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Master_Pedant
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23 Jan 2010, 12:30 am

Barack Obama - like his political strategem inspiration, Bill Clinton - was going soft on the financial institutions who financed his campaign. Financial industry lobbyists were getting key positions as economic advisors to President Obama. Their creatures - Geithner the absymal and Bernanke the detestable - were given or positioned to retain crucial postions like Treasury Secretary and Fed Chairman.

Scott Brown's gain of an allegedly "safe" Senate seat in Massachusetts - in the US "winner take all" Two Party System - sent ripples across the nation. Inaction (aside from paying back your campaign debts to wealthy robber-baron bankers) as employment tanks will no longer be tolerated.

How has the formerly weak, capitulating, indecisive executive taken such news? As a wakeup call. The general population, not the robber-barons at AiG and Goldman Sachs, will now be people of special priority when it comes to national policy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/busin ... lcker.html

Quote:
The president, for the first time, will throw his weight behind an approach long championed by Paul A. Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve and an adviser to the Obama administration. The proposal will put limits on bank size and prohibit commercial banks from trading for their own accounts — known as proprietary trading.

...

Big losses in the trading of those securities precipitated the credit crisis in 2008 and the federal bailout.

...

Last week he [Obama] proposed a new tax on some 50 of the largest banks to raise enough money to recover the losses from the financial bailout, which ultimately could cost up to $117 billion, the Treasury estimates.


This could very well be the only initiative of President Obama to gain bipartisan support. Conservative populists certainly don't like the way the robber-baron bankers have conducted themselves. Grassroots paleoconservatives - on this site and elsewhere - are quite vocal about their opposition to what financial industry is doing. Surely popular political support is there.

All this is on the discussion table because Scott Brown's election shook things up.

Thank you, Mr. Brown.

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23 Jan 2010, 12:39 am

the center cannot hold, and mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...;)


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Orwell
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23 Jan 2010, 1:40 am

Obama was pushing for the bank tax before Brown was elected.


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Master_Pedant
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23 Jan 2010, 2:16 am

Orwell wrote:
Obama was pushing for the bank tax before Brown was elected.


But Obama wasn't pushing as hard as he is now for the limits on bank size and prohibtions against proprietary trading.



TheOddGoat
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23 Jan 2010, 6:59 am

Quote:
Bill Clinton - was going soft


I thought by most accounts his problem involved the opposite?



sartresue
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23 Jan 2010, 3:55 pm

TheOddGoat wrote:
Quote:
Bill Clinton - was going soft


I thought by most accounts his problem involved the opposite?


A soul man? topic

How is life without soul, OG? (I am assuming one can live without said soul.)


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Last edited by sartresue on 26 Jan 2010, 10:07 am, edited 1 time in total.

Master_Pedant
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24 Jan 2010, 2:29 am

TheOddGoat wrote:
Quote:
Bill Clinton - was going soft


I thought by most accounts his problem involved the opposite?


I think Bill Clinton sex jokes shouldn't be so much about his personal foibles as much as his political vices. I hereby offer the following suggestions for people seeking to make new Bill Clinton sex jokes:

- Talk about Clinton screwing American and global labour.
- Talk about Clinton leaving or cheating on American labour in return for corporate relationships with special privileges.
- Talk about his political submission to the Financial and High Tech sectors.
- Talk about the sadism he displayed towards the common person and the progressive activist.

I have hereby converted useless sex jokes designed to distract us from Clinton's real vices into pertinent satire of his moral crimes against the working classes. Somebody give me an award for comedy! :tongue:



richardbenson
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24 Jan 2010, 10:00 am

yes, yes bless you senator brown. you seem like a good guy :)


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auntblabby
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14 Feb 2010, 9:38 am

Master_Pedant wrote:

Thank you, Mr. Brown.

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Kalikimaka
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14 Feb 2010, 10:19 pm

BLESS a POLITICIAN?! Oy gevalt!



Descartes
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15 Feb 2010, 2:27 am

From what I've heard, Scott Brown is pretty moderate. For example, he's pro-choice and he's pro-gay righs (with the exception of same-sex marriage). Correct me if I'm wrong, though. I'm going by what I saw on Wikipedia. :wink:



Sand
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15 Feb 2010, 2:34 am

Same sex marriage - that's one hell of an exception.

