Brain dead. They are just brain dead and have nothing for middle America but a tax cut shiv, frozen spending head knock, and a, “that’s the best we could do,” take down of the American middle class.

I guess the seven haven’t paid attention to when Jane called folks out for voting for cloture on Alito then voting No.

Too bad. I would think that these clowns would realize folks do watch the procedural votes as carefully as the other votes.

I am no fan of Bernanke’s or of democratic leadership at the moment, but, Why do we rail at leibframilch, nelson, landrow, et al about toeing the line on procedural votes in health insurance leg. and assure them that they can vote their heart in the up-down vote. I guess I am just ticked that the cloture power works when I don’t want it too. Any way it looks like there were several rebublicans voting for cloture.

I’ve always done work where I only got rewarded for getting good results. No excuses allowed, results talk, bullshit walks.

I see now that I have lived a very misguided life. Anybody know where I go to get one of these jobs where no performance is not good enough, where disaster just burnishes one’s credentials?

I guess the answer is: Go to Washington, old man. That’s the only place where fucking up your primary responsibilites guarantees that you will NEVER be fired.

See, now, I’m a dedicated cause-and-effect guy, so I don’t have to stretch tooooo far to belive that the reason these guys keep their jobs is because their masters really are not displeased with the effects of what they did. Fucking up the People’s interest is not necessarily the same as fucking up the Master’s interest. It all depends on who the Master is, doesn’t it?

This is why I cringe when Obama begs for bipartisan cooperation.

Well crap. So we’re stuck with Bernanke, Geithner, and Summers. The only person missing from the debacle is Hank Paulson, so we have a pretty good chance of another ‘financial event’ this year as the Option Arms or Pick-a-Payment mortgages begin to reset and recast.

I am getting so sick of Congress falling for the blackmail from Wall Street that if Congress doesn’t vote as they want, they’ll crash the market. What a bunch of spineless sheep. I say let it fall…after all, it’s not like Bernanke is the only person who can save us. The Fed is supposed to be indendent, but Wall Street has been controlling the levers ever since Greenspan gave them control. At this point I would like to see the ‘strategic defaults’ snowball to an entire debtor’s strike.

Simon Johnson at Baseline Scenario isn’t happy either.

http://baselinescenario.com/2010/01/28/a-colossal-failure-of-governance-the-reappointment-of-ben-bernanke/

Why do we rail at leibframilch, nelson, landrow, et al about toeing the line on procedural votes in health insurance leg.

Maybe because of their hypocrisy where they claim the cloture vote is the important one when they want to delay things while saying it’s the actual vote on the legislation when they want the credit.

They can’t have it both ways. So if the standard is to hold the line during the cloture vote then freedom to “vote the conscience” on the legislation is acceptable for a Bernanke vote, then the same standard needs to be applied by all for the things like Health Care.

Could someone tell me how FDR was pressured by the public to be able to proclaim the he ‘welcomed their hate’?
There was no internet, no phone service to speak of, and too many were illiterate to do mail ins. So, what form did pressure take to effect the up ending of the system? Because, that is what is also needed in these times.

Again, google “Bilderberg Group”. Along with Tim Geithner, Larry Summers and Paul Volcker, the membership list includes the name Ben Bernanke.

It was laughable when just a few days ago there was actually speculation on the leftwing netroot that Bernanke might not be confirmed!!

How on earth do these pundits think the world works?

Democratically?

Well, it could work more rather than less democratically if progressives are sucessful in ousting from power DLC Democrats who, when push comes to shove, embrace the Wall Street agenda of the FIRE industries.

Only 12 Democrats voted against big Ben. Most of the opposition ironically came from the “pro business” Republicans who embrace the fiercely free market libertarian outrage against crony capitalism. Again, most of the Democratric leadership in the Congress and the White House are smack dab in the middle of the state socialism for the rich agenda.

Al Franken? Al took in over one million dollars from the FIRE industry.

Barack Obama?

Bob Cusack from The Hill [re Huffington Post]

A day after bashing lobbyists, President Barack Obama’s administration has invited K Street insiders to join private briefings on a range of topics addressed in Wednesday’s State of the Union.

The Treasury Department on Thursday morning invited selected individuals to “a series of conference calls with senior Obama administration officials to discuss key aspects of the State of the Union address.”

So, what are progressives going to do about this?

Personal note: I’ve been in the corner for a few days, so I haven’t been able to call your attention to this earlier, but I left a comment in response to your last response to me at the end of the Comments section (#230) following the Jan. 23 post “60 Votes–It was always Bullshit.”

