You have the ability to reach out to someone who isn't yet invested in this campaign and say, "Hey -- we've got to get started."
Our campaign will not take money from Washington lobbyists or special-interest PACs. You're going to build this 2012 campaign by bringing in more people who share our values. We'll ask them to find a few more. Those people will find a few more -- and after a few million person-to-person connections, we'll have built a grassroots campaign that can change the outcome of an election and change the course of this country.
That's the spirit that drives us.
It all starts with a tap on the shoulder, and your willingness to match someone's commitment. Give it a try.
Okay, this is getting scary. He wants us to believe he has split himself in two and that there are really two Obamas. There's the guy in the White House, who has surrounded himself with lobbyists (David Plouffe, straight from a one-year, million dollar gig at G.E.) and CEOs (Jeffrey Immelt of G.E. is handling the unemployment crisis by shipping more jobs overseas and not paying corporate taxes) and bankers (Chief of Staff Bill Daley of Morgan Stanley) and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (of the Glass-Steagall repeal banking cabal). And then there is that long-forgotten hope-monger who has just been living in the shadows this whole time.
Obama is obviously a puppet of Wall Street, yet he persists in claiming he is not taking any campaign donations from PACs, even as the Democratic Party has already admitted it will be taking advantage of anonymous donations courtesy of the Citizens United decision.
He is still pretending to be a blank slate upon which we can pin our hopes and dreams. And what are his "values"? I wish he would be more specific. But I don't think he knows. I don't even think he wrote the email.
Ralph Nader was right. We need a second political party with a strong labor platform. What we have now is a deeply corrupt duopoly - one united Wall Street front of two slightly different factions, each manufacturing grass-roots movements to retain power. The corrupt politicians are pretending to fight over a manufactured debt ceiling crisis as we slide into a Third Great Depression. All they are doing is the bidding of their masters.
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| Share My Value |
P.S./Update: Thanks to "P. Kent", who just sent me this video of George Carlin speaking of the Death of the American Dream. RIP, George. Your words are more apt than ever.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q
"He wants us to believe he has split himself in two...."
ReplyDeleteNo, no, it's much more simple than that. Look a little closer behind those lovely teeth. Seeeeee? T-LOT-E speaks with a forked tongue and has been doing so for a long time.
I got a similar email from Jim Messina complaining about Citizens United and how Obama is "accountable only to us, not Washington lobbyists and PACs." If this is true why is his cabinet filled with the people you mention in this blog? Why did he accept millions in donations from Goldman, JP Morgan, and GE? Why is his economic team made up of the same folks that oversaw the financial collaspe. This president is full of hot air. I really hope there is viable canidate to vote for in 2012 other than this phony.
ReplyDeleteps: Karen, how do i post comments under my name? I'm registered and following this blog?
Hi Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteI am registered too and for some reason I cannot post comments on my own blog using the Google account choice either! I now post replies using a url and going through the Captcha. At least they don't make me moderate my own comments, although I should probably censor myself half the time.
I figured you'd write about this email. The other part that really bothers me is this "anonymous donor" we are supposed to "tap and match". An "early supporter" it said. Who can it be? Oprah? A Kennedy--Caroline is about the only one left?
ReplyDeleteWhat is going on with these ridiculous fundraisers? If the President is writing them (which I seriously doubt), then I have to question everything I've read about his fabulous intellect! Does the fact that we continue to get them mean that they are working? Or not?
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@Anonymous
I had the same problem for a while. Can't remember how I finally fixed it, but just sign your name in the meantime. When it comes to me, I'll post it.
Janet,
ReplyDeleteThe letter from Messina did not specify, but I think he means just another person who donated a small amount of cash last time. When I donated in '08, they matched me with a first-time donor from Iowa I think. It was some kind of misguided penpal matchup gimmick, from what I can recall. I never wrote to my penpal, and he never wrote to me. I guess we just didn't click.
While on first glance, it appears that "Barack Obama" is lying through his perfect teeth as Jay stated, I think he would argue that he is just parsing his words as any Harvard Law grad is so well-trained to do. The $50,000 fund-raisers, the PACs, are from "that other campaign." However, we, the regular folk are part of the real deal, the grassroots, the movement. We are supposed to pretend we are all part of one great big mutual values-sharing family/army/religion. Scary stuff... scary they think it could work.
I already wrote to Obama and told him I wasn't sending any money unless Elizabeth Warren got her appontment. Of course I won't be sending any money even if she does. What's sauce for the goose, right, Mr. President?
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, Karen, it's scary they think this will work, but I'm afraid they're right. Obama is going to get his billion and he will be re-elected.
