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The Dem Rethug Farce
by Debs is dead
lifted from a comment
I don’t understand why people are even debating the Obama Clinton
thing especially on the thin ice of race, since HRC spent a good deal
of effort trying to paint her opponent into a Jessie Jackson type
candidate for african americans only. The stereotyping was led by Cigar
Bill of course and the only thing it appeared to achieve was to swing
away black voters disenchanted by the spectacle of the "first black
prez" showing his true colors. The bullshit flowed from both sides
which is to be expected.
We know this, just as any thinker knows that a person capable of
winning the nomination from either party, dem or rethug is a guaranteed
enemy of ordinary humans inside and outside amerika who is going to
continue the policies of amerikan imperialism plugged-in, that GWB
introduced.
There is only one tiny chink of light showing anywhere in this. It
seems likely that as Susan articulated so well earlier, the Clinton
dynasty has screwed the pooch badly.
The dynasty is going to have to fight dirty (well dirtier), to secure
their ‘rightful gig’. Even the dynasty’s number one supporter, the NYT conceeds that here:
With every delegate precious, Mrs. Clinton’s advisers
also made it clear that they were prepared to take a number of
potentially incendiary steps to build up Mrs. Clinton’s count. Top
among these, her aides said, is pressing for Democrats to seat the
disputed delegations from Florida and Michigan, who held their
primaries in January in defiance of Democratic Party rules.
Of course the ClintonPlc syndicate will be up to much sleazier
stunts than that little piece of duplicity. The Clintons are so
determined to secure ‘their’ place in the White House that are blind
the fact that most of Obama’s support comes from people who probably
won’t just sigh and mutter "politics as usual" before pulling the
handle for Hilary, the way that most of her supporters would if that
happened to their candidate.
ClintonPlc have shown the depth of their ignorance and hubris
admirably so far, particularly in the way they conducted the primary.
They are quite capable of a blatant super delegate buy-off redolent
with pork barrels, blackmail and bribery right at the convention. That
winning in this way could back-fire badly especially in the long term
won’t occur to them. Future-schmuture. Remember Hillary was a dedicated
rethug until Cigar Bill recognised her potential as a number cruncher
and hard-headed win-at-all-costs organizer and persuaded her she could
find even more fame and fortune in the dem party.
If a convention floor shonky happens, it could spell doom for that favourite plaything of the elites, the democrat party.
Best case for ClintonPlc worst case for humanity is that the
Obaminites will go home after swearing off participatory politics for
life.
There are a number of other alternatives not least of which would be
a big chunk of the democrat support base actively fighting against the
outcome and splitting from the party.
Many african-amerikans including many of those who loathe Obama and
his policies would see a super delegate slink off as the ultimate
betrayal after decades of african american support for the party.
An event such as this could provide the momentum for something which
dems have always consoled themselves with as being an impossibility.
Consoling themselves as they cynically encourage corrupt afrikan
american pols ahead of the legions of capable and honest ones, while
they cynically destroy New Orleans as a home for african amerikans of
all income levels, while they allow policies which aid thefts of assets
and cynically remove any hope of african amerikans of owning a home.
That so-called impossibility is a complete breakaway and the
formation of a new party dedicated to aiding the interests of all
unwhite amerikans.
I realise that many readers have been gulled into believing the
mainstream analysis which holds that this would be impossible to
succeed at, but success is not an impossibility. The last straw will
break the camel’s back eventually.
But more than that could happen to the dems. The legions of young
bourgois voters will be turned off too many of them for good and they
may choose to look elsewhere in future.
This is dangerous stuff for the dems because the only really firm
demographic HRC has is amongst older dem voters and of course they are
a dying breed.
Now the death of the dems, isn’t an instant fix, but it would be a
start to turning around the mess that is amerikan politics and
governance.
The rethugs need the dems as much as the dems need the dems.
Remember the farce is kept running by both sides agreeing to
concentrate on the issues where tiny details separate them, and then
blow that up into a major stoush. The emasculation of the pseudo-left
party would mean there was no longer a system to agree on the issues up
for debate.
People may start debating empire, war, or, heaven forfend, the cult
of ownership. Why do property rights transcend all other rights? Maybe
the emphasis could shift a bit. . . ?
There can be no change in Amerika until the dem rethug farce is
deemed irrelevant. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the ultimate political
whores – HRC and Cigar Bill – were the catalysts for that to occur?