If you will take a moment to read it, I hope that, like a bridge over troubled water, it will ease your mind :).

Peace.

I know what they won’t do: they won’t get off their assess and take an organized, communal, healthy stroll in the streets.

They registered and voted Socialist for one thing.

I believe the hatred and pressure were coming from the monied and industrial class, who liked things the way they had been in olden times, and whose primary concern was in keeping their workers powerless. That is the same reason why many of those same industrialists and their families (including the Bush family) actually supported Hitler in the decades following the Bolshevik Revolution, because they viewed him as the best tool to stymie the spread of pro-worker ideology, you know, unions and stuff.

I also understand that in the early 30′s, as in the earliest years of the 20th century, the abuses of the rober baron class were so egregious that there was a serious perceived threat of revolution, which prompted reforms to appease the furious working class before they exploded. Just temporarily, of course.

Another “memorable” financial collapse is just around the corner.

Hyman Minsky “Stabilizing an Unstable Economy.”

Continue bailing out failing financial institutions with taxpayer money without making structural changes to the overall system and the end result remains the same: further collapse of financial institutions and continued pouring of taxpayer money down a black hole.

Leave the structural systems in place and nothing in the structure changes.

It took Franken such a short time to learn how to act like a douchebag. Nice learning curve.

Sure hope the time bomb explodes on O’s watch. He deserves it.

You get a cookie.

Okay, but he’s got a bunker, and I don’t. And, who’s going to get hurt worse?

Why thank you..)

Welcome. White chocolate chip, macadamia.
No one should be surprised. We don’t have to like it though. But, again, there’s such a big I Don’t Like This list.
PS Sure wish I could stay up long enough to see you at LLN. Alas.

Yup.

People nowadays don’t understand — at all — that the purpose of FDR’s work wasn’t to rescue the middle class and poor people from poverty and certain death. It was to preserve America’s capitalistic system and keep it save from socialist hordes that threatened to overrun the elites.

It could happen.

If we stayed up any later we would have to serve bagels and orange juice..)

You sound very optimistic.
How’s your fingers feeling? So, it’s going to be a while before we see a Decision?

it’s the only way we are going to swing things back to a reasonable center. If you want SP or PO you demand tri care paid for entirely by the rich…. etc. etc.

Accountability. Every one gets hurt when prez makes awful choice. However, if prez never gets harmed by his awful choice, then ever after is worse for everyone. Surely you are familiar with that outcome?

FWIW, I’ve been advertising myself for work as a trader on Craig’s List for the last few weeks, and as part of that post I predicted a Dow high of 10,710, followed by a major decline. Seems like it’s happening. (The actual ultimate high on the Dow was 10,729.89 last week.) Large groups of people have a tendency to always react to the same dramatic stimulus in the same ways as last time, both the masters and the serfs. It’s a basic axiom of my approach to trading.

It’s really not that hard or complicated. Look at a chart of the Dow following 1929, and following 2000, and you’ll see that each time we had a financial bubble followed by a collapse, there was a recovery rally that went about as far as this one has, before rolling over to seek the real support level below. The charts are all remarkably similar.

Surely, we are affected by harm even if they don’t feel the actions of their poor awful devastatingly awful choices.

FYI, but the writer should know that Dorgan is NOT running for re-election, so he has nothing to hide behind for that. Now, perhaps there are other motives, but re-election posturing is not one of them.

Further, with names like Whitehouse and Franken on the list, two of my favorite Senators (and Franken represents me!), I’d look to a possible upside. Franken’s pretty reliably liberal, so, maybe it was a mistake, but I’d like to know more before I pass judgement.

FDR saw himself as saving capitalism.

Unsurprised. Too bad about Franken; thought maybe he’d be a little different (one can dream). Guess it’s time to shift money around again and put some cold hard cash somewhere… hoo boy.

People scoff when I say Washington is broken and our Government doesn’t work.

When they rehire the guy that just gave our money away, and won’t even tell the Congress where He gave it. If this isn’t confirmation what would be.

We have witnessed the Congress being paid for almost a year of doing nothing.

One party doing less than nothing.

Our Supreme Court selling the store.

Not only have they refused to prosicute the bad guys, but have rewarded them. That goes for People, Companies, and systems.

All while basically leaving the people to suffer and take all the loses.

People who still say we have the best Government in the world are delirious.

