"I felt like someone who raged at the wind."

Elizabeth Warren. Enjoy her before she becomes just another crap politician.

Tells us what we want to hear, does whatever the fuck he wants

[source]

That's what we got with Obama. Another elitist asshole. Another crap politician.

A N.Y. Times commenter:

Anybody who's surprised that Obama is virtually identical to Bush has not been paying attention for the past three years. The two men are almost twins - incompetent, dimwitted, totally beholden to the richest .1%. Anybody who votes for Obama in 2012 is endorsing the same policies - on the environment, on torture and illegal wars, on unconstitutional governance - that Bush put forth.

And another:

Maybe a President Perry or President Bachmann would be a good thing. Maybe it would force Democrats to realize that the same strategy of appeasing the right doesn’t work. Maybe Democrats would realize that electing a centrist president, while winning, doesn’t get you anything more than what you get with a centrist Republican president. Maybe a President Perry or President Bachmann would be the thing, so horrific, that the left would finally stand up and fight for liberal values.

Or would I be wrong again?

And another:

All I'm left with at this point is despair. We faced a national crisis, the Democrats received a historic mandate -- and Obama turned out to be a patsy. Bush was incompetent, but at least we could comfort ourselves with the knowledge that we could make a better choice in the next election. What are we supposed to do now that we have no choice?

And another:

The USA government is a government of liars, bought and paid for by corporations. I have no faith in our government, do you? Does anyone? And the people running for president today are the worst liars and the lowest class of people that I have ever seen. I like most people, have no hope anymore that things will get better, hope that our liar in chief ran on to get elected. Nothing will change until there is a revolution.

You know you've got a dud president when people are contemplating revolution and the motivational benefits of a Bachmann or Perry presidency.

Internalizing tea party rhetoric

The Tea Party wins if we internalize its rhetoric, if workers feel guilty about holding government jobs or if we feel it is necessary to apologize for the liberal agenda.

It's okay to feel liberal guilt; it's not okay to feel the kind of liberal guilt that results from constant conservative hammering. The liberal agenda will succeed if liberals take pride in liberal history, work to extend the achievements of the past, and take the fight to the opposition (rather than reacting to the latest conservative absurdity).

Tar sands: "end-to-end environmental degradation."

Tar sands: "the greatest form of moral carelessness you can find on the planet."

Disgusting! And yet our President ignores the protests and is likely to let the pipeline happen.

"If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town sewers."

Thoreau, from Life Without Principle:

It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town sewers. There is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind from the courts of heaven. There is the profane and stale revelation of the barroom and the police court. The same ear is fitted to receive both communications. Only the character of the hearer determines to which it shall be open, and to which closed. I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality. Our very intellect shall be macadamized as it were--its foundation broken into fragments for the wheels of travel to roll over; and if you would know what will make the most durable pavement, surpassing rolled stones, spruce blocks, and asphaltum, you have only to look into some of our minds which have been subjected to this treatment so long.

If we have thus desecrated ourselves--as who has not?--the remedy will be by wariness and devotion to reconsecrate ourselves, and make once more a fane of the mind. We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention. Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.

"88% of the economic recovery has gone to boosting corporate profits. ... only 1% has gone to wages and salaries for the folks who clearly need it."

Sally Kohn:

Following the recession of the 1980s, 28% of the economic growth in recovery went to corporate profits, while 25% went to boost the wages and salaries of ordinary workers. Today, 88% of the economic recovery has gone to boosting corporate profits. As a widely cited earlier version of Sum and McLachlan's report finds (pdf), only 1% – that's one out of every $100 – has gone to wages and salaries for the folks who clearly need it most.

[...]

What if we've reached a new low in unchecked capitalist greed that will perpetually drive up the unemployment rate as long as companies can keep extracting a profit?

(h/t I Cite)

"Obama has been so inept politically that he's let the same people who wrecked our economy and destroyed America's reputation back into power again."

