George Clooney Speaks the Truth

Posted on October 11, 2011 at 12:44 pm by Bob Cesca

Yeah. This. Exactly this.

“I’m disillusioned by the people who are disillusioned by Obama, quite honestly, I am,” [George Clooney] said on ABC News Now’s “Popcorn with Peter Travers” before today’s release of “The Ides of March.”Democrats eat their own. Democrats find singular issues and go, ‘Well, I didn’t get everything I wanted.’ I’m a firm believer in sticking by and sticking up for the people whom you’ve elected.

“If he was a Republican running, because Republicans are better at this,” Clooney continued, “they’d be selling him as the guy who stopped 400,000 jobs a month from leaving the country. They’d be selling him as the guy who saved the auto-industry. If they had the beliefs, they’d be selling him as the guy who got rid of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ who got Osama bin Laden. You could be selling this as a very successful three years.”

He’s exactly right, of course. But it’s not an easy sell, believe it or not, since Matt Drudge’s site is almost entirely geared around making the world seem as if it’s on the brink of Armageddon with President Obama holding the doomsday button.

This wouldn’t be an issue but for the fact that Drudge rules the news media’s world, as Mark Halperin once said. So if Drudge thinks the world is ending and it’s the president’s fault, the news media’s coverage will be tainted with this message. How can anyone overcome that? The president has scored more wins in his first three years than almost any other modern president — especially applause worthy, given the divisive politics and economic disaster he inherited.

But misinformation, myopia and intellectual dishonesty are winning, both on the far-right and the far-left.

(via Kona Lowell)

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  • Obama_FTW

    That’s why people like you and I are cleaning up as much of this mess as we can.

  • blackflon

    Obama has done more bad than good. If re-elected, we will be paying the price for his policies for years.

    • dildenusa

      Oh really? Aren’t we still paying the price for the policies of Saint Ronnie of Raygun and Kings George of Bush 1 and 2? Eight years of Saint Ronnie of Raygun brought us an economic nightmare that all working, middle class, and retired people (98-99% of the population of the US) are still living every day of their lives including me. Eight years of King George of Bush 2 produce a net job loss with millions of manufacturing jobs going offshore.

      It seems to me that President Obama is doing what he can to mend the social fabric of the US and keep the Randians at arms length.

      • blackflon

        Really? What specific economic nightmare did Reagan create that affects us today.

        Bush sent no jobs overseas. Corporations do so because that is where the growth is without all of the idiotic regulations they have to deal with here.

        • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_S7NUGMJ2FDHYATRLWFEFCC5CQI schemata

          Idiotic regulations? Some are sure, but most are there to protect the consumer from the corporation. Regulation is why you aren’t poisoned every time you stick food in your mouth, every time you drink a beverage. Regulations are why your car gets better gas mileage than one 10 years older. Etc..

          As to Reagan here’s a primer http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010062415/reagan-revolution-home-roost-charts

          • blackflon

            Obviously not all regulations are bad. But we have some of the worst.

            Your chart also shows Clinton’s presidency. Looks like some of those issues you blame Reagan for went right through the Clinton years as well.

            Obama is a Marxist. He wants “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”

          • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_S7NUGMJ2FDHYATRLWFEFCC5CQI schemata

            “Obama is a Marxist.”

            Hahaha, and you want to be taken seriously.

        • http://www.facebook.com/people/Rick-Janes/607039439 Rick Janes

          Blackflon, perhaps you aren’t old enough to remember when Reagan’s own VP called his economic plans ‘voodoo economics’ and Reagan advanced the fatuous ‘trickle down’ theory still promoted by the GOP to the nation’s detriment. You might also not know that Reragan pioneered the concept of deregulation of financial institutions followed by a taxpayer bailout when they went broke, as happened when Reagan let the savings and loans gamble in the market and we had to pay $500 million when they went bust. Look at it like a tax so that Reagan could experiment with his economic theories that didn’t work.

