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The Sorry State of the Union
The state of the union is just miserable, no matter how President Obama sugarcoats it. He will claim that progress has been made in stabilizing the markets, increasing national security and advancing toward meaningful health care reform, but he will be wrong on all three counts.
What he will be right about is that none of these problems were originally of his creation, and that the opposition party wants to exacerbate rather than solve any of them - believing, as they do, in that destructive maxim of desperate losers who find their salvation in the stumbles of the winners.
There is no doubt that Obama and his party represent the lesser evil, but it is deeply disturbing to have to defend the leaders of our nation in those terms. They were supposed to lead us to peace, but as the cables from the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, printed in The New York Times on Monday, make absolutely clear, the escalation in Afghanistan is tantamount to a disaster without end. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry, a retired lieutenant general who was previously the top American commander in Afghanistan, warned: "Sending additional forces will delay the day when Afghans will take over, and make it difficult, if not impossible, to bring our people home on a reasonable timetable."
Obama distracted progressives with a grand crusade for health care reform that reasserted the fundamental fallacy of the previous health reform effort of the Clinton years: Give the insurance companies a captive universal market under the absurd illusion that we can control costs without undermining their greed with a competitive government-run option.
The same is the case with the collapse of the economy, as Obama shamefully continued the Bush administration's mugging of U.S. taxpayers by throwing trillions of dollars at the Wall Street bandits who caused the financial meltdown. Meanwhile, 7 million Americans have lost their jobs and 15 million families owe more on their homes than they are worth.
Someday our president, whom I still regard as a decent and well-intentioned politician, will have to confront the demons of that fatal opportunism that led him to turn over the economy to the likes of Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner, who can most charitably be described as hugely successful Wall Street pimps. Obama knows of Summers' devilish role, during his time in the Clinton administration, in pushing the radical deregulation of the markets that the president blamed last week for our economic debacle. And he is aware that the TARP inspector general is hot on Geithner's heels for his role, as head of the New York Fed, in the funneling of $62 billion dollars through AIG to Goldman Sachs and the other bonus payout alchemists.
But there is no indication from the carefully orchestrated leaks of his State of the Union speech that Obama is truly set to reverse course. Rhetoric about the "fat cat" bankers aside, his policies represent more of the same. There will be some hokey gestures of support for the disappearing middle class, but at the heart of his new budget proposal are cuts in needed domestic spending for education, nutrition, air traffic control and just about every other worthwhile domestic program. But there are no cuts for the military budget that already makes up 60% of the federal government's discretionary spending and is comparable to the total military budget for the rest of the world's nations combined.
Budget director Peter Orszag, who is overseeing those cuts, is, like Summers and Geithner, a disciple of former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, whose radical deregulatory policies brought us to this point. Orszag's freeze on domestic spending, projected for the rest of Obama's term, will reduce the domestic budget to its lowest percentage in 50 years. That portion of the discretionary budget is already so small that the proposed cuts will save a scant $10 billion to $15 billion next year-chump change compared to the $145 billion in bonuses for Wall Street's high rollers dispensed after a year of massive national suffering that they engineered.
Shame on Obama for now telling us after wasting many trillions on Wall Street and the Pentagon, that he will now seek to balance the biggest indebtedness in U.S. history not by cutting from that greasy pork but rather into the bone of our civic life, found in funding for schools and other desperately needed social services. That is the opposite of a New Deal for ordinary folks in need of their government's assistance more than at any other time since the days of that last great Democratic president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Will we ever have another?
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175 Comments so far
Show AllHere is how I break down the political spectrum with regard to corporations:
Right-- Let them do whatever they want. Don't tax, don't regulate.
Center Right--Let them do what they have to make profits but put some limits on the most egregious insults they may issue to workers or customers.
Center-- If they will agree to abide by the law let them make their profits and pay taxes-- let them be accountable.
Center Left-- We need a public private partnership when certain matters of public health and safety are concerned, Define what private needs corporations are allowed to fill and give them a public role only if strictly regulated.
Left --Corporate Entities are inherently unjust, exploitative and should be put on the path to extinction.
