The European Banking Crisis Explained

Barney Frank Blames Occupy Wall Street

Did you see this segment on Rachel Maddow last night?  Check it out.




I like Barney Frank, and I'm glad he said what he did. But his complaint that Occupy Wall Street (twitter feed #OWS) should have been in the trenches in 2009, and that OWS really needs to think about voting more Democrats into office in 2012 seems to overlook an important historical fact. In 2008 voters gave the Democrats commanding majorities in both houses of Congress, and they delivered Barack Obama to the White House. In 2009, Democrats assumed the opportunity, the power, and the mandate to deliver change. They overwhelmingly failed to do so.

Instead, in 2009 Frank's Democratic Party began launching a series of policy moves to extend and expand disastrous US foreign military actions along with a series of corporate-friendly domestic policies in the finance, health-care and energy sectors. Most recently, Obama has produced disastrous job-killing federal austerity budget cuts and the largest "free trade" deals since NAFTA (with three pacts to be signed by him this coming Friday). He has alienated his own environmental base to the point of having their leadership arrested at the gates of the White House, and he has overseen the expansion of constitutional infringements and government secrecy, in some cases exceeding those of the Bush era up to and including the unlawful assassination of multiple US citizens without an iota of due legal process. He has done precious little to halt a tsunami of home foreclosures sweeping the country (an estimated 800,000 foreclosures this year alone), many of them clearly involving criminal fraud by banks. Instead of forcefully protecting citizens in their troubled homes, Obama has mouthed vague rhetorical sympathies while protecting his benefactors in the megabanks.

"I've Got Nothing For You On That"

Thanks to Jake Tapper (ABC News) for asking:

Let's face it.  This administration simply doesn't get the civil liberties thing.  And for any law students who were at Chicago when Obama was on the faculty there, I'd suggest you request a refund.    Credit to this blog for posting this video segment.

The Pathetic Left

http://www.visualthesaurus.com/

Pathetic, as in:

"For green groups, President Barack Obama’s retreat on ozone standards is another reason to question how aggressively they want to support his reelection in 2012.  Even more bruising: the realization that they may not have much choice.

“We have no place else left to go but home,” said one official at a major environmental group, speaking on background Friday. “So the enviros come out looking weak once again because of today and we’re all screaming bloody murder.

“But you know what,” the official said. “At the end of the day, I don’t think the White House is unhappy to hear us complain.”

Thus the "environmental Left" is just as pitiable and pathetic as any other segment of the Left, for the same root causes:  

• The Left self-identifies as an abused hostage of the Democratic Party--one that has "no place else to go"; 
• Even while "screaming bloody murder" about its abuse at the hands of the Democrats, environmentalists and other segments of the Left clearly, repeatedly and loyally state their support for the party in the next election--thus guaranteeing that the abuse continues, because of; 
• The Democratic leadership's calculus that they gain political benefits from kicking their base in the teeth from time to time, and that no harm will ever come to them from doing so.

Until the Left identifies some way to effectively change their own behavior, none of this will change, regardless of how many branches of Govt. the Democrats control, or who the party leadership is.  This "I'm mad as hell at the Democrats but will always remain completely loyal to them" tactic is clearly not working.