Sorry, b, but this is mandatory for the MoA’s own Wayback Machine,
before the Politburo wakes up tomorrow and make WaPo strike it out.
Read this, then ask yourself what the hell was Bernanke smoking today:
Predatory Lenders’ Partner in Crime
By Eliot Spitzer
Updated: 02/14/2008
Several years ago, state attorneys general and others involved in consumer protection began to notice
a marked increase in a range of predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders. Some were misrepresenting
the terms of loans, making loans without regard to consumers’ ability to repay, making loans with deceptive
“teaser” rates that later ballooned astronomically, packing loans with undisclosed charges and fees, or even
paying illegal kickbacks. These and other practices, we noticed, were having a devastating effect on home
buyers. In addition, the widespread nature of these practices, if left unchecked, threatened our financial
markets. Even though predatory lending was becoming a national problem, the Bush administration looked the
other way and did nothing to protect American homeowners. In fact, the government chose instead to align
itself with the banks that were victimizing consumers.Predatory lending was widely understood to present
a looming national crisis. This threat was so clear that as New York attorney general, I joined with
colleagues in the other 49 states in attempting to fill the void left by the federal government.
Individually, and together, state attorneys general of both parties brought litigation or entered
into settlements with many subprime lenders that were engaged in predatory lending practices.
Several state legislatures, including New York’s, enacted laws aimed at curbing such practices.
What did the Bush administration do in response? Did it reverse course and decide to take action
to halt this burgeoning scourge? As Americans are now painfully aware, with hundreds of thousands
of homeowners facing foreclosure and our markets reeling, the answer is a resounding no.
Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive
and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems
to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.Let me explain: The administration accomplished
this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).
The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of
national banks. For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were
balanced, an important but uncontroversial function. But a few years ago, for the first time in its
history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers. In 2003, during the height of the predatory
lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions
preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also
promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection
laws against national banks. The federal government’s actions were so egregious and so
unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents,
actively fought the new rules.But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter,
or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my
office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of
banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation.
Throughout our battles with the OCC and the banks, the mantra of the banks and their defenders was that
efforts to curb predatory lending would deny access to credit to the very consumers the states were trying
to protect. But the curbs we sought on predatory and unfair lending would have in no way jeopardized access
to the legitimate credit market for appropriately priced loans. Instead, they would have stopped the
scourge of predatory lending practices that have resulted in countless thousands of consumers losing their
homes and put our economy in a precarious position.When history tells the story of the subprime lending
crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners, the Bush
administration will not be judged favorably. The tale is still unfolding, but when the dust settles,
it will be judged as a willing accomplice to the lenders who went to any lengths in their quest for
(fraudulent) profits. So willing, in fact, that it used the power of the federal government in an unprecedented
assault on state legislatures, as well as on state attorneys general and anyone else on the side of
consumers.
The writer is governor of New York.
Posted by: Tip Orillo | Feb 15 2008 8:19 utc | 8
@ASKOD yeah the Paris Commune may have been lucky that it’s life was so short. How long before the delegates became representatives? I wonder what the mechanism is by which the delegates to the dem convention can swap hats mid meeting and become representatives.
The process by which people who were once probably quite reasonable, at some point, choose to operate against the principles that initially inspired them and delegates become representatives and then despots has always fascinated me in that sickening way that we can become absorbed by something profoundly anti-social such as a thrill killer. How do humans go that bad? Is it a reaction against what they perceive as being the strictures of office or is it a madness which anyone with access to too much power can succumb to?
These ideas have a certain relevance for me at the moment because I have been thinking about a story from yesterday about this scum who I crossed swords with on uncountable occasions but never realised the true depth of his depravity. To me he was just a typical right winger who had gotten control of an allegedly left wing party.
The worst of it is that the charges he went up on, of molesting poor white kids whose parents had trusted the Federal Minister of blah blah with them, were only the tip of the ice-berg.
Even right at the end mainstream media refused to concede they had backed a truly evil horse. The link goes to an article which uses the classic trick of defending Collins for the first few pars before conceding his guilt in the hope few will read that far.
