Clinton was en route to to privatizing Social Security, until he got blown, and the Republicans, instead of helping him achieve one of their own higher policy goals, went for the immediate tactical political satisfaction of removing him from office.

Likewise, Obama is in position to fulfill some of the GOP’s fondest dreams: cutting Social Security, approving Keystone, etc.

The GOP impeachment circus derailed Clinton’s plan to privatize Social Security, and if they pursue impeachment now, they may well derail Obama’s second-term objectives.

Hell, I’m on board: bring on the circus!

…..{crickets}……

Keynes is irrelevant. Keynes mapped out methods which would (and did) minimize the ravages caused by the extremely unequal outcomes which unrestrained capitalism always must produce. Only a highly-regulated and redistributive structure can keep capitalism from eating its own. The years from the late 40s to the late 70s were characterized by the best and most widely-distributed positive economic outcomes in US history, not coincidentally characterized by fewest economic crises.

But Keynes is irrelevant, because capital will always seek its maximum short-term return, even if that maximum return is self-destructive in the long term.

Austerity is discredited in theory and in practice, but it still obtains.

This is not a simple economic crisis that can be cured by implementing proven curative policies. This is a political crisis, precisely because there is ZERO chance that policies producing the best and most-widely distributive positive outcomes will be implemented under the prevailing political system.

Talk of economics is futile at this time. We know what works, and the PTB will not allow a return to those policies.

I share your schadenfreude. “Sharedenfreude?”

I wouldn’t doubt that the GOPers calculated that Obama has little base support, and is vulnerable to these kinds of attacks right now. Of course, the GOPers are just weasely, unprincipled opportunists, just like the crew in the White House, and neither Party gives a rat’s ass about civil liberties. But go for it, GOPers, I say. The sooner the DLC Third Way neo-libs are shit-canned, the better.

Talk about Einstein’s definition of insanity…anyone who thinks any elected Democrat will be anything other than a stooge of the 1% is truly mad. But, yeah, let’s keep on hoping that HRC or Biden will be better than Obama! And let’s keep writing letters to our Democratic Senators and Congressfolks, because they really care what we think!

Katherine Bigelow is nothing more than a PR shill for the MIC, a propagandist for her nazi boot-daddies, a baldfaced liar, a fascist whore.

I hated “Hurt Locker.” It was suspenseful, but extremely emotionally manipulative, and bereft of intellectual content. The entire message of the movie was, “men who do dangerous work are different and better than us, and deserve our adulation.”

Bigelow worships and extols violence and malevolent power. She is nauseating.

Cognitive dissonance and feelgood political correctness are difficult to overcome.

The people who selected Obama knew exactly what they were doing in pushing the Obama Trojan horse onto the national stage, and what they were doing should have been obvious to anyone not hindered with feelgood political correctness. I mean, only an evil racist republican could oppose such an obvious champion of civil liberties, human rights, the environment, etc, as Obama was, right?

The self-righteousness of his supporters was suffocating. The night of the election in 2008, people were literally dancing in the streets in San Francisco. Okay, great, no more Bush, but after patting yourselves on the back, did any of you numbskulls look beyond your own smugness, complacency, and self-satisfaction, to see who Obama really was? The people dancing in the streets were dancing out of ecstasy that they were so enlightened and superior, because they had voted for a black man. “How cool, smart, and sophisticated we white liberals are — we voted for a black man!” Who cares that he is the anti-FDR…he’s black, and we’re so superior for voting for him!

I know this sounds horrible and bitter, but this is exactly what I saw in 2008, and I got hell when I tried to wake people up.

For the record, I am a sophisticated, superior, enlightened white person: I voted for the black woman in 2008– not because she was black, or because she was a woman, but because I agreed with most of her politics. Now, watch me pat me myself on the back!

I don’t know. I’ll never stop speaking my mind. And it’s good to read the commentariat here, who are quite literally among the very few sane people left. I love fdl for championing Manning and Occupy. This is one of the few organizations in leftwing civil society that doesn’t exist to redirect activist sentiment into feelgood poster campaigns.

The problem is, in the unlikely event any third party begins to threaten the status quo, the lea

Unfortunately, a third party has zero chance above the local level. The problem isn’t just the parties; the problem is the system, and it’s delusional to think anyone outside of the big corporations has any real political power. We don’t have a democracy or democratic republic — we have a plutocracy, and voting for a different party, or trying to “fix” the system are fantasies. Well, that’s my sunny belief!

Was she the one who was so concerned about the freezing strikers (in 100 degree heat), that she turned on the heat lamps?

Me too. In 2008, I voted for the black, leftwing female Rahm kicked out of Congress and the Party. I got lots of grief for saying this at the time, and no Democrat remembers McKinney now. It’s funny how people are so quick to judge someone else based on their presidential vote. I mean, it’s one little, ineffectual vote out of tens of millions, cast in a state where the winner was a foregone conclusion, but somehow, voting Green made me a pariah, as if by doing so, I was desecrating All That is Decent.

Donald Trump!

Obama’s duplicity and betrayal should have caused revolt in the Democratic Party, but the base is so embarrassed by how easily it’s been played, that it has more or less just tuned out politics, or, somehow, still believes that it’s the bad ol’ GOPers who are forcing Obama to act like, well, a bad ol’ GOPer. The result is that Obama can do pretty much whatever he wants now, and there’ll be no push-back from anyone calling him- or herself a Democrat.

The mask is indeed off, and the face underneath looks just like GW Bush.

More and more people are waking up to the reality that Obama is a stooge of the plutocracy.

Unfortunately, it is so depressing to have to admit one has been duped, that most of these people are tuning out politics altogether. I see it all the time now. People screamed at me in 2008 when I told them that Obama was inserted into the political dialogue to circumvent the national anger at Bush’s failed policies; that Obama was a head-fake to redirect the anger and energy which could have led to actual political change. These same people now look at me sheepishly, and say, “politics, bah, and I’m through with it.”

Turning millions of progressives, liberals, and even moderates off of politics altogether might prove to be Obama’s most cherished and lasting accomplishment.

They think we’re stupid.

They’re right.

Maybe I’m stating the obvious, but after 9/11, the police state expanded not to fight external terrorism, but to oppress internal dissent; terrorism was simply the cover for expanding the internal police state and the external war apparatus.

Considering the pace of failure of the current occupant of the White House, it’s as if GW never left…

C’mon, folks, this is the simplest math equation ever created:

more war = more profit for the 1%.