Some dark humor on the situation in the gulf….

http://www.naturalnews.com/028892_top_kill_junk_shot.html

Obama is BP oil. It cannot be explained any other way.

He’s the head pr man of the establishment, the bps and goldmans are whose interests he truly represents.

Z

Let us oil look forward, not backward…BP*

* Barack’s Posse

We are all Cajuns now.

* Peter D. Sutherland, Chairman of BP

Peter D. Sutherland KCMG serves as Managing Director of Goldman Sachs International. Mr. Sutherland served as Director General of GATT and Group Secretary and General Counsel of World Trade Organization from 1993 to 1995. He is a former Attorney General of Ireland and also served as European Commissioner from 1985 to 1989, responsible for competition policy. He serves as Chairman of British Petroleum, BP Amoco PLC and United Kingdom. He has also been a Independent Non Executive Director of National Westminster Bank PLC and its subsidiary, Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, since January 2001. He serves as a Non-Executive Director of Foundation of the World Economic Forum. He serves as a Director of Goldman Sachs International and Member of International Advisory Board and Joint Advisory Council of Allianz AG. He served as a Director of LM Ericsson Telephone Co (formerly, Ericsson LM Telephone Co.) since 1996, Ericsson SPA since 1996 and Investor AB since 1995. He served as a Member of International Advisory Board of CNOOC Ltd. since March 20, 2003.

He’s their sock puppet like hockey mom but without the skirt.

Why did Obama trust Big Oil? You don’t know that he did BT. Obama is a liar.

With Obama’s first appointment of Rahm and subsequent cabinet appointments everyone with even the slightest modicum of interest and understanding knew in their hearts where this cat was going to take the country. Everyone hoped that their instincts would be proven wrong. With nearly every decision, however, this dude has made, our initial reservations have been confirmed. But hey, that’s cool, he’s a pleasant enough fellow, articulate, photogenic, and clearly within the “mainstream”, certainly not a socialist and isn’t being in that mainstream what’s really important? As for transformational reform. well that will be served after dinner and the U.S. public is the main course.

Where are the super tankers?

We now know what happens when the phone rings at the White House any time, just not 2:00am, and the USA has major disaster to deal with. Nothing!!!

Wanted: A Corporate Death Penalty.

In all the areas discussed in the original post, Obama’s actions can easily be explained in either of two ways. He is in each instance either naive or duplicitous. Given his basic intelligence and the political environment in which he was groomed, Chicago and its machine politics, and serving in the Senate, you are left with the nagging feeling it is the latter case.

Unfortunately, I think this gets to the root of Obama’s tragic flaw. He’s simply too comfy with the institutions that need aggressive confrontation.

He believes credentials endow omniscience and wisdom. He is an academic. A perpetual student seeking the knowledge of the credentialed authorities. Some would say elitist, at least in that sense.

Regarding the Texas City incident, it is reported that BP execs were convinced the story would go away because the media and DC were focused on Terry Schaivo…

They were both cynical and correct.

It isn’t that he is an academic, I was an academic and I know that the interests of companies and people are at odds. The problem is that he is a liberal. Radicals like myself would never refer to insurance and drug companies as “stakeholders” with reconcilable interests equal to people.

The Korean saber-rattling concerns me for much the same reason, a timely and fortuitous distraction.

Where are the super tankers?

Good question. They’re probably all fully loaded waiting offshore for the price at the pump to spike to $4.00.

reddflay Obama is a Liberal? what Obama are you talking about, you can not be talking about the one in the White House.

Second, What real Liberal you know supports endless wars, helping drug companies get rich, hates unions, is all for off shore oil drilling? none

Obama is a trojan horse, he works for the corporate elites, he is no FDR

spot on

Blue, there is a word describing Obama’s philosophy: Neoliberalism.

The president is smart enough to pretend he’s a “reformer”, but I think by now the record is pretty clear- he just isn’t into progressive reform. What he is really in to is blowing smoke up our asses while making sure the interests of the status quo elites are covered. Not a healthy situation for our country from my point of view.

The company pleaded guilty to a felony violation of the Clean Air Act, was fined $50 million, and sentenced to three years probation.

No shit. I’m a lawyer and I have no idea whatsoever what it means to put a corporation on probation.

What’s the penalty for violation of the terms? Bigger fines, which may then be passed on to consumers?

There’s no skin in the game, and until there is, stand by while the BP’s of the world continue to flip us the bird.

Unlike 9/11 when the Masters of the Universe totally controlled the message, the message now is controlled by Mother Nature. She is getting a bit fed up with the arrogance of the human species.

Basically, I operate under the assumption that everything Obama says is a lie. Don’t really think it requires much more in depth analysis than that. Except for when he talks about “bipartisan” capitulation to Republican positions, everything else is absolute horseshit.

