The Republican co-chair of President Obama’s Deficit Commission, former Sen. Alan Simpson, has a certain knack for controversy. Recently he described the Social Security system as a “milk cow with 310 million tits.” Now, Simpson has taken on Vietnam veterans claiming Agent Orange injuries as people who are “not helping us to save the country.”
Simpson objects that the Agent Orange claims are paid out too freely and run “contrary to efforts to control federal spending.” He said the “irony” is that “the veterans who saved this country are now, in a way, not helping us to save the country in this fiscal mess.”
Simpson found a particularly bad way to express concerns that have been spoken by others. For example, diabetes has become the most frequently compensated ailment among Vietnam veterans — despite a lack of research connecting Agent Orange and diabetes.
This is a case of a legitimate concern being expressed in the worse possible way. In defense of Simpson, he is an Army veteran who has historically supported military spending and support.
Source: Think Progress
Bloiuse The liberal base would not have gone with Hillary because of her views on the mideast Remember when Samantha Power took out after Hillary. I was not a strong Obama supporter in the primaries and took a lot of heat from my family. I literally stood in the voting booth on primary day and could not decide what to do. I ended up voting for him. Hillary is not more liberal than Obama. I think they are about the same. She might be the VP pick. Once McCain picked Palin, I never looked back and have continued to support Obama. The republicans are too scary at this point in time to let them gain power. No matter what I think or say the tea party republicans are going gain power. You will have a new speaker from the state of Ohio.
Blouise,
I second that.
Swarthmore mom,
I all honesty, Kucinich was the preferable candidate … but Hillary was the closest in the running … if we really wanted change Dennis is the guy and his years in Washington give him the leg up that Carter never had and so badly needed.
If I thought the party was actually going to give him a chance I’d not only start contributing again, I’d triple the amount.
CM,
I have no issue with your take on that comment. It is in line with what I think of when I think of fascists in general. Sold out is sold out, no matter who the purchaser is or if the whole cow was sold or just parts of it. Our public servants from both major parties have totally disregarded their duties to the public over their self-interests in graft, er, campaign finance, er, graft. And the emergent Tea Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of Koch Industries.
Swarthmore mom,
In my opinion, after all is said and done, the country is far better off when being led by democrats than by republicans. Third party candidates of any stripe are unproven and the risk is too great on the national front. I would only start with a third party on the local level where I have more control and input.
We misjudged Obama and should have gone with Hillary. She had the proven track record and, in my opinion, the proven work ethic. She would have hit the ground running. There would have been no Nobel prize but in all honesty, did we really need that … or deserve it?
Obama has demoralized a large number of the liberal base … the ones with money to contribute to the democratic party … and the party is going to have to fix that in the years ahead. It’s their own fault for getting swept up in the charismatic rhetoric that had no demonstrative substance. But in that they were not alone, once again, look at the Peace Prize.
Elaine M, Swahthmore Mom
Apologies I addressed a reply to Swathmore mom but it was actually a response at least partly one of Elaine M’s posts.
About the mining tax. There was skulduggery in the governing Labour party, some of the machine men got freaked out by unfavourable focus group studies and engineered the axing of a reasonably good Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in favour of Julia Gillard. The backtracking on the mining tax was by Gillard after she had knifed Kevin. Then six weeks later we had an election. Labour lost a lot of support and we are getting a minority government. As yet we do not know whether it will a Labour or a Liberal/National party minority government, this depends on negotiations both majors are holding with cross bench MPs.
If the Liberal/national Party forms the government the mining tax is dead, if it is Labour it is just less than was originally proposed.
The reason Labour lost so much support were in my opinion:-
1/ The failure to propose a robust climate change policy after they had promised to do so;
2/ The backflipping on the wishy washy climate policy they did try to implement when it became impossible to get it past the Senate;
3/ The assassination of Kevin Rudd. A government can hardly claim the actions of a Prime Minister that it has deposed as reasons to reelect it.
4/ Polls predicted a Labour win and I think a lot of voters took this as meaning that it was safe to register a protest vote even though they did not want the Liberal/National Party coalition to win.
Elaine He should have known what a tough place Washington is. I think he was naive in thinking he could get cooperation from the republicans. He also knows we have no where to go. I will not vote for a third party candidate and turn this country over to Palin and Bolton and the ultra right. Some here will.
Swathmore Mom.
