DOWNLOADS: (523)

PLAYS: (2829)

Embed

Here's something I never thought I'd hear myself saying... thank you Ali Velshi! He's absolutely correct here and the working class and the unemployed in America are not a "special interest group" as RNC Communications Director Doug Heye called them earlier in this segment on CNN's Rick List, following President Obama's barn burner of a speech he gave for Labor Day. He also did a nice job of knocking back his talking points on small businesses feeling "squeezed" by Obama's policies and not hiring because of "unpredictability" on government policy.

SANCHEZ: Ali, what did you see? And, you know, you look at the economic side of this. There are some new numbers out today that seem to show that more and more Americans are taking jobs that they don't necessarily want, but you know what? Any port in a storm, buddy.

ALI VELSHI: That is exactly right.

SANCHEZ: Sometimes you don't get the job you want. You get the job you can get at the time.

So, the president is pushing on special interests, seeming to be blaming corporatists for keeping Americans from those jobs. That's what I heard. Is he right?

VELSHI: Let me just give you a little perspective.

Doug said something that I think needs to be challenged here. There are special interests in this group. There's no question. And everybody caters to them. Working men and women of America and those 14 million who are not working who would like to be, they are not a special interest group.

You want GDP to go up? People have to have jobs. You want to stop foreclosing on homes? People have to have jobs. So to say that the president talking to working people is pandering to a special interest is quite remarkable to me.

Now, back to the point, the fact is you're right. This was a campaign -- this was a president on fire. This was a president who was back into campaign mode. But the reality is there is an anger out there that we have seen in our polling that indicates that people feel that not enough is being done and this is an urgent situation in the economy. And I think it is better that we all treat it that way and that's the kind of conversation we're going to have.

(CROSSTALK)

SANCHEZ: Hey, Ali, you mind -- since you kind of challenged Doug there a little bit, you mind if we bring Doug in to let him respond?

(CROSSTALK)

VELSHI: Absolutely. I would be happy to. I think he makes a lot of sense on a lot of things, but we do not call workers in this country -- we do not call workers in this country special interests, Doug. You need to learn that.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (658)

PLAYS: (2315)

Embed

Countdown guest host Lawrence O'Donnell asks if South Carolina could do any worse than to keep their current Republican Senator Jim DeMint in office.

DOWNLOADS: (915)

PLAYS: (2532)

Embed

Sen. Bernie Sanders said something we don't hear often enough on cable news shows while talking to Dylan Ratigan about the amendments being considered on the Senate floor today on financial reform.

Sanders: Are we a democracy or are we an oligarchy where the very powerful special interests exert enormous influence over our government.

..I think we're an oligarchy and I think it's getting worse and I think we need to rally the American people...

The middle class in this country is collapsing. Poverty is increasing and the gap between the very rich and everybody else is growing wider. And what's happening with the banks is one of the reasons that that is occurring, so this is not esoteric. This is our standard of living. This is the survival of the middle class.

This interview was before -- no big surprise -- some of those amendments started going down in flames. Shocker right? More good news for the banks all around.

Republicans derail Merkley proposal to regulate banks:

A furious Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., accused Republicans Tuesday of blocking debate on a closely watched amendment that would insulate customers from conflicts of interest and prohibit banks from making risky but highly lucrative trades that helped trigger the recession.

Merkley's outburst came after Republicans objected to what Democrats thought was a routine request for the Senate to consider -- and later vote on -- the amendment he co-sponsored with Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. That pattern had been followed for two weeks.

Continue reading »

The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur was invited on Dylan Ratigan's show to debate right wing blogger Matt Lewis on the financial reform bill. Cenk expressed a lot of the feelings I have about how the Democrats aren't much better than Republicans too often when it comes to who's been co-opted by special interests, but I think the one point he made here needs to be repeated.

Uygur: I don't disagree with what you're saying about the Democrats at all and I have tremendous problems with them. I think Geithner is terrible and I think listening to Bob Rubin was a disaster, so the Democrats are very guilty of this as well. But the problem is we don't have an opposing party that will actually keep their feet to the fire and instead of trying to make the reform stronger we have a party who's trying to make it weaker, so that's why I say the GOP is useless. I wish we had a real opposition party that could help us go down a better path, but we don't.

He's absolutely right. As bad as anyone might want to paint what the Democrats have done, there is no one in the Republican Party that's going to make any of the bills they're trying to get passed any better. They're only going to make them worse.

All of us who are trying to get rid of Democrats who don't represent the working class in America and give them primary challengers to either keep them honest or get them voted out of office are more than familiar with how hard it is to clean up our political process. I don't think Ratigan's generalizations about the two parties are correct though. I agree with Bill Maher.

Maher: This is because we don't have a left and a right party in this country any more. We have a center right party, and a crazy party.

Despite the problems with the Democrats right now, they at least look like they actually want to govern, don't hate unions, want to pass laws that help the working class and the poor and not just the rich, by and large look like they're at least willing to roll back some of the worst abuses from Wall Street even if it's not enough, and still care that there is a safety net in this country for the most vulnerable among us.

The "crazy party" is talking privatizing Social Security even after the Wall Street debacle, wants to take women back to the 1950's, is still fighting the Civil War, thinks we were justified in invading countries that weren't a threat to us and maybe we should do more of it with Iran, wants more tax cuts for the rich and still doesn't want to regulate Wall Street at all even after we watched the entire world's economy almost go down in flames. And their leaders don't mind throwing around birther conspiracy theories and calling capitalism Socialism and Marxism.