WCG:

In early 2009, after the GOP was crushed in the elections, pundits were actually asking if it could even survive. We'd had eight years of non-stop disaster, where every single Republican policy proved to be a complete failure.

[...]

...tax cuts for the rich combined with the deregulation of banks caused a bubble in arcane financial instruments, a bubble which popped to give us the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression! Surely the Republicans were finished after that performance. After that, who would ever vote for a Republican again?

But in only two years, they were back on top of the world again. Heck, they haven't even changed their policies! It seems to make no difference at all that those policies have already failed horribly. The right-wing narrative is the same as it's always been, and the fact that the whole thing failed once - and failed spectacularly - seems to make no difference whatsoever.

I have to blame Barack Obama for this. Oh, sure, I blame the American people, too. All too many of us are complete idiots, apparently. But Barack Obama has been so inept politically that he's let the same people who wrecked our economy and destroyed America's reputation back into power again.

Whatever good he's done - and he has done some good - is completely overshadowed by that.

Letting the Wall Street villains maintain their power is not the result of ineptitude, it's what Obama desires.

Once upon a time, to the delight of many, Obama considered himself progressive. Then he switched to being a "new" democrat. Today he thinks of himself as a blue dog democrat.

In a few more years, what will he be? Whatever it is, he's going in the wrong direction.

"How do you think up ways of being ... that are less horrible than we've got now?"

Well, how do you? Check out this thought-provoking Diet Soap podcast with author and Shelley scholar Timothy Morton.

"Consciousness sucks ... we're all involved in a massive, globally-distributed addiction recovery program."
- Timothy Morton

"All the reasons in the world are not reason enough to ... love. It's all about love, really, isn't it. I don't want my kids to die, I don't want the chimpanzees to go extinct. It's about love...."
- Timothy Morton

The economy sucks, Perry sucks, Bachmann sucks, Obama sucks

[source]

I'm not ready for the 2012 election cycle. It's going to be a real suckfest. Romney, you suck, too.

"Is it too soon to speak of the Bush-Obama presidency?"

David Bromwich:

Is it too soon to speak of the Bush-Obama presidency?

The record shows impressive continuities between the two administrations, and nowhere more than in the policy of “force projection” in the Arab world. With one war half-ended in Iraq, but another doubled in size and stretching across borders in Afghanistan; with an expanded program of drone killings and black-ops assassinations, the latter glorified in special ceremonies of thanksgiving (as they never were under Bush); with the number of prisoners at Guantanamo having decreased, but some now slated for permanent detention; with the repeated invocation of “state secrets” to protect the government from charges of war crimes; with the Patriot Act renewed and its most dubious provisions left intact -- the Bush-Obama presidency has sufficient self-coherence to be considered a historical entity with a life of its own.

[...]

In these August days, Americans are rubbing their eyes, still wondering what has befallen us with the president’s “debt deal” -- a shifting of tectonic plates beneath the economy of a sort Dick Cheney might have dreamed of, but which Barack Obama and the House Republicans together brought to fruition. A redistribution of wealth and power more than three decades in the making has now been carved into the system and given the stamp of permanence.

Only a Democratic president, and only one associated in the public mind (however wrongly) with the fortunes of the poor, could have accomplished such a reversal with such sickening completeness.

Works for me! You can catch more excellent Bromwich analysis on Radio Open Source here (2009) and here (2010).

"To pass through one's mortal days, like a fugitive through the camp of the enemy ... is not to live: it is only to exist."

Edward Carpenter, from Angel's Wings (1898):

Life is expression. If you think of it, you will see more and more that it is a movement from within outwards — an unfolding, a development. To obtain a place, a free field, a harmonious expansion, for your activities, your tastes, your feelings, your personality, your Self, in fact, is to Live. To be blocked on all sides, pinned down, maimed, and thrust out of existence, is to Die.

