On Tuesday, Barack Hussein Obama will take the oath of office and become our nation's 44th President. I have to admit I am still in a state of disbelief.
If you would have asked me one year ago that the man I wanted to be president more than just about anyone else on the political scene was actually going to win, I would've told you that you were nuts. In fact, I probably would've chalked the whole idea up to a pipe dream. There is no way that a country that elected George W. Bush twice would vote for a man like Barack Obama. The last eight years have produced an America that is a three headed monster...a monster that would never elect a man like our next president. It's just not possible, is it?
Before we take a look at how it happened let's take a look at what we have become in the last eight years. What are the three heads...exactly?
1. Hate. For all of our talk of loving thy neighbor, we sure have done an awful lot of hating in this country. Turn on any right wing radio dick and you will hear what I am talking about. They will tell you of the traitors in this country that continually plot to ruin our way of life. These traitors are...well...our next president and anyone else that supports him. They are the media. They are the teachers. They are you and they are I.
Of course, the irony is that they will also tell you that it is the LEFT that is full of hate but I think we can all see, after their convention in my home state of Minnesota, that they should take a look in the fucking mirror. There is no doubt that there is hate on the left. It's just not as prevalent and well organized as it is in the current incarnation of the Republican Party. Even President Bush is appalled by it which is ironic because he helped to create it.
2. Fear. The right does a great job with this one. My eight year old daughter has been told by fellow classmates, whose parents are conservative, that Barack Obama, after he becomes president, is going to give guns to babies so they can kill each other thus leading to infant genocide. I suppose it's possible that something was lost in the translation but I think you get my point.
Bush, Rove, Cheney and minions have been extremely successful in making many people in this country so hysterical with fear that they truly believe that Barack Obama is going to destroy them. Their propaganda has been so effective that I have had people tell me that I "best purchase" a gun to fight off the liberals that are going to take my family away from me and put them in camps. Three people told me this. I am not fucking kidding. And I thought the "liberals are fascists" argument was loony. The cheese is just flying off the cracker now.
3. Ignorance. This one is key. Destroy the credibility of the media and education (e.g. all commie liberal traitors), and you can get #1 and #2 with ease. An ignorant population is easier to control. If twenty percent of this country believe that the media and public education are doling out biased information, where are they going to turn? Either to the Republican Party's various information outlets or nowhere. More than likely it's the latter.
It's not just enough to get people to tune out or follow the party line. They have to be happy about it. Somewhere along the line it became cool to be a fucking moron. We like smart doctors, elite athletes, and business savvy CEOs but when it comes to our government-specifically our president-we want someone with whom we can have beer. Being smart is the absolute last thing many of us seem to want in president. I offer as evidence of this Governor Sarah Palin who has broad support amongst many conservatives.
So, folks on the right have done a great job of crafting this three headed monster in order to essentially gut this country as the mob would bust a joint out that it has taken over. Take a look around you. Know anyone that has lost a job recently? I bet you do. Where did all the money go? It's pretty obvious...the people who are on their way out the door. And funny thing...they don't really care. They got what they wanted from a bunch of hateful, fearful, and ignorant people who STILL believe in them. I have a friend who works in the mortgage industry who is just about destitute and will not, under any circumstances, admit any fault on the part of any conservative. It's all Barney Frank's fault!
So, how is it possible that through all of this we elected a man like Barack Obama? There's the crappy economy, the failed policies in the Middle East, and the shit stained image of the United States in the world...all things that I'm sure helped contribute to the victory. I say it's something else.
When Barack Obama takes the oath of office on Tuesday morning, it will be because the good guys are finally starting to win. I want to be very VERY clear about this. The good guys are not just Democrats. They are Republicans and even far right conservatives. They are independents, socialists, communists, constitutionalists and everyone in between. The good guys are people exactly like our next president...people who have an infinite supply of intellectual and moral strength. People who are going to show those who have succumbed to the three headed monster the true meaning of patriotism.
And there were just enough of them to win an election.