Dylan Ratigan needs to take a better look at both parties and where they're headed before he plays too much more of this "all sides are equal" game. They're not.

President Obama calls out Mitch McConnell for his trip to Wall Street asking for donations if they helped kill the financial reform bill. Apparently it didn't go over too well for him in his home town either.

Mitch McConnell's Homestate Paper Thrashes Him For 'Unabashedly Courting Wall Street Bankers For Political Money':

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is "unabashedly courting Wall Street bankers for political money" and "happy to scratch their backs if they'll scratch his," opines McConnell's homestate newspaper, the Lexington Herald-Leader, in an unusually strong rebuke. In a staff editorial headlined "McConnell to big banks' rescue," the Herald-Leader decries McConnell's pandering to Wall Street executives and repeated use of the catch phrases outlined in an anti-financial reform memo written by pollster Frank Luntz.

From The White House blog -- Weekly Address: Holding Wall Street Accountable:

WASHINGTON – In his weekly address, President Barack Obama said that in the wake of the economic crisis Wall Street reform is too important an issue for inaction. The plan moving through Congress will end bailouts, hold Wall Street accountable, and protect consumers, taxpayers and the economy from the kind of abuses that helped bring about the economic crisis. Every day without reform, those abuses, and the system which allowed them, remain in place. It is time to move forward with real reforms for Wall Street.

Full transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (169)

PLAYS: (256)

Embed

Sherrod Brown took the Senate Republicans to task for their hypocrisy and double speak with pretending like they're standing up for the working class while actually representing the interests of big business. Brown hit them for their opposition to Medicare when they were slamming Medicare as being "socialism", defending the oil industry on energy legislation, defending the drug companies, defending companies that send jobs overseas and defending the insurance industry and the banks.

Brown took a last shot at them for quoting the Lewin Group.

Brown: I hear my colleagues just so liberally if I might use that word to define them, quote Lewin and Associates. Every time Lewin and associates puts out a new study they come to the floor and they ponderously seriously say "Lewin and Associates says that this bill does this". Well Lewin and Associates is owned by... United Health Care which is one of the biggest insurance companies in the country.

So quoting Lewin and Associates on health care is like quoting the oil companies on energy legislation or climate change or quoting the drug companies on the Medicare giveaway to the drug companies bill. I mean, Mr. President, just, you know forget about Lewin and Associates, if they want to comment on something that's got nothing to do with insurance, maybe they're reputable, they used to be reputable, then United Health Care got them and sorry, you know, it's just the way it is.

We could use a few more Sherrod Brown's in the Senate.

DOWNLOADS: (1864)

PLAYS: (320)

Embed

The Republican Party is pulling the strings behind the tea parties but protesters still have some things in common with Democrats, according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

"The Republican Party directs a lot of what the tea party does, but not everybody in the tea party takes direction from the Republican Party. And so there was a lot of, shall we say, astroturf, as opposed to grassroots," Pelosi told ABC's Elizabeth Vargas Sunday.

"We share some of the views of the tea partiers in terms of the role of special interest in Washington, D.C," Pelosi continued.

"So, common ground with Nancy Pelosi and tea party movement?" asked Vargas.

"Well, no, there are some. There are some because they, again, some of it is orchestrated from the Republican headquarters. Some of it is hijacking the good intentions of lots of people who share some of our concerns that we have about the role of special interests and many tea partiers, not that I speak for them, share the view, whether it's -- and Democrats, Republicans and Independents share the view that the recent Supreme Court decision, which greatly empowers the special interests, is something that they oppose," explained Pelosi.

DOWNLOADS: (1268)

PLAYS: (3813)

Embed

Nate Silver breaks down the numbers for us on the influence of lobbyists on blocking health care reform and who those lobbyists are likely to target. Nate has more at FiveThirtyEight: Special Interest Money Means Longer Odds for Public Option.

DOWNLOAD (368)

PLAY (297)

You Tube

Bernie Sanders weighs in on what the differences are between President Obama's budget, what the Conservadems are going to agree to, and what the Republicans are going to try to block. Sanders feels that if the Democrats are forced to get sixty votes for anything they'd like through the Congress it will be watered down and likely not be worth passing. Always one to fight the good fight, Sanders tells us what most of us here anyway already know. It's going to take a strong grass roots movement to combat all the special interest dollars flowing into the campaign coffers of members of Congress.

Olbermann: There's a quote in The Atlantic magazine from an unnamed White official who says these pro-budget ads won't hurt, won't help. What do you think on this? Should the President's supporters be calling their Congressman's and their Senator's offices and saying look this is what I voted for. Don't screw this up.

Sanders: I think so. I think what we need to never forget Keith is that here in Washington we have enormously powerful special interests. You know the financial institutions in the last ten years spent five billion dollars so that we can deregulate Wall Street and that got us to where we are today.

The insurance companies and the drug companies make huge amounts of money keeping us the only nation in the industrialized world without a national health care program. So what we need to combat that enormous power of the big money interests is a strong grass roots movement.

Senator Sanders apparently had a busy day preceeding this interview. He took time to come on the set of Democracy Now: Sen. Sanders Blocking Vote to Confirm Obama Nominee Who Worked to Deregulate Credit Default Swaps.

He also shot down Senator Judd Gregg over his priorities for Americans during a committee meeting on the budget: Senator Sanders "You'll Give Billionaires Tax Cuts But No Health Care For The Middle Class!