I get caught up in the semantics of politics but it was my area and so it matters to me. But liberals are centrists, they aren’t on the left, something those who self-identify as liberal should be very aware of. On foreign policy (wars) Kennedy and Johnson were liberals, so was Eisenhower to a large extent I think, and they perpetrated Vietnam, for example.

The question should be repeated over and over.

Make him explain.

Make him live – politically – with the consequences.

Maybe someone should forward that question to Helen Thomas.

I read someplace a few days ago (sorry, no link because I have no memory) that supertankers that had the capacity to skim, siphon, recover oil were all sitting in ports–filled with oil cargo–waiting for the price of oil to rise.

No true liberal ever engaged in imperial wars, so your take on it in my opinion is wrong. I’m of the mind that there has never ever been elected anyone remotely liberal, just small conservatives versus nutbars. Obama? Wolf in sheep’s clothing neoliberal, or corporate conservative a la Reagan. The ONLY people that still support this liar are diehard Democratic Party members. Nobody else. Unless his corporate buddies have some magic potion or wand, he will not be re-elected. Even those who thought they could “change the party from within” are coming to their senses and figured out both parties are corrupt lying a-holes.

So now liberals are centrists? Uh….and what do you call those on “the left”? I know what Rahm calls them.

There’s another word you might use: Harvardism. This is the belief that, because you went to Harvard, your a competent and smart person – just like all your classmates. Truth is, there was a survey done at Harvard commencement not too long ago: they asked students to explain why it’s hotter in the summer. Only 1 in 10 could give an explanation. These people are dumb, dumb, dumb. Too dumb to even know that they’re dumb.

BP donated more to Obama than any other politician…..you do the math.

you’re, too. damn.

Quote:
How many more subprime crashes and oil spills and 9/11s and mining accidents and Enrons and WorldComs and Iraqs will it take for Obama to notice that these organizations don’t have their act together?

And what will he do about it?

NOTHING!! All talkin BS and no real action!

And what will it take for the sleeping giant of the American citizenry to wake up and get in the streets or whatever to stop this madness? What can we realistically do?

NOTHING?

So he’ll give a good teleprompter speech, and like everything else, that will be that. What diff does it make? Kill all wildlife in area, give good speech, listen to the cheers. Maybe he’ll trot out Michelle a few more photo op times so people can drool over how wonderful she is.

…and underlying the belief that a credential endows its holder with wisdom is the (totally erroneous) belief that the holder’s interests are aligned with the public interest.

Heh. Nobody seems to want to claim that O represents them. That says quite a lot, no? (oh, except Kossacks…which also says a lot.)

Obama may be a complete corporate tool — but I have to say, I don’t find it unbelievable to assume that a major oil company BP would be able to handle a major accident. And yes, I know the regulatory apparatus has been fatally compromised, but where hasn’t it been? And how soon was it absolutely clear that nothing BP could do could possibly work? What, exactly, could the Feds deploy or have deployed that would have appreciably improved the situation?

I read the last part of BT’s litany of disasters and the conclusion seems to be ‘NOTHING WORKS! DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!’

Which doesn’t sound too realistic to me.

Yes. Semantics. I think you are speaking of those whom I call the liberal elites who have been the bone in the throat of genuine populist liberalism or progressivism. They are too respectful of ideas that are on the face crazy and lack the capacity to refute them though they should know better. They deny it but they value their wealth above all else, the next being class and position. Nice polite people. The southern GOP run against them and win and win and win.

They have been off of the gulf coast for some time.

Oh methinks there are alot of wallstreeters, Big 3 CEO’s, BP execs, healthcare CEO’s etc, etc, that just luv them some Obama. Everyone else? Not so much.

Man, I am not going to miss those Black Water Dog diaries!

It’s going to be a funny 2-1/2 years watching those DKos idiots trying to find something to write about without criticizing the O-man!

Obama is a trojan whore.

I really hate talking like this.

I agree. He is the biggest fake ever imposed on the American people. Bush was alot of things, but you KNEW what he was. Obama? Nothing more than a catchy slogan like a Nike ad. Sad, truly sad. Nobody saw it coming.

Oh those morons will still post positive about this snake in the grass. No doubt about it. They have weekly pictographies about him, praising him like he’s the second coming of Jeebus. It’s disgusting.

A lot of that list has to do with government regulation, or the lack thereof. I think there is something we can do about it.

I don’t disagree, but it’s beyond economics, though. It’s a reluctance to aggressively reform powerful institutions.

I thought he was going to be a moderate not an extreme corporate jerk.

Well, maybe by August we’ll have found a Progressive to take Obama down!

We can hope!

He trusts anyone who has made more money and has more influence than he did about four years ago. He’s an aspirer, always looking for the main chance, and now that he’s achieved his goal, he’s suddenly realized there are still bigger more important more influential smarter richer people than he is.

