The Third Bush Term (Supporting Evidence)

I included this as a drive-by link in the previous post, but here's something Matt Taibbi wrote that I believe deserves further consideration.

This explains more than everything that's wrong with this Presidency:

We’re coming up on the one- year anniversary of Barack Obama’s election. I think it’s maybe time that we asked ourselves how he’s doing.

He didn’t close Guantanamo Bay, and not only didn’t reject the idea of pre-emptive detention but added spice to his own new version of pre-crime prosecution, “prolonged detention.” He promised health care reform and campaigned on a public option, and we all know how that is going to turn out.

But most importantly, he came into office amidst sweeping crises in the financial sector and did not do what needed to be done, and what had been done the last time the U.S. was sent careening into a depression because of Wall Street: he failed to push for tough financial reforms. Barack Obama needed to be the FDR figure who remade the American capital markets and made them fair again, and he barely laid a finger on the whole scene.

Instead, he put the people who created the problem in charge of fixing the mess, and ended up bailing them out instead of the rest of the country, at huge current and (presumably) future cost.The total bill for the Bush-Obama bailout is certainly above ten trillion at this point — Inspector General Neil Barofsky thinks it might hit nearly $24 trillion ultimately — and this went through without much fanfare. Meanwhile, the congress is stuck in the mud, panicked at the thought of paying three or four trillion over a decade or so for a health care program.

None of this is new news. What is new is the question of what to do about it. I’m personally of the opinion that our main problem lay with the fact that the Democratic Party as currently constituted is more afraid of losing the financial support of Wall Street and the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry than it is of losing progressive voters. In fact, I think I’ve put that wrong, because it implies that the Democratic Party pushes the agenda of industry insiders out of fear. That is a misread of the situation, I think.

I think they prefer those people to their voters. I think they feel more comfortable with them. I heard a story recently from a Democratic Party operative who tells me that certain members of one of the president’s cabinet departments only got wind of how hard it is out there for ordinary people to pay their bills when they invited in a major corporation to give them a presentation about their financial outlook for the holiday season — and through that report found out that this company’s prospective customers were spending less because large numbers of them had been laid off, or had huge medical bills, or had maxed out their credit, and so on.

Letters from customers, survey answers and such, were read to the cabinet group. And they were shocked. This is how they find out about the economic reality of this country — accidentally, from a major campaign contributor! That’s how out of touch these people are.

I don't like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, or the rest of the bat-shit crazies, but I have to admit I do agree with some of the language they use - that filters through the more sane providers I frequent - more often than not as time goes on.

Primarily, because I didn't realise I was voting for the Third Term of the Bush Administration. A mistake of action and support that I may never allow myself to live down.

I pray we all survive the next three years of this bullshit...