23 comments:
The end indeed. What are you going to bitch about now? You haven't put much of anything on this blog for some time. When, all of a sudden, YOU can't talk about fear and ignorance then you are going to be in the same boat as Jon Stewart and Olberman, as in what are they going to talk about now? They're too pc to make fun of Obama they way they did Bush. They're the ones who need Sara Palin out there so they have material for their shows (that not many people watch btw). Why don't you share with us what role you think Barney Frank had in all this? You are chicken and very rarely take a specific position on anything anymore and if you do, it's just some word like Unity or Hope. Your life will probably be just as empty on Wednesday as it is today.
You know what, rld? Normally I don't use language like this but SHUT THE FUCK UP! It is people like you that give our party a bad name. I disagree with Mark on many things but he is 100 percent correct on what has happened to Republicans. We have let ourselves be run by hateful, ignorant people and look what has happened to our country.
You attack Mark personally and wrongly on so many levels. His family has been sick the last week which is why there haven't been many posts. Maybe his future posts are going to deal with how to clean up the mess that our side made the last eight years. If you were a true conservative, you would admit fault, as Mark has done several times with people on the left, and present solutions.
I talked at length with Mark at Christmas about future topics on this blog and I am here to tell you that they are going to be interesting, intelligent, funny, and helpful. Empty is not a word that would describe the future of Notes From The Front.
I guess there is hope for the Republican Party yet:)
Things just get more and more interesting on this blog. Glad to here you are doing better Mark.
What's hopeful is that a goodly number of Republicans finally admitted that Bush has made colossal mistakes, that McCain/Palin were likely to continue them, that Obama would do a better job and they voted for him.
There are good people across the political spectrum. But for the first seven years of Bush's reign no Republican dared admit that. They had to criticize their opponents in every way possible. They could never acknowledge that ANY idea that a Democrat had was in any way possibly good or correct.
This kind of oppositional politics is self-destructive in the long run, because you lock yourself out of the best ideas. One of the reasons that Bill Clinton did well for the economy was that he wasn't so doctrinaire. The Republicans wanted welfare reform, and Clinton went along with it. The Republicans wanted a balanced budget and to eliminate the deficit, and Clinton DID it -- something no Republican has been able to do in a century.
Obama has said time and again that if someone has a better idea, he wants to hear it. Bush never talked like that -- he always insisted he was right about everything, that he got his marching orders from God. To this day he still can't admit any real mistakes -- he's still carping that everything bad that happened was someone else's fault.
As far as Jon Stewart goes: he'll have plenty to talk about. He's already criticized Obama's silence on Israel's invasion of Gaza, he echoed the Right's derision of the "deification of Obama," Geithner's tax problems, and he can still make fun of Republicans like Palin who still refuse to acknowledge their responsibility for the mess we're in.
Obama will have scandals; someone always screws up. The Daily Show pulled no punches on Monica Lewinski; if Obama has a major screwup Stewart will lambaste him for it.
But the Republicans are inherently easier to deride. They constantly trumpet their moral superiority and correctness of their ideas. When guys like Larry Craig are caught cruising men's rooms, or the employees of the Bush Interior department are swapping sex for oil, of course the comedy shows will have a field day. Hypocrisy and hubris are much easier and deserving target than honest mistakes.
Iowa and RLD= metaphor for the end of the Republican Party as we know it.
The Republicans wanted welfare reform, and Clinton went along with it blk? Yeah, only after he vetoed it 3 times. Got any more revisionist history to peddle? And to you Iowa Kid, Markadelphia hasn't presented a specific solution to anything in a long time on this blog. Sure he admits the lefts faults - giving those faults 2 lines in amongst the other 98 lines of juvenile name calling.
wow blk, i didn't know the gov of alaska has so much sway over, say, the house banking committee. you sure are a genius. elizabeth, iowa disagreed with rld, or did you mess that? typical liberal education. How many of you think that geithners tax issues were "an honest mistake"??? hahahahahahaha, nice interpretation - the garbage you all swallow is hilarious. then markadelphia wants to know where the money went. i read today that there are more government employees in this country than manufacturing employees. thats where the money is. Yeah markadelphia preaches against hate in the same post as calling people right wing dicks, gives a couple of idiotic examples that nobody can verify, calling people fucking morons, saying palin isn't smart, and so on. markadelphia, why don't you tell us what role barney frank had in all this? or are you too chicken to put your assessment down for fear that someone may pick it apart.