And so he trusts them, listens to them, kowtows to them.

And they rape America while he enables them.

I guess it’s hard for us progressives (and our families) who worked hard for Obama to admit he is a fraud—
a Trojan Horse for the worst elements in our nation

I became suspicious when he so heartily embraced TARP and the financial giveaways

“Health Care Reform” transfers of wealth to Pharma and Insurance cos. confirmed that

Obama is an enemy of the people of the United States

Stockholm Syndrome with benefits.

My reading of it was that he had to say he was wrong about something in order to balance the “we have to drill” statements earlier in the news conference. It was an attempt to avoid looking clueless. Just because he is clueless about this and appears clueless to progressives and a lot of ordinary Democrats does not mean that the rest of the public will see him as clueless.

And he might not be aware of all the regulatory history that active blogger are. In the Bubble, there is more than just an oil spill to take care of and his environmental advisors are too focused on that spill to get to the regulatory history yet.

But at base, Obama trusts corporate CEOs more than he ought to – for whatever personal reasons, including his fundamental belief in Chicago economics theories.

He is not clueless. He is corrupt.

Our President has sold us out to corporate power again and again. That this is still going on proves that he has no intention of speaking for us, the voters who put him in office. He fooled us once. Next time I’ll vote Green or Independent.

He’s simply too comfy with the institutions that need aggressive confrontation.

One of those institutions is the Democratic Party. Those of us who know this easily predicted Obama’s continuation of Bush’s policies.

It is called the Ratchet Effect and it is not some new phenomenon, undiscovered by science.

The electoral ratchet permits movement only in the rightward direction. The Republican role is fairly clear; the Republicans apply the torque that rotates the thing rightward.
The Democrats’ role is a little less obvious. The Democrats are the pawl. They don’t resist the rightward movement — they let it happen — but whenever the rightward force slackens momentarily, for whatever reason, the Democrats click into place and keep the machine from rotating back to the left.

the faux naif act just doesn’t play anymore, it is as absurd as Condoleeza Rice or Bush saying “no one could have predicted.” people did predict it, you didn’t believe it, and now your faith based worldview where the heroic Donkey Party fights for the common people is coming under severe stress from cruel realities.

too bad its the people of the Gulf of Mexico, the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan, who have to suffer as a result of the perennial gullibility of the American ‘Left.’

And what will he do about it?

Not a fucking thing.

He’s already doing what he was hired to do: coddle, protect, and enrich the corporations.

We can’t keep on blaming Bush (Nancy Pelosi, etc.).

Barack Obama has been President for two years, and it is his responsibility to appoint people in all the Federal Agencies, including even the CIA, to serve the public interest.

If he is too lazy to bother taking inventory of who is currently serving in these agencies, and what their private industry conflicts may be, then he has only himself to blame. No one could be so naive as to think that Bush and Cheney did not stock government agencies with Oil Industry apologists.

The question then is why isn’t Obama stocking these agencies with good government people?

Why did Obama just rehire Bush’s own War Secretary after promising “change”.

This man is either the laziest and dumbest President I’ve seen, or entirely knowingly complicit with the Corporatist/Neocon/Bankster-Theft agenda

It’s got to be one of the two, and I vote number 2.

Obama needs to be Primaried!

Yes that expertise or wealth or power makes one’s decisions, indeed oneself, always virtuous. It’s a kind of theological concept.

Two words: Rahm Emanuel

Yup. Either a liar or just plain stupid. Either way, the results are the same–crap for this country. “She’s my daughter! SLAP She’s my sister! SLAP”

Why? Because he is “The Corporate Stoogie One in Chief”….

hockey mom but without the skirt.

All pig, no lipstick?

Yeah; what is this business about a ‘tragic flaw?’ Obama is on their team, not ours.

Dayam. He does get around.

I believe that everything Obama has done to-date, on every issue, can be explained by saying that his great strength, the ability to walk between two worlds successfully (which got him elected) has also kept him in the middle between big corporations and the American people.

He trusts that All Americans have our common interests at heart and at stake, and that he will find the common agreement between us so that we can move forward. AND, unfortunately, he takes some solace in the fact that he is a centrist (perhaps not realizing or at least not ready to admit that the republicans re-frame every discussion further and further to the right).

The day will come, sooner we hope, when he realize that the people on the right are not his friends, they don’t wish him well, they are not going to work with him for the betterment of the country, and that if he doesn’t want to continue to be embarrassed by their antics and lack of responsibility, he’s going to have to do more than slap their wrists to get an appropriate response.

One thing he should have done and could have done immediately, was to work on a worst case scenario in the Gulf, begin a contingency planning effort and to set a date certain when the government would take action to protect the coastline.