Where is Obama on this spectrum. I'd say he is center-right (particularly on health care) and occasionally threatening to move to a centerist position if corporations don't behave better-- but behind the threat--thinking all the the time that he can appeal to some sense of conscience or patriotism to move them without having to actually go to the center. Am I wrong?
What about those of us on the center left or left? We don't have a prayer of being represented by the Democratic Party or the Obama administration. It's not who they are. It's not where they want to be. It's not where their funding is. It's not who they feel accountable to. It's not where they will ever take the country.
It's dysfunction for those of us left or center left to support a center right president because the far right is even worse. We have to stand our own ground politically--teabaggers do. They have taken over the Republican party. Could we do the same or are the monied interests of the Dems just too ingrown and powerful? Despite what commentators like Thomas Hartmann believe I think they are.
I don't see how we can stand for our beliefs without leaving the Democratic party. We have to have a posture where we support someone who believes in what we do. Otherwise for example if a leader like Pelosi says all options are back on the table with respect to Health Care what she means is that all center to center right options are back on the table. Without saying it she believes all center left to left options are so unfeasible and flawed that they cannot even be considered real options. Obama is there too. So is practically all of Congress. Don't waste your breathe on them. Don't tell them what to do, as if you could influence them. Talk with others who will not patronize you about what we can do. Don't think that because they sometimes stand in the center posturing and wagging their finger at the far right--they are on your side. They are fundamentally center-right. They will never be on your side. Don't support them. Don't let them coopt you. Believe me they respect you less than they do their far right rivals, (hence the collegiality of the Senate--they are all fundamentally on the same side) They are dismissive of your hopes and aspirations and think that from their perches of pwer they can manipulate and control you. Are they right?
Where is Obama on this spectrum. I'd say he is center-right
This assumes that Obama means well. He doesn't. His corruption is total. Obama represents the "Full Spectrum Dominance" of political and moral corruption.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
I agree. He is nothing but subservient in his actions towards the corporate giants. He has bought into the full spectrum dominance/Unitary Theory of unlimited Presidential "war time" powers lunacy. That alone makes him anti-Constitution, anti-Republic and a fascist line-tower towards gradual global corporate totalitarianism.
metal, you are precisely correct --- but wait, there's more, it's worse than that.
Because it is not merely corporations, or even corporatism (ie. part of statism in fascism) --- no its a whole new animal of the 21st century; Global corporate/financial/militarist EMPIRE --- that only stands behind and uses 'nation-states', corporations, military super-power, political pimps (of course) in legislatures like Congress, supremely corrupted supreme-courts like ours, faux Emperor-Presidents (Andrew Bacevich's term) again like ours, and the fast evolving global law power, which all in combination allow this first successful Global Empire to have a much better chance to actually build a Thousand Year Reich than those rank amateurs Hitler, Stalin, and Mao ever had.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Great empires usually fall because their military reach has exceeded their economic grasp. The longer the list of countries we are militarily occupying, extralegally drone bombing (and black opping including mercenary assassinations), militarily "advising," etc., the farther out on a limb our empire has crawled. That plus the fact that our leaders are such greedheads that they cannot prevent themselves or the big banks from gambling with the obscene debt load of the entire nation shows how vulnerable this empire is to sudden collapse. The system of international law and war crimes created as a result of World War II has been effectively demolished by the Bush II neo-cons and Obama neo-libs and no coherent "global law power" has yet arisen to take its place. The U.S. is operating far outside of its Constitutional treaty obligations to the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions and its own preexisting federal laws pertaining to torture and is now systematically covering up multiple torture-murders of terrorism suspects held and killed in U.S. detention facilities. Many of our EU allies are deeply unhappy at how our rogue torture regime has abused their innocent citizens.
I-d actually say he is SELF-centered (whatever his career demands and whomever he needs to throw under the bus.)
You said it perfectly.
One thing you left out: Support the Greens. They have ballot lines in most states. If you don't think they're viable now, get to work. It may take an election or two but, at this point, we are being pulled along by the colluding two-party. It's time to ....
SHAKE IT UP!