The thing to remember is that primarily Life must be an expression of one's Self. In proportion as it approaches that is it worthy to be called Life. To fall from that is to miss one's aim. To pass through one's mortal days, like a fugitive through the camp of the enemy, in continual fear of discovery, in continual concealment of one's own thoughts and feelings, or like a slave under continual compulsion from others, is not to live: it is only to exist.

Yet how many of us pass through like this! On all sides we are walled in by Fashion, Convention, Custom; things are done in an habitual meaningless way which expresses nothing except common tradition, or the remains of it—certainly in a way which does not express our feelings. We drift along in idle conformity, simply following the common rut—afraid to show our hands. Or we are enslaved to the bread and butter question and only claim to be ourselves for an hour or two out of the twenty-four. It is not real Life; it is not anything. It is the existence of a sheep, unworthy of the children of that Prometheus who stole fire from heaven, or even of our mother Eve who ate—simply because she desired it—of the fruit of the tree that stood in the midst of the garden.

"BE IT RESOLVED ... to alter the course of history ... effect a necessary change ... a possible primary challenge to President Obama."

California Democratic Party's Progressive Caucus:

RESOLUTION in SUPPORT of a POSSIBLE 2012 DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY CHALLENGE Passed July 30, 2011 Anaheim, CA WHEREAS, the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party recognizes the challenge presented by President Obama's negotiating away Democratic Party principles to extremist Republicans, we are challenged by President Obama in the following ways:
• His unilateral closed-door budget offer to slash Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which endangers the New Deal and War on Poverty safety nets.
• His determination to escalate U.S. militarism through illegal secret CIA drone attacks and unauthorized wars.
• His willingness to extend the Bush tax cuts for millionaires and bail out big banks without ending the foreclosure crisis that displaces American working families.
• His insistence on pushing a health insurance bill which enriches private insurance companies while ignoring growing support for single-payer health care or robust public options.
• His continuance of President Bush's assault on civil liberties with an extension of the repressive Patriot Act.
• His failure to restore due process, including the protection of whistleblowers and habeas corpus.
• His numerous failures to adhere to international law.
• The continuing practice of nationwide FBI raids of anti-war progressive protestors.
• His decision to increase the arrests and deportations of undocumented workers.
• His facilitation of the privatizing of the public sphere, which includes education and housing, among others.
• His disregard of his promises to the Labor movement.
• His failure to adequately protect the environment and adequately address climate change.

WHEREAS, the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party recognizes the historical significance of the Eugene McCarthy/Robert F. Kennedy anti-war challenge to President Lyndon Johnson. The challenge followed President Johnson's decision to escalate U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, betraying his campaign promise to end a war that polarized America. Similarly, we recognize the danger and betrayal that the current "Grand Bargain" represents to the legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's signature gift to all Americans, Social Security and the New Deal, a point of pride for all Democrats.

WHEREAS, the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party is committed to the understanding that an interest in a 2012 Democratic presidential primary challenge will not interfere with President Obama's ability to govern and not limit his ability to do so in ways that include invoking Constitutional options, we recognize that this will, in fact, raise debate on important issues without risking the ability to mobilize and energize the base of the Democratic Party to elect a triumphant leader to counter the far-right agenda.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, to make our views heard, the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party will begin the process of contacting other Democratic organizations, Democratic Party members and public organizations that share our views on the issues and which seek to alter the course of history by exploring other steps to effect a necessary change, including a possible primary challenge to President Obama.

"There is no grain of concession or compromise in this man."

Time for Obama to read some Thoreau.

From John Burrough's Henry D. Thoreau (1882):

There is no grain of concession or compromise in this man. He asks no odds and he pays no boot. He will have his way, but his way is not down the stream with the current. He loves to warp up it against wind and tide, holding fast by his anchor at night. When he is chagrined or disgusted, it convinces him his health is better — that there is some vitality left. It is not compliments his friends get from him — rather taunts. The caress of the hand may be good, but the sting of its palm is good also. No is more bracing and tonic than Yes. He said: "I love to go through a patch of scrub-oaks in a bee-line — where you tear your clothes and put your eyes out." The spirit of antagonism never sleeps with Thoreau, and the love of paradox is one of his guiding stars. "The longer I have forgotten you, the more I remember you," he says to his correspondent. "My friend is cold and reserved, because his love for me is waxing and not waning," he says in his journal. The difficult and the disagreeable are in the line of his self-indulgence. Even lightning will choose the easiest way out of the house — an open window or door. Thoreau would rather go through the solid wall, or mine out through the cellar.

