…is either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, then you’re working with the enemy.
It’s evil to buy into the idea that we can only pick one of these two completely unacceptable politicians. Neither one of them has the desire or the capacity to change the course that America is presently on.
A half a decade ago, I would have agreed that there was a difference between the parties. Now, the difference is so subtle that the results would be inconsequential. The difference between Romney and Clinton or Gore? HUGE. The difference between Romney and Obama? Barely noticeable.
I’m not into self-delusion. I want power as much as the next person. Anyone who thinks they are going to get even a minute smidgeon of influence by voting for Obama is out of his or her effing mind. You can only get power by joining with others and refusing to go along with the intentional destruction of your rights.
I’m surprised that the blogosphere has *still* not gotten the courage to fight back. So, are we supposed to lapse into the dog days of summer, waiting for the inevitable, while Obama and Rahm and the other Chicago style Dems hold the liberals hostage? If you weren’t appalled by Rahm’s authoritarian attack on free speech in the Chik-fil-A debacle, you weren’t paying attention to all of the violent crackdowns on Occupy and the inability of citizens to express their grievances in a public place.
You’ll get more of that if you continue to elect this version of Democrats. There ARE other options but if you don’t want to discuss them, then yeah, I guess you’ll have to choose one of the two bad guys. The rest of us will turn our backs and walk away just like the party walked away from us and our trivial no jobs/no money problems.
I am not going to vote for another enabler of the financial industry. I want someone who is going to put these assholes in rehab so we can get our jobs back and save for old age again. If you think for one minute that Barack Obama is your guy, you’re delusional.
Filed under: General | Tagged: Barack Obama, choices, Democrats, Mitt Romney |
The Confluence 
That’s a key insight….the differences between the parties have narrowed considerably. I watched the HBO movie ” Recount ” last week. The differences between Bush and Gore were significant. The differences between Obama and Romney are inconsequential. Both are corporate statists with slightly different allegiences. Obama is a supplicant of the financial industry, Romney will cater more to energy interests, but we’re just splitting hairs here. Neither candidate will alter the trajectory of economic decline for the working class.
Here’s what I want to see: tons of commenters and blogsites saying:”I want rehab”
That’s all I ask.
My husband wants me to make him a “Robamney” sticker. And I might just get around to it. Me, I’m content to support Jill Stein, the Green party candidate, and cast my vote with a happy, and clean, conscience.
I’m voting for Jill Stein as well. But, what does it matter? I live in CA. Now, if I still lived in Nevada, it could make a minuscule difference.
@ Greg T – “Neither candidate will alter the trajectory of economic decline for the working class.” Yep.
I am voting for Jill Stein. She is backing up her words with actions .
“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9k5T3BKf4k&feature=youtube_gdata_player”
RD, you are very right. Evil is evil, but sometimes a knife is necessary to take out the pus. Whether we like it or not, the two candidates that matter are Romney and Obama. I know what four more yeas with Obama will look like. Here is my thinking. Romney will change our world for better or for worse, and either way it will work. If it’s for worse, the voters will throw him out of the WH in 2016. It’s if for the better, he’ll be reelected. Going with Obama will be for the worse and he’ll never be punished for being a bad president. That’s no way to vote, imo. Voting third a third party candidate just doesn’t work in our two party system.
The GOP (and Boll Weevils, which is what Blue Dogs were called back in the 1980s) cut funding for peasants like me to go to college just as I graduated from high school. 👿
This crippled my life prospects to the point where my ONLY hope for EVER knowing enduring happiness is the afterlife.
So, while I will not vote for Obummer, pigs will sprout wings and soar over the frozen plains of Hell before I vote for Richie Retch or any other GOPher, either.
I wish conservatism were a building, so I could burn it down and piss in its ashes. 😈
Isn’t Charles Pierce an Obama backer? That’s why I had to stop reading him. I’d love to be wrong, but I don’t think I am.
Also, do not forget that Obama is a war criminal on such a massive scale it is almost impossible to comprehend. Sure, Romney will be a war criminal too, within seconds, if he is elected. But Obama is one right now.