Ralph Nader has been saying, essentially: Obama's bandwagon had faulty wheels to begin with. Don't get on it! It's hazardous!
Most of the commenters are having a fit over Scheer's line that Obama, "whom I still regard as a decent and well-intentioned politician," might perhaps still redeem himself and get the country back on a progressive track if only he ... blah blah blah. It seems the worst thing anyone can now say is that s/he still regards Obama as decent and well-intentioned. But only a week or so ago there was a poll somewhere, reported on MSNBC by Olbermann or Maddow, I forget which, that said 90% of Americans shared that view of Obama. Ninety percent.
Nearly everyone likes him "personally." Never mind that precisely 0% of that 90% has ever met the man or knows him "personally" in any sense whatsover. All they know is the media image of him, but that's apparently enough for media-addicted Americans who also deeply believe they "know" and have personal opinions about movie and TV stars, rock stars and "balloon boy" for that matter. All Scheer knows about Obama's political intentions is what he has gathered since BHO arrived on the political scene a few years ago that corporate media has presented in the form of a packaged celebrity image. Has he met Michelle and the girls, taken a little weekend vacation with them to Martha's Vineyard, did he hang out with Obama when he was a Chicago community organizer, just enough to "get to know the guy," etc.? I didn't think so.
I think Tommy Lee Jones is a great actor, but if I really want to sound like I need psychiatric evaluation I could say I like him personally and think he's a swell dude who has saintly instincts and has always struck me as a really good person. (Actually, I'm sure he's a much better person than Obama, but that's just me.)
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
I always tell less informed people who are looking for a way to gauge the character of nominees for president to see where they announce that they will send their kids to school if they win the White House. This is always announced by the corporate media after they have designated "their" winner but several weeks before the presidential election itself. If they announce that they will send their kids to one of the posh D.C. private schools then I tell the folks: This means they consider themselves and their children "above" the concerns of families forced to send their kids to the troubled public school system and because of that condescending attitude they have no serious intention to reform the public school system for the majority of poor working-class families who must send their kids to that system. This means they look down on the working-class and struggling poor Americans in general and are there to improve things for their own family and not the common good. Jimmy Carter was the last president to send his child to the public schools.
So If I’m successful in life I don’t have the right to send my kid to whatever school I deem fit? Don’t get me wrong I believe that we should have a public school system that allows every child a fighting chance to make it in society. But part of what makes this country great is that you can take your success and teach it to your kids so they too can have a healthy and meaning full life.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
How does whether or not you send your kids to public school or private school prevent you from teaching your success to your kids? [Oh, unless class elitism and a superiority complex is something you consider as part of your "success" because you believe that while the children of the masses are allowed a "fighting chance" to make it in society, your somehow inherently superior children deserve to make it in society in comfort, style and ease.]
LAH (Laughable Aristo-Hubris?), neither you nor your offspring are better than any other citizen in the U.S. regardless of what you conceive of as your personal level of "success" as a human being.
Not once did I say my offspring nor I am better than anyone else. I said I should have the right to send my kids to any school that I wish. If I, or you choose to send your kids to a school that teaches the values you believe in or standards of education how is that "concieved" of being better than any other human being? Does wanting to send your kids the best school they can get into make you an elitist or just a good parent?
Pardon a woolly tangent, but your Tommy Lee Jones reference reminds me that I used to be a sucker for the presumption that persons are "decent and well-intentioned" regarding actors and other show-biz celebrities.
For the sake of accuracy and efficiency, I'll use the mysterious but enduring term "cool".
Fortunately, my habitual error is insignificant in the scheme of things, but for years I idiotically, if unconsciously, assumed that actors who appeared in, um, counterculturally appealing films must be totally cool people in real life.
In my defense, I was set up by the fact that during my Formative Years, there were certain iconic actors who were proudly right-wing, e.g. John Wayne and Charlton Heston. So it was a natural error to assume that "anti-hero" stars were lefties, even if they didn't wear their politics on their sleeves like Brando or Warren Beatty.