          Both Bushes, but especially Junior, turned a blind eye to corporate malfeasance and the SEC prosecuted few global corporations or banks for fraud — in fact, the Bush family and their cronies profited greatly from allowing these practices to continue, as well as the tax cuts for the wealthy Junior supported.

          Blackflon, would you like you and your relatives to drink water containing toxins causing, at the least, severe cramps and, at the most, death? Breathe air saturated with poison shortening your breath and your life? Have a nuclear waste dump next door causing you cancer? Have to worry that the toys your kid plays with might land him or her in the hospital from exposure to lead paint? All of those scenarios have already happened in other countries that lacked those ‘idiotic regulations.’ It’s not very smart to sacrifice your health and life so that some corporation can increase their profit margin. OTOH, if you really don’t care, why don’t you move to some country without those ‘idiotic’ safety or health regulations and see how you like it? And, don’t worry, you wouldn’t be missed.

    • villemar

      No one cares what you think, troll.

      • blackflon

        Poor baby.

        • laddieluv

          You ate many paint chips as a kid? Yup!

          OK. Feeding troll. Yes, I am.

          You’re a complete “idiot.” And those are rare.

    • Alex0001

      Quite the well thought out and detailed argument you’ve got there.

      • blackflon

        Pretty concise, don’t you think?

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/John-Conner/100000495528525 John Conner

      What bad things has President Obama done? Saving the auto industry isn’t bad, overturning DADT isn’t bad, preventing a full blown depression isn’t a bad thing, making uninsured people have insurance isn’t a bad thing, removing right wing restriction of stem cell research isn’t a bad thing and creating/saving jobs isn’t a bad thing either.

      As for paying you guys on the right didn’t mind fighting two wars with no means for paying for them, you didn’t mind tax cuts for trust fund babies with no means for paying for them and I certainly didn’t hear out cries from conservatives when the Republican house passed medicaid part D.

      And the jokers running on the Republican side are already admitted if they get in they’re taking us back to the George W.Bush way of doing things gutting regulation and spending for their pet projects i.e. tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.

      It’s you Republicans that spend like teenage girls in the mall with daddy’s new credit card and hide when the bill comes.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_PZRI4FSGXWS3HSBOCS3V7DKOKI Fred

    Saving the country from disaster is not enough for The Media.
    Save the country AND bringing back ALL it’s awesome glory and economic might is what is required to get a pass.
    While “disappearing” why we are in this mess in the first place.

    Corporate Media. Corporate Messaging.

  • http://twitter.com/groobiecat Groobiecat

    Mm, well, Drudge doesn’t have much influence on the left–and it’s not necessarily the “far left,” which I dont’ consider myself to be. I do consider that suggesting oil drilling off the coast of the Atlantic without getting anything in return, allowing Vermont Yankee to be relicensed when it’s a dangerous, nuclear Pinto waiting to explode, and keeping Guantanamo open as problematic issue–to name a few–that reasonable folks on the left were not terribly happy about. We’re not wild eyed, but if you’re not a little disappointed, you’re not paying attention (and yes, time to circle the wagons).

    Thankless job that Bush “gave to the black guy’? Oh, hell yes, but he didn’t do himself any favors by not explaining why he did a number of things he did to his base.

    Just sayin’…

    • ranger11

      Sanders voted against it. Yeah, blame the black guy.

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_YM23FX2FBZEC3UVDPZRGCUBIZ4 staci

        And the liberal, progressive hero Russ Feingold voted against it, too.

    • Dan_in_DE

      It’s not really the far left – okay, you do have a point there. The absurdly hard criticism and even defection is really widespread on the left. I think it’s because people on the left are programmed for dissent. We idolize the protest movements of history – since long before the right started trying to co-opt them with their “tea party”.

      I don’t consider you to be absurdly critical just for naming a couple reasons for dissapointment. My beef is with the influential firebagger types like Sirota and Greenwald, who spend all their energy beating down the most progressive president in half a century, at a time when his administration seems like our only hope of holding some control of our government.

