For the past few weeks, I've been thinking of my old Uncle Jack, a country attorney who loved philosophy and theology, that his brother (my dad) taught me about, but recently I've been thinking of a quote that Uncle Jack kept repeating to me in the last years of his life:
The moving finger writes, and having written moves on. Nor all thy piety nor all thy wit, can cancel half a line of it.
Omar Khayyam
Sometimes that which is true, and has come to pass in our own lives seeks deeps resonance in our own wisdom and souls, and who we have become as a nation and a party. And what I have found in that quote from a great old hard assed Democrat, like my Uncle Jack, who had bullets laced in his own home (as he tried to protect his three daughters and his wife,) when he dared to join the NAACP in the 1960's was this: More below the fold.
The heart and the soul of the Democratic Party does not belong to whichever President we elect in our nation, nor does it belong to the any these individuals:
DNC Officers
Gov. Tim Kaine, DNC Chairman
Donna Brazile, Vice Chair of Voter Registration & Participation
Linda Chavez-Thompson, Vice Chair
Rep. Mike Honda, Vice Chair
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Vice Chair
Raymond Buckley, Vice Chair, ASDC President
Alice Germond, Secretary
Andrew Tobias, Treasurer
Jane Stetson, National Finance Chair
Organizational Leaders
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman
Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, Democratic Governors Association Chairman
Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee Chairman
http://www.democrats.org/...
As President Obama moves more and more towards the center and right, I welcome the reality based situation that is now confronting a great chasm within our own party. After all, I think it is somewhat hypocritical to note that Markos is the only 'progressive' Democrat that has been exiled by the MSM. The great fracturing of our own Party, is the direct result of not owning up to the so called: New and Better Democrats, who are selling the Middle Class, the poor, our Unions and jobs down the river, yet still have the temerity to expect us to give them our undying loyalty, our support, as long as we don't dare to question their motives.
It is no wonder to me why great fighters like Byron Dorgan, or Russ Feingold, or Alan Grayson have been beaten out of our own party. These were the sacrificial 'goats' that would not STFU, and had to much integrity for the likes of the new Democratic/Republican Wing of the Democratic Party:
Matt Stoller brings it all home to me, so if you care to listen up: BTW, Matt, who I consider a great friend an mentor, gave me full permission to publish this entire article on Daily Kos:
Matt Stoller: Understanding the Strategy of the Democratic Power Class
Yves here. I took the liberty of lifting this comment by Matt Stoller from a recent post, since it is informative in its own right and relevant to the piece today dissecting a mortgage proposal advanced by a think tank with close ties to the Administration.
By Matt Stoller, the former Senior Policy Advisor for Rep. Alan Grayson. His Twitter feed is @matthewstoller
Since the 1970s, Democratic elites have focused on breaking public sector unions and financializing the economy. Carter, not Reagan, started the defense build-up. Carter, not Reagan, lifted usury caps. Carter, not Reagan, first cut capital gains taxes. Clinton, not Bush, passed NAFTA. It isn’t the base of the Democratic party that did this, but then, voters in America have never had a lot of power because they are too disorganized. And there wasn’t a substantial grassroots movement to challenge this, either.
Obama continues this trend. It isn’t that he’s not fighting, he fights like hell for what he wants. He whipped incredibly aggressively for TARP, he has passed emergency war funding (breaking a campaign promise) several times, and nearly broke the arms of feckless liberals in the process. I mean, when Bernie Sanders did the filiBernie, Obama flirted with Bernie’s potential 2012 GOP challenger. Obama just wants policies that cement the status of a aristocratic class, with crumbs for everyone else (Republican elites disagree in that they hate anyone but elites getting crumbs). And he will fight for them.
There is simply no basis for arguing that Democratic elites are pursuing poor strategy anymore. They are achieving an enormous amount of leverage within the party. Consider the following. Despite Obama violating every core tenet of what might have been considered the Democratic Party platform, from supporting foreclosures to destroying civil liberties to torturing political dissidents to wrecking unions, Obama has no viable primary challenger. Moreover, no Senate Democratic incumbent lost a primary challenge in 2010, despite a horrible governing posture. Now THAT is a successful strategy, it minimized the losses of the Democratic elite and kept them firmly in control of the party. Thus, the political debate remains confined to what neoliberals want to talk about. It’s a good strategy, it’s just you are the one the strategy is being played on.