I've pretty much said all along that Barney Frank is partly responsible for our economic problems. The information that you get about him from your propaganda network...which cracks me up btw because all of you guys sound like you are reading from a script-exactly the same lines!...is only a small part of the greater issue. As blk so eloquently pointed out...
"Obama has said time and again that if someone has a better idea, he wants to hear it. Bush never talked like that -- he always insisted he was right about everything, that he got his marching orders from God. To this day he still can't admit any real mistakes -- he's still carping that everything bad that happened was someone else's fault."
This perfectly sums up the difference between someone like me-an Obama supporter and someone like sw, rld, taxpayer etc-supporters of a bizarre form of conservatism in which personal responsibility seems to have gone out the window.
To be certain, there is plenty of blame to be laid at the feet of the Democrats in Congress. But what of the Republicans? And don't give me the "they spent like liberals" line. Take a hard look at the mistakes they made based on their flawed economic ideology. I don't think you can because you are incapable of admitting fault. That is, in fact, the Bush legacy.
Help me out with what the "flawed economic ideology" is, exactly. I'm not saying you're wrong. I just wonder exactly what position you are taking.
The Friedman idea that the free market can take care of itself without any oversight and very little regulation. Ol' Milt seemed to forget that people are inherently greedy and if they've been given the wink, like W gave them, to do whatever they want..well...you have what we have now.
Now, that doesn't mean that government should heap regulations on the private industry either. Finding the balance is a very complex process of which there is no wise old man. I think it is safe to say that you begin by not allowing criminals and incompetents to run the various industries of our country. This would also prevent the large amount of buying people off on in DC that most of these people like to do so they can keep being criminals.
President Obama says that he is going to change this. Let's hope he does.
Too funny. We haven't run a market without oversight or vast amounts of regulation in decades. Every year industry is saddled with more regulation and more requirements and more litigation yet it gets worse.
You have little understanding of the 'free market' do you?
Regulation and oversight aren't inherently bad but what we have now hinders free market correction and creates more and more loopholes to exploit.
"I think it is safe to say that you begin by not allowing criminals and incompetents to run the various industries of our country."
Thank you Mister Obvious!
Instead of writing the crap you do and sounding mentally handicapped, how about a condensed version eh?:
True Free market is dangerous so I think a perfect regulated free market is better. Companies should not hire criminals or incompetents to lead them. Stop the buying of Senators.
There, a condensed version of what you want and probably what most people do agree with. Without all the innuendo and false premises, you might make salient points.
Actually I have quite a bit of understanding of the free market. This statement
"Every year industry is saddled with more regulation and more requirements..."
shows that you do not. Spend some time in the library or on the Internet and focus your conceptual lens on this topic
Ronald Reagan and Deregulation: Government Policy in the Free Market Since 1980.
Here's a hint...one of your main topics should be media ownership. I think you'll get a kick out of that one.
When you're done, let me know what you find out. It will be interesting to see how much critical thought will be put behind YOUR view of the free market.
one of your main topics should be media ownership.
You mean like a member of the Mexican oligarchy propping up the NY Times?
While the MBS-market was conspicuously NOT regulated, you have to be a first class imbecile to not see that the vast majority of markets have been subject to more regulation, not less. Check out the Federal Register - notice any great reduction there in the last 20 years?
Govt has more power than corporations M, no matter how blind you choose to be to that. Then you wonder why govt does favors for certain businesses (the ones who have made the right campaign contributions usually). If business was all powerful, it wouldn't need to use govt - would it?
