I have two pieces of video for you to compare and contrast. One is of a failed morning zoo DJ. The other is of a well-regarded professor from Columbia University. Can you figure out which is which?
VIDEO ONE:
VIDEO TWO:
So, did you figure it out? Here’s a hint… The economics professor isn’t the one talking about how peaceful protestors are going to be dragging those with jobs from their homes, and gnawing on their femurs.
Who are you more likely to believe, the former morning zoo DJ, or the economist from Columbia? Sorry if that makes me sound like an elitist, but I’m beyond caring.
Here, for those of you who didn’t watch the videos, are a few quotes.
BECK: “Capitalists, if you think that you can play footsies with these people, you’re wrong. They will come for you and drag you into the streets and kill you…they’re Marxist radicals…these guys are worse than Robespierre from the French Revolution…they’ll kill everybody.”
SACHS: “What we need right now is a massive social understanding… it’s starting here and it’s spreading around the country. We need politicians that are going to come forward and say something very simple. ‘I’m not taking any donations beyond $100. I’m not going to have any PACs, any Super PACs, any 527s, or whatever it is. I’m not going to have any anonymous corporate giving. Nothing. I am going to run for office as a person not bought by the corporate sector.’ And that is going to win the election… Use the social marketing tools. Break the back of money in the campaigns… Elect those people, and then we’re going to have our Democracy back. Those people will win. President Obama seemed like he was doing it. He actually showed that you could raise hundreds of millions of dollars, but, you know, he bought a little insurance on the side. ‘OK, mass movement, but I’ll still have some Wall Street bundlers on the side.’ And then, as soon as he came in, what did we get? We got Robert Rubin. We got Larry Summers. We got Tim Geithner. We got Wall Street back again. That won’t work in this country.”
26 Comments
i actually like obama a little still… but this is right on the money:
President Obama seemed like he was doing it. He actually showed that you could raise hundreds of millions of dollars, but, you know, he bought a little insurance on the side. ‘OK, mass movement, but I’ll still have some Wall Street bundlers on the side.’ And then, as soon as he came in, what did we get? We got Robert Rubin. We got Larry Summers. We got Tim Geithner. We got Wall Street back again. That won’t work in this country.”
Beck is really good at helping amass evidence that he is a complete moron.
I don’t know how even the most hard core of rightists could argue with Sachs’ statement.
How can you guys vote for Obama again when a lot of you have admitted that he isn’t what you though he was?
Seems kind of like a defeatist attitude. Dont you guys think you deserve better.
I mean voting is kind of scam and it doesnt solve problems, but why vote for a guy you cant even fully support anymore?
Mr. Gomez,
Who are “you guys”?
I’ve never made my dissatisfaction of Obama a secret.
Obama was seduced by Wall Street, and we’re all paying the price for it. That’s the story of the last four years. Prior to that, it was oil companies and “defense” contractors that were really cashing in. Everyone gets a turn. All you need is enough money to get a seat at the table. I don’t know that Sachs is right though about social media being able to go up against a candidate with a $1 billion war chest. Negative ads are persuasive, and $1 billion buys a lot of them. Look at what Bush/Rove did to Kerry and Gore. It’s not enough just to have good candidates who agree not to take corporate money. We need to change the system so that they can’t.
The crackdown on the Occupy movement has begun. Hundreds of riot police descended on Occupy Boston protestors last night.
http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/l7z3r/help_occupy_boston_under_attack_by_riot_police/
Check out this protest sign.
http://i.imgur.com/lXNlu.jpg
You guys was just a way of saying, the majority of people’s comments I read on here. Nothing insulting. It just seems that a lot of Mr. Maynard’s readers tend to be liberals.
Edward, how would you change the system without inviting communism or fascism or general totalitarianism/big brother to completely take over?
If you’re dissatisfied with Obama why vote for him again?
“So enthused about promoting the far-left protests, ABC anchor Diane Sawyer on Monday night’s World News championed “the Occupy Wall Street movement” by claiming that “as of tonight, it has spread to more than 250 American cities, more than a thousand countries — every continent but Antarctica.”