We are still told we have the best Government, Law, Military, healthcare, and many more things. Yet none of them works well, and really works for us.

Bernanke is like a golden stake in the heart of the Country, driven home with Congress’s todays vote.

Vote the incumbents out especially if they are Democrat or Republican but most people continue to ignore their principles and vote for the lesser of two evils. What a shame.

What people are you talking about? Kids in your child’s preschool class?

the Democratic party is a lost cause.

It’s time to found a new progressive party

All available evidence indicates that the system as currently constituted is designed to defeat rather than realize the needs and interests of the regular working people. That is why I believe that solutions must be sought outside the system. But there is no easy solution. Smart and malicious people have been working very hard for many years to limit the available extra-systemic options.

The market is rigged. Predicting the market is a fools errand.

This is true.

The reason they get away with it, and are successful is the American people back the people and the parties that have allowed that to happen.

People still think our Government works, and they control things by voting. They still put their money in the Markets, their money in those Banks. They still buy insurance from the crooked insurance companies. They not only support both Parties and their politicians, but won’t vote for third party candidates.

Everything that happens in this Country is with the blessing of the people because they have supported all of it. The unnessicary Wars, bloated Military, open borders, uncontrolled Government and it’s spending.

As we see they even support the Government not fixing the healthcare system. Not fixing climit change, not getting us off foreign oil, not making us energy suffcient. Yes they even have supported the high unemployment, and all the problems with the housing industry, because they have made no demand for the Government to fix it.

” Americans are pissed off and scared.”

Civil disobedience is the only expression of popular sentiment other than elections that will make the critters and the Prez. sit up and listen.
The Administration, however, can sink this economy by continuing to validate a broken system in no time flat. Waiting for midterms may be waiting too long.

True. The art of mind-fucking has been perfected by those in power and thier minions, and the ignoran people can get fooled every time by the practitioners of that dark art.

Washington politics is just like a TV sitcom. Somewhere in the middle of the show, Lucy is going to go to prison for life for stealing Ethel’s car, but, by the end of the show, she is back home with Ricky. Little Ricky, Fred, and Ethel. So too, has Ben escaped perdition at the hands of the Senate. At the end of the day, he is back in his chairmanship, and at home with Hank, Tim, Larry, and all the little senators. I Love Lucy was all about selling soap or cereal; Senate confirmation hearings are all about selling bullshit.

I should say there were 6 who voted against cloture and Bernanke: : Begich (D-AK), Cantwell (D-WA), Feingold (D-WI), Merkley (D-OR), Sanders (I-VT), Specter (D-PA.

The Bernanke vote was more consequential than Obama’s limp SOTU. This is another trait that Obama and Bush have in common. Both had this idea that a speech could solve anything, that it could substitute for the lack of policy or to gloss over any disaster.

Not true. The market has its own lnguage and rythyms, which are incomprehensible to outsiders who do not or cannot take the time to study it closely.

In fact, I was able to precisely call the top in March, 2000, the bottom in June, 2002, the top in October, 2007, the bottom in March, 2008, and now, it seems, the top last week.

It is also possible to precisely predict many of the half-dozen up and down moves that occur in the course of almost every trading day. Trust me, it’s true. But it takes a total commitment of time and energy over many years to understand the language and rhythyms of natural price moves, and the investing industry is heavily invested in persuading people that market timing is impossible, so most people don’t even try to do it.

I alerted people to each of the major moves referenced above, in advance, but almost nobody would listenwrong at each of those major turns, but almost nobody would listen–they were too overwhelmed with contrary messages ferom the industry and the media, which were completely wrong at every one of those major turns.

I am beating a dead horse here, but between Obama’s duplicity, and these sordid HCR negotiations, every single request I get from any politician, (actually all Democrats in my case) will get torn in half and thrown out.
(Yes, I got regular requests from Franken and the other phony populists.)

My only hope now is the the Chinese buy our government with campaign financing allowed by Judge Alito, and they hold trials for these scoundrel politicians for mucking up their (the Chinese) investments.

It seems that the Great Democracy Experiment has run its course.

I am forced to agree that only some sort of dramatic civil disobedience holds out any hope for us, as I have watched well-intentioned people trying to change things by working within the system for the last half-century, to little or no avail. In fact, it seeems clear that things keep moving irrevocably in the wrong direction, doesn’t it? Doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result . . . well, you know what that is.

Strange as it seems, the Teabaggers might be showing the way. Just look at all the attention and response they’ve gotten with just a few months of angry, in-your-face activity. But we progressives, we are so meek, we can’t even get a decent street demonstration going.

