History doesn’t necessarily ‘repeat’ but it sure as shit ‘echoes’. Which is to point out that tonight’s offering echoes last night’s post in a rather creepy fashion as the GOP invokes ‘the center’ (that they’ve laid claim to) as the basis for what is ultimately ‘minority rule’.
Sure they’ve bankrupted most of the nation, which only proves they are ‘unfit’ to rule! Why would the citizens of the US want to pay attention to losers that have been played for chumps at every turn because the ‘smart money’ has stacked both the legislative and the media decks?
Judges, like journalists, work for paychecks…if they want to continue to receive those paychecks, they do as their told. If they don’t agree with what they’re told, too bad! If they don’t do what they’re told to do the overlords will simply find someone who will, and believe me what I tell ya, there’s no shortage of sellouts out there!
Um, before we dive in I want to note that I’ve taken a little ‘liberty’ with tonight’s offering. I copied and pasted a quote from the bottom of the article and moved it to the top. This sort of ‘negates’ the intended feeble play for irony, turning it back into the outrage it should be.
In a Message to Democrats, Wall St. Sends Cash to G.O.P. [Like this is somehow ‘new’ or ‘news’?]
Senator John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said he visited New York about twice a month to try to tap into Wall Street’s “buyers’ remorse.”
“I just don’t know how long you can expect people to contribute money to a political party whose main plank of their platform is to punish you,” Mr. Cornyn said. [How many of you are simply agog at this blatant declaration of the willingness of the GOP to prostrate themselves before the golden thrones of Wall Street just to obtain campaign financing?
This is supposed to be a ‘selling point’? If you want Wall Street to donate to your campaign you have to suck their balls? Understand good citizen the ‘monied interests’ on Wall Street are directly responsible for the ‘disassembly’ and subsequent destruction of our economy! Do you really want to elect politicians who are willing to sell you (and your future livelihood) out for a campaign contribution?
So what do you think good citizen, how ‘good’ do you feel about the Republican pukes now?]
[Beginning of original article]
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: February 7, 2010
WASHINGTON — If the Democratic Party has a stronghold on Wall Street, it is its chief executive, Jamie Dimon, is a friend of President Obama’s from Chicago, a frequent White House guest and a big Democratic donor. Its vice chairman, William M. Daley, a former Clinton administration cabinet official and Obama transition adviser, comes from Chicago’s Democratic dynasty. [Think the media did the administration a ‘favor’ by pointing out Jamie Dimon’s close connection to the President? I’m sure if you checked the visitor’s log you’d find Mr. Dimon was no stranger to the Bush White House…]
But this year Chase’s political action committee is sending the Democrats a pointed message. While it has contributed to some individual Democrats and state organizations, it has rebuffed solicitations from the national Democratic House and Senate campaign committees. Instead, it gave $30,000 to their Republican counterparts. [The Republicans have remained steadfast in their ‘opposition’ of any banking reform. The Massachusetts Senate race only proves that elections, even ‘special elections, continue to be ‘stolen’.]
The shift reflects the hard political edge to the industry’s campaign to thwart Mr. Obama’s proposals for tighter financial regulations. [Shift? What shift? After Bush screwed the pooch the bankers KNEW they had to put a Democrat in the White house…and they even succeeded in putting their two favored candidates on the short list. So what’s this ‘shift’ shit all about? Are they trying to assert that they’ve always donated to the Democrats more than to the Republicans? WTF!]
Just two years after Mr. Obama helped his party pull in record Wall Street contributions — $89 million from the securities and investment business, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics — some of his biggest supporters, like Mr. Dimon, have become the industry’s chief lobbyists against his regulatory agenda. [Excuse me? This says more about who ‘Uncle Tom’ belongs to and the longstanding lack of a substantive difference between our two political parties than his ‘savvy’ at fundraising’.]