All I can say is we have to work for what we want because the DNC (RNC-Lite) is going to fight tooth and nail to make sure no one challenges Obama. There is no way the corporate oligarchy actually will sit back and allow us to take our government back without a fight. They have it too good.
ReplyDeleteI don't know where I wrote it - maybe RealityChex - but I now think of Tim Geithner as the Dick Cheney of the Obama Administration. I am convinced he is pulling Obama's strings on banking regulation.
I encourage everyone reading these comments to go to the New Progressive Alliance. Until we organise ourselves and stick together and fight for progressive causes as a block of voters, we will get nowhere. Those in power don't care if we complain - they care if we organise and act.
Karen, thank you for this typically astute post. To my mind, Obama is either: (1) the most incompetent politician in American history; or (2) the most deliberately self-destructive. Doesn't Poli Sci 101 teach that a: you've got to have a base to win; and b: you should make nice with your base, and not attack them?
ReplyDeleteI think Obama is likely to win, and I think we're better off if he wins than if the opposition wins. However, I think it's going to be a lot harder than he imagines. Lots and lots of people who placed their hope and trust in him are bitterly disappointed by his sad performance. It's going to be a lot harder to get those doorbells rung this time.
(I mean, really, what can be this guy's game? attack your base?? that's just so insane. And going back to one of his first press conferences after the inauguration, he said it would be okay if he were a one-term president! Really -- it's okay with you if you lose and the Republicans take over four years from now (which would obviously be what would cause him to be a one-term president)?? It's not okay with me, you turncoat.
I seem to remember a similar attitude before the November elections was:"I'm not going to vote Dem because they didn't stand up for me."
ReplyDeleteCan we look at what has happened since then?
Besides the Republican party holding the unemployed hostage with their unemployment insurance in order to keep the Bush Tax cuts? pretty much NOTHING. Zilch, Zippo.
Oh, President Obama got OBL, but yeah, the media is onto the non issue of Anthony's Wiener, and not yet up to speed on asking: "Why is Breitbart walking around with a picture of Weiner's penis on his phone?"
I'm not saying don't criticize Obama; but do it right. And blaming Obama now, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, is doing it wrong.
Obama had to align with the team he has to at least LOOK like he's willing to work with the lunatics... because the drapes are still smoldering and here comes the GOP, not with water(a middle class, energy & infrastructure stimulus package), but with gas(not raising the debt ceiling)...not one Republican can accuse him of not working with them, unless that person is a willfully uninformed voter.
Of course when he does compromise he's eaten alive by those on the left; no matter its the only avenue left to him, besides saying "Nope, can't do that, I'd rather have nothing"
Really? Does anyone think that was a good answer for the Unemployed to hear when renewing the Bush tax cuts came tied to renewing Unemployment Insurance?
Its tough to make that connection, that its not Obama but Republicans and Conservative Democrats that are gumming up the system...I get it.
Yet every deviation from that fact, simply gives the GOP cover and more time...we literally don't have time for that deviation...
Remember, they aren't interested in creating jobs, their interested in defeating Obama and they've said as much. (Wait, how many jobs did the GOP Congress people and Governors create since taking office? Whoops my bad, unemployment has gone UP.)
I mean, they've said they wouldn't work with Obama, and they've managed for the first time to match their actions to their rhetoric...and what's that gotten us now?
Can I make this ->0(Zero) any larger?
Yet he's worked with them...so why is anyone surprised, first of all, with a split Congress, he has to compromise, second, he's said time and again, I'll work with anyone with a reasonable proposal...
You'd think it obvious by now, that, as long as GOP has power, there will be no talk of jobs and certainly no action to create jobs.
You were right there KM, you ended by pointing out that its the legislators nationally and locally that need to be changed...but saying Obama is a lost cause is so dissonant to the idea that its Congress that's the problem, anyone reading it will say "Well, if its Obama that's the problem, what's does it matter if we replace the legislators?"
If you want to get Obama to 'prove' he's for liberal/progressive ideas, then you must give him a Congress that will work with him on those ideas, so that there is no excuse for him not to support our ideals; you know like George W. Bush had...
Until that's soundbite-ified, it seems the only way the average voter is really going to get that point is the hard way...like voting in Republican governors(either directly or by not voting) and then getting laid off; or having collective bargaining rights shackled.
The GOP's known that the weakness isn't Obama, its the voter...that was the point in decimating education with tax cuts...and if they can just hang in long enough to get what they want, they'll destroy the nation almost permanently.
(And talking of a 3rd party is simply ludicrous and only more distraction for a nation that can't do its easy homework with 2 parties, by the way.)
Good luck America...we're going to need it.