Obama has already signaled he will accede to Republican demands for extending tax cuts at all income levels …

Was it Tuesday the President signaled that, I was sick then and maybe didn’t get the news. Or was it earlier, 2009, 2008, or early in his Presidential run? Or has he been a money and power shill since his beginnings at that Chicago real estate privatization law firm?

The full quote actually refers to resistance in Congress to extending tax breaks for our nation’s richest. Both Obama and his AP court scribe decide to demean this as mere posturing (they’re more than likely right, but I think it’s revealing (to those who havent’ ‘gotten’ Obama) how quick and comfortable Obama is insulting populism among Democrats (has he ever insulted Sarah Palin as he does now to his fellow Democrats in Congress, as a posturing fake?)):

Two days after [Obama] and newly empowered Republicans exchanged pledges of cooperation at the White House, President Barack Obama expressed optimism about the prospects for agreement …

Still, he cautioned, “That doesn’t mean there might not be some posturing over the next several days.”

Not long after he spoke, Democrats ignited a partisan row in the House with legislation that would prevent taxes from rising on lower- and middle-income wage earners but allow them to rise for people at higher incomes.

The measure has no chance of passing the Senate, and Obama has already signaled he will accede to Republican demands for extending tax cuts at all income levels, making the vote purely symbolic.

The Senate, that fine club of millionaires where the Democrats have a 56 to 42 majority over Republicans, surely no chance there. And so it goes. That populist anti-rich-people bill passed 234-188 in the House, by the way.

Meanwhile, the right-left effort commanded by Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders has forced our Federal Reserve to tell us how much we gifted our biggest banks during the financial crisis they created:

The $3.3 trillion in emergency loans and other assistance and more than $9 trillion in more than 21,000 short-term loans and other financial arrangements were disclosed by the Federal Reserve on their Web site in response to a provision by Sen. Bernie Sanders in the new financial reform law.  The figures revealed dwarf the $700 billion Treasury Department bank bailout out signed into law under President George W. Bush – which Sanders voted against. …

Goldman Sachs received nearly $600 billion

Morgan Stanley received nearly $2 trillion

Citigroup received $1.8 trillion

Bear Stearns received nearly $1 trillion

Merrill Lynch received some $1.5 trillion

Deutsche Bank, a German lender, sold the Fed more than $290 billion worth of mortgage securities

Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank, sold the Fed more than $287 billion in mortgage bonds

This country needs some real populism. Anyone else liking him/her a President Bernie Sanders in 2012, to run against the anti-populist?