Republicans are rushing to capitalize on what they call Wall Street’s “buyer’s remorse” with the Democrats. And industry executives and lobbyists are warning Democrats that if Mr. Obama keeps attacking Wall Street “fat cats,” they may fight back by withholding their cash. [How sad is it good citizen when an argument such as this runs in the nation’s ‘paper of record?’]
“If the president doesn’t become a little more balanced and centrist in his approach, then he will likely lose that support,” said Kelly S. King, the chairman and chief executive of BB&T. Mr. King is a board member of the Financial Services Roundtable, which lobbies for the biggest banks, and last month he helped represent the industry at a private dinner at the Treasury Department. [Perhaps more perplexing is how ‘flunkies’ for the rich and shameless rate being quoted in this ‘shamelessly liberal’ newspaper? Which is to ask, ‘how liberal is it?’…The answer, good citizen is ‘not at all!’]
“I understand the public outcry,” he continued. “We have a 17 percent real unemployment rate, people are hurting, they want to see punishment. But the political rhetoric just incites more animosity and gets people riled up.” [Does this mean Mr. King doesn’t agree with the idea of burning Wall Street to the ground? Funny, the rest of the nation thinks it’s a great idea! Which only proves how ‘out of step’ the Republican’s are.]
A spokesman for JPMorgan Chase declined to comment on its political action committee’s contributions or relations with the Democrats. But many Wall Street lobbyists and executives said they, too, were rethinking their giving. [Hmmn, odd, there’s that ‘unwillingness to go on the record’ again. Doesn’t it usually indicate somebody is lying through their teeth?]
“The expectation in Washington is that ‘We can kick you around, and you are still going to give us money,’ ” said a top official at a major Wall Street firm, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of alienating the White House. “We are not going to play that game anymore.” [Wait a minute Slim! Without taxpayer funding those Wall Street banks (technically are) would be broke/bankrupt…so WHOSE money are the bankers laying out for their (longstanding) political allies?]
Wall Street fund-raisers for the Democrats say they are feeling under attack from all sides. The president is lashing out at their “arrogance and greed.” Republican friends are saying “I told you so.” And contributors are wishing they had their money back. [Um, WHOSE money back? I’m sure John and Jane Q. Taxpayer wish the banks weren’t using THEIR money to scuttle banking reform…if you want to be honest about who is doing what here!]
“I am a big fan of the president,” said Thomas R. Nides, a prominent Democrat who is also a Morgan Stanley executive and chairman of a major Wall Street trade group, the Securities and Financial Markets Association.[Who?] “But even if you are a big fan, when you are the piñata at the party, it doesn’t really feel good.” [Talk about ‘disconnect’…are the Democrats supposed to defend these criminals like the G.O.P. does?]
Roger C. Altman, a former Clinton administration Treasury official who founded the Wall Street boutique Evercore Partners, called the Wall Street backlash against Mr. Obama “a constant topic of conversation.” Many bankers, he said, failed to appreciate the “white hot anger” at Wall Street for the financial crisis. (Mr. Altman said he personally supported “the substance” of the president’s recent proposals, though he questioned their feasibility and declined to comment at all on what he called “the rhetoric.”) [Do you suppose Mr. Altman just acknowledged what everyone fears, that Wall Street is simply pulling Obama’s strings?]
Mr. Obama’s fight with Wall Street began last year with his proposals for greater oversight of compensation and a consumer financial protection commission. It escalated with verbal attacks this year on what he called Wall Street’s “obscene bonuses.” And it reached a new level in his calls for policies Wall Street finds even more infuriating: a “financial crisis responsibility” tax aimed only at the biggest banks, and a restriction on “proprietary trading” that banks do with their own money for their own profit. [Which naturally assumes banks HAVE ‘their own money’ apart from what the government ‘gave’ them. Then there is the issue of whether or not banks ‘earn’ money rather than simply ‘creating’ it.]
“If the president wanted to turn every Democrat on Wall Street into a Republican,” one industry lobbyist said, “he is doing everything right.” [Now, think about that statement and tell me why he SHOULDN’T do exactly that? What’s to be gained from a ‘working relationship’ with criminals?]
