For years, we have had a spirited debate over whether civil libertarians could vote for Barack Obama after his expanding of Bush anti-privacy measures, “hit list” policy, refusal to prosecute officials for torture, and other actions. For those who now oppose Obama, there is now a theme song to express their angst and anger. Even for those who still support Obama, you have to admit it is pretty funny.
The parody of Gotye’s hit “Somebody that I used to know” is the impressive work of Justin Monticello and Ryan Newbrough who have lost faith in Obama.
The song includes a couple of digs at Romney like “You took Obamacare so far. But you left me like a dog strapped on Romney’s car.”
Here are the lyrics:
We could have been so much more than just friends with healthcare benefits
Now and then I think of that election day, November
When you won I felt so happy I could die
Chugged a fifth, paraded in the street
And I thanked God that Palin wasn’t Veep
It felt like change and it’s a hope I still remember
You can get addicted to a certain kind of message
Like this is change we can believe in, yes we can
But college ended, had to pay my rent
At least you’re the first gay president
But the change I got was that I moved in with my mother
Because you won and then you cut me off
Now your speeches never soar as high as unemployment
You took Obamacare so far
But you left me like a dog strapped on Romney’s car
Even the shirt that was on my back
Is owned by China or being arbitraged by Goldman Sachs
Just send in a Predator Drone
‘Cause now you’re not Obama that I used to know
Now you’re not Obama that I used to know
Now I need Obama that I used to know
Sometimes I think that Peace Prize winners shouldn’t have a kill list
But you dumped Bin Laden in the sea so maybe it’s all good
Said you’d rouse my economy
Your big package didn’t stimulate me
Still my American Idol, though
When you sang, “I’m so in love with you”…Obama that I used to know
But you won and then you cut me off
Made out like you’d close Guantanamo and we got nothing
Relocation shouldn’t be that hard
Just strap the prisoners in on top of Romney’s car
No, I don’t need you to legalize
Just keep the feds away from folks like you when you were younger
There’s nothing that you didn’t toke
But now that’s just Obama that I used to know
Obama
That I used to know
Obama
That I used to know
Obama
That I used to know
In 2012 I need Obama that I used to know
Karl, Romney is not changing the policies that you refer to. He has said otherwise many times. With Jon Bolton and Cheney on board with Romney, I will take my chances with Obama.
Speaking of Paul Ryan:
The Ryan Family’s History of Fakery
By Charles P. Pierce
August 13, 2012
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/paul-ryan-family-wealth-11644997
I was struck by the revelation in this morning’s paean to zombie-eyed granny-starving in the Times, that young, up-from-the-muddy-bootstraps Paul Ryan, the plucky burger-flippin’ success story from darkest Janesville, Wisconsin, had amassed a fortune of “between three and $7.7 million” without having held a more lucrative job than “Congressman” at any point in his adult life. Then, I noticed another item. Namely, that:
Mr. Ryan reported two tax-deferred college savings plans, with a combined value of between $150,000 and $300,000. He also reported two investment partnerships worth, in total, between $350,000 and $750,000, mostly containing shares of stock in well-known companies, including Apple, Goodrich, Kraft Foods, Visa and Whole Foods. Both partnerships were formed by Mr. Ryan and other family members to manage assets left by his grandparents and an aunt. Mrs. Ryan has reported receiving a trust after her mother died in 2010 that is valued between $1 million and $5 million, according to a letter Mr. Ryan filed with his latest financial disclosure. Mrs. Ryan also has longstanding interests in several mining and oil exploration investments in Oklahoma and Texas managed by her father, Dan Little, a lawyer in Oklahoma whose clients include oil and gas companies. Those investments generated as much as $150,000 in income last year.
So, he’s not the son of poor Smallville dirt farmer Jonathan Kent and his wife, Martha, after all. Where does the family dough come from? A construction company founded by Great Grandpa Ryan. The Rude Pundit went a’wandering through Googlestan, and what did he find? Among other great nuggets, this thing right here:
“The Ryan workload from 1910 until the rural interstate Highway System was completed 60 years later, was mostly Highway construction.”