The concept in American politics that the solution to a problem with the Democrats is a Republican (because that's the only solution offered) is a rather pitiful dilemma.



auntblabby
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15 Feb 2010, 9:43 am

Sand wrote:
Same sex marriage - that's one hell of an exception.

The concept in American politics that the solution to a problem with the Democrats is a Republican (because that's the only solution offered) is a rather pitiful dilemma.

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Kalikimaka
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15 Feb 2010, 10:09 am

Sand wrote:
The concept in American politics that the solution to a problem with the Democrats is a Republican (because that's the only solution offered) is a rather pitiful dilemma.


Well I live in Massatoochetts myself, and the way the campaigns were run, Coakley didn't have a chance. The Dems thought they had this in the bag, and didn't put any effort into promoting Coakley until they saw Brown, who'd been openly campaigning, was gaining a lead.

Further towards election day there were the senate debates, where Coakley argued we needed to finish Ted Kennedy's life work, and Brown rebutted that it isn't Kennedy's seat. Having to bring the President up here to campaign for Coakley wasn't good, because when you have the president trying to influence an election to make sure a bill that HE wants is passed, we're back to politics as usual, not the CHANGE we voted for. Coakley's TV spots didn't show up until late in the campaign, and they were all basically attack ads (and Brown shot down many of the claims they made during the debates).

What clinched it was when Coakley remarked in an interview that the reason she was losing people was because they DIDN'T UNDERSTAND the healthcare bill.

And, as plenty of people have pointed out, the reason our state even has a special election when a senate seat is vacated is because of a law that was enacted by Democrats in 2004: when Senator Kerry was running for president and there was the possibility his senate seat would be left empty, the governor would get to appoint a senator - in 2004 we had Governor Romney, a Republican. The Democrats manipulated the system thinking they couldn't lose, and it bit them in the ass when they didn't realize they'd actually have to make an effort to keep their spot.

Finally, as Brown pointed out, we Massholes already have a great healthcare system, why should we support a national bill that'll put us further in the hole? THAT's why Coakley lost the race.



auntblabby
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15 Feb 2010, 10:20 am

Kalikimaka wrote:
Sand wrote:
Finally, as Brown pointed out, we Massholes already have a great healthcare system, why should we support a national bill that'll put us further in the hole? THAT's why Coakley lost the race.

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YOU said "Massholes", not me. that said, i remember on tv, a game show contestant was asked where he was from- "oh, i'm from as*hole, woodsachusetts!"

anyways, it was shortsighted of mass votors to turn their backs on the rest of the nation of the uninsured- we are all in this thing together, whether or not you choose to acknowledge this fact. your state's healthcare financing could fall down tomorrow, then where would you be without the backstop of a federal program? out on the street or in bankrupcy court. or deceased from something which if you were in any other western nation, you likely would not be. why are working-class americans not as deserving of primary healthcare as japanese, or canadians or europeans? remember, social mobility means if you are lucky and plucky, you MIGHT be able to move upwards to the middle class but it ALSO means you can even more easily sink back down to the working class. it CAN happen to you! pride cometh before the fall.



Sand
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15 Feb 2010, 10:21 am

auntblabby wrote:
Kalikimaka wrote:
Sand wrote:
Finally, as Brown pointed out, we Massholes already have a great healthcare system, why should we support a national bill that'll put us further in the hole? THAT's why Coakley lost the race.

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YOU said "Massholes", not me. that said, i remember on tv, a game show contestant was asked where he was from- "oh, i'm from as*hole, woodsachusetts!"

anyways, it was shortsighted of mass votors to turn their backs on the rest of the nation of the uninsured- we are all in this thing together, whether or not you choose to acknowledge this fact. your state's healthcare financing could fall down tomorrow, then where would you be without the backstop of a federal program? out on the street or in bankrupcy court. or deceased from something which if you were in any other western nation, you likely would not be. why are working-class americans not as deserving of primary healthcare as japanese, or canadians or europeans? remember, social mobility means if you are lucky and plucky, you MIGHT be able to move upwards to the middle class but it ALSO means you can even more easily sink back down to the working class. it CAN happen to you! pride cometh before the fall.


HEY! Sand wrote?