More on John Burroughs at the Catskill Archive.

"They thought ... they could take away the last little things that gave people hope ... and nothing would happen."

Penny Red:

They thought that after thirty years of soaring inequality, in the middle of a recession, they could take away the last little things that gave people hope, the benefits, the jobs, the possibility of higher education, the support structures, and nothing would happen. They were wrong. And now my city is burning, and it will continue to burn until we stop the blanket condemnations and blind conjecture and try to understand just what has brought viral civil unrest to Britain. Let me give you a hint: it ain’t Twitter.

You can crush us
You can bruise us
But you'll have to answer to
Oh, the guns of Brixton

The money feels good
And your life you like it well
But surely your time will come
As in heaven, as in hell

- The Clash, Guns of Brixton

"The old European aristocracies occasionally produced scholars, scientists, writers.... Our elites read a few pages of Ayn Rand and play golf."

OHollern:

I would look upon these people far less venomously if any of them ever managed to say or do anything original, anything that indicated the presence of an independent or thoughtful mind. None of them do. The old European aristocracies occasionally produced scholars, scientists, writers and political philosophers of great renown. Our elites read a few pages of Ayn Rand and play golf. A French aristocrat, Montesquieu, wrote The Spirit of the Laws, which heavily influenced the US Constitution; the American aristocracy produced Donald Trump, who made Celebrity Apprentice. Draw your own conclusions.

We can’t even manage to squeeze out a Lord Byron. The cheap, tawdy rogues that come out of our financial nobility don’t compose anything but text messages to hookers, or, in a moment of unique inspiration, an inter-office email that cheerfully describes the country as a “plutonomy.”

The MBAs who are destroying the United States of America are turning it into a cultural desert first. Outside of their narrow field of expertise, which in this case happens to be fraud, they are the most unremarkable group of ‘leaders’ in history. They are, in essence, just barbarous, money-grubbing non-entities, Visigoths in two-thousand dollar suits. They know how to drink fine wine but not how to make it. If it wasn’t for their money and power, posterity would forget all about them as if they were no more important than medieval peasants or Roman slaves. Their legacy to the human race will be as barren as the ruins of ancient Sparta.

"Outside of their narrow field of expertise, which in this case happens to be fraud, they are the most unremarkable group of ‘leaders’ in history. They are, in essence, just barbarous, money-grubbing non-entities, Visigoths in two-thousand dollar suits."
- OHollern

"This system won’t change unless there is massive, radical, global class warfare waged by workers on all fronts."

[source]

Michael Yates:

What if every worker in the world obtained more schooling? Imagine that there was not a single person anywhere who did not possess a first-rate college education, trained just like those who now attend elite colleges and universities and usually get the best employment. Would this change the job structure? Would it resemble an upside down triangle, with a few bad jobs at the bottom and hundreds of millions of great ones at the top? The only way this could happen would be, first, if there was full employment and one set of educated workers couldn’t undercut another; and second, if the now educated workers all banded together and refused to work at any job that didn’t pay a high wage and provide excellent conditions. Oh, but wait a minute, that could happen now. It’s called forming labor unions and building a labor movement. Again, this has nothing to do with education.

Jobs are what they are because our economic system is what it is. It is the system that will have to change, not the amount of schooling each of us obtains. And this system won’t change unless there is massive, radical, global class warfare waged by workers on all fronts (on the job, politically, culturally) and in all places. If this doesn’t happen, the employment prospects for most people worldwide will be bleak. Low wages, longer hours, harder labor, and perpetual insecurity: these are what await us.

