Finally, even Bill Maher is starting to get it: Where's the Beef?
- Thread starter blackascoal
- Start date
fun fact: watermark used to be a libertarian. lol.
He will be again...
blackascoal
The Force is With Me
I've always been aware of this problem good brother. No one rants about the danger of corporations, plutocrats, and the plutocracy we've morphed into more than I.
In fact, I was warning about their grip on American government when Wall Street was showering Obama with money .. more than they've given any presidential candidate in history. He returned the favor and showered Wall Street with a trillion dollars of taxpayer money. What a surprise.
Obama gives good speeches, but he doesn't have the political courage to do the right thing for the American people if it means standing up against those who funded his rise to glory.
I did not vote for Obama because of his connection to Wall Street which will ultimately feed into war and the military/industrial complex.
Bfgrn
New member
Barack Obama is the first candidate to get elected in history with the LEAST amount of ties to special interest money and big corporate fundraisers...
The "Wall Street" contributions came from individuals who work on Wall Street.
Your theory is flawed ...
Where would we be with the war monger McCain?
SmarterthanYou
rebel
we'd be right where we are now, with the same policies in effect at the end of the Bush admin.
FUCK THE POLICE
911 EVERY DAY
Just like Ornot, eh?
FUCK THE POLICE
911 EVERY DAY
And how exactly are you coming up with this statistic? Are you saying George Washington had more ties to "big money"?
blackascoal
The Force is With Me
I'm afraid you've fallen for the mindfuck my brother.
Corporations cannot donate to political campaigns, thus their donations always come from their employees.
Barack Obama's Campaign Donors Much Like George Bush's
President-elect Barack Obama built a formidable campaign money machine during the presidential election, raising more money than any single presidential candidate in U.S. history, over $600 million. Obama credited, and the media parrotted, millions of small donors each donating less than $200 for his fund raising prowess. He even referred to this army of contributors as a new kind of public financing system. But a new analysis of Obama's donor base shows that there was no army of small donors. In fact, Obama raised just about the same percentage of his money from small donors as George W. Bush did in his campaign.
The non-partsan Campaign Finance Institute took a look at the numbers and found that Obama raised 26% of his campaign money from donors who gave less than a total of $200. That is just one percent better than Bush's 2004 campaign which raised 25% from the same group. Obama's percentage of small donors only increases if one engages in a bit of rhetorical slight of hand. Obama's finances included many more donors who gave $200 multiple times, including those that approached the legal limit of $4,600 for the primary and the general election. If each individual donation of $200 or less from a single donor is counted as a separate donation from a small donor, Obama's fund raising army begins to materialize. And since that accounting method fit the campaign's image of being grassroots movement of the people, candidate Obama was happy to let the misperception persist.
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2008/12/01/barack-obamas-campaign-donors-much-like-george-bushs/
Obama Bests McCain Among Bush-Backing Bankers, Drug Companies
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=aRCVqfSQ43Eo
Obama Top Fundraiser on Wall Street
Big Banks' Employees Gave Senator $479,000 in 1st Quarter
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/17/AR2007041701688.html
Barack Obama has collected nearly twice as much money as John McCain
This was befrore the election was over. By the time it ended Obma had collected more money from Wall Street than any candidate in history.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/pol...rack_obama_has_collected_nearly_twice_-2.html
Barack Obama/Campaign Financing
Exploratory Committee, asked[1] the Federal Election Commission "whether, if Senator Obama becomes a candidate, [may he] provisionally raise funds for the general election but retain the option, upon nomination, of returning these contributions and [accept] the public funds for which he would be eligible as the Democratic Party's nominee."
Obama "used campaign donations generated by PACs and lobbyists to bankroll the birth of his White House bid -- though he's banning that money for his presidential 2008 race," Lynn Sweet reported[2] February 9, 2007, in the Chicago Sun-Times.
"Obama's conversion to a laudable higher standard does not negate that money from sources he now disdains helped paved the way for his kickoff in Springfield [Illinois] on Saturday [February 10, 2007].
"Obama has been raising campaign cash for two political pots -- Obama 2010 Inc., his Senate re-election committee, and the Hopefund, another war chest. Obama, until his recent conversion on the eve of his presidential run, took more than $1 million from political action committees.
"An examination of disbursements from the two funds reveals how Obama was able to use legal loopholes commonly used by other presidential contenders to pay for White House testing-of-the-water expenses," Sweet wrote.[3]
"Discussing the issue of campaign finance reform, Obama said, 'The argument is not that I'm pristine, because I'm swimming in the same muddy water, ... The argument is that I know it's muddy and I want to clean it up," Barack Obama said August 16, 2007, in Des Moines, Iowa
Obama’s financial advisors and staff
Austan Goolsbee: Obama’s Economic Advisor; Professor at the
University of Chicago’s conservative business school; ideologue of “free
trade” policies; supports NAFTA and other free trade agreements which
deeply impoverish farmers and producers in colonized countries; in a
2007 New York Times opinion piece he disputed whether “subprime
lending was the leading cause of foreclosure problems,” and defended
the targeting of African and Latino homeowners for subprime, stating
“the existence and spread of subprime lending helps explain the drastic
growth of homeownership for these same groups.”
Jason Furman: Obama Economic Policy Director; centrist; supporter
of free trade; supporter of Wal-Mart; protégé of Wall Street insider,
Citibank head and Clinton’s Secretary of the Treasury, Robert Rubin;
considered to be an assurance to Wall Street that an Obama presidency
will be subservient to the interests of the big banks.