When I first became involved in indigenous community development people used to talk about Bob Collins in hushed tones. What a wonderful job he’d done in Maningrida setting up and managing a market garden that became commercially successful. That success was traded up as his ticket to the top of Australian politics becoming a minister in the Bob Hawke government of the 80’s. Yet even when he was a field officer working in Aboriginal communities he was sodomising the children. None of that, not a word, came out until some of the whitefella kids of the Canberra years grew up and finally found their voice. The aboriginal kids and their communities had been hanging on to it. There’s a classic story about it here. The cops who have gotten onto the story find one of the aboriginal kids who has grown up and gone on to bigger things. They get him to ring Collins up :
“I rang him up,” says Lewis, re-enacting the conversation. “‘Bob Collins here’. ‘Hello, Mr Bob Collins, this is Tom Lewis here. Remember that job you offered me in Berrimah, where you took me?’
“And he said, ‘Oh Tom, I haven’t got any money at the moment. You want money?’ I said to him, ‘I don’t want your money. I just want you to know that I’m ringing you to tell you that I’ve been very upset about this.’ And he said, ‘Look, I’m too busy now.’ Then he cut his phone out.”
What’s the first thing Collins does? He offers him money, typical whitefella trying to abuse the one power that most whitefellas have over most blackfellas – access to money. Of course being a tight ass he says he hasn’t got any right now. The scum had obviously had this conversation many times before.
The community Collins fucked over is a real shit hole, a total mess ruined by successive interfering whitefellas and because many different clans have been shifted into a spot owned by one clan, the community council is chaotic. It’s in beautiful country right on the coast, but circumstances have made it one of the saddest places I have ever visited. Once month the barge comes to town and pallets of booze are unloaded so the whole town goes mental for 4 days until the grog runs out.
Once I tried to get a house building program going there. One where people built their own house as they would like it to be. We supply the materials and some experts to show people what to do – very simple mud brick construction and they do the rest. Maningrida was a town where the project never really worked now I know at least part of the reason why.
Were the locals waiting for me to rape their sons? Whitefellas knew little or nothing of this, it’s odd there were no rumours the whole time I was in the NT, nearly 20 years, and Collins was the big cheese of the left all that time. But just because the whitefellas didn’t know, it sure doesn’t mean the people of Maningrida didn’t know.
His market garden fell over shortly after he left Maningrida. That was turned around by some to ‘prove’ what a great man Collins was, that a project like that could only work under his tutelage. We know the real reason now. That enterprise must have summoned up horror images for so many of the locals.
Of course the old paternalists would always look for anything to justify their interference, for me the market garden failure was a sign that community development isn’t about imposing what you think is best on a community, it is interacting with the community and helping them access what they believe to be best for them.
The absolute worst thing about what Collins did, no that’s not correct what he did to each child was the worst of all, but his megalomania, pedophilia and abuse of power has managed to doubly fuck the indigenous people of the NT over.
Last year John Howard used the issue of child abuse to destroy the indigenous people’s rights under the Federal Land Rights Act. Now the federal government has total control over the town centres. Prior to that anyone from a policeman to a parson could only enter an NT community if they had a pass issued by that community’s council. It was cumbersome but it protected the people from the teams of carpetbaggers, money-lenders, rip-off insurance salesmen, drug pushers (alcohol, kava, pot, speed) and the like.
The opposition at that time were hard pressed to oppose it because the specter of Collin’s debauch and abuse was hanging over their heads. One wrong move in Parliament and Howard would accuse them all of enabling pedophilia to be like their ‘comrade’ Collins. Now they are the government they won’t repeal the act. Saying ‘sorry’ was easier than actually doing anything.
So now the communities have no protection against the usurers who will come in giving away credit cards etc, which will then force communities to grant mining rights to get their pittance in ‘royalties’ only to give it back to the con-men.
All of this can be traced back to the structure that enabled it. Giving certain people unchecked power over others. Collins went out to Maningrida as a representative of whitefellas, to impose what he believed were whitefella values and lifestyles on the indigenous people. Because he was a representative he wasn’t held to account on detail he was ‘trusted’. Same thing when he came to town. As leader of the Labor Party in the NT he was always sticking his oar in where it was neither wanted nor needed, making sure that no one did anything ‘too radical’. He was answerable to no one on that either. He was a ‘representative’ so he was only held to account every 4 years and then everybody only looked to the issues that were deemed worthy by Collins himself or the media.
Is this some sort of a reaction against this almost total power which has some men using it to hurt the least able to defend themselves? That is as close as I can get to defining it. A perverse expression of their belief that they have total control? Who knows, what we do know is that the best way to prevent these abuses is to ensure that no-one in our society accumulates that much power.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Feb 15 2008 22:05 utc | 12
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