Is bypassing Congress gridlock and appealing directly to the people the only hope Obama has?

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

 

Some fiery shit right here. Shuts them other suits right up proper.


Questions for the group: Is he right regarding Obama's (and ours, collectively) only hope of turning this around? Is Congressional election system so money corrupt that we, the people, must literally fire them from their jobs? 

Does anyone know anything about his references to previous presidents bypassing Congress LIKE A BOSS and going to the people, even at the risk of alienating his own party (even more than he has)?


And what about this new bank idea of his, loaning business capital @ 2%? Which side claims that idea?

EDITED FOR CLARIFICATION: Folks, checks and balances are not the issue here. Not is the abolition of Congress and establishing  Executive dictatorships. That is silly talk.

The issue is the speaker in the video suggests the POTUS, who is free to speak directly to the people, should rally the people against the Congress incumbency.

Some think he has to have Congressional oversight to do so. Er, no. He is not passing laws here, folks.

What the gentleman in the video is suggesting is that Obama talk directly to the people as our LEADER, to point the blame at the entire congress, including his party (80% of the country agree). He has the bully pulpit.

The purpose of the bully pulpit being to rally the people to purge Congress of incumbents, replace them with 'clean' legislators (read clarifications in my comments to those below who misinterpreted the intent), who will pledge to work in a non-partisan manner to get the country back on track (whatever that is; another post for another time)

Comments

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

We have a Constitution with people exactly like Mr. Ratigan in mind. Thank God for that.

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

so you are an apologist for the status quo?

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

What status quo are we talking about? Separation of Powers? Equality between the branches of government? Limits on the power of any one branch of government to dictate policy?

Damn right I am an apologist for the "status quo."

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

you confuse "The Right and Proper Structure" with our"Status Quo Congress"

Bad mistake. Killing country.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

So, the only way to save the village is to destroy it, amirite?

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

do me a favor and read the other comments, you will get the gist of my position.

:)

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

The only way to save the village is to refer to the rules laid out in the constitution. The POTUS has duty to serve the nation. Congress has put duty to corporate lobbies before this.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Where in the rules laid out by the Constitution does it say that the POTUS can just ignore the other Branches of government if he deems them suddenly to be shills for whatever boogey man you choose to name? The POTUS has a duty, it is in his oath, to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. The Constitution. Not the ephemeral needs of a fickle public easily stirred by phony baloney rhetoric and cheap enthusiasms who seek pat answers and easy solutions to difficult problems.

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

It doesn't. Nowhere in the OP and in my comment is the suggestion to ignore branches of government. A speech that wags a verbal finger at the instigators of economic ruin is taking minimal action necessary.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Ironically as this discussion went on I was reading a certain book...

"If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war."

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Wow. It has been a long time since I read that book. Maybe its time for another session.

The status quo hasn't held.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

Regardless whether you respect the intentions ascribed to those who drafted it or not, whether you think the Constition would work in theory or not, you have to admit that it has failed spectacularly in practice. It has failed to prevent almost every usurpation against which it was theoretically designed to be a bullwark.

Re: The status quo hasn't held.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

And here I was thinking we had a free press, the right to bear arms and the right to not incriminate ourselves in court. What a spectacular failure.

Re: The status quo hasn't held.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

Ah, we do have something of a free press, unless of course, you ask people like Julian Assange. Perhaps we could also ask certain conservative media people about the "Fairness Doctrine" promulgated by the FCC or perhaps discuss the desire by persons within the government for an Internet Kill-Switch.

The right to bear arms is under attack all over the place in the U.S. despite the clear Constitutional prohibition against infringing it. The "open carry debate" in California is but one small example of this.

As for self-incrimination, well waterboarding, enhanced interrogation, presumption of guilt extra-judicial proceedings, executive abridgement of habeus corpus... Are you sure we are referencing the same Constitution and society?

Re: The status quo hasn't held.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Even granting that the Federal government is larger and more intrusive than should be, that assertion is needlessly hyperbolic.