Mr. Gomez,
I am most certainly a liberal. I will vote for Obama, not because I think he’s my idea of what I’d like to have in a President, but because the Presidential office is more complicated than just a couple of issues. I don’t like his market centered approach, but things like the affordable health care act and the money it sets aside for streamlining how health data is collected and stored, banning restrictions on excluding folks with preexisting conditions and caps on profits, requiring that all have insurance of some kind, etc. The act is flawed and disappointing to me, but I want a lot. It would have never happened under a Republican President.
DADT would have remained as it is (was) under a Republican. Lifting bans on the creation of stem cell lines with federal funds and would have never happened. Those are just small examples.
For all the things I don’t like, there are a couple things that I do, and that’s while I’ll vote for him.
Hell, people will vote for a candidate purely on their stance on a single issue (abortion, gun control). I’ll at least vote for someone on 2 or three at once.
If the Republicans came up with someone better, I’d vote for him. I voted for McCain in the Michigan Republican primary of 2008.
The third parties are interesting, but are often non-starters. Paul is interesting, but his tune would change when he actually had to govern, and his free wheeling approach to the deregulation of finance markets would just continue the hole we’re in. Call me old, but I think it would be a disaster.
It’s a mistake to put everyone on this site into the same category. There are lot of differing opinions here and a mixture of attitudes. I would only call a third of the people who regularly comment on this site to be through and through liberals.
Peter,
Maybe, just Maybe Ron Paul would change if he were elected president. That possibility is always in the back of my head. But, listen to what he says and then compare that to Obama, Romney, Perry etc.
They talk in general terms about change and helping the common man, but they avoid openly talking about challenging the real centers of power ie The Fed, CIA/military industrial complex. They ALL push the same tired lines about being anti-imperialists, yet they all support undeclared wars that benefit the people that finance their campaigns.
Paul has always openly been against those centers of power since the 70’s. Even John Stewart admits that Paul’s message has been consistent, even if he doesn’t agree with it/understand it all.
Yes Paul could turn evil, but since he says radically different things that actually challenge who wields the power, Id risk electing him. I mean Romney, Obama, they’ve already said they have no intentions of ever challenging the system of Central Banking via the Fed.
The Fed is PRIVATE bank, meaning their whole operation only benefits them and their cronies. They are privately owned, yet they have full control over the money supply and can inflate the currency and set artificial interest rates in markets at will?
The Fed is the cause of nearly all of our economic problems. They work only for themselves, yet they parade around like they are some government bank that protects our economy. That’s a freaking joke and they need to be abolished.
The financial turmoil did not happen because of deregulation, it happened because of regulation. That’s a myth we are sold by the media.
The regulations almost always benefit the wall streeters who have ties to bankers at the FED. This gives a small group advantages and harms others who are not so connected. This is not a natural occurrence in a free market and its a fallacy to say that the free market is fueled such behavior. THat’s government who makes that happen, not the free market.
Oh and any regulations that were enacted to protect Americans from banks, ie the Glass-Stegall Act get repealed and the president (Clinton at the time I think) comes on TV and lies to us about how removing the protections will be good for the whole economy.
Anyways I really think now would be a good time to try the one guy who ACTUALLY has different ideas that the other other 99% of politicians. And who can ACTUALLY explain them in depth and without the use of a teleprompter.
Call me crazy, call me a Paultard, call me whatever. As a USMC vet I want the guy running who says he’d bring the troops home as soon as he was sworn in. Even Obama never said that specific, and he talked a good anti-war game.
The reality is that Paul will never get the nomination. He’s a good side figure, but he’s unelectable.
White Senior Adviser David Plouffe went on Good Morning America today to say that the President understood with those occupying Wall Street, and, to some extent, stood with them. He said, “the president is standing on the side of consumers and the middle class.” Given his ties to Wall Street, I find that a little hard to swallow. Still, though, I don’t doubt that the Republicans are worse.
http://www.businessinsider.com/white-house-ties-obama-to-occupy-wall-street-2011-10
Doesn’t the fact that the media TRIES soooo hard to discredit him all the time mean anything to you?