But to be clear, my point is that this summary judgement of stars being "cool people" wasn't exclusively political; it was a more generalized delusion of all-around coolness. So when I found out that guys like Robert Duvall and Jon Voight are wingnuts, I was a bit disconcerted.
Major Frank Burns and Joe Buck, wingnuts? These Icons of Cinematic Coolness were in real life horribly INdecent and ill-intentioned-- reactionary and Uncool?
As noted, this is-- was-- an unconscious if foolish bias. If you had asked me point-blank whether an actor's roles (or talent) proved anything about their politics, I would have said no, of course not. Duh. Yet despite myself, I formed certain strong assumptions about these celebrities' personality and character.
And, as you astutely comment, I believe that people form the same unconscious impressions of political celebrities, based on a minimum of information-- and skewed, processed, manufactured information at that.
When it comes to politicians, even people who have read Sartre, and are familiar with cautionary themes such as Arendt's seminal description of "the banality of evil" still tend to reflexively approve of any young politician who doesn't twirl an elaborate mustache like Snidely Whiplash, or rub his hands together and mutter "Excellent!" like C. Montgomery Burns.
A good-hearted relative who became enthralled by Obama, and is now working through the painful angst of Obama-remorse, still cringes when I brutally discount "gut feelings" that Obama is essentially a "good guy".
I don't know that. My own gut provides no pings of reassurance about Obama. I do know for sure that he's a highly ambitious, narcissistic corporate lawyer with an identity crisis that renders him phobic toward any traces of leftist politics, values, and spirit of the Sixties counterculture "owned" by his mother.
BTW, when I write "brutally discount", I mean that I feel like I'm being "brutal" to my poor pained relative. He's feebly remonstrates "Aw, c'mon, you can't tell me Obama is a personal creep like Cheney or Dubya... or even Emanuel!"
I can only shrug, leaving my interlocutor more distressed at my seeming "cynicism" than their own presumptuousness.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Brilliant! as usual. Don't you ever have days when you find it difficult to express what you mean? I doubt it. But I must say my heart sinks to be reminded that Robert Duvall is a rightwinger. He's another of my favorite actors. A few nights ago I watched "Deliverance" again and couldn't stop thinking about Voigt being a raving reactionary lunatic, and what a sympathetic role he plays in that film. And "Midnight Cowboy" I pretty much have memorized. The old video tape I have of it is basically worn out. It's disgusting to find these silver screen heroes to be in fact deranged authoritarians who would love to be living in a third-world-style dictatorship, presumably to protect their own rank and privilege. Dennis Hopper is another such, not to mention the clown Chuck Norris, and I'm sure I'm overlooking a long list of them. But we do have Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn and Warren Beatty! And probably three or four others.
You're right, of course. Personally, I'm disappointed. Not a lot as I wasn't expecting much, but after the eight years previous to Obama I was hoping for something a little better. Even that "little" hasn't happened. I couldn't allow myself to believe we'd get someone even worse than W was, and I still don't think we have someone worse. What we have is someone exactly the same who is slightly more articulate and therefore, a little less nauseating.
Meet the new boss.....Same as the old boss.
Now that I'm thinking about it.....maybe Obama IS worse. I mean, W had Cheney pulling his strings. Do you suppose ol' Dick is in a back room at the White House? It certainly appears so.
"Obama knows of Summers' devilish role, during his time in the Clinton administration, in pushing the radical deregulation of the markets that the president blamed last week for our economic debacle."
I thought the "debacle" was the dumb W's fault?
sierra7
Study Summer's, Rubin's, Senator Phil Gramm (also his wife Wendy's) role in the Clinton Administration prior to the monkey that succeeded him and, made the mess worse.
Obama let the wolves into the manger when he brought these monsters back in his administration.
(But, that should tell you how nasty the dems are.....anyway....(I'm no-partisan voter)
sierra, you present a very accurate description of this bipartisan crime, which both sides of the 'Vichy' D/R Party committed for the benefit of the very same singular ruling-elite corporate/financial/militarist EMPIRE that until last Thursday controlled our country quite covertly and under pretty good PR cover from their equally 'Vichy' corporatist media --- until the supreme court ruling overtly sold the EMPIRE our country OVERTLY.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
No, dumb Duhhbya just:
(1) Ignored the hyper-inflating housing bubble for 8 years after repeated attempts by budgetary experts like Ralph Nader to warn him (complete with a plan to defuse the bubble before it could pop that Congress, Duhhbya & the Fed ignored).
