Etc.

Despite tons of propaganda about enjoying one's "golden years," the reality of old age still stinks.
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And speaking of stink, it isn't because Obama was weak that he "capitulated" with the far right Republicans. No, it's because he really IS one of them and endorses their policies of privatization and enriching the rich further.

Clinton paved the way, although it was the WTO who pushed to get rid of Glass-Stegall:

That same opportunistic reasoning got us into the Great Recession, thanks to President Clinton joining with congressional Republicans to destroy the sensible controls on Wall Street greed that FDR had put in place in order to prevent a repeat of the Depression. That was also the rationale of the Clinton alums that Obama appointed to clean up the mess they themselves had created. Instead of worrying about jobless workers and swindled homeowners, they bailed out the swindlers, following the example set by George W. Bush.

We don't have a real Democratic Party anymore.
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Expect more of this kind of thing thanks to the Citizens United case:

A fledgling company dissolved shortly after making a $1 million contribution to an independent political committee supporting Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, leaving the source of the money unclear.

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OF COURSE the principal kept her job. She probably will be principal of the year:

But an education source expressed outrage over what he saw as a slap on the wrist.
"A letter of reprimand is an outrageously light punishment for such an egregious breach of parents' trust," he said.
"I . . . wonder whether the same standard of justice would have been applied had their [officials'] children been the ones sent out in the back of that cold, dark and uninsured U-Haul truck."

The reason the principal did what she did is because she knew she would get away with it.

Par for the course in public ed.
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I'd say the second Great Depression is already here.

In sum, we have a demand problem, and neoliberal policies do nothing but make economies worse.
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The Ben Roethlisberger civil trial will remain in Reno.
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Robert Scheer Calls B.S.

on all the outrage leveled at Senator Bunning, who deserves a lot of criticism for his delaying tactics, but Scheer thinks it simply obscures the fact Congress HAS the money to extend unemployment insurance because, after all, it bailed out Wall Street without batting an eyelash.

While the REAL problem is with Wall Street, nobody in our Senate wants to deal with the 800-ton gorilla in the 5x5 outhouse. After all, both parties are on the take from these "banksters."

Scheer:

He is right to point out that enormous sums always seem to exist to aid Wall Street but that assistance to average Americans has consistently been only an afterthought. And he does have a point in noting that if the latest spending extension was felt to be so important, why wasn’t it funded in a timely manner or in an orderly procedure by his congressional colleagues from both parties who are now trouncing him?

The money is always there when they want it, as we have witnessed throughout the banking bailout when enormous sums have suddenly been made available to those who least need it. The Treasury Department managed to find $200 billion last week to deposit with the Fed to increase the purchase of toxic mortgages to $1.25 trillion to make the bankers whole.

But the level of vituperation unleashed against this senator is so disproportionate to his role in the economic catastrophe as to raise questions of motive. The overreaction to Bunning’s protest was never anything more than a ploy for Democratic and Republican leaders to profess great sorrow for the folks on Main Street while they continue to coddle Wall Street.

I really can't disagree. Both parties play a stinking parliamentary and rhetorical game while people continue to hurt.

I like this comment following the piece:

By Thomas Dooley, March 3 at 3:45 pm #

“Don’t blame Bunning?”

I understand that Bunning is making a symbolic gesture, but surprise, surprise, he’s making it at the expense of the unemployed. Why did he choose them rather than the wealthy and powerful? Gee, I wonder why.

Besides, there is a special tax already levied to pay for unemployment benefits. Employers figure this tax into the total compensation package for each employee. Company accountants treat it as wages as though the employee had received the funds. The assumption is that if the unemployment tax did not exist the employee’s take home pay would increase by that amount. This is money that has been earned by the employee and has been set aside as a form of forced savings on the Social Security model.

Like Social Security the unemployment fund has been running in surplus taking in more than it paid out. If brave boy Bunning wanted to go after someone’s store of wealth to make a point why not go after the wealthy’s store of wealth rather than the unemployment surplus? Isn’t he a brave maverick? I guess not that brave or mavericky.

The only way to not blame Bunning is to blame the Senate and here we can make a good case.

The Senate is anti-democratic. In a democracy no one, not Bunning nor anyone else should be able to invalidated public policy after candidates have been selected, elections held, legislative battles fought and won, and the policy passed into law. Doing so is a disgrace to anyone’s notion of democratic ideals. This insult is due to our tolerating the existence of the profoundly anti-democratic Senate. It should be abolished and Bunning gives a crystal clear, unmistakable example why it should.

Bunning isn’t the only example. Look at how our health care policy is being handled, mangled and strangled in the Senate. There plenty of other examples. The House of Representatives has passed many good bills in the past few years only to see them buried in the Senate at times on the whim of a single Senator.

So sure, don’t blame Bunning, but if you don’t want this sort of thing to happen then we must advance a constitutional amendment to abolish the Senate.

That would require the Senate to have a 2/3rds vote for abolishing itself. Fat chance it would happen. Not that it shouldn't. The Senate is as much use as tits on a boar.

The Kool-Aid Has Finally Worn off of Robert Scheer,

who should have bothered to do even the most rudimentary bit of research into President Obama's political career, and therefore he wouldn't be shocked about the president's neoliberal/Wall Street shilling tendencies.

But now he's shocked Obama would sound like a populist but his actions reveal what he truly is:

But we, following him, have already backed down. Does the president not recall that he began his health care reform effort by ingratiating himself with the insurance lobbyists in taking “single payer” off the table on day one? The insurers are not really upset with what may survive as a minuscule public option, for they have won the big prize: Everyone must buy insurance from them under penalty of law, and there will be no built-in requirement for cost control. Their so-called opposition to the current plans has to do with fine-tuning the president’s guarantee of their future profits.

The same contradiction between progressive rhetoric and big-business giveaways was on display, also on Tuesday, when Obama addressed the economic crisis. Speaking at the Brookings Institution, an Establishment think tank that helped craft the radical financial deregulation of the Clinton years, Obama blamed Republicans for the mess. He thundered against “an opposition party, which, unfortunately, after having presided over the decision-making that led to the crisis, decided to hand it over to others to solve.”

Robert Scheer on AIG, Etc.

Some of Obama's people need to get the hell out of Dodge.

Robert Scheer

has utterly lost his marbles.

I Thank God for Ann Coulter.

She's the best thing that happened to John Edwards' campaign.

Any publicity is better than none, as the media are insistent they aren't planning to cover him otherwise.

Like many others, upon hearing that she had used an address at a major conservative convention to call Edwards a "faggot," I quickly clicked to his home page to see his campaign's reaction -- and was happily diverted to more substantive stuff, such as his firm support of universal health care and an end to the war in Iraq. No wonder Coulter hates him: Edwards is a Democrat who believes in the progressive heritage of his party and is not afraid to tell the world.

Yep. He's too big a threat to the status quo.