M
It's interesting to me that (if I infer correctly from your response) you would cite the crash of a market - let's use Juris's MBS market as an example - as a failure of the free market system. Many economists would consider the crash of the MBS market as perfect operation of the market. Yes, people got rich. But while that may have been a small part of the collapse, the actual financial reality is that the market was doomed to collapse at some point anyway. If anything, it's the years preceding the crash where the market was artificially enhanced, in large part due to failure of government policy, that should be viewed as the failure. One can easily make the argument that the ill-fated makeup of the MBS market would not have existed if government had not laid the framework for proliferation of subprime mortgages. The Bush Administration is blamed for a great many things...failure on this front is something for which he does not get enough blame, if you ask me.
I hear Obama talk about "fairness" in the market, and you endorse his idea of regulating to eliminate corruption. Yet at the same time you acknowledge that people are inherently greedy. So isn't it possible - one might say even likely - that additional regulation will simply have the short-term effect of scapegoating those who share only a fraction of the blame for the current problems and, long-term, greed and corruption will arise in other markets? 20 years down the road we'll be talking about how greed and corruption in the Bandwidth market led to the financial market collapse of 2029. Are we now charging government - the very people who are most susceptible to corruption - with stamping out corruption everywhere it occurs?
No thanks. I have a lot more faith in free market corrections which, while painful for many, will eventually always work. The people that are hurt the most by a market correction are the people who were ill-positioned before the correction. Whose fault is that? Undoubtedly there are cases where people were unable to position themselves any better, and those are the unfortunate victims of the situation. Is government's aim to prevent that from ever happening? Wow...good luck with that. Otherwise, for the majority of those businesses and people who are currently failing, I would say they are failing now because they deserve to fail.
or, we could give the government less power...then it may become less of a magnet for corruption. I doubt, though, that many here I disagree with will favor THAT remedy.
In 2004, New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey resigned after the married father was alleged to have hired an unqualified boy toy to run his Homeland Security Department. In 2006, Rep. William Jefferson of Louisiana was caught with nearly $100,000 in his freezer. Rep. Patrick Kennedy, Spitzer, John Edwards, and the dem replacement for Foley haven't had very good years recently but their stuff was all personal. Charles Rangel, the Democratic dinosaur in charge of the House Ways and Means Committee, is embroiled in a series of allegations of self-dealing corruption where the guy who writes tax laws for the rest of us doesn't like paying his taxes. Tim Geithner is in the same boat but I'm happy about that - the guy in charge of the IRS doesn't like paying his own income taxes....I couldn't ask for anything more and like sw said - honest mistake my arse. Chris Dodd, who gets a major subprime loan, and Barney Frank, who tells the country there is nothing wrong with Fannie and Freddie (I don't need to watch Fox, I can get that info from the Senate Banking Comittee hearings themselves), were both at ground zero of the Fannie-Freddie meltdown and haven't stepped down from their committee chairmanships, even with the nexus between the money they received and the entities they were supposed to oversee. Bill Richardson bowed out as Obamas choice to be Commerce secretary thanks to an unfolding investigation into possible pay-for-play deal and we now you have Blago in Illinois. Caroline Kennedy, who can't finish a single sentence without "You know" or "I mean", never elected to a single office is now somehow qualified to be a U.S. senator by a fiat appointment in a political climate where Sarah Palin (16 years in local and state politics) is deemed too inexperienced for high elected office (don't launch into another boring tirade about Palin again, that's not the point).
I totally understand that the party in power warrants — and gets — more scrutiny than the other guys. Well, as of yesterday, the Democrats now dominate American politics in a way they haven't since the 1960s. Suddenly, a Democratic "culture of corruption" sure seems like a pretty easy story to write Mark...and these are the folks who are in charge of regulating the rest of us? I certainly hope Obama can change all that but it sure seems like a tall task as those folks aren't going to suddenly give up their posts for the greater good.
Companies failing is not a failure of the free market, it is a part of the free market. For example, the Big Three automakers won’t compete effectively until they lower their labor costs and produce better management. As Rep. Tom Coburn told the Senate during the hearings, GM and Toyota sold roughly the same number of vehicles over the last year, but Toyota turned a $1.7 billion profit while GM lost around $9 billion. That doesn’t happen by accident. Until these automakers and their unions resolve the structural problems that creates this kind of unprofitability (like job classifications on the shop floor), they are a terrible credit risk and a lousy investment — and neither management nor labor shows much willingness to change.
