Daily Topics - Friday May 21 2010 Anything Goes! Friday...Senator Bernie Sanders
By louisehartmann
Anything Goes Friday
"Brunch With Bernie" Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) spends the hour with Thom discussing the issues and answering listener questions www.sanders.senate.gov
Comments
#2
Senate Passes Faux Financial "Reform" Bill
The Senate passed a financial "reform" bill today by a 59-39 vote which won't fix any of the core problems in the financial system, and won't prevent the next financial crisis.
The bill doesn't include the Volcker Rule (it wasn't even debated), doesn't break up or even substantially rein in the too big to fails, and doesn't force transparency in the derivatives market.
#3
I see before my eyes a Banana Republic.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Growing-Homelessness-in-Am-by-Stephen-Lendman-100521-89.html
#4
Re: Yes it does matter
I wholeheartedly agree that it does matter. Unfortunately presidents, like lawyers protect their own.
#5
The financial reform bill was passed in order to stop some "real" financial reform measures. When the GOP can have some members crossover to pass a bill, the bill must be flawed.
#7
Obama has been BOHICA-d again by our financial institutions.
BOHICA-d is a verb for this comment.
#8
Re: honest "mistakes"
This is just another example that our legal system is based on a class system. Rich, powerful people make honest mistakes, the common folk commit crimes that have consequences (and must be paid for).
#9
Don't mess with Boeing!
Windsheilds are shattering on Boeing planes and the NTSB and FAA mandates the airlines fix the problem. How would Toyota owners reacted had the NTSB ordered them to fix their own cars?
#10
Can we all agree to stop billing minor re-regulation as “Reform”?
Reform would require effective oversight and enforcement.
#11
@rladlof, stop calling minor re-regulation "REFORM"? What next, are you going to want us to stop calling the Democratic party "PROGRESSIVE"?
That's just crazy talk Mr.
N
#12
@Maxrot: My political party (Yes, I am a card carrying member), the DemonCrats come in to major flavors . . .
1. DLC: Democrats Loving Corporations
2. The marginalized left-wing wacko CENTRISTS
Where is Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson when we need them . . .
#13
Re: Where is Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson when we need them . . .
Didn't Jefferson & Jackson hold opposite views regarding government?
#14
Jackson appears on a currency that lots of natives refuse to use. Remember the "Trail of Tears Golf Course."
#15
oops! I got Jackson confused with Hamilton.
Sorry!!
#16
Progressives were folk like Fighting Bob LaFollette and Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt . . . Hey!!!! How did a Democratic Party member get included in that mix?
#17
@rladlof, those guys are gagged and locked away, there is serious consideration of cutting out their damn tongues too. They're idealism is best left to history (and its best to spin their words to 180 when siting what they believed and what they meant).
N
#18
Jackson and Jefferson were opposites in a crap-load of respects . . . Jefferson was about enlightenment and uplifting . . . Jackson was about kicking the butts of those who would screw with folk BUT they both were about the best for flesh and blood folk and not about power and oppression of folk.
#19
@Maxrot: That is true in TEXAS school books . . .
#20
Yeah, Jackson was one of those guys that walked the walk.
N
#21
BP rebranded itself to Beyond Petroleum in a hollow attempt to "greenwash" itself and seem more environmentally friendly.
I say it's time for a re-rebranding before they "whitewash" this catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.
New brands for BP:
Burst Pipes
Billowing Plumes
Bloody Psychotic
Blowout Prevention .... NOT
Backroom Pirates
Buying Politicians
Big Profits
Bigger Piggies
Biggest Parasites
Burning Peril
Beyond Principles
Building Plutocracy
#22
@Mysterious Floating Head: Jackson screwed with the Native Americans big time.ie genocide.
#23
@Maxrot: Jackson walked the walk? He didnt' walk the "trail of tears"...
#24
And they were white enlightened; neither would mess with acknowledgment of rights for all.
#25
Re: How did a Democratic Party member get included in that mix?