So it’s a race to the bottom. And I don’t think most of the country is even paying attention, as folks stumble along just trying to keep their heads above water (water that is no longer safe to drink), fully aware that it will be a cold day in Hell before a single stinking politician gives a flying eff about their troubles.
I’m telling you, the 1% has reason to be worried. There is a mass of rage that is growing by the hour. And, rotten person that I am, I derive some satisfaction out of the increasing numbers of layoffs on Wall Street, though nothing would please me more than running into Jamie Dimon in a dark alley at night. (Only kidding, I think.)
I agree. This is why the Occupy encampments we’re broken up so aggressively. The elites knew the occupiers had a powerful message, and had to pull the plug on it. At first they were caught off balance, but once DHS got involved, the crackdowns were systematic and violent. People can take a lot, but everyone has a limit.
that’s ridiculous. hard working people trying to get to their jobs were grossed out by the trashing of a park they enjoyed – as a benefit of citizenship. THEIR rights were denied by disorganized misanthropes who disrupted their daily lives, freeloading off the well-intended while threatening the balance. If the “message” was so powerful, a few days of occupation should have responsibly developed a more self-respecting leadership. Americans who “saw themselves” in the virtual gutter that was the 60’s and 70’s reflect on that behavior as rebellion. Until they cleaned up and conducted themselves with civility, they were not to be taken seriously. Too many of these hot heads expect their failures to be salvaged by disrupting order. The “Universe,” that was the folks still making money and holding jobs, adjusted to correct the imbalance at whatever level of resistance the up-enders were forcing.
That’s ridiculous. The DHS orchestrated the whole shut down, including the media trying to paint the protestors with a vile brush. I believe DHS violated every aspect of our…I repeat….OUR Constitution. Fascisim is alive and well inside DHS, the White House and the Congress, and the Judicial. We are in for a nasty ride. As if it were the citizens who were grossed out that caused the crackdown …. that makes me roar with laughter. As if DHS has any sensibilities for our being grossed out!!! Please…
I’m sure there were people who agreed with you. That doesn’t explain the aggressive, violent and systematic nature of the crackdowns. The ” dirty hippie’ argument ignores the spirit of protest at those encampments, we’re the Egyptians at Tahir Square also unorganized mobs? What frightened the authorities was not that the public spaces were soiled, it’s that the occupiers had a lot of support and their message was getting through. We disagree on that point.
Um, I was there in Zuccotti Park on many occasions. I never saw the kinds of things the media reported. The Occupiers didn’t trash the park. In fact, they were quite tidy and resourceful. Yep, it looks messy when people sleep outdoors. But you would be wrong to assume that the people who were there were derelict failures. The people I saw were well educated and engaged in problem solving with similarly well educated strangers.
You were had. Sorry. If you weren’t there, if you never bothered to go down there and talk to them yourself, then you have no idea how badly the DHS harmed free speech in this country.
BTW, I’m not sure how people are supposed to get attention unless they are loud and persistent. Unlike the banks, who can hire media specialists who will kill their enemy in the papers and on TV, average Americans only have themselves. They occupy the space they stand in.
I’m kind of surprised that you were gullible enough to swallow the lies. But for your edification, here’s my post on what I saw in Zuccotti park in October 2011.
The people in the park .
I was there 4 or 5 times, pre and post eviction. You should be embarrassed that you ever fell for the lies. I hope you never have to protest something important to you because in the US these days, you can’t. That’s the lesson of Occupy. Too bad you missed it.
I think if Occupy had focused on fighting for others rather than themselves, they would have connected on a much wider scale.
What the HELL are you talking about?
What does “We are the 99%” mean to you?
I can’t believe you actually typed that. It shows a remarkable lack of awareness of what the Occupy movement is all about.
Please, do everyone a favor, if you didn’t actually to an Occupy site and find out for yourself what it was all about, then STFU. You are talking nonsense.
Is your comment directed towards my comment about fighting for others?