I just saw your most recent post. The people who believe Obama is a Muslim, a socialist, a communist or the Antichrist are never going to vote for him whatever he does or says, appeasing them is a waste of time. If Obama officials say that he is trying to walk a fine line this is just an excuse. He is doing what he is doing because he wants to protect elite interests. Obama is cooperating with the Republicans as much as any other Democrat. He is probably hoping for a Republican takeover of both houses as it will give him more cover to move rightward. I did not realize how thoroughly evil the Clinton regime was until I read Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow”.
Swarthmore mom–
I think Obama is more afraid of Conservatives, Fox News, and Wall Street bigwigs than he is of the wrath of the people who were responsible for helping to get him elected. He has let liberals/progressives down big time. He promised change–he shouldn’t be treading the middle ground. If you can’t stand the heat in the kitchen, you shouldn’t apply for the job of chef.
Swarthmore mom.
“We see the difference in the parties opinions on reproductive freedom.”.
I think you are misinterpreting the differences over reproductive freedom. Reproductive freedom does not affect the oligarchy economically therefore they allow their Democratic servants to differ from their Republican servants on this, in fact most of the overclass probably don’t care one way or the other on this issue. However a major function of government is to set the terms of trade between different sectors of society and in this the Democrats are as eager as the Republicans to tilt them in favour of the kleptocratic elite.
I am sad when I see so many people failing to see how damaging to their interests is the Democratic party. The Republicans use culture war issues to appeal to racists and other bigots and have gone beyond insanity, but it is a mistake to in recoiling in horror from the Republicans to fail to realize how toxic are the Democrats.
We agree to disagree, have a good day. It is after midnight here and I must stop blogging now.
CM Obama is in the difficult position of being considered by many in the US to be a marxist muslim and by a few others including some on this blog to be a member of the “family” and a fascist. No wonder he treads the middle ground. He is afraid. Why did Australia cave to the mining companies and get rid of the tax?
Swarthmore Mum.
“CM Some democrats are part of the problem, and some aren’t.”
I think you are overestimating the numbers of democrats who are not part of the problem.
I thought Canada had the evil mining companies but we Aussies do have some. Tonight the premier of Western Australia announced that he is going to compulsorily acquire Aboriginal land because the Aborigines have not agreed to sell it cheaply enough for an LNG plant.
Cenk Uygur on Alan Simpson and US Veterans
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pQk5yJFyXw&fs=1&hl=en_US]
Carlyle,
You see it your way; I’ll see it my way. Obama and his administration are afraid of FOX News and cretins like Andrew Breitbart.
I agree that many Democrats and Republicans are cooperating to serve their common masters.
Here’s a link to an August Rolling Stone article by Matt Taibbi in which he writes about the collusion between the two parties to kill major parts of the financial reform bill.
From Rolling Stone (August 6,2010)
Wall Street’s Big Win
by Matt Taibbi
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/188551
Excerpt:
Cue the credits: the era of financial thuggery is officially over. Three hellish years of panic, all done and gone – the mass bankruptcies, midnight bailouts, shotgun mergers of dying megabanks, high-stakes SEC investigations, all capped by a legislative orgy in which industry lobbyists hurled more than $600 million at Congress. It all supposedly came to an end one Wednesday morning a few weeks back, when President Obama, flanked by hundreds of party flacks and congressional bigwigs, stepped up to the lectern at an extravagant ceremony to sign into law his sweeping new bill to clean up Wall Street.
Obama’s speech introducing the massive law brimmed with celebratory finality. He threw around lofty phrases like “never again” and “no more.” He proclaimed the end of unfair credit-card-rate hikes and issued a fatwa on abusive mortgage practices and the shady loans that helped fuel the debt bubble. The message was clear: The sheriff was padlocking the Wall Street casino, and the government was taking decisive steps to unfuck our hopelessly broken economy.
But is the nightmare really over, or is this just another Inception-style trick ending? It’s hard to figure, given all the absurd rhetoric emanating from the leadership of both parties. Obama and the Democrats boasted that the bill is the “toughest financial reform since the ones we created in the aftermath of the Great Depression” – a claim that would maybe be more impressive if Congress had passed any financial reforms since the Great Depression, or at least any that didn’t specifically involve radically undoing the Depression-era laws.