Unfortunately many Liberals have a blind allegiance to the Democratic Party, much the same as many Conservatives have a blind allegiance to the Republican party.
Clay Jenkinson of "The Thomas Jefferson Hours" says that both the Democratic & Republican Parties are Hamiltonian Parties.
#26
Re: And they were white enlightened...
From what I have read, Thomas Jefferson thought that we had a lot to learn from Native American Indians.
#27
DNC Outraises RNC In April -- But NRSC Outraises DSCC
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/05/dnc-outraises-rnc-in-april----but-nrsc-outraises-dscc.php
Why fund the DSCC when they are going to fund DLC candidates over actual Democrats. I send my $$$$ direct to the candidate of my choice. If they do a summation of direct candidate donations . . . I'm sure it will tell a different story.
#28
I would have to say that Jefferson and Jackson were the men that Americans wanted, that they could identify with. I think our Presidents reflect more of where the majority of Americans are at psychologically when they elect them then anything else. I think every successful campaign has always tapped into the current American psychology whether on purpose or by luck. I think our poor choices in Presidents in the last few decades says more about us then it says about our Presidents. Right now I would say psychologically that Americans really want to step away from the crude mentality of bully politics and want to make everything better, without really doing anything. That's why Obama still has sweet polls, he's placating our collective desire.
I don't know maybe I'm just way off on this.
N
#29
Oh Boy- listen to that pass Bernie just gave that unqualifed, lacking environmental values or vision Ken Slay-the- natural -world-azaar. Salzaar is a dink. He should never have been selected as Secretary of Interior.
#30
The issue with looking back at folk from prior times with the jaundice of current focus is it colors the true strides accomplished as charcoal gray.
Jefferson had a slave issue.
Jackson had competing culture versus land use issue.
Both issues were safety valves for their respective USAian societal infighting issues BUT both issues were tragedies . . . This is about context and content. The concept of the “Win-Win” is a Twentieth Century framework.
We must be careful to not blindly idealize and idolize folk from our past AS WELL AS we must not knee-jerk broad-brush paint them as evil.
#31
@harry, I was neither praising or detracting from Jackson when I made my "walked the walk" statement. All I was pointing out was the he worked for what said he would do. He was a tough son of a bitch, rather you like or dislike his policies, it doesn't change the man.
Heck Polk accomplished what he said he would, in four years, didn't even bother running for another election because he felt he was done. I can't say I agree with his policies, but enough of the American people did at the time and he had their support. Spotty Lincoln didn't support his policies either, but he fought to keep the Union and the land that Polk added to it, intact.
N
#32
www.pahrumplife.org writes:
A Visit Down Memory Lane
Watch 1948 Chicago: http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=ZaMGqzkNwLY
For most who were raised in the US 1940’s the video is a nostalgic look at the late 40s in Chicago (many in Pahrump are originally from Chicago and have a special nostalgia watching the Video). Others certainly also experience here the good time feel of the old times, when an apple was an apple and a peach was a peach and surely, with exceptions of course, most everyone, especially we youngsters, looked forward to realizing our American Dream where everybody got an even break. What happened to Tomorrowland?
Corporations became people in the law; but are allowed to conceal - with their corporate veil - their MOs, their way of doing business, sort of like BP hiding their Gulf of Mexico continually-spilling oil river with a covering of yet more untested chemical toxins so that the spill will appear that it has been diluted and has vanished although it has not vanished but gotten worse and much will suffer and die and only God knows what else, in its wake. Just another experiment in making big bucks. And the oil industry will profit.
Watch what happens to Pahrump if we allow the prison sewage effluent to be dumped on Pahrump contractors’ grassy fields. Do you believe that the private for-profit prison industrial complex cares more about the devastating contamination of Pahrump air and water than BP cares about the devastating contamination of the fishing waters off New Orleans or the coral colonies off Key West, Florida, or the world’s biologically-diverse oceans’ ecosystems? People care. Too-big-to-fail, monopolistic Corporations don’t.