Though Wall Street has long been a major source of Democratic campaign money (alongside Hollywood and Silicon Valley), Mr. Obama built unusually direct ties to his contributors there. He is the first president since Richard M. Nixon whose campaign relied solely on private donations, not public financing. [Oh ho! Now Mr. Kirkpatrick is trying to tar the Democrats with the same brush so often used to tar the Republicans. Wall Street curry’s favor with whatever party whose star is rising…and it’s a huge mistake to think the Republican’s will return from exile in a single four year term!]
Wall Street lobbyists say the financial industry’s big Democratic donors help ensure that their arguments reach the ears of the president and Congress. White House visitors’ logs show dozens of meetings with big Wall Street fund-raisers, including Gary D. Cohn, a president of Goldman Sachs; Mr. Dimon of JPMorgan Chase; and Robert Wolf, the chief of the American division of the Swiss bank UBS, who has also played golf, had lunch and watched July 4 fireworks with the president. [Jesus, must have been a real heavy-duty contributor to be granted that much ‘access’ to the first family! Makes you wonder if he’s on the list of people who baby-sit the Obama children when the first couple goes out for the evening?]
Lobbyists say they routinely brief top executives on policy talking points before they meet with the president or others in the administration. Mr. Wolf, in particular, also serves on the Presidential Economic Recovery Advisory Board led by the former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul A. Volcker.
Mr. Wolf was the only Wall Street executive on the panel and became the board’s leading opponent of what became known as the Volcker rule against so-called proprietary trading, according to participants. Such trading did nothing to cause the crisis, Mr. Wolf argued, as the industry lobbyists do now. (The panel concluded that the crisis established a precedent for government rescue that could enable big banks to speculate for their own gain while taxpayers took the biggest risks.) [Um. Left unsaid here is whether Mr. Wolf’s position on the advisory board was granted by virtue of his expertise or whether he ‘bought’ the spot…as Mr. Kirkpatrick is taking pains to imply…]
Mr. Wolf and Mr. Dimon, who was in Washington last week for meetings on Capitol Hill and lunch with the president, have both pressed the industry’s arguments against other proposed regulations and the bank tax as well — saying the rules could cramp needed lending and send business abroad, according to lobbyists. [Um, the banks aren’t lending period; so threatening not to do what they aren’t doing anyway rings mighty hollow…]
Both men are said to remain personally supportive of the president. But UBS’s political action committee has shifted its contributions, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. [Um, isn’t that the Republican watchdog group?] After dividing its money evenly between the parties for 2008, it has given about 56 percent to Republicans this cycle. [What lesson do you suppose the average reader will draw from that information? You don’t suppose they’d conclude that Republicans votes are ‘for sale’, would they?]
Most of its biggest contributions, of $10,000 each, went to five Republican opponents of Mr. Obama’s regulatory proposals, including Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the ranking minority member of the Banking Committee. [What does that say about the ‘honorable’ Mr. Shelby?]
The Democratic campaign committees declined to comment on Wall Street money. But their Republican rivals are actively courting it. [Now let’s watch the media deny any knowledge of the Republicans being in the pay of Wall Street! And so we arrive at the statement I moved to the head of the article.]
Senator John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said he visited New York about twice a month to try to tap into Wall Street’s “buyers’ remorse.”
“I just don’t know how long you can expect people to contribute money to a political party whose main plank of their platform is to punish you,” Mr. Cornyn said.
Damn good citizen, you can only sit there in amazement wondering what part of ‘they don’t get this’ the media doesn’t understand.
The public is ready to start burning banks to the ground and Conservative ‘nitwits’ are crowing over being ‘favored’ by Wall Street bankers!
I guess it’s true, ‘stupid is as stupid does!’
But wait for it good citizen, we may see a piece in Alternet or some other web site but it is certain that no other MSM outlet will seize on this…dare I say it? Bonanza!
And you know that is just plain wrong!
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
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