By Steve Rhodes
1. From the Twitter feed of seemoreglass09:
#Occupy exists because the Left has been corrupted as well as the Right
2. From Matt Damon in Elle (via the Huffington Post):
I’ve talked to a lot of people who worked for Obama at the grassroots level. One of them said to me, ‘Never again. I will never be fooled again by a politician.’ You know, a one-term president with some balls who actually got stuff done would have been, in the long run of the country, much better.
3. From William Pfaff’s “History Tells Us Not To Dismiss A Democratic Challenge To Obama” at Truthdig:
A week ago, in the Providence Journal newspaper (in Rhode Island), the publisher of Harper’s Magazine, John R. MacArthur, wrote that President Barack Obama, through expedient political compromises, has lost the moral authority that an American president must command, and therefore has lost his right to a second presidential term. Mr. MacArthur quotes in support of his argument the veteran journalist Bill Moyers, who was a member of President Lyndon Johnson’s staff from 1965 to 1967, and since has become a prominent commentator on public television and in liberal and Democratic Party circles.
4. From MacArthur’s “President Obama Richly Deserves To Be Dumped“:
As Ron Suskind’s book Confidence Men confirms, there was never any question of doing things differently. Describing the then president-elect’s choice of economic advisers, he notes, “Obama, after all, had selected for his top domestic officials two men [Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner] whose actions [in the Clinton Administration] had contributed to the very financial disaster they were hired to solve.” These anti-reform appointments did not go unnoticed by party regulars, even though they were ignored by Obama groupies. “I don’t understand how you could do this,” Suskind quotes Sen. Byron Dorgan (D., N.D.) saying to Obama. “You’ve picked the wrong people!”
The “wrong people” included Rahm Emanuel, now mayor of Chicago, and his replacement as White House chief of staff, William Daley; both of these advisers were four-star generals within the Chicago Democratic machine who cut their teeth in Washington during the campaign to pass that job-killer North American Free Trade Act and who later worked for investment banks. But Obama’s hypocrisy in Osawatomie, Kansas, set a new standard in deception. Among other things, his speech blamed “regulators who were supposed to warn us about the dangers of all this [the unfettered sales of bundled mortgages], but looked the other way or didn’t have the authority to look at all. It was wrong. It combined the breathtaking greed of a few with irresponsibility all across the system.”
What’s truly breathtaking is the president’s gall, his stunning contempt for political history and contemporary reality. Besides neglecting to mention Democratic complicity in the debacle of 2008, he failed to point out that derivatives trading remains largely unregulated while the Securities and Exchange Commission awaits “public comment on a detailed implementation plan” for future regulation. In other words, until the banking and brokerage lobbies have had their say with John Boehner, Max Baucus, and Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner. Meanwhile, the administration steadfastly opposes a restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act, the New Deal law that reduced outlandish speculation by separating commercial and investment banks. In 1999, it was Summers and Geithner, led by Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin (much admired by Obama), who persuaded Congress to repeal this crucial impediment to Wall Street recklessness.
5. From “The Zenith of Civil Libertarian Anger At President Obama” in the Atlantic:
On the eve of 2012, President Obama is facing a backlash from civil libertarians that is more widespread and intense than anything he’s yet seen. He has previously been subject to complaints about his war on whistleblowers, the humanitarian and strategic costs of his drone war, the illegality of the war he waged in Libya, his use of the state secrets privilege, his defense of Bush-era warrantless wiretapping, and his assertion of the power to kill American citizens accused of terrorism. But news that Obama plans to sign rather than veto a bill enshrining indefinite detention into U.S. law and failing to exempt American citizens is provoking unprecedented ire.
6. Jon Stewart on the indefinite detention bill:
Part 1:
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Part 2:
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7. Ret. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson says NDAA is “Road to Tyranny”:
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8. From “Obama Apologists Ignore Rotting Corpse Of Anwar Al-Awlaki” at emptywheel:
It’s been amusing to see how Obama apologists have taken Lawfare’s very helpful explainer on the NDAA’s detainee provisions to pretend that their president isn’t signing a bill that he believes authorizes the indefinite detention of American citizens.
9. From Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy:
10. From Tom the Dancing Bug:
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Elsewhere on the Beachwood today:
* Audio-Visual Accompaniment To Greg Kot’s Favorite Concerts Of 2011.
* Rahm’s Mental Health Problem.
* The Blue & Orange Kool-Aid Report: Executive Decisions.
* Gerald Celente’s Top 12 Trends For 2012 Including The Shocking Megatrend Being Seriously Discussed At The Highest Levels Of Government.
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The Beachwood Tip Line: Megatrending.
Posted on December 22, 2011