(2) Dug us deeper into a fiscal pit via open-ended war spending on bloody, illegal and bungled occupations with no commensurate reduction in the threat from terrorism.
(3) Compounded the need to borrow from foreign lenders plus interest to maintain that war spending by reducing taxes on the richest Americans during war time (a first in all of world history according to world historians).
After seeing how the Republican strategy against Obama has deteriorated to having a nationwide mob threatening to used the "bullet box" if the ballot box doesn't bring the results they'r demanding, and after seeing how this morning Timothy Geithner had to agonize and suffer through a bestial interrogation by both, Republicans AND Democrats, I'd like to tell the people in the left to please cool it off.
Please stop seeing so much evil in Obama and his administration in the exact same way the rightwing freaks are doing.
Obama is not an idiot. He knew the second he got elect the Republicans were going to put up a front to the last man against anything and everything Obama had to say and offer.
It should be more than clear by now that Obama tried his hardest to avert this irrational attack on him by populating his administration with people who at worst can be accused of being slightly right off center.
All Obama has been trying to do is to quiet down the rightwing neanderthals the best he could. The fact that it didn't work is not his fault.
And the last thing he needs is for the left to split hairs about what a "leftist" is supposed to do once in power.
Give these guys a freaking break and concentrate your intellectual firepower the other direction, for crying out loud.
Your concern should be to educate the American people the best you can and not to help the right to build an image of Obama as a totally useless fool.
The left needs to get real and get to work.
Give Obama a break eh? Sure ! We'll give him a break as soon as we're done incinerating his party if NJ, VA, and MA wasn't a wakeup call. Obama is making all the wrong moves and getting himself into trouble with the public. When will you Obama apologists quit being dingbats and realize that you can't appease rightwing lunatics no matter how much you try?
Hey, Max. Remember we have to be bipartisan in everything ---- including "incineration"!
Best,
Alan
Hey Max, Angry Geezer Club meets tonight at 8.
phil, with all due respect, Obama has to shit or get off the pot.
The only way he could possibly redeem himself and our country from this corporate/financial/militarist Global EMPIRE is to publicly confront this Empire as JFK did, and as follows:
Here's how Obama could win a second term, or four like FDR (if it were still legal) and be as popular as George Washington for winning the Revolution against the British EMPIRE, if he has the guts to level with the American people (and coincidentally save our democracy):
Here’s the single, seminal, and underlying ‘cause’ of all these problematic ‘issues’ that Obama has to level with the American people about to restore his credibility, and coincidentally save our democracy: ---- its not health care, nor the economy, nor the wars, nor the hundred other distractive symptomatic 'identity issues' that are ALL caused by the exact same hidden metastasizing tumor of cancer.
It begins with an 'E', but “its not the Economy stupid” ---- it's EMPIRE.
In his "State of the (supposedly democratic) Union' he should forcefully point out that today we're almost totally controlled by a previously well hidden corporatist EMPIRE --- now made more visible by the supreme court's treason of literally handing over our country to the Empire overtly.
While this problem can not be solved by any quick legislative or other means, that he will actually 'lead' and solve this (and all our other problems caused by Empire) and he will do it by moving to the Green (independent) Party (which does not accept corrupting corporate Empire money), and then Obama should challenge all those he is addressing in Congress, who have the guts to represent us (and the U.S.) to follow him and shun the hopelessly corrupted and 'bought' Dem/Rep single corporate Empire's two-faced phony party.
Of course, if Obama has the guts to do so, the Empire would probably kill him like they did to JFK, RFK, MLK, or remove him like they tried with FDR --- and which, if enough people know that this is likely before hand, is the only thing that would keep the Empire from doing it.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Very good, Alan. And how I wish it could happen. Unfortunately, we all know better.