“I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it” –FDR

“During the Great Depression, it was only massive pressure from citizens, often including civil disobedience, that allowed Roosevelt to make the changes we all take for granted.

It was only the uncompromising action of hundreds of thousands that ended U.S. segregation and South African apartheid.”

http://www.beyondtalk.net/

I believe that everybody but the American people understands by now that the future is Asia. What we are witnessing here is the efforts of the giant corporations to suck the last few drops of juice, i.e., capital, from the dying corpus of America, prior to moving their operations overseas entirely, where the fastest growing markets are. This market has matured and been used up, every promising niche exploited, so corporations that require higher profit growth each and every quarter naturally want to re-position themslves in emerging and developing markets, where the rate of growth will always be highest.

So, why is it so hard to get people like us to take over the streets, do a general strike, etc.? Maybe it’s just the memory of Kent State, which taught us that the other side is willing to kill us for protesting, even non-violently.

It’s clear that most of us are now willing to settle for sitting home and beeating up our keyboards. There’s pleasure in venting, I suppose, but change will require exerting some dramatic real-world pressure. We will have to be willing to endure some real discomfort.

““Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.” –Henry David Thoreau

The media will ignore or totally mock a protest by the Left.
The establishment hates the Left because we call out them based on facts.

Teabaggers don’t have an original thought in their heads. They’re Glen Beck groupies. The reason they get so much coverage is they’re oblivious corporate tools.

It would have to be a protest so massive and prolonged that it would strangle commerce. That could not be ignored. it would draw the attention of the outside world, where the corporations really care about how they are perceived, because they are trying to lock up those outside markets but have not yet fully succeeded in doing so.

Don’t underestimate the Teabaggers. They are being co-opted in many ways by corporate agents, but their anger against injustice is genuine. I think Jane idea of building bridges to them on common issues has merit.

We need to educate them to see that the real battle is PEOPLE vs. CORPORATIONS

I agree totally. The U.S. has no national industrial policy – hasn’t had one since corporations became exceedingly international in scope. Asia, by contrast, has had, and continues to have very specific national industrial targets. Wall Street and their tools, the U.S. politicians, HAVE sucked America dry. It’s easy to blame ONLY the Republicans, but that would be self-delusional. Wall Street, like the proverbial longer than 4 hour erection, has NO CONSCIENCE, much less an American conscience.

Well, OK, how many of us are willoing to endure a prison term? Or brutality on the streets from the police who tell us to move along? Are you aware that they now have weapons that can lay a whole crowd down at once?

Full disclosure–I’m getting old, and have many painful physical infirmities. There’s a limit to what I can endure physically. How many of the young are willing to endure the necessary risks and discomforts? I mean, after all, it is THEIR future that is at stake. My interest in this fight is becoming an increasingly philosophical one. I love justice and hate injustice, but I won’t be here that much longer to witness either one.

Is there ANY hope of mobilizing the young? They have always had to be the agents of radical change.

No big corporation has any conscience. Because they are NOT persons.

But they ARE always erect. The greed really accelerated when the progressive income tax rate was largely scrapped by Reagan. With all that extra cash, it became harder and harder for corporations NOT to start shtooping every thing in sight.

that’s a fucking poor excuse for doing nothing.

The Prez just gave Ben his chopper one to more efficiently run America into the ground.

LOL. I tried to resist, but don’t you think that the “threat” of the “longer than 4 hour erection” was just the cleverest marketing ploy ever?

Night all. Away to bed, perchance to dream of being chased by the Dow 30 and the Supreme 5, all sporting giant, untameable erections.

If what it will take is more pain to organize, more pain is surely in the works.

Organize against the real ‘cash for clunkers’; The Wall Street Banks.

No doubt about that, especially if I am right that the market will now collapse in anticipation of a renewed economic downleg. Plenty of pain to go around. The big question is, how much will it take to get people off their fat asses? And remember, with modern survellance laws and techniques, organizing anything big is more difficult than ever before. So it will take an enormous amount of pain to generate something spontaneous and unorganized. Probably the bravest must take the risk of leading, and hope the thing goes viral.

Just don’t delude yourself into thinking that success will be assured; in fact, it is unlikely. Democracy is history’s exception. We recall the Greeks and Romans at their best only because they were so exceptional, as the American experiment has been in many ways. But democracy has never lasted.

G’ night.

