Remember the Tea Party rally at which a group of unwashed degenerates sang screeched the words to a little diddy entitled "F*** the USA"? Me neither. But don't you dare question their patriotism (via Verum Serum -- content warning):
Significant elements of these protests may be virulently anti-American, but that won't stop the Obama campaign from trying to exploit anti-Wall Street anger for electoral gain. Remember, never let a crisis go to waste:
President Obama and his team have decided to turn public anger at Wall Street into a central tenet of their reelection strategy. The move comes as the Occupy Wall Street protests gain momentum across the country and as polls show deep public distrust of the nation’s major financial institutions. And it sets up what strategists see as a potent line of attack against Republican front-runner Mitt Romney, a former investment executive whom Obama aides plan to portray as a wealthy Wall Street sympathizer.
Many Democrats consider Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, the greatest threat to Obama when it comes to wooing centrist independents next year, and Romney this week has begun to present himself as a champion of middle-income Americans. Obama aides point to recent surveys that show anger at Wall Street spanning ideologies, including a new Washington Post-ABC News poll in which 68 percent of independents and 60 percent of Republicans say they have unfavorable impressions of the big financial institutions. But the strategy of channeling anti-Wall Street anger carries risks. Many of Obama’s senior advisers have ties to the financial industry — a point that makes Occupy protesters wary of the president and his party.
You know who else has "ties to the financial industry"? This guy. Incidentally, Washington Post, Mitt Romney is undeniably a GOP top tier mainstay, but I'm not sure the "front runner" label applies at the moment. But that's a small quibble. Back to the story:
In recent days, Obama has ramped up his rhetoric. He took the unusual step of targeting an individual company when he attacked Bank of America for its new $5 monthly debit-card fee, calling it “exactly the sort of stuff that folks are frustrated by.” And his campaign and the White House have distributed messages blasting GOP candidates and lawmakers for wanting to repeal Wall Street regulations pushed by Obama and opposing the confirmation of a leader for the consumer protection bureau created as part of the overhaul.
“We intend to make it one of the central elements of the campaign next year,” Obama senior adviser David Plouffe said in an interview. “One of the main elements of the contrast will be that the president passed Wall Street reform and our opponent and the other party want to repeal it.”
Actually, it's not that unusual of a step for this president to target an individual company. To pluck one example out of the memory bank, remember when Obama demagogued the hell out of those AIG bonuses in 2009? The very same bonuses it was later revealed that his own administration and political allies had secured in the stimulus? We're witnessing a very similar pattern with Bank of America today. The president is running around bashing the debit card fees and vowing to whip up resentment against big business as an election strategy -- but the fees in question were implemented as a direct result of a law he championed and signed. George Orwell, call your office. Better yet, the White House has now officially embraced the Occupy so-called movement's "99 percent" rhetoric:
The White House continued its embrace of the Occupy Wall Street protests on Sunday, using the strongest terms yet to identify President Barack Obama with the growing movement. In a call previewing Obama's upcoming bus tour through North Carolina and Virginia, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama "will continue to acknowledge the frustration that he himself shares," about Washington's laggard response to the financial crisis.
Earnest added that while on the trip, Obama will make it clear that he is fighting to make certain that the "interests of 99 percent of Americans are well represented" — the first time the White House has used the term to differentiate the vast majority of Americans from the wealthy.
I'll leave you with a final piece of irony. Remember the nutter whose tragically unfair lot in life pushed him to the brink of madness? Here's a reminder of his supposed desperate incoherence:
Yeah, turns out his name is Edward T. Hall III (really)...and that he's a graduate student at an Ivy League institution (really)...and that he has a trust fund (really). With all of that information in mind, re-watch his little performance, and enjoy the resulting chuckle. Bravo to Larry O'Connor for exposing this creep. What a total fraud.
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