I’m Having Trouble Seeing This Marriage End In Anything Other Than Divorce
Cenk Uygar (the Seminal at Fire Dog Lake) has issued an invitation to tea parties.
I issue a challenge to the tea-party movement. If you’re true to your word, and you believe in protecting the American people and principles, and you think government is too big and hands out money to the wrong people, then join us in fighting against the biggest giveaway to biggest culprits. Fight the power of the banks with us.
Don’t get me wrong, I think creating a majority of Americans fighting against banks is a good idea. That said, I already think this coalition, while not organized under one name, exists across ideological lines. I also think pointing out how tea parties are being played by astroturf organizations is smart.
What I’m not sure is smart is hitching your cart to a group of people who didn’t exist until Barack Obama became President. So forgive me for questioning the sincerity of tea parties – a group who apparently didn’t seem to care all that much about deficits and debt during the Bush Administration. To me their history is questionable, their timing far too obvious to be coincidental, and their sudden concern over spending shallow at best. Unless… someone here actually believes they would exist if McCain won. So, color me extremely skeptical. To me, tea parties have always been far more political than populist.
But there’s another side to this debate, and that’s the movement courting the tea partiers. From where I’m standing, the only way to bring these two groups together involves compromise And, let’s face it, the side issuing this invitation, as well as the side being asked to RSVP, aren’t known for compromise. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I’m having trouble seeing these two groups playing happy family for more than 30 seconds before all hell breaks loose.
But what really bothers me about this post is the use of specific language designed to woo tea partiers. Take this line for instance: If you’re true to your word, and you believe in protecting the American people and principles, and you think government is too big and hands out money to the wrong people... Wrong people? Government too big? Hmmm… Think the Tea Partier’s idea of where government needs to shrink and who constitutes the wrong sort of person to hand out money will match up with a Progressive’s idea? And don’t even get me started on trying to define American “principles.”
I have one last thought, giving the recent split on the left. Before we start adding additions, perhaps we should get our own house in order. Unless… I’ve already been divorced and my former partner is moving onto their next relationship? Say it ain’t so!
Tags: Progressives, Tea Parties
“Firebaggers” – that’s John Cole’s term for them.
I think criticizing Obama from the left is a good thing. It helps Obama position himself as a centrist while moving to the left. However, some critics from the left have gone around the bend and have been criticizing Obama using right wing framses – that’s he’s incompetent, that he’s an empty suit, that he’s a wimp yet somehow the same as Bush.
I’m still not getting how teaming up with Grover Norquist and the destroy the government crew is going to move us towards more progressive legislation. I think there’s some people who believe if Democrats lose to Republicans it will be some kind of wake-up call and they’ll start becoming more progressive? When has that ever happened. I think it’s true that Democrats are suffering partly from wounds of their own making, but the dominant narrative in the media will be that Democrats need to move right, because right is the center. I really hope I’m wrong.
I actually am starting to believe that FDL, and others, have written me off as the enemy, and not worth dealing with. Which is okay, I guess (not really since it does upset me). What I don’t understand is why they would turn their hopes to the tea parties… unless they’re only looking for a cheap, one night stand?
I am perfectly fine with criticizing Obama from the left. For it moves the Overton Window to the left, as UI states. But I cannot forgive any alliance with racist teabaggers. Jane Hamsher and her ilk at FDL are dead to me.
I didn’t read the recent Cenk missive because it looked like it was going to give me head pains. But scanning what you have hear it looks like he is cajoling some support for the ‘invest locally’ movement to take you dollars to the community banks and out of TBTF. Not so scary, is it pan?
Otherwise, the ‘firebaggers’ was an over-reaction to Jane Hamsher’s signing onto a letter with Grover Norquist….hardly much more than a meeting of minds to a unitary goal. Not setting up camp together. Promise.
The apologists for the administration have gone out of their way to impugn the new triangulation: away from the centrist sell outs that are keeping American more of a kleptocracy that a democracy.
I don’t know how many DL readers appreciated Alan Grayson’s call for an audit of the Fed. I did and I signed the petition even though Grayson wrote the letter with Ron Paul and even though the political right wants this too.
I don’t know how many DL readers appreciated Bernie Sanders hold on the reappointment of Helicopter Ben as Fed Chair. I did and I applauded GOPer Senator Bunning’s fantastic speech during Bernanke’s hearing and his second hold on the re-nomination. Read that speech and you may well agree that Ben Bernanke doesn’t deserve a second term since he missed all the signs and ignored all his regulatory responsibilities leading up to the realty bubble’s bursting and the global economic crash.