This, of course, partly explains the outburst of Weaselspeak that Ryan dropped on Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker when Lizza cornered him at the logical end of all of the government-bashing on which he’d built his career.
When I pointed out to Ryan that government spending programs were at the heart of his home town’s recovery, he didn’t disagree. But he insisted that he has been misunderstood. “Obama is trying to paint us as a caricature,” he said. “As if we’re some bizarre individualists who are hardcore libertarians. It’s a false dichotomy and intellectually lazy.” He added, “Of course we believe in government. We think government should do what it does really well, but that it has limits, and obviously within those limits are things like infrastructure, interstate highways, and airports.”
We think government should also do those things on which my family traditionally has been able to turn a pretty buck, so I could one day buy the handsome Georgian mansion back home that is on the National Register of Historic Places. Two days ago, as he joined the ticket led by presidential candidate G.I. Luvmoney, formerly employed by the game of Life, this is what Paul Ryan, whose owes his family fortune to government construction projects said:
“I’m proud to stand with a man who understands what it takes to foster job creation in our economy, someone who knows from experience, that if you have a small business — you did build that.”
His entire life, and the history of his entire family, makes a lie out of everything the man has said in his political career, and a sham out of every policy position he purports to hold. It seems to be there used to be a word for that. What I do know is that, in 20 years, a lot of people in the Beltway who are in my business today are going to look at what they’ve written and said about this faker, and drink themselves into early graves.
Sure, you’ll have reproductive rights while he’ll have the right to put you on a “kill list” and either incarcerate you & your family or worse, execute you all, perhaps as a terrorist sympathizer for participating on a blog whose founder has written scathing indictments of his admistration for being the most profound destroyer of civil liberties & constitutional law in the history of the Republic.
Like the old Jew in the Warsaw Ghetto said: “First they came for blah blah blah and I thought nothing of it…. Then they came for me.”
SwM,
If all politics are local then one’s body is about as local as it gets. 😉
Blouis, Ryan has reignited it. He is against abortion even in the cases of possible death, rape or incest. He wants to ban many forms of birth control. He is the absolute worst the catholic church has to offer. …. bad on social issues and very punishing to the poor and unemployed.
SwM,
Women will smile, nod their heads as if in agreement with whatever the conservative is saying and then walk into the booth, pull the lever for Obama and walk out smiling, nodding their heads and saying, “Of course I voted for Mitt, dear.”
Karl, We will see. I think the selection of Ryan who represents the worst the catholic bishop’s have to offer on reproductive freedom might just provide a wake up call.
“Fact is so many women are disgusted by his lies & doublecrossing (not to mention Pentagon & Wall Street bootlicking) that millions less will be voting for him this time around.”
one can only hope so, no sense in voting for someone who is hell bent on making you a widow, eh Karl?
Swarthmore mom
Karl, Obama will win because WOMEN will vote for him.
——————————————————————
Bingo … backlash from the War on Women
S Mom: Only the women who are still unaware his foreign policy (which is only an extension of his domestic policy) will lead them to widowhood will be voting for him for his policies will be directly attributable to all the future terrorist killings sure to follow his policy of breeding terrorists, for that’s what all the civilians killed in invasions & drone strikes do: they breed terrorists bent on revenge.
Fact is so many women are disgusted by his lies & doublecrossing (not to mention Pentagon & Wall Street bootlicking) that millions less will be voting for him this time around.
Res Ipsa Loquitur
Karl, Read the Ryan plan. Why would I stay home like you advocate when the goal of the state of Texas that I live in is to disenfranchise democrats? I am certainly not going to be complicit in that.
Stop with the voter suppression crap already. How can anyone be against showing ID to vote? Someone who doesn’t have ID today cannot function in society. You need ID to get a job, open a bank account, drive a car, ride AMTRAK, take out a library book, sign up for social security, apply for welfare. How does someone function in society today without ID? But that person should just be allowed to vote with no questions asked. If even one person votes who should not be able to vote, that cancels out my vote. The left knows that the only way they can win many elections is by cheating. If you know someone who doesn’t have a phot ID, they help them get the freakin’ ID and stop complaining.