      • http://www.facebook.com/people/Rick-Janes/607039439 Rick Janes

        What’s scary is that people as smart as Sirota and Greenwald never provide any realistic alternative to Obama and I know (or hope, anyway) they wouldn’t be happy with a Republican — well, except it would give them a larger target for their mud throwing.

    • Dan_in_DE

      Also, too..

      Go Clooney!

  • http://kalamazoopost.blogspot.com/ Tony Indovina

    There is some truth that FOX News and other outlets have an agenda to slam the President and promote pro-busniess ideology. No question bout it and Clooney is correct.

    However, Obama underestimated the amount of economic pain and the cynicism of the financial elite, whose lackeys he kept in office, eg, Geithner and Summers. We wanted change, MORE change. But beyond just what we “wanted”, the system required more change and Obama seems to have built a bridge halfway.

    Obama’s presidency has made me all the more impressed with FDR’s administration, whose institutions had kept us safe for decades. Obama needed to be more radical, more like FDR. It’s not a matter of giving Obama “a break”, it’s a matter of what was required.

    …I do give Obama a break on the prolongation of the wars and Gitmo and assassinations without trial only because I do not think McCain would have been any better. But the fact remains that Obama called these economic half-measures “A Victory For the American People” and he was just plain wrong. I’ll probably vote for Obama again, but that does not mean that criticism is not in order.

    • ranger11

      You do know how big FDR’s Democratic majorities were, don’t you?

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_YM23FX2FBZEC3UVDPZRGCUBIZ4 staci

        FDR also didn’t have the racist, obstructionist bullshit to deal with either.

        • villemar

          Or a small cadre of professional ratfuckers maquerading as leftists.

  • trgahan

    Repeat: Obama is the elected head of the executive branch of the federal government. He is not a king or a dictator. If we so wanted the things we’re currently complaining about him not doing, then why in the hell did we hand back the House plus a majority of the state legislators and governorships to the right just two years into his first term? We went from ARRA, middle class tax cuts, infrastructure investment, and healthcare reform in 2008 and 2009 to “austerity,” budget cutting, service ending, and deregulation since 2010.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1432102542 Tim Neuenhaus

    But we didn’t get the free hamburgers he promised. OUT WITH HIM!

    • villemar

      Where’s my magic unicorn that shits emeralds???? When I stepped out my front door in the morning of January 22, 2009, I should have seen a perfect pogressitopian wonderland of rainbows, buttercups, gumdrops, lollipop trees, butterscotch waterfalls, and little mice on toadstools wearing footy pajamas. Fuck you Barack OHitlermba; I’m voting for Nader next year.

  • mrbrink

    It’s not difficult at all to sell the Obama agenda(adding, George Clooney just did it!), or the democratic policies he signed into law. The intellectual cowards and victims of this cowardice are the ones running away into the welcoming arms of social peer pressure.

    Republicans are in sales. White-race brand sales. Bible sales. Selling “the ketchup pop-sickle to the woman in white gloves.”

    Most Democrats are just the cleaners trying to get out the stain.

    But those who find it difficult to focus their energies on a more democratic body of government, taking shortcuts to real voter activism supplementing with occasionally disorganized public protest and emotional pleas to whomever, or thinks taking their glass of grievance-concentrate directly to the top of the U.S. government’s power structure– with daily updated blog entries– is changing things for the better are presenting half-ass democracy in action and calling it trustworthy.

    I find it’s more forward-thinking to not take political fashion tips from people who are telling you old-Bush is the new black, or this Obama garb is the new Bush.

    I don’t take political fashion tips from political drag queens.

    We should be throwing a goddamn hero’s parade for president Obama, not only for his bravery and leadership in the face of manufactured right wing republican chaos, but for being grossly devalued in the marketplace of ideas as the last man standing between us and the conservative butchering of the courts, the legislature, the safety net, and complete for-profit absorption of the United States of America.