When an occupy protestor demands student loan forgiveness because it will benefit them directly, it comes off as narcissistic. If an occupy protestor protects a family of four from an illegal foreclosure, or parallel foreclosure, they come off as being selfless in their quest to help fix the world.
Is this even an arguable point?
I’ll add this: student loans are a massive nationwide problem that affect millions of graduates. Only a small sample of that population showed up at the Occupy encampments. Think about it: students are told to attend college to enhance their job prospects, and when they graduate, they have upwards of 50 K or more in loans which are expected to be repaid. Except they can’t be repaid because they can’t get good jobs. So what does this mean? It means the predatory financial industry has floated billions of dollars in debt THAT CAN”T BE REPAID, but can’t be discharged in a bankruptcy.
That’s what the Occupiers were protesting.
Daily PUMA: were you paying attention when Occupier showed up for all of the people who were going to lose their houses through foreclosure??? You need to google that.
BTW, I agree with GregT that student loans are a huge problem and lead to a kind of indentured servitude. Did you know that if you declare bankruptcy, you can get the mortgage on your *second* house restructured (like, the house you have at the beach? How many people do you know have one of those?) but student loans can never be forgiven. Never. And because they can never be forgiven, there is an incentive by the banks to make sure the interest on those loans is as high as possible and that the student pays forever.
Do you see where the problem is? You’re not a stupid person. You can figure this out and why the banking industry will fight tooth and nail to make sure students are forever indebted to them. That results in a permanent underclass of college educated people who are in thrall to the banks for the duration of their lives.
Do you know what students in France pay in tuition? It’s about the same amount that students here pay in student activity fees.
They might have higher taxes (not that much higher according to my former expat colleagues) but they get MUCH, MUCH more for their taxes in healthcare, education and retirement.
You choose: tax breaks for the rich and endless expensive wars or a better society for the vast majority of people. The problem is not how much we pay in taxes. It’s how that money is spent. And I’d rather give it to students. They are our children. They deserve it. They will work harder than any other citizen on the face of the planet. We owe them that much.
Yes, I was involved in the Occupy Movement from a distance.
I lobbied the Occupy movement for several days on their forum to be more involved in the home foreclosure movement. I started http://www.occupynews.blogspot.net as a way for the occupiers to keep tabs on all other other occupy sites in as little time as possible. This involved several dozen google searches trying to put together a massive list of occupy websites with RSS feeds.
And I created the OccupyNews site while I had what felt like the worst case of Pneumonia I have ever had, and I created the site with no money.
I read, I studied, I watched the Occupy Movement. The four biggest things many Occupiers wanted were student loan forgiveness, marijuana usage, wall street executives jailed, and hooking up.
They should have just kept it simple. Rather than recruit people like themselves, they should have focused completely on the home foreclosure issue (5,000 foreclosures each and every day in this country), and converted people by saving those people from the system.
Parallel Foreclosure and Obama’s approval of Parallel Foreclosure should be an impeachable cause of action. Parallel Foreclosure is an actual violation of two constitution rights and most likely the Federal Hobbs Act, extortion under the color of right by an elected official.
The occupiers could have gone for the parallel foreclosure jugular, but chose not to.
Ahhh, I see your problem. You didn’t actually go to a site.
I don’t know how you came up with that priority list. Everytime I ACTUALLY WENT TO ZUCCOTTI PARK, the emphasis was on cleaning up the finance industry and all that implies (foreclosures, transparency, investing in the future, prosecuting the fraud, etc).