BTW, how's things in Sanford??? I spent 10 happy years in Saco and wish I'd never moved away.
blythe, it's a little cold right now, but I'll use Obama's gutless speech tonight to get my temperature up.
Best,
Alan
Poor Timothy Geithner, I wouldn't want him to suffer criticism, especially after all the flack he took for not paying his taxes. So what if he put the trillion dollar bailouts of his wealthy wall street buddies ahead of the taxpayer!
And thanks for pointing out that all the valid criticism of Obama expressed here is just us "seeing so much evil" because if we had known that what was wrong with the US government was just a case of so much evil then, of course, we would have held our tongue.
"Obama is not an idiot"...now here, ...here you may get an argument...but in your defence, perhaps you have been sleeping this first full year of Obama's term as president.
"The left needs to get real and get to work"....Whatever you say Rahm.
Are you serious? We should support Obama for turning the treasury over to the banks, continuing all the wars, and forcing everyone to buy private insurance? All so he could deflect criticism from the Right? And it didn't even work?
What are you talking about? Obama's not Left at all - this is the Clinton administration all over again, but without the prosperity. If he had actually tried to DO something, people would have gotten behind him. But he's been corporate all the way. There is nothing there to support.
There was no prosperity in 1993 either.
It's the fallacious nature of the Obama conservatives that disables their thinking. They think that because Obama is a black Democrat that he has special rights and is above the law. Imagine what they would be saying if Colin Powell or Ralph Nader were in Obama's place and the same position.
Another Obama conservative making fallacious arguments in defense of the Obama administration. If Colin Powell or Ralph Nader were in the same place and position as Obama, would you be just as nice to either one of them as you are to Obama? Let me guess. You were once a bleeding heart liberal whose anger with the Bush administration and the Republicans has thrown your mind off. It sounds like all you want is Obama and more Democrats. It is not unpatriotic or treasonous to call a leader out for his errors even if he is a black Democrat. You have no business rambling about the need for the left to do more when all the work of the commons alone cannot counter the actions of the political leaders. Obama failed on all counts of actions and responsibilities and nothing we do can substitute for his errors. You have a conservative disease because all you care about is electing more Democrats. Obama has purposely chosen to betray the left and he deserves to be called out on it. The left is angry at the Obama administration but for different reasons compared to the right. Obama is not above the law.
Phil...you wrote "...He knew the minute he got elected the Republicans were going to put up a front to the last man against anything and everything Obama had to say and offer."
Yet Obama, whom you say is "...not an idiot." has spent the last year trying to be bipartisan and gain the cooperation of the very people who were out to "put up a front to the last man" against him.
You wonder why there is anger out here on the left? How about Obama fighting these SOB's, not trying to be bipartisan, which is beltway speak for I Surrender!
The Republican Party after 2008 was poised for banishment to the political wilderness for generations but now they are back and on a roll thanks to Obama, his gang of Wall Street retreads and bi-partisanship. You bet we're &+(&^&*% mad!
The greatest chance for progressive reform in decades and these clowns have pissed it all away in one year.
AARRGGHH
Sorry, philistine, but no one here is buying your DLC claptrap. OK, maybe a few are, like ezeflyer, but your apologetics are a bit stale and totally unpersuasive. Anyone who actually empathizes with Geithner, not to mention defends Obama, at this stage of their Bush-lite game either can't stand paying attention and is determined to remain a true-blue believer to the bitter end, or is hoping to get hired on to Obama's understaff his next term, which erroneously assumes he'll have one. Or maybe you already work for him in some minor capacity.
We aren't "helping the right" by criticizing, even vilifying, Obama and his gang of Republicans in disguise, and whether he's a fool or an idiot isn't the issue. The point is . . . but you're not interested. You just want the horrible left to shut its collective trap and get on with the real work of "educating Americans" to keep voting for Democrats forever, so those nasty Republicans don't get back in. We hear that a lot, and only a few are listening to such drivel. Try to catch up. Paying attention to what the Obamabots actually DO instead of how flashy and confident they appear on TV is a good start.
