(9:00AM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)
The New York Stock Exchange let it be known last week that it would no longer require companies to report all of their program trading–an outrage that enables large investment banks, particularly Goldman Sachs, to shield themselves from public scrutiny.
Matt Tiabbi . . .
This is quiet obviously a move designed to make it even more impossible to track what’s going on in the NYSE and shield, in particular, Goldman Sachs. The move is designed to protect investment banks from bloggers who are exposing the companies’ stock market manipulations. Goldman Sachs is singled out because the investment bank’s share of principal NYSE trading has gone from 27 percent at the end of 2008 to fully 50 percent of trades in recent months.
For some bizarre reason, Danps at FDL seems to think that Goldman Sachs taking over the Obama Administration and Wall Street and God only knows what else might not be a good development. He’s asking Is the Left Being Too Easy on the President? . . .
Maybe some of the president’s supporters prefer to turn a blind eye towards a scathing indictment of a company whose employees have lavishly funded the president and with whom he appears to enjoy a warm relationship. If so it is troubling.
This is far beyond troubling. But the response of far too many progressives is typical. The same progressives who opposed Impeachment are blindly supporting Obama and ignoring the reeking stench of Goldman Sachs that’s hanging over Obama’s White House. They like to call themselves “realists.” They’ve had plenty of practice at that, it’s been their standard response every time other progressives take a stand for progressive principles and ask them why they won’t.
Back during the Impeachment wars, I posted Impeachment Reality on Daily Kos. . .
According to anti-Impeachment “realists” here, we shouldn’t even try to Impeach Bush or Cheney. Most Democrats in Congress agree. They tell us we can’t Impeach because Bush’s liars, right wing nitwits, Neocons, media hacks, and thugs in Congress won’t let us. These “realists” don’t state their anti-Impeachment position that way, of course, they prefer to say “we don’t have the votes”, it sounds so much better than admitting they are advocating craven and shameful political expediency at the very time tens of millions of Americans are begging for decisive leadership from Democrats.
It was said that I “trashed a lot of people” in that diary. I didn’t trash anyone. They trashed themselves by opposing Impeachment. All I did was point that out. Now, the same “realists” who trashed themselves by opposing Impeachment are trashing themselves again, by blindly supporting Obama, by ignoring his pandering to Wall Street criminals, BushCo thugs, NSA spies, and rightwing lunatics in Congress.
They still think they’re being “realists.” Well there are many words fit to describe them, but “realists” isn’t one of them.
In 2008, Americans gave Democrats the Presidency and expanded majorities in the House and Senate. They want decisive leadership from Obama and the Democrats, now more than ever because decisive leadership is needed now more than ever, on the economy, on banking reform, on healthcare reform, on restoring civil liberties and the rule of law.
But we’re seeing the same old shit–craven political expediency. Far too many Democrats in Washington are still saying BushCo crimes can’t be investigated, they’re saying we have to compromise on healthcare reform, they’re saying they need Republican support and have to be bipartisan, they’re saying we have to be “realistic.”
Here are a few basic facts that still don’t seem to have penetrated their thick skulls: The Constitution is REAL. The authority of the Democratic Congress and Holder’s Department of Justice to investigate BushCo crimes is REAL. The consequences of those crimes are REAL. The death and destruction BushCo inflicted in Iraq are REAL. Their war crimes are REAL. America’s desperate need for an across the board progressive agenda is REAL. The majorities Democrats have in the House and Senate are REAL. The mandate for change American voters gave Obama and the Democrats is REAL.
And the consequences if they keep fucking this up will be all too REAL.
Democrats may never have an opportunity like this again. They need to seize this opportunity and demonstrate political courage, integrity, and decisive leadership, or be damned once and for all by tens of millions of Americans as craven politicians, as Wall Street errand boys who will never take a stand for We the People.
Progressive bloggers have to take the gloves off. If we don’t escalate the pressure on Obama and the Democrats to stand up to Wall Street and K Street, who will? Larry Summers? Tim Geithner? Rahm Emanuel? Joe Lieberman? Diane Feinstein?
You can hear them blow,
If you lean your head out far enough,
From Desolation Row.
We need to get our shit together. Progressives need to quit making excuses for Obama, the “realists” among us need to finally wake the fuck up and take a stand for the progressive principles they claim to support. They need to do that now.
After the ambulances go,
Is Barack Obama, sweeping up,
On Desolation Row.
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Yes, I received your letter yesterday,
about the time the economy broke.
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
All those people that you mention,
Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame,
I had to rearrange their faces,
And give them all another name.
Right now I can’t read too good,
Don’t send me no more letters, no,
From your Goldman Sachs White House,
Where nobody wants to think too much
About Desolation Row . . .
“We misread how bad the economy is” I thought, “Well, WTF?”
This feels like a neurosurgeon saying, “Your brain tumor needs to come out but I’m not sure how to perform the surgery” or a lawyer saying, “The murder charge against you is false, but I’m not sure I know how to defend you against it.”
Hello out there! If the “we” in the White House “misread” how bad things are, just exactly where do we go from here? Didn’t we elect them on the presumption that they sort of know what they’re doing? Congress has already proven its ineptitude. So who the hell is in charge of fixing this mess?
Rusty, good diary. It seemed like a fine place to rant a bit.:)
he bring about “real change” (Is that in pennies, nickels, and dimes? ), if you are always fighting him??? –Anonymous Realist
Goldman Sachs: Public Enemy
Goldman Sachs laughs in our faces
gave me a photocopy of that Matt Taibbi article slamming Goldman Sachs. I told her that I subscribe to Rolling Stone so I had already read it.
I really think the Dems wanted power not the power to change things and here is where you and I disagree Rusty. I don’t think Americans want the kind of change that involves a challenge to the structures that created our tenuous political and economic system. They are angry enough and confused enough and smart enough but they still believe in the American Dream/opportunity for all/hard work equals success meme. Until the myth of the American Dream is completely punctured average Americans won’t want real change and the problem is if one takes a stab at that meme the issue of patriotism comes up and left/right/moderate…. Americans still want to think of themselves as being patriotic. Americans have a pretty fragile psychological framework to operate with and they get shunted into panic easily.
I was always pretty ho hum on Obama not based on any of his particular weakness but based on the assumption that the Dems were incapable of offering up any truly radical thinkers.
I don’t have the same “stake in America” as you do, over the years I have come to think of myself as “North American” I more or less lump myself in with Canadians,Americans, and Mexican nationals now. Ultimately we will all sink or swim together.