I *did* notice that there was a ring of really weird and freaky looking people who surrounded Zuccotti park. I mentioned them before. I suspect they were paid by Fox News to scare average people away. When I say freaky, I mean people dressed up like grim reapers and big, scary looking dudes with tattoos all over their faces and the occasional white supremacist Nazi. Those people were *not* occupiers. Once you got past that thin but intimidating gauntlet and into the park, the vast majority of the people there were a diverse collection of ages, education, employment statuses. They weren’t dirty or smelly or unkempt. In fact, it smelled wonderful because they made delicious vegetarian curries and other stuff. If you had actually gone down there, you would have found someone who was sympatico to your point of view. I guarantee it. Marsha, aka CoyoteCreek and ShainZona, is an Occupier from Tucson. If you met her, you would never suspect she was a stoned hippy chick. She looks like a nice, classy suburban woman who most certainly does not need a handout. Or Lambert. If you have ever met Lambert you would know that he doesn’t look anything like the stereotypical Occupier. And there were little kids there and their clean cut all american parents. And union workers and musicians who play on Broadway and in orchestras and teachers and nurses. In short, everything you think you know about the Occupiers is wrong. Just wrong and misguided and incorrect and duped.
But you didn’t actually go there. So you will never actually know what the occupiers were all about. You can only speculate based on the limited amount of information you got online.
Sad, very sad. Occupy could have used people like you. It was truly a movement that cut across all demographic lines and I know because I actually went there and checked it out for myself.
Yes, it is an arguable point. Calling for student loan forgiveness can be made by anyone, whether or not he/she has one. Protests can take many forms and forge many alliances. Pointing out that the student loan scam is a major problem in this country is a legitimate form of protest and not necessarily narcissistic. You’re interpreting the Occupy movement incorrectly, in my view. Excessive student loans are one example of the broader theme of how the 1% takes advantage of the 99% for its own interest. Trying to parse out the motivations for protest misses the main point.
Two huge mistakes by PUMA’s and those who were outraged by the democrat party in 2008 and their actions against Hillary Clinton. An opposing democrat candidate should have been put on the ballot in each state. Not necessarily the same one either.
Dennis Kucinich should have run on the Green Party Ticket to rattle both parties, but particularly the democrat party, to its senses.
And sadly, not enough feminists rallied around Roseanne Arnold and her quest to be the Green Party nominee. Arnold could have siphoned enough votes from Obama that this year’s democrat convention could have proven very interesting.
Unfortunately, there is a rift between older feminists and younger feminists that is so large that it would be easier for older feminists to find support among older men.
An opposing democrat candidate should have been put on the ballot in each state. Not necessarily the same one either…
I meant to add…. in 2012, An opposing democrat candidate should have been put on the ballot in each state. Not necessarily the same one either. 50 different democrat candidates all pulling significant numbers from Obama during the primaries, even more than was pulled, could have been a deal breaker for Obama’s renomination.
I dimly remember the Official Democrats promising (and practising) all kinds of obstruction and sabotage against any such primary efforts.
I think little Davely Poo Atkins was a proud part of threats to “decertify and expel” the California Progressive Democratic Caucus from the California Democratic Party if they were to endorse a “call-for-primary-challenge” under their official group name.
But if the millions of people who voted Clinton throughout the primaries are still in physica/ phone-tree/ post-card-and-letter/other analog methods touch with eachother; might they still credibly rattle and threaten the DemParty hierarchs by sending them millions of letters and so forth indicating a refusal to vote for a DemPrezVice ticket with Obama anywhere on it? Do the Clinton-volunteer-and-voter networks still exist?
I talked to a few people who were solidly behind Hillary Clinton in 2008. They were men, they had businesses, and they were too busy to blog or do anything but run their businesses and vote for her. I think of all the candidates, Hillary Clinton voters tend to be the most productive people, whether it’s running their own business, holding down a job, or providing family care to other family members who needed it, they were the true backbone of the country, but they were hard to reach.
What we were left with was more hard core supporters who blogged for her, then forgot her this year.
And yet, threatening to “primary” sitting dems who failed to rubber-stamp the Obrat’s hair-brained legislation was their GOTO reaction to everything. The “Organized” dems are on the sidelines, biding their time til the “kids” get their asses kicked out of the grown-ups’ way. Just as RD expects her SS to be there for her, the elders can spot and purge freeloaders. Bail-out funds were not “allowances” meant as spending money to preserve their lifestyles. Young feminists eloped with hot shot and now they want the folks to sacrifice their retirement to babysit. We got were we are LIVING the same errors of judgement. Young-uns – by definition – don’t know what “arrogance” means.