Something else he needs to do is set a position to the “left” of a moderate republican — any moderate, if he can find one — and begin his negotiations on his next step (whatever the next bill is he wants passed in the Congress) from there. He can no longer continue to attempt to be a peacemaker. It’s going to lose him the confidence of ALL Americans — just like it did Jimmy Carter.

On the Gulf, he needs to call in experts right away from every field and see what the United States government can do — not to staunch the flow but to protect the land. He has failed Louisiana by relying on the unproven “expertise” of Big Oil.

Book Salon a couple of flights upstairs with Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness hosted by Paul Street

A lot of us saw it coming and voted for Hillary, exactly for that reason.

The guy is a three dollar bill. If you needed a flashing neon sign to tell you so, how about his voting for telecom immunity after promising a filibuster. Hill’ry at least had the ‘nads to vote against it.

Yes she is a corporatist, and has flaws, but she is a work horse — O is just a show horse.

True, true.

Perfectly correct.

A lot of that list has to do with government regulation, or the lack thereof. I think there is something we can do about it.

I agree completely. But you’re implying a top to bottom redo of the entire structure of, well, EVERYTHING — and how does one guy, President or no, even if he actually WANTS to do it, do that on his own? I know he has a bully pulpit and can ‘twist arms’ — but really, this shit actually is hard. I know people are furious and I am too — but much of the discussion here seems, to me, to verge on magical thinking, and I don’t know how useful it is other than venting.

I believe you are wrong, but I guess it depends on the context, when I taught university-level political theory “liberal” referred to ideas originating during the enlightenment and associated especially with John Locke, and to a lesser extent, Adam Smith. In that sense liberals most certainly do go to war, because from the standpoint of Lockean liberal foreign policy the purpose of the state is to defend private property. Everything about the wars of Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton and now Obama are completely consistent with liberalism.

So let me ask Democrats and progressives: if you had voted for the best candidate, the greatest American to run for president since FDR, RALPH NADER, if you had done that and given Nader the same vote that Ross Perot received (about 18%), if you had done that and given Nader a voice in our national affairs, a voice against our imperial wars, what would have been the result. What? The election of McCain/Palin? Could they have been any worse than the S.O.B. (son of Obama) we now have installed for the next 4 to 8 years? Would McCain have covertly supported torturing detainees, presidential assassinations, drone bombing of civilians? I wonder, but McCain could not have done much worse!

Democrats, progressives, you outsmarted yourselves! You voted for a “winner” and we all LOST !

I am a Marxist but would count myself among those seeking a progressive movement in the US of A. Progressive and liberal are not synonyms, I taught this stuff.

I am a Marxist but would count myself among those seeking a progressive movement in the US of A. Progressive and liberal are not synonyms, I taught this stuff.

I thought I was indicating a distinction. In common practice, especially political, however it becomes impossible to retain pure definitions of anything.

I like to use the word liberal as often as possible just to throw it back in the face of the Becks and Gingriches. (my family came from the same county in Wisconsin as Battling Bob LaFollette. In fact one member gave him is last defeat before he took off.)

to reddflagg: What a stretch! To go from the period of Great Britain’s imperial triumph over Spain and France and assimilate Lockeian liberalism – primarily a defense of property and enterprise against the royal monopolies – to American liberalism displays a basic misunderstanding of Locke in his day and of American political liberals, today.

Today’s American liberals have been co-opted by the absorption of the Democratic Party by the military-industrial elite. The liberals of the Party have no where else to turn. They wish to use the instruments of government to solve domestic problems of unemployment, infrastructure decay, increasingly skewed income distributions between rich and poor, but they have no voice in the Democratic Party, because it has been taken over by the so-called “centrists” since Carter and WJ Clinton.

Progressives and labor supporters have been similarly neutralized. The only hope for any of them is the formation of new political parties, but that does not seem likely. They are trapped. They have trapped themselves.

I am sure everyone is amused by this little debate about what “liberals” are: everywhere else they are extreme free-traders sanguine about using military might to protect that trade. I would just add that anyone from outside of the US or Canada would recognize the definition I am using. A little anecdote: when I was an undergrad during Reagan I had an instructor from Peru teaching a Latin American politics class, and one day he said “Latin Americans are opposed to Reagan’s liberal policies.” This produced much head scratching, and someone held up his hand and said “Reagan is a conservative, not a liberal.” The instructor emphasized that, despite the conservative attempt to redefine liberal in the 80s that his definition is the one commonly accepted in the rest of the world and thus the default definition, something I completely agree with.

Are you kidding? Many of us knew what Obama was. We had our hair on fire screaming about his fraudness and corrupt background. We were assaulted for being racists. I repeat. We were ASSAULTED OVER AND OVER for being RACISTS!!!!!we were PUMA. Were were opposed to obbama as being inexperienced, a liar, a fraud, a corporate hack. Yes, some of us knew. It is too bad know body wanted to listen to what we were saying. Being attacked as a racist was the criticism each and every time somebody pointed out his lies, his inexperience, his corporate ties, his lies, and his bigger lies.