Penny Pritzker: Obama’s Finance Chair; heir to Hyatt Hotel
fortune; one of the key bankers who designed, packaged and launched
the sub-prime mortgage to Wall Street investment bank Merrill Lynch;
she convinced people who had fi xed mortgages to convert to subprime;
Pritzker’s Superior Bank defaulted in 2001 due to subprime investment
and shady practices; bank customers lost all their money while the
Pritzker family walked away with millions of dollars.
Obama’s financial backers
• One third of Obama’s record breaking contributions of nearly $400
million have come from donations of $1,000 or more—a total of $112
million, more than McCain or Hillary Clinton.
• Obama has more than 500 “bundlers,” professional fundraisers and
lobbyists who each collected a minimum of $50,000.
• Two thirds of Obama’s bundlers come from law, securities and
investments, real estate and entertainment.
• At least 100 Obama bundlers are top executives or brokers from
investment fi rms; nearly two dozen work for Wall Street giants like
Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs or Citigroups; about 40 others
come from the real estate industry.
• Obama gets more donations from Wall Street than any other
candidate in the 08 campaign.
http://www.apscuhuru.org/issues/election2008/obama-exposed-reformat-view2.pdf
Surely red flags went off in your head when he selected Larry "Women are dumb and non-white life is worthless" Summers and Tim Geithner as his economic advisers.
On the question of McCain .. I didn't vote for McCain either.
On the question of war .. my daughter will be on her way BACK to Iraq in November. Is McCain in office?
If your point is the lessor evil, I don't play that game either good brother.
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Bfgrn
New member
You really don't have much choice other than the lesser of two evils..."brother"...Barack Obama is NOT a George Bush, and John McCain IS...
If you are really aware of the corporatocracy we live under, who embraces it and the philosophy of the two parties, it's a NO brainer...
Our founding fathers gave birth to a GOVERNMENT, not a private corporate run entity...
Government is not the problem, incompetently run government IS... As we know, Bush and his right wing cohorts in Congress never attempted to shrink government...they attempted to CASTRATE government...They even turned the drafting of Bills to be proposed in Congress over to corporate lawyers so they could "craft" a bill that suited THEIR special interests...
The way I see it, the GOP is completely in the tank for corporations, and half the Democrats ...
THAT makes the Democrats TWICE as likely to serve We, the People...
BTW, your argument was impressive until you went down the path of the Black Power movement source...
The President in my lifetime Barack Obama reminds me of is Jack Kennedy... an extremely intelligent pragmatic liberal. And one that understands the role of a President...
"Harry Truman once said, 'There are 14 or 15 million Americans who have the resources to have representatives in Washington to protect their interests, and that the interests of the great mass of the other people - the 150 or 160 million - is the responsibility of the president of the United States, and I propose to fulfill it.'"
President John F. Kennedy
change is never easy even with people calling for it, but especially among politicians where change may mean losing their re-electabily
yeah, bho needs some of bush's hutzpah
oat, bho may be proceeding as fast as he can given the nature of change
bho is scary considering just how good a politician he is...
blackascoal
The Force is With Me
I'm sorry if all your sources have to come from white people, but I challenge you to refute what I posted .. even though some of it came from black people. What do they know, huh?
I'm also sorry that you're so confused but Obama is not a liberal, never been a liberal, never will be a liberal. He's a centrist and he'll tell you that himself. Liberals don't pour money on corporations .. AND he has few .. as in one .. liberal in his cabinet. He has more republicans in his cabinet than liberals.
I don't know your politics, but if you think democrats aren't in the pockets of corporations, I think your politics are confused. If you are serious about your opposition to the plutocracy, then you're going to have become less of a partisan, more of a citizen.
I don't intend to make an enemy of you, I generally like your thoughts and agree with you on a variety of issues.
blackascoal
The Force is With Me
Obama is scary considering how desperate this country is to alter the failed course we've been on for years. The tendency is to let Obama be Obama. That is scary.
He should be criticized just as vigorously as we criticized Bush on war, illegal wiretapping, capitulation to the energy companies, giving away billions to corporations without the necessary increased regulations, and all the other nuanced flip-flops he's engaged in.
Good looks, charisma, and a good speaking voice is no substitute for sane policies.
blackascoal
The Force is With Me
Hilda Solis, Ron Kirk, and Lisa Jackson are the only people in the Obama Administration who could honestly be considered liberal.
Robert Gates, James Jones, Mary Schapiro, Judd Gregg, and Ray LaHood are Republicans.
Obama is a centrist. He is not a liberal.
Bfgrn
New member
JFK was also a centrist and a pragmatist, but he had a liberal heart. So does Obama. I see in Jack Kennedy the heart of an artist. He was probably a little more of a "pol" than Obama, but that is yet to be seen...it could just be style. Rahm Emanuel would give JFK's "Irish Mafia" a run for their money...
I like Ike's take: "In all those things which deal with people, be liberal, be human. In all those things which deal with people's money, or their economy, or their form of government, be conservative."
President Dwight D. Eisenhower
It's sad the GOP has become the authoritarian party...
BTW, my skepticism of your source has nothing to do with color, just their allegiance to another continent first...and extremism IS extreme, from either side of the aisle...
"If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our nation falls short of its highest potential. I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist."
President John F. Kennedy
centrist, pragmatist and charismatic
ok all older jpp members, rack your brains.... i swear ive read the EXACT SAME THING bfg posted above. That's a re-used paragraph line for line.
Taichiliberal
Shaken, not stirred!
I'm with you on this. So far, Obama has done some disturbing moves...but he is a chess player and has patience. People freaking out should remember that the man is a centrist and never claimed to be anything else.