No war but the class war!

Facebook Pushback

Kristen Gwynne:

Calling out Facebook for selling privacy and working for "authoritarian governments, such as those of Egypt and Syria," Anonymous urges "hacktivists" and others to help them kill Facebook. Their message, in full text, reads:

[...]

Think for a while and prepare for a day that will go down in history. November 5 2011, #opfacebook . Engaged.

This is our world now. We exist without nationality, without religious bias. We have the right to not be surveilled, not be stalked, and not be used for profit. We have the right to not live as slaves.

We are anonymous

We are legion

We do not forgive

We do not forget

Expect us

"We will understand nothing of these events if we ignore the history and the context in which they occur."

Nina Power:

Those condemning the events of the past couple of nights in north London and elsewhere would do well to take a step back and consider the bigger picture: a country in which the richest 10% are now 100 times better off than the poorest, where consumerism predicated on personal debt has been pushed for years as the solution to a faltering economy, and where, according to the OECD, social mobility is worse than any other developed country.

As Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett point out in The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, phenomena usually described as "social problems" (crime, ill-health, imprisonment rates, mental illness) are far more common in unequal societies than ones with better economic distribution and less gap between the richest and the poorest. Decades of individualism, competition and state-encouraged selfishness – combined with a systematic crushing of unions and the ever-increasing criminalisation of dissent – have made Britain one of the most unequal countries in the developed world.

"A time comes when cages must be broken."

"Rise of the Planet of the Apes may be a CGI fantasy, but it does convey one realistic truth: A time comes when cages must be broken. If this isn't the time, I don't know when is."
- Dennis Perrin

"Our union with Nature and humanity is a fact, which— whether we recognize it or not—is at the base of our lives."

Edward Carpenter, from My Days and Dreams (1916):

On the whole I am struck by the singularly little difference I feel in myself, as I realize it now, from what I was when a boy—say of eighteen or twenty. In the deeps of course. Superficially there are plenty of differences, but they relate mostly to superficial things like success in games, examinations and so forth. I used to go and sit on the beach at Brighton and dream, and now I sit on the shore of human life and dream practically the same dreams. I remember about the time that I mention—or it may have been a trifle later—coming to the distinct conclusion that there were only two things really worth living for—the glory and beauty of Nature, and the glory and beauty of human love and friendship. And to-day I still feel the same. What else indeed is there? All the nonsense about riches, fame, distinction, ease, luxury and so forth—how little does it amount to! It really is not worth wasting time over. These things are so obviously secondhand affairs, useful only and in so far as they may lead to the first two, and short of their doing that liable to become odious and harmful. To become united and in line with the beauty and vitality of Nature (but, Lord help us! we are far enough off from that at present), and to become united with those we love—what other ultimate object in life is there? Surely all these other things—these games and examinations, these churches and chapels, these district councils and money markets, these top-hats and telephones and even the general necessity of earning one's living—if they are not ultimately for that, what are they for?

At any rate that is how I feel about it now. I feel that the object of life at seventy is practically the same as it was at twenty. Only one thing has been added. One thing. Beneath the surface waves and storms of youth, beneath the backward and forward fluctuations, deep down, there has been added the calm of inner realization and union. I know now that these two primordial and foundational things (or perhaps they are one) are there. Our union with Nature and humanity is a fact, which— whether we recognize it or not—is at the base of our lives; slumbering, yet ready to wake in our consciousness when the due time arrives.

"All the nonsense about riches, fame, distinction, ease, luxury and so forth—how little does it amount to! It really is not worth wasting time over."
- Edward Carpenter

"Jerry Brown represents a dying Democratic Party."

Scarecrow:

The intellectually bankrupt leaders of the Democratic Party are telling us that with 25 million people under- or unemployed, with borrowing rates at historically low levels, with trillions in needed infrastructure crying out for investments, what states need to do is slash public services. And like Brown, they don’t like borrowing even though the money’s almost free and the rates tell us the markets are begging to lend it.