Hey, stop all the side arguments and focus on the real issue.

You plebs are getting an involuntary rogering of biblical proportions from the Corporate Stooge in Chief. What are you going to do about it?

To Primrose:

Barack Obama is either a fool or a knave. I think he is a great fool and a run of the mill knave. The problem is he is in too high a position for a fool or a knave, and he is doing our country irreparable harm.

Go anywhere outside the US and Canada and the definition of liberals as centrists (e.g. the Liberal Democrats in the UK and the Free Democrats in Germany, both in coalition governments with conservative parties) is the one that carries. You have essentially bought in to the Reagan-era framing by conservatives of liberals as on the left.

When will Firedoglake go *all in* and operate under the hypothesis that the current system cannot be changed without a mass struggle against the elite? And that the “left – right” system is used specifically to forestall that mass struggle?

The time of questioning and wondering about Obama et al. is over. The earth is dying. We dont have the time for baby steps.

Hillary is a white female Obama. Nothing more.

And I believe Phil Ochs wrote a song about this called “Love Me I’m a Liberal”

Yea, let’s not look back. Let’s not assign blame. Let everybody off the hook. Pretend Obama is just trying his best. He inherited this mess. Never mind that he campaigned hard for this and said he had the answers. And now we are supposed to ignore his incompetence and look forward. NO WAYW!!!!!!!!! No way. Obama needs to be held accountable as Bush should have been but Obama would not. now Obama gets culpability for both Bush’s crimes and now his own!

Obama should have investigated Bush. Then Obama could blame Bush. But since Obama never had the courage to investigate Bush, the war criminal, then Obama gets to shoulder all the blame. You can’t blame someone if you let them off he hook.

“Pretend Obama is just trying his best. He inherited this mess. Never mind that he campaigned hard for this and said he had the answers.”

The funny thing is that IS how the automatic-pilot Obama defenders are reacting. Sort of like that old Simpsons’ episode where Bart is cowering in a room saying “Krusty is coming, Krusty is coming.” Just go over to HP and read some of the comments to clear-headed blogs like Harry Shearer’s from a few days back: delusional at best.

President Obama is also obviously responsible for the fact that many of the children of the oil rig operators have cavities in their teeth.

Oh please — Nader gave us Bush. Without Nader Gore would’ve won Florida cleanly. As it was he did win, but that, as we know, got lost in the scuffle.

dakine01 is upstairs!
Memorial Day 2010

Clinton gave us Bush, by grossly disenfranchising his base with NAFTA, a botched bullshit HCR attempt, his overtures to Reaganism on cutting the social safety-net, etc.

The Democratic Party gave us Bush by running Gore, a man who could not possibly distance himself from the above if he tried, and he didn’t even try.

Moreover, getting Obama elected gave us a whole lot more Bush, and established the most egregios Bush policies as now being the accepted bipartisan consensus. Do you think Gore would have been significantly more liberal than Obama? Based on what, the fact that he made a fucking movie? He’s a bigger war-hawk, a bigger deficit-hawk, and he’s as entrenched in corporatism as any other DLC’er.

And speaking of Paul Street, he along with the folks over at Black Agenda Report alerted me to Obama’s true character and intentions back in 2007. Glen Ford even warned me on my radio show that Obama was a Trojan horse back in February 2008. Read Paul Street’s book “Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics.”

I can’t wait for Obama to become President:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/30-0

We could really use some genuine leadership—not a corporate syncophant and a master of good intentions who consistently fails to deliver.

Scarecrow is upstairs!
Carol Browner on BP Efforts to Contain Gusher: It’s Going to Get Worse

Glad to see that Black AgendaReport is on your radar,mm.

I have sung its praises here for some time now.

GREAT site..and no pretentious BS,thankfully.

I agree 100%.

Don’t think Jane’s figured it out yet, if her own comments are to be believed.

I only wish O was acting as he does out of dumbness. He knows exactly what he’s doing–fucking over real people in favor of big corporations.

Bush/Cheney also were not dumb–they achieved exactly the same goal, and that’s what they intended to do all along.

Villains since Reagan all love it when you are dumb enough to think they are just dumb. That way, you won’t think they need to be punished.

Some saw it coming. As soon as I learned in early 2008 that Michelle was a corporate lawyer, my bells were going off big-time.

Forest, meet trees. Big corporations are deliberately and methodically being placed in a position to control people’s lives and shape the future. That’s not liberalism, that’s fascism.

I’m very happy you never taught any of my children, if your present comments are in any way reflective of your teaching style and philosophy. You show a remarkable lack of insight and perspective, and completely fail to capture the political realities while staunchly defending your sacred label system.

Yes, indeed, what are we going to do about it?