One more thing I've been thinking about recently - given what we know of Ted Stevens, Rangel, and the Freddie/Fannie circle, surely no one like Bernie Madoff steals billions right under the N.Y./D.C. radar without friends in high places. Can't our media, or anybody else for that matter, do some research and find out exactly to whom and to what degree he donated to Congress? (Names and amounts?) This makes Ken Lay look tiny.
When your 401(K) balance drops by 30-40% you know your retirement is in trouble; when pension funds or Fannie and Freddie take a similar hit, we get bland reassurances from politicians that everything’s okay. Isn’t it better to know where things stand? Like PL, I'll take my chances in the free market.
"Govt has more power than corporations M, no matter how blind you choose to be to that."
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. Our government is the stool pigeon of US Corporations. The Great Lie is that everything would be just fine if government would get off the backs of the free market. And who are the ones that are paying for the PR of the Lie? Corporations. They have enjoyed 28 years of getting to fuck around and pretty much do whatever they want...as long as they paid off people in Congress...of both parties btw.
Last, I agree with your list of Democratic corruption. This would be an excellent example of why Obama is going to have more problems with the Dems than the Republicans. He really does want to change the way business is done in DC. He is going to have a lot of problems trying to accomplish this because of people in his own party.
That being said, the Democratic corruption can't hold a candle to what your side has done the last eight years. Murder, theft, lying, and yes..even treason...all things that are simply swept away because a). Conservatives are always right b). When a conservative breaks the law, it is the fault of a witch hunt. And c). In the rare event that conservatives do "slip up" it is because they are behaving like liberals (see too much spending).
PL, I'll give you the fact that the concept of the free market is a nice one. And let's say we whittle it down to as little regulation as possible. What is the mechanism for oversight then? How can we prevent companies like AIG from doing what they did in the future? If the government is not the tool, then what is?
My problem isn't with the notion of government oversight per se, particularly as it relates to criminal wrongdoing. Rather, my problem is with the very question "How can we prevent..." Frankly, I don't believe it's the job of the government to prevent anything like what happened with AIG.
Unfortunately, being stupid isn't a crime. A problem such as AIG's will always arise when the investment basis is flawed. The securitization of subprime mortgages - a financial inevitability, given the flawed business model of issuing subprime mortgages - was inevitably going to lead to a market failure, whether it be due to the housing bubble bursting, interest rates falling too low, credit market failure, etc. What exactly is the government supposed to do to stop that? Tell AIG that they are becoming "too invested" in CDSs to cover their "too many" MBSs? That smacks of competitive dysfunction and, frankly, would seem to me to open the door even more to corruption. A scenario where a government can tell one business to stop doing something that is perfectly legal is a nightmare of epic proportion. You think no-bid contracts are bad, how about a situation where a policymaker with a financial interest in one company can actively pursue a policy that retards the business of a competing company, all under the auspices of "preventing companies like AIG from doing what they did."
Point the finger of blame at whichever President or whichever Congress you want. The reality remains the same. A tremendous portion of the "prosperity" realized during the Clinton administration was due to the dotcom boom (another inevitability independent of government fiscal policy) and the growth of the financial market, which owed a great deal to the boom of securities such as MBSs. Could the government have taken steps to proactively address this issue? Probably, although if it did something like the trendy "crack down on speculation" then you are clearly infringing upon the opportunity of reasoned investors to turn a profit. If the government was bright enough to identify and attack the root cause of the problem - arguably caused, to a large degreee, by the government itself - then the market ultimately would have had a chance to correct itself more gracefully. Either way, though, the market was doomed to correct. AIG isn't the cause as much as it is a pawn, facilitating a boom that we and our government cheered the whole way.
I'm not sure anyone has to "agree" with the list. They are facts...how the hell could anyone disagree with them? They ar emuch more concrete than say, a story of some guy you know in the mortgage industry or a story filtered a couple times with one of those filters being an 8 year old.