The Republicans, meanwhile, were predictably hysterical. They described the new law – officially known as the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act – as something not far from a full-blown Marxist seizure of the means of production. House ¬Minority Leader John Boehner shrieked that it was like “killing an ant with a nuclear weapon,” apparently forgetting that the ant crisis in question wiped out about 40 percent of the world’s wealth in a little over a year, making its smallness highly debatable.
But Dodd-Frank was neither an FDR-style, paradigm-shifting reform, nor a historic assault on free enterprise. What it was, ultimately, was a cop-out, a Band-Aid on a severed artery. If it marks the end of anything at all, it represents the end of the best opportunity we had to do something real about the criminal hijacking of America’s financial-services industry. During the yearlong legislative battle that forged this bill, Congress took a long, hard look at the shape of the modern American economy – and then decided that it didn’t have the stones to wipe out our country’s one ¬dependably thriving profit center: theft.
Frank.
I think you are wise, get your kids to try Australia. The UK has already gone but Australian democracy yet appears healthy.
During the Clinton years, Clinton pushed drug policies that resulted in an increased rate at which Democratic leaning black people were locked up and disenfranchised. What kind of political party implements policies that strip the electorate of people who vote for it? The answer is a party that does not care about the interests of those who vote for it. The Democrats want to remove towards the right and if people who support left policies cease to vote for them that is an excuse to move rightward to appeal to “moderate” Republicans
CM Some democrats are part of the problem, and some aren’t. The ones that are tend to come from conservative districts where an even more conservative republican would have been elected. Many of these conservatives will be replaced by tea party republicans so the democrats that are left will be more liberal ones in safe districts. More women in the US vote for the democrats. We see the difference in the parties opinions on reproductive freedom. Also the republicans are the party of the white evangelicals. Look for the congress to turn far right. How about those “evil” mining companies in Australia trying to take over the world?
Elaine M.
“The Democrats are a bunch of wimps–and the Republicans are despicable.”
You are one of the people who don’t get it. The Democrats are not actually wimps they are just pretending to be, the reason that they do not implement what they promised to do is because they do not want to, it would displease their masters. They use Republican opposition as cover but in fact Democrats and Republicans are cooperating to serve their common masters. The Republicans act obstructionist and the Democrats pretend that they are helpless to overcome the obstruction but in fact they don’t want to overcome it.
Democrats are not wimps when it comes to punching the dirty hippies who voted for them.
Swarthmore mom.
I am going by what Obama has said compared with what he has actually done. There are more than enough reports pointing out that the Deficit Cutting Commission is stacked with appointees who are known for their hatred of Social Security. Obama would not have done this if he did not intend to wreck SS. I don’t think he will axe it rather he will mandate that citizens set up individual social security funds the management of which will be handed over to the same banks and insurance companies whose incompetence caused the global financial crisis. They will be allowed to charge exorbitant fees and to gamble the money in trust on whatever bubble/casino is the madness of the moment, and when a retiree finds that his retirement funds have been embezzled, that will just be two bad and his/her own fault for choosing the wrong band of thieves to manage his fund.
I read so many American blogs where people who voted Obama and the Democrats are whining plaintively that the Democrats are not being Democrats. However they are missing the essential truth that a choice between Democrats and Republicans is no choice at all. They are simply failing to see the evidence already piled up by the behaviour of Obama and his Congress colleagues since the 2008 election. US politics is broken beyond any possibility of repair. Things must get extremely much worse before there is any possibility of reform. The empire is well into the process of collapse but the proportion of people who realize this is yet too low to force corrective action.
I am an Australian and in our last election 2 weeks ago we voted to have a hung parliament. Neither of our major parties has enough seats to govern and negotiations are going on between both major parties and a gaggle of greens and independents to see which one gets to form minority government. Tonight I was listening to Lateline where both party leaders were spouting what a disaster it will be if the other party takes government. I smile when I hear this because it is hyperbole, I like neither party but I don’t see either one as the forces of Sauron. But I look at the US and I see two parties that both are really evil, however many are so entranced wit the vileness of the Republicans that they fall into the error of failing to see that the Democrats as they are now are just as much the problem.
If the period of total Republican domination of the Federal government from 2000 – 2006 sandwiched between the years of mere Republican direction have not given the American voters a clear picture of what is to come when they put more Republicans into office this fall then we are well and truly screwed.
It’s too late for me but I have encouraged my kids to get out of this festering hell hole before that becomes impossible. Things are going to get a whole lot worse before they even stand a chance of getting better.
The Democrats are a bunch of wimps–and the Republicans are despicable.