Comments on: John Edwards

By: scott

scott — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 22:33:56 +0000

You rightly stated that Mr Edwards was the only candidate to address poverty and take a strong anti war stance during the run up to the last presidential election.His fall from grace had nothing to do with his politics but fall he did and rarely have I been so disappointed pondering what could have been.Instead Democrats elected a center right corporate lackey who has squandered almost all of the opportunities and good will afforded him in this endless desire to please the hard right ideologues and wall street vultures who helped mire the world in the economic bog we all now struggle to find purchase in. Once Edwards was dispatched in a corporate media ass stomping (get that union loving commie fucker!) I did my best to try to convince people that Mrs.Clinton was a far better choice than Obama,but alas everyone had already hopped on the party train to Sillytown.

By: someofparts

someofparts — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 23:21:51 +0000

Montana Maven – That Russ Baker link was a real eye-opener. Thanks.

By: The Tragically Flip

The Tragically Flip — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 15:10:47 +0000

Krugman is not a neoliberal. Yes, he’s generally a free trader, but not a deregulator or privatizer, nor is he in denial over the distribution effects of free trade, in fact inequality is a big concern in his writings, which is hardly the hallmark of a neoliberal “make the pie bigger yada yada” type.

By: Alcuin

Alcuin — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 22:49:56 +0000

@ Montana Maven: – Conspiracy theorist? Hardly. I never had the time to read it, but I bought an interesting book, by Timothy Melley, entitled Empire of Conspiracy. Essentially, his thesis is that conspiracy theorists exhibit something called “agency panic”. I’m going from memory here (I read a few pages of the book), but agency panic is rooted in a sense of powerlessness and fear and conspiracy theories reinforce and justify that sense of powerlessness and fear. It’s an interesting book. There is quite a difference between believing in the “international Jewish bankers”, the Bilderbergs, and the other actors that hang out at Alex Jones’ site and a realistic appraisal of the methods that the elite use to destroy their opponents.

By: Notorious P.A.T.

Notorious P.A.T. — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 19:12:16 +0000

“big enough to steal him away from every elite law firm in the country”

Do we know for sure that the big law firms wanted Obama? His knowledge of and respect for the law are shaky, at best.

You might find this interesting, about the right wing’s attempt to “colonize” Black American politics:

http://blackagendareport.com/content/corey-booker-and-hard-rights-colonization-black-american-politics

By: Benedict@Large

Benedict@Large — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 05:03:41 +0000

I’ve been doing a lot of deep background on Obama of late, stuff going back to even before he went to the Illinois statehouse. When you look at enough of this stuff, you start to notice things that happened around the same time but don’t particularly seem related. Then you look again and think, well wasn’t it convenient that the one thing worked out the way it did right when that other thing was happening. You see a lot of this with Obama. It’s not that you can link the stuff, but there do seem to be way too many of these things with Obama. You start to think that there’s something else there, if you could only put your finger on it.

My guess, and it’s nothing but a guess, is that someone with a very broad reach was rocking this guy’s cradle all the way along. Not in a birther kind of way; that stuff’s goofy. But somewhere along the way, someone either brought this guy to Chicago with a career plan for him in mind, or identified him soon afterwards. But it would have had to be someone very big; big enough to steal him away from every elite law firm in the country.

By: Kim Kaufman

Kim Kaufman — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 04:46:17 +0000

“Actually, from what I know, Elizabeth really was a left winger on a lot of issues.” Talking a good game on the issues is different from not being an asshole. From what I’ve read about them, they were both the kind of assholes that rich people can become. Careless people. Rules are for other people. She was actually the one with the big $$. However, I believe the point of the article was that it was politically motivated and that appears true and disturbing. Unfortunately, there’s just no one to root for.

Hillary lost because of her calculating vote on the war in Iraq and because folks were sick of the Clintons and wanted something new. I couldn’t look at Bill and not think of his repeal of Glass -Steagel or the CFTC “Modernization” Act. I agree, Hillary would have been much better on domestic issues. It’s hard to reconcile how we have arrived at this nadir but here we are.

By: S Brennan

S Brennan — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 23:48:44 +0000

From my FaceBook Posting on the subject

File Under: “Be careful what you wish for…”

I don’t know anybody who likes John Edwards in 2012, but the case against him could be brought against anybody who ever ran for political office.

Briefly, the FEC doesn’t consider the extortion payment a campaign contribution, but the prosecutor decided Federal Election Law applied, but federal standards as to what that law was…did not. Thus the jury instruction is not to determine if the extortion payment was for “express advocacy” [the FEC standard], but to look into the mind of the contributor and determine if the monies paid in the extortion could be construed to be “for the purpose of influencing an election…You [the jury] will consider any evidence about the intent, motivation and goals of Ms. Mellon…The government does not have to prove that the sole or only purpose of the money was to influence the election. People rarely act with a single purpose in mind.”

Under that standard, you could convict an ham sandwich.

Later…

The Jury was 10:2 with most feeling the case never should have brought to court and the holdouts wanting to convict him of something…meanwhile nobody has been charged in the ongoing mult-trillion dollar thefts of taxpayers money by Wall Street.

By: MontanaMaven

MontanaMaven — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 20:33:21 +0000

Better link right to the Sunlight Foundation sight: http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/05/21/grade-level-congress/

Great charts!

By: MontanaMaven

MontanaMaven — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 20:25:30 +0000

Thanks, Alcuin, for the Systemic Disorder link. His post on the Argentina default is an excellent summary as is his essay “Where does Profit Come From?”

Did you here that a new study shows that people in Congress now talk like high school sophomores? Like LOL at that. So voting for Eggplant is not too far off.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2012/05/congress-speaks-dumb-sophomores-sunlight-foundation-/1#.T8kkgL_VqkI