A lot of people think that Obama is a bad poker player, but they miss the point. He’s not playing with his money, he’s playing with YOUR money. You are the weak hand at the table, he’s colluding with the other players.
There are parts of the Democratic elite that don’t believe in neoliberalism, but they are a modest portion of that structure. So often what comes out of the party is garbled. Most Democrats support our reigning institutions, they believe in paying taxes, they believe in government power. Given a choice, they’ll grumble, but they are more willing to believe that this government is good than to support structural change. By contrast, the Republicans are unified in their desire for a more brutal and more plutocratic though otherwise unchanged institutional arrangement.
This makes the GOP seem more committed, more professional and more change-oriented. This isn’t poor strategy or coordination from Democratic elites. The lack of willingness to fight on behalf of the public isn’t the same of an unwillingness to fight. It’s just their unwillingness to fight anyone but you.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/...
You know, when the truth hits you in your gut, you can feel it, and Matt did that for me.....but more to that kind of punch, because, regardless of what your particular delusion is about President Obama, and the SOTU (shared sacrifice gutting of social security is really going to be all about which is completely destroying and fragmenting our own party, and I deeply resent that) .....
As usual, William K. Black, gets it all right: Again and again and again: I can not even count the amount of diaries I've done on this man, who had the courage to send thousands of these filthy shitty bankers to jail in the 1980's. What happened to that idea? Oh right, they are all paying Obama's new election for 2012. Got it.
I get President Obama's "regulatory review" plan, I really do. His game plan is a straight steal from President Clinton's strategy after the Republican's 1994 congressional triumph. Clinton's strategy was to steal the Republican Party's play book. I know that Clinton's strategy was considered brilliant politics (particularly by the Clintonites), but the Republican financial playbook produces recurrent, intensifying fraud epidemics and financial crises. Rubin and Summers were Clinton's offensive coordinators. They planned and implemented the Republican game plan on finance. Rubin and Summers were good choices for this role because they were, and remain, reflexively anti-regulatory. They led the deregulation and attack on supervision that began to create the criminogenic environment that produced the financial crisis.
The zeal, crude threats, and arrogance they displayed in leading the attacks on SEC Chair Levitt and CFTC Chair Born's efforts to adopt regulations that would have reduced the risks of fraud and financial crises were exceptional. Just one problem -- they were wrong and Levitt and Born were right. Rubin and Summers weren't slightly wrong; they put us on the path to the Great Recession. Obama knows that Clinton's brilliant political strategy, stealing the Republican play book, was a disaster for the nation, but he has picked politics over substance. I explained in a prior column how the anti-regulators made the crisis possible and caused the loss of over 10 million jobs.
Anti-regulation proved to be a profoundly negative sum "game" in the financial sphere. Both principals -- the home borrower and the lender -- lost (negative Pareto optimality). The unfaithful "agents," however, made out like bandits. Effective financial regulation is essential to protect honest firms and consumers from the frauds -- it is distinctly positive sum. The primary purpose of financial regulation is to limit fraud. President Obama, Summers, and OMB do not understand this fundamental aspect of financial regulation -- limiting fraud. Consider this portion of the President's letter: This is the lesson of our history: Our economy is not a zero-sum game. Regulations do have costs; often, as a country, we have to make tough decisions about whether those costs are necessary. Voluntary transactions should be positive sum -- both parties are typically made better off. Fraud causes negative sum transactions. Regulators are the "cops on the beat" in finance. If cheaters prosper, then "private market discipline" drives honest firms and officers out of the marketplace. Vigorous financial regulation is essential to the effective prosecution of elite criminals. Many of the best financial regulations impose virtually no cost. The traditional underwriting rules, for example, would have been exceeded by any honest, competent bank. Indeed, the rules reduced costs to honest firms. The rules imposed material costs only on dishonest managers -- and that reduces costs to hones firms and managers. Net, underwriting rules produce enormous net-benefits. That is equivalent to saying that they have a negative cost. The underwriting rules designed primarily to reduce fraud also reduce losses from incompetence, unrecognized risk, and mistake. This means that financial rules designed primarily to reduce fraud are essential to convert the negative sum (fraudulent) transactions that would prevail absent regulation into positive sum (honest) transactions. Because fraud can impose severe "negative externalities," this transaction-based analysis dramatically understates the net cost savings of effective safety and soundness regulation.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
I would suggest your read the entire great article by Professor Black, if you dare to have a nice 'shock doctrine donut with your coffee.'