Just know that the talk of "your side", "well you guys were worse", and "this country is run by hateful, fear mongering, ignorant murderers and thieves" isn't going to last very much longer, which is why I agree with rld in the sense that you folks will not have anyone to blame for some time now.
You've put up blog entries saying conservatives are the roadblocks to solving every problem in this country. Well now that they are out of power I'm going to expect to see some results. I'd better see the unemployment rate drop, diseases cured, health care system fixed, a cleaner environment, schools better stop complaining about lack of funding, crime better be reduced, deficit better be reduced, etc. I'd better not see our country get hit again by terrorists either. No more "Blame Bush" folks. We are going to see how the left governs and the whole world will see you all unfiltered in this 24 hour news cycle with no one else to blame. Hell the one-line folks are going to have even less to post about.
I think I can get used to Monday morning quarterbacking and with all due respect Mark, don't pass off "He really does want to change the way business is done in DC." as fact. You don't know that and that smacks of "asking yourself the right question and *presto* having the answer appear". All you have are speeches and books thus far. Once the results come in, then I will match them to what I have read on this blog. If the results improve the economy, I will be happy. Just state that that is what you believe because it is easy for many of us to see how certain ideas, no matter how dysfunctional, are beloved by those who believe them. Thus, many ideas are believed not because they are fact, but because they are beautiful.
The free market is nothing more than a very cold, impersonal, yet highly effective and efficient way of allocating resources. They could also be a recognition that no one person or institution can get things right all the time and reliance upon that fact is a welcome recognition of human imperfection. Free markets create winners and losers and they can certainly foster a sense of alienation in a lot of people. If someone breaks the law, lock them up. I know that free markets can also infuriate many intellectuals which is probably why they are constantly looking for ways to convince themselves and others that they are smarter than the free market.
If 1 persons arguments flow from the premise that freedom is the highest value and all of the other guys arguments flow from the importance of equality being #1, the futility of arguing with each other is staggering.
They have enjoyed 28 years of getting to fuck around and pretty much do whatever they want...as long as they paid off people in Congress...of both parties btw.
That's right, they pay and they get to play. And it doesn't change regardless of which party is in charge. It is the power of gov't that causes corporations to buy it off. If the corporation was MORE powerful than the gov't, it wouldn't bother.
Dammit, how can you be so close to getting it and still veer left at the last possible second?
"A scenario where a government can tell one business to stop doing something that is perfectly legal is a nightmare of epic proportion. You think no-bid contracts are bad, how about a situation where a policymaker with a financial interest in one company can actively pursue a policy that retards the business of a competing company, all under the auspices of "preventing companies like AIG from doing what they did."
"It is the power of gov't that causes corporations to buy it off. If the corporation was MORE powerful than the gov't, it wouldn't bother."
I love both of you.
"Dammit, how can you be so close to getting it and still veer left at the last possible second?"
Actually, I think the same thing about you.
Governments have never really been the ones to run the show. It's always been the guys with the money. Think about it...the government doesn't actually have any money...they borrow it from the Federal Reserve which is a private bank owned by people who own...corporations.
It's not the fact that they "wouldn't bother." It's that they need a mechanism with which to assert more control and the government is that mechanism. Another mechanism is the media which is why I laugh every time I hear "liberal" media.
Have you seen this film?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Corporation
It sheds more light on what I am talking about.
Governments have never really been the ones to run the show. It's always been the guys with the money.
Funny but I haven't seen Wal-mart employees running around with guns and badges.
Think about it...the government doesn't actually have any money...they borrow it from the Federal Reserve which is a private bank owned by people who own...corporations.
WHAT? Gov't raises money through TAXES - you do remember those don't you M? If you don't pay your taxes you get in just a bit of trouble - see e.g. Wesley Snipes. Wal-mart has no way to force me to buy a damn thing from them.
It's that they need a mechanism with which to assert ... control and the government is that mechanism.
See, all you had to do was drop one word and we agree.
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