Siun is upstairs!
Israeli Warships Try To Block Wheelchairs and Schoolbooks for Gaza

Only a few here have said the obvious…”What do we do about it?” Too few have productive answers. canadianbeaver rightly points out we didn’t see it coming. Too many people i know don’t want to admit Obama’s duplcity or stupidity or wrongheadedness when faced with the facts. Denial is not a river in Egypt.

We helped put the man in office…we are going to have to work hard to find viable candidates to confront Obama’s errors, hypocrisy, or lies…or whatever they are that have strengthened corporate ownership of our government so that it no longer represents our interests (as citizens, not corporations).

I come to FDL because here i’ve witnessed Jane and you all do magic finding productive ways to confront the politcal gamesmanship that more than once has caused me to abandon hope.

We need to relentlessly confront Obama & company’s sellouts and failures to honor their promises. We need to be developing a game plan so we aren’t stuck in a reactive position with no options when elections come up.

I come to FDL because here i’ve witnessed Jane and you all do magic finding productive ways to confront the politcal gamesmanship that more than once has caused me to abandon hope.

You should use the sidebar on the right to donate to FDL’s call to action to run an ad in the D.C. area.

That will undoubtedly work to finally shame the completely shameless by performing the otherwise impossible task of highlighting the huge dick waving red flag of hypocrisy related to Obama’s off-shore-drilling endorsements and the current state of affairs in the Gulf of Mexico.

When the ad revenue you help provide is ultimately used by Big Media to lobby against your interests you can take solace in the fact that you’ll have successfully gotten countless lobbyists and politicians to watch 3-seconds of an ad spot that calls them out before they turned the channel to a shiny BP greenwashing ad that plays 10,000 times a day all over the country.

Well, I am glad too because no doubt they would be the stubborn type who believe that if you think something is true it is true, and that a word’s meaning can be changed ad hoc and at will to fit one’s purposes.

Lisa Derrick is upstairs!
Caught on Tape: Hollywood LAPD Bash Bicyclists During BP Protest Ride

Exactly. NoDrama ObamaRahma is a coporatist. The question is can his world view be challenged enough for him to bite the puppeteer hand up his ass? I sorta doubt it. AS long as all these corporatists in his administration stay onboard Obama is showing any who will look where his loyalties lie.

That’s pretty much my metric as well. Once you start to see his cabinet purged of every last ounce of neoliberalism, we’ll know it’s worthwhile to even engage in the conversation. Until then, there’s no point. All he has to do is hit ignore.

Or at the very least it hard to tell your actual bosses (Big Business) what to do………one can only give suggestions to the boss-not orders.

Well, venting can be a good thing. Hope every one feels better having gotten their anger/disappointment/frustration off their chest.

And how many doable solutions have been proposed? Not one that I can see. Seems playing Obama the magic negroe would be appropriate, as you folks seem to think there are magical solutions.

I agree with this. We should just let the well bleed itself dry, because there’s no manual or turn-key solution here. No point in doing anything other than letting BP spin its wheels trying a bunch of harebrained ideas that didn’t work 30-years ago either.

At least when it fills with ocean water it will ever so slightly lower the sea-level, and help with that disappearing shoreline problem we’re having.

Oh yeah! it always comes back to “race”.

The problem is he suck as Prez,almost all of his decisions are geared to rewarding Corporations over people.

He just proposed more offshore drilling a few months ago,something you would expect from a GOP Prez.And as for transforming the Nation to new energy………he made a feeble attempt.

We all knew that all the Govt agencies were deficient.He even campaigned promising major changes ….And yet after almost 2 yrs he has not made the necessary changes….take a look at the DOJ.The guy is pathetic.

BP Played Central Role in Botched Containment of 1989 Exxon Valdez Disaster

Democratic Senators Urge Probe into Transocean Dividends

US Inspector General Report – Falsified Oil Rig Inspections And Other Improprieties

What was Halliburton’s role in US oil spill?

Dividends
Dividends
Dividends
Dividends

Absolute nonsense.

“Many of the people appointed in the Bush administration are still burrowed in the agencies that are supposed to oversee the [oil] industry,” Pelosi said when asked if Democrats could have prevented or mitigated the crisis by keeping a closer watch on the industry.”

What federal agency did the Bush administration NOT appoint people to to burrow into and corrupt that agency’s regulatory function?

In fact, after we saw what Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson did at the Justice Department, exactly how many Hatch Act violations are we really talking about throughout all other federal agencies? And since we know that this happened at the DOJ, did it also happen at the Interior Department under Gayle Norton, and all other federal agencies headed by hardcore Republican de-regulatory fools, right-wing fools who have gotten and continue to get American citizens killed or injured?

We are literally still experiencing the results of a pandemic of corrupt Republican practices in our federal government, fostered by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, conservative partners in the most criminal and corrupt administration and crime spree in American history.