When I mentioned that older feminists and younger feminists had separated in 2008, and that ageism may have played a bigger role than sexism in 2008, I was rousted pretty good over that comment.
When I then mentioned that four powerful women and their support for Barack Obama in 2008 well before the end of the democrat presidential nomination race gave the men in the media and on late night talk shows an excuse to take shots at Hillary Clinton, this too outraged some of the more militant feminists who said I was blaming women.
Feminists who see the value in welcoming men in will have more success than the feminists who believe that if they all just thought and voted the same they would have majority power.
An older feminists will probably have more success connecting with a man in her age range than with a younger feminist.
It sounds like “Kidding on the square”. 😉
Yes, I think anyone in Goldman-Sachs and JP Morgan should be very afraid of meeting the unemployed in a dark alley. it could get very ugly. And I think they’re finally waking up to the fact that their retainers who make their beds and prepare their single malt scotches are just tge people who they have been screwing. There’s bound to be a number of Madame DeFarges among them.
At this point, it’s a pretty safe bet that all of the mainstream A list lefty bloggers are flogging for Obama. And you know and I know that pierce and krugman are throwing up a little everytime they do it. So, why do it? I wouldn’t. You get NOTHING from Obama by being easy. You only get his attention when you threaten him. Haven’t we seen that with the LGBT movement and the Hispanic community?
Damn straight. He only responds to threats. If you’re too nice, he walks all over you.
yep.
Voting Green for President just as I did in 2008. I wish I was wrong about Obama but unfortunately I, and the rest of the people on this blog, can read him like a book.
I agree with Ian Welsh, the quicker he is gone the quicker we have an opportunity to make a real choice. Otherwise, we will get a corporate Republican in 2016 and have to wait until at least 2020. That is at least 20 years of nonsense. Too much and too long.
Exactly. Let him be gone Jan 20, 2013. Let’s send him back to Chicago where he can write a fiction about his successful presidency.
It’s dysfunctional to support a candidate or a party on the basis that the other candidate/party is worse. It’s like the spouse of an alcoholic staying in the marriage convinced he/she will change. There reaches a point when a party is not deserving of support. We are at that point with the Democrats. In the case of Obama, if he has to lose an election, so be it. Let it be a message to other prospective candidates that it isn’t enough to simply BE president. You have to advance the right policies. What are the die hards on DAily Kos going to do when their great leader agrees to cut Social Security ? Are they going to still support him?
Yes, yes they are. IFF! . . . Obama is the next-term President. Because they will support him being the Great Democrat who does a Nixon-goes-to-China on SS/MediCareCaide.
Now the question arises . . . if Romney is elected and wants to Obamafy our survival benefits, will the Koswipes still support Obamafication if it is a Republican President who gets the credit? Or will they oppose it in that case on brand-name tribalitical grounds? And how about the DemSenators in office at that time? Will they support the Simpson-Obama Catfood Plan if it is a President Romney who gets to claim the credit? Well? does anyone have a speculative opinion on those two questions?
The GOP won’t cut SS. They are aware their base supports it and needs it. The Dems have to do it. The odds of a Grand Bargain being struck are much higher under Obama than Romney. If O wins reelection, he’ll have no incentive to do anything the left wants because he won’t face re-election. And he’ll browbeat other Ds to tow the line in the name of fiscal responsibility.
That is my suspicion as well. And that is why I have said that Obama really IS different from Romney. Different as in WORSE. And that is why I have suggested that defeating Obama really IS job one even if it requires voting FOR Romney as a way of making my anti-Obama vote
Most eFFECtive.
What am I, chopped liver?
I’ve said it before, Obama will make choices that ensure a comfortable life post presidency. That means bye-bye to the safety net of Social Security and Medicare/aid and packing the SCOTUS with conservative judges.
If that is true, that means that Obama is the greater evil and also the more effective evil. That means deleting Obama must be Job One, and if that requires voting for Romney to make sure of deleting Obama, that is what I will do.