With a 70-30 margin they clearly had the votes to confirm him (which is appalling, but appalling is the nature of the Senate).

But the point I’d like to raise is:

When D’s might have the votes to do something they want, but the R’s resist by using procedure, Keith, Rachel and others on the left whine loudly about them not cooperating and simply being obstructionist.

Yet when the R’s have the votes (R’s and D’s in this case, sadly), somehow the cry is the D’s are cooperating too much and not using obstructionist procedure to stop the action.

Apparently it’s OK to bitch in the SOTU about not cooperating on things one wants but then turn around and bitch about cooperating on things one doesn’t.

Then again, selfish tantrums and inconsistency are the unifying characteristic of both parties.

(Personally, I think the thing the country needed most during the Bush years was for the D’s to be exactly like the R’s are now.)

Most of the people on these blogs.

People won’t admit they are part of the problem.

All you need do is ask did You vote in the last election, if they said yes, they are part of the problem.

It doesn’t matter if one voted for Obama or McCain, because they supported one of the two parties.

Both of these parties survive and have become what they are, because the people have supported them, voted for them, and put up with what they did.

The very fact that some in Congress have been there for almost fifty years, on both sides show the ignorance of the voters.

We have tried both parties in power, and watched things get worse no matter which is in charge.

Yet people will vote for members of both parties in the next election.

Late here, but this is exactly the tact Obama took on John Roberts’ nomination, and it worked out OK for him.

Yes, that’s the power of “branding.” But my vote will only go to third party candidates from now on.

And all my energy will be directed toward educating people that the real battle line is not D v. R, not left v. right, but rather PEOPLE v. BIG CORPORATIONS.

In the past half-century we’ve gone from a moderate Republican President warning us about the “military-industrial complex” to a Democratic President feeding us “hope and change” while selling out to corporatism on every level.

Of course we always knew Obama was not really a progressive or even a liberal, but he does occasionally play one on the tee vee.

The Bernacke vote was pivotal in so many ways. Just as we always knew that Obama was not who we hoped he was, we knew he would get his Republican daddy back to run the Fed. I allowed myself (again)to hope the vote would be close; the margin of victory shows how totally and completely we are beaten. Franken’s vote is especially crushing.

When you put the Bernacke vote together with the media’s take (http://mediamatters.org/columns/201001280053) from Quinn to Noonan to Broder to Brooks and the tepid, faux populism (let’s all hate on the bankers before reconfirming their guy to the Fed) of Obama’s speech, the resiliance of the corporate agenda astounds. What’s the matter with Kansas? I don’t think we’re just in Kansas any more, Toto.

Doesn’t this suggest that the “power” of the progressive internet community is, ah, somewhat circumscribed, that the real public debate indeed spans the rivulet between Brooks and Shields? And that Rahm is right: the left will either come on board or drop out in the end. Either way the corporate center wins.

Glenn Greenwald’s brilliant piece today (http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/29/iraq/index.html) demonstrates how far the US is from beginning to own the consequences (on us and on others) of “exceptionalism” and foreign adventurism for fun and profit.

I salute (and support) FDL and those above looking for responses and answers. Like Razorbrain, I’m probably not going be of much use on the barricades, if it comes to that. My race is almost run. I’m really only terrified for the kids.

At this point “fuckno” pretty much says it all, even before you read his/her comments. But I’m going to go with Razorbrain to conclude:

“…democracy has never lasted. G’ night.”

But, like AAAAHNOLD, I’ll be baaaahk.

Bah, who cares what the slaves think.

Shame that some Senators I still give the benefit of the doubt to are in on this.

I think my senators I respect (to any small degree) is down to:
- Brown
- Sanders
- Fiengold

None others come to mind, and I assume the 3% I listed above likely suck as well.

I might be missing one or two max. So at most 5% that still have some small shred of credibility with me – though apparently no power to get it done.

I lost all respect for Feingold when he caved on all of Bush’s judicial appointees. He’s a typical talk pleasingly-but-never-follow-thru democrat. And I’ve never forgiven Brown for his spectacularly gutless vote against habeas corpus, and he was all talk no follow thru on the public option. None of these guys have a true line in the sand.

I sadly fear that Franken is going to be a huge disappointment. He cited Hillary as his role model, which means go overboard proving to the GOP that you’re not a radical leftists, pointlessly, because they’ll still attack him mercilessly. He’s also very likely afraid of the shitkickers in Minnesota, so I see him morphing into a combination of Kent Conrad and Tim Johnson.