Jerry Brown represents a dying Democratic Party. Judging from its corrupt behavior and mind-numbing statements, the Party apparently sees its responsibility as something between a slightly more benevolent caretaker for America’s decline and a respectful mortician. They’ve become the hospice party.

If you think the patient is dying and there’s nothing to stop it, providing hospice care is a humane, honorable role. But this patient is not dying of natural causes. It’s being strangled and its wealth systematically looted.

Brown and his Party seem unable to explain to the public that the death of government functioning in the broad public interest is not inevitable. It is rather a choice that should be resisted with every breath and every weapon we have. It has become the calculated strategy of a determined, anti-democratic and deeply corrupt oligarchy and their crazed and manipulated followers. We’re in a war, and no one is fighting back for our side.

FDR welcomed their hatred, Obama welcomes their advice and their cash.

Drew Westen:

...when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public — a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it. Had the president chosen to bend the arc of history, he would have told the public the story of the destruction wrought by the dismantling of the New Deal regulations that had protected them for more than half a century. He would have offered them a counternarrative of how to fix the problem other than the politics of appeasement, one that emphasized creating economic demand and consumer confidence by putting consumers back to work. He would have had to stare down those who had wrecked the economy, and he would have had to tolerate their hatred if not welcome it. But the arc of his temperament just didn’t bend that far.

"Divine am I inside and out."

[source]

"Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from,
The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,
This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds."
- Walt Whitman

"Obama refused to grow as a leader and do what the times demanded from him."

Julio Huato:

Obama is the anti-Fidel. The needs of Wall Street, the needs of the establishment, the needs of insurance companies, the needs of the military-industrial complex are his needs. Our needs, the needs of working people, are alien to him. Those of us who supported and celebrated his ascent to the White House have good reasons to be disappointed and angry. He escalated the war in Afghanistan (it doesn’t matter if, during his campaign, he said he’d escalate that war). His economic choices are devastating the lives of working people. I wouldn’t change my 2008 vote if I could. But, that is past now. Given the chance, Obama refused to grow as a leader and do what the times demanded from him. He will join Kerensky in some fitting niche of Dante’s inferno. We must draw the right lessons from our experience and fight.

Well said. Obama's time has past. He should be spoken of in the past tense. We must look beyond him.

(h/t Louis Proyect)

"Capitalism is in crisis and all we got was this lousy tea party."

The Communist Horizon with Jodi Dean from Not An Alternative

"Time to bring back the guillotine!"

Frank in Santa Monica (N.Y. Times commenter):

S&P (which never met a subprime mortgage-backed security it didn't like!) is wholly and fully funded by the Wall Street investment banks. So if S&P is downgrading US Treasuries, it's because THAT'S WHAT WALL STREET WANTS. It's all part of drowning government in the bathtub. The financial industry rules this country, making an utter mockery of our "democracy." Time to bring back the guillotine!

BP in Florida:

S&P should be put out of business. These are the same guys that rated mortgage derivatives AAA as long as they were getting paid for it. And now they come out with a $2T arithmetic mistake in their headline-grabbing announcement, but don't change anything when it's pointed out, demonstrating that the numbers really don't matter anyway to them. This "downgrade" is a politically motivated joke, from a ratings agency that is truly a joke.

Yup, people are upset and fed up with Wall Street.

Why the Hell Weren't We Obama's First Priority?

Sarah Jaffe:

...73 percent of the jobs created since the supposed economic recovery began have been in low-wage fields, where workers make between $7.51 (the national minimum wage) and $13.52 an hour ($15,621 to $28,122 a year for full-time).

In contrast, 60 percent of the layoffs from the Great Recession were in ... midwage occupations, those that make between $28,142 and $42,973 per year.

[...]

