I read through Obama’s 60 Minutes interview with Steve Kroft and, sure, there was a lot of bullshit comments making excuses about why he catered more to the Republicans than the Democrats but as writers like Paul Street have been pointing BEFORE he was elected president, Obama is of the right, not the left.
But there was one statement in particular that really set me off, that really got my blood boiling:
It’s very important for us to write these [financial and healthcare] rules in collaboration with interested parties so that they can start knowin’ how things are gonna work.
And by “interested parties,” Farmer Obama means Mr. Fox (i.e. bankers and healthcare industry execs), not us hens (i.e. the foreclosed or the poor slob suffocating under high medical bills). So this is how it is—this is how the President justifies not only letting the fox watch the henhouse, but allowing the sly dog “write the rules in collaboration.” According to our Harvard-trained president, when foxes have raided the henhouse “it is entirely legitimate” that you sit down with the fox, collaborate with him on writing new rules “to make sure they know how things are gonna work.” To hell with the hens! Let them lay eggs!
This is precisely the kind of betrayal that cost his party the midterm election. So go on, hotshot. Shove that foot deeper down your throat. Piss us off even more.
For more than thirty years we have seen our economy get wiped away by financial deregulation. It started with Carter and then Reagan took it and ran with it. Bill Clinton smiled warmly when he repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, and as the housing bubble exploded economists like Dean Baker didn’t enjoy saying, “I told you so.” The banks ruined our economy and to teach them a lesson President Obama says, “We need to collaborate in writing new rules. Here is $3 trillion. You can manage how it is used and while you are on that über–vacation on the rings of Saturn have your secretaries secretary hire a secretary for her secretary so they can begin figuring out how you good Lords of Capital want to fix this economy.”
The private health industry has robbed us blind for decades. We spend twice as much per capita as the rest of the developed world who has some form of singlepayer program. Our auto companies spend more on healthcare than steel per car made in America. Over half of our bankruptcies are due to medical bills and over half of those were for the insured. The elderly struggle to afford prescriptions while they barely get by with Social Security (which is regressively taxed, the benefits insufficient and Obama has his sights on them for a massacre)—so it’s no wonder the elderly are the demographic with the highest rate of suicides. Speaking of death, hundreds of Americans die each due to lack of health care. And to teach the private sector a lesson President Obama asks, “How do you think we should fix this? Mandating that the American people keep buying your product? Sure! Write up the rules so you know what they are and don’t forget to turn the light off when you leave. Goodnight.”
What a lousy piece of shit!
For anyone who has drowned in debt of medical bills, or sacrificed a meal to pay for a prescription, or lost a home due to the shenanigans of greedy Wall Street bastards, the president comes off as utterly offensive.
His argument doesn’t make sense. We have to collaborate with the perpetrators in writing new rules so they know what they are? That’s like asking Hitler help write the UN Charter so he knows what acceptable international behavior is. No wonder President Obama refuses to press charges against the Bush administration for aggression or torture or other assorted war crimes—clearly these “interested parties” are needed to collaborate in writing “new rules” so they know how things are gonna work.
Why not collaborate and write the rules with the victims of Fannie Mae and Aetna, so that they can rest assure it won’t happen again? I’ve got some grandparents who know quite a bit about what the healthcare industry does to the average person, and I am sure they would be “interested” in writing the “new rules” so they know how things are gonna work. Perhaps I should email Obama their contact information. I bet he would call them ASAP.
I just don’t buy it. His collusion with the criminals has cost his party a midterm election and he’s just trying to make excuses for himself. I call bullshit.
I am not stupid enough to think the Republicans are any different. I know the game. Both parties serve Wall Street. Hell, I remember the stink about Cheney’s Energy TASK Force plan that wasn’t much different than this load of crap. He was going to give the oil and energy companies, what Obama would call the “interested parties,” the ability to “collaborate” in “writing the rules” of our national energy policy “so that they can start knowin’ how things are gonna work.”
In 2008 Obama raised more than $700 million (donated largely by the Lords of Capital) and he used it to hire a PR firm to brand himself as Mr.Change. It worked. Millions of naïve liberals salivated over the man as if he were Moses and was leading them out of the desert. He even won a marketing award for his hoodwinking. But eventually the cat got out of the bag and young voters felt the sting of betrayal and left him and his party cold on November 2, 2010. The election was less the result of a conservative “earthquake” and more the result of abandonment by the betrayed. I guess they realized they are still in the desert.
Just like the banks were “too big to fail,” now we got this assclown saying reform should be written by the perps who provoked the need for reform. The American worker isn’t too big to fail and in the eyes of our political and business leaders we have no place in writing the new rules in collaboration so we know how things are gonna work. Shut up, keep your heads down and obey orders. That’s what they expect of us.
What are we going to do about it?
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