For me, Matt Stoller and William K. Black are right on the dime. They know who they are and what they stand for, and I have a feeling, that at night when their heads hit the pillow, they sleep very well, thank you very much.
As far as our own party goes, and our own President, I have only this to say:
When President Obama finally starts standing up and protecting Social Security, the Middle Class, the Unions, and fighting as all Democrats have before him, then I will stand up for him.
This strange idea, that the MSM is feeding us, as is the so called progressive blogs that: The Democrats are being blackmailed by the Republicans is a bald faced lie. The Oligarchy, Plutocrats, or whatever you want to call them are in full force, and now they are picking the skins off of the carcasses as they willingly let the rest of us face their own destructive morality for money.
My old uncle Jack, got it right in the first place:
The moving finger writes, and having written moves on. Nor all thy piety nor all thy wit, can cancel half a line of it.
Omar Khayyam
the only other way to say this would be this:
You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time."
Abraham Lincoln quotes (American 16th US President (1861-65), who brought about the emancipation of the slaves. 1809-1865)
Only no one is being fooled anymore President Obama. We know who you are working for and who you represent, and we figured out the difference, and you are out of the shadows and mirrors and smoke, and into the light.
The Democratic party does not belong to the President in the White House, or the 13 people I mentioned above. It does not belong to the Senators or the House, it belong to 'US'....It does not belong to the blogs, it belongs in our hearts and souls. It belongs on the streets, where, our parents and grandparents were willing to show up and suit up to fight the fight, regardless of what it costs us.
On January 30, 1956 Dr. King's home was bombed. His wife and their baby daughter escaped without injury. When Dr. King arrived home he found an angry mob waiting. Dr. King told the crowd to go home.
"We must learn to meet hate with love" he said.
The boycott continued for over a year. It eventually took the United States Supreme Court to end the boycott. On November 13, 1956 the Court declared that Alabama's state and local laws requiring segregation on buses were illegal. On December 20th federal injunctions were served on the city and bus company officials forcing them to follow the Supreme Court's ruling.
The following morning, December 21, 1956, Dr. King and Rev. Glen Smiley, a white minister, shared the front seat of a public bus. The boycott had lasted 381 days. The boycott was a success.
http://www.holidays.net/...
I wonder, how many of us would be willing for 381 days of any year, would be willing to 'boycott' anything in our lives. That is the courage it takes, that is the way things change in our nation, no matter what anyone else tells you.
No offense to Markos, who has stated that 'marches or boycotts' are so passe, and no longer matter. I disagree with that point of action.
One other article I wanted to mention, especially in light of the fact the President Obama's new COS, William Daley (a total JP Morgan guy) and Gene Sperling, (yet another Goldman Sachs guy) is indicative of where the crashing housing market is going.
What, did you really thing that MERS is going to go away, or that the Banks and our Corporate Overlords are not going to figure out yet another way to destroy centuries of property laws?
DC Puts Its Bankster-Friendly Solution for Foreclosure Fraud on the Table
We’ll analyze a proposal to fix the foreclosure mess put out by a DC think tank known as Third Way. Normally this blog steers clear of delving into random policy documents. In this case, though, it is likely that Third Way is speaking for the administration. Third Way is an influential think tank whose board is composed of a special Wall Street-type – the Rubin Democrat. These people sit at the nexus of politics and finance, and are conduits for big bank friendly information flow into the administration and Congress. The President of the think tank, Jonathan Cowan, was the Chief of Staff for Andrew Cuomo at HUD in the 1990s, and Third Way is well known in policy circles for delivering ‘politically safe’ and well-packaged conventional wisdom. Oh, and one more thing – the new White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, who just left the most senior operating committee of JP Morgan, was on their Board of Directors.
So by looking at this proposal, we are looking at the state of play among high level policy makers in DC, particularly of the New Dem bent. This is how the administration will probably try to play foreclosure-gate. Their proposal, not surprisingly, is yet another bailout. The big difference between the original and the new, improved version of the bailout model is that the payouts to the banks were at least in part visible the first time around. This is an effort yet again to spare the banks any pain, not only at the cost of the rule of law but also of investor rights.