The “nifty” old newsreel is something we can enjoy and share but keep in mind what we didn’t know and how we felt back then, how miraculous the new inventions, the music, the automobiles, the streamliners, the airplanes, TV. The future was bright. “What will the cars look like when we grow up? To where will we travel? What abundant foods will we know? What wilderness will we witness and enjoy? What will we learn?”
What should we be trying to preserve and trying to create now to have the better world that we imagined back then? Think, study, and inform based on knowledge of facts. I know that you can’t reason with psychotics, but you can at least spread the word to most people. Logic does work. Some people do listen to reason.
#33
@Foodfascist: Almost ALL of President Obama’s choices were the worse person for the job. It is a trademark of his Administration.
#34
God, I love the braininess of the folk on this site at times . . .
#35
Boehner: Yeah, Let's Televise This Financial Reform Conference!
Yeah, cuz this worked out so well for the Republicans during the Health insurance debate.
#36
@maxrotre:31 well, yeah...but...that's a lot of dead people in exchange. @Mysterious Floating Head re: #33 yer right. re:#34 yer right.
#37
rladlof
Re: The issue of looking back
Balance. Wow, what a novel idea!
;)
#38
@rladlof "God, I love the braininess of the folk on this site at times ." Who was this insult directed at?
#39
@Foodfascist: if you have to ask, you can't comprehend it.
#40
Bernie Sanders has said it may take decades and decades to resolve our problems. I say bs!!! Reagan destroyed our country in twenty-nine years. Change should not take sixty to eighty years to better our country. Our country is one massive cesspool.
#41
@harry- clarify. Perhaps its not a matter of comprehension. Perhaps its a matter of having the courage of conviction, some basic manners, and some basic maturity.
#42
A bomb could set in place some earthquake fault zones - not a good idea.
#43
@Foodfascist: No insult intended. It was an expression of true joy . . . The folk here are brainy. We discuss and dismantle and re-built. We agree and disagree. We arrive at concurring and diverging lines of thought AND we do it mostly respectfully.
WOOOHOOO! I love the adventure of true conversation.
#44
@foodfascist: that was my clumsy way of trying to say maybe he wasn't being sarcasatic....
#45
re: BP, I think the obvious first thing for our legislators to do is simply require that all drilling rigs use the same Blowout Preventers that are required in the North Atlantic. Seems like a no-brainer first step to me.
Second, everything BP is doing to clean up and stop the leak should be made public immediately. Their f-up is destroying the Gulf, they have forfeited any right to corporate privacy.
Third, the NOAA as well as Maritime Institutes should be dispersed with appropriate data collection equipment and start reporting on the data they're able to collect about the breadth, depths and direction of the spill.
No reason that all three of these issues can't be enacted immediately.
(Well no good reason, I'm sure BP could come up with a lot of BS reason not to do so).
N
#46
@Gerald re #40, at least a cesspool will extinguish the fires of the United States of "Hell", right?
#47
@foodfascist, re#39: no offense meant, I should have added a smiley. I was trying to appear as brainy as the Mysterious Floating Head by being droll.
#48
@harry @ladlof All right fellas, we will let this go this time. Given the anger on the board in so many places, it would not be inconsistent to make the case the comment was not sarcastic. Do not mess with the Food Fascist!!!!!
#49
The United States of Hell is an uncivilized society.
#50
THOM!
Not corporate. NOT MONOPOLY!!!
Monopolistic, cartel, cabal . . . even Multinational Enterprise (MNE) work.
This maybe me just getting all whiny about the precision in languaging rearing its ugly head thingy, again. To lump into inexact categories is to dance on the edge of jingoist propaganda and give ammo to the idiots on the ‘other’ side of shouting match.
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Yes, it does matter!
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2010/0519/Bush-case-for-Iraq-war-Does-it-matter-if-it-was-an-honest-mistake