In case you missed it:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/progressives-vs-the-presi_b_438825.html
Well, I did miss it-- but I didn't miss much.
Cesca is just another dogmatic liberal-lite who thinks he discovered the concept of "don't cut off your nose to spite your face". He's also a big believer in politics being the art of the possible, keeping one's powder dry, and most of all not making the perfect the enemy of the good.
Like every other self-respecting gamboholic, Cesca has a Foolproof System.
If anything happens to John Nichols, they'll just slide Cesca right in and "The Nation" won't miss a beat.
· Yr Obd't Servant
I must admit I was an Obama apologist when he was running for president and just after he was elected, and I took some flack for that here on Common Dreams for some of the comments I made in support of him (and I was a bit rude in reply.) I still believe he is better than Bush, but the people who stood against Obama on this site were right, and I was wrong. I will never vote for a republican or democrat again.
Obama is a complete flop and not much better than a republican. I have gotten to point where I don't even bother to listen to him anymore; I won't be watching his address tonight that's for sure. Why bother. I have better things to do with my time. He's proven he is nothing but an elitist and a corporate lackey-just like every other president has been since the end of the Civil War. He's also, unlike his pre-election persona of compassion he projected, is aloof and detached. He just wanted the presidency and sold his soul (if he ever had one) to get it...
I think Republicons pay well for convincing people not to vote or to vote third party so they can get in through the back door again.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Things are too screwed up and the public is too confused for this tactic to benefit the Republicans for any length of time once they get back in power. They've got no policies to retain anymore electoral loyalty from the voting masses than do the DLC Dimocrats now. Neither McParty will honestly or effectively address soaring unemployment and the related middle-class rot that is bleeding out what is left of the middle-class from the bottom up. The threat from the GOP is not that they will somehow win the hearts and minds of any lasting coalition of voters but that they will crush the last remnants of the old Republic and replace it with military/corporatist totalitarianism in support of Rumsfeld's nihilistic "Long War" within/against oil rich countries (Islamic or not as is the case in Columbia and may soon be the case re: Venezuela, Nigeria and elsewhere).
What we're going to see is a made for domestic consumption, televised electoral ping-pong battle between the same old DLC and GOP corporatist fascists while the corporate oligarchs (domestic and military) get the rest of their agenda passed and all the other needs of the country and the biosphere are ignored.
Only a united, courageous and energetic progressive movement can effectively resist this and we've only got a couple more years to get our collective act together.
I also will never vote Republican or Democrat again (I never did vote Repub). Its like I invited Barack to meet my parents for a week and he was great and as soon as we got married, he started fucking me in the ass 3 times a day and hitting me while he did it. By the way, I am male and not gay, so that is all figurative. 3rd party all the way!!!
Well, it was on while I was driving home from Stop 'n Shop and when I was putting the few provisions I needed away. And here's one thing that got me boiling: If there's anybody with a better idea on health care that won't add to the deficit bring it on -- said Big Brother Obama. I nearly lost it. Bernie Sanders' talked for 30 minutes a couple of months ago on THE IDEA -- you know, the one Obama refused to consider. While I don't know totally about the deficit nitty-gritty for single-payer, one thing is for sure -- it will help greatly with the job situation now and into the future. But, again, what do I know, except all the good stuff I've been reading all these months on the subject.
Listen, you guys once again are not making any sense.
Imagine for a moment that instead of Obama someone like Ralph Nader or Dennis Kucinich got elected as president.
Imagine either one of them got people like Gore Vidal and Matthew Rothschild, etc., etc., to work for them.
Do you really think they would have been allowed to even take one step out of the starting gate?
Come on, now. Use your brains for once. You know very well there would have been a coup d'etat in a matter of days if not hours after they took control on January 20th, or whatever.
In other words, if every leftist dream came true it wouldn't last long and you know it.
So, again, the problem is not the left or any other liberal's agenda. The problem is the American people.
T-H-E A-M-E-R-I-C-A-N P-E-O-P-L-E.
Not the Tea Party, not the Republicans or any other rightiwng freak, but the American people who let themselves be impressed by them like a 3 year-old all scared while asking for candy on a Halloween run.