Replacing living-wage jobs with low-wage jobs is an excellent way to continue sluggish economic growth. It's not rocket science: people who make less money have less money to spend, and less spending means less incentive to hire. It's the vicious cycle of recession, and the reason why government spending has been necessary in the past to put people back to work.

The N.Y. Times headline reads:

Debt Fight Over, Obama Promises Action on Jobs

Are you starting to feel like you play second fiddle to Wall Street and the Republicans?

Why the Hell Weren't We Obama's First Priority?

That's the headline that belongs above Obama's smug mug today.

"You'll go from Beatnik to Yuppie in the blink of an eye."

Charles Shaar Murray:

“The line from hippy to yuppie is not nearly as convoluted as some people like to believe. A lot of old hippy rhetoric could well be co-opted now by the pseudo-libertarian right, which has in fact happened. Get the government off our backs, let individuals do what they want — that translates very smoothly into laissez-faire yuppie-ism, and that’s the legacy of the era."

Also check out the KunstlerCast, From Hippies to Yuppies.

"We need to get rid of the people who now make the decisions. And that will be very hard."

The mood of the country is pretty bleak today. Thank you, Mr. President, for digging the hole a little deeper, all in the spirit of capitulation (which you call compromise).

Automatic Earth:

There are only two political parties in America, and they might as well be one. None represent the interests of the people.

[...]

Washington’s not raising a ceiling, it's digging an ever deeper, damp and darkened hole for US taxpayers and their children. Whatever comes out of the talks, and something will since no-one wants to take the blame of failure, will materialize as even more hardship for even more Americans.

Watch what will happen to Social Security. With Medicare. They're going to strip it to the bone, layer by layer. They'll do it slowly, so you won't even remember after a while what there used to be. Like many won't remember what is was like to own a home and be happy about it, what it was like to have a job that paid the bills and left some money on the side for fun things for the kids.

Barack Obama, Surrender Monkey

[source]

Paul Krugman:

Republicans will surely be emboldened by the way Mr. Obama keeps folding in the face of their threats. He surrendered last December, extending all the Bush tax cuts; he surrendered in the spring when they threatened to shut down the government; and he has now surrendered on a grand scale to raw extortion over the debt ceiling. Maybe it’s just me, but I see a pattern here.

I don't know about you but a second term of surrender after surrender is not appealing. At all. And that's all we can expect of Obama in 2012 and beyond.

"They have given President Obama a clear platform to denounce them, and he has chosen not to do it."

Mark in Tuscaloosa, a commenter at the N.Y. Times:

I supported Barack Obama even before he decided to run for the presidency. His speech to the 2004 Democratic Convention was remarkable. It was as if we finally had another John Kennedy. I subsequently voted for him in the primary and the general election, and still believe he is one of the finest people we've ever had in the White House. But I'm disappointed and disheartened. He seems to have forgotten a key point about leadership: Great leaders are at their best in a crisis. They don't follow. They lead, and they step out on limbs and sometimes risk everything. He is trying to be loved by everyone. It's not possible.

He has allowed a small fringe faction, the so-called Tea Party (a name stolen shamelessly from a very courageous group of American patriots in the 18th century) to put this country in a vise-grip from which it will not soon recover. The way out of a stalled economy is to spend on infrastructure, on a jobs bill, on a plan to put Americans back to work. It is not to reduce government, to cut programs for senior citizens, and to turn our backs on the middle class and lower income families as well.

President Clinton's administration produced 23 million jobs and left this country with a huge surplus because it opened up the budget and did some remarkable things. Yes, this is a different era. We have right wing extremists who apparently want to destroy the government. But they are so extreme that they have given President Obama a clear platform to denounce them, and he has chosen not to do it. He wouldn't even mention them by name in his speech the other day. That's a failure of leadership.

No doubt Mark's affection for the President will gain the upper hand when the 2012 elections roll around. This fiasco will be a bad memory but Mark will regard the president as most Americans do, as less bad than the party to which Obama bows and scrapes as if he were one of them.