S Mom: The difference between which of the 2 parties utterly beholden to the Pentagon, Wall Street & Multinational Corporations (a coin toss) is going to gut social spending & finance endless militarism on the backs of working people through austerity is really splitting hairs.
The sooner that progressive minded democrats like you learn that the sooner this country might break the political monopoly enjoyed by this 2 party Kleptocracy.
Meanwhile, the stubborn & odious facts are that the party of Obama CLEARLY has bent over backwards to stop legislation that might check the avarice of greedhead speculators & banksters — just read & weep:
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/26/protectors_of_wall_street/
Karl, Obama will win because WOMEN will vote for him.
Raff: My point all along was to demonstrate the political bankruptcy of the typical left/liberal act of “lesser evilism” in Presidential voting by way of the incredible irony that up until Holder’s Naziesque speech at NWU followed the next day by the disclosure of Obama’s “kill list” it was assumed by virtually all the Turley groupies & guest bloggers here (Gene H. nothwithstanding) that he was voting for Obama in 2012 like he did in 2008.
By way of logic & ethical principles I demonstrated why that was impossible: that no Constitutional Lawyer worthy of the profession would ever give a vote of confidence to a candidate that he would go out of his way to write scathing condemnation articles in major publications detailing why a President’s assumption of the role of judge, jury & executioner of every living sole on the planet was anathema to the letter & spirit of the US Constitution, not to mention all civil liberties jurisprudence since the Magna Carta.
Nobody disputed this logic except for the hard headed Spindell who kept demanding “proof” of my assertion.
So when Turley writes: “Even for those who still support Obama, you have to admit it is pretty funny” the implication of the way that sentence was written is more evidence that Turley is no longer a supporter and therefore will be either abstaining (or not voting for Obama) from the 2012 Presidential vote like myself, Gene H., plus several others on this forum, not to mention tens of millions who, not that they don’t vote, but rather WON’T vote.
Obama will still win though because he’s so much more effective for the ruling class at creating their long sought after uber security state. Think about it. When Bush was in office there was a whole classes of people & punditry squealing about torture, executive abuses of power & no transparency. But now with Obama in power the silence is disgustingly deafening.
HenMan,
Just for you….http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYG2J8kh7_c
But they do have a point….. It’s the lesser of evils right now…… Paul Ryan with his close connections to the Koch brothers scares the heck out of me…..
To Lotta and others re my writing (mistakes)
The Swedish genetive form appears often. too often;
“power use talent” instead of “talent for the use OF power”. When I do that only a swede might(?) understand.
As for principles. Obviously the schools are not teachiing principles. Why they are not on the curriculum at all is debated. We teach patriotism, but not the why of patriotism and support for our nominal form of government.
Even the religious zealots would agree that their principles are not taught in public schools, although they try. Now again they try with charter and private schools.
Their stated principles may seem appealing, but the methods of extinguishing the questioning mind is appalling.
I knew your tale, you had entrusted it to me before.
But felt it was up to only you to refer to it.
How many cats do you have? Names?
ID707: “how are your power use talents”. [sorry, don’t understand that]
Regarding odd hours, I have always had a disrupted sleep schedule, even as a child. It should be your morning now, yes? I’m getting ready to have supper, feed the kitties again and watch some recorded TV. I did seek out jobs on occasion that featured odd hours, much to the delight of other workers that would then be free to move to a more ‘normal’ shift.
Here’s the sad thing about our school situation being fragmented and dismantled: principles don’t have to die with the man or woman. In a secular nation principles (which are the attributes of learned behaviours as well as personal inclinations) can be taught. The simple concepts of enlightened self-interest, ‘citizenship’ and basic ethics (integrated with history) can and should be basic and non-partisan. As concepts they are non-partisan.
If those subjects were approached as no more than basic survival skills in a complex social structure the country would be better off. You can’t give people principles or make them be principled but you can give people, even very young people, the intellectual tools to act in a principled way if they choose to and believe that there are (personal) rewards for doing so.
The kids in Florida I suspect aren’t going to be learning about any of that.
My last rant for the evening- I’m going to have supper.
Principles? They die with the man. Thomas More comes to mind. Oh, they are praised, but few emulate them.
Pragmatism is better. A piece of spoiled meat is better than none at all,