“Vote Romney for the sake of your Social Security”
You and Lambert are my first two reads every morning. (Then I head over to John W Smart).
I registered democrat in the gym hall of my all girls catholic high school back in 1972 as a seventeen year old. I manned a telephone (there was only one) in my small town as a democratic volunteer that year. I continued to volunteer for over 30 years. The last time I participated in any way whatsoever at a party event was in Washington on May 31, 2008.
Bravo RD…you fight the good fight, and you fight it very very well. I too will be voting for for Jill Stein this year.
That’s a tough call. I’m tracking your tactical approach, but I can’t vote for Mitt Romney. I’ll vote Green instead, knowing a Green ballot will favor Romney.
I would have felt the same till recently, but when it became very clear just how invested the Democratic Party is in making Obama the historic “Democratic” President who pulls the great Nixon-goes-to-China Grand Catfood Bargain against SS/MediCareCaide; I realized what a deadly menace Obama 2.0 combined with the Senate Democrats poses to my future survival.
Romney is more esthetically distasteful to many Democrats, possibly including Democratic Senators. That is my only hope in this election . . . that Democratic Senators may be spiteful enough at seeing their beloved Obama defeated that they will withhold from Romney the Simpson Obama Catfood Conspiracy Victory which they feel should rightfully be Obama’s . . . and theirs, as “Democrats”.
But we will all make our separate cases and we will all consider those separate cases and end up doing what we think best at whatever level.. And if somebody presents a good strong case that
Romney would be so much catastrohically worse for the country at large than Obama would be . . . then I will go back to being unable to vote for Romney. In that case, I would vote third party of some sort, because the thought of voting for Backstab is just too distasteful.
(Backstab is my newly coined experimental nickname for Obama which I here launch to see if it takes off and flies. And any mispellings are due to the the type-screen obscuring presence of microsoft’s comments hosting function.
Perhaps we should start a letter/email campaign to our Democratic Senators and Representatives asking for a solid promise from them and Obama to preserve Social Security and Medicare/aid in return for our votes.
They are liars. Their promise is part of the Long Confidence Game.
They are even now conspiring to pass and sign the Simpson Obama Catfood Plan during the post-election Lame Duck Session. Obama in particular has raised cynical lying to an Art Form. Both Yves Smith and Matt Stoller have written about that. If they get voted for on the basis of having made that promise, what kind of revenge can we get on them after they decide to break that promise while laughing at us all the way to the bank?(That of course is just my considered opinion and I could well be wrong though I don’t think so.
Certainly writing our Democratic Officeseekers-holders with just that demand for just that promise would be a low-cost experiment worth running on the part of those who wish to run it).
Since I assume the Shitocratic Officeholders will all support Obama’s effort to destroy SS, my slender reed of hope is that they
are not ready to help Romney achieve the Catfood Achievement which they believe belongs to Obama. How many ex-Democratic voters have already privately decided to vote against Obama NO MATTER WHAT for this or other reasons? What if each and every one of those voters were to write their DemParty whatevers and deliver the following promise-not-a-threat: “we will vote against any
PrezVice Demticket which includes Obama anywhere on it. We will vote for a Demticket including (whatever people every individual promise-writer cares to name). That would be a credible threat to not do something “ahead of time” unless the DemParty does something “ahead of time”, namely stripping Obama off the ticket. Stripping Obama off the ticket would be something the DemParty would have to do “ahead of time” rather than promising “after the election”.
I mean . . . what if Obama promised to resign from office the day after winning the election if we said we wouldn’t vote for him unless he promised to resign? And if we voted for him on that basis and then he refused to resign after being re-elected, what power would we have to make him resign? No such power that I can see. Voting for officeholders “now” based on their PROmise not to do something “later” seems like the same thing to me.
Thank you all for an incredible read this a.m….it’s been awhile. RD…you are my first read everyday,,,and i always anticipate “and another thing…” through out the day…Thanks for keeping me thinking!!