Who did you vote for? Because I’m in the mood to laugh at someone.

Well sir, I voted for Nader, because why the fuck not?

I also seriously considered writing in Jello Biafra.

Honestly, why is that funny? I live in Portland, OR. It’s not like fucking McCain was going to win the state without me there, bravely manning the trenches.

How would I have benefited by voting for Obama? People in my family were horrified that I didn’t but none of them was able to actually answer that question.

And yes, taken in means that I’m not going to wail and gnash like a true leftist at the immediate point a politician in this country is proved to be a politician from this country.

I will never understand this attitude as long as I live.

Now, by “this attitude’ I don’t mean a person saying “Given the choice between the imperfect and the appalling, I’ll support the imperfect’. That’s a perfectly reasonable and rational choice to make.

No, the part I don’t get is when that same person starts yelling at everybody who doesn’t praise the imperfect side at every opportunity.

You’re pretty much saying “Imperfect is the best we’re ever going to get! How dare you ask for more, you upstart!”

First of all, Obama’s not the king. He’s not endowed with the power of god and it’s not blasphemous to criticize him. Second, random kvetching on obscure comedy blogs is not likely to bring on the collapse of the Obama administration.

I mean, Obama has some pretty awful qualities. He voted for telecom immunity. He’s incredibly pro-Israel and that’s probably going to scuttle any chances for peace. These are pretty big issues. Is it really so unreasonable for people to find them important?

I’ll just leave this here.

Thanks jim. This is one of those things that restores my faith in this country.

No, seriously, or fucking what? What do you think you’re going to do Brad? Vote republican? Bullshit. Come on, you’re not going to vote republican. You’re not going to do jack-fucking-shit and everyone on the planet knows it.

Look, just go back to making fun of conservitards and rightwing nutcakes and such. There’s lots of humor there and you’re much better at it. Nobody expects you to stand up it your political masters – and you only look foolish when you try.

I’m not going to hold the democratic people of Bhutan responsible for something their king did.

Better hurry over there. I made a comment that’s bound to get deleted.

FYWP!!

I have one word: Bhutan.

Or you could look northward.

Not that Canucklevania’s history is without violence (1759, <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebellions_of_1837, 1885 for example) but the country’s founding from 1864-67 was all negotiation and consensus.

You can support the representational perspective of one politician over another without being “taken in” or immaturely expecting magical overnight corrections of all the things you think are mean and bad. Jeezus H. Christ grow the fuck up already, some of you.

So, anyway, back to my point.
We’ve got a lot of people who’ve been given enormous amounts of money during the process of running the financial industry into the ground. Whether per contract or not, they’ve made fortunes for no demonstrable cause.
So, it’s time for the gubmint to take their stuff. Everything that they can’t demonstrate that they have earned.
Like the poor guy with the flower import business, who had his entire capital investment budget, in cash, confiscated from him at the Miami airport because it was cash and he couldn’t prove then and there that it wasn’t from or for drugs.
I think it would help our current economic mess.
1. the folks who were steering the handbasket would be spending more time trying to get some of their $ back than cadging more
2. it would provide the gubmint with assets to sell to fund stimulus
3. Scalia, who authored the decision that the gubmint could keep the flower dealers $ even though it had been established that he was an honest flower broker who operated on a cash basis, would have a stroke.
(that might not directly help the economy, but it would be good for the country as a whole – I’m sure that importers and producers of sparkling wine would see an uptick in business.)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/feb/05/lux-interior-the-cramps-dies

:(

If Obama does one thing in office, he’ll be remembered as a great President: ban corporate political contributions.

I agree to some degree with you. The old saying is “We get the government that we deserve”.

The problems in America are immense and only really revealed in the economics. I would argue in return that, if Americans really knew the extent of the problems that face us, we’d probably get together and work towards a solution.

But we have a complicit media that won’t tell us what their corporate overlords want us to hear. The whole “liberal/conservative MSM” fallacy is just that: a fallacy. We are under a corporatocracy. We, the people, have to learn to use that in order to effect real change.

Until then, we’re going to have to rely on government to provide us protection from the unified monster known as corporate America.

The great tragedy of the Bush administration is the abandonment of this end of the social contract: in exchange for our tax dollars, government is supposed to protect the least among us, and that means the individual. (S)he doesn’t have to be black or disabled or female, just one single person.

Prima facie evidence can be found in the absolute abominations FEMA, the FDA and SEC became under Bush. And I can assure you, that’s just the tip of the iceberg, and we may have ducked a bullet by sheer dumb luck that the financial crisis held off until Obama, because who the fuck knows how badly the FDIC was being run?

This argument isn’t about left or right, which is why I can stomach some conservatives: this is about us versus them. People versus organizations whose very efficiency, very existence, demands as little consideration for the human element as possible.

You know yelling at a Nader voter is the only thing that gives D.N. an erection.

If it has to be done, then it happens to be done.

Thanks for pointing that out. I didn’t hang around long enough last night to defend my comment. There is a balance (ask WalMart). The banking system crash would tip the scales.

As for any major political change only coming about with the threat of violence, I have one word: Bhutan.

Google it.

That’s because they’re human, just like us. We’re all fucking monsters – maybe not in the same ways, but we’re all basically a bunch of clever hairless chimps with way poor impulse control. Sometimes things go well for a while, but it’s not the way to bet.

So far, Obama seems cleverer and better-controlled than most of us, and I’m personally willing to wait and see what he actually does before deciding he’s just the same as the Previous Occupant.

Y’know who does that “tee hee, I’ll make a cheap joke out of the quotation, that way I’ll control the conversation” thing? The troll. I’m just saying, it’s a kind of circumstantial thing but which few other commenters utilize aside from it.

But anyway:

Not dumb enough to be taken in by a smoothtalking corporate shill just because he says he’ll buy me a pony.

No, I was promised he’d buy two children a puppy. Entirely selfless motives, here.

And yes, taken in means that I’m not going to wail and gnash like a true leftist at the immediate point a politician in this country is proved to be a politician from this country. Because frankly, the ashes and sackcloth look doesn’t appeal to me.

Now, you’re totally free to go fucking off to some other land like comsympinko, secure in the idea that Obama is just as bad as Bush, and that all other politicians the world over are somehow not beholden to global corporate interests, and therefore are not going to engage in the exact same bullshit.

Me, I’m gonna ride this out. I was born during Reagan’s reign, so I’ve got a, how you’d say, low bar of expectation for corporate shills. So far, Obama seems to be the very best one we’ve ever had.

But I’m sure that doesn’t gel with the gnashing and rending you want to do, tearing out your hair, grinding of your teeth, trying to prove just how much more left you are than anybody by saying you hated Obama before hating Obama was cool.

So, I’ll just stay over here, acting in weary resignation to the idea that I have to interact with reality, and dragging Leon Trotsky’s pseudonym along for the ride.

Because that’s funny to me now. Every hyperventilating jackass, left and right, since the inauguration has become like a comedic buffet. Every single one that seems almost *personally* hurt that he’s a politician, not a superhero…

You’re fucking hilarious.

Me, I know who and what I voted for, and I’m not going to bitch when he behaves exactly in the manner I expected.