Re: The status quo hasn't held.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

When the U.S. president can clam the authority to kill anyone, anywhere, for any reason, or none, and not be subject to even having that decision questioned by anyone, what other tyranny does that leave unclaimed? NO tyrant in history, from Alexander to Ghengis Khan to Pol Pot or Adolph Hitler ever want anything more than that power. It isn't hyperbole on my part; go READ what the people who claim to represent this sad State actuall claim out of their own damned mouthes. The problem here is not "hyperbole;" it is the inability of people to face the truth of the facts on the ground because they've wrapped themselves up in evasions, rationalizations, sophistries, and pretty words on a piece of parchment, or as Arthur Silber pointed out (linked below) they are blinded by the story. The phenomenon is not new in history. See for examples:

They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45 by Milton Mayer (http://www.amazon.com/They-Thought-Were-Free-Germans/dp/0226511928/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1313073719&sr=1-1)
OR
It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis (http://www.amazon.com/Cant-Happen-Here-Sinclair-Lewis/dp/045121658X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1313073719&sr=1-2)
OR
Blinded by the Story: Liberals and Progressives as Political Creationists (http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2007/08/blinded-by-story-liberals-and.html)

Re: The status quo hasn't held.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I doubt very many Germans in Nazi Germany truly thought they were free. For one thing both Bruning and Hindenberg were already authoritarian, Hitler simply dialed it up to 11. For another Hitler's first acts as dictator were to send Germany's communists and socialists to concentration camps and purging the Old Guard in the Night of the Long Knives. As Nazi Germany lasted the state turned increasingly into a nightmarish dystopia where anyone who criticized it disappeared in the middle of the night.

Re: The status quo hasn't held.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

Oh I agree completely with what you've written in this comment. The point is though, the German people were already open to the ideas of totalitarianism, collectivism, and fuhrerprinzip and that is how they slid into the nightmare that they did.

Re: The status quo hasn't held.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Except all the Germans put in Hitler's camps who were not in fact open to it, merely smashed with the boot stamping on the human face for twelve years.

Re: The status quo hasn't held.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

Completely false. Most of them were not open to Hitler's brand of fuhrerprinzip. The only contention, in many cases, was merely over who was the "right strongman" for the job. True, Hitler and the Nazis were a political joke before he was appointed chancellor, but afterward, somebody consented to his government and the hard core Nazi "inner party" members were not numerous enough to build and man all of those camps and enforce their will on a majority of the population all by themselves. The Germans may not have thought Hitler was the right man for the job, but he said things that many of the people wanted to hear such that if the alternatives were putting up with Hitler being the top dog and Germany not recovering its prosperity, its "national greatness," and obtaining a more "fair deal" in the arena of international relations, they would take Hitler. The same phenomenon is playing out among the major political party followers and the people who actually get into office. Many of the Progressives understand that Obama has betrayed the supposed principles for which they stand, that in many ways he has outdone Bush at being Bush, but they will vote for him anyway, because their entire identity is entangled with their nominal political affiliation and in many cases, whatever "power" they have is dependent upon that affiliation. Arthur Silber, a self-identified man-of-the-left, writes of this phenomenon often. (http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2008/05/choosing-sides-ii-killing-truth-and.html)

Re: The status quo hasn't held.

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

Way to hijack my thread, Herr History Major

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

I suppose that depends. What he's saying could be interpreted as a plea for an Executive branch without a check.

You are not getting the point.

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

check..for...?

He is not attempting to pass any new laws.

POTUS has existing and constitutionally approved Executive Privilege. He can send troops to war, abolish cabinet positions, and can DAMN well speak unfettered directly to the people to put pressure on the Congress to do what is best for the country without a check from the Legislative bodies or the Judicial.

All of this talk of 'dictatorship' is conservative hogwash; knee jerk responses that are part of the divisive that is the underlying fester; the literal rotting of the body politic.

Re: You are not getting the point.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

I said could be. Not exactly an authoritative stance. You also didn't help matters much in the naming of the post.

And it's not like we haven't been ceding more and more authority away from the legislative to the executive. You mentioned war-making, but it's not just a technicality to say that we've allowed the executive a license to start wars that he ends up sending troops to fight as long as they're not 'declared' as such. Then there was the more recent talk of going around congress on fiscal matters using the 14th amendment.

So yeah, it's not as unreasonable as you might think to be a little touchy when anyone starts making arguments that even sound like more authority should be ceded.

Re: You are not getting the point.

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

Oh i agree entirely, but that was not his suggestion, I came off this with: the authority must go back to the people.

They need a leader to point to how corrupt the Congressional election system is, extol the voters to purge the incumbents (even him, if necessary) and vote only for those who take a pledge of not 'taking the dirty money'. Do 'money bombs'.

Avoid the candidate with the most advertising budgets, for they are the ones most easily marked as being bought.

Demand non-partisanship on a list of issues: "A Pact for America" only coming from the bottom up, and not the other way.