Which makes David Michael Green’s excellent article today at The Smirking Chimp so appropriate, entitled: “I Can’t Wait For Barack Obama To Become President.”

President Obama, since he’s been in office, has bent over backwards to appease Republicans and corporations, making him look and act a whole lot like George W. Bush, even though I’d love to see him, and his administration, do a snarling Dick Cheney impression and go after the Republicans and corporations, holding their feet to the fire, while standing up forthright for liberal ideals and our liberal democracy.

For instance, one of the excuses the Obama administration has used to explain the slow pace of reforming our federal agencies to weed out all the corrupt Republican practitioners and practices has been that Republicans in the U.S. Senate keep blocking his nominations. What? During the first congressional recess after entering the White House, President Obama could have recess-appointed all of his nominees (we are talking about America being in a crisis after Bush/Cheney), telling the obstructionist Republicans to “Go F**k Yourselves,” so the desperately-needed clean-up work at all of our democratic institutions could have started immediately. He didn’t, so most federal agencies remain compromised, and American lives still are endangered due to Republicans weakening regulatory oversight and enforcement. How many more MMS’s are there?

Furthermore, President Obama, and his administration, decided to give retroactive immunity to all members of the outgoing Bush/Cheney administration. Oversight? Investigations? Enforcement? Prosecutions? Scrapped. Nada. Zilch. Thus, culture of corruption Republicans have been given the green light to continue with their dismantling of our democracy, with no recriminations for their past crimes. I, too, can’t wait for Barack Obama to become president.

I can’t get over how many of you are willing to throw Obama and the dems under the bus. I spent 8 long years under Bush/Cheney and worked to keep dems in office so that one day, we would get our chance once again to right this ship of state. I’ve got 4 children and I want them to inherit this democracy without corporatism in charge. Obama inherited an unprecedented failing nation and he has to lead Weak, self-serving Dems. The Party of NO obstructs and declares their goal is to make this President FAIL. With HCR _the Tea Party got in its bruises, Financial Reform is okay but not perfect. We let the Beck’s, Palin’s and Cheney’s dictate and measure his performance and then can’t wait to support their lies and badgering. I really am tired of liberals who got no guts. Why would any dem put their futures in our hands, we behave like spoiled children. Don’t get what we want, run and hide!! Well, this president is far ahead of the last. We are no longer an embarrassment around the world; we are headed out of Iraq and DADT will soon be a footnote and we are fighting in Afghanistan.
Obama may have been enamoured with the Team of Rivals, but what our President did not understand is that in Lincoln’s day, the rivals loved their country more than corporatism and were more interested in success for the new nation than their own pocketbooks. The President did not create the oil spill in the Gulf. BP did it through years of bribery,lucrative gifts to people in power and the money to “buy the science it needed” to achieve its company’s goals. With 40 years of civic activism I am bruised, bloodied, but I will not surrender to the Party of NO. This is my President, I fought for him and I will not run when the going gets rough. PS Tim Kaine needs to go as chair of the DNC.

It’s not a question of Gore vs. Obama — it’s what would have happened if Bush had not happened.

SInce Gore was highly focussed on Al-Quaeda terrorism, there’s a good chance 9-11 would *not* have happened on his watch — the consequences of which are incalculable.

Nader was wrong in 2000 to say there wasn’t a rip of difference between the parties — but that’s certainly true now. I was a loyal democrat since voting for McGovern in ’72, but I have left the party now.

But Nader is still fundamentally not for real. Nor was Perot, even though he was the only one in the 1990 presidential debates to make the correct call on the consequences of NAFTA.

As one half a mixed-race family (Aframerican –Ashkenaz) which was unanimously pro-Hillary, I am sick and tired of people crying race when Obama is criticized.

The guy is a corporate tool — and always was. If you want some inspiration from the Aframerican side in politics, go back to Jesse Jackson’s run for president in 1988. I remember hearing interviews with redneck farmers after they heard Jackson speak, and it’s as if they were injected with progressive truth serum.

But Jesse’s run was quixotic at best.

They are throwing us under the bus.

The fact that republicans are criminals doesn’t make Obama good. He is still for the corporations and the corporations only. The health bill is a wet kiss for the insurance business and big pharma. Thirty million new customers, no obligation to sell good insurance, no government buying power to negotiate pricing for the Medicare drug benefit — the back room deals with big pharma are a matter of record — even the NYT has them scoped.

The meaning of words, especially political labels, changes constantly over time.

Try to keep up.

Every word true, and also well-known. Every agency was corrupted in the same ways. Obama identifies with the people who corrupted them.

The evidence of what is happening couldn’t be clearer.

Regular people are the new cattle. We’re only here to be eaten.

Will we ever use our horns?

