Even in your diatribe, you pepper your article with how much you like him and how glad you are that he is in office, as if to apologize for the fact that you dare to criticize “The One.” Frankly, Mr. Maher, this is the first time in two years when you should NOT be apologizing because your criticisms are the first sensible words I’ve heard from you in regards to President Obama.

Someone PLEASE tell me how, in just FOUR SHORT MONTHS, Obama has managed to take over the banks, kick out the CEO of a private company, hand over a private company, financed with OUR money, to a union? Oh, and let’s not forget his handing over CA to another union, SEIU? How?? How has this happened???

Oh, wait – and how about those of us who pay back our credit card bills regularly now being saddled with having to support the losers who act in bad faith? Why do we have to constantly bail out, and ENABLE, those people who go over their means, be it credit cards or mortgages or car loans? And the Senate can stop acting like they give a crap about this issue – Obama VOTED to enable the credit card companies while a senator, along with many other Democrats. So just stop the charade – and stop laying the burden of irresponsible behavior on those of us who have good credit, or else WE might not have that any longer, either.

If you have not already read it, I recommend to you the following post by my good friend, SusanUnPC, “A Personal Note Only For Those Who Voted For Obama.” And I would add, not only “ditto,” but in the most pastoral way possible to those who did vote for Obama, you can just bite me for what you have unleashed on this country. If only there was a way to make only those people support the UAW/GM, pay the ne’er-do-wells’ credit card bills, etc.

Hmm – that’s a thought – let’s figure out how to do just that – let them pay for Obama’s taking over private companies, banks, and kowtowing to the unions (again – I am not anti-union in general, just when they try to take over states or private companies). A pipe dream, I know, but for this moment, it helps to keep my head from exploding…