Haven’t you ever heard that saying that whenever the government thinks something is bad for you it probably isn’t? I think that applies with him.
He wins the GOP establishment’s polls and they work fast to try and say that the poll didn’t matter. Then when Cain, Perry and Romney lead in a poll they talk about how only legitimate front runners should be able to win polls. They discredit their own shit when Ron Paul wins their polls, that doesnt at least make you curious as to why sooooooooo many of these people in places of power hate the guy?
It’s BS to say he’s unelectable. I call shenanigans on that one.
F*** the media telling me and you whos electable or not. Come on Peter, so the media tells us the guy is unelectable, that means you support Obama by default?
Is that the sad state of politics? Don’t your rights matter to you? Hell why even vote at all.
No, man, the media didn’t tell me he’s unelectable, I told me that he’s unelectable.
He’s just too weird, has zero charisma, has a tendency to babble on and maintains nuanced views on obscure positions that your average office lady cares little about.
If it came down to a regular election, with regular people voting, he’d lose. That’s just the reality.
He believes the planet is 6,000 old and that people rode on dinosaurs. That makes him unelectable in my book. And he also doesn’t believe birth control should be available.
SO he’s religous (I’m not by the way). So that means that he’d force the US to become a totally christian nation? I doubt that very much.
Come on, how is he too weird? Because he believes in limited government.
Obama believes that Kenysian economics is the economic policy that the US should adhere to, yet it causes nearly all of our economic problems! THats insane as Christianity too. Yet Obama isn’t a babbler because he practices more, so that makes him all the more electable?
I think it’s weird that there are people who don’t think Obama has been a terrible president.
We have more military overseas now than we had with BUSH!!!!!! I want peace guys, peace. That’s what this is all about for me NO MORE WAR.
We will have no country if we dont do something to end the wars. Believe that.
Let’s be careful what we say though because we may get put on Obama’s “Kill List”.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/10/the-secret-committee-that-drafts-obamas-kill-lists/246286/
http://tucsoncitizen.com/usa-today-news/2011/10/08/obama-panel-can-put-americans-on-kill-list/
Who among us actually thinks its ok to kill to these terrorists without a trial? My whole point is that the political system sucks, but to just accept that it sucks and stick with the establishment’s candidate is even suckier.
I believe that we deserve better, but I just dont where we will get it because anytime someone talks about REAL liberty it becomes this oversenstive subject and we cant ever really have meaningful debates on it.
Does anyone else miss Tater? I can’t help but think he would have had something witty and insightful to share here.
Believing that the world is 6000 years old isn’t religious. It’s completely stupid.
I agree, but ALL politicians have religions and we don’t say the whole government is full of completely stupid people. Find me an atheist or anti-theist politician, they don’t (openly) exist.
I think all religion is stupid and I know I’m not the only one, but we collectively accept that politicians have religious beliefs.
I wish we allowed politicians who openly expressed their rejection of religious beliefs, but this country doesn’t do this. It’s not enough to make me think Paul is insane. Technically anyone who believes in religion at all is dumb if we go with that logic. Are they all stupid morons , really really?
Don’t generalize too much now…….
Pete Stark (D) of the 13th Congressional District of California is an open atheist.
Oh wow, there’s one.
Yes, there is and he’s an extremely brave individual.
I’m tempted to start a whole new thread for this crazy video of SNL alumnus Victoria Jackson confronting Occupy Wall Street folks in New York, but I don’t want to put it on the front page. It’s bad enough that I linked to Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter in the last few days… Anyway, here’s the link if you want to follow it. I know that some people are convinced this is a put-on, and that she’s doing some kind of Kaufaman-esque kind of thing, but I think she’s the real deal.
Rupert Murdoch is going after Occupy Wall Street big time. The following references a segment on Fox News yesterday.
It must be great to be able to print shit in one of your papers, and then have it read back on one of your networks as news.
http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/rupert-murdoch-declares-war-on-occupy-wall-street/question-2211897/