So, again, reserve your anger, and madness, and for once be a mature adult in your life and do what's right: To tell all those "3 year-olds" to calm down, and not to feel threatened by liberals no matter what shape or form they take.
Right phil. Maybe I'm paranoid, but you have to wonder who a few CD posters are working for sometimes.
What's a racial equality symbol to do? He can't please everybody. Right and left hate him equally and the system keeps us fighting among ourselves while the oligarchy fleeces us.
Oh yeah ! Blame the American people will you ? Let's have it for more big government spending on wars and Wall Street handouts, yipee hooray ! Let's pay no attention to Big Government's meddling with the working class. Uh huh ! It's ok for Obama to placate the right because he's a Democrat ! YEP ! YEP ! Let's just be naive and poopoo heads like philistine ! Yeah philistine, don't blame the Republicans, Democrats, or teabaggers. Just blame the American people ! Wait, you are an American person so you wanna blame yourself? Then shut up and blame yourself but leave us out of your blame circle. Down boy, down philistine ! Stupid dog !
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Reading the defeatist exhortations of old school Democratic Party apparatchiks like Philistinetherear is pretty surreal at this point, but it's such a deliberately & self-servingly dumbed-down surrealism that I'd much rather look at old picture books of Salividor Dali paintings to enjoy the good stuff.
Unquestioning, usually older and more affluent Dimocrats like Philistinetherear have already lived the good life and don't face the grim economic realities the younger generations now must face thanks to their elders' materially glutted, political zombification. These dinosaurs lack the balls or energy to stand up to military/corporate fascism so they insist it must be so for all of us.
Right on response Cicero, in my experience, the people who assertively defend Obama or the dem party are often recipients of pork barrel or cronyism. Or they're people who were so emotionally manipulated that the process was effectively abusive and they haven't begun to heal as of yet. So they're still in denial as to how flagrantly they've been misused.
Mainstream pols are at the beginning of their end. They're on the way out. And it can't be soon enough.
Watch out with Salvador Dali though. I'm an artist, too (and a social worker) and Dali is a traitor to the proudly progressive traition of most cultural workers.
The bastard was a collaborator with the fascists in Spain. Basta.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
This is off topic but to live in Spain under Franco many people had to appear to support and "collaborate" with the fascist government whether they actually did support them or not in order to survive. The fascist movements in Nazi Germany and Spain eschewed post-19th century styles of art except for propaganda supporting fascist unity and government approved policies. Picasso was a special case because he was so famous even before WWII that his name alone reflected prestige on whatever country he inhabited so his famous personal and artistic "eccentricities" were also tolerated in Spain. Regarding Dali, if you can point to a source that supports the contention that he was a willing collaborator with Francisco Franco of Spain I would like to read it.
metal, thank you. I'm 25 myself and I kinda hate my life. I wanted to be a small business entrepreneur specializing in environmentally friendly technologies but in this crazy capitalist bloat, the referee which is Big Government is giving more handouts to the huge corporations while punishing small businesses. What do people like me have left? I had to move from KY to Indianapolis just to get a 9 month contract and I was lucky that I had friends living there to share an apartment with me. My job gives me no benefits and only pays by the hour so holidays are off. My other alternative is to put up with more torment from my screwy Republican parents who complain about government feeding the poor while they are just fine with government defending the rich and the wars ! I don't hate my parents but I have been tormented by their silly Limbaugh talk that I would much rather run away. Thanks for understanding the pain we the younger face. I do have to say though that some of my elders are actually sympathetic to the young so I wouldn't classify all elders as materially glutted.
PS: I apologize for using the term Big Government. I'm not a deadbeat libertarian but quasi libertarian quasi green.
I hate my life too. It's really hard for we the younger who are in such pain about some elders being materially glutted. And also that silly dilly Limbaugh talk.
Is that you NoMoreForCorps?
Hey Lex, forget it, you wouldn't understand even if I used real small words to explain it to you.
Didn't you read Lex's other response to metal? I think you misunderstood his original post you replied to. He apologized for using the term "Big Government" and explained.