blame Obama

I have a cold, it has been really tons of fun and apparently I managed to forget to lock the store last night. I did sleep for about ten hours straight though and am somewhat improved this morning so that is something.

Odd couple of days, Congress passed a budget that isn't actually insane despite the White House's best efforts, our president apparently thinks that Andrew Jackson would have prevented the Civil War, also seems to be confused about why it happened in the first place, also we had May Day protests that turned out fun for all involved.

I wanna talk about Barack Obama, he emerged from vacation last week to give a speech to rich people, for which he was paid four hundred thousand dollars. This has angered liberals who feel he has betrayed them in some way by doing something for money. First I have something pretty basic for you: Obama is not a liberal, I like him and think he was a damn good president in many ways, but outside of some social policies he is basically a conservative leaning moderate with a terrifying love for drone warfare. Just because he is so much better than the shithead we currently have in the White House is no reason to fool yourself.

Second, what exactly does it matter that he spoke for money to a bunch of Wall Street people? He isn't president and holds no position of authority at all anymore, do you think that someone talking to financiers is just inherently evil or something? If a group with more money than sense wants to pay an ex president to say a few words then fine, odds are he will do something more productive with that money than they would.

Almost every president has commanded speaker fees after leaving office, and have spoken to all sorts on the financial ladder, why is it suddenly a big deal that Obama does it now? particularly given who paid him, I mean, if he had made some college or other pay almost half a million dollars for him to talk then there is something to be annoyed about, but he charged people who could afford it, fucking deal with it, dude doesn't have to work for free now that he is out of office. Bernie Sanders can suck it.

But seriously, what damage do you think will happen? Will financial regulations (that he passed, remember) be undone because he took money for a speech? No that is stupid, they will be undone because the Republicans specifically hate them and are dismantling them as fast as possible.
What do you think is more likely? The content of his speech boiling down to "fuck yeah steal from the poor1" or "Hey guys you can still make shitloads of money while being socially responsible." We'll probably see the transcript some day, but my bet is on the latter.

A number of people claim racism is behind the "controversy" and while I can't definitively say that, it is revealing that the only black ex-president is getting shit doing the same thing the white ones did. So make of that what you will.