This proposal guts state control of their own real estate law when the Supreme Court has repeatedly found that "dirt law" is not a Federal matter. It strips homeowners of their right to their day in court to preserve their contractual rights, namely, that only the proven mortgagee, and not a gangster, or in this case, bankster, can take possession of their home. This sort of protection is fundamental to the operation of capitalism, so it’s astonishing to see neoliberals so willing to throw it under the bus to preserve the balance sheets of the TBTF banks. Readers may recall how we came to have this sort of legal protection in the first place. England learned the hard way in the 17th century what happens with low documentation requirements: abuse of court procedures, perjury and corruption become the norm. Parliament enacted the 1677 Statute of Fraudsto establish higher standards for contracts, such as witnessing by a third party, to stop the widespread theft of property that was underway. The memo completely ignores the harm to investors from the bank mistakes and lacks any provisions for damage to investors to be remedied. Moreover, denying borrower rights removes their leverage to obtain deep principal mortgage modifications, which for viable borrowers produces lower losses than costly foreclosures and sales of distressed property. Thus this shredding of contractual protections in mortgages not only hurts borrowers but also harms investors. So to save the banks from their own, colossal abuses of contracts that they devised, the Third Way document advocates Congressional intervention into well established, well functioning state law. This is a case where these matters can and should be left to the courts and ultimately state AGs to coordinate the template of a more broad based solution.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/...
I have this very basic rule of thumb that I use when I come to post on Daily Kos:
I never click onto any stories (front page or diaries) about Sarah Palin, Glen Beck, or Rush, nor do I pay any attention to the the stories of what the Republicans are doing are what they have said. I don't give a shit about any of those people. These are the decoys, and keep us us divided and falling into the total pie fights that are useless, unproductive and quite frankly: boring as hell.
There is an old saying: Clean up your side of the street first, and keep your eyes on the prize. That is what I care about, action in our own party, and holding our own party accountable, and if we could do this, which is exactly what Matt Stoller is talking about, then perhaps, and maybe then, we could actually get something honest going on here, instead of blaming each other, and letting our so called party leaders, fragment our own party.
Last night I watched, the special on the Anniversary of JFK, and it made me cry.
On June 12, 1963, a day after President John F. Kennedy's speech on national television in support of civil rights, Evers pulled into his driveway just after returning from a meeting with NAACP lawyers. Emerging from his car and carrying NAACP T-shirts that read "Jim Crow Must Go," Evers was struck in the back with a bullet fired from an Enfield 1917 .303 rifle that ricocheted into his Jackson, Mississippi home. He staggered 9 meters (30 feet) before collapsing. He died at a local hospital 50 minutes later.[8]
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Less than 5 months later, President Kennedy met the same fate, then MLK and Bobby. I lived through all of that, and my dad and Uncle Jack took me to Civil Rights marches, and taught me the great wisdom of how much the Irish people and the Black people of this nation shared.
Today, in our own party, President Obama could very well take a page our of what JFK had to say on civil rights, the the moral implications that are facing our nation now:
This is not a sectional issue. Difficulties over segregation and discrimination exist in every city, in every State of the Union, producing in many cities a rising tide of discontent that threatens the public safety. Nor is this a partisan issue. In a time of domestic crisis men of good will and generosity should be able to unite regardless of party or politics. This is not even a legal or legislative issue alone. It is better to settle these matters in the courts than on the streets, and new laws are needed at every level, but law alone cannot make men see right. We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/...
The 'moral' issue now is exactly how Wall St/the Banks are getting away with socialized murder, as is the MIC and the Corporations, and Insurance Companies. This isn't simply about the color our our skins, our creeds or our sexuality, it is about facing up to the fact that our own two party system, refuses to hold the Robber Barons in control.
That is the real moral issue. When we somehow gave up 'accountability in our nation,' then we gave up the rule of law on both sides of the spectrum. But in that morass came consequences of deep civil reactionary politics, that was bound to occur. What began in our own nation, the complete meltdown of deregulation, by Clinton/Rubin/Greenspan, with NAFTA, belongs on 'all our watches' not just the asshole Republicans.
Now we find ourselves in the ultimate Catch 22. Vote for Obama, or you are fucked. Great choice right?
I'm just saying, the more power we give into the 'gossip of the MSM' is not the answer at all. And the absolute worse thing we can do, is to not understand what Matt Stoller is saying:
Clean up our own side of the street, and stop feeding into all the shit that doesn't even matter anymore.
I think that happens to be a great place to start. I believe President Obama has been 'found out' to who he is about, and what he stands for, and from my front porch, he sure as hell, isn't doing it for me.
Hey, just saying....
Love you all, even my enemies.....LOL.
Ms. B.