Drowning in the Kool-Aide. Somebody throw that person a life preserver.

Or not.

Reddflagg: I truly would go outside the US, if I could. Regrettably, I am too old for permanent residence in another country, and my dollars have sunk in exchange value to the point where I could not afford to live outside our shores.

As for the definition of “liberal” outside the US, you are certainly right. The word has a far different meaning from that here. Here it does connote left of center. The catch is that the “center” in the US has been shifted so far to the right by Carter and WJ Clinton, that to be left of it now means voting for Obama-care as almost all of our rotten, “progressive” Democrats have done.

Yes, liberalism in Europe refers to John Locke’s opposition to monarchical or government monopoly and preferences in commerce.

Since I continue to live in our beknighted land, I use the language as understood here, unless I specifically write otherwise.

We agree far more than we disagree, I venture to suggest.

Gore did not win clearly, and his loss was his own fault. Gore did not even win his own state, Tennessee. He was a poor candidate, timid and conservative. His father would have been ashamed of him. To blame junior’s loss on Nader is to deny others the right to run.

My vote always goes to the best possible candidate. If Nader had not run, I’d have chose another independent candidate or not have voted. When you vote for someone who can win rather than the best person, you risk betrayal. The Democrats betrayed us just as did GWB. The former supported the wars, and they “behaved” themselves throughout the Bush presidency. John Kerry was an even worse candidate than Albert Gore. He, too, had nothing to offer ordinary Americans but war, war, war.

Actually I think the difference is you are using a historically-grounded definition whereas I am using a theoretical definition. Liberal theory is more or less transhistorical. Locke’s (heretofore unasked) question was quite simple: “Why do we have government?” This is important because for liberals society is the sum of its parts, there are no such things as classes or structural coercion, and therefore the best way to further the ends of society (a good life for everyone) is to allow each person to freely work for his or her self. Thus, liberal theory is against government regulation of the economy because it interferes with both the welfare of individuals and of society as a whole. Locke’s answer to the question of why we even want government is that it can act to protect improved property (e.g. cultivated land) which is more productive but which you wouldn’t undertake if it could be stolen from you. It is only slightly simplistic to argue that for liberals the purpose of government is the protection of private property. Now take a look at the recent policies of, say, Bill Clinton and his NAFTA and all the talk of “growing the economy” and you will find liberal theory.

Liberal foreign policy is also derived from Lockean theory in that it is based upon Locke’s theory of “human nature” derived from his discussion of “the state of nature” that posits individuals to be essentially decent and interested in cooperation to further their ends, as opposed to the Hobbesian “realist” theory (from which conservative foreign policy is derived) which posits us to be murderous thugs if not constrained. Replace people with the countries of the world, but with the understanding that there cannot be police to protect them (there is no world government) and you have the basic outlines of liberal and conservative foreign policy.

I am a Marxist and I must admit am hostile to liberal theory, its conclusions, its policy prescriptions, etc., but my point is that you should be wary of it too.

Accuracy is its own justification. Accuracy in terminology is what makes discussion possible. When one redefines terms to suit his or her desires we no longer are able to make comparisons which destroys intellectual curiosity and progress. But I can see by your arguments that you are neither intellectual curious nor progressive.

Actually now I see that the difference is that you are using a loose definition of liberals, taken from the vernacular.

Is it OK to judge your intelligence by the lack of accuracy of your conclusions, Teach?

If you insist on using historically fixed meanings for political labels, you are not dealing in reality. Sorry. Words certainly do matter, but so does communicating in the accepted vernacular of your audience. Unless the goal is to only be understood by yourself. Or, perhaps, to be crowned “Universal Mentor.”

Your anti-rationalism is closer to what the conservatives believe than even the mealy-mouthed liberals. It is obvious that you have some sort of agenda and are willing to twist reality in order to advance it. I would kick you out of my class simply for being obtuse.

LOL. I would know better than to ever enroll in a class you were teaching. Tight-assed instructors quickly get a bad reputation, and I’m quite sure you fit that mold.

Why don’t you trot over to Redstate and tell the conservatives how they’re not “conservative” anymore?

Or maybe your hot air emissions would only find acceptance with other Marxists. Property is theft, right?

LOL, that is a groaner. If you knew anything about Marxism (or epistemology, or ontology, or political theory, or politics, or history) you would know “Property is theft!” is a slogan coined by French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in his 1840 book “What is Property? Or, an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government,” and that Marx had utter contempt for Proudhon. As for redstate I think you would find a home there: they have no problem arguing that up is down, black is white, the sky is red, etc. if it serves their ends. Bon Voyage!

Could you possibly sink any deeper into your esoteric irrelevancy?

How have any of us survived this long without intimate knowledge of Proudhon, I wonder? (As if he was the only human to ever use that phrase.)

I think we all understand that Marxists have the best grip on current realities.