This teaming up of right and left in the hopes of challenging the powers that be isn’t so scary, really. Teh wingnuts don’t have cuties. They aren’t contagious. And FireDogLake isn’t the bad guy here.
I applaud Cenk’s appeal to the wingnuts to put their money where their mouths are and put it into the local banks to encourage the availability of credit to their Main Streets. Obama and Geithner and the rest of the financial team haven’t done enough for Main Street. Why not encourage them by setting an example?
I didn’t read the recent Cenk missive…
I have nothing to add to this statement.
How is it an overreaction to Hamsher teaming up with Norquist to push false rightwing memes that Fannie & Freddie are up to no good and Rahm is behind it all? I’m sorry but that’s classic RW garbage, especially considering this has been investigated already 3 times. It looks like classic scalp-taking to me.
oh please both of you ladies…for one thing, Pan might have found this on FDL but I saw it first on the Daily Kos. Cenk is neither a Lake or a DKos regular but he posts on both sites from his home site, YoungTurks.com. This missive was first posted on Daily Kos but I don’t see the same vituperative bullshit from DL regulars about Kos and his crew. DKos is pretty equally split into camps of apologists willing to blindly follow the HIGH DEM agenda – pretty much what DL represents – and those who wish to practice true democracy and challenge authority when apropriate.
The facts behind the Freddie Mac scandal are salient and there’s definately a coverup in action by Rahm in his action to put a limit on investigations at FM while he was in Congress and that the active investigation was curtailed by his boss Obama as soon as he took office.
Rather like the AIG getting a TEN YEAR secrecy clause on opening their books to the public on what happened to the bailout cash that went directly to counterparties at 100 pennies on the dollar with the blessing of Geithner et al, the Rahm Emanuel story involves his placing a ten year statute limitation on investigation of his actions while at Freddie and then, somehow, the investigation is stopped by his now boss Obama via the removal of the US Inspector General.
Cenk:
“it’s actual bipartisan work here by the left wing and the right wing to say Rahm Emanuel’s doing something wrong.
So what’s it on? Well, it turns out he was on the board of Freddie Mac back during 2000 and 2001. They claim he did some things on that board that need to be investigated. And in fact, that an investigator was investigating it — Inspector General Ed Kelley — and he was stripped of his authority by the Obama Administration’s Justice Department.
And that the Justice Department used a bill, or a loophole in a bill, passed by: Rahm Emanuel, before he left congress. And that the statute of limitations is going to run out in 2010 and 2011 for investigating what Rahm Emanuel was doing on that board and what the rest of the board was doing at Freddie Mac.
In fact, right now they’re negotiating to double the commitments to Fannie and Freddie for a total of $800 billion by December 31 and Jane Hamsher and Grover Norquist are saying we shouldn’t let them have that money, it’s another back door TARP and they’re going to funnel that money to toxic assets, and we need to know what they did on that board in the first place, and why they got rid of that inspector general.
Since they got rid of the Inspector General, no one has replaced them. And this is an enormous part of our economy, and Fannie and Freddie have six trillion dollars in mortgages without any oversight. And how much of this is Rahm Emanuel responsible for?”
And to the ever snide miss pandora, I didn’t read through it because I have no money invested in a TBTF to move to a local bank.
Nice way to ignore the substantive argument put before you. Can’t answer it, can you.
Conspiracy theorists always claim to have a substantive argument when it is pretty damn clear that there is none on offer.
Still haven’t read the article – which really does say A LOT. The article – you haven’t read – says nothing about the “moving your money” movement. But keep on writing about something you never bothered to read. It really is quite revealing.
This missive was first posted on Daily Kos but I don’t see the same vituperative bullshit from DL regulars about Kos and his crew.
Which proves our point – it’s not the criticism of the bill that’s the problem, it’s HOW you do it. If you do it with substantive issues from the left, that’s a good thing. If you join with a rightwing warrior to push rightwing conspiracy theories, then that’s where you come in for criticism.
I see nothing wrong with extending an olive branch to Tea Parties. The test of their credibility is whether they will turn their anger and attention from the servants — our political class — to their corporate masters. Many here have noted that many of these people are emphatically not Republicans — they are fed up with the whole system. But they aren’t well-read enough to realize who’s pulling the politicians’ strings. If they can be turned to attack the entrenched powers, they can be an asset to progressives — you have to overturn the old order before you can start arguing about who forms the new one.
I basically agree, Geezer, that there’s nothing wrong with working towards a common goal. My concern is with the inflexibility of the two groups. Tea partiers are pretty up front with their “it’s my way, or the highway” approach, and the people issuing the invitation have basically written off the people who actually agree with them on most things. Guess I’m not seeing how middle ground is achieved between two groups to which compromise is a dirty word.