Obama's socialist ranking

"We are poised to pass the toughest financial reform since the ones we created in the aftermath of the Great Depression." - President Obama at the White House

"Never let a crisis go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel

CRISIS - SOLUTION

This new consumer protection bureau to monitor credit-card companies, mortgage brokers and banks will be housed in the Federal Reserve. Getting the willies yet?

OK, we had quite a discussion here back in the day whether or not Obama is a socialist. Daniel pointed out that based on the true technical definition of a socialist and a socialist system Obama is not one so let's posit that. BUT he goes right up to the edge of being one, always two or three steps removed. To put it in movie ratings terms you have your R, your NC-17 and your hardcore X. Obama is definitely in NC-17 territory, never quite the technical definition of a working socialist but, here read this from the Washington Post today:

Lawmakers guide Dodd-Frank bill for Wall Street reform into homestretch by David Cho, Jia Lynn Yang and Brady Dennis
(re Goldman Sachs)
"...In the coming year a regulatory council could force the bank to shed its sizeable hedge funds and private-equity activities. It also could be banned from making financial trades for its own profit instead of for clients, shaving roughly 10 percent from the firm's revenue."

So we're gonna have alot more regulators than we had in the past with vastly more powers. Risky activities, somehow I always thought they were the hallmark of capitalism, they could be limited in the future but derivatives haven't been banned outright under the proposed bill. Also if this passes and it will banks will have to have more money put in reserve for those bad times but the regulators will figure this out don't you worry. I know I know auto dealers have been exempt from your new consumer protections and most mutual fund and insurance companies made out ok, community banks are good but on the capitalist/socialist scale there's a sense out there that Obama's philosophy is closer to the socialist end than the capitalist end. Liberalism has gradations just like conservatism has and Obama certainly doesn't talk as if he's in love with our capitalist system. Ours as soapie is fond of pointing out is a mixed economy, not pure capitalism but I don't like where this is headed. It moves us further along on that scale even if it would be more important to plug that damn hole in the Gulf first. I've yet to hear Obama say anything positive about wealth and wealth creation which doesn't prove ipso facto that he's One of Them but he's definitely an NC-17 kind of guy pushing the envelope. Question is if he does get a 2nd Term will he go hardcore?

The Westchester County Gun Show

When it comes to guns I'm a superfreak. I'm a little liberal on the issue but in the end take your basic conservative position, well yeah conservative but without your NRA extremism. Today there's a gun show going on at the Westchester County Center here in White Plains NY. Now the last County Executive Andy Spano, a Democrat banned the thing but now we got a Repub in office, Rob Astorino and he brought it back. Now what is the main purpose, actually the only purpose of a gun or firearm? It's to kill people at least theoretically so I've always found those who drool over guns at these shows to be somehow, to be charitable here of the Ozark mentality. Not quite right in the head, a couple screws need tightening is all, Off-Center and it's like the time at my sister-in-law's. The story goes they saw a deer in their yard once as they live in the sticks and while everyone was ooohing and aaahing one of the friends goes "I wish I had my gun right now" and, well it was kind of those brain farts again, the type of thing you shouldn't express at least in mixed company anyway. Basically the guy's a dickhead but he's kind of emblematic of the species. Now my bro ain't into guns either but few years back as a favor he took a friend to the same gun show and there sitting at some table was some guy with swastikas on his belt selling some white supremacy books. Friend goes ignore him most folks ain't that way but my brother wanted to get the hell out of there just the same. Now on the other hand I've always said pass all the gun control measures you like and for the record I'm not against all of them but it'll only affect the law-abiding and honest among us. Criminals by definition break the law, that's why they're known as criminals and so to somehow disarm the rest of the populace seems well to me that's it's a complicated issue not given to easy liberal sermonizing. So gun shows attract weird people and I kinda have to go with Spano on this one although he effectively booted himself out of office by constantly raising people's property taxes. Rob Astorino, good ole Republican boy gotta open up the cowboy show again. If I'm somewhat Satyish on the issue that's because I am, the gun crowd gives me the willies, the heebeejeebies and you can sex it up all you want by having Sarah Palin eating a bowl of Moose Nose Stew but when I'm driving up the line on the Taconic in the Dutchess County area and pass Farmer Joe's Road you can't help but think of some farmer/Dad sneaking into his daughter's room at night, gap-toothed perverted overalled church usher bastardo on Sunday (don't like me making jokes? change the name of the road). I know I'm stereotyping but then again my friend and I were driving on Sprout Brook Road recently by some nature preserve/trailway system, that's kinda in the general hillbilly geographic area I'm talking about here and the sign had a bullet hole in it so I said let's get out of here. Conservatives who are birdwatchers, dayhikers, yuppie cyclists, Pelican-cleaners, photobugs, mallrats, I-podding skateboarding mofos, I think we need to go with them and leave the gun enthusiasts/masturbators at home. It's just a vibe thing.

How come lib critics of the President aren't racists too?

(I have borrowed some of the following information from Moderate Republicans' blog of 6/17, Obama, Oil Spills and Rhetoric. Mod Repub, ever a useful resource)

First it was Kirsten Powers who seemed the first to fall out of love with him, then the Ragin' Cajun' went ballistic. I heard also that Olbermann had something not nice to say. So what was the impetus for all this? The Crisis in the Gulf of course, yes it took something of this magnitude for them to finally turn this spaceship around and head back towards Earth but here's a list of some other liberals who've had critical things to say:

E.J. Dionne (Wash. Post) - a fair lib imo not given to hyperventilating
Gail Collins (Ole Gray Lady) - I recall her name from somewhere and it wasn't for her conservative musings
David Broder (Wash. Post) - I think he's some type of lib but I'm not really sure. Seen him on gabfests with Gwen Ifill on PBS and he always looked kind of boring to me like he'd get out his lawn chair with a few other oldsters and sit outside of Macy's on a hot sweltering day in July. Looks like he uses the stall in the Men's Room alot.
Tina Brown - THE Tina Brown
Robert Reich (HuffPo) - we all remember him.
Roger Simon (Politico),

& on it goes. Now many of them are saying the same things you or I might say. You know I gotta break this down and get to the Westchester County Gun Show but I'm just sayin' if you're a Tea Party motherfucker you're a racist by definition but if you hang with the above set your criticism is somehow more cerebral and fair. In short why has criticism of Obama become niggerized but only on the conservative end?

The Mother Hen retires

It's not that I find Helen Thomas to be an obligatory subject for a blog post. Quite the contrary, I pretty much blog about what I damn well please but how does this grab you? She had every right to say what she said even though it was offensive and racist and whatever else you want to throw in there. You see that's the thing about Free Speech, it's only real test comes when a Helen Thomas comes along or a Don Imus or a South Park or a Glenn Beck or a Larry Flynt or a......and it seems like in too many of these cases we simply fail the test. A rabbi asked her what she thinks of Israel and she said they should get out of Palestine and move back to Germany and Poland and so if he didn't like the response why'd he ask her? So is Helen Thomas an anti-Semitic bigot? at 89 probably as I'm sure she didn't just wake up one day on the wrong spot.

The thing about the Middle East is I don't pretend to understand it. It's one of those things you need Monarch Notes for and both sides insist the other side is 100% wrong and they are 100% right. Obama is getting alot of heat these days for being anti-Israel and for snubbing Bibi as some war criminal but again unless you're a Mideast junkie who's to say? The Mideast is the world's most controversial issue and I think the sheer tenacity of the issue over the years is what grates on me most. It's 2010, the Palestinians should have a homeland by now so we can move on to other pressing international issues that desperately need attention. I've always found the continent of Africa interesting with its long history of wars and despots and coups, its diamonds, tribes, culture, dialects and way of life and was pondering the other day about the usual conservative rationale for toppling Saddam when those phantom WMDs failed to materialize. They said and continue to say sure that was some f*'ed up intel but not only Iraq but the world is now better off without him and I was thinking the same can be said of Robert Mugabe. Africa has always been some type of nightmare continent, well parts of it anyway and as a kid growing up I was always thankful I wasn't born there to maybe wind up as part of Idi Amin's dinner banquet. It's a continent that desperately needs saving and its Third World status has gone on way too long. Let's talk about THAT.

Helen Thomas, this is what happens when you're still working at 89. She apologized for what she said and seems to me after 50 years of covering the White House there's a better way to go out.

How did liberals become so conservative on the matter of the Oil Spill?

Normally they wouldn't be. If Bush were in charge today, OMG if Bush were in charge today you can bet dollars to doughnuts that that scalawag Michael Moore would probably do a scathing documentary on it. Pretty safe bet that MoveOn.org would have something to say too. Now I wasn't gonna do a new blog on this subject so soon but Shaw's blog yesterday inspired me. Actually alot of folks both right and left have some very good points to make. Mal's point that the government and BP should just get together and solve the damn thing first makes the most sense, assign blame and let the bashing begin but LATER. I also get Saty's point that the government doesn't have the technical know-how to cap the damn thing but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be involved at all and pretend it ain't happening. Actually I find the liberals to be most inconsistent here first because they're normally such big environmentalists and such strong advocates of the government taking the leading role in other environmental matters such as global warming and climate change. Nay in the liberal cosmos those aren't just matters but crises as well. Funny thing though is if we conservatives said what they are saying we should say, namely advocate for no governmental involvement in the matter whatsoever we'd be lambasted for that too. Basically the reason the libs have come up with this curious application of a very basic conservative, libertarian free-market position/approach here is really quite simple: they are still so damn in love with Obama that it's the ONLY logical position open to them whereby they can still defend their man. It's parabolic logic at least for a liberal, a default position and they know it just like if your brakes fail you pump the pedal up and down or turn off the keys or just jump the hell out of the car. I strive for absolute honesty here in my blog and on another matter if I am mildly curious why the Gores are separating or divorcing then you liberal bloggers have every right to opine why Rush seems to keep turning off his wives. Have at it, it's all good. On the crisis in the Gulf the consensus has been reached rather quickly among people as varied as James Carville, Colin Powell and Malcontent that Obama has been disengaged from this crisis from Day One, doesn't know how to handle it but the hardcore libs still aroused by Obama deny he's been Peter-Principled into office and would rather attack conservatives as if this is gonna somehow save all those Brown Pelicans and the Louisiana shrimp industry. Actually this is the one issue that we should all be nonideological on, could've been a proud moment. As liberal Matt Rose has said Obama is a loser. Just admit it, it'll make the pain go away.